If you were put in charge of trimming Earth's human population down to 3 billion or so, what would your criteria be for who stays and who goes?

Clayburn · 2012-05-24T21:53:10.566400+00:00

Limit everyone to 1 child per person.

Problem solved within ~200 years.

After that you institute a lottery, odds of winning are 1 in 10 and they win 1 additional kid. Once in a while you get to drop the odds to 1 in 9 to keep the population steady.

mepper · 2012-05-24T20:39:40.960148+00:00

...Their tax-exempt status is because they're a non-profit organization.

dronezero · 2012-05-24T20:23:37.646401+00:00

More willing or more openly obvious about it?

Call me when they stop committing fraud and bribing people.

mepper · 2012-05-23T18:53:00.838428-07:00

You either have to get the materials to the moon to launch them there

No one has ever suggested this, Ever. The entire point of a moon base is to NOT take things to the moon, and launch them. The infrastructure for building most things on the moon can be made from a smaller, remote controlled infrastructure, sent up first. To do things like this

water is not a fuel.

Water, also known as H2O, that's 2 hydrogen and 1 oxygen. The space shuttle and Apollo rockets were both powered by liquid oxygen and liquid hydrogen, made from...water.

daver555 · 2012-05-24T01:00:20.825210+00:00

It doesn't really matter how you index our Gini score. We're sucking hind tit and starting to look like a third world country.

daver555 · 2012-05-24T00:51:39.026185+00:00

usually everyone gets richer.

No, usually they don't. That's what makes democratic countries different.

mepper · 1 day

And lunar launches need to include that figure too, as both fuel and construction material need to go from to the earth to the moon first.

No, that is the reason the moon gets cheaper. You don't fly materials to the moon, you make them on site. You only send components that can't be made on site. Fuel(water), aluminum, iron, carbon, silicon and copper are all available on the moon. That's the point of the moon base, making those raw materials into useful parts and getting those parts into orbit.

mepper · 1 day

For a single mission or even several missions, Earth launch is cheaper and easier. Lunar production value grows with the amount of mass lifted. Earth launch prices always have to include ~6x the fuel and lifting power cost compared to a lunar launch.

mepper · 1 day

Oh a random rock couldn't make it through the atmosphere, apparently that means all rocks are the same, and none of them ever will.

And these are not going to make it out of the Earths gravity well, let alone to lunar impact.

greenrd · 1 day

That's what I get for not reading german. It's also not a 0% bond, yet. The bidding is opening at 0 and will go up in 0.05% increments.

mepper · 1 day

No, it's a cheaper way to launch multiple large craft into orbit than doing it from Earth.

Abandname · 1 day

There have been churches threatened with losing their status, it's just never been done to my knowledge. (No one want to risk attacking a church politically)

As for outspoken ministers, they aren't part of a church, or they do it outside of their church as an exercise of free speech, and some actually do have for profit churches or schools.

greenrd · 1 day

German banks would probably be snapping them up, along with any investment banks that significantly trade in Euro's.

Abandname · 1 day

Churches and other non-profit organizations don't pay taxes because they aren't allowed to advocate for political causes. At least legally, in reality I don't think it's ever been enforced.

greenrd · 1 day

If you think Euro's are about to get printed, do you want an inflation protected bond or a stack of Euro's in your vault?

greenrd · 1 day

Nah, the people getting out of Greek banks are holding Euro's or putting them in other countries banks. Some might buy bonds, but they'd be the rare exception really.

greenrd · 1 day

Not so much worried about the banks. It's the banks themselves buying it. They have nothing else to buy with a return, and they're afraid of holding cash that might get printed.

mepper · 1 day

That's why I think the Chinese are going to be a bigger global player than the Russians, in the future. That and the trade/monetary treaties they're quietly signing with developed countries like the US and Germany.

mepper · 1 day

I've read it. It's fanciful on economics, computer science and plays real loose with the physics, but there is a grain of truth to the idea.

mepper · 1 day

A steel plate on the front would be more than enough really. It's an impactor, not a lander. A bit of spin on the launch to keep on side forward and you can now drop 1 kiloton bombs anywhere in the world.

You can get bigger rocks, but then they get harder to lift. Since you have to put a motor on them anyway, might as well go through the trouble of a face plate to allow a much smaller rock.

mepper · 1 day

True, any lingual shift to any other language is going to take either a century or about an hour.

mepper · 1 day

The point is that the side benefits of the research reduce the cost of the base itself.

And of course mining on the earth is a lot cheaper, getting steel and aluminum isn't the problem. Getting steel and aluminum into orbit is the expensive part.

mepper · 1 day

Atmospheric breakup depends on material consistency, higher iron content can change an atmospheric break up into a 1 kiloton impact. The Apollo program launched a 5 ton lander from the moon with zero lunar infrastructure. And a lunar base would be subterranean to protect from asteroid impact, which also makes a damn good nuclear bunker. That's of course assuming the earth could modify enough nuclear weapons to reach the moon.

Yes, I do know what the hell I'm talking about. Dumb ass.

mepper · 1 day

The lunar lander was 5 tons.

Given 40 years of practice I'd be willing to bet we could launch double that by now.

mepper · 1 day

Lunar Lava Tubes

Skyrmir

TROPHY CASE

Skyrmir

TROPHY CASE

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