More on the space issue later!

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 7:32pm

At some point I will write a sequel to this diary, published a month ago, which suggested that Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk were blowing smoke about exploring outer space. The idea that capitalists won't do it was already picked up by Richard Seymour in 2013.

Okay so I will get back to you all later about two interesting-looking volumes about all this fun: first, Christian Davenport's The Space Barons, dated March 20, and second, Tim Fernholz's Rocket Billionaires, also March 20. I'll tell you what they contain when they come in the mail. At any rate, there's more news about outer space. From The Guardian:

Space is full of dirty, toxic grease, scientists reveal

Research to calculate amount of ‘space grease’ in the Milky Way found enough for 40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter

Here's the money quote:

Until now there has been uncertainty over how much carbon is drifting between the stars. About half is expected to be found in its pure form. The rest is chemically bound with hydrogen in either a grease-like form, known as aliphatic carbon, or as a gaseous version of naphthalene, the main chemical component of mothballs.

This is merely to reinforce the point that, no, space is not just like home. To be specific, it contains a fine mist of dirty, toxic grease. Still don't know what it means.

Last word: Sam Criss: Think Twice about Escaping Earth to an Exoplanet

Tags:

Outer space

space grease

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Comments

Submitted by Snode on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 7:57pm

Whew!

I guess you won't be able to load your billions into a space ship waving "so long, sucker", and for a brief time it'll be a hell of a stock market bubble. That's the backside of ignorance of science, that it can somehow immediately produce magic when you need it.

My own notion is that we need a frontier, an unknown land that we can escape to, to be free. With no place to escape to it sinks in.... this is all we have. Now a few control the most, and there is no way to go back and correct what we allowed to happen.

I propose we don't tell the wealthy it's a scam. They'll head for Mars, we'll wave good by and then let's get to work. They were a pain in the ass anyway.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 8:15pm

Let them eat perchlorates

@Snode as you said:

I propose we don't tell the wealthy it's a scam. They'll head for Mars, we'll wave good by and then let's get to work. They were a pain in the ass anyway.

Anyway...

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by wendy davis on Mon, 07/02/2018 - 1:09pm

lol.

@Cassiodorus

love the 'anyway' link. maybe they can necromance perchlorates into chocolate, and reinvent Mars Bars!

or invent one of walter's windows into a parallel universe, then walter's machine to create temporary doors into it...and go take it over with their wiles and dollars. (my favorite sci-fi series ever)

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sn5tQ0WjsdE]

Submitted by Johnny Q on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 9:59pm

@Snode https://www.youtube.com

@Snode @Snode https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a242reY6-EM

—

They say that there's a broken light for every heart on Broadway
They say that life's a game and then they take the board away
They give you masks and costumes and an outline of the story
And leave you all to improvise their vicious cabaret-- A. Moore

Submitted by Snode on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 8:03am

@Johnny Q Mucho Thanks!!..How

@Johnny Q Mucho Thanks!!..How could I have forgotten the Dead Kennedys?

Submitted by Bisbonian on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 10:23pm

This has been my plan all along:

@Snode

I propose we don't tell the wealthy it's a scam. They'll head for Mars, we'll wave good by and then let's get to work. They were a pain in the ass anyway.

You just know one of those idiots it going to screw up the air-making machine...it's only a matter of time...and then that will be that.

—

"I’m a human being, first and foremost, and as such I’m for whoever and whatever benefits humanity as a whole.” —Malcolm X

Submitted by Snode on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 8:11am

@Bisbonian Well, they needed the

@Bisbonian Well, they needed the room for the StarBux-o-matic and espresso machine. I bet they have different urinals for richies and servants for the water recycler. Can't have that. Oh wait, there is no recycler for the servants.

Submitted by boriscleto on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 10:15am

Operation Vacu-suck

@Bisbonian

—

" In the beginning, the universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry, and is generally considered to have been a bad move. -- Douglas Adams, The Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy "

Submitted by JekyllnHyde on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 8:19pm

No Way Out. Not for a Couple of Years.

My own notion is that we need a frontier, an unknown land that we can escape to, to be free.

There is no escape from Trumpism at least until 2020. After that, who knows?

—

A riddle wrapped in a mystery inside an enigma

Submitted by Pricknick on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 8:34pm

Is there really any doubt

that humans will never be allowed to leave a perfect blue marble.
It may still be dreamed and capitalized, but the human race is a doomed species.
My only issue is that we'll make sure almost everything alive will perish with us.

—

Regardless of the path in life I chose, I realize it's always forward, never straight.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 7:46am

@Pricknick It's not that "humanity"

@Pricknick @Pricknick It's not that "humanity" will be allowed to leave. It's that the Offshore, in the case of global climate destruction, is obviously offplanet,

and it looks to some (like me), like the very wealthy who brought the planet to this point intend to extract as much profit as they can and then, when it's about to collapse, move to a space station or a lunar colony.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by Snode on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 8:20am

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal That looks interesting.

@Cant Stop the Macedonian Signal That looks interesting. I used to eat and breathe science fiction and always got jolted when something I read about, years before, popped up in real life.I thought that "Elysium" was pretty good. Close enough to keep extracting resources, far enough away to not smell us.

Submitted by The Voice In th... on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 9:07pm

At what density?

I'm quite sure that the "grease" is thinner than most laboratory vacuums, else the Universe would have collapsed from friction long ago.
"40 trillion trillion trillion packs of butter" sounds like a lot but what is the volume of the galaxy in cubic meters? Even in cubic miles it is stupendous.

If no else chimes in, perhaps I'll look it up tomorrow and report.

Last time I heard a figure, interstellar space had a density of around one atom per cubic centimeter.

—

I've seen lots of changes. What doesn't change is people. Same old hairless apes.

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 7:44am

@The Voice In the Wilderness I was thinking the same

@The Voice In the Wilderness I was thinking the same thing. This sounds fishy (maybe the grease is cod liver oil from space fish like this:

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 10:11am

Oh sure.

@The Voice In the Wilderness I'm still left wondering if space grease will matter if, for instance, someone decides to make a fifty-year (or however long it takes) trek across space to visit one of those exoplanets they've been talking about...

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by ggersh on Sat, 06/30/2018 - 9:22pm

As long as they don't need us to "bail them out"

cause once they get to wherever they get

—

I never knew that the term "Never Again" only pertained to
those born Jewish

"Antisemite used to be someone who didn't like Jews
now it's someone who Jews don't like"

Heard from Margaret Kimberley

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 3:08am

Ah yes! Helium, ClCO4- inflated balloons and dry cleaning

Very timely article. Who will pay? Bezos? Gates? Soros? Nope, we will. Is capitalism too timid to space mine? Not if they have the government to bail them out when they mess up--which they most surely will. What about the putative benefits of He3 and ClO4?

Well, we could conceivably drag that He3 back to mother earth by a very expensive, not cost-efficient technique of sending Lunar Landers back and forth from Terra to Luna as sort of a Lunar Red Ball Express. Impractical and ridiculous. Whatever the putative value of He3, the expense of this caravan to the moon will not pay off--no matter how much energy is produced by such a process. I suspect that the energy and capital expenditure will prove to be more expensive then any possible benefit reaped (raped?). Off course applying earth-bound techniques to lunar mining willl be as destructive to the moon and the capitalists have proven themselves of doing to Mother Earth (don't fuck with Mother!)

There is the matter of a nascent thorium technology here on earth, a relatively abundant heavy metal (toxic too!) for which reactors of various types are in various states of development as written about in this board: the power of power

Of course using thorium is much too simple. Effective, efficient thorium reactors are probably less than 5 years away.

But no, let Musk and Bezoar fuck up the troposphere with careening, out of control rocketry blowing up in the skies above.

Read this from the Oil Price blog

The presence of helium-3 was confirmed in moon samples returned by the Apollo missions, and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who walked on the moon in December 1972, is an avid proponent of mining helium-3.

There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon — enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries.

“It is thought that this isotope could provide safer nuclear energy in a fusion reactor, since it is not radioactive and would not produce dangerous waste products,’’ the European Space Agency said.

There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon, though only about a quarter of that realistically could be brought to Earth, said Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council.

That’s still enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries, Kulcinski said. He estimated helium-3’s value at about $5 billion a ton, meaning 250,000 tons would be worth in the trillions of dollars.

To be sure, there are numerous obstacles to overcome before the material can be used – including the logistics of collection and delivery back to Earth and building fusion power plants to convert the material into energy. Those costs would be stratospheric.

As for perchlorate, yeah, we could use another hundred billion tons of gun powder and dry cleaner fluid. Just imagine all the fun we could have with that outlandish, money-sucking stupidity.

As far as "space grease", I am sure this will be the next beauty craze for the effete elite--only $30,000 per ounce if not applied liberally.

Submitted by Alligator Ed on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 3:11am

Yay! Fly me to the Moon

@Alligator Ed Dedicated to the earnest Lunatics

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5hxibHJOE5E&frags=pl%2Cwn]

Very timely article. Who will pay? Bezos? Gates? Soros? Nope, we will. Is capitalism too timid to space mine? Not if they have the government to bail them out when they mess up--which they most surely will. What about the putative benefits of He3 and ClO4? Well, we could conceivably drag that He3 back to mother earth by a very expensive, not cost-efficient technique of sending Lunar Landers back and forth from Terra to Luna as sort of a Lunar Red Ball Express. Impractical and ridiculous. Whatever the putative value of He3, the expense of this caravan to the moon will not pay off--no matter how much energy is produced by such a process. I suspect that the energy and capital expenditure will prove to be more expensive then any possible benefit reaped (raped?). Off course applying earth-bound techniques to lunar mining willl be as destructive to the moon and the capitalists have proven themselves of doing to Mother Earth (don't fuck with Mother!) There is the matter of a nascent thorium technology here on earth, a relatively abundant heavy metal (toxic too!) for which reactors of various types are in various states of development as written about in this board: the power of power Of course using thorium is much too simple. Effective, efficient thorium reactors are probably less than 5 years away. But no, let Musk and Bezoar fuck up the troposphere with careening, out of control rocketry blowing up in the skies above. Read this from the Oil Price blog The presence of helium-3 was confirmed in moon samples returned by the Apollo missions, and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who walked on the moon in December 1972, is an avid proponent of mining helium-3. There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon — enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries. “It is thought that this isotope could provide safer nuclear energy in a fusion reactor, since it is not radioactive and would not produce dangerous waste products,’’ the European Space Agency said. There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon, though only about a quarter of that realistically could be brought to Earth, said Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council. That’s still enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries, Kulcinski said. He estimated helium-3’s value at about $5 billion a ton, meaning 250,000 tons would be worth in the trillions of dollars. To be sure, there are numerous obstacles to overcome before the material can be used – including the logistics of collection and delivery back to Earth and building fusion power plants to convert the material into energy. Those costs would be stratospheric. As for perchlorate, yeah, we could use another hundred billion tons of gun powder and dry cleaner fluid. Just imagine all the fun we could have with that outlandish, money-sucking stupidity. As far as "space grease", I am sure this will be the next beauty craze for the effete elite--only $30,000 per ounce if not applied liberally.

Submitted by Snode on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 8:31am

@Alligator Ed This is easy. We just

@Alligator Ed This is easy. We just deploy Americas greatest arsenal...tax cuts, subsidies and tax breaks. We'll win one for the Grifter. It'll be bipartisan.

Very timely article. Who will pay? Bezos? Gates? Soros? Nope, we will. Is capitalism too timid to space mine? Not if they have the government to bail them out when they mess up--which they most surely will. What about the putative benefits of He3 and ClO4? Well, we could conceivably drag that He3 back to mother earth by a very expensive, not cost-efficient technique of sending Lunar Landers back and forth from Terra to Luna as sort of a Lunar Red Ball Express. Impractical and ridiculous. Whatever the putative value of He3, the expense of this caravan to the moon will not pay off--no matter how much energy is produced by such a process. I suspect that the energy and capital expenditure will prove to be more expensive then any possible benefit reaped (raped?). Off course applying earth-bound techniques to lunar mining willl be as destructive to the moon and the capitalists have proven themselves of doing to Mother Earth (don't fuck with Mother!) There is the matter of a nascent thorium technology here on earth, a relatively abundant heavy metal (toxic too!) for which reactors of various types are in various states of development as written about in this board: the power of power Of course using thorium is much too simple. Effective, efficient thorium reactors are probably less than 5 years away. But no, let Musk and Bezoar fuck up the troposphere with careening, out of control rocketry blowing up in the skies above. Read this from the Oil Price blog The presence of helium-3 was confirmed in moon samples returned by the Apollo missions, and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who walked on the moon in December 1972, is an avid proponent of mining helium-3. There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon — enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries. “It is thought that this isotope could provide safer nuclear energy in a fusion reactor, since it is not radioactive and would not produce dangerous waste products,’’ the European Space Agency said. There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon, though only about a quarter of that realistically could be brought to Earth, said Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council. That’s still enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries, Kulcinski said. He estimated helium-3’s value at about $5 billion a ton, meaning 250,000 tons would be worth in the trillions of dollars. To be sure, there are numerous obstacles to overcome before the material can be used – including the logistics of collection and delivery back to Earth and building fusion power plants to convert the material into energy. Those costs would be stratospheric. As for perchlorate, yeah, we could use another hundred billion tons of gun powder and dry cleaner fluid. Just imagine all the fun we could have with that outlandish, money-sucking stupidity. As far as "space grease", I am sure this will be the next beauty craze for the effete elite--only $30,000 per ounce if not applied liberally.

Submitted by Cassiodorus on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 10:28am

Right.

@Alligator Ed It's not going to work.

Very timely article. Who will pay? Bezos? Gates? Soros? Nope, we will. Is capitalism too timid to space mine? Not if they have the government to bail them out when they mess up--which they most surely will. What about the putative benefits of He3 and ClO4? Well, we could conceivably drag that He3 back to mother earth by a very expensive, not cost-efficient technique of sending Lunar Landers back and forth from Terra to Luna as sort of a Lunar Red Ball Express. Impractical and ridiculous. Whatever the putative value of He3, the expense of this caravan to the moon will not pay off--no matter how much energy is produced by such a process. I suspect that the energy and capital expenditure will prove to be more expensive then any possible benefit reaped (raped?). Off course applying earth-bound techniques to lunar mining willl be as destructive to the moon and the capitalists have proven themselves of doing to Mother Earth (don't fuck with Mother!) There is the matter of a nascent thorium technology here on earth, a relatively abundant heavy metal (toxic too!) for which reactors of various types are in various states of development as written about in this board: the power of power Of course using thorium is much too simple. Effective, efficient thorium reactors are probably less than 5 years away. But no, let Musk and Bezoar fuck up the troposphere with careening, out of control rocketry blowing up in the skies above. Read this from the Oil Price blog The presence of helium-3 was confirmed in moon samples returned by the Apollo missions, and Apollo 17 astronaut Harrison Schmitt, a geologist who walked on the moon in December 1972, is an avid proponent of mining helium-3. There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon — enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries. “It is thought that this isotope could provide safer nuclear energy in a fusion reactor, since it is not radioactive and would not produce dangerous waste products,’’ the European Space Agency said. There are an estimated 1 million metric tons of helium-3 embedded in the moon, though only about a quarter of that realistically could be brought to Earth, said Gerald Kulcinski, director of the Fusion Technology Institute at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and a former member of the NASA Advisory Council. That’s still enough to meet the world’s current energy demands for at least two, and possibly as many as five, centuries, Kulcinski said. He estimated helium-3’s value at about $5 billion a ton, meaning 250,000 tons would be worth in the trillions of dollars. To be sure, there are numerous obstacles to overcome before the material can be used – including the logistics of collection and delivery back to Earth and building fusion power plants to convert the material into energy. Those costs would be stratospheric. As for perchlorate, yeah, we could use another hundred billion tons of gun powder and dry cleaner fluid. Just imagine all the fun we could have with that outlandish, money-sucking stupidity. As far as "space grease", I am sure this will be the next beauty craze for the effete elite--only $30,000 per ounce if not applied liberally.

—

'French theory is a product of US cultural imperialism." -- Gabriel Rockhill

Submitted by Cant Stop the M... on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 7:51am

Sam Criss has it right.

—

"More for Gore or the son of a drug lord--None of the above, fuck it, cut the cord."
--Zack de la Rocha

"I tell you I'll have nothing to do with the place...The roof of that hall is made of bones."
-- Fiver

Submitted by detroitmechworks on Sun, 07/01/2018 - 10:32am

Sadly, more and more a pessimistic Scot's view of the future

Is coming to mind.

Man After Man

Course, he was just doing a retread of "The Time Machine" which also had the same class/technology divide, except with a different conclusion.

I don't know what the future holds to be honest, but I do know that humanity tends to regulate overpopulation through war. While I would hope that our supposed leaders would learn from history, I have learned that they not only do not, they expect the rest of us not to as well.

—

I do not pretend I know what I do not know.