Universal Basic Income and the Threat of Tyranny

[prizrak]

I can see new lines of work being developed, one of those would probably be in space

There is already a massive emphasis on education, getting a decent paying job without a college degree is almost impossible. There isn't any money in philosophical pursuits, just because there are not enough jobs to go around doesn't mean someone will pay a person to sit around and think about random shit.

 

[narf]

Solar panels are not particularly useful on a space voyage like say one to Mars, distance to the sun makes it impractical.

Eh wha? Even after arriving at Mars you're still receiving almost half as much solar power per area as you get in Earth's orbit. The asteroid belt is roughly where I'd say impractical starts... Jupiter gets less than 4% of our power per area, for example.
As for spinning to create gravity-like effects, let the ship be disk-shaped with the "top" covered in solar panels pointed at the sun.

Nuclear batteries are what's not particularly useful once you involve people. Efficient electronics can survive on the low-power, long-term output of a nuclear battery but the energy consumption of a human-inhabited ship will be orders of magnitude larger.

 

[prizrak]

Eh wha? Even after arriving at Mars you're still receiving almost half as much solar power per area as you get in Earth's orbit. The asteroid belt is roughly where I'd say impractical starts... Jupiter gets less than 4% of our power per area, for example.
As for spinning to create gravity-like effects, let the ship be disk-shaped with the "top" covered in solar panels pointed at the sun.

Read a bit more of my response as to why I said what I said. You have an interesting idea with a disk shaped ship but that seems like a huge waste of space IMO.

Nuclear batteries are what's not particularly useful once you involve people. Efficient electronics can survive on the low-power, long-term output of a nuclear battery but the energy consumption of a human-inhabited ship will be orders of magnitude larger.

Full on PBR?

 

[narf]

Read a bit more of my response as to why I said what I said. You have an interesting idea with a disk shaped ship but that seems like a huge waste of space IMO.

Well, how big the station is and how big the panels are doesn't have to be identical. You could have a 30m diameter station but 200m diameter panels, as long as you're like a spinning top with the stick pointing at the sun you'll have gravity and solar power.


"Waste of space"? There's enough of it



Returning to nuclear batteries, the most efficient RTGs flying through space in terms of power per mass make about 5W per kg, e.g. on board the New Horizons probe. The ISS' solar panels make about 100kW of power, about two thirds of the time because they're in orbit around Earth - let's round down to 50kW on average... you'd need a 50 ton nuclear battery, assuming these do scale up linearly. Then you'll need several times that for shielding the crew... seems impractical compared to light-weight solar panels like these: https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-116/html/iss014e10053.html

 

[prizrak]

Well, how big the station is and how big the panels are doesn't have to be identical. You could have a 30m diameter station but 200m diameter panels, as long as you're like a spinning top with the stick pointing at the sun you'll have gravity and solar power.


"Waste of space"? There's enough of it

Your suggestion is basically same as mine then, you would have to have an "umbrella" of solar panels that can change angle in order to keep the sun @ 90 degrees and ship spinning underneath it.

Returning to nuclear batteries, the most efficient RTGs flying through space in terms of power per mass make about 5W per kg, e.g. on board the New Horizons probe. The ISS' solar panels make about 100kW of power, about two thirds of the time because they're in orbit around Earth - let's round down to 50kW on average... you'd need a 50 ton nuclear battery, assuming these do scale up linearly. Then you'll need several times that for shielding the crew... seems impractical compared to light-weight solar panels like these: https://spaceflight.nasa.gov/gallery/images/shuttle/sts-116/html/iss014e10053.html

OK you convinced me current crop of nuclear batteries are not going to work. You keep telling me regular batteries are about to get amazeballs so we can perhaps use those.

 

[narf]

Your suggestion is basically same as mine then, you would have to have an "umbrella" of solar panels that can change angle in order to keep the sun @ 90 degrees and ship spinning underneath it.

No need to have the solar panels change their angle. Imagine the solar panels are a pizza, and the ship is the tiny "chair" in the middle that keeps the box from touching the cheese.
Orient the pizza to face the sun and spin it - your toppings will keep facing the sun despite the pizza spinning.

 

[SirEdward]

So, getting back OT, I'd say again:

"Constant expansion (on a mass level) is over, and given the difficulties of space travel it will be for quite a while (and this is already the positive scenario). We have to learn how to maintain and balance what we have instead of recurring to nomadism and move someplace else, because for the foreseeable future "someplace else" doesn't exist. When it will exist, we will move again. "

 

[kunedog]

Gotta agree, and go one further. Even if space travel itself were as easy and cheap as a bus ticket, there's still no someplace else, no other suitable environment. AFAIK, at best we can barely imagine the tech necessary to sustain human life anywhere else in the solar system without regular resupply from Earth.

So space travel alone doesn't solve a crowded Earth problem, nor a destroyed Earth (asteroid, supervolcano) problem.

 

[prizrak]

No need to have the solar panels change their angle. Imagine the solar panels are a pizza, and the ship is the tiny "chair" in the middle that keeps the box from touching the cheese.
Orient the pizza to face the sun and spin it - your toppings will keep facing the sun despite the pizza spinning.

But would it be always facing the sun correctly as you are going towards Mars? I would assume that some portions of a trip would put the ship at an angle since it?s typically a parabolic trajectory

 

[prizrak]

Gotta agree, and go one further. Even if space travel itself were as easy and cheap as a bus ticket, there's still no someplace else, no other suitable environment. AFAIK, at best we can barely imagine the tech necessary to sustain human life anywhere else in the solar system without regular resupply from Earth.

So space travel alone doesn't solve a crowded Earth problem, nor a destroyed Earth (asteroid, supervolcano) problem.

No one says you don?t need a resupply from Earth. Tho you can grow food off planet, all you need is soil with right nutrients.

 

[narf]

But would it be always facing the sun correctly as you are going towards Mars? I would assume that some portions of a trip would put the ship at an angle since it?s typically a parabolic trajectory

A spaceship is not a car train, it can move in one direction and face another... dorifto to Mars!

 

[prizrak]

A spaceship is not a car train, it can move in one direction and face another... dorifto to Mars!

Sure but there is a limitation of where thrust is coming from, unless you are suggesting accelerate, use attitude thrusters to position the ship at best possible angle to the sun and then "straighten out" for deceleration? I guess it's a question of trade off between how much power you getting from panels vs mass vs extra fuel for thrusters, etc...

 

[narf]

You'll have an initial acceleration phase, similar to the translunar injection we saw with Apollo missions: Start out from parking orbit around Earth and give it the beans. For lunar missions that burn lasted just a few seconds, likely more for longer distances... but still tiny compared to the flight duration.
Given the tiny burn time, rotation of the ship or orientation of solar panels during burn doesn't matter and you'll likely even keep the panels folded until the trans-Mars injection burn has finished.