If the conversations were like this the entire time they tried to sell things on these types of 24/7 channels, I just might watch them. For the comedy, and to get some of the best fracking video clips in the Universe to play and re-play...

I'd love it if they had to label a really complicated star system that has three stars (two that are satellites--and obviously if this star system existed it would fall apart really fast or if it achieved equilibrium then it still has, as I/you can imagine, amazingly low chances of staying in this semi-stable state; like our own system...which IS falling apart, but it's just doing it at a moderately slow pace); then add in planets revolving around the stars, moons around the planets...and it will become hard to decide what is a satellite or a planet in some instances (as it may count technically as both).

Throw in a large debris field (an asteroid belt, but with "chunks" the size of very large moons--like 1.5x the size of our own Moon) and an Oort Cloud, again with comets that are as big as small moons/satellites and they will literally have no idea how to label anything.

The sad part is that I bet a very large segment of our population would also have the same problems with this task.

Sometimes, it is bad that we have Google...because some people will rely on it too much (especially so if it's students--those going through K-12, or similar setups in whatever country you're reading this from; but, not college...though problems do exist there, but it gets FAR harder to "lie" your way to a degree, etc...). However, if you are older and you use the Internet to look up things you don't know and if you remember any of it--this is when the Internet (or "Google") becomes a great tool and boon for humanity.

Nothing is better than spreading knowledge and wisdom.

ARRRRRGH!!!! THE ASTEROID BELT DOESN'T LOOK LIKE THAT!!!

I missed it on the first viewing, but they have themselves some neptunium! Neptunium 237 is essential in the productions of plutonium 238. Unlike its brother plutonium 239 used in nuclear weapons, plutonium 238 is used for deep space exploration in RTG units. RTGs are the reason we can go beyond the asteroid belt! The curiosity rover will also be using an RTG as they are much more reliable than solar cells, especially on a notoriously dusty planet like mars.

I truly don't care about man's NEED to label and categorize everything.

What I do care about is giving us the whole picture, like the size differences, the distances, how many planetoids are in this Kuiper Belt and so on. Give us the diagrams so we can see what is there. I've never heard of this belt (perhaps my focuses were elsewhere).

Why is this never mentioned in Elementry school is any realistic way. I bought my son a stack of books (set) from Schoolastic. One book for every planet. I'd hoped he would get a better idea of the things around him. what they have failed at was defining their relationships to each other and never mentioned anything about the other members of Kuiper Belt and the Asteroid belt. (Hell Kuiper doesn't even exist in spellcheck - so who isn't taking this seriously)

The labels just help us to memorize and document them, but names don't make us understand anything about them. Lets educate through understanding.

>> ^BicycleRepairMan:

Fascinating, but not very plausible.. to make this, you'd have to collect several million earthlike planets from all over the galaxy, somehow tow them to this star, bring them all into the same, stable orbit, and then somehow splice them together, sort of like a stone arch falling into place. How you could keep gravity from pulling them together to form gas-giants or even small stars is yet another matter. overall, with superb planet-towing spaceships and all, I'd estimated the task to take several hundred million years and probably fail. I'd think I'd settle for populating the galaxy first.


I've read the whole series, many times and according to Niven the Ringworld was constructed as a filled shell. Planets, planetoids and asteroid belts from neighboring systems were broken down and through a never explained process, transmuted into a unique alloy called Scrith. That shell was then contoured like a bas-relief, bulges for oceans, depressions for mountains and filled with earth, water, oxygen, plants etc.. Still a massive undertaking to be sure, esp. at sub-light speeds but not as bad as assembling a giant jigsaw.

Sub-light speed technology is assumed as any civilization capable of FTL travel would find it far easier to terraform and inhabit existing worlds.

Damn, Asteroid Belt! You scary!

Hunter S. Maul would make a great Character: "I was somewhere around Bespin, on the edge of an asteroid belt when the drugs began to take hold."