Are we prepared for Chinese preeminence on the moon and Mars? (op-ed)

[Atlan0001]

Atlan0001, there are L4 and L5 orbits for different 3 body problems. One is for the Earth and the Moon with a light-weight object in roughly the Moon's orbit around the Earth, leading and trailing by 60 degrees. There is another 3 body problem that involves the Earth and the Sun with a 3rd, light weight satellite. Those L4 and L5 points are roughly in Earth's orbit around the Sun, leading and tailing the Earth by 60 degrees. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagrange_point .

My question to you is WHICH set of L4 and L5 points are you proposing to colonize?

The sun-Earth gravitational cross section also involves the Moon's gravitational field, keeping the L-points stable to the Moon's orbit of Earth as well as the Earth's orbit of the sun. You seem not to be aware of three gravities involved, not two.

Oops! I'm leaving what I said above regardless, but suddenly I realize what you are describing and talking about, the even larger Lagrange picture. In answer, I think I'm talking the smaller Lagrange picture usually illustrated closer to Earth and the Moon.

My mistake and my apologies to you.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

OK, so the Earth - Moon L4 and L5 points are about as far from Earth as the Moon. The advantage of going there and leaving there, compared to the Moon's surface, is that it does not have a local gravity well that requires a lot of propellant to brake into and launch out of.

But, there is nothing there to work with, unless it is brought there by space craft.

On the Moon, there is at least some gravity to help with human health, some natural materials that can be use for shielding from radiation and meteorites, and, hopefully, at least some water to use for life support and maybe even for making rocket fuel. And, there is also the possibility of finding a lot of some elements that are rare on Earth and useful for technological devices. Plus, the Moon serves as a shield from the light pollution and radio emissions from Earth if a telescope is placed on the far side.

So, despite the propellant penalty, it seems like a Lunar base would be both easier to establish and maintain, plus better for scientific investigations of the universe, not to mention the science value of figuring out how the Moon was formed by examining it closely.

Maybe some day there will be heavy industry in space using materials from asteroids to make space craft and propellant for travelling even further into space. But, I don't see that happening until long after we have demonstrated a lot of the necessary technological achievements that will be necessary to establish and maintain long duration habitats on the Moon, and probably also on Mars.

At this point in our biological understanding, some sort of gravity or surrogate force seems essential to astronauts' long term health. "Artificial gravity" can be produced by rotating a large space craft/station. But docking and undocking other spacecraft from a rotating space station is not so simple. To dock on the axis, the space craft needs to "roll" at the same rate of rotation, AND it needs to have its docking mechanism aligned with its center of mass, which might be an issue for variable amounts of fuel remaining in tanks, various loads of raw materials coming in, and various shapes of heavy manufactured goods going out. Docking elsewhere might be accomplished with an automated system that matches the rotating latching mechanism with an assortment of thrusters on the craft, but then the docked spacecraft will shift the center of rotation for the compound assembly. Whatever design is chosen for a free orbiting space station, it seems like it would be a good idea to develop and get some practice with the technologies in low earth orbit first, before trying to put one out at the orbital radius of the Moon.

 

[Atlan0001]

Unclear Engineer,

Lagrange point colonization - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

The vastly better, vastly greater, colonization of the Solar System will be to colonize orbits and the belts with cloud city-like city-state 'Stanford Torus' type colonies, beginning with Earth-Moon's L4 and L5, expanding to the orbit of Mars, expanding to near-asteroid belt colonization, expanding to the orbit of Venus, expanding out to Jupiter and its moons, expanding out to Saturn....

You've apparently read none of the large amount of literature on the subject of SPACE colonization and the vastness of frontier and frontier reaches, with growing brute force transit shipping and shipping lanes shrinking the whole of the Solar System. The ever-enlarging revolutions and evolutions of ships, hordes of ships and quadrillions of people in frontier facilitation expansion it implies reaching all the way into interstellar space for the next frontier steps beyond the manmade islanded miniature model galaxy life will have made of the whole planetary and asteroid local and wide area networking of the Solar System.

You appear not to understand the energy physics of mankind's, and civilization's, frontier expansions over the Earth. Nor the technology and structural, and infrastructural, revolutions and evolutions from the cave and tree to readiness for SPACE. To need and want for SPACE (that the small and narrow magnitude and focus of the Moon and Mars can never even possibly satisfy).

In the year 1492OCE, the 'Old World' became a new frontier world because of the 'New World' frontier. Vast new opportunity opened both in the Americas and in the homelands being left behind by an outward flow. You picture virtually nothing but SPACE producing for the Earth . . . and Earth have to supply everything for SPACE. People like Sir Thomas More (the writer of 'Utopia' circa 1512OCE as nostalgia for the world that was passing away due to expansions East and West, thus also interiorly) thought like you. Revolutions and evolutions, growing mass genius and sheer energies (as described in essay letters by such as J. Hector St. John de Crevecoeur, pub. 1782), proved them dead wrong. An outpouring outflow of positive productive energies and wealth by its very existence can produce an inpouring inflow of other equally positive productive energies and wealth.

No in-space frontier exodus and expansion?! The road to an inevitable extinction (Stephen Hawking)! If not of the species all too soon, of dynamic civilization and civilization's dynamic infrastructure in a negative entropy of closed world system! Like a meteor that burns ever brighter, ever hotter, and ever faster, on its way a catastrophic ground, only for so long will civilization run faster and ever faster in place on a treadmill going nowhere but disaster after disaster, ever worsening in disasters!

**P. S. Mined materials from the Moon will exit the Moon toward L-point in-space colony construction sites and captures via "mass drivers", NOT ships shipping! **

 

[DrSpaceMan0110]

What small minded concerns. Countries are uniquely human constructs that do not exist in nature. Space is vast beyond our comprehension. In order for our species to successfully continue beyond earth, we will have to eventually move beyond these fictional constraints, pool our intelligence, share resources, and forge achievements as a planet.

 

[Atlan0001]

People who don't know history and the physics are doomed to repeat its worst trials! You cannot have one world without two dividing worlds, only one that can then unite (fundamental binary base2 (infinite '0' (null unity) and finite '1' (unity)). Division is half the multiverse of the universe and where it cannot have that half in external frontier exodus it will rip it internally out of the guts of any kind of 'One World' attempted unity to an overall total quality managed state. Repeating, that is any attempt at a closed systemic 'One World' state 'statism' of any kind whatsoever.

A loose unity state, a third and trojan state, might be achieved only after opening up a frontier exhaust system for an always combustible life (a life always in combustion and revolutionary-evolutionary anti-unity branching).

 

[orsobubu]

Let's not make the mistake of the 1960's all over again. Then, space exploration was framed as a race with the Soviet Union. Once the United States won that race, the political will to use Apollo technology to the fullest to explore the moon vanished. We didn't go back to the moon for decades. Going back to the moon and on to Mars is worthwhile no matter what China does. It is valuable in its own right because we will gain new scientific knowledge and foster the development of valuable new technologies. If China is also going, we would be better off cooperating with them to maximize scientific returns and astronaut and taikonaut safety, and to minimize costs. An equitably prosperous China is something the world should want. An equitably prosperous China is a China whose people value their lives and won't want war. It is also, necessarily, a China connected to the rest of the world via the internet, and thus less likely to fall too heavily under a dictator's spell.

Your words are reasonable from an idealistic point of view, but unfortunately the real world doesn't work like that, capitalism is today in its imperialistic phase, and american, european, russian and chinese imperial policies cannot foresee full and scientifically based collaborations, but only opportunistically strategic control of spheres of influence and world markets, possibly for their expansion, as nato does today in eastern europe, russia in africa, etc. Your vision would first presuppose the transition to a production system more advanced than the capitalist one.

 

[Atlan0001]

Your words are reasonable from an idealistic point of view, but unfortunately the real world doesn't work like that, capitalism is today in its imperialistic phase, and american, european, russian and chinese imperial policies cannot foresee full and scientifically based collaborations, but only opportunistically strategic control of spheres of influence and world markets, possibly for their expansion, as nato does today in eastern europe, russia in africa, etc. Your vision would first presuppose the transition to a production system more advanced than the capitalist one.

There is no such thing as "a production system more advanced than the capitalist one" (the open systemic first half freer frontier one, not the second half closed systemic meteor shining ever brighter, burning ever hotter and faster in decline to ground). Still, in all even in the second half while recycling toward 'Renaissance', by very definition of "capital," "capitalization," and "capitalism," there is no transition to a production system more advanced than the capitalist one. Just look at the observable universe itself at large, the accelerating expansion (accelerating "capitalization" of the universe. A universe of creative, generative, "capitalism.").

Only in and with new expanding energetic frontier birthing and growth, including new 'Renaissance' periods after Dark Ages if there is time, does the system itself not largely inbreed and corrupt itself by its very richness of productivity.
-------------------------

Thomas Jefferson in a letter to a French aristocrat friend just prior to the French Revolution, "We both love the people, but you love them as infants (adult children) whom you are afraid to trust without nurses, and I as adults whom I freely leave to self-government."

"The government can do something for the people only in proportion as it can do something to the people." -- Thomas Jefferson.

 

[billslugg]

Capitalism is where we have the right to hold property and trade it.
In all other systems, someone else decides what happens to your stuff.

 

[Classical Motion]

Capitalism is the only system that takes man's self interest, his strongest motive, and benefits all of society with that selfish motive. It's pure genus. A true blessing. It's not taught because it comes from common simple societies.......not academic societies. Academics are not needed for capitalism. Wealth or contentment can come to any with a good product, idea or service. Or a song. Living present ART.

No matter what, life is cruel to all. It would be so easy if just one aspect of it caused that cruelty.

The true purpose of human life is not survival, it's endurance.

The perceived threat of some other country getting somewhere first or discovering something first has been used for funding since the cold war.

Bogeyman funding.

 

[billslugg]

"Capitalism is the production system more efficient in the production of capital."
This is correct. All other systems lose vast amounts to corruption.

"And capital can be produced exclusively with human work exploitation. " False, we pay a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. There is no exploitation inherent to Capitalism

I cannot make sense of the remainder. I'm working on it. I might be able to comment some day.

 

[orsobubu]

There is no such thing as "a production system more advanced than the capitalist one" (the open systemic first half freer frontier one, not the second half closed systemic meteor shining ever brighter, burning ever hotter and faster in decline to ground). Still, in all even in the second half while recycling toward 'Renaissance', by very definition of "capital," "capitalization," and "capitalism," there is no transition to a production system more advanced than the capitalist one. Just look at the observable universe itself at large, the accelerating expansion (accelerating "capitalization" of the universe. A universe of creative, generative, "capitalism.").

Only in and with new expanding energetic frontier birthing and growth, including new 'Renaissance' periods after Dark Ages if there is time, does the system itself not largely inbreed and corrupt itself by its very richness of productivity.

I think that you don't know what capitalism is. Capitalism is the production system more efficient in the production of capital. And capital can be produced exclusively with human work exploitation. So, capitalism is a social relationship, when the wage worker sells himself to the owner of the means of production, it is not something real and material like a rock, a planet, an universe. Mankind history is an history of continuously dialectical developments (panta rei): we started from primitive communism during million years, proving that communism is a real production system geneticlally ingrained in human species, and then progressively evolving through cultural evolutions and scientific\economic\political revolutions. So, history is not at the end, like fukuyama wrongly sold his scam, instead we can demonstrate that since the beginning of XX century the transtion to a resource based economy (communism) was already possible, but the worker class was not organized yet. Counter revolution and total destruction of capital, fixed and variable, was the bourgeoise's solution, see schumpeter, the austrian school, etc. In the real world, a communistic production system, if you look closely, is already adopted INTERNALLY to virtually all the big capitalistic companies on earth and , externally, they furiously struggle to make a "capitalistic communism" in the markets by monopolism, trusts, ecc, but obviously this is a contradictory impossibility, since scientific communism requires the abolition of wage work, money, market and capital.

 

[billslugg]

Yes, unbridled competition is brutal. The capitalist marketplace does not tolerate substandard products. They end up in the landfill. In the other systems they end up in our house.

 

[orsobubu]

"Capitalism is the production system more efficient in the production of capital."
This is correct. All other systems lose vast amounts to corruption.

"And capital can be produced exclusively with human work exploitation. " False, we pay a fair day's wages for a fair day's work. There is no exploitation inherent to Capitalism

I cannot make sense of the remainder. I'm working on it. I might be able to comment some day.

sorry, i confused the replies, now i'm going to rewrite

no, see my answer to atlan001; the key difference with other systems, is that conversion from money to capital is more efficient. "The proletariat is that class in society which lives entirely from the sale of its labor and does not draw profit from any kind of capital; whose weal and woe, whose life and death, whose sole existence depends on the demand for labor – hence, on the changing state of business, on the vagaries of unbridled competition. The proletariat, or the class of proletarians, is, in a word, the working class of the 19th century."

 

[Classical Motion]

Have you ever made a selfish choice? Decided something completely on your own? Did it frighten you? or excite you? Or maybe someone has made your choices for you? I haven't met too many lately that are like that. Years ago yes, today no.

I was just curious, lot's of my choices have been boo boos. Sometimes I wished I had listened.

It's called growing up. It can be bumpy. And even disappointing to find life is not easy. Or fair. It can even prey on you. All life can be preyed upon. One can spend their whole life trying to change the circumstance. Or one can adapt and learn to advantage the circumstance. Change the world......or change yourself. What would be the smartest and a chance of getting done? What are the changes in the recent world that you approve of? This world will always be sour. Part of your world will always be sour.

Whether you succeed or fail, if you made the choice, it's capitalism. Capitalism isn't about raising or growing capitol, it's about who makes the choice. And how many choices are made and available.

Capitalism is many choices for all. It does not need to be administered. Or guided. That only removes choices.

A fish in a school has only one choice. And only a person with choice, needs to be educated. Or benefits from it. To educate one without choice is a crime against the soul.

That's my thoughts from living in it. And sorry for my descendants to see it go.

 

[Unclear Engineer]

We seem to have strayed into not just politics, but propaganda.

Any successful sociological system needs to realistically deal with human nature. And both pure communism and pure capitalism founder on unrealistic "expectations" of human nature.

People are not only "imperfect", we are also highly variable. No system that relies on everybody "doing the right thing", including the ones with the most power, is going to succeed in creating "equity" or even "equal opportunity".

That is why we have governments that make economic laws. And, hopefully in a democracy, the laws tend to block or at least reduce the abuses.

It is a continuing conversation, and I expect it always will be. For one thing, conditions keep changing. At this point in our development, humans are our own worst enemy and seem to have been so as far back as history has been recorded.

And, that will probably only get worse so long as we do not learn how to peacefully control our own population growth, because it will increase both the competition for essential resources and also increase our fears that "others" will take over and abuse us.

As for humans once being "communist", that is rubbish. Take a look at other social animals such as chimps and wolves. There is a dominance system in those societies, too, where the weak get less than the strong.

And, regarding the idea that society needs to evolve to the point where nobody needs to "work", more rubbish. There are a lot of tasks to perform just to feed and house us. Even if we manage to get self-replicating and self-maintaining and self-directing machines to "serve mankind", we would probably need to work pretty hard at keeping them from taking over completely. I mean, if they can do everything they need to do for themselves, why would they also continue to do what we need them to do for human survival? To them, we would be useless.