Re: starship-design: Clarke's Laws In a message dated 7/22/99 2:59:41 PM, nlindber@u.washington.edu writes: >Hello All, >	I have heard of Clarke's 2nd Law, "All sufficiently advanced >technology is indistinguishable from magic",  But i have always heard that >second-hand, usually in discussions about human ET relations.  I was >wondering if anyone on the group knew what the title of clarke's original >essay/book having to do with the "laws" was. >Thanks, >Nels Lindberg I'm not sure it was even something written in his essays. Kelly >From VM Mon Jul 26 09:43:12 1999 X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] 	["969" "Saturday" "24" "July" "1999" "18:55:32" "+1000" "Adam Crowl" "ajcrowlx2@ozemail.com.au" nil "33" "Re: starship-design: Clarke's Laws" "^From:" nil nil "7" nil "starship-design: Clarke's Laws" nil nil nil] 	nil) Content-Length: 969 Return-Path:  Received: (from majordom@localhost) 	by darkwing.uoregon.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id BAA16032 	for starship-design-outgoing; Sat, 24 Jul 1999 01:54:28 -0700 (PDT) Received: from fepa.mail.ozemail.net (fepa.mail.ozemail.net [203.2.192.101]) 	by darkwing.uoregon.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id BAA16025 	for ; Sat, 24 Jul 1999 01:54:24 -0700 (PDT) Received: from oemcomputer (ae05109.powerup.com.au [203.147.197.109]) by fepa.mail.ozemail.net (8.9.0/8.6.12) with SMTP id SAA17748 for ; Sat, 24 Jul 1999 18:54:20 +1000 (EST) Message-ID: <001701bed5b2$4a52fc00$6dc593cb@oemcomputer> References: <4a8812dc.24c92650@aol.com> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; 	charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2314.1300 X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Precedence: bulk Reply-To: "Adam Crowl"  From: "Adam Crowl"  Sender: owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu To:  Subject: Re: starship-design: Clarke's Laws Date: Sat, 24 Jul 1999 18:55:32 +1000 Hi Guys, The original statement is in "Report On Planet Three" or "Profiles of the Future". It's definitely something he wrote as he refers to it many times elsewhere. I think the original context was about starflight. Adam ----- Original Message ----- From:  To: ;  Sent: Friday, July 23, 1999 11:58 AM Subject: Re: starship-design: Clarke's Laws > > In a message dated 7/22/99 2:59:41 PM, nlindber@u.washington.edu writes: > > >Hello All, > > I have heard of Clarke's 2nd Law, "All sufficiently advanced > >technology is indistinguishable from magic",  But i have always heard that > >second-hand, usually in discussions about human ET relations.  I was > >wondering if anyone on the group knew what the title of clarke's original > >essay/book having to do with the "laws" was. > >Thanks, > >Nels Lindberg > > > I'm not sure it was even something written in his essays. > > Kelly > >From VM Mon Jul 26 09:43:13 1999 X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] 	["8326" "Sunday" "25" "July" "1999" "11:05:31" "-0500" "L. Parker" "lparker@cacaphony.net" nil "158" "starship-design: WHERE ARE THEY?" "^From:" nil nil "7" nil "starship-design: WHERE ARE THEY?" nil nil nil] 	nil) Content-Length: 8326 Return-Path:  Received: (from majordom@localhost) 	by darkwing.uoregon.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA11735 	for starship-design-outgoing; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 09:06:29 -0700 (PDT) Received: from traffic.gnt.net (root@gnt.com [204.49.53.5]) 	by darkwing.uoregon.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA11730 	for ; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 09:06:26 -0700 (PDT) Received: from broadsword (p276.gnt.com [204.49.91.36]) 	by traffic.gnt.net (8.9.1a/8.9.0) with SMTP id LAA18573 	for ; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 11:06:22 -0500 Message-ID: <000101bed6b7$92ea7230$0401a8c0@broadsword> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; 	charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook CWS, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Importance: Normal Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk Reply-To: "L. Parker"  From: "L. Parker"  Sender: owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu To: "Starship-Design (E-mail)"  Subject: starship-design: WHERE ARE THEY? Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 11:05:31 -0500 WHERE ARE THEY? What follows is a commentary on several recent theories regarding life in our galaxy and my ideas on the results of these theories when applied to the Drake Equation in attempt to answer Fermi's Paradox. Drake's Equation (see http://www.seti.org/drake-eq.html for an explanation) has been a past topic of conversation here many times. I first came across this equation many years ago and have been fascinated with it ever since. For those of you not familiar with it, it basically an algebraic representation of the probability for the existence of life, and in particular, intelligent life in our galaxy. This was in response to Fermi's famous query, "Where are they?", now called Fermi's Paradox. I am always interested in any ideas or theories that would help to answer Fermi's question and recently two new theories have been propounded that bear directly upon the parameters for Drake's Equation. The equation itself is fairly straight forward. Choosing values for each of the variables however, is not so easy. Many of these variables must be no more than educated guesses. Different values for some of the variables can produce wildly different results, hence a better understanding of the conditions which define those variables can make an enormous difference in the accuracy of the equations solution. GAMMA RAY BURSTS The first new theory is from James Annis, an astrophysicist at Fermilab near Chicago. He thinks cataclysmic gamma-ray bursts often sterilize galaxies, wiping out life forms before they have evolved sufficiently to leave their planet (Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, vol 52, p 19). GRBs are thought to be the most powerful explosions in the Universe, releasing as much energy as a supernova in seconds. Many scientists think the bursts occur when the remnants of dead stars such as neutron stars or black holes collide. Annis points out that each GRB unleashes devastating amounts of radiation. "If one went off in the Galactic center, we here two-thirds of the way out on the Galactic disc would be exposed over a few seconds to a wave of powerful gamma rays." He believes this would be lethal to life on land. The rate of GRBs is about one burst per galaxy every few hundred million years. But Annis says theories of GRBs suggest the rate was much higher in the past, with galaxies suffering one strike every few million years -- far shorter than any plausible time scale for the emergence of intelligent life capable of space travel. That, says Annis, may be the answer to Fermi's question. "They just haven't had enough time to get here yet," he says. "The GRB model essentially resets the available time for the rise of intelligent life to zero each time a burst occurs." Paul Davies, a visiting physicist at Imperial College, London, says the basic idea for resolving the paradox makes sense. "Any Galaxy-wide sterilizing event would do," he says. However, he adds that GRBs may be too brief: "If the drama is all over in seconds, you only zap half a planet. The planet's mass shields the shadowed side." Annis counters that GRBs are likely to have many indirect effects, such as wrecking ozone layers that protect planets from deadly levels of ultraviolet radiation. Annis also highlights an intriguing implication of the theory: the current rate of GRBs allows intelligent life to evolve for a few hundred million years before being zapped, possibly giving it enough time to reach the space faring stage. "It may be that intelligent life has recently sprouted up at many places in the Galaxy and that at least a few groups are busily engaged in spreading." LARGE MOONS The second theory deals with a surprising connection between the conditions required for a total eclipse and for the emergence of intelligent life. Guillermo Gonzalez of the University of Washington in Seattle points out that our distance from the Sun is a necessary condition for us to be here. "If we were a little nearer or farther from the Sun, the Earth would be too hot or too cold and so uninhabitable," says Gonzalez. At the same time our existence depends on an unusually large moon since its pull stops the Earth wobbling around too much on its axis and causing wild and catastrophic swings in climate like those on Mars. Our Moon, which is unusually large compared to those in almost all other planet-moon systems, probably formed from molten material blasted from the Earth during the impact of a giant body more than 4 billion years ago. In the current issue of Astronomy & Geophysics (vol 40, p 3.18), Gonzalez points out that the way the Moon formed means it started off very close to the Earth and has taken several billion years to move far enough away until it precisely covers the Sun during an eclipse. "The timescale is very similar to that of the appearance of intelligent life," he says. "It is therefore not such a big coincidence that we are around at the time when it is possible to see total eclipses." Because tidal effects cause the Moon to slowly recede from the Earth, perfect eclipses have been visible only for about 150 million years and will continue for only another 150 million years, about 5 per cent of the current age of the Earth. Furthermore, Earth is the only planet in our Solar System where a perfect eclipse is visible, although there are 64 other moons. If Gonzalez is right, then all extraterrestrials, wherever they are, are likely to live on planets like ours that experience total eclipses. But since an unusually large Moon is rare, he says, this suggests that both ETs and total eclipses are very rare indeed. WHAT IT MEANS Taken together, these two factors enormously reduce the values of at least one and probably as many as three variables to practically zero offering at least one possible answer to Fermi's query, there aren't any... If you consider all of the factors you can write a simple relation, using Drake's Equation, for estimating the probability. I use the word "estimate" intentionally because our knowledge of most of the factors is so poor that we are really only guessing. Drake's Equation, involves 7 factors as follows: |Number of    |   |Rate     |   |Fraction|   |Number  |   |Fraction| |civilizations|   |of       |   |of stars|   |of      |   |of      | |in our galaxy|   |star     |   |with    |   |planets |   |planets | |capable of   | = |formation| X |planets | X |per star| X |on which| |communication|   |(per     |                |with    |   |life    | |now          |   |year)    |                |suitable|   |appears |                                              |environ-|                                              |ment    |      |Fraction|   |Fraction |   |Longevity   |      |of life |   |of       |   |of each     |      |bearing |   |intelli- |   |technology  |    x |planets | X |gent     | X |in          |      |on which|   |societies|   |communi-    |      |intelli-|   |which    |   |cative      |      |gence   |   |develop  |   |mode (years)|      |emerges |   |communi- |                   |cation   |                   |ability  | Suppose you guessed that stars in our galaxy form at the rate of one per year (probably not a bad estimate), that 1/5 of the stars have planets (no one knows), that there are 0.0005859375 planets with stable environments (length of time between GRBs divided by the age of our solar system times the fraction of planets with suitable moons in our solar system ), that life appears on each (fraction = 1), that intelligence emerges on each of these (fraction= 1), that 1/10 of these develop communication capability and that these remain in this state for 1000 years. Then, it works out that the number is 0.01171875. In other words, in one hundred thousand years, only one intelligent, communicative civilization would appear, far less than most current speculations. Note that other than the value for suitable life bearing planets, all of the rest of the values were heavily in favor of intelligent life developing. Reducing either of the next two factors to reasonable levels further reduces the odds by several orders of magnitude. If you accept these two theories (and remember, they are just theories), then in all likelihood Earth is the only planet in the galaxy that currently harbors intelligent life. L. Parker >From VM Mon Jul 26 09:43:13 1999 X-VM-v5-Data: ([nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil nil] 	["8401" "Sunday" "25" "July" "1999" "09:33:03" "-0500" "L. Parker" "lparker@cacaphony.net" nil "149" "starship-design: The Next Thirty Years: A Business Vision" "^From:" nil nil "7" nil "starship-design: The Next Thirty Years: A Business Vision" nil nil nil] 	nil) Content-Length: 8401 Return-Path:  Received: (from majordom@localhost) 	by darkwing.uoregon.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) id JAA11727 	for starship-design-outgoing; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 09:06:25 -0700 (PDT) Received: from traffic.gnt.net (root@gnt.com [204.49.53.5]) 	by darkwing.uoregon.edu (8.9.3/8.9.3) with ESMTP id JAA11718 	for ; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 09:06:22 -0700 (PDT) Received: from broadsword (p276.gnt.com [204.49.91.36]) 	by traffic.gnt.net (8.9.1a/8.9.0) with SMTP id LAA18566 	for ; Sun, 25 Jul 1999 11:06:17 -0500 Message-ID: <000001bed6b7$8f30c590$0401a8c0@broadsword> MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; 	charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook CWS, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2314.1300 Importance: Normal Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Precedence: bulk Reply-To: "L. Parker"  From: "L. Parker"  Sender: owner-starship-design@lists.uoregon.edu To: "Starship-Design (E-mail)"  Subject: starship-design: The Next Thirty Years: A Business Vision Date: Sun, 25 Jul 1999 09:33:03 -0500 Reposted from SpaceDaily The Next Thirty Years: A Business Vision by Joe Schembrie AstroTug Corporation Seattle - July 19, 1999 - Thirty years ago, when the Apollo astronauts became the first humans to voyage to the Moon, they surveyed the lunar landscape and spoke of 'magnificent desolation.' Thirty years later, the Moon is still as desolate as they left it. Will it be that way thirty years from now? Back in the 1960s, we had so many heady dreams that never came to pass. We thought that the Apollo missions would be followed up by regular flights to the Moon. There would soon be a refueling base, and then even colonies. Next stop: Mars. Why not? The government was spending 5.7 % of the federal budget on the space program. Massive government spending would buy the rockets, the stations, the moon bases. The best and brightest, attracted to government service through selfless dedication, would plan every step. Enduring motivation would be provided through government-mandated goals of national prestige, defense, and science. Then the taxpayers grumbled, and the ordering of governmental priorities was altered. Thirty years of space-advocate cheerleading for public funding has coincided with a seven-fold decline in NASA's budget and the indefinite postponement of trips beyond Earth orbit. The bad news is, today we're in competition before Congress with a million other bright ideas on how to spend other people's tax money -- and all of them are 'for the children.' The good news is, today we no longer have to rely solely on government to advance the cause of human space exploration. The computer and communications revolutions are creating an ever-increasing demand for commercial satellites. A hundred-billion-dollar launch services market cries out for cheap access to space. And what a market that big wants, it usually gets. Following is a brief scenario of how private enterprise might advance the human space endeavor. It's not a call for a government industrial planning agency. It's not a call for special subsidies. It's not the business plan of any one company. It's simply some speculations on how that much-maligned motivator known as 'short-term profit-seeking' may well lure us back to the Moon -- this time not just to plant footprints, but to establish cities. The Personal Space Initiative begins with cheap access to space. Reusable Launch Vehicles are already being built which will replace the far more expensive throwaway vehicles presently used to launch satellites. Within the next four years, by 2004, surely one such vehicle will be orbiting payloads for less than $1000/pound. First-generation RLVs will be too small to place large payloads directly into high orbit. Instead, they will launch satellite and orbital transfer fuel on separate flights into Low Earth Orbit. A teleoperated space tug, guided by humans and computers on the ground, will shepherd the satellite and fuel together and push them toward Geosynchronous Earth Orbit -- and beyond. For such LEO-to-GEO transfers, ion propulsion in place of chemical-fuel propulsion will save thousands of pounds of fuel per space tug mission. With fuel transported from Earth into low orbit costing $1000/pound, millions of dollars will be saved per mission. NASA's Deep Space One probe has already proven that ion propulsion is feasible for inner solar system space flight. A reusable ion space tug can be built now and be ready for transorbital missions when RLVs need them, around 2005. Yet ion propulsion is slow to accelerate, and can take a month or more pushing a satellite from LEO to GEO -- and time is a very critical cost issue when satellite depreciation and interest charges run to millions of dollars per month. An alternative, preferable source of high-thrust chemical fuel for orbital transfer missions can be found on the Moon, where lunar ice can be mined and converted into hydrogen-oxygen fuel by teleoperated equipment, and then transported by teleoperated vehicles down to LEO for only a few dollars per pound. 'Lunar Express' can be in service by 2007. The satellite orbital transfer business will annually require hundreds of thousands of pounds of lunar ice/fuel to be shipped from Luna to LEO. Why couldn't humans ride to the Moon on the return trips? Perhaps by 2009, a human will revisit the Moon aboard a teleoperated moon shuttle. Humans on the Moon will prospect for rare metals. For an overall transport cost which is a tiny fraction of their market value, gold, platinum, palladium, and even silver mined on the Moon can be lifted into lunar orbit with chemical rockets whose hydrogen-oxygen fuel is derived from lunar ice, and then towed down to LEO with ion space tugs, and then dropped from LEO to Earth's surface inside disposable atmospheric entry shells. Lunar rare metals -- a potential twenty billion dollar a year industry -- should be discovered by 2011. In just four years, the California Gold Rush drew two hundred thousand people across a continental divide as formidable in the nineteenth century as the distance between Earth and Moon will be in the twenty-first. A multi-billion dollar lunar mining industry could afford and rapidly attract thousands of miners as soon as a major strike occurs. And with that $1000/pound shipping charge from Earth, there will be a powerful incentive to grow food, manufacture clothing, and construct habitats from local materials. Accomplishing those tasks of lunar self-sufficiency will be thousands of additional workers -- and entrepreneurs. Lunar mining company executives will want to retain people rather than ship them up from Earth in rapid rotation, and that means making the lunar environment as hospitable as possible. Perhaps cities will resemble something along the lines of multiple stadium-like enclosures, with a transparent dome over a central parkland, ringed by condominiums and shops. The first such lunar atrium, housing as many as a thousand humans, could be erected by 2015. As life on the Moon proceeds from magnificent desolation to comfortable self-sufficiency, and second-generation RLVs bring the cost of space access down to $100/pound or less, other reasons for lunar colonization open up. There's space tourism. There's old folks retirement (for those in their late seventies and older, low gravity can make the difference between an active and sedentary lifestyle). And the environmental laws will be looser and the taxes lower (we hope). By 2030, the Moon could be speckled with numerous large domed ecospheres, filled with trees and lakes gleaming beneath the earthlight, populated by creative and industrious pioneers who consider themselves not so much the offspring of earthly states as the founding citizens of an interplanetary civilization. The Apollo astronauts saw a barren, airless, lifeless world that made them glad to come home. The Moon has remained in that pristine but slaglike state for thirty years. But thirty years from now, there will be enterprises and cities, gardens and even young forests on the Moon. How soon can this vision be realized? Ion tugs could be ready when RLVs are, and once teleoperated vehicles are in routine service to the Moon, it will be difficult to restrain humans from hitching rides. Creative individual initiative and the profit motive could make it all happen sooner than currently thought. What is certain is that the journey back to the Moon has already begun. With appropriately directed enthusiasm, all of this will be achieved in the private sector, driven by market forces -- without grumbling taxpayers, without subsidies, without the 'guidance' of a central planning agency -- for much less cost than grandiose governmental efforts. Giant political leaps failed, but small private steps will not. There's just too much money to be made. That's why, thirty years from now, there will be regular flights to the Moon, and a refueling base, and even colonies. And perhaps well before that time, there will be an intrepid lunar entrepreneur with enough vision to say, "Next Stop: Mars." Joe Schembrie, a lifelong space enthusiast, has a BS in Electrical Engineering and an MBA from the University of Washington. An engineer who has worked for the US Department of the Navy and the Boeing Airplane Company, he is currently President of Astrotug, a company dedicated to the development of teleoperated space tugs.