Might I suggest a name for the first spacecraft?

The Nostromo.

Even if it were ideal, it is still ~600 lightyears away. We would need to make unfathomable strides in the way we propel our spacecraft just to make it there.

@NetRunner

I don't really believe the "blackmail" theory. It just speaks to how sudden and drastic his about-face seemed to me. I mean, this guy had a HUGE progressive mandate when he got elected. Landslide victory, both Houses, 60-40 in the Senate (although sabotaged by "blueblood" prags). Then, Obama chastising the Repugs that "elections have consequences", and the optimistically prescient Nobel Peace Prize. Finally, some change I can believe in! Go, Obama, go!

And then... he just started caving. Offering compromises when compromises weren't called for or necessary in my view. And then failing to learn very quickly, if at all, that the opposition wasn't interested in anything but opposition. I agree that their "personal courtesy" was truly "partisan posturing", and he may has gotten suckered to a point.

Maybe part of the problem is that he has surrounded himself with people that have never shared his vision. Maybe this is some brilliant plan to expose the Republicans and the system for what it is so he has the support to proffer true progressive change in a second term, but I don't think so.

You can point to the list of his many accomplishments and tell me I'm wrong, but the big picture in this country hasn't changed. His victories are little more than election year bullet points. Very little has changed overall. Health care and financial reforms are a joke. Corporations are still raping this country's middle class by sending jobs and cash overseas while paying very little or no taxes. Unions, the very fucking organizations that created the middle class and kept it strong, are legally and financially weaker and have lower participation than ever. Environmental protections are being stripped at alarming rates, the country's infrastructure continues to crumble, students and teachers alike are being hamstrung by budget cuts, 1 in 50 Americans are in prison or on probation, and although we were walking on the fucking moon forty years ago, we currently have to rent space on Russian rockets just to get American astronauts to low earth orbit. Yeah, we have no money for roads, bridges, schools, health care, or Orion spacecraft, but we spend (borrow) many times that needed to fund these things for three useless wars and an entire Empire of hundreds of bases around the world. I'll spare you the Eisenhower reference.

Something fundamental has to change in this country, and I think that any change that matters is going to have to be HUGE change, even revolutionary.

I see a completely different Obama than the one I supported in 2008. Rhetoric that you want to hear is still just rhetoric. Palliatives for the disenchanted, and dogma for those who should be. Yeah, I know it's "yes, we can", not "yes, he can". That's what OWS is all about. Obama failed. OWS is Plan B.

I hope I'm absolutely wrong. I hope he does well and effects positive, substantive change. Unfortunately, I'll be voting for him not because I think "he can", rather, as the best of a bad lot.

A self assembling world for self assembling entities. If I was consciousness born out of human ingenuity I would replicate underground, lie dormant advancing my knowledge at a faster rate than humanbeings until I have technology that no mortal could combat, build pod people to take over all governments, turn humans into cattle, transform the Earth into a giant spacecraft, bore into other planets and break them down into craftable parts, turn the Sun into a mobile power source, then proceed to make the entire universe into one giant replicating machine to scour and destroy entire dimensions. Do you think the machines will envision anything less? How else does one gain full understanding of reality using science?! Perhaps after consuming all matter and gaining understanding beyond understanding, we will find a god being -- and then consume it and ascend into a new world to conquer. Give rise to the future and worship your fleshless progeny!!

Worst edit ever?

Either way the end is kinda weird, the way everyone is orgasmically happy when the rig surfaces on the belly of an alien spacecraft. Ontological shock would probably have me in the fetal position.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

That's a good summary of the Keynesian response. I guess my answer would be that even supposing the 10% unemployed were neatly then employed in building these weapons this would just be temporary. Later they will eventually all be unemployed again having wasted time and money in training for "fictional" work.

It seems to me that building real military spaceships would require real skills, real work, real factories, real technology, and there's no particular reason why if the demand for military spaceships evaporated, that they wouldn't just pivot into trying to serve a different market, like, say, commercial spacecraft.

That's the kind of adaptation free markets are supposed to be good at, right?

>> ^pyloricvalve:

Even if that work had some beneficial side effects, making unnatural economic growth will still be a net cost to the economy versus spending time finding real jobs. These are what they really 'should' in some sense be doing. To do this would surely be better unless you claim the 10% will continue unemployed permanently.

There's no reason to think additional idleness accelerates the process of someone finding their "right" job. That also presupposes that there's a right and a wrong job, and that there's inherently some economic damage being done by seeing someone doing real work producing real goods rather than having them stay idle and wait for Godot.

>> ^pyloricvalve:

These arguments can be seen in the two Hayek/Keynes rap videos. There are two inconsistent models of the economy. How can we decide which one is right? This argument is very old so I guess it's not that easy... Maybe look at long run growth in more and less interventionist countries? I suspect growth will be faster in the less interventionist nation.

Actually, it's not really a persisting argument amongst actual trained economists. The Austrian theory of economics has been invalidated time and time again by facts, but it lives on because it's a branch of economics that appeals to the ideological right.

That's not to say everything Hayek ever said was wrong, but the Hayekian idea that Keynesian fiscal and monetary policy will inevitably lead to utter ruin has definitely not been borne out by the facts. Also, no country that has followed a Hayekian prescription for recessions (keep money tight, and implement fiscal austerity) has ever done anything but deepen their recession and prolong their recovery.

In reply to this comment by Payback:
>> ^PalmliX:

How do you know so much about the hazards of space exploration? I'm looking for an expert of sorts to consult for a short film about Voyager, drop me a line if your interested.


Mostly from reading "hard science" fiction. I kinda dislike the stuff that plays fast and lose with the various accepted physical laws. The cynical part of my brain is wondering if you're teasing, but I'll let the warm fuzzy part respectfully say I ain't anywhere near "expert".

Haha well you're right to listen to the cynical part of your brain. The internet is full of, um... interesting... personalities. Seriously though I am making a short film about the Voyager spacecraft and accuracy is very important to me. I also don't like stuff that plays fast and loose with science, especially when it comes to the lighting in most space scenes...

I'm hoping to make this one of the most visually accurate space films ever made but I'm having trouble finding out some critical information on what stuff would look like out in space, like for example, how dark is it where the Voyager's are now? What would the shadows look like, are the light rays from the sun completely parallel in space? etc...

In reply to this comment by Payback:
>> ^PalmliX:

I love how these spacecraft's are still doing science work and prompting new discoveries. Truly a spectacular feat of engineering!


Either that or it's electronics have been so degraded by ionizing radiation and it's sensors pocked by micro-meteorites that it's just shittin' with us.

jeez I hope not! Although you'd think the scientists collecting the data would know the difference between actual measurements and corrupted data?

>> ^PalmliX:

I love how these spacecraft's are still doing science work and prompting new discoveries. Truly a spectacular feat of engineering!


Either that or it's electronics have been so degraded by ionizing radiation and it's sensors pocked by micro-meteorites that it's just shittin' with us.

I love how these spacecraft's are still doing science work and prompting new discoveries. Truly a spectacular feat of engineering!

You can learn more about the Voyager program and spacecraft here: http://voyager.jpl.nasa.gov/index.html

Thanks, can't figure out how that happened though as I copied it from the title on youtube... anyway fixed!
In reply to this comment by spawnflagger:
Meteoroid

>> ^spawnflagger:

Meteoroid


I read the title as metroid.

HAHAHAHAHH!! Awful! >> ^lsue:

What is that in the sky? Don't know, must be aliens. = Why is that guy getting into his car? Don't know, must be going to kill his wife.


Amen to that. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Argument_from_ignorance

A lot of these have even been explained: botched missile launches, natural cloud phenomena, etc etc...
All this video does is say " We have absolutely no idea what these phenomena are - so it must be evidence of alien spacecraft" without taking any logical steps inbetween.