Science!! Fucking magnets, how do they work?

Yeah that's fine, if at best we are talking about destroying a house then that is fine.

BurnemWizfyre_sl said:

Yeah that's fine, if at best we are talking about destroying a house then that is fine.

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It depends on the delivery method, as I mentioned, some projections seek to retrieve ~100,000 tons per landing which can do a lot more damage to something more than a house. However, such mass retrievals will be landed in the desert, and they won't crash into the earth so much as they will intercept it along the same trajectory and "land" as the two flight paths merge. Which means they impact at ~500 MPH. That's enough to ruin quite a few "houses," but it's extremely far away from destroying a continent. Oil spills are far, far more dangerous overall. The only way to do super serious nuclear weapon style damage would be to super villain out with some serious tech, and even then there'd probably be better things to do with the money.

Xasten_sl said:

The idea that private industry will be unsupervised is false, as is the notion that private industry would be less safe than a government body under such a situation.

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The second thing doesn't follow at all from the first, nor have you addressed the reasons I've already given for a preference of direct government action.

Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:

The second thing doesn't follow at all from the first, nor have you addressed the reasons I've already given for a preference of direct government action.

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It is true that you can exercise your vote, hence control, more directly over the government than you might be able to a private company. My only question would be why? Why would government control of the mining of asteroids be safer than private industry? I suspect you will submit that it is because the government does not have a profit motive and that private industry will cut corners. However, would the private industry alone be to blame, or was there an additional failure on the government supervisor's part? In theory, if the same standards apply to both the government and the private company and appropriate oversight applied in accordance with those regulations, why would one be less safe than the other?

Even if the government were safer, is the increase in safety so large as to justify a monopoly? If your answer to this is yes, I would ask the same question with regards to the oil industry, the chemical industry, the terrestrial mining industry, or even the food industry. If you answer yes to all of those, there's little that can be done to convince you otherwise, and I can take solace knowing that such a scheme will never actually happen.

Ultimately, the discussion is moot. Realistically, these companies will not be nationalized, nor is the government at all likely to get into the mining industry. These companies are increasingly poaching talent from NASA, and they are already just as competent, if not more so, at their select functions. Also, even if NASA somehow tried to monopolize the industry, many of these companies are chartered in the Isle of Man which has repeatedly announced its support as a haven for privatized space efforts.

Xasten_sl said:

It is true that you can exercise your vote, hence control, more directly over the government than you might be able to a private company. My only question would be why? Why would government control of the mining of asteroids be safer than private industry? I suspect you will submit that it is because the government does not have a profit motive and that private industry will cut corners. However, would the private industry alone be to blame, or was there an additional failure on the government supervisor's part? In theory, if the same standards apply to both the government and the private company and appropriate oversight applied in accordance with those regulations, why would one be less safe than the other?

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The democratic threat of being able to fire the people in charge at every level as levied by the stakeholders with at least a vote, if not a democratic process, that is unweighted by wealth and other forms of irrelevant and unjustified skew.

Xasten_sl said:

Even if the government were safer, is the increase in safety so large as to justify a monopoly? If your answer to this is yes, I would ask the same question with regards to the oil industry, the chemical industry, the terrestrial mining industry, or even the food industry. If you answer yes to all of those, there's little that can be done to convince you otherwise, and I can take solace knowing that such a scheme will never actually happen.

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Yeah a government is just like a business monopoly. lulz

Xasten_sl said:

Ultimately, the discussion is moot. Realistically, these companies will not be nationalized, nor is the government at all likely to get into the mining industry. These companies are increasingly poaching talent from NASA, and they are already just as competent, if not more so, at their select functions. Also, even if NASA somehow tried to monopolize the industry, many of these companies are chartered in the Isle of Man which has repeatedly announced its support as a haven for privatized space efforts.

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It's a good thing we don't live in a country that's prone to erratic bouts of regime change.

Mikhail Bakunin_sl said:

Yeah a government is just like a business monopoly.

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You seem to be suggesting that the government, and only the government, should be in the business of running an enterprise such as asteroid mining. That's a clearly a form of monopoly.

You also seem to have missed the question so I'll ask it again: Is this so inherently dangerous that it justifies disallowing private individuals the right to do it even if under government supervision?

I believe, for the reasons I laid out, the answer is emphatically no. Unless you promote the nationalization of any industry that poses a comparable level of risk, I don't see why it's necessary to single this one out in particular.

Xasten_sl said:

You seem to be suggesting that the government, and only the government, should be in the business of running an enterprise such as asteroid mining. That's a clearly a form of monopoly.

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Clearly.

lol

Xasten_sl said:

You also seem to have missed the question so I'll ask it again: Is this so inherently dangerous that it justifies disallowing private individuals the right to do it even if under government supervision?

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It might be, yeah. It's at least worth thinking about.

Xasten_sl said:

I believe, for the reasons I laid out, the answer is emphatically no. Unless you promote the nationalization of any industry that poses a comparable level of risk, I don't see why it's necessary to single this one out in particular.

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Ideally I would prefer socialization of every industry along lines which give all stakeholders (which may exist at larger or smaller scopes depending on the the type and scale of the firm) equal democratic power over the organization and decision-making structure. I don't really consider that "nationalization" (in that our government isn't really run as a direct democracy and elected officials from the government wouldn't (necessarily) play a special part in decision making. Of course in this case you're talking about a global risk (or at least, a risk to each person on the globe, if not every person...or at least not yet) so really "nationalization" probably isn't sufficiently grandiose to capture my meaning. "Globalization" might make sense if it weren't already used to refer to anti-globalization. Well whatever. You get the idea.

I would suggest you switch your avatar Xasten, I'm having a hard time taking you seriously when I read your text with that "thing" on the side.

mkopec_sl said:

Does not work when billions are spent on campaigns full of lies. Its all washed out in the end and there is nothing you can do to insulate yourself from it. There is no vote in this country. The two chosen puppets are handed to you every time and you get to chose between dumb and dumber. Now where is that power you wield with your vote again?

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So what you are saying is that you don't even bother to vote because it has literally ZERO power since both sides are exactly the same on the horrible meter?

Even if one side is dumb and the other side is dumber it's still your obligation to vote less dumb. It's not much insulation, but it's better than no insulation.

Stop fagging up the science forum bitches!
Something to get us back on track:http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/...st-laid-plans/
An amazing example of how funding research for seemingly stupid shit can lead to breakthroughs of great value to us. Its also a great story.

MaulNutz_sl said:

Stop fagging up the science forum bitches!
Something to get us back on track:http://www.radiolab.org/2010/jun/28/...st-laid-plans/
An amazing example of how funding research for seemingly stupid shit can lead to breakthroughs of great value to us. Its also a great story.

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That is the worst telling of a story I, or any other human that has ever existed, has ever heard ever. The story itself is really cool, but jesus that was painful to listen to

New guidelines call for broad changes in scientific education:http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/sc...education.html

So in the future, our brain will really be located.... in our boners?

That's interesting... but this quote is jumping the gun a little:

"There's been a lot of research activity where people would like to repair brain and spinal cord injuries," Lerner says. "With this method, you can go to a person's own stem cells and turn them into brain cells that can repair nerve injuries."

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There is a big difference between growing some cells in a lab and managing to get those cells to heal an injury.

It will be very interesting to see if they can take those same marrow stem cells and transform them into any other types of cells.

What's up with this six inch long mutant human mummy? That shit's some sort of hoax right?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...cumentary.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3135628.html

Fox Mulder is on it !

Famm_sl said:

What's up with this six inch long mutant human mummy? That shit's some sort of hoax right?

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/arti...cumentary.html

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/0...n_3135628.html

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Looks like a particularly well-made 'human fetish'. First thing that came to mind was those P.T. Barnum ''mermaid skeletons'' composed of real bone and dessicated tissue for that authentic look.
The pictures that show the hands make it pretty obvious its a constructed object. No preserved patella, internal organs or brain- but the jaw remained attached and the hands/feet are still fully attached with all of the bones articulated? Nah.

Edit: Also noticed that the pictures from the field obviously show the mummy-thing as looking different from what they have in the lab. Don't care how dry the desert is where they found it, no mummy is preserved to the point where it's still 'poseable.'