Serban Tanasa

general recent conversations

Discussion between jdunlop and MolbOrg

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Serban Tanasa

Apr 10, 2021 09:31

@jdunlop high automation does not need to mean complete automation. One technician in oribit can control drones with high-level instructions and if need be can take direct control of a unit via telepresence, and in-extremis, can actually go down in person and do whatever the drones/exoskeletons cannot

Serban Tanasa

Apr 10, 2021 09:30

However, if your cost of labor is a lot higher (oh, your humans need these expensive habitats and need to arrive in special low-g accelerated ships) you can almost always substitute capital. Moreover, with sufficient praxis (praxis = you get better at things as you do them more and at larger scale), the cost of capital to replace that unit of labor might actually end up dropping even below the cost of labor on Earth

Serban Tanasa

Apr 10, 2021 09:27

@MolbOrg the reason we don't have better automation on Earth today is the labor is relatively plentiful, and therefore relatively cheap. It is not because stuff cannot be automated, it is simply not cost-effective to do so at the current margin.

Serban Tanasa

Apr 10, 2021 08:29

@jdunlop nobody said this is "easy", but we are on the verge of self-driving cars finally, and I specifically stated that I don't expect that sort of automation technology to be available for a few decades yet, I believe I said it's likely 30-40 years away. Considering where we were with computers and automation in 1980...

Serban Tanasa

Apr 10, 2021 08:25

@MolbOrg I did not mess up an order of magnitude. At Mercury orbit, the solar irradiation is 10x what it is on Earth, so you need roughly 1/10 the area

Discussion on question by jla: Can a …

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Serban Tanasa

Apr 3, 2021 04:05

for the amount of energy it would take to accelerate your supercomputer to high fractional c, you can build a computer 1,000,000 times the size.

Discussion on question by Serban Tana…

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Serban Tanasa

Apr 2, 2021 17:56

@JBH care to try your hand at an answer?

Serban Tanasa

Apr 2, 2021 17:56

Q: What will it take to get 1,000,000 people living in space habitats?

Sure, land is expensive here in downtown Metropolis, but lots of cheap land to build on even a few dozen miles out, never mind in the backwoods, or in flyover agricultural lands that rich, self-important and sophisticated people like me scoff at. Then you have deserts, taigas, the arctic, shallow...

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 17:32

I understand that I am simplifying complex issues. Technical issues are hard. Before SpaceX started landing rockets, everybody would have said the idea of landing rockets is stupid. I think you underestimate exponential growth curves -- 1000 years ago, everything about today's world would have appeared as unthinkable magic. Nothing about what I'm talking about appears to me as unthinkably magic, just difficult given our current lack of a space-based industrial base.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 13:35

@JBH "Energy doesn't reduce transport, construction, or maintenance costs - only operation costs." - Not sure what you mean -- energy IS the bulk of transport cost. You have depreciation and maintenance of the physical plant (car, rocket, shuttle) and the expenditure of gas/rocket fuel etc. Construction -- most of the cost is in transforming the atoms from one state to another -- mining, melting, casting etc --- the main cost there is also energy

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 13:24

@JBH regarding "bottom of a gravity well is always to point of lowest energy consumption" -- absolutely, unless the matter does not come UP the gravity well, as it wouldn't from for example, lunar mining. If you look at the delta-V budget, it's much cheaper to put things in Earth orbit from the moon than it is from Earth. Although, as we just discussed, if the space solar arrays are deployed in bulk, and if that bounty of power can be sent (microwaved?) to Earth, folks might not care...

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 13:19

In fact, I think once we figure out how to run an automated factory on the moon (this may be as little as 10 years away), and establish basic lunar launch capabilities to Earth GEO or Lagrange points, all the basic ingredients are in place.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 13:14

I don't think I am describing magic at all -- I am just thinking that economies of scale, when the power supply cost is probably 1/1000th or 1/1000,000th of what it is on earth, will make megastructures possible. In space, building megastructures is relatively easier than on Earth, assuming you have the capability to put it up there (say a solar-powered big railgun on the moon)

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 02:28

Right now, the median price for a home in the United States is somewhere around USD $400,000. California has a median price per sq. ft. of $324> USD $300. So while getting space habitats to provide price-competitive homes would take a lot, I don't see anything about physics that says it is utterly impossible to provide a sq foot of living space on a habitat for <$300 + whatever price inflation occurs in housing between now and then.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 02:22

Why is it impossible that at some point bulk-constructing a habitat for say 100,000 people or 1,000,000 people would not result in cheaper housing in orbit than on the planet. The economies of scale might actually flip against Earth construction at some point.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 02:20

@JBH In a place with such ample solar radiation as to have literal GW at one's disposal, it's easy to imagine a buildout of industrial infrastructure. Once the capacity to build container-ship-sized structures in space with space materials is in place, that can be scaled up and scaled up. Once the infrastructure is in place, construction costs to orbit might be minuscule, given all the free energy. Moving atoms into desired configurations and from place to place is all about energy.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 26, 2021 02:16

@JBH I am not sure I buy that argument. At the very least, trivially small populations could be deployed on a semi-permanent basis for highly valuable high maintenance operations where telerobotics and automation are just not enough. Admittedly, that more describes an oil rig than anything else on Earth. Allow me to pursue the space station argument further though.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 25, 2021 19:54

...since you'll always find that colonizing the suburbs, then the Gobi desert and the Siberian tundra is cheaper and easier. So how does one bootstrap human habitation in space -- I suggested the coolness factor and NIMBY earthers.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 25, 2021 19:54

@JBH I could, but then you'd vote to close the question for showing insufficient research. In the "wordy" section, I point out that a)costs are decreasing and with manufacturing on the moon could decrease much further, and yet that b) there seems to be no rationale for permanent residential habitats in space (i.e. outside of outposts with life support for technicians to do maintenance and go home)

Serban Tanasa

Mar 25, 2021 19:50

@Flater interesting -- have to confess had never thought about that.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 25, 2021 15:52

@jdunlop, for a typical factory, the mass of microchips needed to run it is a trivially small fraction of the total mass. Those items that are difficult to manufacture can be imported if it is cheaper to do so.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 25, 2021 15:52

May go as far as solar panels or microchips, depending on how sophisticate the factory is.

Serban Tanasa

Mar 25, 2021 15:52

@Pelinore In my thinking matter processor = Ore & regolith refining into ingots or metal beams, or sheet metal.

The Factory Floor

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Serban Tanasa

Apr 16, 2020 02:31

Serban Tanasa

Apr 16, 2020 01:55

what happened to Monica

Serban Tanasa

Oct 31, 2018 20:24

Q: Novel: Magic is derived from the bodies of dead gods

I walked into the store, leafed about 100 pages in, and all I remember is a scroll was made out of pieces of a sacrificed minor deity, literally, she had been slaughtered and used as a spell ingredient. I was distracted and did not buy the book. Googling only gets me garbage about Egyptian 'Book ...

story-identification novel

Serban Tanasa

Oct 31, 2018 20:24

any takers?

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 22:31

I have a bunch of cool ideas that yearn to jump from synapse to pixel and bit.

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 22:30

Thanks! Do miss worldbuilding tho

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 22:26

Got married, having a kid, working for da Man, it's all good. Kinda like a Fairy Tale not written by the Grimm brothers

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 22:23

How's college?

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 22:23

Just noticed you guys are throwing an election and decided to drop in and say hi

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 22:23

Hello @HDE226868 yeah it's been a while

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 21:57

hello @FoxElemental !

Serban Tanasa

Jul 3, 2018 21:51

hello gang

Serban Tanasa

Oct 17, 2017 15:22

I wanted to call it "Golden Rain" but thankfully (?) googled the term first

Serban Tanasa

Oct 17, 2017 15:21

Kilonova --- or it is KILLonova?

Serban Tanasa

Oct 17, 2017 15:21

Q: Goldplating Planets with Kilonovas

One of Alice's interstellar jaunts will take her to a Gold Planet. It's a planet that was recently covered in a meter deep layer of gold dust (for realism, it is mixed with silver, platinum, teensy bits or uranium and the like) I've been thinking about how to do this -- since planets don't natur...

reality-check planets space

Serban Tanasa

Sep 5, 2017 16:55

no stealth, but there are decoys, inertial guidance, chaff, diplomatic deception, sabotage, sensor blinding, etc

Serban Tanasa

Sep 5, 2017 16:52

if it is a surprise attack, about 10 seconds

Serban Tanasa

Sep 5, 2017 16:16

\○

Serban Tanasa

Sep 5, 2017 16:06

hat tip: hpmor.com/chapter/64

Serban Tanasa

Sep 5, 2017 16:05

All SerbanTanasa had of those moments were fading memories, but he knew that it had felt like dying, to let all his towers of thought collapse and become only a highrep user once more. It had felt like dying, he remembered that much of the WhiteMiceLounge even if he remembered little else.

Serban Tanasa

Sep 5, 2017 16:02

If i vote(d) to close, question is locked.

Serban Tanasa

Sep 5, 2017 16:02

although with 40k rep, dunno if losing the diamond will really make much of a difference, besides losing access to all the secret stuff*

Discussion on answer by Oleg V. Volko…

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Serban Tanasa

Oct 20, 2017 11:15

How very interesting! I think residents of Eastern European countries in the Soviet sphere of influence such as Hungary and Czechoslovakia had a very different perspective on the issue than you do.

Universe Factory

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Serban Tanasa

Sep 11, 2017 17:17

@Mithrandir24601, dunno, looks kinda wave-splashy. What causes that

Serban Tanasa

Sep 11, 2017 17:15

@Green turned blue now?

Serban Tanasa

Sep 11, 2017 15:31

damn it python

Serban Tanasa

Sep 11, 2017 15:31

u"hello world"