Happy New Decade, Oppo

"ttyymmnn" (ttyymmnn)
12/31/2019 at 12:03 • Filed to: None

Sure, the new decade probably starts in 2021, but who's going to argue with Calvin?

DISCUSSION (15)

facw > ttyymmnn
12/31/2019 at 12:09

As someone with a computer science degree, I’m glad there’s one place in normal society where we start counting with 0 rather than 1. Even in the IT world, far too many of those database weirdos like to start their counting at 1.

myopicprophet > facw
12/31/2019 at 12:13

It’s the twenties. I’m 100% with you on this.

MiniGTI - now with XJ6 > facw
12/31/2019 at 12:16

I’ve only lightly dabbled in programming over the years but enough that I bristle at how little kids are invariably taught to start counting at 1. I’d love to teach my son different but I’m sure it would just confuse him and cause him to resist conformity.

ttyymmnn > MiniGTI - now with XJ6
12/31/2019 at 12:18

They still start the number line at 0. But it’s an easier concept for kids to start with one thing than with nothing.

Svend > ttyymmnn
12/31/2019 at 12:21

Ye’, but we’ve hover boards, THAT DON’T FUCKING HOVER, I SEE THE WHEELS YOU LYING PRICKS!!!!

Kinja'd!!!

user314 > ttyymmnn
12/31/2019 at 12:47

Flying Cars

Absent discovering repulsor lift and fusion power, flying cars are going to remain one-offs and excellent ways to bilk gullible fools , erm, investments in nascent technology, for the foreseeable future.

Moon Colonies

Who knows, had we not given up on the moon once we beat the Russians, or not gotten sidetracked by the Shuttle, or if the American people didn’t have group ADHD we’d have a couple thousand people living on the moon now. We’ll never know. As it is, looks like private enterprise is going to drag us there (and/or Mars), even if the timetable is a bit fluid.

Personal Robots

Well, now that depends on your point of view. Granted, we don’t have general robots like the Jetson’s Rosie helping out around the home, but Roombas are a thing, and for good or ill home automation systems like Alexa are selling like hotcakes.

Zero G Boots

See Cars, Flying.

Rocket Packs

See Cars, Flying. There’s also Yves Rossy’s wingpacks and Richard Browning’s jetpacks, which are both works in progress, but pointing in the right direction.

Disintegration Rays

Hey, who knows what DARPA’s got in their toy chest, just waiting for an alien invasion ?

Seriously though, power is still an issue, both from storage standpoint and throughput from the emitter. Going to be relying on slugthrowers and less-than-lethal exotics for a while longer.

Floating Cities

See Cars, Flying.

ttyymmnn > user314
12/31/2019 at 12:52

Is it even practical to have a Moon base? With no atmosphere and no water, it would be a bitch to keep people alive for any great length of time.

BaconSandwich is tasty. > ttyymmnn
12/31/2019 at 13:39

There's supposedly ice near one of the poles. That, plus unlimited solar power might make it feasible. But it's not like we have found some sort of value resource to make it worth while.

facw > ttyymmnn
12/31/2019 at 13:49

There’s water ice in craters at the poles, though not a ton. Some people want to take that water ice, use solar power to break it up into hydrogen and oxygen that could then be used to fuel rockets going elsewhere. That seems like a waste when there’s abundant water ice in the asteroid belt though. The far side of the moon would be a decent place to build radio observatories, given that the moon would block radio signals from Earth. You certainly could go beyond such outposts to full sized colonies, but there are many lightly inhabited places on Earth that would be far easier to build on. Really if you are talking about large scale colonies (at least near term), you are talking about potentially avoiding the destruction of humanity should some calamity happen on Earth, or as a test of technology for more distant outposts, made safer and easier due to the relative proximity.

user314 > ttyymmnn
12/31/2019 at 13:50

Humans are both stubborn and adaptable . Give us a reason to be there and we’ll figure out the hows as we go (witness Antarctica and Australia...).

The lack of an atmosphere and magnetic field, with the resulting radiation environment, do make long-term habitation a challenge, and the problems related to the lunar dust are going to be cast-iron bitches to work out, but if the guestimates of ice (perhaps as much as 600 million metric tonnes of water-ice) at the lunar poles do pan out, getting there is still the trickiest issue.

ttyymmnn > user314
12/31/2019 at 13:54

Seems to me that they will have to find a way to generate oxygen. You can’t possibly ship enough of it up there to sustain life, at least on a large scale.

user314 > BaconSandwich is tasty.
12/31/2019 at 15:26

If we’re ever going to build Gundams, we need Lunar titanium to build them and He3 to power them.

user314 > ttyymmnn
12/31/2019 at 15:35

J ust like facw said: use solar power to crack water into hydrogen and oxygen, though we may need to start tapping near-Earth asteroids after a while .

Urambo Tauro > Svend
12/31/2019 at 16:52

I refuse to call rollerboards “hoverboards”.

Urambo Tauro > user314
12/31/2019 at 17:13

F lying cars: not gonna happen, at least not on t he same level as regular cars. A roadworthy aircraft that can fit in one’s home garage just is n’ t possible on a pr a ctical level . I can’t even wrap my head around how air traffic would work if our cars were replaced with fly ing versions.

H overcars aren’t much more realistic, either. Even if every car could be easily retrofitted with affordable hover technology , we’d just find ourselves faced wit h a whole new set of problems. Like how to accelerate, turn, or stop without being able to grip the road via tires . Fans? Thrusters? That’s a LOT of work to avoid the relative simplicity of good old- fashioned wheels.