Back to: What happens now? | Forward to: A Quick Infomercial

Covid on Mars

Time for a thought experiment! (For those of us who don't want to keep chewing on the sore that is the US presidential succession—if you do, please stick to this already-existing discussion: cross-contamination into this new discussion will be dealt with harshly.)

We all know by now that Elon Musk wants to appoint himself Pope-Emperor of Mars. As the world's richest man (currently, and only on paper—it's based on the Tesla share valuation, which is wildly inflated) and as the guy with the private space program that scooped 50% of the planetary civil launch market in the past decade, it's not entirely inconceivable. Evidently SpaceX hope to fly Starship to orbit in the next 1-2 years and land a Starship on Mars within this decade. Let's suppose it happens.

So then ...

Let's suppose that Musk's Mars colony plan is as viable as his other businesses: there are ups and downs and lots of ducking and weaving but he actually gets there in the end. All the "... and then a miracle happens ..." bits in the plan (don't mention closed-circuit life support! Don't mention legal frameworks!) actually come together, and by 2060 there is a human colony on Mars. Not just an Antarctic-style research base, but an actual city with a population on the order of 500,000 people, plus outlying mining, resource extraction, fuel synthesis, and photovoltaic power farms (not to mention indoor intensive agriculture to grow food).

Most of the city is tunnelled underground, using the rock overhead as radiation shielding. The radiation level to which citizens are exposed is nevertheless higher than in any comparable city on Earth: it's just the way Mars is. Workers in the outlying installations may be much closer to the surface than city-dwellers, and indeed most such plants are staffed on strict rotation by workers who are exposed to near-surface radiation levels for no more than three months in any consecutive Martian year.

Obvious aspects: cities are easier to heat and protect against radiation and provide with air and water, so housing is dense—think Singapore or Hong Kong density. High energy activities (eg. fuel and chemical synthesis, metal refining) and work with toxic substances are carried out sufficiently distant from the dense habitat that there's no risk of explosion damage. Musk's tunnel boring fetish turns out to be pretty useful when it comes to building a narrow-gauge mass transit system to move workers to/from these outlying sites, so there's a subway linking the city to most of its far-flung human-operated work sites.

More remote work is either fully automated, or largely automated but overseen by a small local dome full of canned apes with space suits. (Think the folks who go out to fix wiring faults on the big-ass solar farms, or to repair the robots that clean the PV panels after the dust storms pass).

The city is large enough that "self sufficient" is within sight. There's a teaching hospital and a university (a lot of educational material is distance-learning based but it's a hub that provides for tutorials/symposia and lab space). There's a semiconductor fab line, although the mine and refinery for on-planet sources of rare earth dopants keeps getting shoved back into the future: easier to import a few tons of gallium and lanthanum and so on from Earth every couple of years at a few million dollars a ton rather than spend 10% of your planet's GDP on a refinery that'll only break even after several decades. It's still a net population sink (most terrestrial cities were, until the industrial revolution: more people died than were born there) but there is a birth rate and it turns out that with a sufficiently good medical system babies can be born and raised on Mars without too many medical issues.

The population is overall young: nobody has lived there for more than 40 years so far, the oldest citizens are around 80 years old but somewhat more mobile than on Earth (having been born on Earth and now living in a lower gravity environment), and chronic illnesses that prove fatal on Earth over a period of years (eg. Alzheimer's) are either curable by this point, or result in short incapacitation followed by death. (In 2120 there will be a huge scandal and public commission of enquiry into the policy of "assisted dying" applied by the authorities to most of the first generation of colonists who lived significantly past their productive years, but that's another scenario. Let's just say, retirement of 12-18 months is tolerated: retirement over 24 months is almost unheard of because retirees are widely believed to "just give up".)

Most of the necessities of life can be manufactured or recycled with only minimal inputs. Pharmaceuticals, for example: modular chemical synthesis "bricks" can be plumbed together to produce different drugs flexibly. Lots of research aimed at disaster resilience on Earth—portable modular pharmaceutical factories, basically—turns out to be applicable on Mars. And mandatory pre-vaccination of colonists keeps the major human plagues from ever gaining a toe-hold in the new colony: there is and will be no mumps, flu, common cold, polio, smallpox, COVID19, HIV, or rabies.

The habitats are of course instrumented and surveilled exhaustively. Nobody wants to accidentally wander into a room that is anoxic because an air circulation fan packed in, or to sleep in a near-surface dormitory where a heater failed at night in winter. Nobody wants to asphyxiate in a cloud of sewer gas that burped from a waste tank with a blocked extractor pipe. Nobody wants to starve in a famine because the strain of fungi which play a vital role in some obscure phytonutrient recycling pathway got infected and crashed. And so on.

(Politics: Musk's autocratic dream didn't outlast his own lifetime and Mars is very locked down—ridiculously so, in the eyes of anyone accustomed to life on a planet with a self-sustaining biosphere. It turns out that dog-eat-dog capitalism is a bad fit for domed cities, which can't tolerate homelessness, civil unrest, or unmedicated schizophrenia. So socially it's a lot more like the Soviet bloc than the early 21st century EU or USA, albeit with much better planning/control/management and a governing ideology which boils down to lifeboat utilitarianism—"we're not building utopia, we're just trying to ensure survival for as many as possible in an intensely hostile environment (what were our grandparents thinking?)".)

So I'm going with the most optimistic take on a Mars colony in 2070 (short of invoking magical singularity woo and benevolent superintelligent AIs running everything).

What happens next ...

One of the regular biannual colony shuttles from Earth brings an unwelcome surprise: some of the essential supplies for the life support farms are contaminated with SARS-CoV-70, leading to an outbreak which starts among workers in one of the agricultural units (possibly a potato farm—h/t to "The Martian" here).

SARS-CoV-70 is the latest emergent vaccine-resistant mutant from the clade of respiratory coronaviruses descended from SARS-CoV-19. Failure to vaccinate to achieve global herd immunity in the 2020s resulted in these coronavirii becoming endemic, and with a large host population (natural immunity seldom lasts more than 1-2 years: often only months) it keeps throwing out mutant strains (eg. Lineae B.1.1.7, the more infectious strain of the original disease, which emerged in late 2020). When a new strain of SARS emerges which is resistant to existing vaccines, the World Health Organization coordinates another global emergency vaccine response, usually releasing a tweaked mRNA vaccine within 90 days: often only local lockdowns are necessary while the first doses are airlifted to the outbreak site. On Earth, SARS-type diseases are a recurring but well-understood problem: new outbreaks compare to the COVID19 pandemic of 2020-2024 much as a winter flu pandemic in the late 20th century compared to the 1918-22 Spanish Flu.

Mars is different.

Firstly, SARS-CoV-70 is vaccine-resistant: the Mars colony is a green field zone. Indeed, the policy of excluding diseases prior to emigration has resulted in a younger generation (20-30% of colonists) who are unvaccinated against anything, and probably didn't learn about historic plagues in history class (because why would they?).

Secondly, SARS-CoV-70 is comparable in mortality/morbidity and infectivity to the original COVID19: the one twist is that "long covid" post-viral damage is more prevalent, affecting up to 25% of survivors. The pattern is familiar, with 50% of long covid patients suffering serious organ damage and 30% being severely disabled after 6 months: "long haulers" on Earth follow a pattern familiar from other post-viral syndromes (eg. CFS) and may be impaired to the point of being unable to work for years or decades.

COVID70 is highly contagious, many carriers are asymptomatic, and it was spreading in close quarters for up to 11 days before anybody realized it had arrived.

However, there is some hope due to peculiarities of architecture on Mars. All rooms have pressure control, and where a hospital on Earth would have fire doors, a hospital on Mars has emergency airlock doors. Habitats in a Mars colony by default have to be able to lock down in case of a depressurization accident, and are compartmented like a submarine. Finally, per-room breathing gas control makes nursing support for patients much easier than on earth—you can crank the partial pressure of oxygen in the ICU right up (as long as you stay below roughly 28%, above which even waterlogged organic tissue is potentially inflammable).

An mRNA vaccine for SARS-CoV-70 is available off-the-shelf on Earth. Problem: Hohman transfer orbit windows are biennial, and the next one won't open for another 15 months or so. The hospital and university have limited flexible manufacturing capacity for mRNA vaccines—they're in constant demand, because they're highly effective against most cancers and cancer is a persistent health threat in the relatively high-radiation environment on Mars.

Figures: 60% of the population will suffer from cancer at some point in their lives, compared with 30-40% on Earth. Most cancers can be treated with a course of mRNA shots that teach the patient's learned immune system to recognize the cancer clone. 0.5M people ➙ 300K cases over 75 years ➙ the colony requires capacity to manufacture at least 4000 treatment courses/year, as a routine baseline for survival. So there is a vaccine factory and local expertise, and this can be scaled up, but to provide a COVID70 vaccine for the entire Martian population within a year would require at least two orders of magnitude more output.

So their choices are (a) wait 15 months for the vaccine shipment (and upgraded vaccine factory) to arrive from Earth, or (b) divert resources into lockdown, contact tracing, nursing, and jerry-building an emergency vaccine factory from equipment/expertise/parts on hand.

Oh, and note those 90 day crew rotations to the outlying fuel, refinery, and mining plants outside the city limits ...

Some additional parameters

(I will add to this section as other stuff occurs to me. Check back often!)

The UK in 2020 operates a very lean medical service that employs roughly 1.8 million people out of a population of 68 million. 1 in 40 is thus a low-ball estimate of the proportion of the Mars population who will be working in one or another area of medical practice—nursing, surgery, pharmacy, lab diagnostics, nutrition, general practitioners, physiotherapy. That means Mars General Hospital and satellite facilities employ about 12,000 people.

COVID family viruses kill roughly 1% of the total population, but health workers and school staff are disproportionately affected, with mortality/morbidity running at 300-500% of baseline.

COVID70 will, if unchecked, kill roughly 5000 martians ... but perhaps 500 of them will be doctors and nurses. Training new doctors/nurses is a 7-10 year process, and recruiting on Earth may be difficult in the wake of a pandemic hitting a closed environment.

The colony will be left with a legacy of maybe 50-60,000 disabled colonists, of whom perhaps half will recover in 3-9 months: the rest are extreme long-haulers. Repatriating the disabled back to Earth is not an option (many of the invalids would be harmed or killed simply by landing on a high-gravity world, after spending years or decades on Mars). You're going to have to work out a social policy for handling dependents. In contrast, the colony age distribution resembles contemporary China emerging from the one-child-per-family decades rather than any historic high birth rate/high death rate colonial model. Growing your own doctors and nurses—or care home workers—is a very long term project.

The question

You are the Mayor of Armstrong City, facing a variant SARS pandemic, and supplies and support are 15 months away. What do you do?

Alternatively: what are the unforeseen aspects of a SARS-type disease infiltrating such a colony?

And what are the long-term consequences—the aftermath—for architecture and administration of the Mars colony, assuming they're willing to learn and don't want it to happen again?

Discuss.

1267 Comments

1:

Or (c) small-scale compartmentalisation to slow it down, provide basic medical care only, and put up with the death toll until (a) saves them. See also you remarks about unrequested assisted dying. That assumes that it is no more lethal and has no more long-term issues than at present. If it is, then (b).

Actually, given a highly-educated population, reasonable control of Alzheimers, osteoporosis etc. and an authoritative society (enforcing decent nutrition and exercise, and limiting obesity and substance abuse), the long-term retirement issue isn't as bad as you imply. People move into other tasks (including training and remote checking of automated systems) as they cease to be directly involved. Nothing new in that.

2:

I have just spotted your extra parameters; sorry about reposting, but they change what I should have said. The death rate for doctors and nurses is solved by my approach, because COVID patients get isolated (possibly in groups), oxygen and supplies, and live or die as they will. Priority occupations (probably including those) would get better care. Standard cost-benefit risk assessment.

I don't see how to deal with the disablement except to put up with the 10% hit to productivity. But, with planning, that's not an infeasible problem - it's comparable to a significant war.

3:

As a card-carrying molecular biologist myself, the thing that strikes me is that mRNA vaccines are very, very easy to manufacture. And that's NOW, not after 50 years of mRNA vaccines having become the standard rapid-response to emerging infectious disease. In 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture mRNA vaccines in bulk. What's more, when Covid-70 comes to Mars, we already know how to make a vaccine that works because Earth has done it. What's more it's a modular manufacturing problem. All we need to do is snap the SARS-COv70 module into our existing process.

If I'm the mayor of Armstrong City, I definitely go with making our own. Having it shipped from Earth is not something that anyone would even consider. I think that the scenario posited will end up being much less dire than it first appears.

4:

It is painfully obvious that the major indication of not following sensible social distancing protocols is "Being a Real Man™".

I think we can safely assume that it is sufficiently programmed into DNA that it will apply also on Mars.

All things considered, I would expect a Mars colony to attract a lot of Real Men™, the same way USA did a century and a half ago.

Whatever else we can say about the Mayor, it is unlikely to be a soft and squishy person in fabulous contact with their inner feelings, it will be a gung-ho problem solver, because there will be lots of problems to solve.

On hearing the 1% mortality projection, the Mayor will tell the people to buckle up and bear, it with an unmistakable "If you cannot cope with this virus, you shouldn't be here to begin with" subcontext.

Vaccine are to be produced, to the extent there is spare capacity, and it is reserved for "deserving senior citizens" which will mean the decorated, the famous and the well connected.

And then he will move on to the more pressing matters, in this case the very wet soil which makes it impossible to drill the next lower level.

5:

Maybe the Martian canals are collapsed subway tunnels from an ancient civilization. Really wide tunnels, if they're visible from space.

(Yes, I know the canal theory has been thoroughly debunked.)

As for the pandemic problem, I suspect that in 40 years contact tracing will be implemented as a face mask with molecular detectors. If Mars is lucky, those will be stored in an emergency locker in every atmosphere domain next to the vacuum suits, and with an over-the-ether software update they'll be looking for CoV-70. If not, they'll be easy to manufacture but tricky to distribute through closed airlocks. But there will be plenty of bunny suits.

6:

I would be more comfortable with your scenario if it took place in 2170 instead of 2070.

7:

In your senario, the colony will collapse. I don't swallow either your Real Men claim or such a mismanager as mayor, in a colony that has just established itself under conditions where there is little scope for cock-ups. They are likely only if the colony was a society a bit like the White Highlands of Kenya, and was heavily propped-up by subsidised supply ships from earth. That's not how I read OGH's scenario.

8:

In 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture mRNA vaccines in bulk.

Now tell me that in 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture a million disposable syringes (or other sterile vaccine delivery devices) in a city-sized Mars colony!

This is your scheduled reminder that a drug is not a medicine. (In pharmacy: a drug is a substance that exerts a detectable pharmacological effect on metabolism. A medicine is a ... thing ... that delivers said drug into the body in sufficient dose and concentration to produce the desired effect.)

9:

I disagree. You have an experimental colony in a hostile environment. Detailed technical knowledge is required on a day to day basis just to keep everyone alive.

This is not an environment where Real Men prosper. It's the natural habitat of the airline pilot and checklist enthusiast.

If COVID really is endemic on earth then there will be a section in the standard operating procedures.

10:

Does oral mRNA vaccine delivery make it easier? I believe some of the relevant pharmaceutical companies are already working on that for SARS-CoV-2, and that delivery mechanism would seem a lot more likely to have taken hold by 2070 as the standard mechanism in a colony that needs to worry about things like operating as a closed system.

11:
Now tell me that in 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture a million disposable syringes (or other sterile vaccine delivery devices) in a city-sized Mars colony!

How about if I tell you that in 2070 mRNA vaccines will be administered nasally?

Of course, I don't know that, not that specific detail, but I will make a big bet that in 2070 there will be facile routes for administration of mRNA vaccines. It will by then have become terribly important for Earth to have those routes.

I think a tremendously important point, which I hinted at in my first response but didn't make explicitly, is that Mars is backed up by the full weight of Erath expertise. For instance, scale-up problems are hard, if you're working from scratch. But if someone has already scaled up your process successfully and can tell you how they did it, the problem gets much easier. And this goes for every aspect of Mars's Covid-70 response.

Also, and this would worry me more than the direct effects of Covid-70 itself -- there will be a strong impulse to loosen safety standards in Armstrong City. That will speed things up a lot, but would add a fat tail to the death number probability distribution.

12:

The Real Men™ tendency in recent US politics appears to correlate with patriarchal white Christian supremacism. 50 years hence I expect it to be a social disease either in complete remission, or in a 50-year cyclical spike (if you give credence to Turchin's cliodynamic cyclic model of history).

A rigid social hierarchy based on the principle of white Christian male supremacy is really not going to play well in a closed society on Mars ... at least, not for the inmates. Such hierarchies are inherently wasteful of human potential, and that's why they're on the way out (for the most part) here on Earth.

13:

Does oral mRNA vaccine delivery make it easier?

I think oral per se would be hard. When you take something by mouth, it heads into your stomach and intestines. That's a super-harsh environment. And there's no easy way for macromolecules like mRNA to get from the digestive system into the blood or lymph, where the immune system can get a handle on it.

14:

When I started being vaccinated, both syringes and needles were reused - and were not even sterilised properly between uses (*); as you know, it's not a great idea in the presence of blood-transmitted diseases, but is feasible. Given the assumptions that there are a small number of uncommon blood-borne diseases, and that people's medical records have those identified, it's trivial to reuse within groups that have only the same set.

(*) They were put into alcohol between uses, but that is all.

15:

mRNA synthesis is likely to be ubiquitous and easy by 2070; the real problem is one of formulation science -- how you deliver the drug. And there's a reason why large-scale vaccine factories today are rare and cost billions.

(mRNA is a fragile molecule and easily degraded, so figuring out how to deliver it orally or intranasally is a Hard Problem in drug design -- much harder than designing an mRNA COVID vaccine, apparently, which took about 48 hours early in the pandemic. The delay was caused by the requirement for safety testing, even though it was abbreviated and a screaming emergency, and by the headache of scaling up manufacturing to meet demand.)

16:

Actually, DNA vaccines might have become much more important by 2070. And they are likely to be much easier to administer. In fact, a vaccine might itself be packaged as an infectious virus. Some of the viruses now being worked on are based on adenovirus.

The big problem with the current incarnation of those is that they confer immunity not only to SARS-CoV-19, but also to the adenovirus vehicle, which means no one who gets one of those vaccines can ever be immunized to anything else using the same vehicle. I think that problem will be solved fairly quickly by clever engineering.

17:

You're talking about one of 100s of failure modes in such a colony. I guess my question is is it even possible that shaved apes can live in enclosed spaces for any period of time. Or do we need an entire planet to sink our excess chemistry secretions, diverse chemical input needs, and allow us to spread out when needed?

Maybe the colony, to be able to exist long term, needs a different design that incorporates 100 times the space. Which of course tanks the funding in the near term.

I'm reminded of the carrier USS Theodore Roosevelt (CVN-71). And those stories of how much fun it is to live on a nuclear sub for a couple of months at a time.

https://fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/ship/docs/simlife.htm

Oh, yeah. By then will not there be an option for a high energy transfer mission that takes only 90 days or so to get from earth to Mars?

18:

Given your age that would have been 1950s/early 1960s, right?

Hepatitis-A was only discovered in 1973; HIV only arrived on the medical establishment's radar in the 1980s (although it began to circulate long before that).

Basically we're a lot more careful about blood-borne diseases today than we were in the 1960s because nobody really knew about them. Same with antibiotic resistance in bacterial infections: it was a theoretical possibility but hadn't really been observed -- abstract enough that SF writers thought it was a really neat premise for a novel of the 21st century, rather than something their friends and family could expect to die of.

19:

mRNA synthesis is likely to be ubiquitous and easy by 2070

mRNA synthesis is ubiquitous and easy NOW.

20:

The Real Men™ tendency in recent US politics appears to correlate with patriarchal white Christian supremacism.

So what do you call the similar things in India and China and many other places around the world?

21:

Well, a martian colony, due to technological trends already active and being accelerated right now, should be much more easily converted to a social distancing and contagion tracking measures.

First of all, like yourself noted, learning is already mostly distance. Most essential jobs will also likely already be done by telepresence, and for the essential jobs that can't be, people will be trained already to do it with breathers/pressure suits because that's the kind of environment where people live.

If you're building underground, large open spaces where many people can assemble are already at a premium, so it's likely that the only kind of those spaces are destined to socializing, not strictly necessary for a barebone survival functioning of the city.

Surveillance and monitoring will be already massive, because not only it can be, but in that kind of environment it's almost mandatory having it, things like Singapore on steroids.

Also, population will likely have been already heavily "trained" in following emergency guidelines.

So, if the mayor impose a strict social distancing and quarantine regime, move immediately to an "isolate, certify the status then move on" policy for essential workers, and start immediately a program to vaccine them, this should keep the lid on the stiuation for a while.

Also, side notes: due to the nature of such a colony, it's likely that there will be already an abundance of respirator masks, likely at least one private one per person plus many common one in emergency boxes at every corner and pressure door, regularly checked, and with everybody trained in using them with regular drills. If you start mandating the use of those in public spaces for the duration of the emergency, they should work much better than even the currently used hospital stuff, and as noted before the kind of people that would live on Mars would be quite less likely to start "anti-mask" revolts: you could even add some "smell" to the air in public zones, and start a campaign "if you're smelling the smell, fix your mask or go in quarantine!"

Honestly, unless the engineers that designed this colony did some huge cock-ups in designing the environment and security measures, or some other unforeseen circumstances (i.e. it's not a newcovid virus, it's some kind of toxic spores released by a new fungus that like to eat cable sheaths and AC filters, it's resistant to known antimycotics, and likes the high-radiation environment! or there is some kind of social disruption going on like a new MAGOM cult (make america great on mars) started by the grand-nephew of Trump), I think a extra-Earth colony it's the harder environment for such a virus to spread, because the environment and the population have to be already super-controlled and super-monitored. Unless, that is, the colony is already so close to its safety margins that even a limited push it's sufficient to drive it over to

22:

Actually, I wonder if we might by then have a stable, translatable RNA analog. RNA is unstable because the sugar-phosphate backbone has a kind-of built-in self-destruction mechanism, the 2'-oxygen that is missing in DNA. However, one can manufacture nucleic-acid-like molecules that have, instead of a sugar-phosphate backbone, some different chemistry. (Morpholino oligonucleotides are much used already.) These molecules tend to be highly stable in vivo, because the enzymes that chew up RNA can't touch them. And they can accomplish much of the function of real nucleic acids, since those depend primarily on the bases, not the backbone.

An mRNA analog would have to look enough like mRNA for the ribosome to accept it. That's a big ask. But nothing I know says it can't be done.

23:

In fact, a vaccine might itself be packaged as an infectious virus.

That's a huge can of worms right there! Once you release your new, theoretically harmless, vaccine-as-virus, it's going to hit a bunch of hosts and replicate. And as it replicates, it's quite possibly going to hybridize with other viruses, or simply mutate. Upshot: you run the risk of getting an uncontrolled contagious viral pandemic of something, and it's not what you planned on.

This is admittedly a risk directly proportional to the size of the population you're planning on infecting. But? It's a serious one, especially with a disease vector as the carrier.

24:
In fact, a vaccine might itself be packaged as an infectious virus. That's a huge can of worms right there!

Indeed it is. But it's one that is likely to have been opened on Earth already before 2070.

25:

I guess my question is is it even possible that shaved apes can live in enclosed spaces for any period of time. Or do we need an entire planet to sink our excess chemistry secretions, diverse chemical input needs, and allow us to spread out when needed?

Remember when about a decade ago I asked what the minimum size of a viable off-earth colony was, and concluded "Germany"?

Musk's Mars colony, and the immature version in this scenario, is about two orders of magnitude smaller. It might work, but it'd have very little resilience in terms of human resources.

For example: in this scenario, we have one (1) Mars General Hospital. Odds are that there are at most a couple of professor/consultant level doctors in each speciality -- peer review and cross-training being a necessity, along with training up the next generation. The nightmare scenario is that our 1% overall death rate -- spiking to 2-3% among over-exposed/over-worked medical staff in a pandemic emergency -- takes out the entire senior cadre of a necessary speciality: oncology, for example, or autoimmune diseases, or boring abdominal surgery. And suddenly conditions which were routinely treatable -- appendicitis or rheumatoid arthritis or bladder cancer -- become life-threatening and this situation can't be repaired in less than years, either by rushing in a new oncology professor from Earth, or by distance-training up a registrar to consultant-grade.

26:

Let's suppose that Musk's Mars colony plan is as viable as his other businesses: Oh really? Like his "Loop" idea that is simply unworkable, expensive & inferior to existing systems, you mean?

City on Mars with partially-closed loop, deep in Valles Marineris, I suspect? when it comes to building a narrow-gauge mass transit system Ohe NOE! Mustn't do that it's a RAILWAY & Musk doesn't do those - see "Loop" above & his total failure to grok how mass-transis systems actually do ( & Don't ) work ....

babies can be born and raised on Mars without too many medical issues. Bone density? Taller, thinner, weaker, fragile people? Maybe / Yes / No?

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

LAvery I think you have it - especially with regard to self-manufacturing a vaccine - then.

EC Problem there... No-one expected when C-19 turned up that the "leadership of the USA or Britain would have gone walkies & awa' wi' the fairies simultaneously. Could ex-Musk's Mars go the same way? All too easily - it's a standard failure mode, I think.

Charlie "...mRNA synthesis is likely to be ubiquitous and easy by 20702030, or sooner."

David L A world-wide outbreak of fuckwittery? Self-defeating with it - though it tends to kill bystanders.

27:

Early 1950s, at school near Bulawayo. You mean Hepatitis C, I assume - A is what I have had, and it's water-borne. Even then, 'we' suspected that such things as malaria, sleeping sickness and yellow fever (all widespread in places I had been) night be transmittable blood-blood as well as blood-insect-blood. But, yes, I fully agree with you that it's a bad idea (as I said) if you have any option.

However, what I am saying is that their existence is not a show-stopper for reusable syringes (and even needles) by following the procedure I described. It's risky - but not AS risky as not vaccinating against COVID-70, as I can witness. Needs must when the devil drives, and all that. My solution (c) is the ruthless one - do whatever is best for the survival of the society and bugger worrying about individuals.

28:

[...] jerry-building an emergency vaccine factory from equipment/expertise/parts on hand [...]

Why would this be a problem? We already know that there are a lot of biotech wizards in the population because of the number of critical biotech processes that keep the population alive. And no doubt by now they have had their share of near-disasters, with some of the old fogies going on about how they worked around the Great Guanine Collapse of 53. So recognising a biotech emergency and moving fast to fix it is going to be something they know how to do.

As for equipment, with a turnaround time of 15 months you bet they are going to have a big stockpile of parts and materials, plus local manufacturing capacity, to make anything they need. A lot of that local capacity is going to be automated manufacturing, so just feed blueprints and raw materials in at one end and get whatever you want out of the other end. So whether it be specialised bioreactors for the vaccine itself, wierd adjuvants, culture media for the viral overcoats, syringes, glass bottles, its just a matter of reallocating local manufacturing bandwidth. The only quesiton will be how fast they can ramp this stuff up.

29:

My solution (c) is the ruthless one - do whatever is best for the survival of the society and bugger worrying about individuals.

Yes, but my counter-argument is that a society of 0.5M people living in a very hostile environment is likely to be marginally resilient: quite possibly some of those 1% fatalities and 10-20% long-term injured will include clusters that take down entire critical path specialities (especially likely as medics and academics are over-represented among COVID casualties, due to working conditions).

30:

I suspect that most medical things can be handled by slow tele medicine. Not well but handled.

Surgery will be the big on. Maybe they need to be top heavy with docs who have surgical experience.

And not matter what there will be a lot of surgeries that we do on earth that there just will not be enough demand to do them on Mars till, as you note, the population gets to something like Germany.

I suspect the Elon's thinking about this are not thinking about prostate meds and surgeries. From my experience it is totally off the radar of most men till they get hit by the need. Younger "guys" just don't seem to talk about or even know about it. And for those younger ones and, maybe the ladies here, this is not something that most don't see till their 80s or 90s. For most men it starts to come up in the latter 50s or mid 60s. And not being able to empty your bladder makes for a terrible life.

31:

The Martian city is not a single city. Not in the way we have on earth. It has more in common with a spacecraft or an airliner, in that the system is designed to be resilient to failure.

When you patch the code on a spacecraft, you don't patch all the computers at once; you patch one that you aren't using, you switch to that one, and you keep the computer with the old version as your backup in case the primary computer fails.

The https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interactome of a human colony works in a similar way.

So there is not one city, with a single set of infrastructure. There are three, the same way there are three computers on a spacecraft. There are three parts to the city, physically separated; humans and human working fluids don't usually pass between them.

Even before a new can of apes arrives, they're being surveilled. Their temperament and susceptibility for certain diseases have been tested before they boarded their shuttle. Once aboard, the ambient genomic surveillance begins. OGH has posted before about the future of ambient computing, and it kicks in here. Genetic material is captured and sequenced everywhere during the long ferry journey from Earth.

So even then, even knowing the entire proteome of your can of apes, having had them in isolation from the rest of humanity for their entire seven-month journey, you don't just patch every habitat simultaneously with the fresh code from Gaia's festering, wonderful bioreactor. Once a new can arrives, they're introduced to one of the segments, and that segment is isolated from the others for a quarantine period.

This doesn't improve the situation for the colonists in the infected segment, of course, but it does reduce the impact on the colony as a whole system, which is the point. Two thirds of the population are safe, and they can help the infected segment at a distance, whether that is through waldoes in the hospital, or by supplying food and medicines.

32:

You left our robots. When labor is expensive, expect robots to be ubiquitous by 2050. Or at least telefactors, with lots of AI support. And robots are relatively easy to sterilize against something that can be killed by, alcohol or hydrogen peroxide. (Or at least can be relatively easy to sterilize.)

So some of the robots are diverted to medical care, and some people have to do work that robots usually do. This scenario is a bit like a cross between a military camp and an office, with (essentially) everyone living in NCO housing. Isolation should be easy. Virtual reality, or other telepresence technologies should be a lot better than currently.

The problem is detection. If it's difficult to detect that someone is a carrier, then you've still got bad problems. If it isn't, then isolation and treatment should be easy. If you can't detect asymptomatic carriers, then prepare for a lot of people dying.

33:

Now tell me that in 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture a million disposable syringes (or other sterile vaccine delivery devices) in a city-sized Mars colony!

I suspect that by then we will have needle-less injection.

https://www.healthline.com/health-news/needleless-vaccinations-could-help-end-diseases-020713#How-Does-Needle-free-Vaccination-Work?

I would hope that your hypothetical colony has learned that disease outbreaks occur and that you need to be ready for them. So instead of Ontario, you have the approach of Taiwan or South Korea: plans made, equipment reserves stockpiled and maintained, and the ability to ramp up manufacturing of necessary supplies.

If mRNA vaccines are common, then having enough delivery devices for the entire population should be part of the plan, with newly-manufactured devices going into the stockpile and older devices pulled out and used.

34:

That is precisely why I would give priority to such people, probably using up the stock of disposable syringes. My point isn't not that reusing them is not harmful, but it is LESS harmful than the alternatives. Let's start from the day we have the vaccine (and assume ample vaccine), when we have only 100,000 syringes, so we protect 50,000 key people (in my view, a no-brainer). So far, so good. Let's look at the scenarios for (a), (b) and (c):

(a) Waiting until the syringe supply ramps up (or is delivered) would create 45,000 casualties - seriously bad news for a borderline colony.

(b) Lock-down could drop the productivity by something like 10% (half the UK figure), drop the casualties to (say) 5,000 (10%), and cause c. 1,500 deaths (UK figure, scaled) from other causes (you mentioned cancer?) That is almost equally bad news for a borderline colony in the short term.

https://www.mirror.co.uk/money/breaking-uk-economys-record-plunge-22269559 https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2020/07/19/lockdown-may-cost-200k-lives-government-report-shows/

(c) Would infect (say) 5,000 with diseases that had a prognosis similar to COVID-70, but would protect the whole population, dropping to casualty rate to (say) 5,000 (87% protection).

So we are talking (a) 45,000 casualties, (b) 7,500 casualties and a hit to economy comparable to 45,000 until the syringes are available, or (c) 10,000 casualties.

Obviously, if syringes can be produced fast enough, (b) wins. But, if they can't, I assert that (c) does.

35:

A couple points might be useful:

One is that SARS-CoV2 wasn't one of the hundred-odd coronaviruses, from the few thousand in Chinese and other bats, that virologists had tagged as potentially infectious in humans. So you don't have to limit yourself to something that descends from or acts like Covid19. This will turn out to be important in a second.

The bigger problem is incubation period versus transit time. Right now, it looks like getting to Mars would take about six months. Covid19's incubation period is in the range of, perhaps, three weeks at the outside. So either you've got to posit a virus whose incubation period is over six months, or you've got to posit some really fast spaceships. I'd personally bet the latter, as six months of space travel isn't pleasant for shipping a lot of people to Mars, and having fusion reactors would help explain why civilization is still around at that point, and what it's doing on Mars.

However, if you've got fast ships, then the Hohmann transfer orbit problem doesn't matter, and the vaccine can get to Mars from Earth the hard way. That solves the problem.

So let's posit slow ships, a virus with a record-breaking incubation time, a society that's willing to put large numbers of people in free fall for half a year to ship them to Mars. AND able to provide rehab and training on Mars so that they can become functional citizens there. And able to keep people healthy in free fall for six months. AND aware that there's a virus with a six-month incubation period circulating through the population. AND able to create a vaccine for it...

See where this is going? That's a big paunch for the suspenders of disbelief to hold. More likely the pants are going to come off either scenario.

So let's assume that a virus that acts just like Covid19 "evolves" on Mars. I put that in quotes because what really happened was a bunch of coronaviruses (aka common colds, but including a juicy selection of currently untransmitted bat viruses) recombined in a really weird way and made a Covid analog that's indigenous to Mars.

They don't have the facilities to develop a vaccine, because this is literally an newly emergent problem, and it takes a lot of specialized kit to test out a vaccine, probably more than it takes to make it. Presumably everything they know about the virus is getting transmitted to Earth, but that's irrelevant. The virus isn't getting to Earth, because it's not going to survive the six month transit.

The problem with vaccines is that most of them fail. That's been true for the Covid19 vaccines too. We're seeing a bunch of fairly successful ones showing up now, but over a hundred firms started this race (see old posts on In The Pipeline) and most of them disappeared. Even now, there are questions about how good a bunch of the vaccines actually are.

For Mars, with a small population to test out experimental vaccines in, this is a real problem. Screw up, and the vaccine actually makes the virus exposure more dangerous, and you only get data on efficacy once people are exposed and don't get sick. Then you have to worry about whether vaccinated people can still pass the virus to unexposed people, or not. It's a mess for a small, isolated colony.

So they don't vaccinate. The thing about building an underground city on Mars, as noted, is that there have to be a lot of airlocks, both for construction and safety. So the place can be isolated. Also for safety, there's a lot of redundancy, as you don't want to lose the only hospital to a meteorite, for example. The third thing is that this place isn't going to look like, say, Montreal's underground city. Instead, it's going to look like a huge industrial greenhouse system with living quarters here and there. That's because you have to factor in some fraction of an acre of farmland for every person, and it's all got to be built. So most of the colony isn't cramped apartments, it's some sort of fractal-like complex of complexes of greenhouses, all linked by passages that have airlocks on them. With multiple, redundant medical and other centers. It's designed to break occasionally, just because shit happens and consequences are dire. You don't want someone who's suicidal or delusional to pop open an airlock and doom the entire colony.

With such a colony, you implement what I think of as the Rwandan solution. Rwanda's doing pretty well with Covid19, despite having desperate poverty, few hospitals, and no vaccine. They've invested in what they can afford to do, which is public health: contact tracing, isolating, and taking care of infected people by providing food and other assistance so that they don't spread it to others. I'm not saying they're free of it by any means, but such basic measures actually do quite a lot.

You do the same on Mars. Trace, isolate, provide care and resources to those in quarantine, and use the hospitals as you can. Since the Martian colony is designed to be break into semi self-sufficient segments, probably on multiple scales, this is a nasty mess, but probably one that's survivable. Probably the faster engineering solution is turning surface-exploration suits into respirators and training workers as ad hoc respiratory therapists who monitor but do not intubate.

Fortunately, sterilizing corpses and other nonliving systems is pretty easy: you just leave them outside on the martian surface for awhile. Probably the Martians have already developed an analog to the old "sky burial" systems that used to be common on Earth, so corpses get left outside for awhile before the memorial service, and are thus made safe for the memorial service and the subsequent recycling.

36:

Yes. Remote (i.e. nearby rooms) surgery is already ramping up, but that doesn't help if you have lost all of your surgeons with relevant expertise. Obviously, remote control from earth is out of the question without an ansible (*). Appendicitis is a bad example, because it was done by untrained people following instructions on corvettes in WW II, was done by the local doctor on the kitchen table in my youth, and still is done that way in much of the third world. But I can witness from the death of both an uncle and a friend that unskilled (i.e. GP-level) removal of melanomas turns a survivable cancer into one that will kill within months.

(*) Not yet on Musk's grand plan, as far as I know.

37:

The logistics of a preventive program (vaccination or anything else) are always much more of a challenge than the underlying science. OK, fine, Mars develops a faaaaabulously effective system for somehow getting the vaccine for this particular virus into its population quickly. In approximately the order that things will raise their ugly little variant heads:

(a) Every broad-based medical program above the level of "don't mix sewage with your drinking water" (and even some of those!) has a nonzero adverse-effect-on-population-subset issue. That's actually more likely given the prospective inbreeding (you don't really think that the population of Mars is going to be evenly and perfectly demographically drawn from the diversity of Earth's population, do you?) and radiation hazards.

(b) Unfortunately, virtually every public-health program in history has also had an Andrew Wakefield: Someone who obtains/uses a platform and spews nonsense that is convincing enough to enough people to undermine things. All you have to do is get those checklist-followers into a checklist whose concepts they don't understand to see it blow up in action.

(c) What's being done with wastes — ranging from used syringes to, umm, casualties — to keep them from contaminating this closed system? The temptation to recycle needles using "proper sanitation techniques" (for some value of those, even full resmelt-if-made-of-metal) is going to be extremely high, and extremely... cost-effective... under ordinary circumstances. These not being ordinary circumstances...

(d) Why assume that there's only one simultaneous threat, and that there's no synergy? Consider, for a moment, food-animal (or "food-synthetic-animal") crossover problems. Better yet, consider that population of feral hamsters roaming the tunnels that descended from some overpaid/entitled manager's kid's pets that were smuggled in in 2047 just before escaping. Got any hamster vaccines?

(e) It takes time for vaccines (and other immunotherapies) to become effective across a population, and even an individual; and it takes time to administer them. That means that some people are going to get sick after the start of the immunization program. What does the care system look like? How does that feed back into the waste-disposal problem?

(f) Remember that the ability to foresee and plan for a problem does not guarantee an actual, effective, fully-implemented response. For example, in real no-kidding gas-and-chemical-warfare drills in 19xx — immediately before actual deployment to an area in which that was believed by everyone to be a real risk — the "too inconvenient to actually stop what one is doing and put on the gas mask within fifteen seconds" rate was disturbingly high (and resulted in a lot of screaming at after-exercise staff meetings), and that didn't account for those who didn't participate because the immediate tasks made it too dangerous to stop and put on the mask. (Sadly, pilots — the subpopulation most "enthusiastic" about checklists — were the worst; switching between checklists without any prior warning is, in practice, a lot harder than it seems.)

Lots of story fodder in here...

38:

Oops. Correct figures for (b) are 4,500 casualties from COVID-70 and 6,000 overall. Sorry. More favourable, but my point stands.

39:

Looking at this from a wider point of view, I've always thought that lunar or planetary colonisation is going to go like this:

  • Send robots.

  • Robots build mines, refinaries and factories.

  • Factories build more robots.

  • More robots build whatever you want.

  • If you want a lunar base, fine. If you want millions of widgets shipped to any point on Earth, also fine (hmm. yet another tricky waste stream for Earth's biosphere to absorb). I predict that Earth-based Lunar Robot Wrangler is going to be a job description in 20 years time. Even the moon has a pesky 2.5s round trip time, so getting anything done is going to be some kind of interaction beteween a human giving high level instructions like "screw a bolt on to that" and a robot using local AI to handle the details. Somebody somewhere is doubtless researching this.

    Even for a moonbase, its hard to see any kind of habitation made of pre-fab units shipped up from Earth as being feasible for anything except national bragging rights. I don't just mean raw construction materials, I mean stuff like a power plant, O2 refinery and a biomass recycling plant. A lunar or planetary colony is going to have to be pretty close to self-sufficient before any canned monkeys arrive, because the prime measure of self-sufficiency is the percentage mass of non-local materials required to build a robot factory (by which I mean both "a factory that operates with very limited human interaction" and "a factory that makes robots")

    So because of all this I'd expect a lunar colony to happen first, just because the whole thing is about 2 orders of magnitude simpler: communication lag in seconds rather than tens of minutes so the robots need much less sophisticated AI. Shipping time measured in days rather than months so your supply chain for the 1% that can't be made locally is much shorter. And thats before you get to the practicalities of shipping a can of monkeys all the way to Mars, which is more like 3 or 4 orders of magnitude more difficult because of the amount of life-support you need to ship with them. In fact a well-developed lunar manufacturing and fuelling facility is likely to be necessary to produce a practical Mars colony ship.

    Also the only practical differences between the Moon and Mars for a colony are (AFIAK)

  • Mars has an atmosphere of about 1% the density of Earth's, which isn't useful for breathing but does at least round the sharp edges off the dust. Lunar dust is seriously dangerous stuff if you breath it in, and its not good for moving parts in machinery either. That's going to be an engineering and health challenge. Quite possibly moonwalks will require too much decontamination to be feasible on a routine basis.

  • Mars gravity is about twice that of the moon, which might be a big health issue for lunar colonists.

  • Travelling to Mars is going to be a 1 way trip for quite a while. Travelling back from the Moon would be comparatively trivial. This is likely to be important for recruitment. It may also go a long way to deal with health issues of low gravity; just rotate the crew back to Earth after a few months.

  • We tend to think of rockets as things that go from Earth to the Moon and back. But once the robot economy gets going it'll be the other way around; rockets will be things you build on the Moon and send to Earth to pick up the monkeys and those few high-value commodities like microprocessors that can't yet be made locally.

    If I was Musk, I'd be thinking just as much about robots on the moon as I am about reusable rocket ships.

    40:

    It starts with a compartmentalization order.

    The hard question is not vaccine deployment - it's a space colony, it's easily compartmentalized, you probably aren't legally adult unless you can work in a spacesuit. To me, the harder question is TESTING - I don't know how easy it is to ramp up production for a TEST for covid70, and tests are potentially consumed in much larger numbers.

    So. We start making our own vaccine, since we have the equipment and each jab now is slightly slower transmission. We do not need 500,000 disposable syringes (though we should probably have them). Reusable syringes are almost certainly less work to manufacture per dose delivered, can be sterilized chemically or with heat, and likely could be sterilized just by leaving them at outdoor air pressure for a couple sols. Not necessarily perfectly, but the risk of someone getting killed or crippled by a disease that has gone undetected for all the years the colony is in place is lower than the expected risk from covid70.

    Vaccine prioritization:

    I expect by 2070 some genetic conditions that make it easier for you to asymptomatically spread covid variants will be known. So likely superspreaders get top priority.

    After that, there are several options. You could make a complicated priority chart of who gets vaccines when (children too young to put/keep spacesuits on first, followed by personal entertainers whose work requires them to go unsuited among others, followed by guards, followed by medical professionals).

    However, a more likely approach than job ranking is an attempt to make sure that some of EVERY profession are vaccinated. Air plant maintenance is more important than curing cancer, but the colony will do better with one tech lost in air plant and one lost in cancer-treatment than with all the air plant techs vaccinated and all the cancer medics left to coof. Bonus technocratic dystopia: who gets vaccinated first is determined by performance reviews.

    The next question is how much energy a Hohmann transfer actually saves? I don't know orbital dynamics, but I have a distinct suspicion that the engine needed to get a ton of mixed rare earths to a soft lithobrake fifteen months from now could ALSO get a few kilos of frozen vaccine to a soft landing much sooner - in which case the Martian vaccine deployment is just a matter of slowing the spread and maybe testing our injectors.

    The aftermath:

    Vaccine manufactory capacity was significantly increased. The syringe stockpile was enlarged. A petition to publicly cane the former administrators for failing to have sufficient capacity BEFORE the arrival of Covid-70 narrowly failed. There is a heated debate over whether the near-surface crews should be rewarded for proactively digging deeper radiation shelters when the plague hit instead of doing their official work, or whether they should be punished for dropping productivity on their official jobs to dig more holes. The Asshole Brigade argues that the low death toll means we shouldn't be wasting valuable space that could be used for gem-encrusted statuary on surplus vaccine capacity, and that we SHOULD punish the Diggers. The Diggers have noted that they could just declare independance and that Armstrong City cannot afford the resources needed to take back essential surface infrastructure by force and then repair it post-battle.

    41:

    The waste disposal problem looks serious to me, because the colony systems are not built with a significant loss of resources in mind; they're supposed to be closed-loop, or close to it. Anything which puts a big crimp in those loops puts the whole operation on a downward spiral, especially if the resource loss is effectively permanent.

    At that point, look for a "rapid unplanned change of senior management", because any attempt to replenish those resources from outside means you're gifting the survival of the whole enterprise to outsiders.

    42:

    Reusable syringes ... likely could be sterilized just by leaving them at outdoor air pressure for a couple sols

    Not sure why you think this would work. Low pressure won't kill viruses or most bacteria. It's cold out there. Cold doesn't kill effectively. Bacteria and viruses are relatively resistant to radiation and the interior of a syringe needle will be sheltered from much of the surface radiation. (Not cosmic rays, but UV for sure.)

    43:

    11 days? So, maybe 2 transmission periods. With R of 20, say 400 infected? Given knowledge of the long-term disability issue, spread minimization is key.

    For a Mars colony, probably an immediate, draconian lockdown. (Real Men end up being captured with butterfly nets. Protestors are shot.). Follow with contact tracing. China managed with far less invasive protocols than are available.

    Divide city by sectors and relax restrictions once it is clear there are no infected. Masks and proxy tests to start.

    Once infection rates hit zero, choice of vaccine delivery is less of an issue. Given the rate of organ damage, vaccine trials are 'expediated'.

    44:

    There are already surgical "robots" (really telefactor) that are better than the surgeon, because their "hands" are stabler. I would be surprised if this hasn't drastically improved by 2070, and more surprised if the colony described wasn't heavily invested in them. But this by isolation of medical professionals a lot easier. What is really needed now are better robot nurses, but Japan is already working on that problem...and I don't think they mean telefactors. Time lag would keep doing it from off-planet from being practical, but the width of a city/dome wouldn't be a problem.

    People on Mars are going to require a lot more life support, so I expect that the society is going to be heavily infused with robots and telepresence (and probably telefactors). This will make isolation easy to accomplish, if you know who needs to be isolated. It may make isolating everyone simultaneously for a couple of weeks (household by household) practical. Just don't send people out to the mines during this period.

    OTOH, one thing not specified was the incubation period. Since the disease got to Mars from Earth, either it's a lot more durable than the current COVID, or it's got a remarkably long incubation period. Current COVID seems to only last at most hours outside a host in an infectious form. Most of the tests saying it last for day only checked that the RNA was present, as checking that it's infectious requires trying to grow it, and that needs to be done in a biological confinement environment (e.g. a Biological Warfare lab or something with equivalent precautions) so it's almost never done. (Well, now that COVID is so widely circulating that's probably not true, but that was the case in the early days when they were doing all the durability tests.) The CDC currently says that surface contact based transmission is a minor cause of infection. I can't find a decent link to the quote, there are pdfs and a link to a search page on the CDC site from Google, but the original news release didn't show up on a quick search.

    So you're really talking about something considerably different from COVID. Probably a bacterium or a spore. Say a from of athlete's foot that has a high fatality rate. That would have the advantage that it's hard for people to take it seriously.

    45:

    Now tell me that in 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture a million disposable syringes (or other sterile vaccine delivery devices) in a city-sized Mars colony!

    Checking, a 3 ml syringe and needle weighs something like 5 g. -- 5 tonnes for a million of them, plus a like mass for packaging. Prepositioning 10 tonnes against a plausible contingency doesn't seem unreasonable given how much other stuff would have to be hauled from Earth to establish and maintain Marsograd.

    http://www.ssaapp.com/product/injection-and-venipuncture-1.php

    46:

    The problem is there are 10K different items that will likely look as valuable but not needed immediately or maybe at all except when the unexpected happens.

    Maybe 100K.

    After the discussions here a few years ago I started paying attention to just how much stuff (crap) is needed to keep our lives in comfort and it is just staggering in terms of the number of little bits.

    Go back to the discussion about screw types. Do you remake most everything you take to Mars so the number of threaded sizes is only 1000 and not 100,000?

    47:

    I would expect most cargo transport to Mars to be on a more efficient cheaper orbit like gravity capture (or whatever gets thought up in the next 50 years). So there would be a couple of months extra in which the pandemic would have been noticed on Earth and vaccines developed. Since only information would be required to make a vaccine that would give the colony time to develop enough vaccine and to quarantine cargo from Earth and sterilise it. There would presumably enough spare rocket (or Vasimir or fusion) capacity, possibly military, to send a cargo of vaccine on a hyperbolic orbit with atmospheric braking in a much shorter time than a Hohmann orbit. Of course fusion drive will be available because it's more than thirty years in the future. At least that's what people keep telling me. Also it would be reasonable to expect the Mars colony to routinely vaccinate it's citizens with the latest terrestrial vaccines or it would risk plague with every immigrant. In this case there would be plenty of supplies and vaccine manufacturing equipment available. The first adult science fiction book I ever read,The Sands of Mars by Arthur C Clark had the crew of his spaceship pick up a vaccine for "Martian Fever" when their ship was intercepted by an automated probe.

    48:

    The problem is there are 10K different items that will likely look as valuable but not needed immediately or maybe at all except when the unexpected happens.

    I take your general point, but in the case of syringes there will be a continuing need to give other kinds of shots/jabs to the 500k populace. I have no real idea what that would be, but 200k per year seems like it might be a reasonable guess. So establish an initial 1.4M stockpile, replenish it as part of the regular supply shipments from Earth and restock the, ah, stockpile in FIFO fashion. (*)

    (*) There will be regular supply shipments, won't there?

    49:
    Musk's tunnel boring fetish turns out to be pretty useful when it comes to building a narrow-gauge mass transit system

    Making popcorn to watch this bump up against his fetish for the rugged individualism of private car (or "tunnel can") ownership.

    50:

    It seems fairly likely to me that the stockpiling of dispo syringes might happen, because of our tendency to always be fighting the last war. We're not gonna forget Covid-19 soon, I hope. OTOH, I think David L's point is well taken. Whatever small thing it turns out to be that the Mars colony desperately needs, it probably won't have it.

    51:

    Knee-jerk assumption that vaccuum is bad for things. You're right, though. (And I suspect that even if vaccuum IS bad for viruses the cold will help protect them)

    52:

    "Whatever small thing it turns out to be that the Mars colony desperately needs, it probably won't have it."

    They will probably be able to print it.

    53:

    Technical solutions to a few of the problems upthread:

    Needle free injectors sound like something that Mars will have gone for from the start on the principle that it's that much more hostile up there, shipping stuff in costs a fortune, if there's a way to make a reusable object instead of single use it's likely to have been built into the project.

    DaVinci surgical robots, surgeons on earth on the end of a 4 minute time lag, remotely placed surgical markers that let you tell the DaVinci MCXVI.6 what it's going to do relative to those markers and 50 years of expert systems all built onto a technology that's currently only 20 years old at the moment

    54:
    "Whatever small thing it turns out to be that the Mars colony desperately needs, it probably won't have it." They will probably be able to print it.

    If they can print it, then by definition, it is not the thing that they desperately need.

    55:

    When I started work in the bacteriology lab at Wythenshawe Hospital in 1966 we saw penicillin resistance every day, particularly in burns patients on the plastic surgery wards. New antibiotics like gentamicin were already added to our antibiotic sensitivity plates.

    56:

    They will use Stametix TM. Fully functional fungi farming. Maybe adding in some mars adapted mistle toe.

    Hugh!

    57:

    They will probably be able to print it.

    It would be interesting to try, today, to print a functional syringe and needle, perhaps needing a bit of post-printing finishing or not.

    59:

    Right, 2060.

    First of all, Charlie, exactly how are we going to get 500,000 people to Mars in forty years? His "Starship" ain't going to carry 25,000 people to Mars every year for 10 years.

    What are the half-million jobs going to be?

    Second, I utterly fail to see how all of the 25? versions of the cold virus will be excluded.

    Third... asymptomatic? In a closed environment? You've got 90% (at least) infections in the first 10 days, as the HVAC recycles it. (See the first attack of "Legionnaire's Disease").

    Fourth: syringes? Primitive tech: jet injectors. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4675000/

    Fifth: Real Man syndrome what percentage of everyone going doesn't have it (and I include women and trans in that)?

    Sixth: I'm back to "with zillions of robots, and robot wrangling being automated (let's see, have you tried the latest HP robot wrangling solution? The new release, from 2069, has really great reviews....), what are the half-million people going to do... unless you're moving to a post-industrial society....

    61:

    Geez, I go take a shower, and realize there's more issues. First, unless you want to pay attention to Bruce "Asshole" Willis's Armageddon (gag), every single person who goes up will have at least one college degree. Given that, having more than one or two children is extremely unlikely.

    Second, unless God-Emperor Musk has the humans hiring the homeless Native Martians (you know, the ones who've been keeping our Mars Rovers going by squeegeeing the dust off their windshields, er, solar panels), I'm assuming that children will be taken care of by robot nannies. Now, George Jetson, Jr, will, one assumes, build deep connections and feelings for the robot nannies, and much less for mater and pater, and how's that going to work when they come of age to reproduce?

    62:

    Tsk, Tsk. Reproduction by conventional means will be so oldfashioned then. Cloning it is. You have seen https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6292852/ , yes?

    63:

    I watch a few hours of tv... a year.

    And just looking at the promo, my suspenders of disbelief snapped: if humanity is extinct, and she's been created... what the hell is a "stranger"?

    64:

    I can't really reply without spoiling, or going further OT. Let's just say I had a phase without any movies, and I don't own a "TV" since 1996. Out of all the trash out there, this was at least something less trashy, with hints of good smells even. K?

    65:

    Er, not really. Being brought up by a nanny is SO pre-20th century, and has exactly the problems you describe. (M/P)aternal leave plus day care centres works much better, not least because it socialises children - and, given competent government/management of such things and people's workloads (*), an average of 3 children per couple is perfectly feasible, even likely.

    (*) I.e. not as in the UK or USA of today, not even in academia.

    66:

    Oh, btw, just to make your day... "A third of people who recovered after suffering from severe Covid were readmitted to hospital within five months with complications including heart problems, diabetes and chronic liver and kidney conditions. "

    67:

    Why would you under-provision your RNA manufacturing so much? Just scale it up. And RNA is actually something that can be replicated using biological enzymes from DNA templates, so scaling up is not that challenging.

    It also makes no sense to stop vaccinations, mRNA vaccines have zero risk of infection with the actual virus. And by 2070 most of the vaccines will likely be mRNA based.

    68:

    Whitroth @61:

    A college degree is not a guarantee, even if in some senses and in some areas it reduces the incidence of foofery. Apollo One was designed, and its construction was supervised, by people with college degrees. The Dear Leader of the United States (until Wednesday) has a college degree. Rand Paul and Andrew Wakefield have graduate degrees in the biological sciences. An awful high proportion of the wooiest antivaxxers have college degrees. Lawyers and economists have college degrees.

    All it takes is overconfidence in knowledge (as distinct from process), and/or misapplication of knowledge from one field to another that looks comparable but really isn't — especially if not current enough in either field (been there, caught my own mistakes before they went too far).

    69:

    Legionaries disease is well-known and that's why air recirculation systems on Mars will have strict multi-stage filtering, UV disinfection and monitoring.

    70:

    Does the surface radiation level decline at night?

    I'm not sure where all the surface radiation comes from, but I'm guessing a whole lot of it comes from the sun. Would there be any benefit to doing surface work only after the sun sets?

    71:

    Does the surface radiation level decline at night?

    I can't imagine that it doesn't.

    I'm not sure where all the surface radiation comes from, but I'm guessing a whole lot of it comes from the sun. Would there be any benefit to doing surface work only after the sun sets?

    I'd bet a lot that you're right about that.

    72:

    You've got 90% (at least) infections in the first 10 days, as the HVAC recycles it.

    I suspect that UV lights(*) in the air ducts would be a good idea in such environments in any case.

    (*) Or equivalent. Maybe some strategically placed strips of cobalt 60.

    73:

    Fine. Show me an HR department, government or not, in the industrialized world that DOES NOT INSIST on a college degree for almost anything.

    Someone without one isn't even going to get their resume seen by anyone other than the circular file.

    1988: "Yes, I understand you had an excellent interview with the manager, and that the ad says you can substitute years of work for a degree, but I'm saying I'm not going to accept you without a degree" - Texas AG HR.

    1995, several months after starting with Ameritech: so, did my brand new shiney B.Sc help get me this job? Manager: we didn't care, we wanted your experience, but it helped us get you through HR.

    74:

    McDonalds, cashier at AldiLidl or something, Amazon...

    75:

    Or, perhaps to make it simpler, have the HVAC air ducts go to the surface, with clear (glass?) tops, and let the external radiation take care of it.

    76:

    Depends on where you are, or the dust storms are coming from, I'd guess?

    https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/map-of-martian-thorium-at-mid-latitudes/

    77:

    Sure. And applying to God-Emperor Musk to go to Mars?

    78:

    I think as others have said this is a big underestimation of the advances in medical technology. The idea that we could pull off a Mars colony and we are still stuck With glass vials and metal needles doesn’t fly

    Similarity I don’t really buy the “it takes a Germany” argument . I think a combination of AI, AR and extreme modularization / standardization will make a lot of things (like surgery or fixing a car) much much simpler and more a matter of humans being delegated to a final approver role rather then the primary doer. “the computer wants to do this , does that look reasonable ok, I hit the go button” of the aren't just flat out automated

    So if Mars can’t manufacture the thjng it will download the ability to manufacture the thjng. If your doctor dies you will train a new one in a couple of weeks, since the computer is doing 99% of the work anyway

    79:

    It is a documented fact, brought up on this blog a number of times over the years, that the higher the education level of the women, the fewer children she wants.

    Then, most people these days, if you hadn't noticed, want a lot of kids. I mean, it's not like a large percentage of them will die before they're teens, and it's not like you need as many hands as possible to take care of the fields....

    And childcare is very intensive. Ask someone, if you know any personally, about working in childcare, esp. for small children.

    80:

    I hope they were dosing Vit-D properly as a matter of course, probably unavoidable given the environment, unless all their lighting is putting out UVB.

    My main struggle with this scenario is how does a coronavirus survive either 6 months in transit outside a human host or without any host showing symptoms. Although we can wave around that by saying hey it's some new Martian virus or whatever.

    81:

    Certainly not. Let the virtual gazillionairies have their run in with the Leather Godesses from Phobos, for all I care. I'll rather buy my clean Perry ..err Nestle Air on the Planet of the Apes. From time to time, a short whiff, CBD infused, to ease the struggle, take it all in with a giggle...

    82:

    “Vacuum Quarantine” will be the euphemism that emerges for applying the same response to potential exposure that ground-grippers use for foot-and-mouth disease in livestock.

    83:

    The Dear Leader of the United States (until Wednesday) has a college degree

    Looks like his dad may have bought it for him.

    https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-trump-book/trump-paid-proxy-to-take-college-entrance-exam-for-him-nieces-book-says-idUSKBN2482UN

    84:
    Depends on where you are, or the dust storms are coming from, I'd guess? https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/images/map-of-martian-thorium-at-mid-latitudes/

    Surely you're not suggesting that all surface radiation on Mars comes from Thorium, and none from the sun?

    I've read sources explaining that a large part of the reason for higher radiation on Mars in the lack of atmosphere, and the lack of a magnetic field. Atmosphere and magnetic field reduce radiation exposure by shielding the surface from solar radiation. If it is indeed the case that the Mars surface has higher radiation levels because of reduced shielding, much of that radiation must be from the sun. And putting a planet between you and the sun has got to do wonders for shielding.

    85:

    With respect to the likelihood of an infection not manifesting and being detected in the 37 weeks it would take a Hohmann transfer to get to Mars - it's weird and unintuitive, but only a factor of two different from a known incident.

    "Six of 12 men wintering at an isolated Antarctic base sequentially developed symptoms and signs of a common cold after 17 weeks of complete isolation."

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2130424/

    86:

    My main struggle with this scenario is how does a coronavirus survive either 6 months in transit outside a human host

    I read a report about someone in China who apparently caught COVID-19 from handling plastic-wrapped frozen pigs heads imported from Germany. It seems this particular coronavirus remains viable and infectious outside the body for months at low temperatures. This might explain at least part of the upsurge in cases in northern hemisphere countries after the summer was over.

    87:

    Of course not! While I have no information how these do compare to the few places on earth we have with higher background radiation like black sands on the beaches in parts of Brazil, in Iran on the coast of the Caspian Sea, in India somewhere near Goa, and at least one place in China where they've built a cluster of large NPPs because YOLO! came to my mind. If it were like 10 times, that surely would be bad? No matter if day or night.

    88:

    I'd say, hard lockdown right away, as others already said. Looking globally, there are a number of countries that clamped down the infections pretty well and got it under control mostly (many Asian countries, Australia, NZ). What they got right: everyone coming in is fully quarantined. Quarantine is enforced in special facilities with guards at the door, and not a voluntary exercise. And, people in quarantine are fed and taken care of, to avoid any hard reason for them to venture out.

    In a Mars colony it should be quite easy to enforce: presumably, all air locks are under government control, there are no other routes (no unnoticed sneaking past the checkpoints). Depending on incubation time, and assuming transmission is human-to-human only, the infections should drop to near zero within 2 weeks. Implement rapid tests and enforce them at all hubs between habitats. Infected zones: everyone gets tested, and quarantined if needed (like done in small countries like Iceland). People who have to walk around: everyone probably has an emergency pressure suit and high-grade respirators of some sort anyway for emergency use (fire? pressure drop?), which should be far more effective that self-made masks, or nothing at all. I assume that robotic delivery services are standard to get food and essentials to quarantined people. Depending on available technology, it might be possible to test exhaust air in the life support systems, to identify new hot spots as they form (similar to testing sewage plants right now). If so, partial habitats can be re-opened when clear. Of course things can go horribly wrong (maybe viruses can spread through the ventilation system if it's poorly designed?), but it seems a colony would easily be able to exceed the efforts in post-lockdown Wuhan, where the virus was pretty much under control with a month or two after measures were implemented. And if there's no large wave, the limited vaccine can be sent to the places where it's needed: medical staff, zones with outbreaks (vaccinate everyone in that zone, assuming affected zones are small compared to population).

    The big wildcard is people's behaviour and trust in the government: will Martian settlers play along for the 1-2 months of very harsh measures? Or will there be anti-lockdown demos, conspiracy nuts, armed coups, dissenting habitats, etc.? And if there are: can a governor just lock them down until they give up? How hackable/escapable are the airlocks?

    89:

    So I'm also going to have to go down the mRNA vaccines are crazy easy to manufacture route. As in a device the size of a microwave can make you a few hundred batches over night, at current tech levels.

    If you combine this with the whole 3D printer style tech and automated lab systems I would think in 50 years you could have a vaccine printer in each house or doctors office. You plug in a reagent kit of a few lipids and your RNA nucleotides, plus a digital design file of a couple of kilobytes.

    3 hours later the device is ready and tells you to stick your hand in the opening, or press your arm up against a panel with your shirt rolled back, a quick stab with a robotic reusable syringe/needle and your inoculated. You then leave, the booth/surface is irradiated with crazy amounts of UV to sterilise it. The reusable syringe and needle is rinsed with standard lab cleaning solution, UV irradiated and maybe autoclaved briefly.

    Is is all pretty much doable with our current tech, it's just there hasn't been a need, and before the development of RNA based vaccines the complexity of making the vaccine dominated so, there was little point in developing a distributed, reuseable vaccination machine.

    Note to close the circuit you need to sequence the RNA/DNA virus in the first place. The hardware to do this is tiny, for example have a look at the lab on a chip device like Oxford nanopores VolTRAX, and for the sequencer and compute needed to sequence the virus, analyse it and design the vaccine see Nanopores MinION mk1c.

    I think people outside the research side of genetics/molecular genetics don't fully understand how much the tech has advanced in the last 20 years, and secondly how much capability there is in molecular genetics labs. All we are waiting for is enough interest/money to look at merging all the tech together and generating a single automated system.

    90:

    Pervasive surveillance would give faster, more granular automatic contact tracing, but could also be used to direct cleaning robots to sanitize specific filters and surfaces.

    Today: "You spent 15 minutes less than two meters away from someone who tested positive."

    Future: "Your bare left index finger touched keys #7 and 9 on airlock control pad A4364573, thirty-eight minutes after someone touched those keys who later tested positive. You then touched surfaces in washroom B345567, left without cleaning your hands, and then went directly to your sleep pod. Cleaning robots have flame-broiled the keypad and washroom. You and the eight subsequent users of the washroom are now quarantined. Have a nice Sol."

    91:

    Also the transport of virus to Mars via farming equipment while in theory possible can be dealt with. Much like countries currently fumigate shipments for pests, it's not to hard to do the same for viruses/bacteria, secondly in your cargo containers add UV lights that need to be on for a few weeks of the transit. All you need to do is pump a reasonably small amount of ozone or similar (or something more powerful) into the shipping container and over a 6 month journey it should do an excellent job of sterilising the equipment.

    Humans or animals, or germ-plasm would be a bigger problem, but again you can and should be sequencing all DNA/RNA out of such samples before releasing them. Secondly for humans, they need to get there and I can't imagine that won't at least take 3-6months of transit time. That's plenty of time for symptoms to develop for most diseases, and secondly do a monthly route blood and nasal swab from each passenger and sequence it looking for DNA/RNA you don't recognise, or do recognise and don't like. Also you do metagenomics sequencing on the air within the transport daily and and the fecal matter generated. This is very cheap to do (less than $100 per test at current prices) and will be only cheaper in 50 years.

    Not saying it's impossible, but with properly designed systems and a 6 month transit, I think you would almost be having to talk human agent actively trying to distribute the disease. Or complete and utter stupidity in part of every one involved.

    92:

    So we have a society where the majority of the people made a very conscious decision and a huge personal sacrifice to live and die on mars. Everyone is under constant surveillance/tracking. Decompression drills (shelter in place) will be frequent.

    Whilst the base is some way beyond a space mission as I imagine it now, it is likely that many people will be multi-skilled for resiliency, and that multi-skilling could be using very different skills. I can perform surgery, and I can rebuild the air filtration system.

    I'm also assuming that privacy is rare and somewhat exceptional, and peer pressure is expertly employed to get the behaviours that keep everyone alive. So anyone trying the equivalent of an anti-mask demonstration is having their mad rant beamed around for everyone else to laugh at them. Name and address also included.

    Contact tracing is easy. Containment of groups is easy. Testing should be easy.

    Vaccine production may be limited, but the equivalent of a colony-wide business continuity plan would say who lives and dies in the event of any catastrophe. Plans would need to exist for the very real possibilities of mass-starvation food shortages, chemotherapy drug shortages, and any number of small-colony catastrophes.

    Even with all of those negative points, I would still give up everything I have for the chance to die on mars.

    93:
    I think people outside the research side of genetics/molecular genetics don't fully understand how much the tech has advanced in the last 20 years, and secondly how much capability there is in molecular genetics labs. All we are waiting for is enough interest/money to look at merging all the tech together and generating a single automated system.

    Yeah, and Covid-19 has taken us much of the way (maybe all the way, within a few years) towards providing the motivation it'll take to make that happen.

    94:

    (Been AFK for a few hours, playing catch-up, won't catch up before bedtime tonight ...)

    it's going to look like a huge industrial greenhouse system with living quarters here and there.

    Additional tweaks to this imagery:

    If they can get a PV cell factory running on local materials -- which I gather is a matter of some interest to Musk -- then they will, and where possible they'll move the greenhouses underground. Using LED lighting optimized for photosynthesis introduces an energy inefficiency in converting sunlight to electricity and back again, but it buys them better radiological and depressurization safety. In addition, they'll mess with the temperature and atmospheric gas mix to maximize plant growth or photosynthesis -- it's not like there's a shortage of CO2 on Mars, after all.

    I also expect the human-inhabited zones to normally run at a partial pressure of oxygen under 15% rather than the nearly 20% in our own atmosphere. This is an effective fire suppression system and you really don't want a fire to break out in an off-world habitat (read the account of the fire on Mir if you want the cold shudders -- or any number of submarine disasters). Supplying supplementary oxygen to sleeping berths should be practical, and I expect it to be the norm in hospital beds.

    Mars is very much cooler than Earth, with ground-level temperatures down to -80 celsius at the poles and rarely going as high as 0 celsius. This suggests that cold traps to precipitate CO2 out of the in-habitat atmosphere should be rather cheaper to run/more efficient than on Earth, allowing for fine control. The colony also needs a LOX plant (in addition to Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of methane) for spacecraft fuel: again, this has significant implications for what the colonists are breathing and/or growing crops in.

    95:

    So in the next 50 years nobody, not even the military, will have regular air sniffers looking for novel pathogens in real time? That DNA sequencing cannot be done in seconds?

    96:

    Lavery @ 84

    Yes, having the planet as a shield stops the solar radiation by night.

    On the other hand, when you have a solar storm the particles and radiation from the sun go all the way around Mars, because of the lack of an atmosphere and a magnetic field like Earth has.

    So, the night side of Mars also get zapped during these storms.

    https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/large-solar-storm-sparks-global-aurora-and-doubles-radiation-levels-on-the-martian-surface

    Mars is an awful place.

    97:
    On the other hand, when you have a solar storm the particles and radiation from the sun go all the way around Mars, because of the lack of an atmosphere and a magnetic field like Earth has.

    So, the night side of Mars also get zapped during these storms.

    That's what I don't get. On Earth, it is true the effects of a big solar storm go all the way around the planet. But that's because the magnetic field causes charged particles to not go in straight lines. On Mars, I would expect only the side facing the sun to experience the elevated radiation. And that is in fact what the images in that doc you linked to appear to show.

    98:

    So in the next 50 years nobody, not even the military, will have regular air sniffers looking for novel pathogens in real time? That DNA sequencing cannot be done in seconds?

    Are you replying to me? If so, I don't understand the questions in relation to anything I've posted so far.

    99:

    Look, I worked in an (academic) environment where the women almost always have a degree and often two, the households had three or more, with both parents working full-time, and my social contacts are mostly with such households. My wife has two degrees, I have one and a half, and we both worked full-time. The reasons that (generic) we had relatively few children were various, but three of the main ones were the god-awful politics of schooling, the even more god-awful attitude of managers to employees (especially men), and the equally god-awful dog-eat-dog promotion ladders (affecting especially women). Those are removable factors and, without them, (specific) we would have had more than two children.

    Correlation is not causality.

    100:

    LAvery @ 96

    Read the tiny captions under the images: The last 2 show, on the left side, the night side of Mars, bathed in UV radiation.

    101:

    I note that the text does say, "An aurora on Mars can envelope the entire planet because Mars has no strong magnetic field like Earth's to concentrate the aurora near polar regions." But I think what they mean by "envelope the entire planet" is all latitudes, not all longitudes simultaneously. Of course, the event described lasted two days, and Mars rotates in 24.6 hours, so in the course of that storm, everything got hit. But not necessarily all at one time.

    102:

    "Armed coups"? With what - there shouldn't be any firearms on Mars. You're not going to hunt tharks, and in a pressurized habitat?

    103:

    Why photovoltaic for underground farms? Why not just skylights?

    My late ex was interested in these ads we saw, put a panel into the roof: not a window, but / / \ \ / /

    if I'm remembering correctly.

    104:

    One of the things I see missing in Marsograd so far is a very well-equipped, state-of-the-2070-art machine shop capable of making everything from medical syringes and contact lenses to modest nuclear reactors (given the materials). DIY will have a very serious meaning on Mars.

    105:

    The "no physical help from Earth for months" seems undeniable. Poking around revealed a list of Earth/Mars window midpoints so our plague ship would probably have arrived on Mars during April of 2070. Allowing for incubation time it would be May when things start going sideways and using this handy orrery shows that Earth is then about a quarter of an orbit past Mars. That means for an immediate launch of relief supplies the trajectory has to either dive round the sun and then settle down for a long chase, or head well out beyond Mars and wait for it to catch up. Looking at the "porkchop" plot for the 2018 window gives an idea of the delta-v required for a fast transit, chemical propulsion isn't going to work and nuclear doesn't look useful either. For comparison the current Starship design has a delta-v of between 6 km/s and 7 km/s, the best bet to widen the window would be to make its payload a fully fuelled Falcon 9 second stage or equivalent with a small re-entry vehicle on top of that. The Starship being used as the booster would need to be expended as you'd want to burn all its fuel.

    As mentioned in a comment above, mRNA vaccines don't seem to take up a lot of production space. One possibly over-enthusiastic site claimed a million doses could be brewed in a 2 litre bio-reactor, although it avoided mentioning how long that would take, and 2 litre bio-reactors are advertised by several suppliers in a desktop format. If you've got a big desk at least...

    Needle free injections look to be the way to go. Needles take a fair bit of effort to recycle whereas the capsule for a gas powered system can be all plastic and relatively easy to produce and recycle locally. Preparing for mass vaccination shows the general idea about three quarters of the way down.

    Using the Hong Kong/Singapore model of population density, each apartment block unit is likely to be largely self contained for life support purposes and hopefully the entire settlement will have been designed with dedicated home offices, or maybe a shared office space for each sub-unit so a room with a dozen workstations shared between the six surrounding flats. That makes isolating groups much easier, and individuals from uninfected units can be rotated through the outside work. It may also make sense to vaccinate people by accommodation unit rather than the scattergun effect being used here. Once the medical staff and immediate contacts are vaccinated deal with Shotwell Towers, then Mueller Mall, Innsprucker Heights, Anderson Avenue and so on.

    106:
    Read the tiny captions under the images: The last 2 show, on the left side, the night side of Mars, bathed in UV radiation.

    But those images don't show the dayside radiation levels. I don't think you can conclude from these images that the nightside is not shielded.

    107:

    shakes head

    We've seen reports from around the world. from both First World and Third, and this is the case. And, from my kids, friends, and others, they don't want that many kids.

    Hell, of my four, I have one grandkid, and one on the way. Total. Carefully planned for, no accidents.

    The attitude has changed since we were younger.

    108:

    What about abusing maintenance and construction tools, beginning with the good old wrench? :-) Offensive cybering into energy and HVAC comes to mind also.

    109:

    I'm sorry, but I think you're trying to write for Bruce Willis, who I loathe.

    Government has control over airlocks, etc. I'd assume gov't control of most robots.

    And with the people presumably on Mars, why are you not thinking of a horror movie, where everyone's afraid of most others, who might be carrying the plague?

    110:

    A college degree is not a guarantee, even if in some senses and in some areas it reduces the incidence of foofery.

    Ayep.

    A Mars colony needs people who are happy being an electrician, plumber, plant grower, etc... An electrical engineer many times turns out to be a lousy electrician. Or one who doesn't want to do it full time. Or even 10% of the time.

    111:

    Decompression drills (shelter in place) will be frequent.

    I wonder how long before the "reformers" want to replace the "owners" with a "better" governing body that doesn't make people do so many stupid things like a decompression drill every week.

    112:

    This suggests that cold traps to precipitate CO2 out of the in-habitat atmosphere should be rather cheaper to run/more efficient than on Earth, allowing for fine control. The colony also needs a LOX plant (in addition to Fischer-Tropsch synthesis of methane) for spacecraft fuel: again, this has significant implications for what the colonists are breathing and/or growing crops in.

    Where are you getting this CO2? The atmosphere is almost non existent compared to earth.

    113:
    So in the next 50 years nobody, not even the military, will have regular air sniffers looking for novel pathogens in real time? That DNA sequencing cannot be done in seconds?

    There is no existing technology I know of that can do that. Nor is there anything in the wings. High-throughput sequencing technology is not particularly fast, in the sense of having a very short time between starting the machine up and having a sequence. It's high-capacity, in that once it gets going, you get lots of bases per second.

    "DNA sniffers", AFAIK, are pure science fiction. On "The Mandalorian" you can have a device that bars entry to any living thing whose DNA sequence is not approved, but those are as fictional as The Force.

    114:

    And ... talking of C-19 and similar ... This image should, hopefully, generate some laughs.

    115:

    Err, actually no. I rather had that epic Red/Blue/Green Mars trilogy thing in mind, where there were many different systems in competing sites, and countless SNAFUS because of that. While the single outpost site discussed here diverges from that, I have serious doubts everything will go according to plan, as another commenter at 110 meanwhile already mentioned.

    116:

    Pipelines from the pole caps? Which consist of dry ice supposedly?

    117:

    I am fully aware of that, but I am ALSO aware of why people with multiple degrees have fewer children. You can add finance (even for dual-income academics), and pessimism about overpopulation and the future of the world (especially for childless people). What you are missing is that a Mars colony would be seriously different in the collective mindset, not least because there would be room to expand. And, if the society were well-organised (a prerequisite for it to succeed), MOST of the existing constraints in the society I live in (which includes youngsters of breeding age) would be removed.

    You seem to be claiming that people will emigrate to a Mars colony, with the intention of creating an unsustainable population. I find that totally bizarre. If they emigrate to it, they will (a) be optimistic about its success and (b) 'do their bit' to ensure that it is. And the government and society will be set up to encourage that.

    Note that I am NOT talking about breeding like rabbits or "lie back and think of Mars", but on (a) choosing to have children in the first place and (b) choosing to have three or four rather than one or two. What is more, these people will be intelligent, and know that a reproduction rate of below 2 is unsustainable.

    119:
    Where are you getting this CO2? The atmosphere is almost non existent compared to earth.

    Although the Martian atmosphere is very thin, it is 95% CO2. If my back of the envelope calculation is right, the partial pressure of CO2 at the surface or Mars is higher than at the surface of Erath.

    120:

    Well, I don't know, it's a wild card... ideally it's true, there shouldn't be any firearms in the hands of civilians on Mars. There might be non-projectile weapons for police forces, maybe? But then, ideally, there also shouldn't be any firearms in the hands of civilians on planet Earth either, but there are (and very few of them actually for hunting purposes). Just extrapolating that it's Musk's colony, Musk is based in the US, and will probably recruit a lot of colonists from the US. Don't know how easy it will be to fumigate against the "FREEDOM! GUNS! ARMED BEARS!" virus that is prevalent in this region, and keep it off the colony... If the type of people that want weapons have come along, and installed themselves in the population, possibly throughout politics and police as they tend to do, the idea will probably spread and stay alive. And with rapid prototyping/manufacturing technology being widely available, someone will start making weapons if there is demand - either legalised, or illegally on the black market. Making the uncomfortable assumption that a persistent subgroup of humans simply can't stay peaceful for very long, I'd expect some level of (possibly improvised) weaponry to be around, and violent crime too. Of course, "armed mob" can also mean pitchforks and baseball bats... I've maybe become too cynical over the last year when it comes to reason, and reasonable behaviour of the human species.

    Maybe, a hopeful/optimistic outlook could be that colonies with armed mobs, fascist trouble makers and other disaster parasites evolve themselves out of existence? So if our colony still exists in 2170, maybe they've worked out a mostly peaceful society due to the strong survival pressure?

    121:

    The Muskerator will secretly have invested in the https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffsb&q=texas+tesla+tower and have his very own pocket zapper by means of projecting Zenneck waves ( https://duckduckgo.com/?q=zenneck+wave ) everywhere anytime! As it should be! Brzzz Bzzz Bzzzzz!

    122:

    There is equipment that is starting to get the capabilities to do this. Oxford nanopores sequencers (MinION), and automated lab device (VolTRAX) can take samples and and prep them for sequencing and then sequence them with in hours. They have a field kit that can do it in minutes. The Voltrax would need some additional automation to do the DNA extractions but there has been talk about column based library prep methods that you add raw sample at one end and get out library out the other end in minutes to load onto the sequencer.

    The Nanopore Minion has the ability to sequence DNA or RNA samples in minutes and, reject/eject DNA molecules it's already seen.

    It's not there as a single automated unit, but within 5 years if there was demand I can see it getting there.

    123:

    "lifeboat utilitarianism"

    What happens depends on how true that really is.

    Anyone who thinks intelligent people will behave rationally and won't go in for unproductive stupid in-fighting has never worked at a university.

    So just how utopian an ideal are you postulating here?

    Somebody paid for this Mars colony, they want a return on it, and their local factors want to make sure it gets paid. Somebody migrated here to raise a family, they want a long-term solution for their kids. Somebody else is at the end of a 10-year shift, if the place is a death trap they want to go home.

    And somebody else is an anti-vaxxer, and somebody else thinks their American enclave has the funding to support itself and why are they supporting all these others, and somebody else thinks their Japanese enclave has decent hygiene and why doesn't everybody else please just wash a bit more?

    124:
    Anyone who thinks intelligent people will behave rationally and won't go in for unproductive stupid in-fighting has never worked at a university.

    I've worked at universities most of my life. I mostly saw rational behavior, except when what I saw was irrational altruism. I saw very little "unproductive stupid in-fighting".

    125:

    Sorry, haven't read the comments yet.

    Firstly, proper PPE for medical staff. Not these stupid paper masks. They have pressure suits on hand. They drill decompression procedures. Everyone has a spacesuit and knows how to use it. They deal with immediately life threatening environments all the time. They're not going to put up with walking into a room full of infectious people wearing little more than a fig leaf and a bin liner.

    So the infected medical staff idea goes out the window.

    Follow that up with full lockdown as per NZ or stricter. There's going to be UV sterilisers and filters in all the ventilation, because presumably Mars will be settled by people who can tie their shoelaces. So you won't end up with a cruise ship style disaster.

    There's obviously quarantine imposed on ships for the simple reason they're in transit for so long. News of the outbreak on Earth would beat the virus to Mars by months. So the Martian authorities would be expecting it.

    I think it would be a complete non event, never get loose and in the very unlikely event it did, totally wiped out in a month.

    126:

    PS. I'm assuming a level of competence amongst leaders and planners not demonstrated here in Earth, for the simple reason that if they showed the kind of incompetence that's the norm here, everyone on Mars would be dead in hours or minutes.

    So if there are people on Mars it's certain that their decision makers are orders of magnitude more competent than our leaders. Ours have managed to make Earth uninhabitable on the time scale of decades. That takes some serious dedication to utterly fucking up. You've got to really work hard at being stupid.

    127:

    And needing an unexpected widget will be a continuing problem, so I expect the Mars colony to be heavily invested in a few fancy 3-D printers. Some of them already work with things like titanium, though I don't know how well, but they can be expected to improve over the next few decades.

    This is inefficient compared to mass production, but should be able to do the job for custom screws, hypodermic needles, and customized bookmarks. (etc.) Or possibly just print the gizmo as a single piece without any screws. (Current versions can't handle wiring, but I understand that there are a couple of laboratory models that can.)

    For the Mars colony tools with general use are more practical than more efficient single use tools...in many cases. (The boy scout knife with built-in silverware wasn't practical for much of anything.)

    128:

    You won't get that kind of fancy automation in practical use by 2050. Not even in the Mars colony. But advice systems with deeply expert knowledge will be present, and so will high quality telefactors.

    IOW, I don't see isolation as being a problem. Expertise will be available, but experts may not be. And you can't get away with two weeks tutorial and achieve comparable results.

    That said, robots will handle a lot of the simple stuff. But what "simple" is may turn out to be very counter-intuitive. Recognizing cell types turns out to be simple compared to walking down the street. Playing chess is simple compared to playing hop-scotch. Etc. (And learning to play checkers is a LOT simpler than learning to play chess...but is hard to generalize to other topics.) So it's really hard to predict just what the robots will be good at. But the Japanese have been working hard at robot nurses, so they'll probably be available.

    129:

    So if our colony still exists in 2170, maybe they've worked out a mostly peaceful society due to the strong survival pressure?

    Most of the latter 1800s US western cattle towns had laws and people who enforced with with all seriousness about no guns inside the town limits.

    Of course this is NOT what US western movies depict.

    130:

    Ok, mods, LargoMustkif is sounding more and more like one of the turkeys I run into on faceplant, with nothing actually interesting and relevant, and apparently unable to keep up with the actual conversations.

    But they're easily ignored.

    131:

    Armed mobs?

    [rolls eyes]. "Lower the air pressure in that module, and cut the oxygen down by 5%."

    "Ah, good, they're collapsing. Send in security bots to zip-tie them."

    132:

    Actually, let me offer you this.... http://mrw.5-cent.us/supervillians.html for my take on what actual superpowers (or control, which in this case is similar) would do.

    133:

    So socially it's a lot more like the Soviet bloc than the early 21st century EU or USA, albeit with much better planning/control/management and a governing ideology which boils down to lifeboat utilitarianism—"we're not building utopia, we're just trying to ensure survival for as many as possible in an intensely hostile environment (what were our grandparents thinking?)".)

    Which sounds a lot like Mars in "The Expanse"

    134:

    I agree that for something COVID19 like it would be a non-issue. Robust contact tracing (assuming ubiquitous surveillance for safety etc.) and isolation would be trivial too. You'd have 99% confidence re who was infected before you even started testing, and the passengers wouldn't have disembarked until they had passed quarantine and shown zero sign of any (new) infections.

    I would also assume that * In 50 years time we are a little bit better at sentinel testing and are looking for novel infection markers, or novel diseases as SOP every time someone travels up the well to a closed colony (or back for that mater).

    • The colony is ok at making bulk stuff and probably intricate stuff. If you are 3D printing your insulated tunnel linings/power/hvac/piping/furniture/lego components, then fabricating 100,000 syringes and needles might slow down base expansion for a couple of days.

    • If mRNA manufacture is a big thing (worth shipping out) then it will be industrial scale and used as part of your agriculture (viruses/cancer aren't just for humans).

    Having said all that, this is all assuming that it wasn't something that was engineered to have a HIV length incubation period and measles levels of contagiousness (Scalzi style Locked In). If half the world was infected before anybody noticed that would be interesting times. In that case, if there the colony is running lean (as in a Musk company) then I think it would later be used text book example of where lean business methods or suboptimal and aren't robust in the face of black swan events. Again, though, because Musk... He wants this Mars thing as an insurance policy against Case BLACK SWAN, and given that mission statement the team would well and truly over-staff/over engineer and over stock the project. If the average person of working age there needs to work more than productive 2 hours a day to keep the colony afloat I'd be surprised.

    135:

    I agree. It actually makes sense to grow plants (that will tolerate this) in pink houses in burrows, pink from the LEDs that you use in place of full spectrum light. This gets to the second problem, which is that instead of 1360 w/m2 (Earth top of atmosphere), you've got more like 590 w/m2 (top of atmosphere) on Mars. So taking that in via solar panels and concentrating a lot of it in photosynthetically optimal red and purple wavelengths makes sense.

    Nothing but pink light also probably would drive people nuts, so you've also got to provide full spectrum areas for humans to live in.

    Also, don't forget that there would be a whole spectrum of different dig types to suit the various subsoils and temperatures. Digging through unconsolidated versus ice regolith demand different tunnels than going through hard rock, depending again on what the rock is. That provides a lot of diversity in what the Martian Underground would look like in practice. In some places it makes sense to mine out a cavern, then turn it into a domed habitat, while in others, a maze of pink-lit tunnels makes more sense.

    There's something to be said for just making like gophers and living mostly underground, aside from solar collectors and whatever on the surface. Again, aside from the psychological effects. And these are nontrivial, so either people need to brave the radiation to get some surface light, or good terrestrial light mimics need to be built belowground. I think the latter are feasible, because I used to deal with Midwestern winters by spending more time in the research greenhouses. All that green (not pink) is therapeutic.

    Actually, this might provide uses for Mr. Musk's Boring Company and Hyperloop technology: trains between settlements.

    136:

    The problem with Musk's idea is that you can substitute "Dorset Island" or any of a number of other places and get most of the benefits for a small fraction of the price. I'll believe someone's serious about this when they start settling hundreds of people in the most miserable parts of Earth. Heck, Musk or his fellow rocketards could do a lot of good and gather a lot of data by simply making livable refugee settlements around the world. It's the same challenge, and second-rate architects have been experimenting in refugee camps for decades already.*

    *To the point where at least one NGO politely asked all the eager architects with their geodesic whatevers to go away and stop giving the refugees unlivable homes.

    137:

    What if senior medical staff are easily replaceable in 2070? With expert systems for diagnosis and computer assistance for surgery it's possible that the loss of Prof. Watzername, Oncology, ExtraLetters, is a hiccup rather than a showstopper. Her no. 2 may be able to do nearly as good a job, maybe even better if Watzername was a stick-in-the-mud.

    There's plenty of work being done on reducing headcount and the need for skilled workers in the business world and no reason to think that will stop. What's special about these skills in particular in 2070?

    138:

    LAvery Try the various political & religious student societies & clubs. 100% full of irrationality

    AVR Wasn't one of the plot-drivers in "Consider Phlebas" that a human protagonist was essential to solve the Culture's problem?

    139:

    So focusing on the actual questions Charlie asked:

    You are the Mayor of Armstrong City, facing a variant SARS pandemic, and supplies and support are 15 months away. What do you do?

    Assuming I don't already have capacity to generate a few hundred

    First lockdown to slow the spread of the virus, only essential people/robotics move. Secondly sequence the local strain and transmit the data back to earth. Immediately start nanopore based sequencing on fecal matter from each areas sewerage system if it wasn't already being done, to detect which areas/groups are shedding virus. Also start sequencing samples from key staff to determine if they have the disease.

    Then generate a multi-target mRNA vaccine using mRNAs that target the current version of genes that have previously been targeted on earth. Likely there will be expert systems/ML based software that can take the viral genome, and related genomes and their successful mRNA vaccines and generate a new designs. If not it's a few days work for a couple of bioinformatians. Likely I'd ask it to target several different genes to reduce the ability for it to escape the vaccine. Turn around time for this is likely to be hours/days (it's 24-48hrs currently to go from DNA/RNA design to a few million copies of the moecule in a vial on your desk). We take the designs predicted to have the least side effects, in fact if the entire colony is genome sequenced (very likely) I may be able to make multiple vaccines and customize them to each individual based on there likely risk of having an allergic reaction.

    Immediately start vaccinating a proportion (not every one) of the medical staff and essential staff so we start to develop a resistant population. We don't do everyone in case we are really unlucky and have significant issues with the vaccine or it doesn't work. Even a single dose will provide partial immunity, which combined with PPE and remote medicine should allow medical staff to start treating the worst effected, with substantially lower risk of infection. Also treat some of the chemists who are capable of synthesis of the RNA and lipid feedstocks that are needed for vaccine production.

    For critical individuals that are likely infected or have recently been exposed, I would offer them a dose of the vaccine as well to accelerate the activation of there immune response to the virus, unless this has been shown in previous versions of the virus to cause adverse health reactions.

    Essential staff are then focused on maintaining key systems and secondly retasking any spare 3D printer capacity I have to start producing reusable syringes and needles. These will be collected after use, washed, autoclaved and UV irradiated making them safe for reuse within 6hrs.

    Secondly we will purchase 3D printer designs (more make them our selves) for Oligo-synthesis devices and start building additional machines, it's likely we would only need a couple to be capable of producing 10s if not hundreds of thousands of vaccine doses a week. Once we've built these we rapidly increase our production of vaccine and start inoculating the population, with an aim to reach 80-90% coverage within a month or so.

    As more colonists are inoculated we focus on increasing our vaccine production capacity and our sequence based environmental and individual screening using solid state nanopore based meatgenomic sequencing (should already have a reasonable number of these for environmental monitoring, if not #D printer should be able to make some). Device is the size of a cellphone, you spit into it when you wake up and by the time you've had breakfast and got ready it tells you if you've got the all clear to go to work.

    Maintain this regime of daily testing of key individuals, and environmental testing of air and fecal matter until the virus has not been detected for 3-4 weeks. At that point possibly let up on the daily testing, but maintain the environmental testing to keep looking for new diseases.

    140:

    How is the politics going to work on this colony?

    I've seen a bunch of comments about how the government in this colony has total knowledge and control of everything that happens. But with hundreds of thousands of people, possibly spread over distinct habitats for redundancy, there is going to be politics of some kind.

    Also, from Earth's point of view, what is the business proposition here? Is it an actual long-term plan to colonise another planet, so all necessary support will be provided free? Or is there someone back on Earth looking at the profit-and-loss and sending orders to their Head of Colony on Mars to boost production or lose their quarterly bonus? And production of what? What could possibly be done more cheaply on Mars than on Earth?

    I can't imagine any reasonable financial case for a Mars colony of this size that pays off in less than a century, and probably longer. The American colonies had a business case based on tobacco and sugar, but unless Mars has lots of easily-mined unobtanium that's not going to work for our colony. So its got to be something more idealistic. People on Earth believe that colonising Mars is a good idea regardless of the bottom line, and are prepared to make it happen by subsidising a colony.

    The colony needs people who are brave, resourceful, and highly educated. Cultists who want to live and die for the God-King Musk need not apply. Anyone capable of making the grade will not sign up without first reading the constitution. So what does the constitution say about airlock control and monitoring? What democratic systems are used to manage the colony? How does money work? What is the criminal-justice system? How does this protect against abuse of power?

    What happens when Habitat 5 declares independence and seeks to establish trade relations (because both sides will die without stuff made by the other)?

    I'm asking these questions because its becoming obvious that the answers matter to the Exam Question. A serious public health emergency is always a test for the political power. Are we going to see a legal case in which the emergency airlock monitoring protocol is deemed unconstitutional?

    141:

    I suspect that most medical things can be handled by slow tele medicine. Not well but handled.

    Very slow. When Earth and Mars are at their closest, the speed of light round trip is a bit over 6 minutes, and I can see that as being a bit frustrating but workable for some video consultations. But when they are farthest apart, that round trip is a bit under 45 minutes. That's when the sun isn't in the way: I understand that Earth and Mars have very similar axial tilt, so their orbital planes are pretty close together. This suggests that there's a period where direct LoS comms are not feasible. I don't know whether there's some solar system feature that might be analogous to Earth's ionosphere, which we could bounce long wave signals off, but I gather such tricks limit the available bandwidth somewhat.

    So data comms between Mars and Earth need to cope with somewhere between 3 and 22 minutes of one-way path latency, depending on where Mars and Earth are in their orbits. TCP-like protocols would be very slow and most likely impractical, we're talking about mostly UDP-like one-way data streams. Assuming sufficient bandwidth (and this is assuming a lot!), video is feasible with streams in either direction showing what happened several minutes ago. But I can see patterns from the HA world appearing, showing "heartbeat" and forms of checksumming and response status codes that work better with high latency.

    That's all not allowing for magic^H^H^H^H^Hentangelement comms, of course.

    There are definitely forms of telemedicine that can work in such conditions, again assuming adequate bandwidth to ensure there isn't additional congestion induced latency. But it's more like email with attachments than live face-to-face consultations.

    142:

    I worked in one of the top universities in the world for over 40 years, and I saw a hell of a lot of it.

    143:

    "What democratic systems are used to manage the colony?"

    None.

    If they try to run it as a democracy everyone will die. Probably quite promptly. Maybe not as promptly as say an aircraft with an engine fire that reacts by issuing a white paper to the passengers and then calling for nominations to form a steering committee and calling for submissions from stakeholders, but not far off.

    OGH's question presupposes that there are living people there.

    144:
    Try the various political & religious student societies & clubs.

    100% full of irrationality

    Why on Earth would I do that? If you attend meetings of the "Irrational Club for Irrational People", you can expect to see some irrationality. I had better things to do with my Friday nights, like folk-dance club.

    145:

    Yes. You have a local requirement for the laboratories, and people sufficiently skilled to follow complex instructions and deal with the unforeseen events, but you can get advice (including help with diagnosis). Actual telesurgery is marginal for even synchronous orbit, let alone the moon; if anything goes wrong and fast action is needed, it's a disaster.

    146:

    A colony of this kind can only get to the stage you described because there is a large Earth-bound faction pushing for its continued survival and growth.

    In this case, I suggest that said faction would in the judge it expedient to skip the Hohman window and just brute-force a large rocket carrying a small payload. Perhaps a repurposing of one of the ones that normally does the gallium/lanthanum shipments.

    Colony establishment is a generation-level investment, next to which the costs of almost any individual emergency pale in comparison. "Keep throwing money at it until the willpower runs out" is the motto, and hope the willpower lasts long enough to pass the true measure of self-sufficiency: the ability to survive Four-Horsemen-disasters such as this one.

    Long term, recruiting more Earth doctors to replace the new shortfall would obviously be given priority. And if they can't be motivated to join up by increasing incentives to emigrate, just go right ahead and press-gang them. A few bribes to corrupt cops/politicos, and I'm sure you can get enough doctors arrested and sentenced to Australia-style-Transportation to meet your needs.

    There is however, the darker path. "Boom and Bust".

    When the railway networks were first established hundreds of companies laid lines with promises of profit, most of which tanked when the bubble burst. But the infrastructure they created, the physical railway lines, remained. This ensured that the second wave could expand and grow further, without being tethered to the debt involved in laying the rails. Likewise, during the dotcom-bubble of the nineties hundreds of companies went bust and fortunes were lost, but the infrastructure (and knowledge) they created became the foundation for the internet we have today.

    Now let us consider applying those principles to Mars.

    The first colony is doomed. It's only a matter of time before some issue comes along (like this one) that either can't be solved, or whose solution is unpalatably expensive to the Earth-based investors, at which point everyone in the colony dies. However we, the meta-investor, knew this was going to happen and prepared for it. The colonists were pre-screened and/or indoctrinated to "Believe In Mars" as fervently as possible. And the colony supervisor was given a large tank of neurotoxin. The desired result is that, if/when the colony tips past the point of being able to sustain human life, everyone dies quickly and neatly with as little damage to the infrastructure as possible. As a last "tidying up", you have the cleaning robots sweep the corpses into the recycling tanks.

    Then you wait fifty years or so for a new crop of investors to grow up on Earth. And you say to them "Yes, the first colony fell down, but re-establishing it will be easy. The first city is already mined-out and just waiting to be be repopulated to make a profit! One-tenth the investment of the original, and you get to skip straight to the good stuff. Like naming new cities after yourself!"

    Human finance and willpower has a finite tolerance for massive-projects. But the effort involved can be farmed out over several generations, with gaps to breathe. If you don't mind the occasional small genocide of the workforce, of course.

    147:

    I'd suggest your numbers in the healthcare professions are low, although it's a bit hard to estimate by how much. There are two elements to that.

    1) The NHS works by being able to share load - COVID has stressed that to the point that patients in ICUs were being shifted from London to Plymouth and so on when London was at full capacity, which is very unusual, normally they share to a nearby hospital and we don't hear about it. In your model city, it's hard to see how that happens.

    2) Likewise, we have a few regional centres of excellence which work at close to capacity in a certain specialism, so if you're in the North of England, you might have to go to Leeds to be treated for lung cancer, but to Newcastle to be treated for neuroscience disorders for example. That's not going to work in Marsopolis, you're going to have to support the overheads to treat everything (except possibly geriatric conditions).

    You might spread the load, and reduce numbers a little by having someone who is a multiple specialist, so if there's a small number of cases of MS say, you have someone who specialises in that, but also deals with a more common Martian condition as well. Even with that, I'd guess at least a 50% markup in numbers but a doubling might be closer to the mark.

    148:

    You might be surprised at how little effect advanced medical techniques have on the productive population, whether survival or longevity. Once people have ceased to be productive, they are no longer relevant to population survival. The big factors were clean water, a better diet, controls over pollution and toxic chemicals, improved workplace safety and disinfectants. Even things like antibiotics are surprisingly unimportant.

    149:
    Anyone who thinks intelligent people will behave rationally and won't go in for unproductive stupid in-fighting has never worked at a university.

    You know, honestly, if I wanted to point to a place where people could acquire the experience that (mostly) intelligent people often go in for unproductive stupid in-fighting, there's one closer to hand: the comment threads on this blog.

    150:

    The "democracy" is likely to be very military in shape. The person at the top would largely have complete authority, because you can't run something that critical by committee. But their staff would be expected to question decisions, to make sure there aren't things they haven't thought about, and their staff would have some formal process for removing them from office. And that would hold true all the way down the line, because everyone is responsible for everyone else's safety.

    As with the military, there'd be no real barrier to entry to officer training; but you would need to have training for each level of authority and show you can do it. And note the process-for-removal point, so you don't just need book learning, you'd need to be able to lead your people too. That'd keep it relatively representative, but also limit access for chancers/grifters.

    151:

    I'm not sure there will be a "mayor of Armstrong City" - at least not a single, omnipotent human.

    If we accept that the most optimistic take on getting a Mars colony established involves solving all the medical, engineering, economic, manufacturing and agronomic challenges, I think it's reasonable to assume that there will be a way to rapidly engineer and distribute a vaccine, and that there will be a way of locking down the population until that's complete.

    What's not so obvious to me is how we solve the political and societal challenges - who goes to Mars and why? "Untold riches" seems a poor motivation as there's no return journey to allow you to spend those riches. "A better life" seems a hard sell - a highly regulated life as a wage slave living in cramped quarters underground, and very few entrepreneurial opportunities. "Religious and/or political freedom" - well...I realize this may not hold for people who don't live the privileged Western life I enjoy - but I'd hope that anyone who has skills useful on Mars has at least some economic, social and political capital on Earth.

    Then you get to the question of politics and economics on Mars - even (especially?) in the most repressive Soviet bloc societies, there were black markets, corruption, nepotism, passive resistance. The most top-down, autocractic businesses have all kinds of informal ways of getting stuff done; the org chart rarely represents where real power lies. The optimist in me believes that the more "educated" the population, the less likely they are to blindly follow orders, or accept unreasonable restrictions. And the more challenging the environment, the more important it is to have distributed decision making, rather than God-Emperor Musk dictating from afar.

    And of course you have the question of "who ultimately decides". Assuming Mars remains dependent on Earth (at least in the 2070 timeframe), the threat of turning off the supply of essentials would carry a lot of weight - Musk's head, floating in a vat of Irn Bru could command the Mayor to do his bidding or face the loss of Netflix. On the other hand, anyone politically astute to be considered for Mayor would not accept the role with such an imbalanced power dynamic.

    So, even if we solve all of the engineering challenges 50 years ahead, I find it very hard to picture the decision making structures on Mars. I doubt they'll neatly reflect anything we're familiar with; the combination of selection bias for the population, persistent and mortal threats to the entire community, and extremely unbalanced power dynamic between Earth and Mars suggests complex, dynamic, widely-based process.

    152:

    When I read this, the first thing that popped into my head were the games Surviving Mars and Outpost. This seems like a great setup for one of these kinds of games.

    153:

    Don't know about "C" on Mars, but I had my first ( Pfizer ) jab this morning ....

    154:

    Wrote this up before reading others’ comments - apologies if these ideas have already been discussed and discarded.

    Key assumption: rates of tech development and medical research will continue at at least the same rate as over the past 40-50 years, e.g., MRI was first used in 1977, CRISPR-Cas9 was discovered/used in 2008.

    1- Sideways thinking - Musk is known for this approach: it will be a guiding principle on Mars. (Earthside processes will not apply.)

    2- Just-in-Time supply management - revised to built-in snafu verification. Because any threat can become dire, pre-testing of everything during transport from Earth long before it arrives on Mars will be SOP. This means investment in on-ship labs and a cross-section of multi-disciplinary highly trained staff.

    3- DNA/RNA coding and recombination labs - every Martian will have had their DNA, RNA and biota’s DNA coded and on record. And such tests will be run on an annual basis to check for disease and mutations.

    4- Bacteria, fungus and virus farms (labs) will be part of the overall infrastructure and testing of their respective populations and health status would be done routinely. Research into how best to incorporate new strains to assist vital functions would also be part of the overall health and resource infrastructure. E.g., strains of CO2 eating-converting into O2 bacteria/fungi/virus would be used in spacesuits to help workers maintain their O2 sat levels because some space work would in fact require muscular and pulmonary exertion and mechanical machines may not be as deft/flexible/sensitive as required. Knowing which bacteria are typically found where in the body, their specific functions, etc. can also help mitigate certain harms and most importantly can be used in labs to help identify the exact biochem processes of new disease threats.

    5-Oldsters - test subjects - if they’re not going be allowed to live beyond 80 anyways, then Hey - no harm done! using them as the colony’s guides pigs. (See pt 7 re: 'Musk …') Because corpses would be recycled anyways to help maintain a very fragile ecosystem, every single person dying of this virus would be thoroughly autopsied down to the molecular level. Apart from helping to identify what tissues are at greatest risk, possible infection routes, it would also be vital to determine whether ‘regular’ corpse disposal practice would be sufficiently safe or whether the colony would have to sacrifice otherwise useful organic materials - destroy affected corpses completely - in order to not contaminate current habitat/food systems.

    6-Isolation - no problem - if every Martian has a space suit then they already have their own personalized containment unit with dedicated O2/waste management systems.

    7- Compliance - depends on needs and psychosocial factors esp. trust in others. Screening for prospective Martian settlers will have to include psychological health: need for power, belief that others are as important as you are, history of mental health issues/trauma, etc. Mechanical compliance - physical distancing will probably be built-in and actionable because each family habitat will probably be a self-contained unit. Anyone with a disease or major psychosocial problem could be identified and isolated from outside. Testing for biological problems could also be done more easily this way: every unit has its own builtin recycling unit that automatically recycles/cleans and segregates important compounds/biota. Adding new screening/testing/medicinal dosing could therefore also be feasible. (E.g., If it is discovered that the best way of reducing the reproduction rate of a bacterium or virus is to reduce/increase something, then that something could be distilled out or added to water/air, etc.) Other alternative is let the affected/infected take their chances and die. (Musk threatened to pull his corp out of Cal to Texas because the Cal isolation was interfering/delaying some of his launches, i.e., he’s already flunked the 'trolley problem’.

    8- Overall population health - prospective Martian colonists would have personal health/fitness drilled into them because there would be too many unknowns for any sane, well-educated, intelligent person not to have internalized as their day-to-day reality. Unless the new virus targeted exceptionally healthy folks, disease and death rates would probably be less severe. Age related physiological decline would still be a factor - but it’s likely that given meticulous testing of the virus and its specific effects/biochem interactions/processes, that some sort of biochem re-equalization/re-balancing meds could be developed.

    9- Biggest threat would be psycho-social as mechanisms for arresting/transmission of the virus — same as on Earth at present. Psychology seems to be the 21st century dirty word - like sex in earlier times. Yes, there have been some total screw-ups in its academic and political study and application, but it’s real, can be measured (even biochemically/electrically now) and pretending it doesn’t exist or matter is just plain reckless.

    History of Criss-cross:

    https://jb.asm.org/content/200/7/e00580-17

    I’m hoping that someone is working on a combination fMRI/CRISPR technology that will allow scientists/medicos to ’see’ biochem/viral reactions in real-time - delivery/communication device would be some nanorobot.

    10 - In the meanwhile while waiting for supplies, increase all food propagation activity - it’s amazing how much food you can grow via cuttings. (I still have frozen fried green tomatoes taking up too much room in my freezer.) Most importantly, see point 2.

    155:

    I'm not sure there will be a "mayor of Armstrong City"

    Of course not. As Wernher von Braun revealed to us in 1949 the leader of the Martian government bears the title "Elon".

    (Project Mars - A Technical Tale, Chapter 24 "How Mars is Governed")

    156:

    Re: 'History of Criss-cross:'

    Now that's a novel auto-correct snafu - was supposed to be CRISPRCas. More interesting still is that the auto-correct happened sometime between when I re-read and then pressed 'submit'. Weird.

    157:
    I’m hoping that someone is working on a combination fMRI/CRISPR technology that will allow scientists/medicos to ’see’ biochem/viral reactions in real-time - delivery/communication device would be some nanorobot.

    I don't understand this idea. How do you imagine fMRI and CRISPR could be combined? Which reactions do you want to observe in real time, and how do you imagine using CRISPR and fMRI to do that? And what do you want the nanobots to do?

    158:

    I was replying to your assumption that anything would need to be done in the first place, although air filtration plus UV would be a given. I do not believe novel pathogens could go undetected for more than a few minutes, let alone the months aboard a spacecraft. All we need is a genetically engineered plague to be released on Earth before then and that tech will be given ultra-priority (assuming it isn't now).

    160:

    @113: Bonus: Contamination and form of DNA matters for handheld-instrument accuracy. There's a yuuuuuuuuuuuge difference between what a handheld instrument can accurately do with aliquots of pure-to-relatively-pure chemical-grade reagents... and what it can do while it is simultaneously taking samples in unpredictable environments. How does one determine which of the millions of potential DNA samples in a drawn-from-the-environment aliquot is the target for analysis? And then extract that sample from a cell environment without damaging it?

    I've seen this with "simple" problems like "determining what molecular weight compound is contaminating an aircraft pneudraulic system": It's damned near impossible, even for something as "simple" as "molecular weight."

    @120: I'd be a lot more concerned about fumigating against the armed bears. They're daaaaangerous.

    Which is rather my point: It's impossible to fumigate against dangerous ideas; just look at Linus Pauling's umm, political allegiances...

    161:

    the leader of the Martian government bears the title "Elon". You made me look. :-) Project MARS(Das Marsprojekt) (Dr. Wernher von Braun, English translation by Henry 1 White, Lt. Cdr. USN) Chapter 24 How Mars is Governed ... The Martian government was directed by ten men, the leader of whom was elected by universal suffrage for five years and entitled "Elon." Two houses of Parliament enacted the laws to be administered by the Elon and his cabinet.

    Also, topical, see the "Chapter 27 Body Repair and Brain Filling Stations" Talks about heart transplants, in 1952. (Didn't see anything about infectious diseases.)

    162:

    They will probably be able to print it.

    Reminder that resources in a Mars colony will be constrained by three things: bits, atoms -- and watts.

    3D printers are an amazingly useful technology family and we're only just scratching the surface of what they can be and what they can do, but they're clearly constrained by (a) feedstock availability, and (b) energy.

    Plastics (including cement) are of various degrees of utility, but there are some things you probably can't do with them -- syringe needles being one.

    Metals ... useful for needles and chemical plant tankage and pipes, but 3D printing metal is energetically expensive, which is why it's only used for prototyping, bespoke products (e.g. custom-fitted bone implants), or ridiculously fiddly/expensive ones (e.g. liquid fuelled rocket motors).

    The energy issue is a killer. Mars has about 60% of the insolation at ground level of a planet in Earth's orbit. The atmosphere's thinner so absorbs less sunlight, which is helpful, but there are dust storms and a diurnal period, so PV farms have various fairly obvious constraints.

    Nuclear reactors are problematic: Mars is short on liquid water, which we use on Earth as a heat sink for our reactors. The Martian atmosphere is too thin to serve as a heat sink for a high power output reactor. So what are you going to use? One option might be radiative cooling, using heat pipes running through those PV solar farms -- the panels can radiate waste heat into space -- but I'm not convinced that's a good answer.

    Anyway: my take-away is that 3D printing in metal is going to be expensive, in terms of an early Martian colony, and in plastics it's going to be of various utility. The best option might actually be to grow trees and use subtractive 3D rendering rather than additive, i.e. 6-axis CNC milling machines working on lumps of wood (where the interior structure can be checked by ultrasound to ensure there are no voids or weak areas in the finished product).

    But "just print it" isn't really an answer to how a Mars colony will manufacture bespoke products, unless by 2070 we have an ACME Corporation Mr Fusion reactor with a direct plasma-to-electrical-current converter rather than a turbogenerator running on some sort of thermal cycle. Which I think is a bit of a long shot. (The alternative, full Drexler-style diamond/vacuum phase boundary nanotech, still looks a little far-fetched, although with 50 years of progress, who knows?)

    163:

    First of all, Charlie, exactly how are we going to get 500,000 people to Mars in forty years? His "Starship" ain't going to carry 25,000 people to Mars every year for 10 years.

    That is actually what he's planning. 100 passengers per launch, average departure rate one per weekday for a decade.

    What SpaceX are building with Starship development isn't an orbit-capable reusable launcher: it's an orbit-capable reusable launcher factory. The plan is not to build them like airliners, but to build them like troop landing craft for D-Day; he ultimately envisages manufacturing thousands of the things.

    The scale is so mind-boggling that most people don't believe it at first, but it's no crazier than progress in heavier-than-air aviation between 1914 and 1954. Which takes us from the first twin-engined biplanes with a cargo capacity of up to half a ton, all the way past the Berlin Air Lift to the prototype Boeing 707.

    I don't know if it'll work: but it's a fascinating premise for a scenario, isn't it?

    As for what the half-million people will do, my guess is that 90% of them will do people-centric stuff like medical services, teaching in schools, cooking, cleaning, fixing things, making clothes ... which leaves 50,000 others, whose job will be robot wrangling: someone's got to manage the real Mars-surface workforce, and we have about 20 years of experience now that proves the lightspeed round-trip time from Earth introduces too much control lag to control robots probes efficiently. Put it another way: two astronauts in a month could accomplish more than all the rovers and landers we've put on Mars since 1976, simply because every ten metre position change doesn't have to be rehearsed for days in a mission simulator: your astronaut can simply put one foot in front of the other, avoiding obstacles, and look for rocks that their education says will be of interest to the researchers back home.

    164:

    SFR Psychology seems to be the 21st century dirty word There's a very good reason for that, unfortunately. Psychology was conflated with & for many years, dominated by "Psychiatry" - a giant pseudo-scientific con-trick, or at least a huge chunk of it was so - again the domination of the subject by Sigmund Fraud fucked it over, to the point that any properly trained & educated "hard" scientist would refuse to go anywhere near it. As in this book by Medawar. Experimental Psychology is, now a respectable, solidly-based subject, but getting on for 70-80 years of previous pure bollocks really has not helped.

    165:

    I'm assuming that children will be taken care of by robot nannies.

    Nope: if you can build robot nannies then by definition you've got strong-enough-to-fool-humans general-purpose AI, and all bets are off.

    I think it's far more likely that the children will be nannying the robots, from an early age: robots who are mostly autonomous but need high-level direction, who do the dangerous grunt work on the near-vacuum/high radiation surface, while the humans nest underground.

    166:

    The energy issue is a killer. Mars has about 60% of the insolation at ground level of a planet in Earth's orbit. The atmosphere's thinner so absorbs less sunlight, which is helpful, but there are dust storms and a diurnal period, so PV farms have various fairly obvious constraints.

    Not to say dust storms aren't an issue, but the first Mars rovers are a reasonable indication that dust isn't that big a deal - and unlike the rovers periodic cleaning is an option.

    Nuclear reactors are problematic: Mars is short on liquid water, which we use on Earth as a heat sink for our reactors. The Martian atmosphere is too thin to serve as a heat sink for a high power output reactor. So what are you going to use?

    Why go for a high power output reactor? The current in thing here on Earth seems to be smaller reactors that can be (for a given definition) mass produced. Instead, use a thousand reactors - may not be as efficient as one big reactor, but makes things like heat easier to deal with as well as providing redundancy.

    Or does a Mars colony go for the beam the energy down from space option?

    167:

    "Running lean"... does that include JIT anything?

    We know, for a fact, having had it demonstrated over the last year, again and again, that JIT anything is completely dependent on everything working 100% of the time for the entire supply chain.

    168:

    Does the surface radiation level decline at night?

    A lot of the worst is in the shape of high energy cosmic rays, which come from pretty much all directions and aren't screened out by the thin Martian atmosphere.

    (Earth's atmosphere is roughly as effective as a 10 metre deep pool of water, like the ones we use for storing spent fuel rods until they're cool enough to reprocess safely ...)

    So no, night won't save you. Only rock (or a thick blanket of water) will help.

    169:

    About that... and no, it's not going to be military, if for no other reason than every other Terran spacefaring nation (i.e., Russia and China) will scream bloody murder, and put their own military stations there while going through the UN and international courts about existing treaties.

    Isn't it obvious: it will be run as a corporation, with no mayor, but a CEO.

    The real question is all the, as someone put it, people things - education, daycare, medical care, etc: will the CEO spin those off? How about what the people do in their off time, arts? theater? games? Will those be small businesses... or NGO?

    Of course, there is the question of what happens if the company wants to fire someone.

    170:

    Very glad to hear that, Greg.

    171:

    One. Per day. 100 people.

    And at what point does the EPA step in? Or when one fails?

    Maybe in 20 years, we can start looking at one a week (well, unless I finish my Famous Secret Theory)....

    172:

    There's a problem with any areosynchronous orbit, usually called "Deimos". It's massive enough and close enough to that orbit that satellites need to do a lot more station keeping than they do in geosynchronous. Power-sats would probably need regular re-fuelling trips.

    173:

    I don’t really buy the “it takes a Germany” argument . I think a combination of AI, AR and extreme modularization / standardization will make a lot of things (like surgery or fixing a car) much much simpler and more a matter of humans being delegated to a final approver role rather then the primary doer.

    I am highly doubtful. A lot of what we do in practice isn't encoded in documentation or taught in classes -- we take our expensive, tedious education then learn how to apply it by "monkey see, monkey do".

    Now, maybe you don't need the population of Germany to run a colony. But you're going to have to dispense with climax activities -- stuff that surplus capacity lets you engage in. An 0.5-1M population colony won't be designing the equivalent of luxury sports cars, much less hosting competing marques like Audi/BMW/Mercedes/Porsche, for example. There will be clothes, there will be fashion ... but the range of available fabrics will be limited at first, and prints will be whatever you can coax out of an inkjet that can be maintained on-site, using locally-produced dyes. Want velcro or zip fasteners? You'll be lucky to have ribbon ties or plastic buttons for the first few years. And so on.

    And then we get to the teaching hospital and the university. At first they're going to be teaching/training, just preserving/propagating specialized skill sets: actual research on anything that isn't Mars-survival-oriented is going to have to wait until there's enough surplus labour.

    Finally, to be blunt, "if your doctor dies you're going to train a new one in a few weeks" is complete bullshit. Just training a pair of hands to do the work presupposes that you've trained the pair of hands to understand the instructions -- in case you'd forgotten, "medical English" is a domain-specific sub language in its own right, with a 30-80,000 word supplemental vocabulary layered on top of everyday English, and difficult/different grammatical constructions in some areas. If you're really lucky you might get a generalist trained up in 5 years, but they'll be less effective and their patient death rate higher than a properly-experienced doctor because you can't train people in stuff like "oedematous tissue squishes like this when you poke it; diabetic hypoglycemia breath smells like that", just to pick a couple of obvious examples. Much of medicine requires senses other than sight and hearing, and you want to fully deploy the human doctor before you go ordering expensive or unusual diagnostic tests that require bespoke manufacturing or import from Earth.

    174:

    "Plastics (including cement) are of various degrees of utility, but there are some things you probably can't do with them -- syringe needles being one."

    I suspect very strongly this isn't so - it's just cheaper to do it with metal. A syringe just needs to be sharp, strong enough to not break off in the person, and not dissolve while you need them.

    But there's also ceramics. Plenty of silicon around on Mars.

    175:

    In a Mars colony it should be quite easy to enforce: presumably, all air locks are under government control, there are no other routes (no unnoticed sneaking past the checkpoints).

    Eh, no: because that implies that if something takes out the central/government control, everybody else asphyxiates. You don't want to design in single points of failure! A more likely model would be to study how airlock/bulkhead door discipline is enforced on a nuclear submarine, where there's a very real risk of killing everyone aboard if you get it wrong (modulo the fact that the colony won't be under military discipline, and it may have to deal with curious toddlers).

    I'd also expect every habitat module to have at least two airlocks, even if one of them is for emergency use only and amounts to "open this valve to vent all air from cabin, then open the door when the pressure lock unlatches". Because if Door (a) is damaged and you don't have a Door (b), you all die, the end.

    everyone probably has an emergency pressure suit and high-grade respirators of some sort anyway for emergency use (fire? pressure drop?), which should be far more effective that self-made masks, or nothing at all.

    Again: not necessarily true.

    Early Mars exploration bases will have suits for all, but a surface-capable space suit is basically a miniature space ship in its own right and horrendously expensive -- I've heard costs for Russian and US suits for use on Mir/Shuttle/ISS on the order of tens of millions of dollars each.

    The lightweight pressure suits used for capsule launch/landing aren't fully versatile EVA suits by a long way. Their job is to hold in pressure and keep the astronaut alive for 30 minutes to 48 hours in event of an in-flight emergency. They don't have the micrometeoroid protection layers, cameras, tools, thermal insulation, built-in oxygen and water supplies, sanitary connections (diapers at best), or other bells and whistles.

    An active colony is going to have to include much, much cheaper space suits -- and local repair/fabrication facilities -- but they're still going to be ridiculously expensive compared to normal clothing. There may be emergency suits for most adults, at least at first, for traversing anoxic or damaged habitat modules with leaks or no air pressure. But exposure to hard UV, peroxide-rich dust, and extreme temperatures won't be part of the package.

    Smoke hoods are likely to be everywhere, along with portable oxygen bottles -- like the equipment airliners carry for cabin crew to permit them to move around in event of a cabin depressurization.

    The big wildcard is people's behaviour and trust in the government: will Martian settlers play along for the 1-2 months of very harsh measures? Or will there be anti-lockdown demos, conspiracy nuts, armed coups, dissenting habitats, etc.?

    If the colonists are today's angry white supremacist American individualists, the colony is fucked. But my guess is that the living conditions on Mars will initially be more like a high-tech version of a 1950s Kibbutz, which is to say, utterly anathema to anyone who isn't ideologically motivated, strong work ethos, utterly selfless in their willingness to put community first, and seeing their calling in building a shining city on a hill rather than to get rich quick and keep "those" other folks down. Because Mars colonization is at least at first going to be more or less a religious imperative rather than an expression of capitalist profit making/rent seeking ...

    176:

    Why photovoltaic for underground farms? Why not just skylights?

    You want to be as far underground as you can get -- metres of rock overhead.

    Skylights are going to be prone to UV-induced discoloration/fogging, sandstorm dust abrasion, heat loss, thermal expansion/contraction at joints, and leakage. They're not effective as radiation shielding, unless they're also effective at keeping light out. And that's assuming they don't get pinged by a micrometeorite.

    My vision of a Mars colony is highly collectivist, hiding underground as much as possible, conducting work on the surface using drones/teleoperated robots as much as possible, with humans only going "up top" the way Australians venture into the less hospitable bits of outback, like the Nullarbor plain -- it's full of things that will kill you dead very rapidly if you don't spot them or your ute breaks down in the middle of nowhere and it's 48 degrees out.

    177:

    Where are you getting this CO2? The atmosphere is almost non existent compared to earth.

    The Martian atmosphere is about 1% as thick as Earth's atmosphere ... and it's over 90% CO2. In contrast, CO2 makes up about 0.4% of Earth's atmosphere.

    There's actually twice as much CO2 per unit of cubic volume of atmosphere on Mars as on Earth.

    178:

    Anyway: my take-away is that 3D printing in metal is going to be expensive, in terms of an early Martian colony, and in plastics it's going to be of various utility. ... But "just print it" isn't really an answer to how a Mars colony will manufacture bespoke products, unless by 2070 we have an ACME Corporation Mr Fusion reactor with a direct plasma-to-electrical-current converter rather than a turbogenerator running on some sort of thermal cycle.

    For critical items like a Oligo-synthesizer or reusable metal needles (wash, UV and autoclave and they'll be usable again) I think you could get away with printing them.

    For mRNA vaccines you are unlikely to need a thousand oligo-synthesizers only a few dozen, and possibly only a couple.

    While for reusable needles you don't need 1m (assuming two doses), you can probably get away with a few thousand or so with sterilization and reuse several times a day. It may not even slow things down much depending on how many medical staff you have trained to give the injections.

    Also do you even need high precision needles? Bifurcated needles are simpler to make and easy to clean, while more painful they should be fine for vaccination.

    179:

    whitroth JIT supply & manufacturing systems... Arthur Wellesley had something to say about that sort of idea: “They planned their campaigns just as you might make a splendid set of harnesses. It looks very well; and answers very well; until it gets broken; and then you are done for. Now I made my campaigns of ropes. If anything went wrong, I tied a knot and went on”

    "Efficiency" is the mutual enemy of "Resilience" ( Personal example: The Great Green Beast is a resilient motor vehicle )

    180:

    Whitroth: my take on what actual superpowers

    I'm guessing you missed my books, "The Annihilation Score" and "Dead Lies Dreaming", both of which deal with superpowers, right? (The first: it turns out there is a lot of paperwork involved, especially for the heroes. Also, forget Mad Scientists; in the 21st century, Mad Science takes an entire Mad Science Multinational R&D Corporation. The latter book: well, it only came out two months ago and I'm not going to spoiler it yet.)

    181:

    All that green (not pink) is therapeutic.

    Huh. How does that play with red/green colour blindness?

    Could we see Martian colonists deliberately engineering their kids with R/G colour blindness to make adaptation to life in the farm warrens less stressful?

    182:

    Not hardly. Got both, read both.

    My article was more comic-book style superheroes and plots (or lack thereof).

    183:

    Doctors - there are generalists who cover a lot.

    The doctor I had in Chicago (sigh, wish I still had him) was a DO, a family practice (as a former partner of his put it, "I love family practice, it's not the same thing every day, anything can walk in the door")... heavily involved with teaching students (several, over the years, told me they fought to train with him).

    Oh, and he is a surgeon. He did the surgery on me when I was being treated for cancer, 20 years ago.

    Not all of them are nothing more than gatekeepers for the specialists.

    184:

    Since this is all speculation, and the discussions about what is usable by in situ utilisation and 3D-printing, I'm wondering if anybody of you has read "Delta-V by Daniel Suarez"? I found it to be very inspiring, though it was more about a clandestine mission to mine asteroids and modifications of the ship underway because of unforeseen events.

    To be honest I don't see why some "kit" similar to that couldn't be included in one or several of those starships.

    In other words, the technical aspects described there regarding https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chemical_vapor_deposition needed almost no suspension of disbelief.

    At least skim it, if you haven't already.

    185:

    On governance: you're all wrong.

    Initially it's not going to be a colony, it's going to be a research base. Take the ISS as a good administrative model and move on. (I gather there was an incident where a cosmonaut became so disturbed he was rotated back to Earth some months ahead of schedule: that's about as bad as it's gotten, and we've had humans living on space stations in orbit almost constantly for a third of a century now.)

    Next, it'll expand into something on the scale of McMurdo Base -- a couple of hundred people. Overall it can be run on a "relaxed" military basis -- assigned tasks, and duties to be undertaken "in event of an attack" (read: accident or disaster), but people aren't actively expected to risk their lives day-to-day and some allowances are made for de-stressing.

    By the time we're up to a city ... you need government, which means all three branches: an executive, a court system to test legality/effectiveness of command decisions (and handle petty crime), and finally some sort of consultative council to deal with stuff like what to name the new primary school, how to commission public art, motions to make farting in the commons an arrestable offence, and so on.

    How this evolves is going to be an interesting question: consultative committees selected at random by sortition is one alternative to elected representatives, for example -- think of it as formalized public opinion polling with teeth. The executive would initially be management, but when it scales up to government level you need a mechanism for the peaceful transfer of power if a chief administrator shits the bed irredeemably: revolutions are bad enough even when you don't have to worry about keeping the air in.

    But it's a delicate situation. Dictatorship simply isn't going to be long-term viable: too much risk of a lowly life support tech turning off the Big Boss's bedroom oxygen supply one night, leaving him breathing 100% pure nitrogen for a while. Willing cooperation is going to be at a premium.

    186:

    SFReader at 154, part 6 (Isolation):

    I'm pretty clear that Extra-Habitat Activity suits are not the same as isolation.

    The waste disposal mechanisms will need massive upgrades to operate unsupported for long periods (i.e. without breaking isolation to do it), and for that engineering and production to be done a pressing need to do it must be seen before it happens. I can't really believe there will be enough EHA suits available to keep the whole population isolated for more than 24 hours, and TBH I'd be surprised to see enough for more than 10% of them. And not many of them will fit the children - most will be for workers.

    (No, I haven't got a better idea. Sorry.)

    187:

    In terms of the long-Covid effects:

    My guess is that the first solution will be that wherever possible, Long-Covid Syndrome sufferers will be asked to work in teams, doing remote operations.

    Remote operations should be possible to run by team, so that if one person's LCS is a serious problem this week then the team-mates will be able to cover the gap. If all three are fit, one will be covering another team using the same hardware.

    Perfect it isn't, but it's better than having them idle.

    In the longer term, I think economics will be the determining factor. I don't understand the economics of the colony (or anywhere else), so I can't tell whether it will be possible to do this for any length of time; it will depend on whether there's a functioning societal safety net, and how well provided it is. OGH's notes on retirees suggest there isn't one, really. So it seems probable that this first solution will run for maybe 6 months before significant parts of public opinion begin to describe LCS sufferers as "shirkers".

    188:

    a surface-capable space suit is basically a miniature space ship in its own right and horrendously expensive -- I've heard costs for Russian and US suits for use on Mir/Shuttle/ISS on the order of tens of millions of dollars each

    Currently they're effectively bespoke items, though. If you are manufacturing 100/workday (assuming you need one for everyone on that daily rocket to Mars) manufacturing costs will come down.

    189:

    So it seems probable that this first solution will run for maybe 6 months before significant parts of public opinion begin to describe LCS sufferers as "shirkers".

    Kinda like how chronic fatigue syndrome is often viewed?

    Complicated as always by a number of people who are shirkers/scammers.

    190:

    And then we get to the teaching hospital and the university. At first they're going to be teaching/training, just preserving/propagating specialized skill sets: actual research on anything that isn't Mars-survival-oriented is going to have to wait until there's enough surplus labour.

    A population of 0.5-1 million is same order of magnitude as Iceland, which has around 360k people. Say the midpoint of your range is about 2 Icelands in population. Iceland trains its own doctors, It has about a busload of medical graduates a year or 14 per 100,000, but sends them abroad to learn specialties. I can imagine handling specialist training through distance learning would be achievable, especially with adequate local practitioners involved in sharing their knowledge and skills.

    The factor I think we haven't got in this account is the change in the proportion of healthcare to the overall economy over time, which is relevant because it's universally increasing now. in 1980 the OECD average of health expenditure as a proportion of per-capita GDP was around 6%, while now is is around 9%, with the trend still apparent in year-by-year change. Assuming the rate remains roughly linear, we'd expect it to have reached 12% by 2060. The USA, incidentally, is an extreme outlier because its health system is so inefficient, with health expenditure currently at 18% of GDP per capita, for which it gets relatively poor health outcomes. Anyhow the USA model obviously couldn't possibly work for Mars, but Iceland is potentially a reasonable case study.

    Health workforce impacts are higher for cancer treatment, which is a multidisciplinary team-sport, than for other forms of intervention, so we'd expect a population with a higher cancer risk to require a larger health workforce. It's not hard to imagine seeing a "knee" in the growth in health expenditure even without USA levels of inefficiency. It's not hard to see healthcare representing over 20% of the workforce, just to meet demand due to conditions.

    191:

    Here's a summary doc for healthcare in Iceland (handy for case study purposes):

    https://www.euro.who.int/__data/assets/pdf_file/0014/130136/E72496.pdf

    192:

    Why do they have to wait for the vaccine to arrive by Hohman orbit?

  • Aren't there faster orbits to get to Mars (if cost is no object)?
  • I'm thinking of an old SF story I remember where a vaccine had to get to one of the interplanetary colonies & couldn't wait for the slow orbits, so a volunteer space jockey takes an atomic shuttle for a sustained high G ride to get it there.

    The high G gives him a lifetime of wear and tear on his body in just a few days so by the time he gets there he's a physical wreck with the body of a centenarian despite being in his prime. He ain't gonna' be a space jockey no more and in fact isn't even fit to return to Earth ever again ... but he's a hero because he sacrificed himself to save the day.

  • It's a mRNA vaccine. Couldn't advances in genetics - mapping DNA/RNA; gene splicing, etc - make it possible to transmit the RNA sequence as DATA to Mars and let the "bricks" start manufacturing it (assembling it?) right away?
  • 193:

    Charlie Stross @ 8:

    In 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture mRNA vaccines in bulk.

    Now tell me that in 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture a million disposable syringes (or other sterile vaccine delivery devices) in a city-sized Mars colony!

    This is your scheduled reminder that a drug is not a medicine. (In pharmacy: a drug is a substance that exerts a detectable pharmacological effect on metabolism. A medicine is a ... thing ... that delivers said drug into the body in sufficient dose and concentration to produce the desired effect.)

    Are there other ways to take the mRNA vaccine that don't require sterile disposable syringes? I got the second (Sabin) Polio vaccine by eating a sugar cube.

    And, with no HIV AIDS or Hepatitis (blood borne diseases would be screened out during the early colonization period) why couldn't they have old fashioned re-usable syringes & sterilize them after use?
    194:

    The problem with spacesuits is multi-fold. Literally. They do have to be tailored to the individual, which drives up the price, and like diving suits, they need to be serviced regularly, even more so if they're in a dirty place like the Moon or Mars. Blown seals kill.

    Mars is probably less harsh than the Moon, because even a thin atmosphere means a lot. For example, the dust on the Moon doesn't get eroded an atmosphere, so it's got all these hyper-fine edges and weird static electrical/electrochemical things that are probably bad for suits. Dust on Mars has been tumbled by the wind and probably reacted a bit, so I suspect it's marginally less abrasive.

    That said, martian soil has a fair amount of perchlorate in it, so digging on Mars is about as safe as digging into an old USAF toxic waste dump. If you want to tunnel on Mars, making the walls nontoxic (how?) is a necessary chore.

    Another problem is differential pressure. Eventually we'll figure out how to have spacesuits with an internal pressure of one atmosphere, so you can slip in and out of them easily. Until that happy time, you're stuck with 1/3d atmospheric pressure, which IIRC is mostly oxygen. Therefore, before you can don a suit, you've got to decompress and purge nitrogen from your body, just like you're coming up from a prolonged deep dive. Spacesuits are also (unsurprisingly) freaking heavy, so they're not normally put on solo, at least right now. All these chores--suit prep and maintenance, prepping the suit-wearer, and so forth, routinely gets ignored in SFF, but it's an integral part of their use.

    195:

    Charlie Stross @ 15: mRNA synthesis is likely to be ubiquitous and easy by 2070; the real problem is one of formulation science -- how you deliver the drug. And there's a reason why large-scale vaccine factories today are rare and cost billions.

    (mRNA is a fragile molecule and easily degraded, so figuring out how to deliver it orally or intranasally is a Hard Problem in drug design -- much harder than designing an mRNA COVID vaccine, apparently, which took about 48 hours early in the pandemic. The delay was caused by the requirement for safety testing, even though it was abbreviated and a screaming emergency, and by the headache of scaling up manufacturing to meet demand.)

    Designing the delivery vector is a hard problem today. Might it be solved in the 50 years intervening between now and the Mars Colony outbreak in 2070 (or even more so if it's 150 years in the future - 2170).

    In your proposed scenario, they've already got the vaccine on Earth. Wouldn't all the safety testing have been done before the mRNA vaccine was approved on Earth? Why would it require additional safety testing on Mars before it could be used there?

    196:

    Are there other ways to take the mRNA vaccine that don't require sterile disposable syringes? I got the second (Sabin) Polio vaccine by eating a sugar cube. And, with no HIV AIDS or Hepatitis (blood borne diseases would be screened out during the early colonization period) why couldn't they have old fashioned re-usable syringes & sterilize them after use?

    Sugar cube? Well, that works for something that's transmitted by the fecal-oral route, like polio, but not for something that spreads through the air. Read up about all the technology that goes into getting designer mRNA read by a human ribosome. This will answer some of your questions: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rna-vaccines-and-their-lipids

    The problem with syringes isn't necessarily sterilization, it's that the dose is 0.6 ml and the tiny little needles they use to dose this amount get dull easily. My pharmacist wife is complaining about how using a needle to mix up the vaccine (the frozen pharmaceutical has to be mixed with normal saline before dosing) can waste that needle if you're not careful. The other problem is that 1 ml is about 1 drop, so if you're dosing 0.6 of a drop and you're not careful, a rather large amount remains in the needle or syringe, and this is bad. So yes, precision, working syringes on this scale are more-or-less disposable. The best you can do, aside from a microscopic cleaning and resharpening service, is to figure out a system to recycle them easily, so that used syringes can be remade into new ones with minimal fuss.

    197:

    Re: 'How do you imagine fMRI and CRISPR could be combined? Which reactions do you want to observe in real time, and how do you imagine using CRISPR and fMRI to do that? And what do you want the nanobots to do?'

    First off - I'm not a techie - this is an exercise in hand-waving/wishful thinking. :)

    That said - why not hybrid tech? If you can get superduper micro-scanning fMRI that can 'read' at the molecular level and have it yoked to a CRISPR system that reads and 'makes' the molecules in question, you can speed up extraction, study and testing of possible compounds. The nanobots could be specialized scourers for damaged/dead tissues.

    I noticed that no one commented about my suggestion of using/developing specialized bacteria/fungi/viruses for therapeutic use to target infections. Curious as to why because I've heard this approach discussed on YT sci blogs.

    COVID-70 - someone already mentioned that some corona viruses can take anywhere from a couple of days (flu) to years to incubate (HIV). Some corona viruses can also go into stealth mode so basically the take-away is that a virus has the potential to do something completely random/weird. Fighting the previous war isn't going to work with viruses. From the blogs I've watched, it seems that viruses are the life sciences' 'quantum' weirdness: dead and alive at the same time. Dead because until they're inside an environment (host) that has an adequate supply of self-assembly parts at hand, they don't do anything. And they can stay 'dead' for millennia. Basically, viruses demonstrate the importance of the right combination of organism and environment.

    198:

    Aren't there faster orbits to get to Mars (if cost is no object)?

    Have a look at the porkchop plot I linked in #105, if you've got the delta-v you have other options but it gets into Star Trek magic drives territory fairly quickly. Getting in to low Earth orbit takes about 7.8km/s, minimum energy trajectory to Mars takes a bit over 6km/s. Earth is orbiting the sun at around 29.8km/s and Mars at 24km/s (hence minimum of 6km/s to get from here to there) and all the numbers add up rapidly out of the launch windows.

    199:

    Robert Prior @ 33:

    Now tell me that in 2170 it will be a snap to manufacture a million disposable syringes (or other sterile vaccine delivery devices) in a city-sized Mars colony!

    I suspect that by then we will have needle-less injection.

    https://www.healthline.com/health-news/needleless-vaccinations-could-help-end-diseases-020713#How-Does-Needle-free-Vaccination-Work?

    I would hope that your hypothetical colony has learned that disease outbreaks occur and that you need to be ready for them. So instead of Ontario, you have the approach of Taiwan or South Korea: plans made, equipment reserves stockpiled and maintained, and the ability to ramp up manufacturing of necessary supplies.

    If mRNA vaccines are common, then having enough delivery devices for the entire population should be part of the plan, with newly-manufactured devices going into the stockpile and older devices pulled out and used.

    When I joined the Army back in 1975 I had to get a bunch of vaccinations going through the Reception Station. They processed about a thousand of us at a time - 2 battalions of 5 - 200 man companies; with new batches about every two weeks.

    They used these things:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector

    They seem to have fallen out of general use here due to concerns about transmission of blood borne diseases, but reading the article it appears manufacturers have developed newer versions that don't have that worry so much, and that wouldn't be as much of a risk on Mars if, as I surmise, blood borne diseases were screened out among colonists early in the colonization wouldn't be that much of a factor.

    Regarding the Real Men TM issue, I don't think they'd be much of a problem. Anti-social behavior wouldn't be tolerated for being anti-survival and I expect anyone who didn't toe the line in that regard would be quickly invited to move out & shown the door.

    200:

    Jack Cohen co-authored an SF book with Ian Stewart, 'Wheelers' about First Contact where it was necessary to get a human resource from Earth orbit to Jupiter orbit in ten days or so and it was achieved without actual miracle tech. It did require a shitload of resources in-place throughout the Solar System though, to accelerate a series of "slugs" which the manned ship caught in a large butterfy-net apparatus to pick up momentum without having to expend lots of on-board fuel for the trip.

    See also the Freefall comic, here.

    http://freefall.purrsia.com/ff3500/fc03426.htm

    201:

    1 mL is not one drop. When I first started work I had to learn to meme 50 drop Pasteur pipettes using glass tubing and a fishtail burner for Widal testing. That’s 50 drops per mL. One mLis considered to be around 20 to 70 drops. A 50 drop pipette is wiry wide compared to a needle. You wouldn’t want to be injected with a needle that size.

    202:

    Problem still stands. I'll point out that my wife is trained to administer the vaccine, so I will take her word for the problem with the disposable needles.

    203:

    "Plastics (including cement) are of various degrees of utility, but there are some things you probably can't do with them - syringe needles being one."

    It is true that you don't often encounter around the home plastics which are capable of taking enough of an edge to go through skin, and which are also broken in such a way as to give them such an edge. But they do exist, and I don't see any reason why you couldn't make single use needles out of suitable plastic. They might not be as good, they would probably be better for being tapered on the outside so only the tip is really fragile, and they would still probably need a bit of extra care in use, but if they've only got to last for one use I don't see any real problem.

    But then I don't see any real problem with syringe needles anyway. How to make 2 needles: take a few cm of fine tube made of something that'll take an edge, and cut it across in the middle at an angle. So complex a venture will have to have a pretty well stocked engineers' stores, especially for things like fine tube, and insulated wire, and screws, etc, which are poor candidates for printing. There is bound to be something, and very likely a number of somethings, that you can use for making needles out of, even if it wouldn't be your ideal first choice. And few of the somethings will be so weak that you don't have a choice of a variety of sterilisation methods to allow you to use them more than once.

    Similarly for syringes themselves; they don't have to look like something you'd expect to see in a nurse's hand today, nor do they even have to use the piston principle instead of the peristaltic. When the urgency of the need so clearly overwhelms all the disadvantages of them being a bit shit, there are all sorts of things you could press into service. There's even a description in the literature of how to substitute for a syringe + needle using an eyedropper and a pin.

    As regards nuclear reactor waste heat, you'll probably want to use that for keeping the place warm rather than just dumping it. It's bloody cold on Mars. To be sure being underground helps, but I'd be surprised if it was considered practical to dig the tunnels deep enough to pick up useful heat from the planet's interior unless there was some other compelling reason. It strikes me as likely being similar to a Russian winter, only a lot worse, in that you want the heat at least as much as you want the electricity.

    204:

    whitroth @ 63: I watch a few hours of tv... a year."

    And just looking at the promo, my suspenders of disbelief snapped: if humanity is extinct, and she's been created... what the hell is a "stranger"?

    "The cake is a lie!"

    205:

    LargoMustkif @ 62: Tsk, Tsk. Reproduction by conventional means will be so oldfashioned then. Cloning it is.
    You have seen https://www.imdb.com/title/tt6292852/ , yes?

    A population of 50,000 is too small. To ensure the colony's survival, China's one child policy would be turned inside out to facilitate maximum population diversity and growth. Instead of a one child policy, there would be a multiple child policy ... a mandatory multiple child policy, to the limit of how fast technology could expand the logistics base.

    I suspect reproductive rules would be rigidly enforced by the State. Every woman might have one child fathered by their selected mate, but must also have two or more additional children "fathered" by randomly selected sperm donors ... "Quiverfull" without the paternalistic "keep 'em barefoot & pregnant" overtones.

    LGBTQ couples would have no problems obtaining requisite medical reproductive services and there would be no "racial minorities".

    206:

    I think the Kzinti Lesson applies there, "A reaction drive is a weapon effective in proportion to it's efficiency". A system capable of accelerating enough slugs to a useful velocity is not something any government is going to want orbiting overhead. And with Newton to be obeyed it would probably have to be built on the Moon (Farside would help with the previous point) which would lead to its availability for any particular trajectory being limited.

    207:

    Niala @ 96: Lavery @ 84

    Yes, having the planet as a shield stops the solar radiation by night.

    On the other hand, when you have a solar storm the particles and radiation from the sun go all the way around Mars, because of the lack of an atmosphere and a magnetic field like Earth has.

    So, the night side of Mars also get zapped during these storms.

    https://www.nasa.gov/feature/jpl/large-solar-storm-sparks-global-aurora-and-doubles-radiation-levels-on-the-martian-surface

    Mars is an awful place.

    Still, might it be less of an awful place after the sun goes down ... on those nights when there isn't a large solar storm? Enough "less awful" to make it advantageous to schedule surface work around the day/night cycle and maybe prepare to "come in out of the rain" whenever it gets stormy outside?

    What would it take to generate an artificial magnetic field for Mars, even if it's only a local one?

    208:

    Who is to say the cloning process excludes any genetic manipulation for variety?

    Anyway, my cited question regarding watching that movie still stands ;-)

    209:

    That is exactly the precedent I had in mind.

    210:

    But it's a delicate situation. Dictatorship simply isn't going to be long-term viable: too much risk of a lowly life support tech turning off the Big Boss's bedroom oxygen supply one night, leaving him breathing 100% pure nitrogen for a while. Willing cooperation is going to be at a premium.

    Note to self - should I or anyone I care about ever end up in a place that relies on life support make sure to have at least 2 devices that will sound an alarm if I have annoyed someone and they have cut off my oxygen...

    211:

    Paul @ 140: How is the politics going to work on this colony?

    I've seen a bunch of comments about how the government in this colony has total knowledge and control of everything that happens. But with hundreds of thousands of people, possibly spread over distinct habitats for redundancy, there is going to be politics of some kind.

    Also, from Earth's point of view, what is the business proposition here? Is it an actual long-term plan to colonise another planet, so all necessary support will be provided free? Or is there someone back on Earth looking at the profit-and-loss and sending orders to their Head of Colony on Mars to boost production or lose their quarterly bonus? And production of what? What could possibly be done more cheaply on Mars than on Earth?

    I can't imagine any reasonable financial case for a Mars colony of this size that pays off in less than a century, and probably longer. The American colonies had a business case based on tobacco and sugar, but unless Mars has lots of easily-mined unobtanium that's not going to work for our colony. So its got to be something more idealistic. People on Earth believe that colonising Mars is a good idea regardless of the bottom line, and are prepared to make it happen by subsidising a colony.

    The colony needs people who are brave, resourceful, and highly educated. Cultists who want to live and die for the God-King Musk need not apply. Anyone capable of making the grade will not sign up without first reading the constitution. So what does the constitution say about airlock control and monitoring? What democratic systems are used to manage the colony? How does money work? What is the criminal-justice system? How does this protect against abuse of power?

    What happens when Habitat 5 declares independence and seeks to establish trade relations (because both sides will die without stuff made by the other)?

    I'm asking these questions because its becoming obvious that the answers matter to the Exam Question. A serious public health emergency is always a test for the political power. Are we going to see a legal case in which the emergency airlock monitoring protocol is deemed unconstitutional?

    Again I'm reminded of an old Sci-Fi story I read.

    After some kind of catastrophe on Earth a colony ship manages to make it to a habitable Earth-like planet. Included in the colonists for some reason is one of those assholes who has problems getting along with the government. And especially because the colony government is overly officious & oppressive. After numerous conflicts with the colony's government - he, along with a number of his followers, steal what supplies they need and move away from the colony to set up their own independent settlement.

    After which he gets a quiet visit from the colony's dictator who brings him some necessary supplies he didn't manage to steal AND informs him that the colony is glad to see him go ... and Oh, BTW, now it's HIS JOB to become oppressive enough to foment discontent among his followers so that some of them will revolt & move out again. It's forced growth to ensure survival. "If you need any help with that, give us a call."

    I expect Habitat 5 won't declare independence, but they will move to a new location and found a daughter colony.

    I don't know what the financial basis for Mars Colonization will be. But it could be a step towards not having all our eggs in one fragile basket. I think the ultimate goal will be to populate the planet and then beyond that the rest of the Solar System. Ain't gonna' be cheap and it ain't gonna' be easy. But I don't think it's going to be impossible.

    212:

    "Note to self - should I or anyone I care about ever end up in a place that relies on life support make sure to have at least 2 devices that will sound an alarm"

    Three

    Three is the absolute minimum I'll go underwater with when I'm using a fully closed rebeather. I can't imagine any less than that in a habitat, and probably more.

    Three is the minimum, and a lot of people died figuring that out.

    Even three, while enough for a dive, is marginal for anything long term unless there's someone or something watching them for unusual behaviour. Oxygen sensors can fail in weird ways. One of them is that if they form a layer of condensate on the surface of the sensor (from say, breathing on them) they hold whatever reading they had when the layer formed. This is bad...

    213:

    The slug-driver owners are Asteroid Belter Buddhists with enough intra-Solar-system capabilities to have built their own version of Rama (but without the interstellar drive at the far end). They normally use their linear accelerators to move cargo around the Solar System. At short notice, to save the Earth from a diverted cometary impact courtesy of the blimp-city dwellers in Jupiter's upper atmosphere they start launching slugs for the Jupiter Express flight, providing enough concentrated energy in the right places to accelerate and decelerate a small manned craft to meet a very tight schedule.

    Basically if you've got enough energy infrastructure on tap in the right places then getting to Mars from Earth orbit should only take a few days. If you don't have the infrastructure already in place, tough.

    214:

    'I suspect reproductive rules would be rigidly enforced by the State. Every woman might have one child fathered by their selected mate, but must also have two or more additional children "fathered" by randomly selected sperm donors ... "Quiverfull" without the paternalistic "keep 'em barefoot & pregnant" overtones.'

    There are three possibilities: a) Intrauterine replicators as in Beta Colony (Bujold) b) The revolt by those women who do not want that many pregnancies succeeds, and the policy is abandoned (there might still be incentives, but no enforcement). c) The revolt fails, and it's Quiverfull WITH "keep 'em barefoot & pregnant".

    JHomes

    215:

    Charlie Stross @ 168:

    Does the surface radiation level decline at night?

    A lot of the worst is in the shape of high energy cosmic rays, which come from pretty much all directions and aren't screened out by the thin Martian atmosphere.

    (Earth's atmosphere is roughly as effective as a 10 metre deep pool of water, like the ones we use for storing spent fuel rods until they're cool enough to reprocess safely ...)

    So no, night won't save you. Only rock (or a thick blanket of water) will help.

    What about the other part of the idea? That it might be possible to schedule around some kind of cycle of high level & higher level radiation to minimize exposure as much as is possible when there's work that has to be done outside and there's no way to avoid going outside to do it?

    216:

    I've heard the radiation environment around Jupiter, including some of its otherwise interesting for settletments, is rather deadly. Earths van Allen belts are a walk in the park comparatively. Do you imagine they have some shielding force fields, like maybe https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cloud_City ?

    217:

    Arrg! ..."including some of its moons otherwise insteresting"... I meant.

    218:

    I would think that it's more likely that when they sign the contract to go, they promise one or two kids, with incentives for more.

    Otherwise, you're simply not going to get them to go.

    219:

    Three is the minimum, and a lot of people died figuring that out.

    Three would be better, and perhaps even 10 to allow years of use and failures.

    But I am assuming even with the advances in space travel there are still going to be strict limits on what any individual settler can take (both weight and volume).

    And there will likely be a lot of other must have things competing for that personal items allotment.

    220:

    I don't you could swing even a promise of two.

    But what you could do is make the incentive really good.

    A couple of generations ago the incentive was only some free labourers that took a good deal of growing. Pretty poor incentive in my book. People had 10 children.

    Make the incentive say, quatrer the cost of flying someone out, paid over a 40 year period. 10 kids makes for a nice retirement.

    221:

    "strict limits on what any individual settler can take"

    Oxygen sensors are something they're going to have to be making there. They only last a couple of years (unless there's some breakthrough I haven't heard about, which is possible, I stopped following oxygen sensors over a decade ago).

    They're not hard to make and they're going to need lots of them for almost everything.

    222:

    Heteromeles @ 196:

    Are there other ways to take the mRNA vaccine that don't require sterile disposable syringes? I got the second (Sabin) Polio vaccine by eating a sugar cube. And, with no HIV AIDS or Hepatitis (blood borne diseases would be screened out during the early colonization period) why couldn't they have old fashioned re-usable syringes & sterilize them after use?

    Sugar cube? Well, that works for something that's transmitted by the fecal-oral route, like polio, but not for something that spreads through the air. Read up about all the technology that goes into getting designer mRNA read by a human ribosome. This will answer some of your questions: https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rna-vaccines-and-their-lipids

    So, a sugar cube wouldn't be appropriate, but is that the only possible alternative to injection with a syringe? I only mentioned sugar cubes as an example from my own experience.

    IIRC, my most recent smallpox vaccination they just poked me with a multi-point lancet that put a drop of liquid on the resulting broken skin. (Come to think about it, I think that's how they did it for my first smallpox vaccination when I was a child).

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZAqnsFa3VQ0

    Someone else mentioned using nasal sprays to administer a vaccine and I've had prescribed drugs (or medicines) administered by nasal spray. The point is that disposable syringes are NOT the only possible way to administer a vaccine.

    See also:
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector

    I got a bunch of vaccinations that way my second day in the Army.

    The problem with syringes isn't necessarily sterilization, it's that the dose is 0.6 ml and the tiny little needles they use to dose this amount get dull easily. My pharmacist wife is complaining about how using a needle to mix up the vaccine (the frozen pharmaceutical has to be mixed with normal saline before dosing) can waste that needle if you're not careful. The other problem is that 1 ml is about 1 drop, so if you're dosing 0.6 of a drop and you're not careful, a rather large amount remains in the needle or syringe, and this is bad. So yes, precision, working syringes on this scale are more-or-less disposable. The best you can do, aside from a microscopic cleaning and resharpening service, is to figure out a system to recycle them easily, so that used syringes can be remade into new ones with minimal fuss.

    Would you need to mix a frozen pharmaceutical if you're manufacturing it in a "brick factory" on site? Why would you freeze it if you're going to use it right away? The reason we freeze it here on Earth is because of the length of the distribution chain.

    223:

    JHomes @ 214:

    'I suspect reproductive rules would be rigidly enforced by the State. Every woman might have one child fathered by their selected mate, but must also have two or more additional children "fathered" by randomly selected sperm donors ... "Quiverfull" without the paternalistic "keep 'em barefoot & pregnant" overtones.'

    There are three possibilities:
    a) Intrauterine replicators as in Beta Colony (Bujold)
    b) The revolt by those women who do not want that many pregnancies succeeds, and the policy is abandoned (there might still be incentives, but no enforcement).
    c) The revolt fails, and it's Quiverfull WITH "keep 'em barefoot & pregnant".

    JHomes

    Or d) "You did read the EULA before signing it didn't you? Subsequent generations, of course, would have been born into the system and would be "educated" in its rightness from nursery school onward.

    224:

    whitroth @ 218: I would think that it's more likely that when they sign the contract to go, they promise one or two kids, with incentives for more.

    Otherwise, you're simply not going to get them to go.

    Change that to not allowed to go. Sign it or stay here on Earth. "We've got more volunteers than we have seats on the Starships. You need us more than we need you."

    225:

    I disagree. They're not going to even look at uneducated, there's plenty of women with degrees... and if they're expected to pop out 10 kids....

    Sorry, but I don't think you have a clue what you're talking about.

    Let me talk about my kids. One is having kids. I have one granddaughter 9 yrs old. My daughter is less than a month from popping out #2. She's got good medical care.

    She's also got gestational diabetes, and several other issues that are giving her real pause about any more kids. When her mom, my ex, was pregnant with the two of them it was bed rest for most of an entire summer.

    I suggest that ninety-five out of 97 women, if told they'll pop out ten, will go to the Russian or Chinese or other folks putting colonies up, with no such requirement.

    226:

    Imagine you put the AR goggles on your head. The computer overlays your observed reality with an exactly perfect diagram of where to cut , where to sew. It process images and diagnoses on the fly . Or the automated surgeon just does it while explaining to the operator what it is doing and occasionally asking for permission

    It’s not far off actually. We already have AI systems that can diagnose and systems that are getting really good at processing images in real time and systems that can do the display, just need to link them all together. It’s bascially how the new gen of military fighters work, except that it looks like we have an AI that just totally fly it on its own. And medicine is one of the harder ones since you can’t specifically design the components to be friendly to that kind of process, like you can say fixing an electric car

    I think the days of people having to be trained for years to know what to are going to be well passed by the time we have a Mars colony . Mostly those colonists are going to be following very detailed instructions from machines or entirely automating things

    227:

    The limit on population growth on a colony is child care and education, not wombs. Nobody is going to want semi feral unsupervised kids running around, that is a good way for population growth to go abruptly negative. And if you have AI good enough to automate that part, you do not really need children at all, just build Moar Robots. Frankly, I would expect the demographics to be that the colony imports fully educated labor from earth in large numbers, and also leaks a simply frightening percentage of its youth on the return flights, despite the fact that running off to earth requires an enormous commitment to weightlifting and other fitness regimes.

    228:

    Your option d will, I think, turn out to be some legalese and spin wrapped around my option c. The EULA means nothing unless enforced, and enforcement turns into option c unless the revolt succeeds and it is option b.

    To reply to another of your posts, the number of women educated enough to be desirable immigrants, who are also desperate enough to go that they would agree, is going to be very small. Mostly, they don't need you more than you need them.

    JHomes.

    229:

    "I'd suggest your numbers in the healthcare professions are low, although it's a bit hard to estimate by how much. There are two elements to that."

    Hmm. I was about to write that I thought they were too high.

    Assume the colony has almost no people over 65, and none at all over 70. (It's only 2060) Health care for over 65s is about half the health spend for NZ, I think, so I assume it's the same for the UK.

    And assume the colony has no-one who had a detectable significant medical condition when they left Earth, with an average on-colony time of 15 years. That's another very large % of the health spend gone.

    Maybe my points about this and yours would cancel out?

    230:
    That said, martian soil has a fair amount of perchlorate in it, so digging on Mars is about as safe as digging into an old USAF toxic waste dump. If you want to tunnel on Mars, making the walls nontoxic (how?) is a necessary chore.

    The Martian crust is mostly tholeiitic basalt, I think (Wikipedia agrees). That means the waste heaps generated by your tunnelling will contain large quantities of both iron oxides and quartz.

    Iron plus CO2 plus energy means you can manufacture steel (which you're going to want anyway); permanent reinforced linings for the walls are unlikely to be regarded as a wasteful use of the energy. (Supplies of iron and CO2 being, essentially, limitless, the primary concern limiting the quantity of steel you manufacture will be the overall constraints on the base's energy supply.)

    If you're worried about corrosion of the steel, then you put a protective layer of quartz between the metal and the Martian bedrock. (You don't want to make the internal walls out of quartz and skip the iron, because silicosis is nasty.)

    Boring machines that construct the walls of the tunnel behind them (from prefabricated panels) as they go already exist, so that of the process is taken care of.

    231:

    JHomes @ 214 : "a) Intrauterine replicators as in Beta Colony (Bujold)

    You can forget about those artificial wombs, because we're still very far from understanding how pregnancies "work". We're not even sure about the role of the placenta.

    I doubt that we'll know much more in the next 50 years.

    In fact we don't know just how much human genetic material will be affected by the long, "exposed" trip between Earth and Mars. It would be much safer to have the colony grow by immigration only, during the first century.

    232:

    "You can forget about those artificial wombs,"

    I don't really want to argue with that. I just included them to cover all the bases, lest someone ask "What about..."

    JHomes

    233:

    So complex a venture will have to have a pretty well stocked engineers' stores, especially for things like fine tube, and insulated wire, and screws, etc, which are poor candidates for printing.

    Which gets back to my point about there is still a freaking huge BOM. For screws alone. (For larger ones you might bring threaded rods of a meter or two each with a special tool for cutting them down into an appropriate screw or bolt.

    Needles come in various sizes. I really like the super fine ones my dentist uses and most medical shots use these days. But when I did try out another dentist a while back I discovered not everyone was using the newer slim designs and it freaking hurt when jambbed into my gum. And there is a current vaccine that requires a larger needle due to the viscosity of the medium and people are complaining.

    So all fat needles or multiple choices.

    234:

    Imagine you put the AR goggles on your head. The computer overlays your observed reality with an exactly perfect diagram of where to cut , where to sew. It process images and diagnoses on the fly

    I'm not a surgeon or even a medical doc but it is my understanding that one reasons surgery is so hard to master is that people are not close to being uniform internally. Especially down under 1cm. It is my understanding that blood vessels grow in a somewhat random fractal sort of way once you get past the major ones.

    235:

    Boring machines that construct the walls of the tunnel

    And getting that there with spare part is going to be a heavy lift to say the least.

    236:

    Do you have to freeze it? Yes, the lifespan of the mRNA vaccines once made is on the order of a few hours. In general, keeping these stupid things from falling apart is why molecular biology and genetics labs routinely have '80 freezers. It's not just for keeping DNA and cells, it's also for keeping the horribly expensive and fragile RNA-based tools.

    Keeping things cold is less hard on Mars, but then again, humans working at Martian temperatures pretty much makes up for this.

    237:

    The factor I think we haven't got in this account is the change in the proportion of healthcare to the overall economy over time, which is relevant because it's universally increasing now.

    A key factor that most people don't get is that medical specialities suffer from Baumol's cost disease (an economic, not a medical, syndrome).

    Loosely: medicine is resistant to efficiency improvements. If a GP can conduct a patient consultation in 10 minutes, you can't double her productivity by running patients past her at five minute intervals: it's limited by human-to-human interactions that aren't automatable.

    Now, there is room for improvement around the margins, with better/cheaper/faster diagnostic tests. If everyone's genome is personally sequenced and on file, then screening for known gene-linked conditions becomes extremely easy, for example. There's promising work on pre-emptive detection of cancer by deep analysis of the individual's genome, and IIRC very early detection of actual cancers via circulating DNA traces is another developing field. Sequencing of their gut microbiome may make it possible to detect stomach ulcers (H. pylorii infection) or ulcerative colitis, or to predict and pre-emptively treat other immune or metabolic disorders.

    But that's on the diagnostic end.

    On the treatment side, some commenters have noted Japanese efforts to robotize nursing. To which all I can say is "yeah, right". Robot laundry carts helping deliver fresh sheets around the ward are one thing, but a robot that can coax a dementia patient into swallowing their medicine is something else entirely (and: if you can do that, then we're getting into magic singularity AI territory again, which I don't think is plausible).

    Most of the growth in healthcare costs since 1980 is down to better diagnostics (lots of them!) leading to the targeting of specific previously-fatal cancers with highly focussed treatments, notably tailored immunotherapy (which is pricey as hell). We're also dealing with more "biseases of affluence" such as diabetes and heart attack survivors (many more infarction events are survivable today thanks to prompt treatment and stents). I'm guessing that type II diabetes will be less prevalent on Mars (if only because of less use of antibiotics and less availability of junk food) and the expensive-in-1980-2020 diagnostics will be cheap as chips and ubiquitous by 2070. But the nursing and treatment end isn't going to go away, and may if anything increase (more cancer survivors in need of rehab/physiotherapy and aftercare).

    So let's go with 1980-level healthcare costs as a fraction of GDP per capita as a baseline; call it 8%.

    238:

    It is my understanding that blood vessels grow in a somewhat random fractal sort of way

    Not just blood vessels. One of my spaniels needed pretty major surgery as a puppy when she got an intussusception - basically think of how you ball socks, and then think of that happening to the intestine. Whilst they had her open though, the surgeon found that part of her intestine naturally branched in two, and the two branches then rejoined a little further on. That part seemed to be fine, so he left it alone and just mentioned it to me afterwards as something to be aware of. As he said, no-one knows exactly how often your gut develops like that, because they wouldn't find it unless they had to open you up. She lived for another 12 years with no further gut problems, and eventually died of cancer.

    Just one of the many reasons why I take issue with the "divine creation" folks. Or even "intelligent design" - if anything about anyone's body was "designed", the evidence is that the designer was spectacularly stupid.

    239:

    @193:

    Are there other ways to take the mRNA vaccine that don't require sterile disposable syringes? I got the second (Sabin) Polio vaccine by eating a sugar cube.

    That was an attenuated/inactivated virus vaccine. It could survive the harsh environment of the digestive system because that is a normal infection route for polio -- it has evolved to survive that. mRNA is a very unstable molecule. It's not going to get through the digestive system. And then there are the needleless injection routes people have pointed out above.

    I think Charlie's pessimism about the nasal route may not be justified. The lungs give you a fairly direct route to immunologically active cells, and one not full of acids and digestive enzymes.

    @197:

    That said - why not hybrid tech? If you can get superduper micro-scanning fMRI that can 'read' at the molecular level and have it yoked to a CRISPR system that reads and 'makes' the molecules in question, you can speed up extraction, study and testing of possible compounds. The nanobots could be specialized scourers for damaged/dead tissues.

    I apologize -- in order to save time, I'm going to be harsh. None of this makes any sense. It wants MRI and CRISPR to do things totally unlike what fMRI and CRISPR do. Sorry.

    COVID-70 - someone already mentioned that some corona viruses can take anywhere from a couple of days (flu) to years to incubate (HIV).

    Neither flu nor HIV is a coronavirus.

    240:

    All these chores--suit prep and maintenance, prepping the suit-wearer, and so forth, routinely gets ignored in SFF, but it's an integral part of their use.

    Yup. This is why my go-to for a Martian-specific job is "robot wrangler". Lots of human-shaped robots on the surface, lots of AR/VR headsets for the folks controlling them underground. For basic tasks -- "walk half a kilometer up that dirt track to the antenna array over that hill" -- the robots can be left to their own autonomous guidance, but for fiddly stuff -- "I need to monkeywrench this corroded connector without destroying the frame it's mounted on, remove the panel, install a replacement, and schlep the broken one to the repair depot" -- a human in the driving seat is useful. The humanoid robot can be kept out on the surface in constant shift-work 24.5x7, no tracking perchlorate dirt into the airlocks: it also probably weighs less to ship from Earth than a space suit (in the early days -- why make them adult human size rather than, say, 80-100cm tall?) and doesn't need all those pesky internal pressure bladders and seals.

    So no, most people won't have a space suit: or if they do, it'll be a basic survival suit good for one half-hour surface sortie (to walk to an evacuation craft) or 24 hours inside a depressurized habitat module with an air hose hook-up.

    241:

    I'm just astonished that in this day and age pharmaceuticals for injection are still distributed in glass vials with rubber tops in inactive/powder form that need to have sterile saline added and then be loaded into individual syringes for injection.

    Back in the late 1980s that was already archaic for most purposes, with doses delivered from the factory in preloaded syringes or single-dose glass ampoulles (break neck of ampoulle, stick syringe in, suck everything out, and inject). (Special exception: insulin, where the type I diabetic user is trained to monitor their blood sugar levels and draw the correct dose as/when they need one.)

    I suspect the difficulty of preparing the Pfizer vaccine is down to it having been developed in a screaming rush without time for the usual product engineering work to make it easier to deliver.

    242:

    Three is the absolute minimum I'll go underwater with when I'm using a fully closed rebeather. I can't imagine any less than that in a habitat, and probably more.

    A nuance of life in the Mars colony just clarified itself for me:

    You know how, this century, the condition of the internet has forced us all to become our own network security administrators (or suffer the consequences)?

    The condition of life of Mars will force everyone to become the equivalent of a professional SCUBA diver, with respect to life support equipment -- or risk dying because someone else got sloppy.

    This is going to lead to some odd psychological effects, notably: interpersonal trust issues, OCD, PTSD, and paranoia.

    243:

    I think it's worth describing how one synthesizes an mRNA, since it's evident that many of the commenters here don't understand the process.

    First, you design the sequence, that is, the ordered list of A, C, G, U that will be in the RNA. That is all informatics -- you do it on a computer, and we know how to do it. Then you synthesize a DNA molecule with that sequence (replacing Us with Ts, and making it double-stranded). This is done in DNA synthesis machines, which exist now. Right now here on Earth you can have a DNA molecule of a few hundred bases synthesized in two days for a few hundred dollars. (That is sometimes called a cDNA, not really accurate in this case, but it's a convenient abbreviation, so I will use it). And the Mars colony has that technology, because they use it for their cancer vaccines. You do this ONCE for any vaccine, so so far Mars doesn't need anything it doesn't already have.

    Now you insert that cDNA into a self-replicated bacterial plasmid vector. You put this self-replicating plasmid into a lab strain of E coli bacteria. You grow the plasmid-bearing bugs up in nutrient broth. (The nutrients E coli needs are a subset of the ones humans need, so Mars has those.) Now you extract the plasmid from the bacteria, a standard operation that every molecular biology lab in the world does on a daily basis.

    Now, you mix the purified plasmid with ATP, CTP, GTP, UTP, and cap (another chemical -- not important) and a thermostable phage RNA polymerase in a buffered salt solution and incubate at 50C for half an hour. (Quick note here: some of you will have read descriptions of the very complicated mechanisms by which mRNA is synthesized in a human cell. Those are irrelevant for the in vitro reaction.) We don't need huge amounts of this phage polymerase because it is catalytic, and it is easy to prepare in bulk. Making a lifetime supply for the entire Mars colony is like two days work for one person.

    The plasmid vector we put our cDNA into has a recognition sequence for the phage polymerase, so once you mix these things in a tube, the polymerase makes mRNA. You purify this. Again, a quick, easy, routine step.

    This tech is old and routine. I first made mRNA in 1987 in essentially this way. (It was not easy to synthesize DNA sequences of several hundred bases in 1987 -- we had to copy them from a living source -- and the phage polymerases we had in those days were not thermostable, but otherwise nothing important has changed.)

    Now comes the hard part: to make a vaccine from this, you have to package this so that you can get it into a human body somewhere where cells of the immune system will see it. In the current Covid-19 mRNA vaccines that means the mRNA gets wrapped up in a protective lipid (= fatty) layer. This is where the research on mRNA vaccines will happen in the next ten years or so.

    244:

    On reproduction, two points the (mostly male) commentariat seem to have missed:

    a) We don't know the prognosis for how safe/viable human gestation will be on Mars. That might prove to be a show-stopper, absent the availability of centrifuge accommodation (which will be eye-wateringly expensive if it's to be reasonably comfortable for a nine month confinement for multiple pregnant women and medical attendants).

    b) Pregnancy on Earth, even when nothing is going wrong, is metabolically marginal: it puts an enormous drain on the pregnant woman's ability to eat/digest/nourish for two. The aftermath is going to be problematic, too: I see no prospect of raising cows or goats on Mars, so no formula milk substitute -- it's going to be human lactation all the way (whether direct breast feeding or using wet nurses or pump-and-freeze).

    Basically, having kids is an incredibly labour-intensive process: I think we can approximate one baby to 2 years' full-time labour, and then schooling and kid-wrangling thereafter to 1 full-time worker per 4 kids. (There's a reason the Kibbutz system -- which I alluded to earlier -- relied on a creche system.) Note that Mars comes with special problems that don't apply on Earth, like keeping toddlers out of the airlocks and keeping teenagers from running wild. All of which spells "more oversight".

    4 children per female colonist is therefore probably equivalent to 20-30 adult-years of work, ie. roughly half to two thirds of her adult productivity.

    So in terms of a growing Mars colony it's cheaper to import young-adult labour from Earth, or use a creche system from kindergarten age onwards, with older teenagers trusted to keep the toddlers out of trouble. Which comes with its own special social problems, as (again) the Kibbutz system demonstrated: creche peer-groups there tended to socialize each other as siblings, so exogamy became an issue when they reached adulthood (kids from the same creche had an aversion to pairing up).

    But there's also a third problem:

    You're young, female, and your partner wants to emigrate to Mars. It is going to mean: having multiple pregnancies (assuming you even can: pregnancy is risky) while living underground, during pregnancy you'll be in a confinement that would strike a Victorian housewife as harsh (10 square metres of floor space in a noisy centrifugal prenatal ward), your babies will be taken away once weaned and raised collectively in a creche ...

    Do you (a) agree to emigrate to Mars under these conditions, or (b) say "fuck that" and ditch your man?

    Either way, I can't see Mars getting many female settlers who agree to those conditions.

    Upshot: either way you cut it, for the first few generations Mars will be a population sink, and most new faces will come from Earth.

    245:

    Do you imagine they have some shielding force fields, like maybe https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cloud_City ?

    No.

    Turns out that high energy cosmic rays are so high energy that you need a multi-tesla magnetic field to deflect them -- something we normally only get inside an MRI machine using superconducting electromagnets. It's too heavy/bulky for a space ship, never mind an entire surface colony under a dome.

    Underground is the only practical way forward.

    246:

    I'm gonna say "checklists" again. The simple, proven technology to prevent people from fucking up. The key to making it work is that everyone needs to be empowered to call anyone out for missing a step.

    https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/6667514-the-checklist-manifesto is an easy read that covers the bases (avoiding big river links).

    247:

    I am completely flabberghasted why people so often (as in this case) consider only extreme positions. Breeding like rabbits ('quiverful') is obviously infeasible, not just because intelligent women will object, but because it requires more resources than have yet been built. But that doesn't mean an unsustainable reproduction ratio, as I pointed out in #117 and OGH did in #175.

    The solution would be good creches near workplaces and communal child care, quite a lot of which can be done by (relatively) elderly or handicapped people. Young children learn a LOT from being told stories (fantasy and real), including language and social customs. The 'problem' has been solved, fer chrissake, and we know how multi-degree women respond when such solutions are available. The result is that breeding couples would need to adjust their working lives for their children, and spend a considerable amount of their 'non-working' with them.

    But they could also gain at least a couple of hours a day from not having long, congested commutes, dealing with user-hostile retail systems, fighting our immense bureaucracy (gummint and private) etc.

    Older children would spend a lot of time with people working on things they (the children) are interested in. Yes, that takes resources, but the result is often that a child goes into advanced education with a clear objective in mind.

    It's feasible. It's been done. We know how relevant women react. No artificial wombs, robot nannies, etc. needed. It takes planning, resources and social engineering, and could easily take up (say) 25% of the 'GDP' - but that's what it does today, on earth.

    248:

    Sign it or stay here on Earth. "We've got more volunteers than we have seats on the Starships. You need us more than we need you."

    You do know that roughly 70% of conceptions end in a miscarriage (that is, a spontaneous abortion)? And it's even higher among over-30s, or women in high-stress environments, or radiation exposure, or, or ...

    Also, a first pregnancy is often the only one, or nearly the only one. Gestational diabetes is only one of the happy fun complications that can kill you: there's hypertension, there's rhesus incompatability (in second and subsequent pregnancies), there's a breech birth (how are you going to handle surgical/caesarian deliveries in a low gee environment with limited medical facilities?) and so on.

    Worst case, in the late 18th/early 19th century in England there was roughly a 5% chance of maternal death with each pregnancy. While much of that was down to "no germ theory of disease, idiot doctors didn't wash their hands", there's no guarantee that initial outcomes on Mars will be any better because there will be other deadly situations. (I mentioned an elevated cancer risk: what do you think chemotherapy does to fertility? Or a developing fetus?) If you want ten babies on Mars per woman, you may well end up with only a 30% survival rate at the end of that sequence.

    Not. Going. To. Happen.

    249:

    As I have M.E, I thought I would comment on long covid. If long covid is equivalent to bad M.E, I would not trust anyone with it with any important task and in a Mars colony any task is an important task. Thus a sufferer would be useless. Thus it depends how bad it is, some people with M.E still have jobs. I on the other hand can hardly do anything, and this doesn't just include physical tasks, but mental ones. Even engaging on this blog is a strain. I think it would difficult to trust the abilities of anyone with long covid in the context of a Mars colony. If the authorities were euthanasia happy, as suggested, they would all be in danger

    250:

    And assume the colony has no-one who had a detectable significant medical condition when they left Earth, with an average on-colony time of 15 years.

    Just getting to Mars is going to give every colonist a significant radiation dose. Elevated cancer risk from the get-go. Also osteoporosis and muscle wastage from microgravity en route, eyeball deformation (apparently ISS astronauts routinely need a new opthalmological prescription after 3-6 months in space), and any new conditions we don't know about yet that are specific to Mars (I can foresee: environment with pervasive toxic chemicals, both Martian perchlorates and lots of crap like VOCs outgassing under Martian conditions from materials shipped from Earth).

    251:

    I was assuming that you were sustainable colony in your original post. I was deliberately ignoring how well gestation will go because, it it doesn't go well, a sustainable colony is impossible.

    Based on my experience and that of people around me, yes, 2 years' of one adult's working time plus 25% until adulthood is about right. There is no reason for that 25% to be shouldered by the woman alone, even in an atomic couple and, in my social groups, it rarely is. The semi-communal systems I am thinking of are less regimented than kibbutz ones, much closer to traditional multi-family households, and don't have the same problems (which is not to say they have no problems).

    I don't see an insuperable problem with either goats or space, IF things are done right. Automated tunnelling gives arbitrary amounts of space, and the resources to fit it out (and heat it!) are the problem. Goats don't need much space, can be fed on the haulms from food crops, are psychologically useful for small children, as well as for milk, meat and perhaps more. Similarly giving people room to get away from the crowding is feasible.

    Yes, that means NOT packing in as many people as possible, amd hence expending a lot more per person on the environment (say, twice as much), but that is partially compensated by the improved productivity (not least by needing fewer psychiatrists). And it does assume that the power supply problem has been solved.

    And, obviously, it is women who volunteer to become colonists, and choose a partner from a much larger pool of available men. Nothing new there, either.

    Yes, for the initial years, it will be a population sink, but I don't see it as a long-term issue IF a colony is feasible at all (which I am doubtful of).

    252:

    Charlie Stross @ 244: "Do you (a) agree to emigrate to Mars under these conditions, or (b) say "fuck that" and ditch your man? Either way, I can't see Mars getting many female settlers who agree to those conditions. Upshot: either way you cut it, for the first few generations Mars will be a population sink, and most new faces will come from Earth."

    Do you realize that you are describing a male-only Martian colony?

    The colony wants people with incredible skill sets and discipline to survive.

    There will be many ladies with incredible skill sets who will want to go to Mars but only if they get, by themselves, an irreversible sterilisation before leaving Earth. If they have such skill sets and a Dream of Space they're not fools and they realize that the trip from Earth to Mars will most probably irradiate their genetic inheritance.

    So, if you throw away those forced breeding contracts you might get a balanced (and sterile) Mars population instead of something our of "Ethan of Athos" by Lois McMaster Bujold.

    253:

    Charlie You do know that roughly 70% of conceptions end in a miscarriage (that is, a spontaneous abortion)? This is my standard argument against the religious fuckwits going on about "abortion is evil" ... apparently it's different if "god" does it, yeah.

    254:
    This is my standard argument against the religious fuckwits going on about "abortion is evil" ... apparently it's different if "god" does it, yeah.

    I've always been curious how they deal with natural human clones, AKA identical twins. If "life begins at conception" (a statement that I, as a biologist, declare unequivocally false) and a soul attaches to a zygote when sperm meets egg, what's the process when that zygote splits up to become two or more, which develop into separate human individuals? Does God have a supplemental soul supply from which he picks out the extra soul needed for the twin? Does one twin get the soul that was attached at fertilization and the other a new soul? Or do we recycle the first one and each twin gets a brand-new soul?

    I'm sure that the theologians out there have standard answers to these question, but it is painfully obvious that most of the abortion-is-murder crowd is unaware that the problem exists.

    255:

    If long covid is equivalent to bad M.E, I would not trust anyone with it with any important task

    Yes, absolutely.

    I know some folks with varying degrees of ME and it's crippling: not just physically debilitating, but the "brain fog" that goes with it also renders the sufferer unable to handle complex cognitive tasks. One person I know with multiple sclerosis was initially misdiagnoses with ME: the symptoms overlap.

    If 10-20% of a Mars colony end up with long covid, the colony will instantly be in a sustainability crisis. Shipping 100,000 disabled people back to Earth would likely be a non-starter (a thousand Starship launches, plus tanker refuelling for Earth transfer orbit = about 5000 launches).

    But forget euthanasia: unless everyone not personally incapacitated is willing to see friends or family members killed, it's guaranteed to trigger a mutiny/revolution.

    One ray of hope: being able to tweak habitat oxygen levels may help significantly, especially for those where the dominant factor is post-covid lung damage. And the low gravity environment may make it less debilitating.

    256:

    Do you realize that you are describing a male-only Martian colony?

    Alaska or California during the gold rush. See also: cribhouses, mail-order brides, and a gender ratio of 4:1 being "normal".

    Personally I expect the first 10-20 years of Mars emigrants to be old, highly skilled, experienced Astronauts -- they may already be grandparents, they're certainly not planning on having babies. Low gravity will be easy on their joints and cardiovascular system and they may not live as long as they would back home, but they'll be On! Mars! and living the dream, etc. (Look at ISS astronauts today and you'll see precious few who are younger than mid-thirties, and many in their fifties.)

    The first pregnancy on Mars won't happen for a decade or more and will be as much a publicity stunt and a live-participation human medical experiment as anything else, probably following lots of successful animal experiments.

    257:

    The "religious fuckwits" aren't actually serious about the position that life begins at conception, souls, and so forth: they're mostly hypocrites attempting to justify a white supremacist patriarchy based on the oppression of women. This becomes clear very rapidly when you follow them down the rabbit hole.

    258:
    The "religious fuckwits" aren't actually serious about the position that life begins at conception, souls, and so forth: they're mostly hypocrites attempting to justify a white supremacist patriarchy based on the oppression of women. This becomes clear very rapidly when you follow them down the rabbit hole.

    Yes, but they feel the need to produce rhetoric that purports to justify their position. And it's fun to watch them twist in the wind when confronted with an argument for which they lack a prefabricated answer.

    259:

    Yes, but nevertheless can we not have that discussion here? THIS IS FOR THE COVID HITS A MARS COLONY DISCUSSION, DAMMIT.

    260:

    Lavery @ 254 : "Does God have a supplemental soul supply from which he picks out the extra soul needed for the twin? Does one twin get the soul that was attached at fertilization and the other a new soul? Or do we recycle the first one and each twin gets a brand-new soul?"

    Relax! Philip Jose Farmer has all of this covered in his Riverworld series. There is no god and the souls that do exist are artificial "wathans" created originally by space aliens in a distant solar system. The spâce aliens want to share this neat invention so they have installed wathan generators under the surface of promising planets. They have also installed wathan-catchers.

    261:

    Philip Jose Farmer has all of this covered in his Riverworld series.

    That sounds like he was taking the piss out of Scientology.

    262:

    The condition of life of Mars will force everyone to become the equivalent of a professional SCUBA diver, with respect to life support equipment -- or risk dying because someone else got sloppy.

    That's why I was assuming that space suits (maybe "mars suits" would be a better term) would be standard gear, and a 'solved problem'.

    Everyone would have a mars suit*, even if it was just a basic one that allows them to get from one part of the city to a safer part if/when there's a leak. The more paranoid/realistic would have better models. Possibly form clubs swapping tips on cleaning seals, hacks to improve the suits, and so on.

    *Actually, if the goal is 'survive for a short time' then maybe you don't need a whole suit. I suspect a 'breath mask' would be adequate, with an insulated coverall, gloves, and boots.

    263:

    Yes. But, as you said previously, that's a research station or a building team, not a proper colony. I don't see that which it is changes the effect of COVID much, because I would assume that its human resource safety margin would be no higher. I still think that any hope of survival would be adoption of (wartime) military thinking - yes, even people deliberately left to die or even sent to certain death. Experience is that people will accept that if it really IS necessary and done 'fairly' (i.e. according to need, not prejudice).

    If that is done, then the questions are (a) what is the best strategy for maximising the chance of the colony surviving, (b) will that be enough and (c) whether and how the military control will be dismantled afterwards?

    The huge difference would be that such treatment (including euthanasia) of old and disable people might be tolerated in extremis, but that of children would not be. There are a good many societies that have practiced the former (in effect), but the latter is rarer and normally done only with newborns. As you say, once it splits into 'them' and 'us', the colony is doomed. Children MIGHT be conscripted into the wards, though, in the same way that they were and are sent to war by their parents.

    264:

    Freezer space. You can store of lot of doses of an mRNA vaccine in a single -80 deg C freezer if you pack and dispatch it in small concentrated vials and have the contents diluted at point-of-use with saline before injection. The vaccine needs to be processed and handled at the distribution locations anyway, brought up to room temps, batch numbers logged and more so the extra preparation steps aren't that onerous compared to the many more freezers, transport flights, dry-ice cartons etc. needed if it is sent out of the factory in ready-for-use one-shot syringes.

    265:
    Relax! Philip Jose Farmer has all of this covered in his Riverworld series. There is no god and the souls that do exist are artificial "wathans" created originally by space aliens in a distant solar system. The spâce aliens want to share this neat invention so they have installed wathan generators under the surface of promising planets. They have also installed wathan-catchers.

    Yes. I remember hating that part of the books. (Not that I much liked the rest of Riverworld.)

    But, we're not supposed to talk about that. So here's a nice review on mRNA vaccines focused on the hard part: How to package the mRNA and deliver it so that immune system sees it. Figure 2 in particular is helpful, showing how the mRNA is packaged to improve survivability.

    266:

    Lavery @ 265 : "Figure 2 in particular is helpful, showing how the mRNA is packaged to improve survivability."

    I like the fact that they put an interrogation point next to "Carrier sensing", above the cationic, lipid, cholesterol nanoparticle. Only fools are positive!

    267:

    LAvery & Charlie The "religious fuckwits" actually includes the Official, Mandated & Promulgated Policy of the RC church ... And they are NOT serious about this? Actually - can we have this discussion in the next thread, or something, or we really will wander off down a different rabbit-hole.

    268:

    re: if you can build robot nannies then by definition you've got strong-enough-to-fool-humans general-purpose AI, and all bets are off.

    That's assuming "nanny" is a unitary job. Robots will hand parts of the job. There'll be a human supervisor (teacher), and kids will supervise each other for some parts (can't separate by age for this to work). Think Kibbutz, but with a bit less ideology and parents to go home to at night, though that's wrong too. OTOH, for this to work well you need more than one teacher/30 kids. 1 to 15 is about right, though 1 to 10 or 12 is better. To make it economic you, as you suggested, have the kids doing useful work. It's hard to predict quite what that would be, as circumstances are a bit...vague. Motivation is crucial, and difficult. And the work needs to be both useful and to prepare them form more advanced work as they get older.

    Getting that right is going to be a real challenge.

    269:

    The first pregnancy on Mars won't happen for a decade or more and will be as much a publicity stunt and a live-participation human medical experiment as anything else, probably following lots of successful animal experiments.

    How much is known, or at least what are the scientific opinions of the affects of low gravity from conception to adulthood? It seems to me to be the greatest obstacle to maintaining a self-sustaining civilization on a planet like Mars.

    270:

    Freezer space

    Beat me to it, thanks.

    Since they just had to discard a batch of Moderna vaccine here because a bunch of people had bad allergic reactions to it, I'd suggest that keeping the production chain as short as possible is probably a good thing from a safety standpoint.

    Besides which, this is only for the mRNA vaccines. The Oxford vaccine is intended to be single dose, ship around the world. Unfortunately it doesn't have as high an immunization rate as the mRNA vaccine, but that's just luck. The useful thing about the mRNA vaccine is how fast it can be created and distributed, even if that distribution is limited. Being able to get high-efficacy vaccines into health care workers and first responders has a huge multiplier effect.

    There's also the secondary problem is figuring out what happens to a syringe when you freeze and thaw it. Hopefully all the coefficients of thermal contraction are roughly equivalent so that the darned thing is still useful when it thaws.

    And...we're back to Mars again, where every air lock has simultaneous problems with deadly atmosphere, lethally low pressure, often colder temperatures, toxic chemicals, AND dust on the other side. Keeping the seals working is going to be a huge chore, especially if the temperatures change radically every time the airlock is cycled. Are they going to have to see if it's possible to make something like a Tesla valve or a labyrinth seal that works on gases in every hallway leading up to an outside door, just to minimize the number of moving parts that have to be maintained?

    If they went with conventional airlocks, it would certainly be profitable to have the polymer synthesis and seal fabrication contract for the colony....

    271:
    How much is known, or at least what are the scientific opinions of the affects of low gravity from conception to adulthood?

    Actually, that's a great question. Probably the best answers I've seen come from The Expanse, which is, OK, FICTION, but it is perhaps the best scientifically informed fiction I have seen, ever.

    I'd say the biggest problem with The Expanse as a source on this question is that the story depends on the possibility of solving the problem, so they have to start from the premise that it CAN be solved.

    272:

    Don't forget, it's not just the question of how living off Earth affects human life cycles. There's the question about how it affects the life cycle of every other species we bring along, AND how it affects the life cycle of every bit of technology we need.

    Realize also that it took people over 10,000 years to figure out how to settle the deep-water Pacific Islands, for pretty much the same reasons: there was the problem of getting to remote islands, then there was the problem of getting enough food to stay alive once you got there, then the problem of getting enough food to feed a family, all the while figuring out replacements for all the bits of kit you no longer had the raw materials for, like decent stone for tools. And these people weren't stupid, and they were dealing with a simpler problem, in that they didn't have to worry about generating a breathable atmosphere, decent radiation shielding, gravity simulation, or accelerating everything up around 3 g to get it off the surface of the Earth.

    273:

    “ The condition of life of Mars will force everyone to become the equivalent of a professional SCUBA diver, with respect to life support equipment -- or risk dying because someone else got sloppy.”

    They talk about that in the Expanse-Belter culture. They basically turn it into personal accountability similar to skydiving or gun safety . No matter who claims what , it is on you tk be the final certifier of the safety of your personal life support . They also figure anyone who can’t do that probably isn’t a big loss and may even be a risk to the community

    274:

    The Oxford vaccine is intended to be single dose, ship around the world.

    Really? The clinical trials were for two doses, with the unexpected discovery that having a half-size first dose seemed to increase immunity into the 90% range

    275:
    Don't forget, it's not just the question of how living off Earth affects human life cycles. There's the question about how it affects the life cycle of every other species we bring along, AND how it affects the life cycle of every bit of technology we need.

    For those other-than-human components, we have the advantage that we are free to engineer them for compatibility. That is, we can engineer the technology directly, and we can genetically engineer the organisms (plants more easily than animals; I'm going to assume it's not an issue for bacteria and fungi, since they evolve rapidly on their own, and are too small to care much about gravity).

    What we can't easily engineer are the humans.

    276:

    I once heard an absolutely terrifying talk by a manufacturer of rebreathers for professional divers, talking about some of his competitors who made stuff for the sport diver market (so take with a large pinch of salt, but still).

    My favourite nightmare from his collection was a computerised control unit that would reset if its power supply glitched, e.g. due to its user shaking the battery by hitting the water. When this happened it rebooted into standby mode. The user passed out due to anoxia a few tens of seconds later.

    And then there were the dive watches that gave clearly wrong answers about how fast to ascend.

    (For non-divers, a rebreather works by scrubbing the CO2 from your exhaled air and adding the right amount of oxygen back in. Unfortunately the human respiratory system works on CO2 sensors in your neck, not O2 sensors. If the oxygen part of the rebreather fails you are breathing pure nitrogen. You don't accumulate any CO2, so you feel perfectly fine. Then you pass out, and then you die.)

    277:

    " Robots will hand parts of the job"

    Which ones?

    278:

    Re: "slug drivers" for propulsion: http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2019/11/hypervelocity-macron-accelerators.html

    If you want diamond-hard sf discussions- go here. I say it's more an an "engineering fiction" site than a "science fiction" site.

    279:

    Yep. Space suits have rebreathers.

    I'd point out another problem: lung damage. I have asthma, and I wanted to learn to SCUBA. I was booted from the class, and my doctor explained in some detail what happens during decompression if you have lung inflammation. The problem is that if there's lung inflammation, from asthma, dust irritation, long term COVID damage, then air can get trapped in alveoli in the lungs (The little sacs at the end of the passages where the oxygen gets exchanged). Normally this isn't a big deal, aside from the loss of gas exchange. However, if there's massive decompression, that trapped air can expand and explode the alveolus. Instant lung hemorrhage, possibly fatal if it's widespread.

    Again, with current suits, astronauts have to decompress before going into space, so everyone who's rated for suits has to have healthy, clear lungs. Even having a cold can be dangerous.

    This is going to be an endemic problem off-planet, unless space suits normally accommodate one atmosphere pressure internally, so there's no decompression. Pretty much every place in our solar system we could visit is dusty and has less dense atmospheric pressure. Those are all lung injuries waiting to happen, even without Covid.

    More challenges.

    Incidentally, before some bright-eyes posits that of course we'll have those space suits any day now, 1 atmosphere is just over 1 kg/cm2 of pressure, so if there's a one atmosphere differential between the inside and outside of the suit, then either the human or the suit has to exert 1 kg/cm2 to bend the joints in the suit. Especially the fingers. So far we've gotten to about 1/3 atmosphere, and apparently astronauts really get strong hands from working in those really, really stiff suit gloves. So either the 1 atmosphere suit is a powered exoskeleton (more weight and complexity) or someone gets exceptionally clever with the joint structure in the suits and figures out how to passively counter the pressure issues.

    280:

    Oxford vaccine is intended to be single dose, ship around the world.

    Two doses. Johnson & Johnson's vaccine is single-dose, IIRC (they also have a two-dose candidate), but still in trials.

    281:

    but a robot that can coax a dementia patient into swallowing their medicine is something else entirely

    Forget dementia. Some folks are just plain ornery. Being told what do to gets them combative. As an interlude between bouts of complaining about how they feel and wish there was something they could take.

    Sorry, your comment brought back a recent 6 year stretch of time.

    282:

    Sorry, confused those. Anyway, it will be interesting to see how this new system evolves: mRNA is rapid but finicky, more traditional methods are slower, easier to distribute, and perhaps less efficacious. Do we keep multi-tracking, set up more refrigerated infrastructure, or what?

    283:

    I'm sure that the theologians out there have standard answers to these question, but it is painfully obvious that most of the abortion-is-murder crowd is unaware that the problem exists.

    Most theologians have a pitiful science background. And the medical oriented people in most churches just keep their mouths shut. They stay for all kinds of reasons but this has been a simmering issue in the US "church" for a long time. The last 4 years sort of happened as the medical people have been more and more refusing to go along with the medical nonsense of the non medical trained. And the non medical trained voted for the orange one.

    See also YEC.

    284:

    Sorry. Posted this too fast.

    But in the US I can already see the yelling about which if any chapels will be on Mars.

    285:

    You've just gotten me annoyed, Charlie. My old insurance, when I was working, I'd been with one doctor for about 9.5 years. They used to have signs saying "bring all your medical issues to your doctor when you see them.

    They went away.

    The last two years with them, my doc came up with something... AND THEY WANTED TO CHARGE ME FOR A "SECOND CONSULTATION".

    Those MF's want to cut 15-20 min to under 15 min, and charge more for anything they find... even in an annual physical.

    It's makemoneyfast.... snarl

    286:

    Does the possible availability of lava tubes to seal off and inhabit change any of the base assumptions - like the population density?

    https://www.universetoday.com/147360/lava-tubes-on-the-moon-and-mars-are-really-really-big-big-enough-to-fit-an-entire-planetary-base/

    287:

    I get an injection every two weeks. Nurse snaps off the top, shoves the needle through the rubber, and shoots me up, no saline added. Bottle comes that way.

    288:

    Do you really think that 50 and more years from now, we won't have started genengineering modifications?

    I'd assume, in the next 20, disease resistance, turning off things like diabetes, etc.

    I'd also assume that a lot of disease will have cures. Someone's mentioned they have ME: I had to ask my SO... oh, another name for fibromyalgia, which my SO suffers.

    289:

    Re: 'Do we keep multi-tracking, set up more refrigerated infrastructure, or what?'

    All of the above.

    Because various cancers are also likelier, we'll need more work on altering, boosting, storing, slowing the ageing/re-invigorating every component of the immune system. Because such research would also be useful (marketable?) for folks on Earth, the Moon as well as on Mars - it wouldn't be a 'waste' of money.

    A few questions:

    Would it make sense to build Clarke's sky ladder on Mars, specifically on Mount Olympus - the highest elevation point? It's a fairly large area combed through with lava tunnels which I think may be more workable for excavating for habitats. The reason I ask is because location of a settlement will determine many of the challenges/opportunities. A location that has intrinsic good year-round access for incoming supplies would be better than building a colony somewhere along the equator where it might be more difficult to land supplies/personnel or dig out habitats.

    Also - wouldn't a carpet of wind power micro-turbines make sense on Mars and especially in places like Mount Olympus? And I do mean 'carpet' - very small, low to the ground but densely packed together vs. what the tall structures seen around the US/Canada.

    What native (Martian) and readily extracted/available materials would be best for blocking unhealthy radiation? And how easily could such a material be processed into furniture, clothing, habitat structures/infrastructure, etc.? Mining a multipurpose material makes more sense than mining several different sole-purpose ones. Multi-purpose also suggests better likelihood of recycling - less waste of materials and energy overall. Importing raw building materials would not only be expensive in terms of transport costs but also likely expensive in terms of safety/health risk, i.e. material hasn't been tested for durability in Mars environment. (Do we have any data from the Mars Rover on which exterior materials have weathered best on Mars?)

    How does radiation on Mars compare with radiation on Earth in soil, rocks, i.e., the likely native agriculture and building materials?

    290:

    One more thing, one cmt by me that everyone seems to have glossed over: if they're doing multiple launche/month, much less per week, who here actually thinks that no one else will be doing it?

    Really? You don't think China or Russia or India will have a colony there? And that they might be willing to produce drugs/needles, etc?

    291:

    On the reproduction angle, I think by 2070 we're probably seeing exo-wombs as a major factor in reproduction even on Earth, and on Mars it's almost certainly going to be normal if it can be done with any decent success rate for a fetus. It's almost certainly cheaper to go full on r-type selection with artificial wombs with high failure rates than to tie down actual humans with the health risks being suggested for Martian pregnancy. The scientific push on Earth is likely to be high for various reasons, particularly with a low fertility aging population where a medical capacity to have children is lower than desire for children.

    I originally wrote "definitely" for it being a factor, but it might end up being one of those random things that turns out to be super hard for some reason. Demand being high doesn't necessarily mean we'll figure it out, and particularly strange looking techniques such as "we made a type of mold that takes over pig wombs that totally lets us grow human babies" might face enough resistance it's not actually being used.

    292:

    Yeah maybe. Or not.

    It's not the exowombs, because they've been experimenting with them for years now. For all I know, they'll be available to carry fetuses to term in emergency circumstances soon.

    But getting women and Earth out of the process may not be so possible, even ignoring the crypto-misogynism inherent in the proposal. I mean, anyone been checking male sperm production on Mars?

    Anyway, getting back to the problems, the thing to remember is we're talking about a system that's evolved within the Earth biosphere for 200-odd million years, just talking about mammalian reproduction. Evolution has this nasty habit of incorporating any aspect of the system into it. Some critical segments that are missing from exowombs: --gravity. Does it matter to the fetus? Let's try that experiment in freefall and see what goes wrong. Not that such human experimentation is legal, but...science! --microbiome and chemical influence. There are two levels of this. One is what the fetus gets through the umbilical cord and by ingesting amniotic fluid. We don't know as much about that as we'd like. Another aspect are the bacteria picked up by a baby passing through a vagina while being born. Turns out this is one way for babies to get inoculated with necessary bacteria and other microorganisms. This isn't a showstopper for C-section babies, but it's still a problem, especially for normal development of that huge other brain you have associated with your GI tract. --Milk: here we go again with the microbiome, chemical influences, necessary and ephemeral chemicals needed for normal development, and so forth. What are babies eating on Mars? Are you going to dose women so that they start lactating? Men maybe? --Human contact. Here's big news: half of human inheritance is cultural. Babies die without constant care, love, touch, and education. Literally, abandoning a child is criminal, as is neglecting a child. If you're stupid enough to use an engineering model to produce future workers for your SFF colony, that colony is going to fail, because children are evolved to thrive with a bonded mother-figure, playmates of varying ages, and other caregivers. That has to be part of a culture, and if it can't be, they can't raise children there.

    293:

    Do you really think that 50 and more years from now, we won't have started genengineering modifications? I don't think you appreciate the technical difficulty of genetically engineering an outbred and generically heterogenous population for traits that are desirable in an evolutionary novel environment.

    294:

    David L Most theologians have a pitiful science background. Yup - as in: "Please provide Objective Evidence that any form of BigSkyFairy exists, or you are discussing something that does not exist, at all" At which point you are told to study Theology (!)

    whitroth That sort of thing simply does not happen here ... it's called Single-payer universal health care.

    295:

    Would it make sense to build Clarke's sky ladder on Mars

    Two problems with the idea, Phobos and Deimos. In "The Fountains of Paradise" Mars provided substantial financing for the Earth elevator in return for the manufacturing plant being sent to Mars afterwards. They planned to deal with Deimos by dismantling it, the carbon content used for making the cable and the remaining rubble becoming part of the counterweight. Their solution for Phobos was to design a resonant flex into the cable so that Phobos would miss it each time round.

    Windmills on Mons Olympus aren't going to do much, it's so high the atmospheric pressure is only 12 % of the average...

    296:
    I don't think you appreciate the technical difficulty of genetically engineering an outbred and generically heterogenous population for traits that are desirable in an evolutionary novel environment.

    I'm assuming we require the kind of evidence of safety and efficacy that is standard for human medicine.

    297:

    @Everybody: I take this as a thought experiment about what would happen if... as opposed to "there will likely be 500k people on Mars in 50 years". Impossible? Don't think so. Likely? REALLY don't think so? Necessary? Definitely not.

    DISCLAIMER: I'm not a Heinleinian/Pournellian "Libertarian Space Cowboy". I'm more of a (Rick) Robinsonian/Strossian(?) “Antarctica and Oil Platforms IN SP-A-A-A-CE Guy" Currently ~1,000 (winter)-4,000 (summer) people in Antarctica @ 66 research facilities (https://www.coolantarctica.com/Antarctica%20fact%20file/science/can_you_live_in_antarctica.php#:~:text=There%20are%20around%2066%20scientific,about%201%2C000%20overwinter%20each%20year.). This is after ~100 years of exploration, etc.

    There are ~1.3k offshore oil rigs around the world (https://www.statista.com/statistics/279100/number-of-offshore-rigs-worldwide-by-region/), but people don't live on these platforms- they work there and we know what's the maguffinite they're looking for).

    We've already discussed how ~90% of the people on Mars would be in support roles doing regular types of jobs. What would the other 50k folks be doing? How many areologists does Mars need? Currently, there are around 32k US geologists., and lets say the US has 20% of the world's total. Would Mars need a good chunk of the worlds geologists and would they be suitable, capable, and interested in being Mars- ready? Pick any other specialty (climatologist, robot-wrangler, etc.), and I think the same applies. IMHO, if and until we start terraforming, we won't need all that many people there, and while there may be many people who'd want to go to Mars, most of them couldn't or shouldn't. MY guesses: 50 years from now on Mars- a small base or three. 100 years from now- like Antarctica today, maybe somewhat more if there's evidence of life. 200 years from now (“The Expanse” time)- definitely NOT 2 G people there. (This assumes we can effectively manage getting through the “Slowpocalypse”.)

    298:

    I believe current thinking on spacesuits is hard suits or skintight suits. Hard suits are I believe being developed now. On Mars you would get some leeway, at least within the habitats, but you would need at least a helmet. You would need to cover you eyes and ears, indeed all skin, but would need a pressurised head covering at least. To go with that perhaps a skintight inner layer, then an outer suit. Of course depending on tech, this is not invoking super tech! I was not keen on the expanse at all, I though it was very unrealistic with it's tech. It seemed to me like mostly tech of a couple of decades in the future, a couple of centuries in the future. It generally seemed like very old school sci fi, I only read the first book years ago though. I did try the series though, I only got minutes in and thought the same and stopped watching. Obviously opinions differ, perhaps I should give it another chance. I'm not sure about M.E being another name for Fibromyalga, I think they are both a name for something else. Unfortunately we don't know what that is!

    299:

    Heteromeles @ 236: Do you have to freeze it? Yes, the lifespan of the mRNA vaccines once made is on the order of a few hours. In general, keeping these stupid things from falling apart is why molecular biology and genetics labs routinely have '80 freezers. It's not just for keeping DNA and cells, it's also for keeping the horribly expensive and fragile RNA-based tools.

    You missed the point I was making. In the putative Mars Colony, the manufacturing robot that synthesizes the vaccine is in one room and the patients who are going to receive the vaccine are in the next room over.

    The vaccine will be used before its lifetime can expire. You won't be storing the vaccine, you'll be using it as soon as it's made.

    300:

    That sort of thing simply does not happen here ... it's called Single-payer universal health care.

    Actually what he was describing was the application of time limits on a visit. As a way to contain costs. Docs are allotted 15 min per patient per most US insurance plans if I remember correctly. Single payer just means that the limit is applied nationally instead of company by company.

    301:

    Charlie Stross @ 245:

    Do you imagine they have some shielding force fields, like maybe https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Cloud_City ?

    No.

    Turns out that high energy cosmic rays are so high energy that you need a multi-tesla magnetic field to deflect them -- something we normally only get inside an MRI machine using superconducting electromagnets. It's too heavy/bulky for a space ship, never mind an entire surface colony under a dome.

    Underground is the only practical way forward.

    MRI machines may be too heavy/bulky for a space ship, but I expect if the Mars Colony needed one they'd find some way to get one there (for medical use, not for shielding a dome colony).

    Plus, I think they'd have to knowledge of how to build one and that doesn't require any additional mass transport at all does it?

    302:

    Whitroth: Someone's mentioned they have ME: I had to ask my SO... oh, another name for fibromyalgia,

    No, ME is really not fibromyalgia by any other name. Different diagnosis, different treatments (and, more recently, evidence of immune system involvement: it appears to be damage triggered by a viral infection, typically influenza, and long COVID is a dead-ringer for it).

    303:

    MRI machines may be too heavy/bulky for a space ship

    No they're not, at least not automatically: there are really new ultra-small wheeled MRI machines about the size of a microwave oven that are large enough for a limb and can be moved around a hospital ward -- the reason current MRI machines are big is that they're sized to take an entire human torso, so about 50-60cm in diameter. The magnetic field strength needed for that job is much higher, and the magnets in turn are much larger and heavier.

    The problem with magnetic shielding for cosmic rays is you need to wrap your entire spaceship in a multi-tesla magnetic field, meaning gigavolts running through superconducting magnets wrapped around the entire hull. Which in turn has to be strong enough not to collapse when a ferrous metal item like a drawing pin gets loose inside that field and turns into a bullet ... and if anything goes wrong, such as a sandgrain sized dust particle whacking into the magnet and heating it, the magnet quenches abruptly and dumps megajoules or even gigajoules of energy out in the form of heat. This is not good for a spaceship hull, to say the least.

    304:

    Just looked, and the common name here is "chronic fatigue syndrome". Effects are similar, though with fibro, you get permanent pain all over.

    Interestingly, Ellen developed it in her thirties, after a bad flu, I think she told me.

    305:

    You missed the point I was making. In the putative Mars Colony, the manufacturing robot that synthesizes the vaccine is in one room and the patients who are going to receive the vaccine are in the next room over

    Oh good grief! No! Cross contamination is a horrible nightmare in DNA labs, and it's an even worse nightmare in RNA labs. And that's even before you introduce all the safety requirements. Hell, they don't put the main pharmacy or the pathology lab anywhere near the ICU or plague floors for a very, very, very good reason. You space shit out (literally) so you don't have contamination problems. You do not want your genetic techs to die because they have to work next door to the Covid ward.

    Besides, a colony of 500,000 has a footprint the size of the Hawaiian Islands (they hit 500,000 sustainably before European contact). You've still got to move stuff around, and that means refrigeration is an issue.

    306:

    Charlie Stross @ 248:

    Sign it or stay here on Earth. "We've got more volunteers than we have seats on the Starships. You need us more than we need you."

    You do know that roughly 70% of conceptions end in a miscarriage (that is, a spontaneous abortion)? And it's even higher among over-30s, or women in high-stress environments, or radiation exposure, or, or ...

    I know about it. My mom once told me about the number of miscarriages she had before I was born. So many that the doctors had told her she was never going to have a successful pregnancy. She persisted in spite of that.

    Also, a first pregnancy is often the only one, or nearly the only one. Gestational diabetes is only one of the happy fun complications that can kill you: there's hypertension, there's rhesus incompatability (in second and subsequent pregnancies), there's a breech birth (how are you going to handle surgical/caesarian deliveries in a low gee environment with limited medical facilities?) and so on.

    Worst case, in the late 18th/early 19th century in England there was roughly a 5% chance of maternal death with each pregnancy. While much of that was down to "no germ theory of disease, idiot doctors didn't wash their hands", there's no guarantee that initial outcomes on Mars will be any better because there will be other deadly situations. (I mentioned an elevated cancer risk: what do you think chemotherapy does to fertility? Or a developing fetus?) If you want ten babies on Mars per woman, you may well end up with only a 30% survival rate at the end of that sequence.

    Not. Going. To. Happen.

    You're postulating here a colony of half a million (500,000) people. I think it was you who stated a colony with a population smaller than Germany couldn't survive; could NOT become self sustaining. Germany has a current population just under 84 million.

    How are you going to get the kind of population growth required to reach sustainability under your own parameters?

    I don't know who came up with the "ten babies on Mars per woman", but it wasn't me.

    I suggested 4 would be required - 2 parental unit replacements & 2 spares to ensure population growth. That may be influenced by the fact I have 3 siblings (two of whom have managed to reproduce).

    307:

    Nojay @ 264: Freezer space. You can store of lot of doses of an mRNA vaccine in a single -80 deg C freezer if you pack and dispatch it in small concentrated vials and have the contents diluted at point-of-use with saline before injection. The vaccine needs to be processed and handled at the distribution locations anyway, brought up to room temps, batch numbers logged and more so the extra preparation steps aren't that onerous compared to the many more freezers, transport flights, dry-ice cartons etc. needed if it is sent out of the factory in ready-for-use one-shot syringes.

    Where do you get a sterile saline solution on Mars?

    308:

    Both oil platforms and antarctic bases have in common that you don't die immediately when there is some sort of breach/leak in your habitat/suit. As we could learn in this thread, they need no long and complicated decompression cycles to suit up/out either.

    So I think a submarine would be a more apt comparison.

    309:

    Note that Mars comes with special problems that don't apply on Earth, like keeping toddlers out of the airlocks and keeping teenagers from running wild.

    Even worse: Keeping smart (but not yet experienced) teenagers from getting creative

    310:

    You're postulating here a colony of half a million (500,000) people. I think it was you who stated a colony with a population smaller than Germany couldn't survive; could NOT become self sustaining. Germany has a current population just under 84 million.

    The bigger problem than a Mars version of a pandemic is that any Mars settlers have to become self sufficient (other than perhaps a few minor things) long before they reach a half million - unless they find something they and only they can sell back to Earth there is no way anyone is going to fund the monthly costs to keep that many people alive on a different planet.

    Which brings up the possibility that Covid70 doesn't just happen to arrive at Mars, but rather it is a deliberate attempt to kill off the settlers to end the subsidies (because the PR on earth - pandemic tragedy on Mars is better than they are dying due to a lack of supplies).

    And so if Covid70 is an engineered weapon, does that change the response - not just because it means everything including any vaccine from Earth is suspect, but because if they aren't successful on the first attempt do they keep trying...

    311:

    Hrm. Interesting thinking. OTOH think about the subsidies for our militaries now and their environmental impact. All of them, I mean.

    /me vanishes into hiding

    312:

    My favourite nightmare from his collection was a computerised control unit that would reset if its power supply glitched, e.g. due to its user shaking the battery by hitting the water. When this happened it rebooted into standby mode.

    What. The. Fuck?

    In case I never mentioned it before, I am a NAUI tech diver and PADI divemaster. Paul's message made my jaw hit the desk.

    OTOH, couple years ago I was looking at used rebreathers on ebay. All US made ones had prices in 4 digits. Russian ones had prices mostly in 3 digits. One Russian rebreather had in its description, presumably as a selling point: "No fatalities associated with this unit".

    313:

    Maybe all of them, like in the Airforce Academy in Colorado Springs?

    314:

    50 years from now on Mars- a small base or three. 100 years from now- like Antarctica today, maybe somewhat more if there's evidence of life. 200 years from now (“The Expanse” time)- definitely NOT 2 G people there.

    What is "2 G"? Two billion?

    315:

    "Where do you get a sterile saline solution on Mars?"

    You put some salt in some water, and boil it.

    316:

    Maybe all of them, like in the Airforce Academy in Colorado Springs?

    As a federal facility where people live the AFA has to do various diverse things.

    As a private enterprise, a Mars could do what they want. But there will be an outcry no matter what they do.

    Now if it is UN sponsored, ugh. 500K people. 10K religions to be supported.

    317:

    Boiling will not sterilize a solution. The standard lab methods are autoclaving (pressurized stem) or filtration.

    In any case Mars will have to solve this problem long before COVID-70, since ordinary medicine consumes huge quantities of sterile saline.

    318:

    So just what is it?

    ME?

    319:

    Boiling will not sterilize a solution. The standard lab methods are autoclaving (pressurized stem) or filtration.

    So pressure cooker for a few hours?

    https://www.scienceofcooking.com/science_of_pressure_cooking.htm

    I'm reminded of a long-ago discussion on sci.space.something where Henry Spencer discussed the virtues of supercritical water.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supercritical_water_oxidation

    320:

    Indeed, an autoclave is basically a pressure cooker. Thirty minutes is usually enough.

    But I suspect filtration would be the more practical solution, certainly the most energy efficient.

    321:

    15 psi for 15 minutes 20 psi for 10 minutes 10 psi for 20 minutes And I’ve used a pressure cooker as an autoclave in a small lab.

    322:

    You know? While I did my usual night walk, wondering about why the some birds sing loudly, and the imbalance of it all...I remembered something very on-topic:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonthermal_plasma

    Aharrharrharr!

    Bzzzt!

    323:

    Hnf. ...wondering why some of the birds sing loudly at 02:00 PM...

    (why I can't edit?)

    324:

    "I'd also assume that a lot of disease will have cures."

    Why? We haven't cured a lot of diseases in the last 50 years, AFAIK, so why do you expect the next 40 to be different?

    We've got better at managing lots of conditions. Which is not a small thing: I won't go blind from glaucoma like my grandad and great-uncles did and that's awesome!

    But cures? Not so much, AFAIK. The most common conditions - cancer, heart disease, osteoarthritis, asthma, dementia, hypothyroidism - I'm not aware of cures happening there.

    But I'm not an expert on pharmaceuticals. Perhaps one may weigh in and correct me...

    325:

    How does Elon make a profit from his Mars Colony?

    Virginia had tobacco. The conquistadors looted gold and silver. The East Indies had spices and coffee.

    So what does Mars make and ship back to Earth to make the whole endeavor financially viable?

    326:

    As any fan of the Expanse knows, Beltalowda should colonize Ceres instead of Mars.

    The dwarf planet Ceres – long believed to be a barren space rock – is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface.

    https://www.theguardian.com/science/2020/aug/10/planet-ceres-ocean-world-sea-water-beneath-surface?fbclid=IwAR08khg_i1No7z7h1b-DuIXv61imqgNH2tQ9fImx9pkzgey4g1A1mJZxBPE

    Ceres actually is a better place to colonize than Mars for several reasons: easier to get to, lower gravity, and lots of water. Its launch windows are actually more frequent than those for Mars.

    http://www.pagef30.com/2009/04/why-ceres-might-be-better-location-for.html?fbclid=IwAR1SnqjeLYiGcxjQVCCySbYBljfQiuSFpa_rOrlcYeu_Kle3xsknIwRSjIY

    327:

    Lower gravities usefulness for human habitation is doubtful. Furthermore Ceres has no great views and landscapes, am I right? Maybe as highly automated fuel station like in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_Station_76 on the way to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saturn_3 :-)

    328:

    I wonder if the luxury survival bunkers currently built by the uber rich could serve as models for underground Mars colonies.

    https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2020/aug/01/3m-price-tag-inside-luxury-doomsday-bunker?fbclid=IwAR3vSNrXVz7IFpzCGyxN5cwmeDcnNyXRWpZvHTPQQclZEdVmNVFFTAXyaD4

    329:

    Of course, because "The high-speed lift features a laser-etched facility map and Star Trek’s door-opening sound."

    330:

    Ceres' gravity (3% of Earths) is great for space transport and trade, greatly reducing energy and fuel costs, and it lies at the heart of the asteroid belt with all of those raw materials.

    You can compensate for low g by building ring habitats that rotate with people living on the outer walls (the 3% of g pulling them downward would feel like a downhill direction, something you can get used to).

    It's surface area is about the same as Argentina, plenty of room for any conceivable number of colonists.

    It has got more going for it than Mars as a place to colonize.

    331:

    Technically that may be the case, but were talking about a Mars colony here. Anyway, with all the raw materials at hand, one could finally go full O'Neill-cylinder and give a damn about exact location.

    332:

    How does Elon make a profit from his Mars Colony?

    What profit it a man if he gain a whole new world but lose his only fortune?

    333:

    More seriously, it seems plausible that Elon is being honest when he says he wants to colonise Mars because we're a bunch of suicidially stupid fuckwits and he can't see a way to stop us wiping ourselves out. His behaviour is consistent with that long-term goal.

    Especially the cars. He needs to sell enough very expensive batteries to work through the process of making them very cheap, and people will pay stupid amounts of money for cars. Plus electric cars solve a bunch of problems caused by the aforementioned fuckwits, just as self-driving cars do.

    You can read his life as a smart, rich dude who has gone through much of the same thinking as some of us here have, but isn't constrained by our relative poverty. he can raise $100M at age 25 to get some vaguely plausible idea off the ground...

    334:

    Art from mars grown psychoactive mushroom inspired creators, out of mars materials. So "out of this world" that one MUST have it!1!!

    335:

    Problem with colonizing Mars is that any argument for it works for any godsforsaken rock or hazardous waste dump around the world. Putting an underground city under Area 51 or Hanford makes more sense than dealing with effectively the same problems (and then some) on Mars.

    Incidentally, I agree with the notion that underground bunkers could be training for living on Mars or surviving the collapse of civilization. Considering the personalities of those who buy (into) such places, I call it the tunnels and trolls solution.

    336:

    if they're doing multiple launche/month, much less per week, who here actually thinks that no one else will be doing it?

    You know how we can't make Saturn V's any more? That.

    Specifically, I bet there are a whole bunch of things where at most one person in SpaceX know how to do them. There are likely to be a few things that just happen to work and no-one knows that until they change something and something completely unrelated stops working. Even when they're making them on a production line there will be key manufacturing machines that were made a few times and "we have the plans". Not to mention all the AI where sure you can copy it, but can you train it when you change things?

    China and India are a long way behind the curve and Russia isn't even playing the game any more. I'd say they could catch up in less time than it took the USA to make the same progress, but there's a whole lot of confounding factors that will make things harder. They can't just clone the US sociopolitical setup, for example, and they can't attract immigrants the same way the US does - the effective US recuitment pool for their space stuff covered most of the planet (Operation Paperclip being just one example, the presence of Musk in the USA is another).

    337:

    More seriously, it seems plausible that Elon is being honest when he says he wants to colonise Mars ...

    This. He wants to colonize Mars.

    To quote an exchange in Marvel comics: Spiderman: You can rewrite DNA on the fly, and you're using it to turn people into dinosaurs? You could cure cancer!" Sauron (not the Tolkien one): But I don't want to cure cancer. I want to turn people into dinosaurs!"

    338:

    You know? There are conspiracy theories stating that this already happenend since long ago, 70ies, 80ies, or so. Just look up "DUMB / Deep Underground Military Bases" and maybe "Nuclear Subterrene".

    Oh! And https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alternative_3 :-)

    339:

    Yep. I do wonder whether some of the people pushing the various sea habs were space fans who wanted to see whether the rugged individualists could actually make a semi-closed system work (answer: no).

    I also wonder whether some of the private islands and bunckers contain little factories where people are experimenting to see how closed a system they can build and making little lists of things they need to import or export. There's not need to be obvious about that, it's what the business world thinks of as normal accounting practice/common sweatshop management.

    On that not, we already have excellent models for how you recruit thousands of people to do very detailed work in terrible conditions... you make the alternative worse. Or for a Mars colony, perhaps you just wait until things are sufficiently worse that you get the candidates you want signing up voluntarily (one or the more terrifying aspects of the clothing industry is the extent to which it uses voluntary labour rather than slaves. Conditions in the New York clothing factories are not very nice... but they're better than the Bangladesh and Maylasan ones)

    340:

    That’s ship sized magnetic shielding which has such high energy density. Larger fields don’t need to be so strong since they have more time to move incoming particles aside. But if you have 10’s of kilometres of space for coils, you’d likely be on the ground where you can dig a simpler tunnel to keep out the radiation.

    Found a 2005 NASA paper on it, comparing different techniques. There’s a novel magnetic plasma one, and the usual mass shield etc.

    341:

    China and India are a long way behind the curve...

    Whenever the US is doing a thing but China and India are not doing the thing, a lack of people is not part of the reason.

    342:

    “So what does Mars make and ship back to Earth to make the whole endeavor financially viable?” So what does Earth make and ship to... somewhere? ... to make the whole endeavour financially viable?

    You don’t actually have to trade with outside entities. Fortunately, since Earth doesn’t have any such trading partner. You grow/extract/make. If you can make enough you get to live. If you can make more than enough you can spare some person time to do art and the other things that make a civilized world.

    343:

    Just so.

    Which is probably a good argument for doing it. Developing the tech to survive on Mars would make it easier to survive here post ciimate apocalypse.

    344:

    A lack of very specific people is often the reason, though. Jack Ma is having a very different experience to Elon Musk, and even if he wanted to I suspect he wouldn't be able to build his own fleet of giant space rockets in China.

    345:

    Viz, I suspect that the entrepreneurial approach to this wouldn't work for China and India, and I'm not confident that their governments are up to the task. Not that the US government is, either.

    For a government I think it would be easier just to not hellform this planet, and that's what the Chinese seem to be attempting.

    346:

    "So what does Earth make and ship to... somewhere? ... to make the whole endeavour financially viable?"

    Whatever it is, it makes enough to pay for whatever it is that Earth gets in from said somewhere.

    As long as Mars depends on stuff being sent from Earth, there has to be a reason for Earth to send it. An attempted colony isn't going to be self-sufficient for quite a while (if ever).

    JHomes

    347:

    That's cancers - there's a ton of different ones - and note that I had one, and am considered "cured", as I was treated 20 years ago - they're finding new mechanism, like the one I read about the other day.

    Yes, both cures, and preventatives.

    348:

    Saturn V's? Why bother? I hereby declare a global peace dividend, wherein we use the nuclear arsenals of the world in orion ships (lifting off of the Earth's surface, of course). We get rid of the nukes that way, and of course it won't hurt Mars to be nuked, seeing as how it's so radioactive already. Simple, tough, and fast. What more could you want?*

    (/slight sarcasm may be detectable)

    *Oh, and I forgot the best part: this solves climate change problems. More or less. A bit.

    [[ html fix - mod ]]

    349:

    What we might be seeing here is the kind of male edifice complex size and potency competition that got rockets shot off to the Moon in the 60s and 70s. There's a simple way to test this:

    Question: for those of you paying attention to military aerospace, is there a race to produce a new generation of intercontinental missiles on, by any chance?

    In other words, colonizing Mars is a PR stunt by the military-industrial complexes of first line powers. That's what pays the freight. Afterwards?

    350:

    Hypersonics? Or so called boost gliders. Where the only difference to ICBMs as we know them is the ability to change course more rapidly, and not going up to full orbit by having their "glide" trough the higher parts of the atmosphere "boosted". Thus not as predictable by ballistics.

    351:

    Remember the whole "inner space" thing that Jacques Cousteau rode in the 1960s and 1970s? That's probably where the sea stuff came from. There was a whole long parallel with settling space of settling undersea cities.

    The problems with living underwater get entertaining. Here I'm not talking about living in a submarine, but 100' down in one of those research centers. The problems include living under three atmospheres of pressure (forget risen bread, your food is flat once it gets down from the surface), more or less constant damp (everything mildews and cuts don't heal) and low grade constant nitrogen narcosis. AFAIK they're still playing with the idea and researchers are using at least one lab for grad student marine biology research (who else would be willing to be miserable for that long?). Otherwise, there is, of course, gasdive's specialty of long term technical diving, with similar living conditions. At least that kind of technical diving pays well.

    It's actually kind of eye opening how limited humans actually are in our habitat requirements. Three miles up and we're suffering, underwater we drown, and we can only really farm and build cities on a small part of the Earth's land surface even so.

    So many of these projects we blithely thought would work, with planting colonies under the sea or on other planets, turn out to be real misery fests when you try to make it work. Kind of sucks, but there you have it.

    352:

    ilya187 @ 312:

    [rebreathers that kill people]

    What. The. Fuck?

    It was over ten years ago, but IIRC the speaker said that there were no standards that sport rebreathers had to comply with, so various manufacturers around the world were producing cut-price knock-offs without proper safety analysis, and sport divers with constrained budgets were buying these things in the comfortable assumption that of course they must be safe if they were allowed to be sold. HIS company, of course, did things properly. It sold to both sport and pro markets, so it was able to leverage the safety from the pro kit in its sport line. The main point of the talk was about the embedded software that ran the things, as that was what the conference was about. But the nerdy tech stuff wasn't the memorable bit.

    353:

    long term technical diving

    Yep, I remember the JC sea hab misery, and I'm also thinking that gasdive's "long term" and Mars colony long term are different things. Unless gasdive is writing to us from 20,000 leagues under the sea :) But you're right that they did rather show that we can't even keep water out, so the idea that we could keep moon dust or Mars dust out seems dubious. IIRC the moon visitors remarked on the smell of stuff coming in from outside, suggesting that their primitive decontamination processes were not very effective. As mentions above, if you can smell it your mask isn't working.

    One positive side effect from a bunch of sea habs would be further restrictions on mining seafood. There are still trawlers in the world, and they're AFAIK the most destructive food gathering technology we have. And they seem likely to keep doing that until there's no fish left to mine...

    354:

    Thinking about the actual topic at hand, I keep coming back to digital contamination being as serious a problem as biological. We're all used to wetware needing to be cleaned and looked after, and that's trained into us from a very young age. But even the "digital native" kids still like to roll round in other people's excrement then come home and jump straight to dinner without even washing their hands. Digital hygiene just isn't intuitive.

    Which leads to the question of where the triply redundant digital hardware and associated software is going to come from. All those useful robots are going to look pretty damn stupid if it turns out that they don't like being outside during solar storms, or that key parts of them were outsourced to someone who wants to buy a failed colony cheap... covid 2060 might only kill 10% directly, but having the only type of air mixer stop working would be more serious.

    Which means Elon is presumably going to have at least two different designs of chip fabs in his colony, and they'll be completely digitally segregated, from the designers (human and AI) down to the silicon refineries. That's less expected than the several different food chains he's also going to need, and potentially more difficult to do. Right now with 10B-odd people we have really only got two tech stacks, Linux and Microsoft / i86 and Arm.

    355:

    How much could a Mars colony make as a reality TV show?

    And how much of the "reality" of colonization would be stage to provide this weeks exciting episode?

    356:

    How about the Mars colony making money from renting VR suits to people back on Earth, full immersion VR experience - you'll feel as if you are on Mars!

    Have to work around that 3 to 22 minute signal delay back and forth from Mars and Earth.

    357:

    I think the gravity part needs to be assumed viable for the OP scenario to be viable at all. The microbiome and chemical aspects of "need a human womb" are more likely to screw with exo-wombs.

    My main point for them is the health problems likely to happen on Mars that might lower fertility and lead to some ugly social consequences for women if fertile women are rare and unique baby factories.

    Formula works about as well as natural milk for the most part despite the massive blood and ink spilled over it. I don't se that as a major limiting factor in the health of babies.

    I also suspect intensive selection to be going on in Martian exowombs. It seems likely to me that a hatchery with a hundred wombs that only gets one viable birth a year would be cheaper than the similar requirement in human capital to get one live birth a year the natural way. The kind of culture that seems likely to exist in the Martian city (socialist, authoritarian, technical, secular) seems like the kind that would make that tradeoff pretty happily.

    I'd also expect a rather macho heavily male and highly technical culture on Mars to be the kind of culture that considers growing babies in vats way cooler than needing one of those icky women with their cooties to make a kid. We were told in the OP that this wasn't a culture identical to our own, and I think this seems like a more plausible outcome of Elon Musk's Mars than a more conventional form of patriarchy. I expect this might be a bigger problem from the "human contact" angle than the technical side, but specialization could take care of that and a small profession of caregivers is much less of a resource drain than trying to make a 20% female population give birth at replacement rates.

    358:

    You can find answers to most of your questions elsewhere.

    Space elevators on Mars run into the problem of Phobos: to a first approximation, they seem highly unlikely unless you can build in some kind of resonance so they avoid being rammed by a ~25km diameter rock zooming past at 2 km/s every seven hours, and I mean every seven hours.

    Olympus Mons is higher than any terrestrial mountain: think "three times as high as Everest" and you're just about getting there. There is effectively no atmosphere above the cliffs around the edge of the volcano, so forget micro-turbines. (They're a pretty piss-poor idea on Mars anyway, which gets winds up to Mach 0.5 and dust storms.) Atmosphere is a resource on Mars, you probably want it as dense as possible -- the bottom of Vales Marineris looks like a better location for a colony.

    359:

    Really? You don't think China or Russia or India will have a colony there?

    Russia is a has-been: population base like Mexico, economy based on resource extraction. India and China are much more likely contenders in the long term, but China is about to hit a demographic transition that will leave its population age distribution looking like Japan today by the back end of this century, i.e. average age heading towards 60 and trying to deal with climate crisis. India ... younger, similar climate crisis, impossible to guess at dominant ideological stance wrt. colonialism by 2070.

    However, I don't really see the USA being anything other than a has-been by 2070, either. Musk's colony plan is best seen as a white colonialist transnational scheme rather than USAn -- he's not American by birth (although he acquired US nationality a few years ago) -- and is likely to be run on a multinational basis. I'd expect significant buy-in from EU nationals, if not from the EU itself, in a US-fronted colony.

    The important influences you're missing are: Indonesia/Malaysia/Singapore (they have serious internal tensions but a combined population around the same size as the USA today and per-capita GDP that's on the way up -- Malaysia's already overlaps with Mexico, Singapore is proverbially rich, and Indonesia's per-capita wealth is rising: another decade or so and it'll overtake Russia), and then Brazil and/or Mexico.

    Sub-Saharan Africa is prospering, and while it's starting from a very low base (after colonization then decades of post-colonial strife and the Apartheid border wars and US/USSR cold war proxy conflict) it's developing rapidly and has a huge population (read: human resources) base. A Nigerian Mars colony by 2070 is probably pushing it, but if we were to add 30 years to the time line all bets are off.

    I'm writing off the Middle East for the 21st century: the next 50 years are going to be dominated by withdrawal symptoms from petrodollar economics, and rebuilding the social capital needed for large enterprises like this is a multi-generational project.

    But in the long term, remember that the Islamic world was a beacon of civilization and incubator for science and the arts back when Europe was a wasteland dominated by religious fanatic barbarian knights squatting in the ruins of Rome. My guess is that Indonesia will be the first Islamic state to put an astronaut on Mars, but I might be wrong.

    360:

    I think by 2070 we're probably seeing exo-wombs as a major factor in reproduction even on Earth, and on Mars it's almost certainly going to be normal if it can be done with any decent success rate for a fetus

    Well yes, but I think you over-estimate how much we know about what the uterus does. Here's a tip: it's not just there to provide an anchor plus blood supply for the placenta, at various stages in pregnancy various immunological processes kick in.

    The best we've done so far is to incubate sheep fetuses for up to four weeks in an exowomb. Human experimentation is fraught, not least because the Screaming Jesus People consider it tantamount to abortion, but even among non-religious medical ethicists it's controversial (a partial failure may result in the creation of a baby who's viable but severely handicapped for life, which in medical terms is a maximum-severity own-goal).

    361:

    That was SKY LIFT by The Admiral in 1953 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sky_Lift

    362:

    "Nuclear reactors are problematic: Mars is short on liquid water, which we use on Earth as a heat sink for our reactors. The Martian atmosphere is too thin to serve as a heat sink for a high power output reactor." Some reactors use our atmosphere as the heat sink instead of water, and the readily available Martian CO2 is a practical heat transfer medium.

    363:

    Thee will be projectile weapons. I'm looking at video of a functional 3D printed revolver, and with the abundance of Martian perchlorates, gunpowder analogs will be easy. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7RUZsCewg14 https://3dprint.com/107062/worlds-1st-3d-printed-revolver/

    364:

    "The CDC currently says that surface contact based transmission is a minor cause of infection. I can't find a decent link to the quote, there are pdfs and a link to a search page on the CDC site from Google, but the original news release didn't show up on a quick search." Less than 10% of cases caused by fomites, per Dr. Daniel Griffin, M.D. from This Week in Virology #701 https://youtu.be/Gq_6mxm4aBw

    365:

    Visits/consultations with a GP in the UK are basically glorified triage interviews: if it's something trivial the GP prescribes a fix on the spot, if it needs specialist intervention you get a follow-on appointment with a community health centre or a general hospital or a specialist hospital (increasing level of specialist focus implied at each step).

    That's why they assign typically 10-14 minutes per patient. It's flexible: when there's no pandemic raging you go sit in the waiting room before your booked slot and then you're called. If you're lucky you get seen on time, if someone else was a time sink there'll be a delay as your GP works through their case load.

    Billing isn't something the patient ever sees or knows about: "secondary consultation" is just total WTF? at this end. The reception/admin staff may have to rearrange their knock-on schedule, is all, and in the longer term there'll be statistical feedback to the healthcare trust about how many patients a GP can actually handle in a working month.

    366:

    Because you rarely see the previously common diseases that are now curable, or preventable by vaccination. I agree that only some are curable.

    367:

    In response to Our Esteemed Author's prolog:

    "COVID family viruses kill roughly 1% of the total population" Worldometer finds a short-term UK death rate of 2.6% nowadays.

    "SARS-CoV-70 is comparable in mortality/morbidity and infectivity to the original COVID19: the one twist is that 'long covid' post-viral damage is more prevalent, affecting up to 25% of survivors." We're already there: Leicester University and the UK's Office for National Statistics (NS) report nearly 1/3 of recovered COVID-19 patients will end up back in hospital within five months, and 1/8 will die. https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.01.15.21249885v1

    "So their choices are (a) wait 15 months for the vaccine shipment (and upgraded vaccine factory) to arrive from Earth, or (b) divert resources into lockdown, contact tracing, nursing, and jerry-building an emergency vaccine factory from equipment/expertise/parts on hand." How about c) Send an Orion ship the (at most) 400 megaklicks? Assuming the ship accelerates at an average 0.5g all the way, and drops an atmospherically braked payload of the vaccine factory, the care package arrives in less than 6 days. Since it's reasonable to assume SOMETHING will go wrong, assembling a Moto-Orion ship http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2021/01/moto-orion-mechanized-nuclear-pulse.html in orbit and parking it against such an eventuality is only rational insurance against the need to have a Planet Express to deliver an interociter (vaccine factory, et al.) quickly.

    368:

    I think it was you who stated a colony with a population smaller than Germany couldn't survive; could NOT become self sustaining. Germany has a current population just under 84 million.

    Yes.

    My yardstick for self-sustaining was "... and with NO external resupply from Earth (eg. life on Earth is extinct), the colony must be capable of replicating and improving on any element of its infrastructure".

    Call it a minimum viable civilization.

    Musk's Mars colony won't be long-term self-sustaining/independent at 2 million people any more than you could pluck the population of Northern Ireland loose and expect them to build a 5nm semiconductor fab line or send probes to Mars (even if you guaranteed food/resource security and no hostile neighbours).

    However, with a lot of the weird-ass/strange specialities outsourced to Earth, an 0.5M colony could probably be stable and achieve population growth and increasing complexity and eventually hit that goal. It'd be dependent on Earth for exotica (e.g. the biannual container shipment full of pre-ordered high quality ICs to replace dying computer kit and glue together the crude-but-cheap locally manufactured PV cells) but at least it'd be a start.

    369:

    Charlie To add to that: My back screamed at me about 3 years back ( Turned out my second-disc-up-the-spine .... wasn't. ) Got temporary painkillers, referred to a clinic ( a fortnight later ) with a provisional booking with a real specialist at a major hospital. They scanned me thoroughly, went, "Right, we'll try localised back injections". Which worked a treat - I was able to dance again. It's now on "hold" because of C-19 overload, but as soon as that dies down, I'm on the list for follow-up injections, which I will then need every year/18 months. Direct cost to me: Zero. How to run a health service. USA-ians take note, yes?

    370:

    Where do you get a sterile saline solution on Mars?

    That's easy.

    Back when I worked as a hospital pharmacist in the mid-late 80s, we manufactured dialysis fluid and sterile saline in the district hospital aseptic manufacturing suite. All it is is distilled water plus a pinch of glucose and salt (sodium chloride: table salt is close enough). You dissolve and mix thoroughly, filter to ensure there are no itty bitty particles to block small blood vessels, stick it in a glass bottle with an injection port or other fitting, then autoclave it -- 15 minutes at 121 degrees celsius/1 bar overpressure meets pharmaceutical sterilization requirements IIRC (it was a third of a century ago). Heating to boiling temperature (100 celsius in an STP environment) will also work, although it takes a lot longer. Exposure to high-intensity radiation from a Co-60 source is also acceptable (different safety issues/requirements apply).

    If you can't provide water, salt, glucose, and a domestic pressure cooker, you don't have a Mars colony: you have a graveyard-in-waiting.

    371:

    "Both oil platforms and antarctic bases have in common that you don't die immediately when there is some sort of breach/leak in your habitat/suit."

    Hahahahaaaa

    Yeah, you do die immediately. Really immediately. Not like decompression from 1 atm where you have a few seconds in which to consider the life choices that have lead up to this point. Instead all the lipids come out of solution instantly and your blood gels. Instantly.

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Byford_Dolphin

    "The autopsy suggested that rapid bubble formation in the blood denatured the lipoprotein complexes, rendering the lipids insoluble.[6]:101 The blood of the three divers left intact inside the chambers likely boiled instantly, stopping their circulation.[6]:101 The fourth diver was dismembered and mutilated by the blast forcing him out through the partially blocked doorway and would have died instantly."

    372:

    Atmosphere is a resource on Mars, you probably want it as dense as possible -- the bottom of Vales Marineris looks like a better location for a colony.

    There are only a couple of spots where the valley floor is lower than the northern plains. It may be easier to burrow into cliffs along the edge but otherwise there's no great advantage to settling on the plains. It appears to be deep because it's running through the Tharsis Bulge which is high.

    One theory for the evolution of Mars is that it got smacked hard by a minor planet early in its history on what is now the north pole. The impact excavated most of the northern hemisphere to 3 or 4 km below the current mean elevation and put a lot of debris in orbit. This also helps to explain why Phobos and Deimos are in near circular equatorial orbits, which is unlikely if they are captured asteroids. The debris cloud aggregated into a number of large bodies, most of which have re-entered creating features like the Hellas and Argyre basins.

    373:

    In case I never mentioned it before, I am a NAUI tech diver and PADI divemaster. Paul's message made my jaw hit the desk.

    IIRC there were US deaths in Afghanistan due to a buggy GPS system. Special forces in the field used it to work out location and bearing/range to a target, then upload and dial in the target's location to a JDAM carried by a bomb truck high overhead. Often while under fire.

    The GPS unit had a fault whereby it could be reset and would silently display it's CURRENT coordinates rather than the coordinates of the dialed-in target. So the JDAM landed right on top of the operator instead.

    (Note: trying to find the source for this via Google proved difficult.)

    374:

    So what does Mars make and ship back to Earth to make the whole endeavor financially viable?

    Elon has no idea! And neither do I. (Hell, I wrote an entire novel in which I tried to hork up a plausible economic motive for space colonization: "Neptune's Brood". Other than a giant millennia-long Ponzi scheme, or a tax write-off on Earth, Mars colonization is most likely a religious project.)

    375:

    And before the second part is halfway finished printing the local security will be round asking some very pointed questions. Individually owned 3d printers in the colony are unlikely, they are a nightmare for life support particularly with the feedstocks mentioned in that article. Accessing the design files is likely to trigger audit alarm bells, and the printers in the workspaces will be intensely monitored for the fire risk and environmental concerns at the very least.

    376:

    There is a huge contingency who believe that manned (if you're going to tell me that terminology is sexist, I retort that so is the phenomenon I'm talking about) spaced exploration is a no brainer, something that we have to do, because Manifest Destiny, or survival after we have trashed Earth, or a hundred other reasons.

    You don't need to tell me that this is irrational. I have made that argument a hundred times. And I have never won it. Space colonization is a hugely popular idea for reasons that transcend economic motives.

    377:

    I hereby declare a global peace dividend, wherein we use the nuclear arsenals of the world in orion ships (lifting off of the Earth's surface, of course).

    There aren't enough of them.

    The best estimate I found was that a well-designed nuclear propulsion charge delivers about 10m/s of delta vee to an Orion-type ship's pusher plate. That's about 850 kiloton-range A-bombs to reach orbital velocity (in the process of which you fry every satellite currently in orbit and create aurorae visible all the way to the equator that hang around for weeks or months).

    You can reduce some of the fallout once you get above the troposphere by angling your ship down range as fast as possible -- the fission fragments are mostly travelling much faster than escape velocity so if they're angled tangential to the Earth's surface they don't get soaked up by the atmosphere -- but you're still talking about something close to a Chernobyl's worth of fallout per launch.

    (This gets treated in great depth in "Invisible Sun", coming on September 28th!)

    378:

    How much could a Mars colony make as a reality TV show? And how much of the "reality" of colonization would be stage to provide this weeks exciting episode?

    Based on my limited experience watching reality TV shows, (I don't but I've caught brief moments at times and I hear people talk about them), the behavior of the people IN these shows that draws people to watch such shows is the type of behaviour that would get the people in the Mars base shown the "airlock". With no appeal allowed.

    And without viewers, no ad revenue and thus no show.

    379:
    Based on my limited experience watching reality TV shows, (I don't but I've caught brief moments at times and I hear people talk about them), the behavior of the people IN these shows that draws people to watch such shows is the type of behaviour that would get the people in the Mars base shown the "airlock". With no appeal allowed.

    Whee! Ratings Gold!

    380:

    Question: for those of you paying attention to military aerospace, is there a race to produce a new generation of intercontinental missiles on, by any chance?

    Not unless Italy and Japan are tooling up for the next Cold War?

    You don't need or want a liquid-fuelled heavy lifted for an ICBM. A present day Falcon 9 takes an hour to fuel up on an exposed launch pad: it'd be a sitting duck. Also, it's designed to lift up to 18 tons into LEO. A current generation RV with a 200 kiloton warhead inside it weighs about 250-300kg, so a Falcon could haul 60-odd warheads into space ... and then they'd all come down rather close together and fall foul of the fratricide effect (neutron pulse from first to detonate damages/fries the followers).

    However, Italy produces Arianespace's Vega rocket, a three stage solid-fuelled launcher that's a dead ringer for the USA's much more expensive Minotaur IV, which is a ploughshared version of the Peacemaker ICBM. And Japan has the Epsilon rocket which, ooh look, yet another three stage solid fuelled booster with a 1500kg payload to LEO, just like the Minuteman-III or Peacemaker or Trident or ... do you detect a pattern here?

    Meanwhile Musk is busy building Starship/Superheavy, which bears about as much resemblance to an ICBM as a supertanker bears to a guided missile frigate.

    (I mean, I can see the Pentagon looking into Starship as a way of delivering a hundred Space Marines in power-assisted armour to any point on the globe in 45 minutes, but that's about all it's good for militarily. And why bother with the space marines when you've got basing rights in 150 countries and can just send a V-22 Osprey full of the regular kind of marines?)

    381:

    His complaint and that of many others is that the entire US health care / doctor visit issues have been cut down to 15 minutes due to cost cutting on the side of paying (allocating taxes) to docs. And any system where someone wants to cut costs can look to the same pressures. No matter who is paying.

    The same issue (doc visit length) applies to US Medicare which for most purposes is a single payer system. (With lots of convoluted options.)

    382:

    Ah, rebreathers...

    If you don't know about them, they're a magic carpet...

    One of the most respected 'breathers on the market had a nickname on the interwebs "YBOD" which stood for Yellow Box of Death.

    When I first started servicing rebreathers I was taught by an old German guy. His first lesson was:

    "a few years ago the navy turned up here, put a set on that table and said 'you were the last person to service this set. The sailor who was using it died, can you tell us why?' "

    A few hours later they had the answer. It wasn't anything he'd done wrong.

    It was a semi closed set. Oxygen rich gas comes into the set at a set slow rate. The diver consumes some, and the unit vents a few bubbles which keeps the mixture in the life support range. When the diver had changed cylinders a few drops of salt water had got in the fittings. Being water it passed through the filters. When it got to the metering jet it was fired at sonic speeds and hit a metal wall inside the regulator. There it flash boiled, leaving the salt behind. Which built up and blocked the flow. Without the fresh gas the diver just breathed up the oxygen.

    Scary stuff. There's a few more ways they can take you out. Too boring for everyone else, but they're silent killers. I just love them.

    I know the space nerds all love the idea of a 1 atm mixed gas space suit. Me, I'd rather do an hour of pre-breathe and use a pure oxygen suit. At least that way if you're breathing something you know it has oxygen in it.

    I'd also be inclined to run the habitat at a bit more than 1 bar. At 2 bar you can have a partial pressure of oxygen of 0.2 bar, which is physiologically the same as earth, but only 10% oxygen in the mix, which won't support combustion. You'd need a different protocol before you went outside, having to decompress down to 1 bar (or a bit less) in 25% oxygen for a day first, then pre-breathe O2 (O2 is eventually toxic at 2 bar). The extra fiddle for going outside would be, I think, a small price to pay for fire safety.

    383:

    Re: 'How does Elon make a profit from his Mars Colony?'

    Mount Olympus is a huge volcano and if Martian volcanoes develop similarly to, including of similar ingredients to those on Earth: gold*, diamonds, zinc, copper, etc. all of which are very useful tech-related substances.

    Much depends on how the market for these keeps going. Also gives eco-Pols some ammo to shut down some highly polluting mining/mineral extraction concerns.

    http://volcano.oregonstate.edu/book/export/html/170

    The highly marketable and expensive metals/ores extraction** basically would finance the conversion of Mt Olympus into a huge habitat. Likely that the outer walls could be maintained at sufficient depth to protect against radioactivity. It's very tall - several Empire State Buildings could be stacked on it - and very wide. Could probably support/house several million people easily. Habitats vs. manufacturing vs. food production vs., etc. would have to be carefully planned to make the best/healthiest use of available space.

    Would it be more or less difficult to manufacture very hi-tech/hi-end tech on Mars vs. Earth? (Would Intel/AMD and similar consider their R&D labs and manufacturing there?) Does low gravity help or hinder this type of manufacturing?

    Lastly - I was thinking that entry access into Mt Olympus would be closer to the floor than the ceiling. Have heard about the dust storms but have no idea how detailed or specific knowledge of Mars meteorological conditions and cycles are. Definitely discoverable via smallish satellites therefore should be on EM's to-do list well before he sends out any long term workers/settlers.

    • While technically, there's tons of gold and other precious stuff in our oceans, I've no idea what the extraction or environmental cost would be. Plus our weather including on the oceans is turning hellish - higher risks re: safety of rigs, employees, transport ships, etc.

    ** Mining/ore extraction and foundry would definitely be robot work - supervised by humans.

    384:

    Formula works about as well as natural milk for the most part despite the massive blood and ink spilled over it. I don't se that as a major limiting factor in the health of babies.

    Formula milk is mostly squeezed cow juice with additives.

    Do you really expect a Mars colony to be relying on locally-farmed cows as a breast milk substitute?

    Coming up with an acceptable plant and chemosynthetic substitute for milk is probably possible, but it's going to be expensive: the nearest equivalent I can think of is total parenteral nutrition formula with some relaxed constraints (it doesn't need to be totally isotonic or sterile because it's not destined for blood infusion, if it's oral formula), but there may be other production/availability bottlenecks on Mars and it's still likely to be orders of magnitude harder to produce there than human milk.

    385:

    Some reactors use our atmosphere as the heat sink instead of water, and the readily available Martian CO2 is a practical heat transfer medium.

    Remind me again, what's the atmospheric pressure like on Mars at mean surface level?

    (Now calculate how much of that atmosphere you're going to be blasting past the meat exchangers every second to keep even a 1MW reactor from melting down. You're going to need some mightly big air ducts ...!)

    386:

    Thee will be projectile weapons.

    In an indoor colony on Mars, a projectile weapon that can shoot through walls is essentially a WMD.

    I expect Martian attitudes to gun control to be so draconian they make Scotland's look like a second amendment ammosexual's wet dream. (Hint: in Scotland, possession of handguns is a strict liability offense like possession of child pornography, with mandatory jail time just for picking one up you found abandoned in the street: only exceptions are for the police and military.) Frankly, I suspect possession of 3D printer STL files for making components of guns -- or explosive devices -- will get you a one-way trip back to Earth, if you're lucky, unless the explosives were ordered by the colony administration for quarrying. And even then, they won't be manufactured or stored inside the habitat -- there'd be distant, access-secured, surface facilities for handling them.

    387:

    On Earth, the current most economical way of producing large quantities of ultrapure water as a precursor to sterile saline solution is through reverse osmosis after multi-stage filtration.

    However, the filters are consumables, and require tight process controls. Difficult and tedious to make in small batches on Mars, and expensive to ship from Earth.

    Mars would likely use distillation - less energy efficient, but more economical given their constraints.

    A harder problem might be where Mars is going to rapidly get large amounts of basic substances like pharmaceutical-grade sodium chloride, sodium lactate, potassium chloride, and calcium chloride, after burning through existing stockpiles.

    The entire crop of fruits from the pinkhouses would be crushed and mixed with sauerkraut starter, then fermented to create lactic acid. An overworked lab technician would attempt to filter and neutralize it into a suitable ingredient for Ringer's Solution.

    Robots would need to be retasked to scrape up promising regolith with LIGHT elements, rather than gold and platinum. Rec areas would be filled with pails of dirt leaching their minerals into water.

    Engineers would be frantically trying to remember their first-year chemistry classes while running around doing bucket chemistry, with sometimes-helpful advice from Earth. Of course, none of the reactions would work the same as in class, with larger volumes and lower pressures.

    Power supplies would be cannibalized from other equipment to do electrolysis (with occasional venting of noxious gases when it drifts out of calibration).

    The med staff would complain about their IV solutions being purple and smelling like berries, and patients might suffer from hives and other adverse reactions, but it'd be better than nothing. Hopefully.

    388:

    When I last attempted to guess a minimal population to maintain our society and technology, I came up with 5 million. HOWEVER, that assumed suitable childcare, education and social engineering would mean that almost all of the population were both productively relevant and efficient, and I was and am not sure that could be done. Or that it could NOT be done, for that matter.

    The main point here is that a HUGE proportion of our resources are spent on things that are unnecessary, undesirable and unwanted. Those can't be reduced to zero, but could be reduced by a huge factor. Another is that a large proportion of the population is unproductive, highly inefficient, or not adaptable. No, I am NOT joining the smug arseholes of our rich list, because that applies across the spectrum and is probably higher in the 1% than in the middle 90%.

    It might even be possible with half a million, but the society would have to be be something that I can't even fantasise. We aren't talking humans as we know them if we want to get there.

    389:

    However, the filters are consumables, and require tight process controls. Difficult and tedious to make in small batches on Mars, and expensive to ship from Earth.

    It is probably possible to regenerate exhausted filter columns, especially if they are designed with that intention in mind.

    But overall, it's a good point. Reagent-quality water is a tough problem.

    390:

    Re: 'Cancers -- '

    Agree - the list of cancer types, sub-types, sub-sub-types keeps growing. And a treatment for one sub-type may not work for some other sub-type. My impression is that it was 'treatment-restance' that actually led researchers into investigating and finding the various sub-types.

    AML, the most common adult leukemia, was once considered one probably homogenous form of blood cancer. By the time my family member was diagnosed and treated, there were 6 different/distinct sub-types, each with varying treatment strategies and survival rates. (Haven't checked how much this list has since grown.)

    Basically, cancer is a screw-up in cell division and/or proliferation. Once you factor in all of the different cell types (200+), their constituent parts and processes, environmental factors (e.g., viruses like HPV, HIV), DNA transcription errors, etc., the total number of possible cancers is in the thousands at a minimum. So 'finding A cure for cancer' should be rephrased to 'finding cures for 1,000+ different cellular screw-ups'.

    Below is a recent Nature open-access collection of articles folks here might find interesting. It's sorta on-topic.

    Collection: Machine learning in healthcare

    https://www.nature.com/collections/xkhrxkzwvv

    391:

    whether the rugged individualists could actually make a semi-closed system work

    Probably the wrong class of people to make (semi-) closed systems work.

    I mean, you could view the Earth as a semi-closed system, and look what the rugged individualists are doing to it :-/

    392:

    On Phobos and orbital towers:

    Phobos' orbit is inclined 1.1 degrees from Mars equator, with an average radius of 9375 km. That means it orbits in a band of 180km above and below the equator where any orbital tower would be. Meanwhile Phobos itself is only 13km along its longest axis. I haven't run the numbers any further than that, but only a few percent of orbits will actually hit the tower. (Bear in mind that if you plot its distance from the equator against time you get a sinusoid, so most of the time its nearer the edges than the centre).

    The potential collision events can be forecast exactly, so if the tower can be moved at all it will be possible to sidestep them.

    393:

    You are the Mayor of Armstrong City, facing a variant SARS pandemic, and supplies and support are 15 months away. What do you do?

    First, I convert all of the chimpanzee zoos/labs to covid research labs on half gravity primates.

    Obviously the colony would have many long-term chimpanzee zoos/labs started to do long term studies of primate gestation in half a gravity, in addition to research on the long term effects of the Earth to Mars trip on primate genetics.

    394:

    On self-sufficiency:

    Someone mentioned the cargo rocket with supplies of microchips. Yes, you aren't kidding. I suspect that if an alien civilisation were to take a look at Earth they would consider the output of Intel and TSMC to be our civilisation's highest achievement. The steppers that do the photolithography are awesome.

    I don't see our Mars colony producing anything like that with a mere half million people; the technology is at the apex of a huge pyramid.

    Self-sufficiency is going to be a gradual thing, and the last 1% (by mass) is going to require 99% of the effort.

    Another way of looking at it: if you go to Radio Spares web page you will see that they have over half a million distinct products, or one product per person in our colony. That's not comparing like with like of course: a single machine making 1/4W resistors can churn out resistors of any value on demand. But it gives you some idea of the sheer scale of the problem.

    395:

    Not specifically martian, but perhaps of interest:

    https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-00149-1 Rogue antibodies could be driving severe COVID-19 Roxanne Khamsi 19 January 2021 [EXCERPT] Evidence is growing that self-attacking ‘autoantibodies’ could be the key to understanding some of the worst cases of SARS-CoV-2 infection. More than a year after COVID-19 emerged, many mysteries persist about the disease: why do some people get so much sicker than others? Why does lung damage sometimes continue to worsen well after the body seems to have cleared the SARS-CoV-2 virus? And what is behind the extended, multi-organ illness that lasts for months in people with ‘long COVID’? A growing number of studies suggest that some of these questions might be explained by the immune system mistakenly turning against the body — a phenomenon known as autoimmunity [snip]
    396:

    And the cost of dragging this material out of Mars' gravity well compared to the zero gravity wells of the asteroid belt?

    Sorry, but there is no business plan that justifies a Mars colony, and colonization is first and foremost a business enterprise.

    397:

    That's why colonizing Mars or any other planet makes no sense.

    Colonize Ceres to establish a hub for asteroid mining.

    Mine said asteroids to create new mining equipment, factories and ship yards.

    Manufacture the one commodity space can provide that is immune to the costs of transport up from a gravity well (or the costs of reentering Earth's atmosphere) : energy from solar power satellites.

    SPS generated energy would be for asteroid colonization what tobacco was for Virginia - a product that shows a profit and makes the colony financially viable.

    Screw planets.

    398:
    Formula milk is mostly squeezed cow juice with additives.

    Do you really expect a Mars colony to be relying on locally-farmed cows as a breast milk substitute?

    Reminds me of story by (I think) Isaac Asimov. It takes place on a space station. The main character, an engineer of some type, likes milk, a lot, and is unhappy that there is no milk on the station. So he gets together with the station bio guy. They go into the freezer and dig out bovine mammary cells, which they culture and try to coax to make milk. He quickly discovers that this is a much harder problem than he imagined. (This is the general experience of anyone trying to replicate a complex biological process outside the organism, which is why I'm deeply skeptical of the external womb posts above.) He quickly discovers the mammary tissue need hormones to work (like, Duh!), and that the best way to supply those is with cultured gland tissues. The gland tissue by itself is not enough to close the loop, so the process continues.

    He eventually succeeds, but by the time he gets satisfactory milk, he ends up having built most of a cow from cultured parts. As a bonus, he is also able to supply the kitchen with fresh beef.

    399:

    Found it. It was "Hi, Diddle, Diddle", by Robert Silverberg.

    400:

    China and India are a long way behind the curve and Russia isn't even playing the game any more.

    It depends on what you want from space.

    Agree Russia is out of it, India don't know enough, but China just did a sample return mission from the far side of the Moon, with plans to have a robotic base on the Moon in the next 4 years.

    China's current goal is to have humans on the Moon in the 2030's, and given their methodical program there is no real reason to doubt that they will achieve it.

    But I can't help but think their focus on robotic operations is more likely to pay off in the long term over attempts to colonize another planet.

    If a point comes when China decides the ability to launch daily/weekly is a priority, then they will allocate resources and likely achieve that goal in a reasonable time frame building on what they know so far.

    I also wouldn't count Bezos/Blue Origin out either just because they aren't being as public as Musk is.

    401:

    We should get you to write a book called "Technical Diving for Space Nerds"

    Anyway, I hope what you just wrote shows up (in mutated form, of course) in hard SF books for years.

    That said, I've got a quibble. The outside pressure on Mars is about 6 millibars. Running the inside at one bar is going to be enough of a nuisance. Reinforcing the walls to deal with about two bars of pressure going out makes it a real chore, especially if it's being built underground in segments to deal with radiation and temperature issues. Fixing leaks in a cavern lining is going to be no fun, especially if the blow out weakened the tunnel walls due to the high pressure differential that got equalized.

    That, and treating the guys going outdoors to work as long term "divers" (decompress for your work week, don't see your family sort of thing) probably is a nonstarter psychologically. Moreover, if the Mars base is running on solar power, and you've got to decompress for a day before you can go out and sweep the dust off after one of those dust storms, there are problems.

    I suspect they'd do the submarine solution (low O2 levels at 1 bar) if they're seriously worried about open flames. In that scenario, spending an hour pre-breathing pure O2 would seem absolutely wonderful.

    402:

    Which means Elon is presumably going to have at least two different designs of chip fabs in his colony, and they'll be completely digitally segregated, from the designers (human and AI) down to the silicon refineries. That's less expected than the several different food chains he's also going to need, and potentially more difficult to do.

    Realistically my guess is any Mars colony is going to need to focus on open source solutions, so they can benefit from the larger Earth population and only send digital information back and forth while still having the full ability to change/modify things locally if needed (or if Earth cuts them off).

    This likely means going RISC-V (assuming it gets traction) and Linux.

    Ironically enough though this is an indication that Musk hasn't though everything through - because if he had he should be encouraging a bunch of open source development so open source versions of needed apps are available when the time comes.

    Right now with 10B-odd people we have really only got two tech stacks, Linux and Microsoft / i86 and Arm.

    I expect Apple may disagree with you.

    403:

    Re: 'Mars' gravity'

    Okay - it will be more expensive than shipping from the zero gravity on asteroids. Mars' gravity well is approx. 32% of Earth's so at least shipping from Mars to Earth would be cheaper than shipping from Earth to Mars. Mostly it will depend on which minerals can be found/mined, cost to process into usable quality, shipping, overhead, etc. vs. their relative market prices.

    My guess though is that Earth-based solutions* will probably fail mostly because many investors are still too enamored of a centralized massively scaled/one-size-fits-all approach. It's an on-going argument between size vs. flexibility.

    • I.e., does it work on Earth?
    404:

    I have to agree that there will be projectiles: rubber bands, sling shots, bows, etc. Probably there will be airguns, as things that can be converted into airguns are too useful, and being able to shoot beanbags down halls to break up disturbances is simply too useful to coercive authoritarians.

    A better way to think of it is in the categories of firearms, coldarms, and (if necessary) windarms and e-arms. Firearms are probably out, because you don't need them unless you plan on killing people or threatening to do so. Cold arms include bows, which are basically springs. You can't keep those out (a chair leg with two heavy springs attached to it and to each other with a wire is a bow). Compressed gas and electricity throwing stuff around is going to be hard to keep out too.

    The key question is whether there will be a culture of people violently shooting at each other. My suspicion is that hacking the air supplies will be the preferred form of mass coercion. But I could be wrong.

    Also, I'd implement wrestling clubs for young men and women who need to work things out without escalating to weapons and killing each other. Perhaps boxing too. Some fights probably just need to happen in nonlethal ways.

    405:

    Now calculate how much of that atmosphere you're going to be blasting past the [h]eat exchangers

    According to https://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/carbon-dioxide-d_974.html the specific heat of CO2 at Mars temperatures is something like 800 J/kg-K. Assuming a temperature rise of 100 K in the cooling stream, that would be 8e4 J/kg and using that to remove 1.5e6J/s of heat from the 1 MWe reactor would need 18.75 kg/s.

    https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/planetary/factsheet/marsfact.html says the atmospheric density at the surface is ~0.020 kg/m3 so you'd need to move a little under 1000 m3/s through the heat exchanger. With intakes with an area of A m2, that would mean a flow velocity at the intakes of 1000/A m/s.

    I have no idea what kind of engineering that implies, or how feasible it would be.

    406:

    Question: for those of you paying attention to military aerospace, is there a race to produce a new generation of intercontinental missiles on, by any chance? Not unless Italy and Japan are tooling up for the next Cold War?

    The point of the question is whether human space flight has a reason other than display of technical prowess for those sponsoring and building the systems. In other words, is it analogous to the architectural erections that a certain class of middle aged male politicians always seem to get into (it's mockingly called edifice complex by some)? Is it like all the car companies that build race cars and sponsor teams for advertising, lulz, and to keep their technical people happy?

    It's worth considering this. I'm not questioning that Musk wants to go to Mars, but I do wonder why he wants to go to Mars. I mean, some gray soul like myself might--conceivably--put out a challenge to go to Mars as an excuse to work out the high density agriculture and housing technologies we'll need to deal with climate change. This would happen simply because more people and more money want to go to Mars than to deal with the tedious real world problems of poor brown people and all of our consumerist addictions.

    Not that I think Musk thinks this way, but who knows? We're not coming up with that really essential reason why living on Mars makes sense for humans, and we've certainly not tried to build domed cities on the most Mars-like parts of our planet. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance around this particular dream.

    407:

    I always thought for a space colony you'd want 8-bit class processors that you could easily build with early 70s technology and be able to fix with discrete spare parts.

    My machine of choice for this is the Apple II+, possibly the last machine made with discrete 74 series logic chips and a 6502 processor (which has only around 3000 transistors, in fact you can [and people have] make one out of discrete transistors if you have to).

    I do a lot of retrocomputing work, and you can get an amazing amount done with a 1MHz processor with 64k of RAM. Definitely enough to run a space base, and even have an early 80s style local internet.

    And sorry C64 and Atari fans who might be suspect of the Apple II, your computers have fancy ASICs for the sound and video that would be difficult to make and not really necessary unless you were gaming.

    408:

    I would be very unhappy if I were forced to go back to 70s computers. (And I learned to program on a PDP-11/20 in the 70s, so I'm fully aware that "you can get an amazing amount done with a 1MHz processor with 64k of RAM"). However, I now routinely work with 32 GB RAM, and many of the things I like to do with computers would be impossible in 64k.

    Of course, I'm not heading to Mars any time soon.

    409:

    the other nice thing about 1970s era computing chips is they're a lot less vulnerable to radiation bit flips. I hate to break it to you but whatever important work you are doing that requires 32GB of RAM isn't going to run very well in a high-rad environment like Mars.

    410:

    The last time this came up I had a poke round and found you could build ARM-3s quite happily with a transportable fab and, with a bit of care, the ARM plus other bits chips used in the Acorn machines that filled the gap between the Archimedes and RISC-PC. That gives you 32 bit architecture and lets you put in a full TCP/IP stack without needing to worry about what to leave out.

    411:

    Maybe they wouldn't need that Megafab? Have you ever heard/read about Yokogawa's minimal.fab?

    https://www.yokogawa.com/yjp/solutions/solutions/minimal-fab/

    Also, right around your corner https://www.semefab.com/ , Glenrothes in cooperation with

    https://www.searchforthenext.com/ via

    https://www.wafertrain.com/ builds this:

    https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20191018005356/en/Search-UK-Collaboration-Unveils-Bizen%C2%AE-Transistor-Wafer

    https://www.eetimes.com/bipolar-zener-combo-takes-on-cmos/

    https://www.eetimes.eu/cmos-is-history-bizen-transistor-tech-awarded-1-7m/

    They are only at the very beginning at the moment, so they concentrate on power electronics for the time being. Think voltage regulators with embedded logic, instead of digital logic somehow regulating voltage/current via attached discrete power electronics.

    However, this has the potential to be much more, even analog computing, memristor like neuromorphic devices, while avoiding the need for semiconductor structures approaching the limits of physics.

    Which is more robust (against radiation for instance), faster and cheaper to produce.

    That could be combined with something like Yokogawa's minimal.fab, making the comparison between state of the art process nodes a' la TSMCs 5nm and theirs not so ridiculous anymore.

    Thereby enabling them to be masters of their own cybernetic fate, reducing path dependencies on established supply chains and platforms.

    Cyber Cyber, burning bright, Between mirrors in the light; What clever hand or eye, Could frame thy dynamic reconfigurability?

    412:

    whatever important work you are doing that requires 32GB of RAM isn't going to run very well in a high-rad environment like Mars.

    Nothing I do is important.

    413:

    Interesting. So, on any stations or colonies, an airlock should first run, say, N2 or any cheap gas through, from the top down through filters in the floor (which are cycled after each use of the airlock), then pressurize with breathable air.

    414:

    I am mostly a regular lurker here. The ME topic that has come up in some posts motivates me to comment. There is a column by George Monbiot in the Guardian today, where he comments on long covid and ME/CFS. According to him, people sufferig from ME/CFS had, and still have, problems to be taken seriously.

    I have CFS-like symptoms since four years myself. They are mostly physical like chronic muscle pain, exhaustion, post-exertional malaise, somewhat disturbed thermoregulation and a general feeling as if the immune system is in constant action. The only third-person indication though is an increased count of leukocytes. On basis of which my general practitioner asserts that I'm completely healthy from his perspective, without saying it may all be psychosomatic in so many words. In the beginning I suspected lyme disease as a possible cause. I used to be in a risk group for it (when I was still working) spending an appreciable time outdoors conducting faunistic studies. But an ELISA test for antibodies came back negative.

    If you, Toby or anyone else, feels like sharing how he or she became aware of the possibility of suffering from ME/CFS and, especially, how he or she got a diagnosis I'd be very interested. I'd also be open for exchange on a more private channel.

    415:

    I was picturing "cut off from Earth, need to build semiconductors from scratch" levels of difficulty here, not the "oh just tell them to stick a new microfab on the next transport".

    I was thinking more of a "Sam Zeloof builds some chips in his garage" level of chip manufacturing although even that requires some complex machinery, modern equipment, and unusual and often highly toxic chemicals.

    416:

    Two different fabs would be absurd. You'd need spare parts for both.

    And I would assume that all chips fabbed on-colony would be a minimum of two generations, if not four, behind what's on Earth. When astronauts go up, they take old ruggedized laptops... whose chips are far less vulnerable to radiation-mediated errors.

    Oh... and Linux runs on everything, including, according to a report today on slashdot, the latest Apple hardware.

    417:

    Canned. You have a tour, record it, then you pay to take a VR tour on Earth.

    You pay a LOT more to actually do it, and it's available only when Earth and Mars are < 5 min apart, and you pay the max for when they're only 3 min apart.

    418:

    Formula: nope. Provides zero immunities, and there may be more things that we don't know yet that you get from mother's breast milk.

    And, per other subthreads here, you need sterile water.

    419:

    Resonance for space elevators?

    How about something completely different?

     |
     ^
    | |
     v
     |

    Best as I can do with pre and ASCII art. Effectively, like a railroad siding on the way up: about 50km high, and about 50 km wide? And it can, of course, be rotated, so that Phobos passes through?

    420:

    I strongly disagree about Russia. I mean, they've been putting up a lot, including US astronauts, for over a decade. And they've signed on with NASA for the Lunar Gateway.

    They're only slowly working their way back from the absolute disaster of the (heavily-assisted) collapse of the USSR, and the oligarchs aren't helping.

    421:

    Written long before we could build remote-controlled robotic probes. I mean, you have heard of these, right?

    Actually, as I write that, I would be very surprised if we've reached the point of being able to have a Martian colony if we don't have emergency ships in stock. And it wouldn't come from Earth, it would come either from the Moon, or one of the stations in Earth or Lunar orbit.

    Oh, right, and if it came from the Moon, we'd use a lunar rail launcher.

    422:

    This gets treated in great depth in "Invisible Sun", coming on September 28th! Oh GOODY!

    with mandatory jail time just for picking one up you found abandoned in the street Which is Utterly fucking STUPID "Strict Liability" offences simply should not exist ... there will ALWAYS, EVERY SINGLE TIME ... be a justifiable exception that the wankers writing it will not have thought of. I've read enough of the history of Railway Accidents & the work of the various inspectorates down the years, to know that there will ALWAYS be an exception. Guns in Scotland, frin'stance .. a 13-year old, who does not know, finds a crook's dropped gun & takes it to the cops - & then goes to jail, VERY intelligent.

    Paul Fit Phobos with v large ion rockets & "fly" it away from Mars entirely ... Oh yes, where do you park or dump it?

    mdive But Putin's Russia is still playing the "I'm a big, threatening World Power" game - with actual resources not much more than Britain's. Which indicates that something has gorn badly worng.

    Eric Sanger You are aware that many ( all? ) sufferers of ME/CFS have nerve damage, often/especially in the area around the back of the neck & shoulders? That physical trace was one of the final killers for the "There's nothing wrong with you, you are imagining it!" school - though some bastards are still pushing it, against all evidence.

    423:

    There. Will. Be. No. Projectile. Weapons.

    After we've disabled the bearer, they will be escorted to the airlock without a spacesuit, and the body will be left visible pour deencourager les autres.

    And then every 3D printer on the station, and their controlling systems, will be searched by security, and anyone having such plans will be put on trial, and if they can't justify it, their body will be put out with the other.

    There is NO SECOND AMENDMENT ON MARS, and if I'm there, I, personally, will carry out the above.

    Got that?

    424:

    I will note that the last time I read anything, about 70k years ago, there were a total of about 2000 homo sap alive.

    On the other hand, all they had to worry about was eating, drinking, reproducing, and not being eaten.

    425:

    We understand that. Actually, my SO and I are both on Kaiser-Permanente, which is a seventies-style HMO: they do do most of it all.

    But for most of the US, I mean, doing it your way, think of the lack of ROI for the investors! I mean, the investors in the health insurance companies and private hospitals and "oh, they may work here, but they're independent contractors, and not in-network", are making trillions! That would be a terrible loss of wealth!

    (If anyone doesn't understand bitter satire, I'm not sure why you're on this blog.)

    426:

    That's one thing that I've had to deal with in my stories about the future universe. A lot of what I have - and we have far cheaper interstellar transportation - is for less crowded conditions, and experimental culture reasons.

    Oh, and of course, the religious wackoes who want to live the way their version of God (tm) Intended.

    427:

    On the other hand, we may be beginning to find similarities in mechanisms. I just read something the other day about when they switch from ATP, I think it is, to fermentation. Staying with the faster route runs into a production bottleneck, apparently.

    428:

    Actually, I saw the first papers about that as an issue something like last summer.

    429:

    Oh... and Linux runs on everything, including, according to a report today on slashdot, the latest Apple hardware.

    Depends on what you classify as run.

    Yes, you can boot Linux. But network requires a USB network controller (no driver - yet - for the internal network stuff) and you get dumb 2D graphics.

    And the custom Apple GPU will be the hard part - there is still no decent open source driver for Nvidia hardware for example.

    430:

    ROTFL!

    Sorry - the reason I'm laughing is that in Stand on Zanzibar, it's Indonesia that's the cold-war-like enemy of the West, and they've got the genius genetic engineer who starts genengineering... and so the scientific advanced nation.

    431:

    I'm not questioning that Musk wants to go to Mars, but I do wonder why he wants to go to Mars.

    I agree.

    I think Musk, like many (most) other human spaceflight enthusiasts has grown up reading fiction by SF authors who uncritically absorbed stuff that was pumped into the zeitgeist by Konstantin Tsiolkovski back before the Russian revolution, recycling quasi-theological arguments advanced by the Christian theologian Nikolai Federovitch Federov (who did a deep dive into "be fruitful and multiply" headspace in the late 19th century and came up with "become immortal: colonize the universe: resurrect everyone who came before you" and decided this was obviously God's plan). It ties in nicely with the American frontier mythos even if it doesn't actually make any kind of economic (or social) sense.

    432:

    My machine of choice for this is the Apple II+, possibly the last machine made with discrete 74 series logic chips and a 6502 processor (which has only around 3000 transistors, in fact you can [and people have] make one out of discrete transistors if you have to).

    Yes, this.

    For a colony of < 500,000 people it's cheaper to assume everyone learns a common language and all messages are written in it rather than to bother with internationalization, message strings, GUIs, multitouch, and processors powerful enough to paint anti-aliased dropshadows under pictures of arrows. And to go with command-line stuff wherever possible, substituting human labour for ease-of-use in return for getting much higher effective performance.

    BUT this is not to say there won't be a requirement for stupidly high performance imported processors in some areas. If you need a neural network to monitor crops (because the only ones you can grow for yourselves are busy running the creche, which also requires NN monitoring) then you pay for an imported chip.

    Musk is looking at a $2M ticket price from Earth to Mars surface, so I'm assume that's roughly 1 ton of cargo (canned ape plus life support and basic posessions). So we get a figure of $2000/kg. That's not insurmountable for importing chips; indeed, current generation high end Intel CPUs cost a whole lot more than that, even in their packaging.

    433:

    That, and treating the guys going outdoors to work as long term "divers" (decompress for your work week, don't see your family sort of thing) probably is a nonstarter psychologically.

    Lots of industries run on the work camp model. It's got it's own set of issues, but workers are demonstrably willing to go to an isolated location for a shift lasting a few weeks, live on site, see their family when they return.

    Come to that, sailors do the same thing.

    434:

    People keep bringing up how this colony pays for itself, but fail to mention SpaceX's ownership?

    SpaceX's strategy seems to be to offer services on Earth in pursuit of profits which it spends on musk's mars project.

    SpaceX is an earth based company of which musk has a slim majority share. Presuming that Musk ends his life on mars, as he's said he wants to, we can expect that martian interests inherit control over SpaceX. In addition to that source of control, I wouldn't be surprised if part of that 500,000 ticket price is a bit of ownership of the firm that exists to supply the colonists.

    Musk's Mars doesn't have to export anything to earth, because Musk's SpaceX is exporting itself it Mars.

    435:

    I think Elon Musk wants to go to Mars to escape the Vogon construction fleet. After all, the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy is his favorite science fiction book.

    https://www.cnbc.com/2017/06/06/elon-musk-says-this-science-fiction-classic-changed-his-life.html

    https://fs.blog/2014/11/elon-musk-book-recommendations/

    In the absence of a Vogon construction fleet, I think that a big asteroid or an oversided solar flare will do, in his list of reasons to go to Mars.

    I see nothing but practical sense in him.

    436:

    people sufferig from ME/CFS had, and still have, problems to be taken seriously

    Years ago I read an article in a management paper that claimed a study in Australia had shown that CFS didn't exist therefore people claiming to have it were slackers.

    What the study showed was that when your health insurance no longer recognizes a condition, the number of claims goes down. What you and I would see as obvious (condition not covered by insurance, don't file a claim for it) apparently got interpreted as no claims = no one with condition.

    437:

    It ties in nicely with the American frontier mythos even if it doesn't actually make any kind of economic (or social) sense.

    Given that the American frontier wasn't actually like the American frontier mythos…

    438:

    Looks like you're building the power station at the North Pole, then:

    https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_polar_ice_caps

    The South Pole has a permanent ice layer of frozen carbon dioxide, eight metres thick; it's seasonal at the North Pole but that's fine, too - 'Seasonal' means it's a renewable resource, redeposited every winter at both poles.

    The advantage of the North Pole is that there is a 'summer' when surface pipelines are warm enough to transport surplus gas elsewhere.

    This isn't clean CO2 ice (nor is the water ice below it): there's a lot of fine dust mixed-in and you don't want that in the primary cooling circuit of a gas-cooled reactor.

    But that's a better problem to have, than a thin atmosphere for your source.

    There is no shortage of CO2 when you can strip-mine it and deliver it on conveyors or dumper trucks.

    That's difficult for long journeys: but placing the power plant on the polar plains, at the centre of an export pipeline network, is workable.

    My working model would be to find a suitable salt dome structure underground for gas storage (or create one with a nuke), somewhere near the North Pole, and use the waste heat from the reactor to keep it at CO2 gas-phase temperatures all year round: strip-mine the ice in Winter and fill up a cubic mile or two of storage, drawing-down in summer for reactor cooling and exporting the surplus southward when the pipelines are warm enough.

    439:

    Indonesia that's the cold-war-like enemy of the West, and they've got the genius genetic engineer who starts genengineering...

    Then there's Aristoi's mataglap nano. IIRC, it originated in a waste management project in Indonesia that was a bit too successful and ate the Earth's biosphere.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aristoi_(novel)

    440:

    Got to remember that basically all of the European colonial powers' colonizing efforts involved invading lands that had been cared for by other humans for 15,000-50,000 years or more. I'm not sure we established anything resembling a self-sustaining colony anywhere that humans hadn't been before. Possibly Ascension Island is as close as Europeans have come to settling a barren island and making it bloom.

    That's the problem with ideas about being first-in colonists on a non-living world: we literally do not know what we're doing. We really should be building cities on Dorset Island, in the Atacama, and other uninhabited spots, restoring Chinese ecosystems around their cities, building sustainable centers on garbage dumps...

    ...Actually about that last bit, it's pretty common to site lower income schools on garbage dumps from decades past, at least in southern California. They're toxic messes waiting to happen. If we build to that standard on Mars, billion dollar failure won't even begin to cover it...

    ...But that's the point. We're not taking the necessary baby steps to live off-planet or even live on-planet long term. And by that, I don't mean little experimental space stations on Mauna Loa, Those are embryonic developments, and we're not going bigger yet.

    My prediction so far is that, if we even bother to return to the Moon or go to Mars or Ceres, all we'll end up doing is leaving a big old pile of garbage and a few rapidly fading flags, and come back with some samples, pictures, and brags, many of which we'll end up losing to bit rot or carelessness. Except the brags. Not very salutary.

    441:

    SpaceX is an earth based company of which musk has a slim majority share. Presuming that Musk ends his life on mars, as he's said he wants to, we can expect that martian interests inherit control over SpaceX. In addition to that source of control, I wouldn't be surprised if part of that 500,000 ticket price is a bit of ownership of the firm that exists to supply the colonists.

    And 2 years after arriving on Mars, a pandemic or natural disaster wipes out SpaceX and a condition of government money to rebuild to selling SpaceX to the government for $1 (because taxpayers won't allow the government to bail it out as long as it continues being a Martian company).

    Or the government, for "national security", takes control of SpaceX as it is viewed as too dangerous to allow a foreign (in this case Martian) entity control US access to space.

    That would seem to be a rather dangerous way to fund a Mars base.

    442:

    I expect Apple may disagree with you.

    My impression is that Apple would like to disagree with me, but currently they make a consumer stack and some niche business products. When I worked in a Mac-heavy company they still relied on Microsoft for everything that wasn't pretty pictures. Many of the iWankers had a Windows PC as well as their McPC so they could interact with sales, accounts and all the other bureaucracy.

    I don't see any sign that Apple is even trying to get hold of an office software suite, they appear to reply on the generosity of Microsoft and the willingness of LibreOffice to support them. There's no corporate accounting software or any of the other essentials for running even a mid-size organisation.

    443:

    I'm not questioning that Musk wants to go to Mars, but I do wonder why he wants to go to Mars. If he is not going off the deep end completely and just feigning a certain degree of madness for the audience entertainment, I can only assume the strategy that is called "riding the wave". Look, he can always say that no matter what he promised to the public (and his investors), it is responsibility of the public to put the trust into him, and as for the money, he is just doing what he can do best. He can always get off the deal as long as power that be favors and tolerates him. That is his only failure point (besides end of his own life, like what happened to Korolyov).

    Realistically speaking, I do not share his optimistic viewpoint, nor any viewpoint associated with it, including Charlie's. Not at all. For me, even establishing a resemblance of Mars colony within this century counts as optimistic. It is not a matter of "why wouldn't we do it" but rather "how else can we do it", given our previous experience, and in that I wouldn't dare to have any prognosis beyond 50 years from now.

    For these reasons, here are the deadlines: 1. 15 years from now on - get rid of rusty old iron aka "ISS" and establish actual deeps space test bed near the moon, may it be the DSO or something similar. The purpose would be to create and 2. 15 of next years are sufficient to build infrastructure for Mars travel, and not only one-way daredevil attempt to trample the soil and putting landmarks (we call it "sharing a hide of of bear that is not killed"), with some perspective to the future projects. 3. It is at this point, optimistically, we can say that we are ready to send major land-and return mission to prove ourselves that we are capable of being interplanetary species. 4. 20 more years to upscale the process enough to be able to build relatively self-sufficient planet-side operation, only the first batch of it. Maybe a habitation module not unlike an arctic station that can host the small population on regular basis.

    All in all, this results into comprehensive strategy that, in the next 50 years, allows exactly four people to touch the surface of the planet, and maybe dozen or two of them to stay in orbit around it, before actually starting to do anything on the surface. If we don't achieve this, we can probably go a bit sideways - and that involves adaptation of humanity to the space in the ways that were not seem to be possible before. Like gene modification therapy. Or widespread application of assistive cybernetic implants. Now, again, what would that mean for biological research like immunity boosting? Maybe people in 50 years would look back at us in bewilderment, "they've had a trouble doing that?".

    China and India are a long way behind the curve and Russia isn't even playing the game any more. Oh come on, not playing the stupid games is supposed to be the part of winning strategy. In contrast to US effort or even China, most Russian observers I am familiar with have the idea of sticking a flag into the other celestial body alluring and provocative, but nothing beyond it, not providing even a slightest hint of foresight. As if Apollo program didn't teach us anything.

    I'm going to put down two of the reference projects of the similar scale and purpose, that have been carried out nowadays. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nagurskoye_(air_base) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yamal_LNG The latter one, I even participated in building some parts it. I don't think many people aware of the scale of the work that has been done, thanks to information blockade imposed against it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JiFFDJglSxE Almost HALF MILLION tonnes (of the modular equipment only) transported and installed.

    444:

    To continue.

    Years ago I have had a great time reading Eclipse Phase rulebook, because there was a time when they still dared to experiment with ideas. (Oh, the times have changed). It has a lot of ideas about future of Mars at large, starting with small-scale settlements (mind you, not isolated case, it is all tied in-universe) and up to a gargantuan terraforming project that has only failed because of other in-universe events of a similar scale. Anyway, I am not really going to spoil the fun of discovery since the books are actually available online for free, for the most part. But instead I am going to drop some of the ideas I picked up from it in the context of self-sufficient deep-space colony.

    Long story short, after the main events of the setting, Mars is practically the only remaining settlement that can even compare to Earth's best days of glory, an embodiment of "backup Earth". Population is well within hundred million, if not 200. Unfinished changes to atmosphere that increase surface pressure by two orders of magnitude, making it possible to breath it with special equipment. The aforementioned Phobos is moved from one orbit to the other, making way to space elevator.

    Some other ideas are even looking appealing to the more closer plans, like the "cyclers" concept, when a pretty big ship with relatively small amount of fuel can constantly traverse the space between planet with little fuel expense, in cycles, 5 months one way, 21 months the other way. To get to Mars this way, you have to accelerate enough to catch up to it and dock, accessing to onboard facilities, and then decelerate at destination.

    445:

    If Space X fails after 2 years of Mars colonization, we don't have the 10+ years of Space X sending in 100 settlers a day.

    I think Space X is a necessary feature of OGH's postulate Elon-Musk settlement. Some degree of careful managment and a huge degree of anxiety on the part of the martians will be constantly leveled at whether or not their next supply rocket is coming for decades.

    Furthermore, I expect the colony, able fuel and return Starships, is able to negotiate the ownership of SpaceX from some degree of mutually assured destruction.

    446:

    Heteromeles @ 440: "We really should be building cities on Dorset Island, in the Atacama, and other uninhabited spots."

    No,no,no, not Dorset Island. There are people there.

    Dorset Island is part of the province of Nunavut and I'm pretty sure that they don't want you there. The village of Kinngait (formerly Cape Dorset)is the "Inuit art capital" of the Arctic and they want customers, not developpers

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kinngait

    You don't want to disturb the grave sites of the Dorset Culture, do you?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorset_culture

    Besides, Dorset Island is right next to the strategic waterways of the Canadian Arctic Archipelago, so it's a closely held piece of land.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_Archipelago

    If you want to develop some places closer than Mars, go develop really empty places like the Antarctic.

    447:

    Justin Jordan @ 343: Just so.

    Which is probably a good argument for doing it. Developing the tech to survive on Mars would make it easier to survive here post ciimate apocalypse.

    Finding a way to stave off the climate apocalypse will probably give a better ROI.

    448:

    For a colony of < 500,000 people it's cheaper to assume everyone learns a common language and all messages are written in it rather than to bother with internationalization

    A common language will be a given, if for no other reason than in an emergency you don't have time to cycle through X versions of a message or have settlers unable to communicate with each other.

    message strings, GUIs, multitouch, and processors powerful enough to paint anti-aliased dropshadows under pictures of arrows. And to go with command-line stuff wherever possible, substituting human labour for ease-of-use in return for getting much higher effective performance.

    The idea of going with simple processors and returning to the 80s has appeal - but we quickly forget all the people who couldn't/can't figure out command line interfaces.

    Not to mention that you really need a GUI to get a lot of stuff done these days, because the software demands it - and the importing of photos, etc.

    You aren't going to do a lot of research stuff, or medical imaging, or any number of other things effectively with 1980s technology. So your small amount of high performance stuff ends up being not so small.

    And that's without getting into the need for entertainment.

    Musk is looking at a $2M ticket price from Earth to Mars surface, so I'm assume that's roughly 1 ton of cargo (canned ape plus life support and basic posessions). So we get a figure of $2000/kg. That's not insurmountable for importing chips; indeed, current generation high end Intel CPUs cost a whole lot more than that, even in their packaging.

    Current iPhone is 228g, call it 250g. So $500 shipping on a $1,000 phone.

    But then it's not just the $500, but the entire $1500 that someone on Mars needs to come up with to pay an Earth based company.

    Or that fact that you wouldn't be buying 1 phone for a base of 500,000 people.

    Now perhaps you remain static in your technology and find a way of just replacing the batteries every couple of years locally, which might work for a while at least.

    But it brings up another important question - at $2M per person to Mars, that's a lot of money for 500,000 people - and he is actually claiming a million people by 2050...

    https://www.businessinsider.com/elon-musk-plans-1-million-people-to-mars-by-2050-2020-1

    (and I still say for his plans there is a lot of stuff that he at least publicly isn't dealing with yet that need to be dealt with if he is being real and not just selling dreams).

    449:

    I disagree. We need a real space station in Earth orbit. (Preferably a wheel, with artificial gravity.)

    The Lunar Gateway should be built up as well.

    Then, I agree, we can talk about really doing things in space, because real spaceships should be orbit-to-orbit, not planet to planet.

    450:

    Moz @ 344: A lack of very specific people is often the reason, though. Jack Ma is having a very different experience to Elon Musk, and even if he wanted to I suspect he wouldn't be able to build his own fleet of giant space rockets in China.

    Unless the Chinese government decided they should have a fleet of giant space rockets of their own ...?

    451:

    I'd forgot about the Dorset culture, but you're right, especially about the geopolitics. Guess we abrogate the Antarctic Treaty...

    ...Or, thinking more about that, since we're talking about a new round of capitalist imperialism (hold your nose)...

    ...There actually is a reason to build ports all along the Arctic Ocean. These would be to service the future trade routes through the Arctic and to establish territorial claims. Tough luck for the natives and all, but what did they do during their 4,000 years of tenure, besides survive? (/heavy sarcasm)

    More seriously, figuring out how to create semi-sustainable ports along the Arctic, in really crappy conditions with melting permafrost and who knows what other horrors the US/USSR war left behind, is actually not the worst way to prepare for Mars. I totally agree with you that Dorset Island should be left to the locals, but we've got a pitiably bad record of doing that when our alpha males get untreated male edifice complex.

    If you want a really unsettling thought, Powell's Airship to Orbit plan has him putting airports in the Arctic, because the top of the stratosphere is closer to the planet there than at the equator by many miles. So you could, conceivably, imagine Mars prototype cities in the Arctic, linked to orbit via giant airships, so they're sea, air, and space ports. Since I happen to like the ATO program, I think I'll go bleach my brain at this point. The only virtue this has is...it's different.

    452:

    Well, no, you don't use it at ambient pressure, you compress it to a more useful density. And then recirculate it.

    After all, you're not wanting to simply dump the low grade heat to the environment. You've got a network of tunnels dug in the rock of a perishing cold planet where nothing at all ever gets above the freezing point of water unless you go a lot deeper than you'd be wanting to do for digging a colony. You need that low grade heat to keep the place warm, so your reactor cooling circuit feeds a heat exchanger with your central heating system. (Also, you've probably got quite a bit of stuff that could make use of it for process heat.)

    453:

    Moz @ 353:

    long term technical diving

    Yep, I remember the JC sea hab misery, and I'm also thinking that gasdive's "long term" and Mars colony long term are different things. Unless gasdive is writing to us from 20,000 leagues under the sea :) But you're right that they did rather show that we can't even keep water out, so the idea that we could keep moon dust or Mars dust out seems dubious. IIRC the moon visitors remarked on the smell of stuff coming in from outside, suggesting that their primitive decontamination processes were not very effective. As mentions above, if you can smell it your mask isn't working.

    I'm pretty sure there's no place on Earth where the ocean is 20,000 leagues deep.

    The title of Verne's novel refers to the distance the scientists from the American expedition to locate the sea monster traveled with Captain Nemo aboard his submarine Nautilus. A nautical league is 2.1584 nautical miles; 20,000 leagues = 43,168.95 nautical miles. The Challenger Deep is only 1.26 leagues (if I have the math right) deep.

    454:

    Duffy @ 356: How about the Mars colony making money from renting VR suits to people back on Earth, full immersion VR experience - you'll feel as if you are on Mars!

    Have to work around that 3 to 22 minute signal delay back and forth from Mars and Earth.

    Would prerecorded VR work?

    455:

    Heteromeles @ 451: "Orbit plan has him putting airports in the Arctic, because the top of the stratosphere is closer to the planet there than at the equator by many miles."

    It's closer to the planet at both poles, in winter.

    https://scied.ucar.edu/shortcontent/stratosphere-overview

    Go to the South Pole first with your ATO, since there no indigenous peoples, no musk ox or caribou there. Then, once you've tried out the plan in the Antarctic and proved that it can't harm the fragile Arctic ecology, you can ask for permissions to launch balloons from the North Pole too.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arctic_ecology

    456:

    But how fast does your neural network for monitoring the crops have to run? Crops don't change very quickly, and they aren't all that complicated. You don't need a machine capable of diagnosing a human disease within a standard GP consultation slot; you can run it on a 6502 and the crops will be quite happy to wait around for the answer.

    (Another point about the 6502 idea is that of course it won't be a real 6502, it'll be a newly made 6502oid. So you can change the design a bit. It would take very little modification (little more than simply bringing some already-existing signals out to pins) to make a 6502oid capable of being ganged up bit-slice style to make a processor of arbitrarily large word length. It would probably also take very little to speed it up maybe 10x, since the main reason it runs at the speed it does is that when it was designed you couldn't get fast enough memory to keep up with anything faster, so there was no point. So you can get quite a bit more horsepower without losing the advantages of simplicity and feature size >> an alpha particle.)

    457:

    Thing is, most industrial activity is in the northern hemisphere. See sleepingroutine's post up there, for example. If we want to get from industrial cities to space, then traveling south via New Zealand or Chile through the Roaring 40s is distinctly suboptimal.

    The other issue is that the Antarctic Treaty System protects Antarctica, so that would have to be broken before commercial ports could be built there.

    That does make me wonder if there's some kind of alternate, non-capitalist structure, as with Antarctica, under which space could be settled by more than satellites. I think the answer is a resounding no, but since capitalism doesn't really support colonizing anywhere off planets, it's worth thinking extremely laterally.

    458:

    You're right on many levels about the psychology of two days to get outside. My thinking is coloured by exposure to lots of highly motivated young men (all men) who think nothing of being away from family for weeks or months for work. That's ok for niche skills.

    On the other hand, there will be many habs and they will undoubtedly find their own balance for temperature, humidity, oxygen fraction and pressure. I talked to a guy once who got a job as a cleaner on an American Antarctic base. He had to walk over to (I think NZ) base to sleep because the Americans kept their base so hot. I feel safe at 2 bar, but I don't have chronic airway obstruction. So who knows. But I'm guessing 1 bar, 21% oxygen in nitrogen might not be all that common.

    As for the difficulty of maintaining 2 bar. I don't see it. Weight is no problem. There's at least 10m of regolith piled on top that you have to support anyway so it's going to have to be built strong. There might be an issue getting more tonnes of nitrogen, I'm not sure how available that is on Mars. Seals work better and are easier to make, the bigger the pressure difference. Getting a cheap airlock to seal at a few psi is a gigantic pain.

    Ultra pure water. The first thing they're building is a spaceship refueling factory. It's going to be making thousands of tonnes of oxygen and hydrogen as precursors to methane and oxygen rocket fuel. Just react some pure hydrogen and pure oxygen and you've got ultra pure water. There's probably going to be fuel cells in something spitting out tonnes of the stuff every day.

    459:

    Heteromeles @ 457: "The other issue is that the Antarctic Treaty System protects Antarctica, so that would have to be broken before commercial ports could be built there."

    Up North in the High Arctic there are already many commercial ports on the main islands. That's how they get the diesel oil in, once a year, to power the many Inuit communities.

    The environmental laws of the province of Nunavut protect the High Arctic.

    https://www.gov.nu.ca/environment/information/documents/195/184

    And, of course, the Federal Government of Canada also protects the whole Arctic Archipelago and its waters

    https://tc.canada.ca/en/marine-transportation/arctic-shipping/pollution-prevention-canadian-arctic?pedisable=false

    460:

    The key question is whether there will be a culture of people violently shooting at each other.

    Get a diverse set of adolescents together and they will improvise projectile "things". They just will. And if there are regular classes about "thou shall not" a subset will be even more determined to make them. If for no other reason than to do the Mars equivalent of "Pumpkin Chunk'n" down the hallways. At first it will be totally with no rules but as people improve the designs rules will spring up to keep the games playable in the available corridors. And maybe to deal with setup and breakdown in minutes if the "cops" are spotted.

    Think street racing in the US.

    461:

    Surface of Mars to Earth is about 11 km/s. Earth to Mars is about 18 km/s. But Earth has a lot of infrastructure already in place and adding more is cheap. So there's not a whole lot in it as far as getting from one to the other being cheaper. Though they're may be a lot of "empties" headed back to Earth.

    462:

    Just ship a million or few 7402 chips 4 elements of 2 input NOR gates on each chip. With NOR you can build anything else. And a few 1000 or so wire wrap tools plus standard plug up boards and miles of wire wrap wire.

    To make life easier add some of the more advanced 74xxx series items.

    This is where I got my start in computing. Ancient of days to be sure.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_7400-series_integrated_circuits

    463:

    I strongly disagree about Russia. I mean, they've been putting up a lot, including US astronauts, for over a decade

    How much will the loss of funding from charging $80mil or so per ride up and down hurt them?

    464:

    On the other hand, all they had to worry about was eating, drinking, reproducing, and not being eaten.

    Breathing, pissing, pooping weren't a project management issue either.

    Well maybe a bit for the last two but still it was fairly simple. Do it over there or we kick you in the crotch.

    465:

    Lots of industries run on the work camp model. It's got it's own set of issues, but workers are demonstrably willing to go to an isolated location for a shift lasting a few weeks, live on site, see their family when they return.

    It can be hard on family life.

    Of course for some being with each other every day can also be hard.

    466:

    Meanwhile, talking of dangerous weapons on Musk's Martian colony Would these be allowed? Musk's company makes them after all ... I think my brain hurts.

    467:

    I'm not sure we established anything resembling a self-sustaining colony anywhere that humans hadn't been before.

    Someone correct me if they know better but.

    I think that I read that over the first 100 years after Columbus about 1500 people landed in the New England area. About 10% survived.

    I assume we'll have better results on Mars but still...

    468:

    Maybe the solution to the silly kids with guns problem is to just not allow Americans onto Mars.

    Only have say, Japanese, who already have a culture of politeness, rule following, contained drunkenness and no guns.

    469:

    I don't see any sign that Apple is even trying to get hold of an office software suite, they appear to reply on the generosity of Microsoft and the willingness of LibreOffice to support them. There's no corporate accounting software or any of the other essentials for running even a mid-size organisation.

    More and more they seem content to be the device in your hands and let the others do the back end stuff. And more and more software is moving to a pure cloud/server based setup with very little on device code. Even most iOS / Android apps are front ends to streamline things over a web interface with the real code on the servers somewhere.

    As to the Microsoft generosity I have read some interesting insights (or crazy speculation) about what went on in secret deal that resulted in that video kiss and make up between Jobs and Gates 20 years ago. Lots of serious lawsuits went away soon after that and 10 digit or more $ amounts moved in and out of some of the companies.

    And as an aside about 5 years ago at a Penn State conference some folks from inside of PS IT talked about how the internal student systems were being yelled at because of how crappy (when it even worked) their software was to us. The IT position was that they only supported Windows. The user perspective was that 60% of the students shows up at campus that year with Mac laptops.

    470:

    The idea of going with simple processors and returning to the 80s has appeal - but we quickly forget all the people who couldn't/can't figure out command line interfaces.

    I know a manager in IBM's cloud business (one of them at least) and they are totally into GUI click and configuration changes. DevOps and all of that. They have discovered that almost all mistakes that create downtime come from staff mistyping commands.

    471:

    guns

    Forget guns. My point is kids like to throw things. And come up with contraptions to do so. Heck we did it a lot with popsicle sticks.

    https://www.instructables.com/Kid-Safe-Trowing-Star-Popsicle-Sticks/

    472:

    gasdive @ 468

    All children and youths can be made to obey, regardless of race or ethnic origin. All it takes is a minimum of pedagogy and just enough staff.

    I went to private schools at all levels. There was never any kind of corporal punishment. All the students obeyed.

    473:

    Whoop-de-doo. And managing the damn things is a nightmare.

    No, sorry, give me a command line. For that matter, generation-old computer architecture will do just fine... if we stop wasting the overwhelming majority of our CPU cycles on nothing but eye candy.

    474:

    Why would you do that? We have FPGAs nowadays. Which have the added benefit of being able to be dynamically reprogrammable in parts during operation, depending on the model. Like an electrical circuit that can morph, and adapt to the load/task/environment, depending on the availability to load the according 'wireplan'/bitstream from somewhere. Like VLIW JIT to hardware in realtime.

    475:

    Charlie Stross @ 373:

    In case I never mentioned it before, I am a NAUI tech diver and PADI divemaster. Paul's message made my jaw hit the desk.

    IIRC there were US deaths in Afghanistan due to a buggy GPS system. Special forces in the field used it to work out location and bearing/range to a target, then upload and dial in the target's location to a JDAM carried by a bomb truck high overhead. Often while under fire.

    The GPS unit had a fault whereby it could be reset and would silently display it's CURRENT coordinates rather than the coordinates of the dialed-in target. So the JDAM landed right on top of the operator instead.

    (Note: trying to find the source for this via Google proved difficult.)

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Sayyd_Alma_Kalay_airstrike

    Poor design, but NOT an equipment fault. Operator error due to inadequate training. The device defaulted to its own coordinates after a battery change. The operator should have known that. It was in the TM.

    Dec. 5, 2001: A B-52 providing CAS under the guidance of a ground controller dropped a JDAM near Sayd Alim Kalay, killing three U.S. troops and five allied Afghans and injuring over forty. It was later ascertained that the changing of a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver’s battery in the middle of the American air raid caused the incident, which almost killed the just-appointed Afghan Interim Authority leader, Hamid Karzai. The receiver defaults to display its own coordinates after the battery is replaced, something the operator either did not know or overlooked in the heat of battle. While the latter is understandable if tragic, the former should raise serious questions about the training U.S. forces receive on such equipment. A Special Forces’ source familiar with the incident disclosed that a newly-arrived Air Force Tactical Air Control Party (TAC-P) called in the air strike in conjunction with a headquarters officer.6 On previous missions the operational detachment – rather than a headquarters element – tended to call in air strikes, usually via a more experienced and better trained controller.

    https://web.archive.org/web/20100317163641/http://www.cdi.org/terrorism/killing.cfm

    Note 6 references an article in the 27 Mar 2002 Boston Herald by Jules Crittenden, “Report: Air Controller Called in Friendly Fire”. I couldn't find that article.

    PS: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Precision_Lightweight_GPS_Receiver

    476:

    Charlie Stross @ 384:

    Formula works about as well as natural milk for the most part despite the massive blood and ink spilled over it. I don't se that as a major limiting factor in the health of babies.

    Formula milk is mostly squeezed cow juice with additives.

    Do you really expect a Mars colony to be relying on locally-farmed cows as a breast milk substitute?

    What if you postulate spherical cows?

    477:

    Charlie Stross @ 386:

    Thee _will_ be projectile weapons.

    In an indoor colony on Mars, a projectile weapon that can shoot through walls is essentially a WMD.

    I expect Martian attitudes to gun control to be so draconian they make Scotland's look like a second amendment ammosexual's wet dream. (Hint: in Scotland, possession of handguns is a strict liability offense like possession of child pornography, with mandatory jail time just for picking one up you found abandoned in the street: only exceptions are for the police and military.) Frankly, I suspect possession of 3D printer STL files for making components of guns -- or explosive devices -- will get you a one-way trip back to Earth, if you're lucky, unless the explosives were ordered by the colony administration for quarrying. And even then, they won't be manufactured or stored inside the habitat -- there'd be distant, access-secured, surface facilities for handling them.

    I expect "security" will have projectile weapons of some sort. Maybe not "guns" as we know them, because I don't know how the propellants in ammunition would work in that environment. But the projectiles themselves are a solved problem - frangible ammunition like is issued to Sky Marshals.

    478:

    LAvery @ 389:

    However, the filters are consumables, and require tight process controls. Difficult and tedious to make in small batches on Mars, and expensive to ship from Earth.

    It is probably possible to regenerate exhausted filter columns, especially if they are designed with that intention in mind.

    But overall, it's a good point. Reagent-quality water is a tough problem.

    Not to mention the original question was intended as rhetorical SNARK!

    479:

    Paul @ 392: On Phobos and orbital towers:

    Phobos' orbit is inclined 1.1 degrees from Mars equator, with an average radius of 9375 km. That means it orbits in a band of 180km above and below the equator where any orbital tower would be. Meanwhile Phobos itself is only 13km along its longest axis. I haven't run the numbers any further than that, but only a few percent of orbits will actually hit the tower. (Bear in mind that if you plot its distance from the equator against time you get a sinusoid, so most of the time its nearer the edges than the centre).

    The potential collision events can be forecast exactly, so if the tower can be moved at all it will be possible to sidestep them.

    I wonder if there's an alternative design that could incorporate Phobos as the upper terminal?

    480:

    I should clarify that I'm thinking about whether someone will import gun culture from the US and insist it be instantiated on Mars, or whether kids will fool around and improvise. I think we all agree on the later, and that can get pretty dangerous, especially if videos from Earth are available. The former? I kind of doubt it.

    481:

    Paul @ 394: On self-sufficiency:

    Someone mentioned the cargo rocket with supplies of microchips. Yes, you aren't kidding. I suspect that if an alien civilisation were to take a look at Earth they would consider the output of Intel and TSMC to be our civilisation's highest achievement. The steppers that do the photolithography are awesome.

    I don't see our Mars colony producing anything like that with a mere half million people; the technology is at the apex of a huge pyramid.

    Self-sufficiency is going to be a gradual thing, and the last 1% (by mass) is going to require 99% of the effort.

    Another way of looking at it: if you go to Radio Spares web page you will see that they have over half a million distinct products, or one product per person in our colony. That's not comparing like with like of course: a single machine making 1/4W resistors can churn out resistors of any value on demand. But it gives you some idea of the sheer scale of the problem.

    It might not be the kind of machinery the colony could turn out when it only has half a million inhabitants, but it is the kind of thing that could be brought from earth before then. How the colony will achieve self sufficiency has to be part of the original plan.

    482:

    DO not, whatever you do, allow your children to google "shaolin hidden weapons." The list of thrown stuff that can put an eye out once thrown is tediously long (steel toads?). There are whole classes of new bows and rubber sling projectiles out there for the miscreants and others.

    Speaking of which: polymer production on Mars. Do they replicate plasticated post-industrial society, or go plastic free? Or perhaps they go with Gasdive's idea of cheap, all metal airlocks, like the old pressure cooker I have, that don't have rubber seals but do have a huge pressure differential across them?

    Or do they grow mass quantities of hemp and make their polymers from that? That's one plant that likes pink LEDs, after all.

    483:

    Heteromeles @ 406:

    Question: for those of you paying attention to military aerospace, is there a race to produce a new generation of intercontinental missiles on, by any chance? Not unless Italy and Japan are tooling up for the next Cold War?

    The point of the question is whether human space flight has a reason other than display of technical prowess for those sponsoring and building the systems. In other words, is it analogous to the architectural erections that a certain class of middle aged male politicians always seem to get into (it's mockingly called edifice complex by some)? Is it like all the car companies that build race cars and sponsor teams for advertising, lulz, and to keep their technical people happy?

    It's worth considering this. I'm not questioning that Musk wants to go to Mars, but I do wonder why he wants to go to Mars. I mean, some gray soul like myself might--conceivably--put out a challenge to go to Mars as an excuse to work out the high density agriculture and housing technologies we'll need to deal with climate change. This would happen simply because more people and more money want to go to Mars than to deal with the tedious real world problems of poor brown people and all of our consumerist addictions.

    Not that I think Musk thinks this way, but who knows? We're not coming up with that really essential reason why living on Mars makes sense for humans, and we've certainly not tried to build domed cities on the most Mars-like parts of our planet. There's a lot of cognitive dissonance around this particular dream.

    A question I heard several times during my childhood was "Why do men climb mountains?" The answer was "Because they're there." So, Why does Elon Musk want to go to Mars? ... because somebody has already climbed all the mountains.

    484:

    whitroth @ 419: Resonance for space elevators?

    How about something completely different?
    |
    ^
    | |
    v
    |

    Best as I can do with pre and ASCII art. Effectively, like a railroad siding on the way up: about 50km high, and about 50 km wide? And it can, of course, be rotated, so that Phobos passes through?

    Why not just mount the hub on Phobos?

    485:

    My impression is that Apple would like to disagree with me, but currently they make a consumer stack and some niche business products.

    But you didn't specify servers, you said tech stack.

    And in that space Apple is a major player.

    PC sales in 2020 were 300 million (up 13% thanks to the pandemic, which reversed a decade of declining sales).

    Apple sold 200 million iPhones in 2020 (sadly they no longer give iPad numbers).

    A lot of people rely on their smartphone, whether iOS or Android, as part of their tech stack so that makes Apple a major player even if it doesn't fit in with your traditional views.

    When I worked in a Mac-heavy company they still relied on Microsoft for everything that wasn't pretty pictures. Many of the iWankers had a Windows PC as well as their McPC so they could interact with sales, accounts and all the other bureaucracy.

    And most of that stuff is going online, whether it be the cloud or some sort of internal cloud equivalent.

    But the point is valid - not everything is available for macOS - but Linux is even worse outside of the server world.

    I don't see any sign that Apple is even trying to get hold of an office software suite,

    Why would they when they are an important market for Office, macOS is fully supported by Microsoft, and Office has won?

    They do have a basic office suite, but anyone serious is using Word - and LibreOffice is a joke (sadly).

    486:

    That's why I said "For a government I think it would be easier just to not hellform this planet, and that's what the Chinese seem to be attempting."

    I expect China could build a giant fleet of rockets, but it would be easier for them not to make that necessary. I hope Elon isn't powerful enough to make that choice (kind of... imagine if he did!). The engineer side of me says that a lot of what we see as Chinese aggression is very much like the Russian aggression before it... they're looking ahead and trying to avoid getting utterly fucked by the US empire.

    In this case it means that not only do they have to not hellform, they have to counter US efforts to do that and US efforts to keep them stuck in the third world poverty trap that has worked so well in other places.

    Again, if I ran something as big as China I too would be "belt and road"ing the fuck out of the Asia-Africa landmass and if the tit on the corner doesn't want to be involved I'd go round them... which seems to be exactly what China is doing. And ditto with a bunch of other stuff, like their moves to get access to the USA's oil and coal reserves (the ones in the Middle East, not the ones in Texas) and even that could well be part of the "don't hellform" strategy as much as the "burn everything" one.

    Heh... it occurs to me while writing this that nuking Saudi Arabia would work brilliantly for the first strategy and would be one use for bases in Tibet - it keeps the missile paths too short to be intercepted.

    487:

    Nope. Sorry, Linux is growing in popularity enough, esp. with the current situation, that more than one major vendor are selling laptops with Linux preinstalled.

    And in what way is LibreOffice a bad joke? I've been using it for well over 10 years, and the only problem I had was about a dozen years ago, when there were one or two idiot corporations - Grumman might have been one - that couldn't slurp up my resume from it, saved as .docx. No one since then has had any issues.

    488:

    There's the issue of orbital velocity at a given height.

    489:

    Crap. I should have said areosynchronous orbit.

    490:

    I disagree. We need a real space station in Earth orbit. (Preferably a wheel, with artificial gravity.) The Lunar Gateway should be built up as well.

    Yes, we will definitely need a spinning wheel station before the Mars colony is started. Ideally before we try a lunar colony.

    It's not been discussed much here but we've got basically no data about humans living in low gravity. Excluding brief antics with aircraft, the entire sample size is twelve adult males who spent a few days each under lunar gravity. The endurance record is 75 hours (Apollo 17) and it would be foolish to try to extrapolate a three day excursion by two men into rules for living for years. No human has spent even hours under Martian gravity yet; hours are probably not going to be a big deal but we've never tried it.

    Before anyone sets out for Mars we should have a rotating space station in Earth orbit where people can actually live at low gravity for extended periods. Simulating the Moon or Mars is just a matter of having an appropriately placed deck on the wheel.

    Microgravity life we know more about; we've had people in free fall for years. But going back and forth between low gravity and free fall several times a day? For months on end? We've got no idea and it's another thing we'd better try close to home, where the test subjects can be monitored in realtime from the surface and, if necessary, brought home quickly for medical care.

    491:

    2m of string and a bit of tape, you have a sling. Sure, it'll only work for lightweight projectiles... if you limit people to only having weak string. A couple of hours practice and the average teenage can throw a 50mm pebble 100m with some force into a 10m circle. Which as sniper weapons go is kinda shit, but it's enough to fatally piss off the IDF so I assume it has some effect.

    492:

    It's a mRNA vaccine. Couldn't advances in genetics - mapping DNA/RNA; gene splicing, etc - make it possible to transmit the RNA sequence as DATA to Mars and let the "bricks" start manufacturing it (assembling it?) right away?

    Ding! Ding! Ding! We have a winner!

    I started asking myself the same question between replies 120 and 130 and must say I'm shocked to see how long it took!

    493:

    Re beanstalks.

    You could just put the base at a high latitude.

    It doesn't have to be at the equator. It's more efficient if it is.

    I don't think beanstalks are a great idea anyway, but you can get around moons.

    494:

    This is why twins are evil and one of them must be killed at once. There is only one soul for each zygote, and the remaining twin will be a soulless monster. The first-born is always the one with the soul - God has decreed it!

    /snark

    495:

    So the next bit is when they can do the same thing with a cow.

    496:

    I didn't jump on this thread earlier, specifically because it Charlie expressed a wish to focus on the Martian colony and to be fair it is a derailing topic. But no surprises that there's a lively debate on this in the world of scholarly bioethics, particularly on the related topic of whether abortion and the destructive use of embryonic stem cells is morally defendable.

    The corner for the Screaming Jesus People is usually personed by one of the authors of this paper, which is a handy reference because all three came together to publish a summary rebuttal attempt of exactly the proposition LAvery makes above. I don't personally find their argument compelling, but it is the state of the art representing the most widely respected thought on that side of the debate. It contains a hilarious irony: they argue that just because an embryo has the potential to split in two doesn't mean it isn't a unified whole entity before this occurs. The corner for everyone else is predictably much more diverse, although Peter Singer takes the microphone often enough to consider the thought leader.

    497:

    I'm just astonished that in this day and age pharmaceuticals for injection are still distributed in glass vials with rubber tops in inactive/powder form that need to have sterile saline added and then be loaded into individual syringes for injection.

    Here's a link to a US PBS News Hour segment on packaging of the various vaccines. 7 minutes or you can tread the transcript. https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/with-major-logistical-challenges-companies-face-a-bottleneck-in-vaccine-distribution

    Based on what some have said here and this new report the various vaccines need to be in an impermeable container. That plus the low temps mean that a disposable syringe could leak. Interesting that Corning has developed a way to make the exterior of the vials "slicker" so they can flow through the production lines faster. And a new company has a way to deposit a glass liner in plastic vials for cheaper costs.

    The article mentions a cold storage site in Louisville which seems a bit out of nowhere unless you know that UPS has an airport distribution center there.

    498:

    Why would you do that? We have FPGAs nowadays.

    I was having fun.

    499:

    DO not, whatever you do, allow your children to google "shaolin hidden weapons." The list of thrown stuff that can put an eye out once thrown is tediously long (steel toads?).

    Ahem. My kids are 28 and 30. :)

    I grew up when Jarts lawn darts were a thing. Who could have known THEY were dangerous? [sarcasm off]

    500:

    Musing today while waiting on line at the motor registry. (overheard some conversation between the concierge and a customer, "yes of course I've signed on today, not here though")

    Thinking about paper and cotton masks...

    Paper implies trees. No trees on Mars. Cotton implies cotton fields. That seems unlikely. So masks might be hard.

    Then clothing... Then all the water needed to wash clothes. The humidity from drying them. Surely no one is sending a rocket full of tee shirts to Mars any time soon. Wool seems out of the question (I'm not wearing wool underwear) for a host of reasons. Nylon and similar? I suppose you could take methane from the fuel plants and make carbon chains and fibres from that.

    So what do they wear? Metal loin cloths?

    501:

    Then all the water needed to wash clothes.

    Oh surely they'll just dry clean them.

    [GDRFC]

    502:

    Sometimes this blog needs a laughing button!

    503:

    They can't go outside. They will absolutely have to have air conditioning to stay alive. Clothing is the last concern. Tool belts, definitely, a cock pouch or booby bag maybe, but lots of people never bother with those things. Just because uptight white people from the icy northern wastelands need clothes doesn't mean that's how it always has to be.

    One of the disadvantages of having couriers delivering stuff right next to my desk is that I have to keep a towel handy. I don't know how I'll cope if I have to go back to the office more than once a month, it's bad enough having to go shopping.

    504:

    We have FPGAs nowadays. Which have the added benefit of being able to be dynamically reprogrammable in parts during operation, depending on the model.

    Yes, not only self-modifying code, but self-modifying hardware! Just what reliability and maintainability needs!

    (Sorry, there might be bits of sarcasm there.)

    505:

    LAvery / troutwaxer Yup - it's religious bollocks ... but. I note they don't appear to be going anywhere near the more serious "problem". IF a human starts at fertilisation ( & maybe gets a "soul" ) - what about the vast majority that are killed-off, naturally & never make it to term, since, after all the BigSkyFairy has just murdered all of them ...

    506:

    You run on self-modifying hardware, what's the problem?

    I remember back in the good old days when self-modifying code was a common way to shave some bytes out of your assembly. It made memory dumps so much more fun when things went wrong. Having self-modifying code running in one of those FPGA+ARM core chips would be awesome fun, especially if you were using it as part of a self-training AI... the one that helped pathetically limited meat puppets design all the chips that came out of your fabs.

    I do wonder whether the background radiation issue on Mars would mean there'd be a whole lot more fun mutations in everything. I suspect so, and I don't think the Covid 2060 postulate is out of the question. I suspect it might be more of a problem in the faster reproducing organisms, not so much the medicine factory ones as the food ones - all that yeast and insect mass cranking out food means you just have more total mass of DNA to experiment on. Things could get really ugly if they're using live organisms to recycle plastics or even just biomining... fungus eating your door seals would be bad, but lichen turning your walls back into easily-refined nodules could be much harder to fix.

    507:

    On the exo-womb angle, I'm not sure how far we actually disagree on the technical side. Fifty years seems like a long time. As for the bio-ethics, your OP stated a society kinda like the Soviet bloc, which is historically notable for some shockingly bad moves such as dosing female athletes with male hormones to win the Olympics. I would assume Soviet Bloc Martians think a fetus has about the moral weight of a chicken in a factory farm, so their experimenting heavily strikes me as likely if the alternatives are forcing themselves to stomach some kind of heavy duty classical patriarchy. The colonist group is likely to be sexist in some ways, but I expect "ideal White Christian Patriarchy" to be the kind of thing a group of technocratic communists to hate on a number of levels.

    Formula, that one I'll concede, though the full logistics of a food sufficient space habitat seem like they'd either be solved by technology or prevent the habitat from emerging in the first place. I'd imagine heavily genetically modified yeast and algae replacing anything that can't be easily produced more naturally on Mars, but that's a wild guess for "how did this happen in the first place?"

    508:

    That's been done in some societies, and written into SF. Marie Brennan: Warror and Witch. Not her best, but not bad.

    509:

    Some of us remember what was being touted as 'real soon now' 50 years ago. For something like exowombs, 50 years is a very SHORT time.

    510:

    "Life on Mars" ( NOT the ghastly TV series ) All this talk of mutations & alterations takes me back to John Varley. "In the hall of the Martian Kings" - was, I think, the story.

    511:

    Er, WHY is wool out of the question? As I posted above, goats don't need much space, can be fed on the haulms of food crops, and produce milk, meat, wool and leather. I am wearing wool underwear, incidentally, because it's cold.

    The great advantage of natural fibres (whether vegetable or animal) in a closed environment is you don't have to think of some way to get rid of microfibres. They are just organic waste, like shed skin and hair from humans.

    512:
    No, sorry, give me a command line. For that matter, generation-old computer architecture will do just fine... if we stop wasting the overwhelming majority of our CPU cycles on nothing but eye candy.

    So, you're not interested in solving 3-space time-dependent PDEs? Protein structure determination? Weather prediction? Modeling disease spread? (Seriously, in the first half of 2020 the HPC cluster I use gave high priority to Covid-19 related jobs.) Neural networks? Convex optimization? Or any class of problem--there are hundreds--that requires the numerical solution of 107 equations in 107 unknowns?

    Most people who solve problems like that do it with command-line interfaces. And they still need HPC clusters. It's not all about gamers playing Minecraft (or whatever it is gamers play these days).

    513:

    Mars-colony will still be very dependant upon communications with Earth. In that light ... What about this? Are the Aussies correct, or wrong, or half-&-half? VERY interesting move.

    514:

    "Technical Diving for Space Nerds"? I'd buy that.

    515:

    He only said that it was a joke. I agree. But, given how often I have seen Microsoft word users have trouble with Microsoft Word files and how the best solution is to use (Open/Libre)office to sanitise them (*), it's clear that Microsoft Word is a sick joke.

    Your point about eye candy being the principle reason for needing massive computing power is true, but it is not the sole reason. There is an equal amount of crap in many other areas of modern computing, causing the same effect. Let's not start this one, as it's a derailment, but the executive summary is that we could do almost everything we do today with the hardware of 20 years ago.

    To LAvery: I am fully aware of such things, not least because I spent 10 years managing fairly large supercomputer systems (yes, we were in the top 100 when I was doing that, once). My point stands, but let's not derail.

    However, this is a generic point, mentioned above. In order to run a relatively small, (partially or wholly) self-sufficient society, we have to redesign almost all of our technical, social, economic and political systems. Such a society simply cannot afford to spend 90% of its resources on unproductive tasks, which is what we do.

    (*) Not to say that, when the EU demanded to see the specification of its interfaces, Microsoft had to admit that they didn't have one.

    516:

    Forget the poles: if you launch from the equator from west to east, you get a +1000 nautical miles/hour speed boost for free. Which is huge -- just go look at existing launcher payloads into LEO vs. circumpolar orbit to get a feel for it.

    And SpaceX is going for it: they just purchased two heavy deepwater drilling rigs for conversion into floating launch/retrieval platforms for Starship. Both rigs are on the order of 20,000 tons displacement -- which is about what you'd need in order to cope with a launch stack that, fully fuelled, weighs over 5000 tons -- and they're way beyond anything necessary for launching the existing Falcon 9 or Falcon Heavy stacks.

    517:

    By the time you've got tweens or teenagers, you've had a decade to build some recreational tunnels. They need lighting, air, heat, and emergency access, and they need as much volume as possible, plus interesting furniture/obstacles, but they can probably be built in such a way that they don't share walls with anything sensitive, and with the essential life support stuff shielded. (Think wire mesh cages around lights, baffles around air vents set high up -- to prevent stuff being jammed in them -- and with a higher flow rate to prevent anoxic zones developing at ground level.)

    You don't want guns, but laser tag is always an option. Curved walls make for an indoor skate park: boards made of local materials, rollers and bearings imported (they're long-lasting and light weight).

    The key thing is, kids need somewhere to run around: so lots of volume. But volume is relatively cheap -- you can use it as a reservoir for breathing gas (which is something your colony does not want to run short of). Maybe even a swimming lake with a wave machine.

    518:

    Do you remember the proposal to repurpose Goonhilly Downs as a satellite launch station? :-)

    519:

    I don't see any sign that Apple is even trying to get hold of an office software suite, they appear to reply on the generosity of Microsoft and the willingness of LibreOffice to support them.

    Firstly, Microsoft got a lock on the office suite world in the early 1990s, and it's become a monoculture -- only Google Docs and Sheets is an effective rival, and they only made it stick by emphasizing collaborative tools and cloud access.

    Secondly, Apple does have a rival office suite, the iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), backed by its own cloud-accessible document storage and editing system (iCloud). It's good enough for consumer and small business use.

    It doesn't have market traction because it's iOS and macOS only. The reason for that is that Apple is primarily a hardware company, and these products enhance the value of the hardware they sell to their customers. If they ported them to Android or Windows, they'd be de facto declaring war on Google and Microsoft -- a war on two fronts -- and the easy retaliatory tactic would be an anti-trust suit (remember, Apple got bushwhacked by Amazon that way over ebooks circa 2012).

    The office suite market is essentially saturated already and there's no way for an interloper to profitably disrupt it: that's why LibreOffice is what it is today (an also-ran on permanent life support because the open source community needs something to exist that ticks the box).

    What happened with Apple over the past few years is, since the move to Intel and then 64 bit CPUs that support virtualization, lots of developers use Macs to run Linux and Windows VMs alongside a Mac development environment: it gives them better access to all three main platforms. Even Apple seems to recognize this tacitly: witness the news that their new M1 Apple Silicon machines don't have locked bootloaders and can run bare-metal Linux and (it is believed) Windows 10 for ARM, with a bit of hacking.

    (Where was I?)

    Oh yeah. Apple: an irrelevant also-ran with 10% of the phone market, about 50% of the non-budget tablet market, a billion iOS devices in use, and 80% of the entire profit margin of the mobile phone biz. But no, Apple don't own and sell Microsoft Office on macOS/iOS (hint: Microsoft holds the franchise) so they're irrelevant.

    520:

    I expect "security" will have projectile weapons of some sort.

    Tasers and/or tranquiliser dart guns.

    If nobody has got firearms, security don't need firearms to have a leg up on troublemakers.

    And there's also de-escalation. As in: get everyone but the troublemaker out of the compartment, shut the doors, and drop the temperature or the oxygen level until they stop resisting. (Probably the temperature: takes a bit longer, but less risk of brain damage from hypothermia than hypoxia).

    But frankly I'd expect an 0.5M pop colony to go for policing by consent along Peelian principles rather than American-style militarized/confrontational bullshit.

    521:

    So what do they wear? Metal loin cloths?

    Hemp. You can make paper with it (but I expect there won't be much call for paper). You can make clothing with it, suitably treated. It's a useful plant that has byproducts including a rather useful family of pharmaceuticals and also plant oils.

    If you can synthesize the basic feedstocks, it's possible to 3D print nylon garments: here's an experimental/artistic example.

    For washing: your go-to is dry cleaning. Lots of carbon and lots of chlorine on Mars (the latter in the perchlorate soil): that's going to make it relatively easy to make carbon tetrachloride (ick) or other dry cleaning fluids. You have lots of expertise in airtight seals!

    What clothing won't be is: fast, and fashion-driven. Automating textile object assembly is a hard (read: X prize hard) problem in computer vision and robotics. We've just about reached the level of being able to build a lights-out factory for simple t-shirts, but a man's dress shirt is way beyond anything we can do with sewbots at this point: needs at least 50 different stitching/joining operations on multiple floppy/unstructured/optionally stretchy components. So clothing is going to rely on human beings with (if they're lucky!) sewing machines, sergers, and similar. If they're not lucky, it's going to be back to the age of hand-stitching.

    My wife's fairly fancy computerised sewing machine cost £1500 and weighs about 12kg. To ship it to Mars at Musk's colony prices, that's another US $100,000 or so. It requires consumables -- needles, thread -- which might be manufacturable in our hypothetical colony, but it runs on fabric, so someone's going to be importing carding, spinning, weaving, folding, and cutting machines to Mars (add another couple of million bucks for a couple of tons of plant needed to make cloth in artisanal quantities -- assumes the heavy bits, like supporting frames, can be built locally).

    Upshot: absent manufacturing breakthroughs, clothing is going to be really expensive on Mars for the first few decades -- like, expensive enough that most people have two or three outfits at most and maybe wear hand-me-downs: think early 19th century. And clothing would once again be a signifier of wealth and social status (it's largely been supplanted in this century by the automobile). We might even see a revival of embroidery and lace-making, as recreational activities that require very little/lightweight equipment, can be interrupted for higher priority tasks, and enhance the value of your expensive possessions (clothing).

    522:

    They can't go outside. They will absolutely have to have air conditioning to stay alive. Clothing is the last concern.

    (a) If the heating fails, you freeze -- it's Mars. Okay, it probably won't fail for long without the air also failing, at which point you have bigger problems than frostbite: but the direction of failure is towards "need more clothes", not "need fewer clothes".

    (b) Social status signifiers. Clothing was the traditional way you signalled wealth and status: if it costs $1000/kg to ship cargo from Earth, the only stuff it makes sense to ship is very high end -- either specialized protective equipment (space suits) or exotic luxury status-signaling stuff (couture gowns -- not that I expect a Mars colony to be a big market for the latter, but the high end can easily cost in the hundreds of thousands of dollars today).

    Just bear in mind you're thinking like a middle-aged male engineer. By 50 years in, most of the colonists won't resemble you. Expecting them to all wear beige nylon uniform jumpsuits is like expecting them to subsist on a diet of soy bean paste and tilapia, and eschew music, dance, and drugs/alcohol: it just ain't gonna happen.

    523:

    WHY is wool out of the question? As I posted above, goats don't need much space,

    An obvious alternative: Angora rabbits. They're small, they breed like, well, rabbits, they're primarily cultivated for their wool and need lots of grooming -- an ideal job for small kids to keep them busy/out of trouble and provide them with pets (which can later be eaten).

    Silkworms would probably be possible later, once white mulberry trees are feasible. (They produce human-edible fruit as well as leaves for silk moth larvae to munch and convert into silk, but they grow to 10-20m tall on Earth: might be possible to farm them in vertical silos?) And then there's the ongoing work on synthetic silk, which mostly seems to be a physical chemistry problem -- not how to produce the proteins in bacterial culture, but how to extrude them in ultra-fine, strong, lightweight thread.

    524:

    Don't throw the Direct Manipulation Interface baby out with the GUI bathwater when planning for non-bit mapped computers on Mars.

    A Direct Manipulation Interface is superior to a command-line only interface because it does not require absolutely perfect mastery of a computer language and absolutely perfect typing skills.

    A Direct Manipulation Interface does not need bit-mapped screens and images to do its work right. You can have a direct manipulation interface with ascii lines, ascii icons, ascii everything.

    When I bought my first MS-DOS computer it had a bit-mapped screen. But I also bought Microsoft Works, which could be used as images fully exploiting the bit-mapped screen or in ascii mode only.

    It was a lot faster in ascii mode but you didn't need a command line since there were menus and/or chord commands for everything.

    So yes, you can have underpowered computers made on Mars and running programs briskly, without the need for a command line interface, for daily use.

    525:

    On souls and twins.

    This piqued my interest, so I did a bit of looking around on some theological websites. Here is a brief summary.

    On the Protestant side they don't seem to think too hard about this. God can do anything, so adding a new soul is no problem.

    The Catholics, on the other hand, have a long history of careful analysis of theological ideas. This is no exception. When "ensoulment" happens is not clear, and the Church has no particular doctrine on it. Souls are individual and indivisible, so the division of an embryo into identical twins cannot create a new soul. So it is speculated that ensoulment occurs after that point.

    However twins are not the end of the problem. What happens about conjoined twins? One soul or two? Does it depend on how many distinct brains there are?

    And what chimeras, where two embryos fuse, thus creating a single individual with two distinct sets of DNA in different cells? If each embryo had a soul then that would imply that we have one individual with two souls? Except that is held to be logically impossible. But on the other hand a soul cannot exist without a body to be reincarnated into after Judgement Day.

    Or (whisper it) perhaps ensoulation happens much later. In which case a sufficiently early abortion isn't murder.

    526:

    I just got back from having an echocardiogram taken. Watching the screen with this discussion in mind, I thought, "This is another thing you're probably not gonna do on Apple IIe hardware."

    527:

    The Turbo Pascal 4 got this nice IDE, running in 80x25 text mode in MS-DOS (I had the TP 6.0, which could also run in 80x50, IIRC). It had menus, windows and all that stuff and was pretty nice to use.

    I wanted to have a monochrome graphics card and a second monitor, which would have allowed the TP to run on the monochrome screen and the program on the colour screen. This would have made debugging easier. Alas, they were too expensive at the time (early Nineties) so never got that.

    Turbo C had the same IDE but I didn't have that and I'm not sure which version of it got the IDE.

    528:

    Interesting. Thanks for checking that out. I am now much better informed (albeit on a subject I don't actually give a damn about) than I was before.

    Or (whisper it) perhaps ensoulation happens much later. In which case a sufficiently early abortion isn't murder.

    I'm sure even those who consider this possibility would fall back on the Precautionary Principle, "We're not sure, and you certainly don't want to risk committing murder".

    529:
    Secondly, Apple does have a rival office suite, the iWork suite (Pages, Numbers, Keynote), backed by its own cloud-accessible document storage and editing system (iCloud). It's good enough for consumer and small business use.

    Mac Users I know (there are a lot of them in Academia) use Word and Excel, but swear by Keynote.

    530:

    Hey, I don't normally post; but thought this is a really interesting question and comment thread.

    I feel like I might be completely misunderstanding the thread discussing dispensing of GUIs but; Rendering and producing images is really core to being able to a lot of things. Without paper printouts for plans, maps etc or visual displays, how does anyone (human or machine) coordinate logistics or construct anything, design or adjust the designs of anything, or map out and monitor the territory around your base (or of your base)?

    You're going to need GUI interfaces and reasonably powerful computers to run the 3d software and template files in the machine shops; unless I'm really misunderstanding? Presumably would also need it for teaching and training resources (textbook, video how to's), for entertainment etc.

    I understand that a lot of individual systems could be simpler, but the feedback for say sensors around your habitat would be better viewed in total graphically? So for instance if you're losing pressure from a part of the habitat it's much easier to see that as an abstracted plan or accurate 3d model (created from a point cloud of sensor information)... than, I mean I'm not sure that would be readable in an emergency from lines of text?

    531:

    I think you're right. Dismissing graphics as eye-candy misses that we are primates, and like all primates, we are very visual animals. We all (even people with little or no vision) have this incredibly powerful supercomputer in the back of our heads. Essentially the entire occipital lobe of the brain is devoted to visual processing. Dismissing the goodies that gives us would be rash.

    532:

    Yes, as people pointed out, you'll want to have some high-end processors in your Mars colony. The problem is off-world computing devices are going to be prohibitively expensive. So you might have 10 high-end systems with powerful GPUs on your colony, and you'll use them for critical services like maybe medical equipment. However the MTBF on these things is not very much (5-10 years?) maybe less in high-rad environment, and also cooling is a lot harder if you're not operating at 1atm of pressure.

    So what do you do if contact with Earth is cut off? That's when you have to hope you have some sort of backup plan for designing electronics. And that's why 70s technology CPUs and maybe 40s technology CRT displays are important, as they are something that a small colony with a copy of Wikipedia and a handful of engineers can cobble together. 70s CPUs were designed by teams of 1-4 people with fabs the size of a large apartment. Modern CPUs require teams of thousands and billion dollar fabs.

    I think a lot of people underestimate the exponential growth of Moore's law. While these days it can be cheaper to use a 32-bit ARM CPU to blink an LED because it's cheaper than buying a discrete transistor, or think it's normal to have a 5GHz 64-bit Processor with 32GB of RAM just to view a plain-text website, those things are unsustainable without a huge industrial base and massive economies of scale.

    533:

    Then clothing... Then all the water needed to wash clothes. The humidity from drying them. Surely no one is sending a rocket full of tee shirts to Mars any time soon. Wool seems out of the question (I'm not wearing wool underwear) for a host of reasons.

    Depends on the wool.

    Merino wool is soft and is used to make lightweight clothing that is used extensively by the long distancing hiking (think months at a time) community.

    It is comfortable (even in summer temperatures), wicks moisture away from the skin, and unlike synthetics is somewhat odour resistant - important when hiking.

    So soft wool clothing could reduce your washing needs on Mars without the clothing becoming smelly.

    534:

    Blue Origin is apparently getting close to flying humans to space following their latest successful test launch https://www.theguardian.com/science/2021/jan/22/spacewatch-bezos-blue-origin-really-close-flying-humans

    535:

    there's also the problem that to make things fast makes things complex.

    read up on 10Mbps Ethernet... relatively simple to explain and implement, even for 8-bit sytems. Then read up on 10Gbps Ethernet. It's nearly incomprehensible unless you have a PhD in signal processing, and until recently even high-end computers couldn't saturate a link.

    Same with processors. A simple 8-bit processor can be explained in a one day lecture and a 4th year undergrad can design a workable one as a class project. Now look at a modern fast processor, and you can spend a whole semester lecturing on it and not cover the details enough to implement it (caches?branch-predictors?out-of-order-executaion?superscalar?SIMD?multi-core?multi-thread?register-renaming?). Most people don't realize but a lot of what makes your modern computer/cellphone so fast is that due to the Memory Wall it spends most of its time guessing what you're going to do next, and then wastes a lot of energy having to go back and re-run things on the surprisingly-rare times that it guessed wrong.

    So it might sound like you can help out the Martians by throwing a crate of high-end Intel chips onto the next shipment, but these days those chips have 10,000 pins (good luck soldering that on a board by hand), need complex often like 30-layer circuit boards that are extremely hard to make, RAM itself is complex and to run fast you need the path lengths on motherboards to be perfectly matched, etc, etc, and if any of these parts fail you more or less throw out the whole thing as they are not repairable.

    536:

    Esteemed Host, please consider that Heteromeles was referring to Arctic bases in the context of JP Aerospace and the airship-to-orbit http://www.jpaerospace.com/ATO/ATO.html concept. Using rotational velocity is wise when you're using chemical rockets, but the ATO system uses solar-powered lighter-than-air ships, so rotational velocity is a piffle since no chemical rocket is used. 73.

    537:

    Or any class of problem--there are hundreds--that requires the numerical solution of 107 equations in 107 unknowns?

    How interactive/quick turnaround do those problems tend to be? Hearkening back to the number of light-seconds between Mars and Earth, would it be acceptable to send the problems to Earth and run them on the HPC iron there?

    (Shades of batch processing! I remember dropping off a deck of punch cards at the university computing center and coming back next day for the printout. But that was a long time ago.)

    538:

    Well, if all else fails:

    https://relaycomputer.co.uk/

    539:

    Nope. Sorry, Linux is growing in popularity enough, esp. with the current situation, that more than one major vendor are selling laptops with Linux preinstalled.

    Yes, some of the major vendors have a token Linux offering - if you search hard enough and are willing to accept the 1 or 2 pieces of hardware they are willing to offer it on. It is safe to say Linux is a mere rounding error in their sales.

    On the other hand Apple is the number 4 PC vendor by sales, selling 23 million Macs last year.

    Take for example the chart on this site (which is consistent with what various surveys have shown over the years) - Linux Desktop market share at less than 1% vs Mac at 7% (and Apple has iOS at 17%). https://gs.statcounter.com/os-market-share

    The only way Linux is a success outside of the server space is if you include Android.

    Look at tech support job openings - in addition to Windows they want iOS, frequently macOS is a nice to have, and rarely to they mention Android.

    Apple is a major tech stack.

    I wish it was different, I have used Linux alongside Windows for almost 30 years now - but while Linux has progressed a lot there are still issues that make it a niche desktop system.

    And in what way is LibreOffice a bad joke? I've been using it for well over 10 years

    I have used LibreOffice since it forked from OpenOffice 10 years ago. I have a great deal of respect for the developers who keep it going an attempt to fix it, but in many ways the worst thing Sun did was buy StarOffice and open source it - we would likely have been much better off developing an office suite from scratch, building off existing projects like Gnumeric and AbiWord.

    LibreOffice is bloated and slow - compared to Office - and occasionally fails to properly import Word documents properly.

    The only reason I use it is because I can't justify the cost of Office, though I find myself increasingly just using the web version of Office - and if they offer a PWA version of Office that could be very interesting.

    540:
    How interactive/quick turnaround do those problems tend to be? Hearkening back to the number of light-seconds between Mars and Earth, would it be acceptable to send the problems to Earth and run them on the HPC iron there?

    I was thinking that myself. When I was an undergrad I spent a lot of time in the minicomputer room of LASSP (Laboratory of Atomic and Sold-State Physics) at Cornell, where lived the PDP-11 I worked on, as well as a terminal from which jobs could be sent to somewhere in Southern California for running on their Heap Big Computer (which was, of course, pitiful compared to the computers we all carry around in our pockets now). Fairly often while I was working Kenneth Wilson (not yet a Nobel Laureate) would come in and send a job off. Some time later the washing-machine-sized line-printer would come to life with a roar and print out his results with a deafening clatter.

    Many of the applications I mentioned could indeed be sent off to HPC clusters on Earth. In fact, to my knowledge, most HPC clusters require big jobs to be run in batch mode, anyway. (Certainly the one I use does.) So I'm sure that would happen a lot.

    541:

    Eric I have all those symptoms (and a few more), and nothing showed up in the many tests I had. It sounds like you have M.E, and I think you either need to change doctors or at least see if they will refer you to your local M.E clinic and if they won't then change doctors. Mind you the clinic can't do anything bar advise you on how to manage it, technically mine couldn't even diagnose me as they were run by nurses! My path to diagnosis took six months, and took that long only because my girlfriends boss gave her access to BUPA via work. This speeded up access to a consultant. Firstly I got too ill to work and went to the doctors. This resulted in lots of tests (including Lyme's) which showed nothing. My doctor then suggested M.E, it is mainly a negative diagnosis. If they can't find anything else then it might be M.E! He then referred me to a rheumatologist (speeded up by BUPA), they couldn't find anything so suggested M.E.. My doctor then referred me to the M.E clinic, they said I definitely had M.E but couldn't technically diagnose it(see above). My doctor agreed, so diagnosed! This took six months, after four years you should be there I think. I don't know your situation, and have been assuming you are in the UK. If not, not all advice is necessarily applicable. You need a diagnosis firstly for some kind of peace of mind, but there are also financial reasons. If you need benefits a diagnosis is important etc. If you want to talk further my email is tobyssw at google mail dot com

    542:

    but swear by Keynote

    After your 1st, 2nd, 20th, PowerPoint meltdown 2 minutes before the big sales presentation you're willing to do finger painting in real time if that is the only alternative.

    543:

    "...whatever important work you are doing that requires 32GB of RAM isn't going to run very well in a high-rad environment like Mars."

    Whatever you're doing in a shirtsleeve environment with your PC or workstation now, you will be able to do in living space under the Martian surface. Three meters of rock provides shielding adequate to lower the radiation dose to a mean of less than 3 millsieverts/year. Devices up top will need to be hardened designs, but down where canned apes live, no huhu.

    https://depts.washington.edu/physcert/radcert/575website/slides/presentations1208/3-Erin%20Board%20Cosmic%20Radiation%20and%20Shielding.pdf

    544:

    On the subject of clothes on Mars. How about felting the fibre (hemp or otherwise), and then glue the clothes together? Far less machinery needed. You could also make really simple clothing this way, as opposed to recreating what we have now. Also you could fit them for each individual, which would probably make the simplicity more acceptable. This seems workable to me, but I know nothing about clothing manufacture!

    545:

    Many of the applications I mentioned could indeed be sent off to HPC clusters on Earth. In fact, to my knowledge, most HPC clusters require big jobs to be run in batch mode, anyway. (Certainly the one I use does.) So I'm sure that would happen a lot.

    Yes a RJE room like I used in college (mid 70s) would make sense for all kinds of things you want run TODAY but can wait an hour or two.

    546:

    Meanwhile Elon Musk is fucking utterly bonkers Tunnels in Miami? - & the sea-level is where-&-rising? He JUST DOES NOT GET "Public Transport" does he?

    547:

    David L @ 501:

    Then all the water needed to wash clothes.

    Oh surely they'll just dry clean them.

    [GDRFC]

    That's not really a joke though. Another SciFi story I remember had them doing that ... sort of. They'd tether the dirty clothes in an airlock & open the outer hatch exposing them to vacuum. Stains & such froze solid & could then just be brushed off.

    And then there's this:
    https://coolclean.com/dry-cleaning/

    548:

    Hi. Long-time lurker, first-time poster here. Love your books.

    But damn if your comment didn't just make me dive deep into Russian Cosmism in Wikipedia and other sites. Technological Resurrection as a shared goal for humanity does make kind of sense if you think Science & Technology can create social chaos, materialistic nihilism and/or disruption of until-then religious humanism, morality and sense of community... And they didn't even envision uploading minds at that time.

    Welp, I guess you turned me into a Neo-Cosmist :-)

    549:

    Yes a RJE room like I used in college (mid 70s) would make sense for all kinds of things you want run TODAY but can wait an hour or two.

    Actually, the hard part might be analysis of the results. I recently had a series of jobs that ran for ~24h each on a 16-core 128GB node. Each run produces close to a TB of results. I analyzed them by downloading them to my home PC (Intel NUC Mini, 2 cores, 32 GB) and analyzed them here, because I could.

    How long would it take to download a TB to Mars from Earth? Hardly bears thinking about.

    550:

    How about felting the fibre (hemp or otherwise), and then glue the clothes together? Far less machinery needed. You could also make really simple clothing this way, as opposed to recreating what we have now. Also you could fit them for each individual, which would probably make the simplicity more acceptable. This seems workable to me, but I know nothing about clothing manufacture!

    • Clutches head *

    You've heard of Dunning-Kruger syndrome, right?

    Please consider the possibility that you've got D-KS with respect to textile science.

    (Yes, felted fibres have their uses. You tend to run into problems when it's time to wash them: you also tend to run into problems when you want them in thin or flexible form -- good luck making a felt t-shirt.)

    551:

    LAvery @ 526: I just got back from having an echocardiogram taken. Watching the screen with this discussion in mind, I thought, "This is another thing you're probably not gonna do on Apple IIe hardware."

    Semi-sort-of-OT, but along the same lines ... and Covid related.

    Got an email from the VA this morning (the first morning in more than 6 months I've gotten out of be before noon) that my tier/cohort whatever can now get our first Covid shot. Appointments available for TOMORROW. Call ... for an appointment.

    Took about half an hour just to get through. Then I'm on hold for the THIRD time (cumulative hold time over an hour), BUT just now as I write this, they've picked up and I have an appointment for tomorrow afternoon.

    552:

    Welp, I guess you turned me into a Neo-Cosmist :-)

    Congratulations on your conversion to Christianity.

    (And no, I'm not even joking.)

    I am of Jewish descent and upbringing. Singularitarianism is glaringly obviously a Christian heresy, once the penny drops and you look at it right. And as a very-definitely-not Christian (with a strong aversion to that faith's axiom system) it ain't for me.

    553:

    Meanwhile Elon Musk is fucking utterly bonkers Tunnels in Miami? - & the sea-level is where-&-rising? He JUST DOES NOT GET "Public Transport" does he?

    As the article notes, Miami already has tunnels (in operation for 6 years) at the Port of Miami so the idea of tunnels in Miami isn't exactly crazy.

    But at the end of the day this isn't about public transit, it is about attempting to find anyone willing to give his company a contract so it can gain experience and test out his thoughts on tunneling that he will need for Mars.

    554:

    David L @ 542:

    but swear by Keynote

    After your 1st, 2nd, 20th, PowerPoint meltdown 2 minutes before the big sales presentation you're willing to do finger painting in real time if that is the only alternative.

    I hate PowerPoint. But I got good with it as a Staff NBC (S3) NCO. Never had any meltdown problems with PowerPoint. All of my presentations ran on rails.

    The only problems I had were lackadaisical officers wanting to insert slides into it after I'd already locked it down & exported it.

    555:

    I may be off in a few details but people who've dealt with such will get the drift.

    Update s.5.xx.3 drops support for some ancient image formats. So existing PPT show them as a blank box or similar. C-Level brings up his tried and true PPT for the big presentation. Turns out it was made a few years ago using now unsupported image formats. Oops.

    Someone who doesn't understand what's happening under the hood is told to put the photos from the following places into a PPT. So they just grab them from the server. 1 or a few are 50mb to 100mb images inside of a PDF. So the drop these PDFs (&!^@&@) into a PPT page or few. And when done everyone wonders why this PPT is so huge and slow. And maybe crashes a lot.

    And ....

    556:

    It's a nonsense example, anyway. Solving a linear system of that size is trivial, and ceased to be an HPC matter several decades ago. And solving a NON-linear one is anything from simple to impossible, depending on its conditioning. I was hoping we wouldn't go down this rabbit-hole, but I could also describe the methods you can use to avoid requiring HPC capacity and power when you don't have it. Been there - done that.

    The point is NOT the few requirements where a lot of power or capacity is needed, but the fact that HPC capabilities are used to provide late-1980s system functionality, due to bloatware and design by marketdroid.

    557:

    Re: 'Exo-womb angle'

    Personally know couples who've had preemies or very low birth weight babies. Couldn't find a medical/science review article but the below covers some major points.

    https://www.healthlinkbc.ca/health-topics/zx3825

    We've a long way to go before exo-wombs are a safe option because human development is a very long process and many issues show up only many years down the road*. Before exo-wombs, we'd first need better - more sensitive and broader ranging - ways of diagnosing and monitoring the health of each future human (embryo-fetus-baby-child-adolescent-adult-old age).

    Something that's often overlooked is sensory and hormonal/biochem stimulation of the developing fetus. I'm guessing that mother-fetus interaction/bonding via contact (pats, humming*, etc.) is probably at least as important at this stage as it it during a child's first few years. (Remember Ceaușescu?)

    • Or show up only in the next generation, i.e. Dutch Winter babies.

    ** Emergency C-section baby that had to go under UV lights - new dad went into NICU and stuck his hands into the crib with crying newborn patting and humming the same way he had done for a few months. Baby stopped crying and calmed down. (New dad got teary-eyed: the baby recognized me!)

    558:

    SFR Or the other way around ... as to how quite suddenly, infant mortality started to drop - in the middle of a major war: When everybody got something like a sensible balanced ration-feed. ( Britain in WWII ) - and then those children grew up faster & larger ( the post-war baby-boom, including me ) And, then ... the next generation, those born, oooh 1960/65-onwards were even larger & healthier .. & we still don't know what the effects are going to be on life expectancy or health in what was previously "old age"

    559:

    I remember dropping off a deck of punch cards at the university computing center and coming back next day for the printout

    Me too.

    I also remember writing programs on paper tape, and uploading them to the remote mainframe through an acoustically-coupled 300 baud modem…

    560:

    Mac Users I know (there are a lot of them in Academia) use Word and Excel, but swear by Keynote.

    I use Pages and Numbers — don't have Word and Excel — and yes, I swear by Keynote.

    When I do presentations at conferences with Keynote, I've always had people complement me on my slides.

    I'm moving away from Pages to Affinity Publisher, mostly because the newer versions of Pages are strictly word processors, and I always used the desktop publishing features. Been a bit of a learning curve, because Publisher is really overkill for what I do.

    I just wish the Affinity team would release a replacement for Lightroom, so I could finally leave Aperture behind and upgrade my OS…

    On a related note, all the Affinity apps are currently 50% off, with a free 90-day trial.

    https://affinity.serif.com/en-gb/supporting-the-creative-community/

    561:

    Re: '... we still don't know what the effects are going to be on life expectancy or health in what was previously "old age"'

    Agree - for now all we have is info from short space missions which show that while overall mortality rates are similar to non-astronauts something like 50% of Russian cosmonauts and 30% of US astronauts died of cancer. Big 'however' - these are males, not pregnant females.

    Search for female astronauts and effects on future offspring - none, because none have since gotten pregnant - turned up the below. More effects than I had guessed.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_space#Physical_effects_of_space_on_women

    BTW, how are you feeling 3 days post first ( Pfizer ) jab?

    562:

    Why, they dress sensibly... just like other Barsoomians, loin cloth and belt with pouches. Why do you need more?

    Oh, and your sword and blaster, of course.

    563:

    Ah, yes, self-modifying code.

    I remember, around '87 or so, discovered that COBOL had a GOTO depending on. I looked at my boss, the VP of DP, in the breakroom, mentioned I'd never heard of that before... and if he found someone using it, would he fire them, or defenestrate them. amd he said, "Yes".

    564:

    That's horribly depressing. Y'know, my reaction to "this dumb crap which people waste endless cycles on when it's trivial has now become outrageously difficult" is basically "fine, so just forget about it completely then". Whereas you're predicting the opposite reaction - "become completely obsessed with it". Mars, the planet of the purple-assed baboon.

    I do have a degree of suspicion that a lot of the apparent difficulty of making clothes by robot is the same as the difficulty you run into with robot bog cleaners, robot power transmission line workers and all sorts of similar things: they are trying to operate on something which has a whole pile of assumptions about human capabilities embedded deeply into its form and doesn't work without those capabilities being available. Whereas if you redesign the thing around robot capabilities, the problem becomes a lot easier: making a robot to assemble a kit car is probably pretty hard, but making a robot to assemble a mass produced car is standard practice. It seems to me that a brand new Mars colony, where you have to redesign almost everything again from scratch, would be a great opportunity for doing it in such a way as to stop excluding it from robot involvement.

    565:

    Ok, first, I don't get how your last paragraph fits with the rest.

    Beyond that, it's all done as batch jobs. You're only talking about a presentation layer, after the calculation's done.

    Now, for you, and EC, and others, let's talk about HPC: no, it isn't to replicate '80's power. And I'm saying this having spent ten years supporting HPC clusters - 128G w/ 16 cores? ROTFL. Let's see, there was the guy working on snips of DNA, using R on a box with 512 cores and 768G RAM, who had jobs that ran for two and more WEEKS, with him as the only person running on the box.

    And then there was my co-worker Charles, who is the official maintainer of NIH-XPLOR, which is used around the world for modeling protein folding, who, along with his assistant, would run jobs on clusters of, let's see, there was the 25 server cluster, with... IIRC 32 cores in each, and 512G RAM, that ran for days, with only two-three folks' jobs running.

    But no, when I say eye candy, I'm talking about the GUIs that have to have moreMoreMORE 3-D buttons and widgets and on and on... that add nothing to functionality, and often decrease it. I am underwhelmed, now that I have the Samsung Tab A to use as an ebook reader, and for browsing, email, and writing when I get back to traveling, with the interface, and I'm sure that thing has as much power as the time-shared 370 I was on around 1980.

    566:

    I see, so, a real dungeon to LARP in, in the tunnels of Mars....

    567:

    Sorry, it was the late '90s that Dirt, er, Word took over the word processing market, having illegally (as defined as "they lost the court case") smashed WP (a vastly superior product) by bribery.

    On the other hand, as far as I can tell, Office 365 may actually push LibreOffice, since a) they want you to rent it (SaaS, annual payments) rather than sell copies. And it REALLY REALLY REALLY wants you to use their cloud, and trying to get stuff out is a mind-boggling pain... and the latter I have from a good friend who is his own consulting business, and has been doing that for decades.

    568:

    It's ALL Christian, esp. evangelical Christian. Let me assure you - I had it in 1994 from an ultraOrthodox rabbi - that Jews have no problems with abortion. "Society has far more invested in a woman of childbearing years than it does in something not yet born."

    And all the US antiabortion stuff... I so much wish I had standing, because I'd push it to the Supreme Court that this WAS a violation of the First Amendment, "shall make no laws establishing religion".

    569:

    Please. The best IDE I've ever used was Brief... which ran under DOS. Edit, compile from within, and debug.

    TEXT mode.

    570:

    You have the machine room several yards, at least, below the surface. And HVAC of its own. And then... why, think of all the heat that's generated - exchange it with the colony's heat.

    571:

    I watched the video. Um, anyone else see it?

    Go ahead, before it launches, and after, tell me what it looks like....

    572:

    No.

    You actually have never even sewn a button back on a shirt?

    No.

    Becauses, let's look at reality: when they report to Earth, management will expect you with jackets and ties....

    573:

    Oh, and all this about PowerPoint, etc.... think about it. Here's someone well-paid... and they're spending time producing a report, rather than handing it off to a lower-paid specialist in the production of reports (that is, a secretary).

    What's a better use of time and money?

    574:

    female astronauts and effects on future offspring - none, because none have since gotten pregnant

    Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya and Liu Yang? No long flight participants, but not none.

    575:
    And I'm saying this having spent ten years supporting HPC clusters - 128G w/ 16 cores?

    ROTFL

    Yeah, It's a small job. That was the point. Went right over your head, didn't it?

    576:

    I suggest that you reread what I posted - yes, I am agreeing with you (see #515), except in one point.

    It is not JUST the eye candy that wastes 90% of its resources - things like file handling and networking are dire because of 'design by sedimentation'. Inter alia, if you want decent bandwidths, you have to use gargantuan buffers often at multiple stages, which all ex-mainframe I/O users know is completely unnecessary. And, if you have ever looked into compiling C++ with 'modern' template libraries and the size of the resulting binaries, you will have gibbered. I could go on, and on, and on ....

    577:

    Musk has always been pretty upfront with why he wants to go to Mars. He thinks the human race is a lot safer and has a lot higher chance of not going extinct if it becomes multi planetary . He doesn’t think that underwater bases or bases in the Antarctica buy you the same insurance policy . And neither do I.

    He’s not thinking of “two planets” he is thinking of Mars first then the rest of the solar system then at some point other stars . His pattern is very much to prove something can be done by doing it, and then trying to get other people to follow in his footsteps

    As far as economic reasons , there are plenty of economic reasons to go to Mars (you may end up owning a good chunk of an entire planet) there just isn’t a lot of upside for earth to fund it. Which is why I am sure he is planning on paying for it through the private sector with a “you get to own a chunk of a planet” with a side of all the actually economically viable angles to space exploration that do exist (asteroid mining and such)

    578:

    Becauses, let's look at reality: when they report to Earth, management will expect you with jackets and ties....

    That's last century office drag: by 2070 they'll expect you to be wearing a traditional henley and chinos.

    579:

    Re: 'Valentina Tereshkova, Svetlana Savitskaya and Liu Yang'

    Can't find any info on their progeny via a regular search.

    580:

    Oh, and all this about PowerPoint, etc.... think about it. Here's someone well-paid... and they're spending time producing a report, rather than handing it off to a lower-paid specialist in the production of reports (that is, a secretary).

    At my first engineering job, in 1985, the manager expected engineers not to waste time typing their reports. Instead, they were to hand them to a secretary to type up for them.

    The time required (both engineering and secretarial) to handwrite a report, wait for it to be typed, submit the inevitable corrections by marking up the manuscript, correct the corrected copy, etc. was much longer than simply typing out the report ourselves.

    581:

    SFReader @ 579 and @ 561

    Without even searching I can tell you that ex-astronaut Julie Payette had two sons after leaving the Canadian Astronaut Corps and having been on two shuttle missions for a total of 25 hours.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julie_Payette

    After a bit of searching I discovered on the BBC that:

    "We know astronauts are at risk of radiation in space and we haven't any idea how that will impact a women's fertility.

    The quality of sperm and sperm count decreases after space travel, but then sperm regenerates back on Earth, so there is no known long-term damage. Women are born with all the eggs they need for their lifetime, so Nasa is very supportive of female astronauts freezing their eggs before their missions."

    https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-49744892

    582:

    Re: ' ... ex-astronaut Julie Payette had two sons after leaving the Canadian Astronaut Corps and having been on two shuttle missions for a total of 25 hours.'

    Thanks! Wonder how her kids are - she's made headlines recently. (Not particularly flattering.)

    BTW - the Wikipedia page mentions only one child.

    583:

    Well, on m/f, they have separate circuits to handle i/o, and so you offload it from the CPU, right?

    A lot of servers, and even PCs, have started doing that.

    And forget templates. I tried to figure them out, and could not get them to work.

    I think we're back to my complaint about OO programming: you want a clipping of Godzilla's toenail, and 95% of the time, what you get it Godzilla, standing there, with a frame around a toenail.

    584:

    Um, these days you type it up, and let them format it, make it pretty, and let them make the PowerPoint.

    Except first, they were turned into salaried "admin asst'", and then they dropped them altogether, and you do their job as well as yours.

    585:

    Horrible design! “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Is instinctive these days, and it’s hard to concentrate on reading the manual when someone’s shooting at you.

    586:

    I tried to figure them out, and could not get them to work.

    Why does that not surprise me?

    587:

    The negotiations between search engines and news will be fun and exciting, and I hope that in the end google has to pay tax. To the news media, the government, whatever, the point is they pay.

    The whole "we'll cut you off" is bollocks, they're trying to pull the same trick they did with Spain because their focus is the rest of the world. Just as the UK is getting a kicking from the EU as a reward for leaving (as well as for being complete dicks basically from the start), Australia will get a kicking if they insist on asking google to pay.

    But the argument that google shouldn't pay, won't pay, can't pay... they regularly pay people to take their search engine.

    https://www.businessinsider.com.au/google-apple-search-deal-doj-antitrust-suit-2020-10?r=US&IR=T

    Also, as you would expect, I use google sometimes but mostly I use the duck. So personally... not much change.

    588:

    One of the fun things will be all the devices that technically aren't locked to google search but in practice changing it is a job for tech support. I expect google to break that stuff and break it hard, but then come up with a redirect or something after a few days to stop the hordes from throwing their TVs, phones, cars, voice assistants etc in the trash and buying ones that still work... from Huawei and Oppo. Because remember, Google pay Apple to make their search the default in iPhones as well.

    The real question is "what do you mean by search?" The google ecosystem is broad and quite tightly integrated. I'd be a little surprised if it turned out I can use DuckDuckGo to search my gmail inbox, for example. But not at all surprised to find out that, say, google drive doesn't work at all if google search is unavailable. I would not be surprised to see a bunch of government software stop working at the same time as commercial stuff. Often just because no-one ever tested their software/system with "google search api calls time out or return HTML "666:fuck you"

    589:

    I'm not sure we established anything resembling a self-sustaining colony anywhere that humans hadn't been before.

    Oddly, Iceland is also exemplary in this regard. There's a (at least partly) written history of its settlement as a bunch of small independent homesteads which experiment with a couple of forms of legal amalgamation before becoming a Norwegian dependency. You can argue that it still isn't quite self-sustaining, but even in that regard it's not a bad lesson for Mars.

    590:

    If the heating fails, you freeze -- it's Mars

    If the heating fails a warm jumper isn't going to help, it's space suit or die. Your idea that the only alternative to European clothing is a beige jumpsuit is interesting but nothing to do with me.

    Clothing will be decorative, but the current fad for tattoos and embedded electronics could well see people optimising for skin exposure. We've already decided that the grotesquely old aren't going to be part of society, and I suspect that the same force will mean that the merely grotesque will also "move to a farm in the country". So the usual Earth scale of "beautiful, acceptable, boring, pitiful" is likely to end at boring.

    There will also be a stronger selection effect than usual, and we'll be able to tell who's doing the selecting by what the chosen ones look like. The correlation between attractiveness and perceived ability is so strong that I expect it to leak into AI if it's not deliberately included. So we really will have a beautiful new world (as well as a younger, smarter one). There could be some real challenges with kids regressing to the mean as well.

    591:

    The thing you have to remember about Australia is that our government is a subsidiary of the Murdoch press. Without that bit of information nothing they do makes the slightest sense. They ruled out a fibre Internet, and then spotted limited it when Murdoch thought fast Internet would harm his business. This is the same.

    592:

    Why would that be more bonkers than many parts of the Metro in NYC, escpecially in most parts of Manhattan, the deep parts of London Underground, some parts of Hochbahn Hamburg, especially the latest ones in the so called 'Hafencity', Metro St. Peterspurg, and possibly every Metro/Subway system in the world, except if built in some desert?

    Here is a really special thing to consider:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Seikan_Tunnel#Maintenance

    RESPECT!

    593:

    err, St. PetersBurg

    594:

    That's last century office drag: by 2070 they'll expect you to be wearing a traditional henley and chinos.

    There's a tale that back when Apple was working with AT&T (Bellsouth?) on the first iPhone that one of the mid level execs asked his counterpart if it would be possible for the Apple folks to wear suits rather than jeans to meetings as it was causing strife in the upper ranks at AT&T.

    We all can guess how far that went.

    595:

    Dumb question time: How fast can we work on Mars?

    The only factual videos I've ever seen of people living/working in low or zero gravity look as though everyone is moving in slo-mo. Is this slo-mo a necessary adaptation or just some PR pro's idea? (Okay - Chris Hadfield's guitar playing seems at regular speed but this isn't a particularly fast tune.)

    Space Oddity - Chris Hadfield video onboard ISS with Larrivée Guitar https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc8BcBZ0tAI

    If a necessary adaptation, by how much will our Mars settlers have to slow down? And what does this mean to the types of jobs they can do, how they live, their activities - fun and 'home' chores (how fast does your tot's glass of milk empty out to and land on the floor?), etc.?

    Slower motion also means less heat generated/thrown off by the body, therefore lower caloric demand. And possibly a bunch of spill-over effects on various organs, tissues, overall metabolism (aging?). Slower motion could also mean a seeming 'redistribution of muscle mass' - thinner thighs because less weight to haul around but proportionally larger muscles elsewhere to enable more appropriate movement by a different part of the body. (If so, then body proportions will be different. This means that clothing would have to be redesigned to accommodate this modified/adapted body shape for optimal movement, plus different patterns of wear and tear.)

    So what are the mundane, real-life, day-to-day issues that humans (evolved for life, movement on a 1G planet) can expect to encounter on Mars which has a much lower gravity?

    596:

    eschew music, dance, and drugs/alcohol

    Speaking of things that are lightweight and easy to manufacture... I can't imagine those things even being on the list of things to discuss banning. Except the latter, where I wouldn't be surprised to see Elon etc decide that edible cannabinoids are fine but alcohol is a death sentence.

    Whether we see big thumpy speakers is a different question. There are huge bioacoustic effects that are hard to impossible to replicate with headphones, but whether you want to build machines to shake your living quarters is a difficult question. We might see a special "recreation hall" built on vibration dampers inside a big airtight building to mitigate that problem. A lot of lockdown DJs have found that a decent subwoofer is an important part of their online performance.

    But the rest of the machinery is easy to build - there will be music, it will be loud and however many varieties exist there will be someone around who passionately loathes each particular type. Speakers are a trivial electromechanical transducer, and from experience they're easy to build if you have decent magnets available (and somehow I think the colony will want those).

    597:

    Clothing will be decorative

    As someone who has gotten their hands dirty with work and hobbies over the years, clothing keeps the skin from getting torn up so much.

    Even with my dad convincing me to wear gloves many decades ago my hands and other places are still covered with all kinds of thin white lines from when I didn't for some reason or another.

    598:

    Valentina Tereshkova. Daughter was the first person with both parents having flown in space.

    Svetlana Savitskaya. Potential third flight partly cancelled by pregnancy.

    Liu Yang. Kid is around its sixth birthday.

    Neither of the Russian offspring were in public life as adults so no reason for anything online other than their existence.

    599:

    The only factual videos I've ever seen of people living/working in low or zero gravity look as though everyone is moving in slo-mo. Is this slo-mo a necessary adaptation or just some PR pro's idea?

    Well first off the practice for most space walking is done under water so folks get used to neutral buoyancy. The friction of the water the deliberateness of actions tends to slow folks down.

    Then you get to space for real and discover that when you start moving you don't stop until you take action. And that action is way different than the 30-40 years of muscle memory you have taught your body.

    600:

    You can work just as fast in any lower gravity as you can on Earth at 1g. Outside in a pressure suit you're putting a lot of effort into just moving your limbs, and on EVA it tends to be an extreme case of "Measure twice, cut once".

    The availability of friction is also a consideration. On Earth you can quite happily run a power drill and stay where you are. Do the same on orbit and you'll quickly find out what Newton meant by equal and opposite reaction.

    601:

    You're right, I misspoke: protective clothing will be required, but much less often than on Earth.

    I'm thinking of all the various "primitive" native people in non-icy areas who generally ran round naked or nearly so. But for industrial work some protective gear is necessary.

    That said I often make carbohydrate dust wearing much less than a jumpsuit. The blisters on my hands suggest i should probably wear gloves as well as a skirt and jandals when I'm out in the garden. Hmm.

    602:

    Moz @ 590 : "There will also be a stronger selection effect than usual, and we'll be able to tell who's doing the selecting by what the chosen ones look like. The correlation between attractiveness and perceived ability is so strong that I expect it to leak into AI if it's not deliberately included."

    I think that you can put all that beauty and attractiveness stuff in a big trash can.

    Beauty is something linked to ethnic and sub-ethnic standards. One group's definition of what is attractive is a major turn-off for another group. The Earth is a big place with all kinds of different conceptions of humanity.

    603:

    A fascinating thing I learned from hearing a lecture by a human population genetic researcher is that we here on Earth are still subject to strong selection pressure. I had assumed, as I find many people do, that modern medicine, dentistry, glasses, etc, had essentially eliminated natural selection as an important force in human genetics.

    This, it turns out, is not the case. Natural selection leaves visible traces in genome sequences. And so, it turns out, we know that the human population has recently been under strong selection (mostly purifying selection, to get technical).

    How recently? I asked that question. Don't remember the precise answer or the evidence, but I was left with the impression that it had continued into the last century.

    604:
    I think that you can put all that beauty and attractiveness stuff in a big trash can.

    Beauty is something linked to ethnic and sub-ethnic standards. One group's definition of what is attractive is a major turn-off for another group. The Earth is a big place with all kinds of different conceptions of humanity.

    While I entirely agree with the point of your second paragraph, I don't think that it implies the conclusion that precedes it in the first paragraph. What it means is that what is perceived as "attractive" in the Mars colony is almost totally unpredictable. It doesn't at all mean that Mars culture will not develop an idea of attractiveness. I would even bet that it will be a fairly unified idea, though of course I'm just speculating about that.

    605:

    The negotiations between search engines and news will be fun and exciting, and I hope that in the end google has to pay tax. To the news media, the government, whatever, the point is they pay.

    I think I would like to see some experts analyze both what Australia is proposing, but also the potential future knock on effects that will happen not only in Australia but in any other country around the world as it (if successful) gets copied.

    If Google has to pay to link to a news story, then does that mean OGH has to pay every time some poster on here links to a news story?

    Which then means do the various online forums that allow posting then start requiring users to provide a credit card to register so that any links you embed you can be billed for?

    Or does it open it up to any random website demanding payment for links?

    There is a lot to dislike about Google these days, and the new media is in trouble (whether it be evil media or good media) as Google dominates the online ads business.

    But any solution should hopefully not make things worse.

    606:

    Where the offload boundary is located is irrelevant to my point. I am talking about the buffers in the application, filing system and in-CPU transport system.

    607:

    Whereas if you redesign the thing around robot capabilities, the problem becomes a lot easier

    I expect that as household robots become a thing, new houses (apartments, etc.) will begin to be built with this technology in mind.

    It is a lot easier to design a drink serving robot if the glasses are always stored in a known configuration inside a dish-storage unit itself designed for automatic filling/emptying. There will be a lot of demand for such technology as population ages. If a not terribly agile robot can easily and safely take a glass out of a cupboard, than an arthritic old man can too.

    608:

    Sorry, it was the late '90s that Dirt, er, Word took over the word processing market, having illegally (as defined as "they lost the court case") smashed WP (a vastly superior product) by bribery.

    A search reveals they didn't lose the court case - Novell lost when the judge threw out the case for a lack of evidence, and 2 higher levels of court declined to hear an appeal.

    On the other hand, as far as I can tell, Office 365 may actually push LibreOffice, since a) they want you to rent it (SaaS, annual payments) rather than sell copies.

    I know some people don't like monthly/annual payments and thus like to demonize any company offering them, but Microsoft still allows the purchase of stand alone copies of Office.

    But considering what one used to pay for Office decades ago C$80/year with 1 TB of online storage doesn't seem unreasonable. https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products

    And it REALLY REALLY REALLY wants you to use their cloud, and trying to get stuff out is a mind-boggling pain... and the latter I have from a good friend who is his own consulting business, and has been doing that for decades.

    Can't comment on the business editions of Office, but I believe the consumer editions use OneDrive (as Office comes with 1 TB of storage), which obviously will quite happily put your files on your hard drive/SSD for you.

    Yes, some of the business editions are more complicated - but I am guessing that's in part for security reasons to prevent employees from stealing company stuff.

    609:

    There is a lot to dislike about Google these days, and the new media is in trouble (whether it be evil media or good media) as Google dominates the online ads business.

    Yep. Most consumers in the US thought they were paying for news with their subscriptions to news papers and magazines over the years. They had no idea that they were paying mainly to curate a subscription list for advertisers.

    One newspapers lost the ad revenue (lots of causes but living in the past was a big one) suddenly income was totally out of whack with expenses.

    And now I can't see how this will help. At all. Except to make the big boy bigger and the smaller ones closer to being dead.

    610:

    The question is whether the search engine is more valuable to the news organization, or vice-versa? And who should be paying who? All Google has to do to prove their point is stop cataloging a particular news organization for awhile and see what happens to page hits.

    My suspicion is that Google is more valuable to News Organization than vice-versa, but I'm not married to the idea.

    611:

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Valentina_Tereshkova#Personal_life

    Valentina married cosmonaut Andriyan Nikolayev on 3 November 1963 at the Moscow Wedding Palace with Khrushchev presiding at the wedding party together with top government and space programme leaders.[68] The marriage was encouraged by the Soviet space authorities as a "fairy-tale message to the country".[69] General Kamanin, head of the space program, described it as "probably useful for politics and science".[70] On 8 June 1964, nearly one year after her space flight, she gave birth to their daughter Elena Andrianovna Nikolaeva-Tereshkova,[2] the first person with both a mother and father who had travelled into space.[71]

    [And I believe still the only one]

    612:

    LAvery @ 603 and @ 604

    How do you factor in for elements that do not appear visually?

    Take teamwork for instance. A single human can't go out hunting, and kill a mammoth alone. A group of humans can kill a mammoth together if they have the capacity to work as a team. This is true also for other animals who are stronger and faster than humans.

    That's one of the reasons why I'm very suspicious of any kind of selection based on external human features.

    613:

    "Clothing will be decorative"

    But will female colonists wear purple wigs?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpJzRyN2f_U

    British Sci-Fi in the 70s was a bit weird.

    614:
    How do you factor in for elements that do not appear visually?

    Take teamwork for instance. A single human can't go out hunting, and kill a mammoth alone. A group of humans can kill a mammoth together if they have the capacity to work as a team. This is true also for other animals who are stronger and faster than humans.

    That's one of the reasons why I'm very suspicious of any kind of selection based on external human features.

    I don't follow your logic. You make an argument that there is selection on non-visible traits. Fine. But why would that lead you to conclude that there is not also selection on visible traits? They're not mutually exclusive.

    In fact, they tend to be mutually reinforcing. Non-visible traits often end up being associated with visible traits. (One of the buzzwords for this is "linkage disequilibrium".)

    There are also technical reasons why your example of teamwork is not a good one, but that's complicated, and I don't want to get into it. If you really want the full argument, read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which lays this out very well.

    615:

    But considering what one used to pay for Office decades ago C$80/year with 1 TB of online storage doesn't seem unreasonable. https://www.microsoft.com/en-ca/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products

    Let me start off by saying that MS can make me grind my teeth at times. Hard.

    And most of my work is in dealing with Apple devices.

    And I have a dozen or so clients with MS Office 365.

    Microsoft of 2020 is NOT the Microsoft of 2010. And definitely not the Microsoft of 2000.

    They really really really want you to rent the software. But most of it you can buy a vesrion of if you poke around. But you can rent most all of it for $8.50 / month. (I'm talking the business verions.) If you want email domain support $12.50 per month. Like you this sure does beat the $400 I spent for a copy of just Excel around 1986. And there are dozens of add on and more feature rich options you can pay more for. Most aimed at the enterprise market.

    Want to put your files in OneDrive? Do it. Want them on your desktop? Do it. Want them on someone else's cloud service or remote server? Do it. It all works.

    They keep getting better and better at supporting simple situations. But OMG, they have 2043034 different variations of what you can buy after you count all the business and consumer iterations. And that number goes up and down daily. And what you signed up for last year may have a new name or bundle this year. Get used to it.

    On the more evil side if you wish, Teams is trying to morph into the be all end all app that you live in and is developed on top of the Electron framework from GitHub which combines the Chromium rendering engine and the Node.js JavaScript platform. This seems to be a way to go cross platform but keep control. I've seen presentations where Electron is portrayed as the spawn of the devil. We'll see.

    As to why they have all these cloud pushes. Google was taking away too much business with their cloud offerings.

    616:

    British Sci-Fi in the 70s was a bit weird.

    Well for hard science there's always "Space 1999".

    [total eye roll]

    617:

    LAvery @ 614: "There are also technical reasons why your example of teamwork is not a good one, but that's complicated, and I don't want to get into it. If you really want the full argument, read Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, which lays this out very well."

    Sorry, a very good friend lent me a copy and that didn't work. I then bought my own copy but no matter how I tried I could never make head or tail of what Dawkins was trying to say. It's too theoretical for me.

    618:

    Sorry to hear that.

    619:

    At any rate, eliding the whole complicated teamwork issue, the main points are (1) There is definitely strong selection on nonvisible traits: lactose tolerance, resistance to infectious disease, and parenting abilities come to mind. (The first two are well documented, the last I made up.) (2) There is also definitely selection on visible traits. (3) 1 and 3 are not mutually exclusive. In fact, they're often mutually reinforcing.

    620:

    Given all the recent interest in UFOS (like the video from the US navy pilot), "UFO" needs a revival.

    Purple wigs mandatory.

    As for Space 1999, if you ignore the ludicrous premise (a nuclear explosion that knocks the moon out of orbit, hurling it through space so fast it can show up at a new solar system every eek, but stays long enough at the new planet long enough to have a story) - it actually had a few well written (Dragons Domain)

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=--3Che2WhaI

    and well acted (Brian Blessed in "Death's Other Dominion") stories.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jDZJI-MfKu0

    Idea for revival of Space 1999 (2099?): A large nickel-iron asteroid is being hollowed out to create a multi-generational starship using Orion nuclear pulse drive. Accident in the orbiting shipyard launches it too soon and (like the moon in the original series) it is hurled out into space. Turns out there are hundreds of black dwarfs and exoplanets between the stars so you don't have to wait decades to have another story of the week.

    Send me a royalty check.

    621:

    I've heard of Dunning-Kruger, I don't think it applies as I said I didn't know anything about it! I've since looked into it a tiny bit, and don't think it's totally unreasonable. Yes, there's problems with washing. If on the other hand there are worthwhile savings in machinery and processes, it may be workable to adjust the washing system. As for the thinness, no good for a t-shirt maybe, but perhaps other things? Thick clothing when you are surrounded by killing cold, would probably be appealing mentally! Also the environment the colonists interact with is likely to be cold and hard, which would favour thicker clothing perhaps. I still don't think it a total loss as an idea

    622:

    Tunnels in Miami? - & the sea-level is where-&-rising? He JUST DOES NOT GET "Public Transport" does he?

    Given that streets near Miami can be underwater at high tide and locals are annoyed by it the idea of digging anything in southern Florida sounds like a non-starter.

    623:

    Moz We've already decided that the grotesquely old aren't going to be part of society, HAVE WE? No, some wanker thought it was a good idea that old people were "unnecessary", with no basis in fact or logic. START AGAIN, please.

    gasdive They ruled out a fibre Internet, and then spotted limited it Translate into English, please?

    Duffy That purple wigs thing won't play here... OTOH, I was once on-stage with three very pleasant youngish ladies ( & Talented singers - them, that is. ) They were wearing blue wigs ...... ( only )

    624:

    Given sea level rise I don’t see the point of spending anything on Miami infrastructure rather than just milking the cash cow until you have to abandon it.

    625:

    Well for hard science there's always "Space 1999".

    I much preferred Space: 1889. :-)

    626:

    Re: Ilya187: @ G people = 2,000,000,000 (as IMSM, “The expanse” has as the 2200 CE Martian Congressional Republic's population)

    Does it seem realistic and feasible to you that there will be 500k in the world over the next 30-50 years who: 1) Want to spend the rest of their lives on Mars--able to live in a “large submarine” (or even an inhabitable Martian lava tube) for years and accept that they will probably die much sooner than they would on Terra, 2) Can be trained/are suitable to be “Mars ready” aka, “trained areonauts”, 3) Have the skills and experience needed to support the population, 4) Willing to pay/raise $2M for the privilege?

    How about this: Instead of having hundreds of k people on Mars in some decades- century+, there are hundreds scattered around a few dozen bases as in Antarctica. Some of these people do the necessary, must-need-a-human-onsite-to-do-it work, e.g., “A skilled geologist on Mars could learn more in 15 seconds than all the rovers time combined”... Others are the “robot wranglers” doing the oversight that can't be handled by some decades-century+ AI/expert systems for hundreds of k of drones, probes, robots, and the millions of inexpensive sensors distributed around the planet (as OGH described as being very near-future probability). Others do the necessary oversight that can't be handled by some decades-century + AI/expert systems to manufacture the Mars-manufactured components of “our plastic pals” just described... Similar to oil riggers, these folks stay and work there for a few years and the survivors return home. Rinse and repeat for other interesting Solar System objects...

    IMHO, the guiding philosophy of space exploration should be: “Space is cool and interesting, but it's also dangerous in ways we know and ways we don't. People are important, so don't put them in danger unless they're really, really needed to do something that can't be done very well remotely/tele-presence/onsite AI, etc.”

    627:

    Speaking of British Sci-Fi is "The Prisoner" with Patrick McGoohan considered to be SF?

    And while the Brits gave us moon babes in purple wigs, America created the greatest theme song of all time:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wwpXUn2dF5c

    628:

    Speaking of British Sci-Fi is "The Prisoner" with Patrick McGoohan considered to be SF?

    Wikipedia thinks so: "The Prisoner is a 1967 British avant-garde social science fiction television series...",

    629:

    The executive summary is that this is a topic which is easy to understand (though still very complicated) if you use the relevant mathematical language, but hard to describe for people who can't follow that. Dawkins is not good at it, assuming that he can use that language (for which I have no proof), though he is better than I would be. The only simple example I can think of is the following one:

    Your siblings, parents and children carry half of your genes (on average) and other relatives carry lesser amounts. If, by sacrificing yourself, you can protect more than two siblings, your genes are more likely to survive than if you save yourself and let them die.

    630:

    "The Prisoner" is definitely SF in my book.

    (And speaking of books, I'm currently working on a kinda-sorta historical Laundry Files novel -- actually the third in the spin-off series beginning with "Dead Lies Dreaming" -- which can loosely be described as a just-barely-post-Napoleonic remix of "The Prisoner", mashed up with "The Boys From Brazil". See, although Portmeiron was built from 1925 onwards, the truth (in the Laundryverse) is that it was a faithful copy of an original Village which mysteriously burned to the ground in 1816. The original village was built by the Invisible College as a prison/deprogramming camp for captured Continental sorcerers during the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic Wars: they're often valuable prisoners -- many of them were aristocrats prior to the Terror -- but can't be trusted. Guess where Eve, from "Dead Lies Dreaming", ends up on her second trip back into history via the ghost roads?)

    631:

    But will you (or have you) set any of your Laundry books in the groovy 60s?

    632:

    the groovy 60s

    The sole unironic use of the word "groovy" I know.

    633:

    Elderly Cynic @ 629

    Thank you for that short example. It makes some things understandable. Even though I have no living parents, no siblings and no descendants I can imagine that the selfish gene (or the immortal gene) is bound to a creature which does.

    I tried to understand "The Selfish Gene" about 20 years ago, when my mind was more nimble than it is now. But even back then I could not understand anything more complicated than simple calculus problems. I was never mathematically inclined, and I had horrid teachers, save one.

    634:
    Thank you for that short example. It makes some things understandable. Even though I have no living parents, no siblings and no descendants I can imagine that the selfish gene (or the immortal gene) is bound to a creature which does.

    That was an example of kin selection, whose direct relevance to the teamwork question is limited to the case of teams of relatives. If the teams consist of unrelated people (which I took to be the most likely case in the Mars context), we're into game theory, and it gets much more complicated. Teamwork is complicated because of the free rider problem, which leads to situations mathematically equivalent to the Prisoner's Dilemma.

    635:

    "The Selfish Gene" was Dawkin's dumbed-down-for-the-masses version; his higher-end-but-not-hardcore-academic version, aimed at folks with a biological sciences background (but not in his field), was "The Extended Phenotype".

    Dawkins basically took an axe to naive theories of kin selection in evolution. However, more recent work -- remember, he published those two books in the 1970s -- have patched and to some extent rehabilitated kin selection (under some conditions: IIRC whether the species in question follows an r-type or K-type reproductive strategy makes a big difference).

    636:

    No. (Although one of the main protagonists of "Dead Lies Dreaming" is modelled on Withnail, from "Withnail and I". So there's that.)

    637:

    Well, it does make sense I'd be vulnerable to it, given my family's (non-practicing) catholic roots. Hard to avoid it here in Brazil... At least I didn't internalize LessWrong when I read them a few years back, or I'd be under the sheets hiding from Roko's Basilisk.

    It does make me wonder - if the main drive to Mars colonization is religious pilgrimage from Singularitarianism / Transhumanism / Neo-Cosmism, with clear Christian roots, is there an equivalent Techno-Religious set of axioms to attract colonists from Jewish and Islamic backgrounds? Or will Mars be a mix of quasi-religious singularitarians (their mission/faith: first Mars, then Immortality, then Mind Upload, then Magic! AI, then Information Retrieval from the past, then universal digital resurrection) and scientific-minded atheists / agnostics (we're in Mars doing our jobs, living our lives, but in Mars! it's a cool job and a cool life)?

    ...and might the Covid crisis spark a religious war on Mars? Singularitarians as our economy-first equivalents - "it's ok to sacrifice part of the population so the colony survives, since we plan to resurrect them in the distant future" - and the others as the "no, killing our people is just not ok" camp?

    ...bonus! What if there's actual preliminary evidence that Information Retrieval might be scientifically possible (such as that the universe is indeed holographic, even if information retrieval requires supernova-level energy - Singularitarians would likely be betting on efficiency gains + macroengineering after Mars)? Does this justify sacrificing part of your population? Or could this evidence be the 2070 of "fake news" and/or trickle-down economics?

    638:

    You make an excellent point.

    There really is no rational cost effective reason for human exploration of space.

    As much I would wish otherwise, there is just no financial, scientific or defense justification for a large sustained human presence in space. Defensive spy sats, weather and comsats, robot planetary rovers and orbital probes do the job just fine. No human need apply. From a purely "bean counter" point of view, even the international space station is a white elephant.

    Fortunately life isn't about bean counting, or even solely about maximizing profit. The spirit, elan and morale of a society are at least as important as its material wealth, perhaps more important. I'm old enough to remember being thrilled by blurry black and white, live TV images of men walking on the moon. Apollo was primarily about non material things like national pride, prestige and patriotism. However as the world becomes closer and borders blur, such chest thumping patriotism may go out of fashion, and won't provide the impetus for further efforts in space. Maybe Chinese taikonauts will provide the same goad as Russian cosmonauts, but more likely future space missions will be multi-national, cooperative efforts.

    In its mystical aspect Apollo embodied the spirit of its age. Every so often in history, a civilization rises up and uses its accumulated economic surplus to create something which has no practical value (from a bean counter's point of view) yet is absolutely essential to the morale and spirit of its people. The Egyptian pyramids and Gothic cathedrals are two examples. The Saturn V rocket in many ways was our Notre Dame. IMHO we have lately become so mono-fixated on economics that we have forgotten that it is the intangibles which make a civilization great. "Without a vision, the people perish" — I believe both secular humanists and devout theists can agree on that.

    A comparison between the Saturn V rocket and the Gothic cathedrals or Egyptian pyramids is an apt analogy (the Expanse touches on this with the Mormon star ship). Perhaps, just perhaps, religious faith might provide the necessary spark for a renewed effort in space — and not just because many Apollo astronauts experienced a profound religious awakening while in space and on the moon.

    So why not a "faith based" space program? How about founding another "shining city on a hill", this time on the Moon. Why not "touch the face of God" from orbit? How about a "new Jerusalem" on Mars, free from the corruption and immorality of the Old World? As crazy as this may sound, we made need to harness the same motivation which built the cathedrals and pyramids to send humans back into space.

    When it comes to the long term survival of our species, rationality may be over rated. Since there may be no rational reason for man in space, we may need an irrational reason.

    639:

    if the main drive to Mars colonization is religious pilgrimage from Singularitarianism / Transhumanism / Neo-Cosmism, with clear Christian roots, is there an equivalent Techno-Religious set of axioms to attract colonists from Jewish and Islamic backgrounds?

    Judaism doesn't really take the "go forth, be fruitful and multiply (and fill the universe with dodgy photocopies of your phenotype)" seriously: insofar as it has any tendency in that direction it got hung up on a very specific promised land and there's no real theological justification even there.

    (The Zionist movement kicked off in 19th century Europe, where educated/assimilated Jews in relatively anti-semitic countries latched onto the idea of a national homeland -- then becoming popular among the subject populations of the Russian, Austro-Hungarian, and Turkish empires -- as a solution to persection. Then they copied the then-in-vogue European colonialist settler stuff previously aimed at North America, Australia/NZ, Africa, etc., and aimed it at Turkish Palestine. There's no ideological or religious basis to extend it off-planet, or indeed anywhere other than Israel.)

    Islam ... I don't know: I don't think they've got the same hang-up on apocalypse/resurrection/day of judgement as the Christians? If I'm wrong, though, a distinctly muslim strain of Singularitarianism might emerge in due course.

    640:

    IIRC whether the species in question follows an r-type or K-type reproductive strategy makes a big difference.

    A useful mathematical concept in this area is reproductive value, which is not a new idea at all. In fact, it was invented by the great mathematical biologist (and eugenics enthusiast) Ronald Fisher in 1930.

    641:

    "Why not a faith-based space program?"

    I refer you to Neptune's Brood (currently on discount as an ebook in the US!) where just such a thing is parodied in the shape of the Church of the Fragile (about which the less said the better -- it's kind of gruesome when you think about it too hard!).

    642:

    Thanks. While, even now, I am happy with the mathematics, my knowledge of the biological aspects is limited.

    To LAvery: I agree that the team of unrelated people is as you say, but I for one can't think of how to describe it in non-mathematical terms except by hand-waving!

    643:

    Actually, most forms of Christianity don't take that breeding injunction seriously, either. What most of them take seriously (just like Islam) is to go forth and convert unbelievers (i.e. anyone who believes anything even marginally different). This was also adopted by the British Imperialists from the days of Victoria onwards - it was primarily a matter of cultural replacement (and associated subservience) rather than ethnic replacement.

    Yes, where there is a religious aspect to Mars colonisation, I would expect the breeder sects to be in the fore, but there are plenty of other reasons to want to join such a project. I still feel the call, for example, and know of a lot of other people who have done or do, too.

    644:

    Since this is science fiction, not fantasy, the science must match what is actually known in the real world.

    With that in mind: How does the Martian radiation environment compare with the radiation environment inside the Far East F*up?

    Background: Years ago, a hospital in Taiwan screwed up royally. Some spent cobalt-60 radiation sources found their way into general trash disposal rather than radwaste disposal. They were thrown out, recycled into steel rebar, and the rebar used to build an apartment building. People then moved in, and started living, having, and raising children, all while living in a radiation bath.

    The results were NOT as predicted by the conventional models. Conventional models predict higher-than-normal cancer incidence. The residents, however, have about 3% (yes, 1/33) of the expected cancer incidence for Taiwanese, and 7% (1/14) of the expected malformation incidence. This is a large-scale experimental result, and it is VERY bad for the conventional model of radiation risk.

    https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2477708/#:~:text=The%20radioactive%20state%20of%20the,1996%2C%20and%201277%20in%201997.

    ABSTRACT

    The conventional approach for radiation protection is based on the ICRP's linear, no threshold (LNT) model of radiation carcinogenesis, which implies that ionizing radiation is always harmful, no matter how small the dose. But a different approach can be derived from the observed health effects of the serendipitous contamination of 1700 apartments in Taiwan with cobalt-60 (T1/2 = 5.3 y). This experience indicates that chronic exposure of the whole body to low-dose-rate radiation, even accumulated to a high annual dose, may be beneficial to human health. Approximately 10,000 people occupied these buildings and received an average radiation dose of 0.4 Sv, unknowingly, during a 9–20 year period. They did not suffer a higher incidence of cancer mortality, as the LNT theory would predict. On the contrary, the incidence of cancer deaths in this population was greatly reduced—to about 3 per cent of the incidence of spontaneous cancer death in the general Taiwan public. In addition, the incidence of congenital malformations was also reduced—to about 7 per cent of the incidence in the general public. These observations appear to be compatible with the radiation hormesis model. Information about this Taiwan experience should be communicated to the public worldwide to help allay its fear of radiation and create a positive impression about important radiation applications. Expenditures of many billions of dollars in nuclear reactor operation could be saved and expansion of nuclear electricity generation could be facilitated. In addition, this knowledge would encourage further investigation and implementation of very important applications of total-body, low-dose irradiation to treat and cure many illnesses, including cancer. The findings of this study are such a departure from expectations, based on ICRP criteria, that we believe that they ought to be carefully reviewed by other, independent organizations and that population data not available to the authors be provided, so that a fully qualified epidemiologically-valid analysis can be made. Many of the confounding factors that limit other studies used to date, such as the A-bomb survivors, the Mayak workers and the Chernobyl evacuees, are not present in this population exposure. It should be one of the most important events on which to base radiation protection standards.

    645:

    These observations appear to be compatible with the radiation hormesis model

    Hormesis was the first thing that came to mind on reading your description.

    646:

    As much I would wish otherwise, there is just no financial, scientific or defense justification for a large sustained human presence in space. Defensive spy sats, weather and comsats, robot planetary rovers and orbital probes do the job just fine. No human need apply.

    Up to a point.

    As I believe someone else already mentioned, a couple of human beings on Mars would in a matter of weeks produce far more important scientific results than decades of landers and rovers have.

    There is no getting around the reality that the rovers, while wonderful pieces of hardware, are seriously limited in what they can do, how much area they can cover, and their need to send everything including non-results back in a seriously bandwidth limited environment.

    647:

    Radiation hormesis

    The Taiwan study you describe is mentioned here. Apparently it had some problems, which cast doubt on the conclusions.

    Since this is science fiction, not fantasy, the science must match what is actually known in the real world.

    This is a rule more honour'd in the breach than the observance.

    648:

    Charlie Unfortunately, yes. Islam has a day of judgement, too .....

    649:

    Roughly summarized: evolution works by survival of the fittest genes, not the fittest individuals or species. It's all about carrying those little sequences of DNA into the future…

    Lots of math to back up the argument, which was unusual for its day. Biology has got a lot more comfortable with using math since then; computers have helped a lot there.

    650:

    Since there may be no rational reason for man in space, we may need an irrational reason.

    You could argue the same for any non-Hobbesian, post-scarcity future. Once life isn't a continual, consuming struggle to stay alive, what do you do? Art? Science? Videogames? Sports? Exploration? Create the Culture?

    651:

    Does it seem realistic and feasible to you that there will be 500k in the world over the next 30-50 years who: 1) Want to spend the rest of their lives on Mars--able to live in a “large submarine” (or even an inhabitable Martian lava tube) for years and accept that they will probably die much sooner than they would on Terra, 2) Can be trained/are suitable to be “Mars ready” aka, “trained areonauts”, 3) Have the skills and experience needed to support the population, 4) Willing to pay/raise $2M for the privilege?

    So to tackle 4 first (and with the provision that I haven't followed Musk), my impression is that Musk intends to somehow finance the $2M cost per person as that is the only way his dream works.

    That said, look around at the world today. Between Europe and North America you are looking at over 1 billion people, and a significant number of them are growing up (or in young adulthood) where despite their education they have no chance of getting on the property ladder, are struggling to live in a small dwelling (often shared) or even continue to live with their parents.

    That is a generation that even the somewhat more successful ones have fallen back on travelling and working around the world (the so called digital nomads) because it satisfies their sense of adventure while finding cheap places to live where they can have actual space.

    And now add in the people from the rest of the world he have a reasonable level of education.

    Yes, I think from that very large pool finding 500,000 to a million can be done. In fact, the bigger problem may well be turning people away.

    How about this: Instead of having hundreds of k people on Mars in some decades- century+, there are hundreds scattered around a few dozen bases as in Antarctica. Some of these people do the necessary, must-need-a-human-onsite-to-do-it work, e.g., “A skilled geologist on Mars could learn more in 15 seconds than all the rovers time combined”... Others are the “robot wranglers” doing the oversight that can't be handled by some decades-century+ AI/expert systems for hundreds of k of drones, probes, robots, and the millions of inexpensive sensors distributed around the planet (as OGH described as being very near-future probability). Others do the necessary oversight that can't be handled by some decades-century + AI/expert systems to manufacture the Mars-manufactured components of “our plastic pals” just described... Similar to oil riggers, these folks stay and work there for a few years and the survivors return home. Rinse and repeat for other interesting Solar System objects...

    Not going to happen.

    Nobody is going to put up, year after year, decade after decade, the required levels of funding for that.

    Which is why Musk and the others who all want humans to settle Mars are so obsessed with the idea of permanent settlements - that is settlements big enough to become self sufficient. Because they know from history that anything else will be abandoned after a short period of time. No, Antarctica is a contrary example - the costs of Antarctica are a rounding error to the costs of maintaining scientific outposts on Mars.

    IMHO, the guiding philosophy of space exploration should be: “Space is cool and interesting, but it's also dangerous in ways we know and ways we don't. People are important, so don't put them in danger unless they're really, really needed to do something that can't be done very well remotely/tele-presence/onsite AI, etc.”

    At the moment, nothing on Mars can be done well remotely - the time delays with tele-presense mean very little gets done, and AI is nowhere close to being good enough.

    But more to the point, exploration and driving humans forward always comes at a human cost. While we should obviously be reasonable in our attempts to minimize loss of life, we also need to accept that there will be loss of life and that the current mantra of any loss of life is unacceptable is a barrier to moving forward that has handcuffed and held back NASA and space exploration in general.

    652:

    Yes, precisely. Another big problem is the selection - you positively do NOT want fanatics or bigots, of whatever stripe (yes, even Dawkinist).

    653:

    In addition to hemp, linen might be a good fiber to use to meet the increased demand for cloth for face masks, hospital linens, and filter media. Scaling up production of synthetic fibers would require engineering effort. Hemp and linen just require changing adjusting the crop planting schedules in the agricultural modules.

    An advantage of growing linen over cotton is that flaxseed is directly edible without processing to remove gossypol toxins. Flaxseed oil also polymerizes under UV light or heat. Mars medical staff could wear locally-produced oilcloth PPE.

    654:

    mdlve @ 651: "...we also need to accept that there will be loss of life and that the current mantra of any loss of life is unacceptable is a barrier to moving forward that has handcuffed and held back NASA..."

    Over the last 40 years NASA has been in the odd position where it has taken the stand that loss of life is unacceptable while at the same time pressing on with human space exploration in a deeply flawed spacecraft. They lost two shuttles and 14 astronauts and still they press on with the human exploration of space.

    Right now they use the ISS, which is not a flawed design, but which has no backup features or safety equipment except for the two Soyuz lifeboats. The humans in there work in shirt sleeves, with no oxygen at hand. If the ISS gets holed by a big enough object, all the humans die. And still, they press on.

    656:

    “ As much I would wish otherwise, there is just no financial, scientific or defense justification for a large sustained human presence in space. ”

    The thing is a majority of what humans do isn’t rationale. So understanding there is no rationale reason to do something doesn’t tell you much about whether it wil happen

    657:
    Does it seem realistic and feasible to you that there will be 500k in the world over the next 30-50 years who:

    1) Want to spend the rest of their lives on Mars--able to live in a “large submarine” (or even an inhabitable Martian lava tube) for years and accept that they will probably die much sooner than they would on Terra,

    2) Can be trained/are suitable to be “Mars ready” aka, “trained areonauts”,

    3) Have the skills and experience needed to support the population,

    4) Willing to pay/raise $2M for the privilege?

    I would consider it, just for the adventure, basically. However, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't meet requirement 2, being well stricken in years. (That, OTOH, makes (1) less of a problem.)

    AI is nowhere close to being good enough

    Worth pointing out that the capabilities of AI are changing rapidly.

    658:

    Can someone explain why Musk wants to go to Mars first rather than the Moon?

    659:

    Can someone explain why Musk wants to go to Mars first rather than the Moon?

    Elon Musk Announces His Plan to Colonize Mars and Save Humanity

    Somewhat tongue-in-cheek, but it does have the answer you're looking for.

    660:

    I would consider it, just for the adventure, basically. However, I'm pretty sure I wouldn't meet requirement 2, being well stricken in years. (That, OTOH, makes (1) less of a problem.)

    Part of the current regime to become an astronaut is merely a way of reducing the field of candidates to a reasonable number.

    If Musk gets to the point where he needs people for Mars on the scale he wants the requirements will be a lot more reasonable than what currently exists - I could see it dropping to the point where the only disqualifiers would be age, underlying health condition, and a lack of basic fitness.

    Worth pointing out that the capabilities of AI are changing rapidly.

    Yes and no.

    ML and other things are indeed getting very good for specific tasks - identifying objects, riding a bike, speech recognition.

    But they are nowhere close to creating an AI that mimics the human brain and its ability to randomly make leaps and other feats that go beyond training.

    661:

    Can someone explain why Musk wants to go to Mars first rather than the Moon?

    Much debate over the years from various sides as to whether a direct to Mars or a Moon then Mars is the best approach.

    The Moon offers proximity in case of trouble - though whether that makes much of a difference can be debatable.

    Mars however offers better gravity and an atmosphere that can be used.

    For Musk part of the decision making is likely that going Moon first eats up time - say 5 to 10 years - that he doesn't have if he wants to go to Mars.

    662:
    But they are nowhere close to creating an AI that mimics the human brain and its ability to randomly make leaps and other feats that go beyond training.

    Not everyone agrees with you on that. (Taking "close to" as a reference to how many more years of progress are required to get there.) Four polls conducted in 2012 and 2013 suggested that the median guess among experts for when they would be 50% confident AGI would arrive was 2040 to 2050, depending on the poll, with the mean being 2081.

    663:

    the current mantra of any loss of life is unacceptable

    Very ironic given the acceptance (in the same country as NASA) of an incredible murder rate, including more school shootings than anywhere else in the world…

    Not to mention 400k Covid deaths and climbing, yet even simple public health measures are unacceptable…

    664:

    As much I would wish otherwise, there is just no financial, scientific or defense justification for a large sustained human presence in space.

    There is similarly no rational justification for not wearing a simple face mask when interacting with others when there's a pandemic caused by an airborne virus, which hasn't stopped a large number of people from refusing to do so for a sustained period of time.

    665:

    Islam could use more holy stones from the sky as relic to walk around, like in the Kaaba in Mekka. Also trying to polish all the navigation beacons there, with arabic names on them...

    666:

    The Price of a Life varies enormously, even in one country. On our railways, a life is priced at approx £10 million - if you can, statistically prevent one fatality by spending that £10 million, it will be done. On our roads, the price of a life is somewhere between £50k & £150k - or if it costs more than certainly £200k, it won't be done.

    667:

    Robert van der Heide @ 585: Horrible design!
    “Have you tried turning it off and on again?” Is instinctive these days, and it’s hard to concentrate on reading the manual when someone’s shooting at you.

    As far as I can tell, the FAC was not himself under fire at the time. But, that's what training is for. You read the manual & LEARN before anyone is shooting at you. And you practice. Then you practice until you can do it correctly, BY THE BOOK, every time - with your eyes closed, in the dark hiding under a poncho ... or under fire.

    He should have known about the coordinate reset with battery change. He should have learned that in training before he was deployed. It should have been ingrained within his muscle memory.

    It was operator error, but the blame for that error does NOT rest with the operator alone. Whoever trained him failed to do their job properly. And since he was newly assigned, he should have been more closely supervised.

    668:

    I expect "security" will have projectile weapons of some sort....Tasers and/or tranquiliser dart guns....If nobody has got firearms, security don't need firearms to have a leg up on troublemakers. And there's also de-escalation.

    I happen to agree that de-escalation is by far the best approach to security in a space colony. I'm also a fan of the Rainbow Family's Shanti Sena approach, wherein everybody's supposed to be doing non-violent security and respond to problems collectively and locally.

    The problems with having a state monopoly on violence in a spaceship or space colony is that the environment is isolating and inherently stressful. Giving some people combat training and weapons doesn't make the setting less stressful, nor do these skills or tools make the police carrying them any bit less susceptible to the inherent problems everyone is facing. If anything, it makes it worse, because it means that the cops get to deal with all the worst problems, while everybody else stands back and doesn't help. And so you get the problem of what to do about the cops being the major troublemakers. That's what Black America has been dealing with for over a century.

    Anyway, back to the technical angle. Tranquilizer darts? And you a pharmacist? The problem with tranking someone is that you've got to know their weight fairly accurately to avoid underdosing or overdosing, and you've got to wait around while the drug takes effect, and you've got to get the injection through their clothes and make sure all the contents go in. And you've got to monitor them for reactions to the drug. Not easy in combat.

    I'm in favor of things like ye olde mark one baton, along with a lot of training in how to use it, so fewer people get their heads bashed in. It's simple, versatile, easily made, and doesn't require reloading.

    Indeed, there's something to be said for allowing baton dueling in spaceships and colonies, perhaps under African-style rules rather than European or soccer hooligan rules. What I'm referring to is traditions of stick fighting where after the winner beats the loser into submission, he or she is responsible for treating the loser's injuries and making sure they recover. Unarmed dueling could happen under similar rules.

    669:

    SFReader @ 595: Dumb question time: How fast can we work on Mars?

    The only factual videos I've ever seen of people living/working in low or zero gravity look as though everyone is moving in slo-mo. Is this slo-mo a necessary adaptation or just some PR pro's idea? (Okay - Chris Hadfield's guitar playing seems at regular speed but this isn't a particularly fast tune.)

    Space Oddity - Chris Hadfield video onboard ISS with Larrivée Guitar
    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lc8BcBZ0tAI

    The way it was explained to me is that the effect of gravity is less, but mass & inertia remain the same. Move too fast & you're going to break things when you come to a sudden stop at the far end of your trajectory.

    My concern taking a guitar to the ISS would be whether there's enough moisture in the atmosphere that it wouldn't damage the wood (guitars "like" moderately high humidity).

    670:

    For Musk part of the decision making is likely that going Moon first eats up time - say 5 to 10 years - that he doesn't have if he wants to go to Mars.

    I'm betting Musk will go to the Moon anyway.

    NASA have already fronted some cash to SpaceX for design studies on a version of Starship optimized for transporting large amounts to cargo to the lunar surface: it wouldn't need fins or a heat shield (it wouldn't be coming back to Earth to land) but would need some sort of cargo unloading feature, plus adaptations for throttling down and landing on a rough regolith surface, whether cleared or not.

    It won't be the first crewed vehicle back to the Moon -- it may not be crewed at all -- but it's so huge in comparison to Blue Origin's lander that it's an obvious supply freighter/prefabricated surface habitat for follow-on missions. The 100 ton payload would support a dozen astronauts for a year, with plentiful supplies and a lot of elbow room, plus spare room for a big-ass rover, for example.

    Am pretty sure NASA won't commission the real thing until (a) Starship has flown to Earth orbit, landed, and demonstrated the on-orbit refuelling Musk needs for beyond-Earth-orbit operations, and (b) the existing Lunar Gateway and Orion and lander stack are all budgeted and paid for (so locking in other contractors), but a Lunar Starship is a slam-dunk for actual operations if they decided to go for a long-term or permanent Lunar research base.

    671:

    Oddly, Iceland is also exemplary in this regard. There's a (at least partly) written history of its settlement as a bunch of small independent homesteads which experiment with a couple of forms of legal amalgamation before becoming a Norwegian dependency. You can argue that it still isn't quite self-sustaining, but even in that regard it's not a bad lesson for Mars.

    That's a good point and a decent counterexample. We could add Greenland as another. While Greenland did have Inuit, they didn't teach the Norse settlers much about how to live on the land.

    The counterpoint is that I was talking about European colonial powers not establishing self-sustaining colonies anywhere, and I think that still stands. The Americas, Australia, and elsewhere were established by exploiting the locals and the resources they had spent millennia building up, and using long distance transport to bring in the means of subjugation (guns, colonists, and industrial product made by the various metropoles). We don't have a culture of virgin ground colonization that we could draw on, so we'd have to make it up from scratch.

    That's why I keep making snide remarks about putting domed or tunneled settlements in the most Mars-like parts of the planet, because that would help at least figure out the technical bases for doing something like that off-planet.

    Right now, the most likely scenario I see for settlement of Mars goes straight through climate change. If we somehow figure out how to keep (a) technological civilization(s) going through severe climate change, the adaptations we make are probably in line with the ones we would need to settle off planet. If we can even get off planet and go to Mars after climate change has bitten down hard, that might be the way. But that hypothetical future is centuries off.

    In this last vein, it's worth remembering that so-called primitive societies, up to and including the Vikings, are the ones who did all the virgin ground colonization. Partly it's because, unlike us, they could live off the land. It's still most likely that only primitive societies will survive climate change, again because the best way to live off the land is to drastically simplify your technical base to live off whatever your area provides and little else.

    672:

    Islam ... I don't know: I don't think they've got the same hang-up on apocalypse/resurrection/day of judgement as the Christians? If I'm wrong, though, a distinctly muslim strain of Singularitarianism might emerge in due course.

    IIRC, Islam has pretty much the same apocalypse as Christianity. As with Christianity, God is the one to decide when the end has come. Unlike Christianity, there doesn't seem to be an apocalyptic strain in Islam, where believers try to force God to act, and the phrase Inshallah may have something to do with this. You seldom hear Christians saying the equivalent. Instead, Islamic radicalism seems to be about restoring the Caliphate, which is more in line with Judaism and the restoration of Israel.

    That said, if we make the huge assumption that it's possible to have humans complete multiple generations of life cycles off planet, then there is an idea that could work. I'm not sure who the first person to propose it was, but I remember seeing it in one of Lynn Margulis' books. The notion is that:

    a) Gaia exists (e.g. the Gaia hypothesis that the biosphere is an entity is true), that b) humans are a part of Gaia and cannot be independent of (Gaia pronoun...Her?), and that c) one function of humanity is to propagate Gaia off Earth.

    I'd add the very old belief that d) The main function of humanity is to use fire and fire-derived technology as our species' special adaptation for maintaining Gaia* on Earth.

    You can attach deities or other accoutrements to this, but it pretty accurately describes the attitude humans need to survive right now, either on planet or off.

    *Or at least a Gaia that supports human life.

    673:

    I'm betting Musk will go to the Moon anyway.

    NASA have already fronted some cash to SpaceX for design studies on a version of Starship optimized for transporting large amounts to cargo to the lunar surface:

    Except that really isn't Musk (as in his grand plans to settle Mars) going to the Moon but rather SpaceX providing the hardware for NASA to go to the moon.

    In theory he would still be proceeding with his plans while gaining some additional knowledge thanks to NASA.

    But I suspect you are right despite the NASA stuff - my guess is that at some point he concedes that his plan isn't going to work in his necessary timeline (he is 49, turning 50 this year) and he pivots to the Moon as a better than nothing alternative.

    674:

    my guess is that at some point he concedes that his plan isn't going to work in his necessary timeline (he is 49, turning 50 this year) and he pivots to the Moon as a better than nothing alternative.

    I expect NASA to get to the moon before 2030. Especially if SpaceX's Starship is available, even if SLS never successfully flies.

    Musk would be young enough, at age 60, to play lunar tourist in person. Mars, however, is a step further out. With only one launch window every couple of years, even if Starship first flies before the end of 2021, it's unlikely a Starship will head for Mars before 2022; more likely the first attempt will be an uncrewed long haul test flight with a huge bunch of infrastructure (comsats, landers, a prototype fuel plant, maybe a sample return package). That means 2024 or 2026 at the earliest for a crewed departure window.

    It would be reasonable to use a Lunar crewed mission on Starship as a dress rehearsal for a first Mars trip in the 2026-28 time frame (at the earliest). He could even turn a profit on it: imagine what National Geographic or Discovery Channel would bid for the rights to put a camera operator, a charismatic anchor, and an 8KHD camera on the fricken' Moon?

    675:

    I happen to agree about momentum or inertia.

    Full disclosure, I've been developing a story partly set on Mars, so I've been reading up on this. Anyway...

    There are a couple of reasons for slow movement in freefall and on the Moon. One big one is that the astronauts were born on Earth, so their learned reflexes all have one gee pointing down. Now you can learn to do some interesting stunts in freefall (example here from a Russian Plane), but you for complex things, especially involving liquids and flames in freefall, you've got to be more careful, because they don't act the same as on Earth.

    On the Moon, how long were the astronauts there. A day each? Two days? That's not a long time to learn how to move.

    The other cool thing is the interaction between human movement gaits (walking, bouncing, jogging, and running) and gravity. There are some papers out there with theoretical and experimental work on the subject. Basically, there's a speed (around 4-5 meters/second depending on leg length) where people have to go from walking fast to jogging or running. That speed depends on gravity, so the lower the gravity, the lower the speed at which you have to break into a run because both feet are off the ground. It's very difficult to walk on the Moon. You can shuffle, but at what we'd consider normal walking speed, both feet are off the ground, so it's easier to bounce like a sifaka, as the lunar astronauts did. Probably you could run really fast on the Moon, if you wanted to and your spacesuit would allow the motion.

    On Mars, it's also difficult to walk at more than a plod, as the speed where the gravity forces you to break into a run is around 2-3 meters/second, or a reasonable walking speed on Earth. It's reasonable to assume that humans on Mars will run or jog as a normal pace. The upside to this is that it's possible to run much faster on Mars than on Earth. There's a simulation that the Mars Institute posted a few years ago that shows how this might work.

    This actually gets to an interesting point: many clothes on Earth are designed to be walked in, especially if they're designed to show status, wealthy, dignity, or ritual significance. Clothes for lower gravity worlds will need to be designed more for running and bouncing. That's going to make fashion rather different off planet. Have fun designing it.

    676:

    My view on Gaia is that, based on what we know, whether She is a single organism is like those old optical illusions - is that two faces, looking at each other, or a goblet? Given that, I choose to see Her as an organism.

    Self-aware? How the hell could you find out - put a million megawatt amplifiers across a continent, and say "HI THERE" at full volumes, and take 10 years to say it, then wait 100 years for a response? I mean, how deep a conversation have you had, lately, with the cell that's 100.00mm to the midline of your knee, and 20.100 mm in from your skin?

    And, being an actual polytheist (assuming Gaia is a deity*) then every planet with a biosphere has its own deity, thank you very much.

    • She is not All-Powerful, otherwise She surely would have saved Her dearly-beloved dinosaurs from the comet.
    677:

    By the way folks, here's something that gives me hope: by the explicit request of President Biden, there's a Moon Rock on display in the Oval Office.

    678:

    "Whoever trained him failed to do their job properly."

    Anyone can have a brain fart, though. And when you have a brain fart in the middle of doing something that you have done enough times for it to become totally instinctive, the cumulative discrepancy between the reality you think you're in and the one you actually are in sometimes has to get really large before it obtrudes itself upon your notice. At which point you come to a halt and go all dizzy trying to work out what's going on. It feels really weird.

    I sometimes wonder if this is what's behind a lot of railway accidents. You read the investigation report and what it boils down to is that the driver or the signalman, who might have been doing the same job for 30 years, did something so bizarrely and inexplicably completely wrong that you can't for the life of you work out why he did that thing. If it was the driver who did it, it was the life of him too so you never can get any further. If it was the signalman, then once you cut through all the flanneling in his testimony because he's afraid of going to prison, it turns out that his explanation is basically "duurrr" and he hasn't got a fucking clue either. He's talking exactly as if he had put the milk in the teapot and the tea in the fridge and 15 people died as a result and now he's being compelled to come up with a logical reason why he thought it was the right thing to do.

    679:

    "The original village was built by the Invisible College as a prison/deprogramming camp for captured Continental sorcerers during the French Revolution and subsequent Napoleonic Wars"

    Repurposed, rather than built, surely. After all, it was already around and looking lived-in back in Galileo's time, when there was all that rumpus over Hieronymus and his pals. And we never really did get a decent explanation of what the Mandragora Helix actually was...

    681:

    at the same time pressing on with human space exploration in a deeply flawed spacecraft.

    What we get when a legislature (concerned about voters and re-election) and a bureaucracy are specifying the design.

    682:

    America created the greatest theme song of all time:

    Mission Impossible Theme

    Playing that on an instrument for the first time makes you realize just how wedded western music is to beats/measures that are powers of two. Takes a bit to work it out in your brain. And some just can't do it.

    683:

    "...primitive societies, up to and including the Vikings, are the ones who did all the virgin ground colonization. Partly it's because, unlike us, they could live off the land. It's still most likely that only primitive societies will survive climate change"

    Oh, it was climate change that did the Greenland Vikings in. They got on all right for a bit while it was still warm enough.

    "The main function of humanity is to use fire and fire-derived technology as our species' special adaptation for maintaining Gaia* on Earth."

    What, with carbon-based fuels?

    Gaits and gravity: seems to be pretty deeply built in; I sometimes have dreams where I can nullify my weight by thinking about it, and I run everywhere incredibly slowly with really long strides. I've never been in a low-g environment, but it just feels natural to do that.

    684:

    "a charismatic anchor"

    You mean, like... nice flukes, a big stock... that sort of thing? :)

    685:

    I think Gaia (the biosphere) is a reasonable approximation of a deity for humans, even atheists. Without the biosphere, it's really hard to keep us alive. Is Gaia an organism? Not really, because there's no hard membrane separating Gaia from the rest of the universe. Earth's exosphere (the outermost layer of the atmosphere) may extend past the Moon, depending on how you define it, and the exosphere certainly merges with the Sun's atmosphere at its outer edges*. So Gaia's edges are fuzzy. Gaia doesn't reach the core of the Earth or the outermost layer of the atmosphere, but at the same time Gaia has powerful effects on the composition of both. Gaia is not a creator deity. In some sense, Gaia is more like an elemental, since the geosphere, atmosphere, hydrosphere, and biosphere interpenetrating each other are what make life on Earth possible.

    What's the gender of Gaia? Right now, I'd go with "it or they," possibly changing to "she" if humans manage to reproduce Gaia elsewhere. We're not the analogy of eggs and sperm. Rather we're bits of Gaia that might conceivably help to propagate Gaia to the surface of other worlds.

    Like you, I tend to break pagan, so this doesn't bother me. It would be interesting to figure out how to instantiate Gaia in an existing monotheistic religion. It's probably possible, but it would use even less of the normal sacred texts than are used by most modern sects. But heck, if nominally Catholic Mexicans can worship Santa Muerta, why can't others worship Santa Gaia or Pachamama?

    *If you're not familiar with the exosphere, neither am I particularly. But it's worth realizing that the Low Earth Orbit is within the exosphere, which is why the ISS needs to be nudged regularly to keep friction from the exosphere from slowing it down enough for it to fall back to Earth.

    686:

    Something back to front about the logic there. I'd have thought that if a body was concerned about voters and re-election, it would make sense for them to not kill astronauts in public.

    687:

    "just how wedded western music is to beats/measures that are powers of two"

    Eh? 3/4 (Waltz time), 6/8, and 9/8 are common enough. There's at least one other piece, Brubeck's Take Five, in 5/4. I've come across 7/8, 3/8, and an instance of 3/16.

    JHomes

    688:

    "The main function of humanity is to use fire and fire-derived technology as our species' special adaptation for maintaining Gaia* on Earth." What, with carbon-based fuels?

    There are two levels here. One is that a lot of aboriginal societies used managed fire as their major tool for managing their landscapes to produce what they needed. That's where the idea that humans are custodians who take care of the world by selective and careful burning comes from (cf the book Sand Talk).

    But fire is basically about releasing solar energy stored through photosynthesis to do things, and fossil fuels are basically stored sunlight. So if you're using electricity generated by solar power to make things work, you're doing something analogous to what we're doing with burning petroleum, or burning wood. And it's what we do. Using solar-derived electricity to care for a chunk of Gaia seems perfectly human.

    Now if you want to get into the radionuclear heresy, that's a different matter. Nor have we usurped the power of the sun and harnessed fusion for ourselves. Maybe that will be the transcendent heresy of Gaianism, to create Gaia-derived biospheres powered by fission or fusion?

    690:

    You're both right.

    If you look at most popular music, it's in 4 or 8 beats per measure. Other times certainly exist and get used, even famously, but 4 on the floor is the basic.

    That said, the powers of 2 argument doesn't scale much beyond that. A lot of popular music used 12 bars of four beats per bar for each theme. That's the basic 12 bar blues. And 2/4 doesn't get used as much as 4 and 8. So western music is not fractal in the powers of 2.

    I also agree that it's a signature of western music. Other systems (Indian and African) go in for polyrhythms and so have effectively multiple time signatures. Primitive music often doesn't get divided into measures. I don't know much about Chinese music, but it appears on Wikipedia that now it uses time signatures, but in the past it specified repeating rhythms for a simple percussion instrument that every other instrument cues off of. This is very familiar, because the music used in the martial art Capoeira works this way, and I did that for awhile.

    691:

    Eh? 3/4 (Waltz time), 6/8, and 9/8 are common enough. There's at least one other piece, Brubeck's Take Five, in 5/4.

    The first number is the one that matters. The second is about notation on the page.

    And yes I was not thinking about 3/4. But the others are just multiples of 3 which are basically about notation and convenience.

    But 5 is hard for most people. I imagine 7 or 11 or similar primes are also hard. (Counting out a 7 beat measure or higher prime seems more punishment than anything else.)

    I'll restate. Anything not a multiple of 1,2, or 3 seems odd to most western folk. Maybe everyone but my appreciation / listening time of non western music is about nil.

    692:

    Which gets to my point about command lines being prone to failure. People are not perfect. And the more little detail bits you make them do for anyone thing the more likely there is to be a failure.

    693:

    But 5 is hard for most people. I imagine 7 or 11 or similar primes are also hard. (Counting out a 7 beat measure or higher prime seems more punishment than anything else.)

    A lot of Balkan music has time signatures like that. For instance, the traditional Lesnoto is 7/16, and there's a common faster dance, whose name I'm forgetting, with a 5/16 time signature.

    And then there are totally weird things like Jove Malo Mome, which has alternating measures of 7 and 11 beats.

    When you dance to these, you break the measure down into long beats and short beats, which are 3/.16 and 2/16 respectively.

    695:

    Basically, there's a speed (around 4-5 meters/second depending on leg length) where people have to go from walking fast to jogging or running.

    4 m/s = 9 mph. That's a really brisk walk.

    696:

    "What, with carbon-based fuels?"

    Not with ever declining EROEI (energy return over energy invested):

    https://countercurrents.org/2017/03/why-eroei-matters-the-role-of-net-energy-in-the-survival-of-civilization/

    We see that the EROEI of oil is not easy to estimate but we can say at least two things: 1) our civilization was built on an energy source with an EROEI around 30-40. 2) the EROEI of oil has been going down owing to the depletion of the most profitable (high EROEI) wells. Today, we may be producing crude oil at EROEIs between 10 and 20, and it keeps going down... photovoltaics has an EROEI around 10. Wind energy does better than that, with an average EROEI around 20. Not bad, but not as large as crude oil in the good old days.

    697:

    Sorry, I wasn't translating 4 mph into kph. You're right.

    698:

    the phrase Inshallah may have something to do with this. You seldom hear Christians saying the equivalent.

    God willing. My Hispanic acquaintances often say "si Dios quiere". Of course large parts of Spain were under Islamic rule for many centuries, so that might have something to do with.

    699:

    Speaking of EROEI, there is a minimum EROEI required for technological civilization, typically estimated as 3

    https://www.mdpi.com/1996-1073/2/1/25/htm

    With all of the additional energy costs just for basic survival (air on Mars won't be free, e.g.), what is the minimum EROEI for a civilization on Mars.

    700:

    Something back to front about the logic there. I'd have thought that if a body was concerned about voters and re-election, it would make sense for them to not kill astronauts in public.

    The problem is that once a direction gets decided - build a rocket, built a shuttle, etc - other factors come into play that sadly sometimes override the do not kill astronauts mantra.

    It's been a long time since I read anything about the shuttle, but it is something along the lines of NASA wants a nice little shuttle to bring humans into space and return them. And then the government gets involved, because funding. And the government says you can have a rocket or the shuttle but not both. So now the shuttle has to be able to launch satellites. And pay attention to what the military wants, because they have money to spend. So the shuttle grows in size. And yes, it doesn't make sense, but because Congressperson A needs to bring jobs to their district/state you can't build everything in one place but instead it gets spread out across multiple states.

    And the end result in a craft that was bigger than it should have been, with the resulting cascade of side effects - solid rocket boosters, bigger area to withstand the heat of re-entry, things that need to break down into transportable sizes - and be reusable - which introduces gaskets, etc.

    701:

    When you dance to these, you break the measure down into long beats and short beats, which are 3/.16 and 2/16 respectively.

    I encountered MI in high school band. I was ok with it. But a lot of the people (maybe the bottom half of the band) just had trouble with it.

    702:

    Sorry, I wasn't translating 4 mph into kph

    I have vast experience in doing such things -- just did an embarrassing one yesterday.

    704:

    In an example of muscle memory.

    My wife and I are dog watching our son's 9 month old larger dog today. He has grown up as an apartment dog on carpets. He continually sits on our hardwoods and his rear legs gradually sprawl out sideways. (I need to get some pics.) He just doesn't understand our floors.

    Now my daughter's 3 year old similarly sized dogs were raised on hardwood floors. They have no trouble sitting when they visit.

    705:

    My Hispanic acquaintances often say "si Dios quiere".

    Oh, I forgot Spanish ojalá, which actually is Inshallah.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inshallah#Iberian_languages In the Spanish and Portuguese languages from the Iberian Peninsula, regardless of the speaker's faith, the expressions ojalá (Spanish) and oxalá (Portuguese) are used. These words are derived from the Andalusian Arabic expression law šá lláh.
    706:

    Re wool.

    Didn't think that through. Sorry.

    707:

    Duffy @ 613:

    "Clothing will be decorative"

    But will female colonists wear purple wigs?

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zpJzRyN2f_U

    British Sci-Fi in the 70s was a bit weird.

    That's no weirder than what I see some of the kids doing today. Probably no weirder than some of the ways we expressed ourselves when I was a kid.

    708:

    Keith @ 626:Does it seem realistic and feasible to you that there will be 500k in the world over the next 30-50 years who: ...

    How large a percentage of the total population of Earth is 500K people? Excluding all of the ignorant & illiterate, what percentage of the remaining population does that represent?

    709:

    If anyone is interested, I got the first Covid vaccine today. Next one in three weeks, Feb 13.

    710:

    "gasdive They ruled out a fibre Internet, and then spotted limited it Translate into English, please?"

    Ghaa, bloody auto incorrect.

    They (the Australian government) rolled out a fibre Internet, and then speed limited it.

    Murdoch thought that if people had fast Internet they wouldn't want to pay for his cable.

    711:

    'Another SciFi story I remember had them doing that ... sort of. They'd tether the dirty clothes in an airlock & open the outer hatch exposing them to vacuum. Stains & such froze solid & could then just be brushed off.'

    Also by the Admiral: MISFIT https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/2527472.Misfit

    712:

    Why the fixation on such 20th century delivery technologies like syringes? There will be other physical delivery devices, although I think biological ones will be far more developed by then. I think Bruce Sterling had it more right in his book "Tomorrow Now". There will be replicating vectors to deliver mRNA or proteins as antigens, as well as other means of immune system control to deliver the antigens to ramp up antibody production.

    Of all the things that might cause a breakdown of a Mars colony, I don't see poorly controlled disease as the likely problem. If it does, it would be because Musk-approved libertarian colonists will have some sort of "super[wo]man" mentality with disdain for such medical options that dooms them.

    713:

    On the Moon, how long were the astronauts there. A day each? Two days? That's not a long time to learn how to move.

    It's surprisingly hard to find a table of Apollo mission lunar surface times. I had to assemble this by hand so forgive any errors:

    Apollo 11: 21h 36m Apollo 12: 31h 31m Apollo 13: oops! Apollo 14: 33h 31m Apollo 15: 66h 56m Apollo 16: 71h 2m Apollo 17: 75h

    As you can see, the later missions managed to stay three days. That's not a lot of time to learn to move!

    I brought this up before; we just don't know enough about humans in low gravity to commit to months or years without any way to return to free fall or Earth gravity. As an analogy, consider pressure. It's easy, if sometimes uncomfortable, to put humans under higher than normal atmospheric pressure; if this lasts only a minute or two, no problem. It turns out that after people have been under high pressure for hours it's important to decompress slowly. Nobody knew that before we had pressurized working spaces and people died discovering this.

    Humans really should build a space station with a rotating low-gravity habitat before we commit to very long duration stays on other bodies. Even if it is nothing more than a training school in how to live and move in lunar or Martian gravity.

    714:

    It's not as simple as that.

    Quite a few 8/8 pieces are in 3:3:2 rhythm. (Coldplay's 'Clocks' is an example, IIRC.)

    And I know at least one song in 10/8, which is in a 3:3:2:2 rhythm. (Siouxsie and the Banshees, 'Overground'.)

    715:

    ...discovered that COBOL had a GOTO depending on.

    Obligatory xkcd:

    https://xkcd.com/292/

    716:

    I'm sure there are all kinds of music that doesn't translate to 3/4 or 4/4 time. I was talking in general terms about how average musicians take to it.

    Plus I stand be my comments about the notation. The first digit says how many beats to a bar, assuming it is consistent with the music. The second number is to let you know how to read the notes into the beat. It is mainly a convenience thing which in almost every case translates into a better way to interpret how to play/sing the music. Or just make the notes on the page readable. I mean you could mechanically translate a page of 4/4 into 16/1 but it would be a pain in the ass for most to read and not advance anything but someone's idea of "jee, can we do this?".

    717:

    Then there was the incredible amount of hassles taking a lot of the first code, applications and OS, of the IBM 360 project and switch it to virtual and later things. For all kinds of terrible reasons it was decided that memory would be a profit center so everything delivered by IBM had to fit into tiny memory spaces. (See references by Fred Brooks and personal talks by him on this.)

    Anyway programmers in assembly would do things like use an instruction op code as a constant if it happened to be the value they needed. Take care modifying THAT code base.

    Then the early programmers discovered that stuffing an op code into the instruction path just ahead was faster than the conditional branch on the early models. So that was done a LOT. Since many of the early models were not all that fast. Then virtual came along and the OS folks discovered vast swaths of code that were self modifying and thus could not just be dropped from the memory allocation but had to be written back to disk as the hardware had no idea if "dirty" code was needed to be kept or could be tossed.

    718:

    Why the fixation on such 20th century delivery technologies like syringes? There will be other physical delivery devices, although I think biological ones will be far more developed by then.

    OK, I'll bite. You have to get a small external thing inside a body. Digestive system is one way. Lungs are another. Both have big restrictions on what can travel that way and have the desired effect and not cause other major problems.

    Other than something sprayed into an eye (any volunteers?) what other options are there other than getting something past the skin?

    Sorry, yes there are patch absorption things but they also have a lot of limitations on what they can handle.

    719:

    You read the manual & LEARN before anyone is shooting at you. And you practice. Then you practice until you can do it correctly, BY THE BOOK, every time - with your eyes closed, in the dark hiding under a poncho ... or under fire.

    Story I tell my students when someone inevitably argues that they don't need to practice something:

    Colleague of my sister got called to a motorcycle accident. Worked on the victim all the way to the hospital. Did everything right, but he was declared DOA at the hospital. Couldn't see what she was doing, because she was crying, but her hands knew what to do.

    It was her son.

    Practice is what you do so you can still function when you can't think.

    720:

    GOTO depending on was not the true evil.

    The real evil was the ALTER statement.

    JHomes.

    721:

    What is MI?

    Sorry. If you follow the links back this sub thread contained a youtube link to the Mission Impossible theme / lead in.

    722:

    Um, say what? NASA decides... then government gets involved?

    You do realize that NASA is a US government agency, right?

    A lot of has to do with spreading the money, to get more of the US on board. But some of that was mind-bogglingly stupid spreading.

    723:

    I am, and I'm glad to hear it.

    724:

    Heh, heh, heh. When I learned BAL in 1979, our instructor told us about one hardware instruction that some people HATED: it was a MVC, IIRC... that could move up to 256 chars... ignoring things like paragraphs, or any end. Sort of the strc in C....

    725:

    If you get a chance, listen to some Thai blues. (Apparently the king is a blues musician.) Some of his songs are 13-bar (which is apparently hard to play), which sounds really cool once you get used to it.

    726:

    THAT was the COBOL command I was trying to remember.

    727:

    4 m/s = 9 mph. That's a really brisk walk.

    It is? That's my normal walking speed. I can go faster if I'm in a hurry.

    728:

    Many, many posts ago, I did post a link to an air-injector....

    729:

    Re: '... we just don't know enough about humans in low gravity to commit to months or years without any way to return to free fall or Earth gravity.'

    Agree. Plus, the only data we have is for screened-for-good-health (mostly male) adults. Although it seems that astronauts are constantly doing scientific studies, not much of the health related stuff seems to get much press - like the below.

    https://www.space.com/25452-zero-gravity-affects-astronauts-hearts.html

    'In the study, Thomas and his team trained 12 astronauts to image their hearts using an ultrasound machine on the International Space Station. Images were taken before, during and after the astronauts' time in space.

    The images revealed the heart becomes 9.4 percent more spherical in space.'

    Okay - the above is zero gravity whereas Mars gravity is approx. 32% that of Earth. But we don't know what the 'critical' gravity is - for how long before irreversible - for such physiological changes esp. at various stages of development.

    Apart from the heart going orb-shaped, another common zero-gravity problem reported by astronauts is fluid build-up in different parts of their bodies - heads included (migraine, sinuses, eyeballs, etc.). For most this eventually resolves. But what would this - plus internal organs going sphere-shape - mean during pregnancy? Often during late trimester, pregnant women complain that they have to keep going to the bathroom - their baby is sitting on/kicking their bladder - and the urge to go is just too great to ignore. Ditto breathlessness. (Basically, organs get pushed up, down and toward the spine.) Given the tendency of soft-enveloped masses to go spherical in zero-g, what's the likeliest third-trimester scenario on Mars - for the mom and for the developing fetus?

    730:

    When I learned BAL in 1979, our instructor told us about one hardware instruction that some people HATED: it was a MVC, IIRC... that could move up to 256 chars

    I think that was the abused one. People would calculate a move for things up to 255 and stuff the number as a byte into the instruction a few down in the code. My fuzzy memory is that the equivalent that worked from a number in a register took more cycles and cycles were dear.

    731:

    I did post a link to an air-injector....

    Which I'm guessing is for skin penetration. Works well for things that work as a fine aerosol but not all things work that way. One of the vaccines for old farts is thick enough that people complain about the size of the needle. 40 years ago it was standard. Now, since move have moved to those very thin things you hardly feel, when a bigger needle is needed people complain. Definitely a first world problem. I also suspect these very thin needles are hard to sterilize for multiple use.

    732:

    Re: 'I got the first Covid vaccine today. Next one in three weeks, Feb 13.'

    Glad to hear - keep us posted and stay well/safe!

    733:

    Let's not talk about what I get an injection of every two weeks, due to the cancer I had 20 years ago. It's viscous. And when some nurses try to shove it in fast... I think it comes up around the shaft of the needle.

    734:

    You, um, do realize what you're saying? That for long-term micro or zero-G missions, we wind up with spherical astronauts of uniform density?

    735:

    Often during late trimester, pregnant women complain that they have to keep going to the bathroom - their baby is sitting on/kicking their bladder - and the urge to go is just too great to ignore.

    Good point! Astronauts experience the exact opposite of this in microgravity. Without any weight of urine, the stretch sensors in the bladder don't activate, so people in free fall are often unaware they need to go until it's suddenly quite urgent - or they've just wet their pants.

    No pregnant woman has ever gone to space, for obvious reasons, but I'm sure that there will be new and exciting complications. Pregnancy is physiologically stressful under any conditions, and microgravity makes everything more difficult.

    736:

    Long post, but not book length.

    It doesn't take a book. There's not much to it really. The most important thing I learned was to have a go. I'll go bullet points.

    I'll say "diver" but that means spacewalker or whatever.

    If you can point to some single bit of kit that if it fails, you die, find a different way of doing things. Not just kit really. If you're struck blind you should still be able to get yourself back to the habitat. Follow the umbilical back through infrastructures right to the airlock. Struck deaf, have a code of pulls and bells (long tug, short double tug on the umbilical) worked out before hand.

    The person doing the work should not be the person monitoring life support.

    Minimum team is 5. The most experienced guy watches the overall flow of work. Directs resources, is the central point that information goes to and comes from. Then there's a tender. They monitor life support (depth, decompression, gas mixture, hot water supply), pass tools, feed and take up the umbilical and relay communication to the diver. The least experienced is the dope on a rope. (that was me). In parallel there's another tender and diver fully dressed and ready to go if the diver gets into trouble. They can swap roles after lunch.

    Keep body parts out of spaces between heavy things. Stuff might weigh nothing, but it still masses a lot and will snip off fingers before you can think about it. This goes double for winches. It's tempting to guide a line or chain into a winch with your hand, but don't. Don't forget your umbilical. Dropping something heavy on it can ruin your day. Ask the tender to take up the slack. They won't mind, they're bored out of their skull.

    Don't be under heavy things or above floaty things. Lines part. (Not sure how that applies to space, but the "try not to get crushed" must apply). In fact, don't be where a line that parts will whip.

    Oxygen clean is clean. Fingerprints can catch fire. Make sure all the cleaning solution is out before you pressurise with pure oxygen. Flush it with nitrogen, then flush it again.

    When you pick out an O-ring, pick it so that if you scratch the land, it's on the side that isn't making the seal. So pick away from the sealing surface.

    O-rings work when there's a decent pressure difference. If the pressure oscillates from positive to negative or is low pressure, use a gasket. O-rings leak if there's dirt or scratches or hair across the seal. Gaskets are more forgiving.

    Breathe your unit for a couple of minutes where it's safe. Particularly rebreathers. That warms up the CO2 scrubber and gets it working and you've also verified that everything is turned on and you're not just breathing what's in the lines or something.

    Tie your tools to you. You will lose them otherwise.

    You'll be judged by your facility with knots. You should be able to tie a bowline around yourself while blinded and wearing gloves.

    It's Partial Pressure of gases that counts for humans. You can breathe PP CO2 0.01 bar for a an hour, but not days. (Equivalent to 1% at surface pressure). You shouldn't have over 0.001 bar long term. Less is better. A human puts out about 0.8 surface litres of CO2 per minute while working. So if you're flushing a habitat you want to put about 80 surface litres per minute per person to keep CO2 down to 0.01 bar. (or 80 litres per minute through the scrubber). Much more to keep it down to 0.001, but long term people aren't working that hard, so not 10 times as much.

    Limits for oxygen are 2.8 bar at rest where you won't drown if you have a convulsion. Maximum about 30 minutes, used medically, not for operational use. 2 bar where you won't drown for 30 minutes operationally. 1.6 in the water for 30 minutes or so. (there are oxygen exposure formula you can look up, but these are rules of thumb) 0.7 bar for a working day. 0.5 bar in a habitat or 25%. 25% is about where the fire risk gets out of hand, so never go over that.

    Don't have pure inert gases on the worksite. Sometimes it's convenient, but just don't do it. Inevitably someone will connect the wrong hose and feed someone pure inert gas. You can recover from too much oxygen, assuming you don't drown. There's no coming back from inert gas, it strips the oxygen out of the blood.

    Always assume confined spaces have no breathable medium.

    Where your gas supply connects to the helmet, there must be a non return valve. If the hose bursts it's inconvenient to have your face sucked into your gas supply. Check the valve before every use. It should close just by blowing down it the wrong way.

    Kit such as bags (counterlungs) that you breathe into and out of need to be sterilised properly and dried after use.

    Kit that is shared needs to be sterilised between use (nappy/diaper wash or similar)

    Hydrogen Sulfide in concentrations that will kill you have no smell.

    A man with one clock knows the time. A man with two clocks doesn't, but a man with three clocks has a pretty good idea. So if there's something you really need to know, like your oxygen level, have three ways of checking.

    Don't over tighten brass fittings. The o-ring does the sealing and it doesn't care as long as it's tightish.

    Legs are useful to hold yourself in position while you torque up bolts.

    Torquing up big bolts in zero g is done better by using threaded rod and nuts and a hydraulic puller that loads the rod with the right tension. Then you just do up the nuts finger tight.

    Everything leaks a bit.

    You can fix small holes in a hull by hammering rope into the hole sideways.

    If you breathe pure oxygen and do a few changes in pressure, you'll get oxygen in your ear. After the work day finishes the oxygen will diffuse into your blood and your ears will pop like descending on an aircraft. It's annoying but nothing to worry about.

    Your working life will be much improved if you can clear your ears without using a valsalva.

    Helium conducts heat but doesn't have a huge heat capacity, so it can make you cold if you're living in it and it feels cold to breathe in.

    Size the pipework on a habitat such that you can't change the pressure too fast.

    If you set things up so that safety depends on everyone working perfectly all the time, people will die. If it's physically possible to open both airlocks at once and dump your habitat down to ambient pressure, someone will do it eventually.

    Compressors can make carbon monoxide.

    Hollywood has airlocks with complex locks and wheels and dogs like a bank vault. Real airlocks are a flat plate held closed by the pressure differential and an o-ring in the door frame. You don't want locks. Someone may need to get to you. Never leave the inner lock open. Close it and establish a pressure differential. That way if someone needs to get to you the chamber operator can vent the outer chamber and open the outer lock without venting the inner chamber. When you close the airlock you'll probably have to lean your back against it to get enough seal to create the pressure difference needed to seal properly. The outside will have a handle you can pull on to do the same thing from the outside.

    It takes a giant o-ring to seal an airlock. They're not an off the shelf thing. Instead you buy o-ring string cut it to length and glue the ends together.

    After you soak cotton clothing and sheets in a saturated sodium bicarbonate solution and let them air dry, they're quite flame retardant, but they're also scratchy and horrible.

    You can take the twists out of a line by trailing it behind the boat. Umbilicals you have to do on land, ideally using two people and a car park. Try to avoid putting twists into the umbilical by "coiling" it into a figure 8 rather than a coil. When you pack up, tie a rope around the top, bottom and centre of the figure 8, then fold the top over the bottom to make a coil. The task is easier using short ropes with an eye spliced in one end.

    The guy on the surface can probably see more through the camera on your head than you can through your eyes. So they may be directing you.

    Clips that operate by a spring loaded gate can clip you to things by accident and you can end up stuck. Remember that you can only see straight ahead, and you're wearing heavy gloves. So fine manipulation of things outside your field of vision is hard. Dog clips are preferred.

    Open supply valves all the way. They're either open or shut. Someone will tell you that they should be all the way open and half a turn closed. It's far too easy to end up all the way closed and half a turn open, which can be fatal. Able to supply enough to test, but not enough when the cylinder pressure falls or you're working hard. Fully open, fully closed.

    When it's all going wrong. Stop. Breathe. Think.

    Communication is essential for safety. No one can save you if no one is listening. It can be rope signals, but it has to be something.

    Pressure differentials are dangerous. It's too easy to get sucked into things. (probably not as big an issue for working in a vacuum)

    A saturation dive team is very dependent on the surface support crew. Doing everything from inside with no outside help is going to be hard.

    An aside re bolts. What's needed for small bolts in zero g is a hand held mechanical tool that replicates the action of a hydrotorque. Something that when you squeeze the handle it opens a set of forked jaws. So you put the threaded rod through the job. Screw nuts on finger tight. Then put a top nut on the end of the threaded rod. Put one jaw under the top nut, the other jaw around the bottom nut so it bears on the job. Squeeze and lock the handles (ideally with some sort of adjustable force limiter like a torque wrench). That puts tension on the threaded rod, then just finger tighten the bottom nut, release the tool and remove the top nut. No twisting action needed.

    Don't use lift bags to lift things off the bottom. As it rises, the air in the bag expands. Which makes it rise faster. There are overpressure vents, but they have limits. I was told a story of trying to lift a multi tonne thing (I think it was some sort of door) off the bottom of a dam. The divers rigged it all. They pumped lots of air into the bags which should have lifted it, but it didn't move. So the divers went back in to add more lift bags. While they were down, the thing that had been stuck in the mud, unstuck. It raced past the divers. Hit the boat on the surface, burst all the lift bags, fell back past the divers and buried itself deep into the mud at the bottom of the dam. I guess the moral for space is that gas filed things expand if you lower the pressure. Seems obvious, but humans aren't wired up to really grok it.

    If you're going inside a machine, padlock the start switch in the off position and take the key with you. If that's not practical, get the captain and the chief engineer involved as in come down to the wharf. Having a ship start while you're polishing the propeller is annoying to say the least. I guess a space equivalent would be it's bad to have a thruster start while you've got your head in the engine bell scraping out carbon deposits.

    Simple solutions are best. If you can do it without going underwater, do it that way. Want to know the depth of the diver? Well you could give him a depth gauge, a voice comms unit, and bother him every few minutes. You could put a sensor or three on him, a connector, some sort of wire to the surface and have a digital readout. Or you can just have a thin hose bundled into the umbilical, feed a little air into it and have the hose open at the diver's end. That will have the same pressure as the end of the hose, so just route that to a pressure gauge calibrated in feet/metres of seawater. Job done and all the fiddly bits are in the dry. The backup is to mark the umbilical every 3 metres. It's not accurate unless the diver is straight down, but it gives you a sanity check.

    Ok, I've tried to distill down 3 months of full time course work and three years of practical experience into a blog post. Lots of practical stuff left out of course. Things like muscle memory training on how to switch from surface supplied gas to backup. How to hang an air intake so it doesn't fall onto the exhaust of the petrol powered compressor. How to nail things together with explosive powered tools. What "tight" feels like on a gas fitting. I'm sure I've forgotten something, but it's a start. There's lessons in there that have been learned the hard way, that amazingly the aerospace industry is relearning the same hard way (2 angle of attack sensors on the Boeing Max? What were they thinking?). Overall it's not that hard. Just cover your arse. Have a way out if the shit hits the fan. Spend some time thinking "what if this goes wrong?" assume that if it can go wrong it will, assume people are tired or confused or simply mistaken. There's a saying that if you lock a diver in an empty room with three ball bearings, and leave them there for an hour, when you come back one will be lost, one will be broken and one will be stolen. Plan for that. Stuff floats away. Things corrode together (vacuum welding?). You never know what you'll be dealing with next, and what you'll need, so don't throw anything away because you might need that later. Divers are magpies, they pick up everything and take it home to their huge shed full of crap. Because it might come in handy later. Mars will be like that. Don't throw anything away. If you need it later, you'll have to make it or get it from Earth which is a two year delay. Even if it's broken.

    737:

    Space 1889

    Was that a Wayne and Schuster sketch? I'm imagining it as a variant on The Quiest Stranger...

    738:

    Spend some time thinking "what if this goes wrong?" assume that if it can go wrong it will, assume people are tired or confused or simply mistaken.

    My rule is: what if both things go wrong.

    You might not be as surprised as I was the number of times full emergency procedures turn out to have been developed on the assumption that everything is working perfectly except for the one thing that is obviously not working at all.

    In reality the model will fail to release from the launch rail because the throttle is jammed, which in turn is caused by fuel leaking onto the throttle control. The fuel is on fire, which is the "one obvious thing not working". Just for the record: squirting the contents of a CO2 extinguisher into the exit end of a gas turbine does not put the fire out. It's where the flames are leaving the scene of the problem, so it makes a tempting target. But a couple of quick squirts in the entry end will calm things down enough for people's brains to start working again.

    739:

    Space 1889 is one of the seminal steampunk RPGs. I don't think it's aged all that well, especially post Black Lives Matter, but it definitely added something to the original Steampunk movement.

    You can still get pdfs of the books at Drivethru RPG.

    740:

    The most important piece of music of the 20C (Tubular Bells, obviously) is ⅞, ⅞,⅞, 9/8 Tricky to whistle.

    741:

    So if you're flushing a habitat you want to put about 80 surface ambient litres per minute per person to keep CO2 down to 0.01 bar

    742:

    Yep, that comes under the stop, breathe, think. It's not as easy as it sounds. Particularly when things are on fire, or the water is filling your helmet.

    743:

    Oh, that makes much more sense. Although I'm still imagining it as (slightly kitsch) 70s Canadian TV sketch comedy.

    744:

    That's really good. Thanks :)

    745:

    Some years ago I learned "Tres Piezas para piano" by Jose Pablo Moncayo. In the first piece, he just makes up the time signature as he goes along. The first measure is 3/4, the second 5/8, then 3/4, 5/8, 5/8, 5/8, 3/4, 7/8, ... Took me a while to figure out how to play it rhythmically.

    746:

    Sorry, yes there are patch absorption things but they also have a lot of limitations on what they can handle.

    A key point about transdermal drug delivery that people tend to overlook is that the skin evolved to be an impermeable barrier between internal tissues and the outside world. It's for keeping stuff out. Getting drugs across it either requires breaking the barrier, or trickery (find a carrier solvent for the drug that bypasses the epidermal layered defenses without unpleasant side effects like eroding/destroying them).

    A key point about oral drug delivery is that the gastrointestinal tract evolved to destroy and denature complex molecules before allowing them to be absorbed. So, eh, ditto (more or less).

    This goes double for extremely delicate molecules like mRNA sequences.

    Sticking them in a liposome and injecting them directly into a vein is vastly easier than getting them through the skin or GI tract undegraded; all you have to worry about then is getting them past the liver and into the cells where they're needed without them being bushwacked by the innate immune system, or triggering an inflammatory reaction, or denaturing because they're thermolabile and the cold chain terminated just too far from the point of delivery, or whatever.

    (This stuff is hard: there's a reason drug development takes so long, and it's not just the clinical trials side of things!)

    747:

    No worries. It was interesting reflecting on what I learnt and how it changed me. Glad you liked it.

    748:

    A key point about needle delivery that people tend to forget is that some persons are needle-phobic and will go running for the hills if any kind of needle is involved.

    I gave up trying to give blood to the Red Cross after the first try more than 40 years ago when they lied to me and said it "wouldn't hurt".

    749:

    As a follow-up to gasdive's post @736 on dive safety, here is a bit more on safety engineering.

    The basic idea of safety engineering is to look at the system and ask, in a carefully structured and systematic way "What could possibly go wrong?".

    Traditionally this has been done in both a top-down and bottom-up way. The idea is that the two methods check each other because they should come up with roughly the same results.

    Top-down is "HAZOP" (Hazards of Operation): get a bunch of people in a room and think hard about the kind of thing the system might do wrong. E.g. for brakes on a car, they might not work when commanded, they might stick on when not commanded, etc.

    Bottom up is "Failure Modes Effects Analysis" (FMEA). Look at every component in the system. Consider what would happen to the system if this component fails in any conceivable way (to early, too late, too much, not enough ...). These are traced to the output of the HAZOP.

    Then there are a bunch of other complexities like common mode failure (e.g. you have two engines, but they were overhauled by a mechanic who made the same mistake on both), and sneak circuit analysis (e.g. you turn on the the cabin lights and the undercarriage descends because a fuse has blown and now some indicator light is carrying current between the circuits).

    If you set things up so that safety depends on everyone working perfectly all the time, people will die.

    Yup. A system consists of people, processes and technology. You have to look at all of them. Operator errors are part of your FMEA. Also when you find an issue with the technology there is a big temptation to "solve" it by putting an extra note in the procedure manual. Even in industries like aviation (where the operators actually do read the manuals) this is not reliable.

    Moz @738: You might not be as surprised as I was the number of times full emergency procedures turn out to have been developed on the assumption that everything is working perfectly except for the one thing that is obviously not working at all.

    That's the downside of FMEAs. Having said that, determining how the operator is going to diagnose the fault in order to take corrective action should be part of the FMEA. And common mode failure analysis should consider what else might fail as well.

    Which brings me on to STAMP. Earlier I used the word "traditionally". The approach I've outlined was a big improvement on the ad-hoc stuff that went before, but its turned out to have some issues. In an increasing number of accidents every component worked perfectly, including the humans. The 737-MAX was one of these. Even the failed angle of attack indicator was within its specs, in the sense that its failure rate was known and was not exceeded fleet-wide.

    STAMP (System-Theoretic Accident Model and Processes) is a new approach pioneered by Nancy Leveson of MIT.

    STAMP treats complex systems as a collection of feedback loops. Each loop consists of a process under control and a controller. These loops can be nested and interlinked in arbitrarily complicated ways. E.g. Flight Management System flies the aircraft, pilot monitors and controls FMS, air traffic control monitor aircraft trajectory and issue clearances to pilot. TCAS monitors nearby aircraft and issues "Resolution Advisories" to pilot (I love the word "advisory" in that; when you hear one you do as it says without stopping to think or warn the passengers).

    The Uberlingen mid-air collision happened when both the ATC and TCAS both noticed an incipient collision (ATC should have noticed it earlier). Both issued instructions to the two pilots. Unfortunately they issued conflicting instructions. One pilot followed ATC, the other followed TCAS.

    Part of a controller is a model of the controlled process. In the STAMP model accidents occur when the controller model is not an accurate representation of the real state of the process. In the 737-MAX case the stability system thought the aircraft was stalling when it wasn't. The pilots lacked an accurate mental model of how the stability system worked and so were not able to override it.

    If your stomach is strong enough, read this transcript of the Air France 447 cockpit voice recorder (this is the one that hit the Atlantic in May 2009). Everyone died because the crew mental model of the state of the aircraft was incorrect. They figured out the mistake just too late.

    This network of control loops continues upwards through management, regulators and government. The immediate cause of the Bhopal disaster was a mistake by a maintenance grunt. But examination of the feedback loops in the administration system shows that the management model of the system ("we've met the legal requirements so it must be safe") did not match the reality of poorly trained overworked grunts who lacked a proper mental model of the system they were dealing with. Grenfell has exposed similar issues in the construction industry. Lots of other accidents have this; in Uberlingen the ATC didn't notice the impending collision because he was holding down two positions and the Short Term Conflict Alert that should have flashed a warning had been turned off for maintenance, which he didn't know.

    Much of what gasdive wrote tallies with this. Having three different ways of getting important parameters speaks to the importance of keeping your mental model consistent with reality. Having an accurate model of the process overall is less of an issue with diving because most of the processes are not all that complicated (with the exception of the physiological stuff), but thinking that a valve is open when it is closed is still something that can kill you. The communication between team members is also part of this; everyone needs to share the same model of the system.

    Don't have pure inert gases on the worksite.

    Real-life example, though not from diving. Workers in a shipyard using pneumatic tools inside a partly constructed ship noticed that their cigarettes were burning up in a few seconds rather than minutes (this was decades ago). Shortly after one of the smokers caught fire. His mates rushed to smother the flames and they caught fire too. It turned out that their pneumatic tools had been connected to the oxygen line rather than the pressurised air line. They were supposed to have incompatible connectors, but someone had thought that an adaptor hose would be a useful short cut for when they didn't have the right hoses to hand, and someone else had the wrong mental model of the hose system. And the worker's mental models of gasses didn't include important stuff about oxygen in an enclosed space.

    750:

    but thinking that a valve is open when it is closed is still something that can kill you.

    Something I noticed a while back -- the burner/oven controls on our gas stove rotate less than half a turn (maybe 150 degrees) from off to fully on. The knobs have a very visible vertical-line indicator on them that can be clearly seen across a dimly-lit kitchen. It's very easy to make a safety check -- have I turned everything off? -- at a glance since it's impossible to have an indicator vertical with the gas on at all. I suspect there's a law requiring this sort of user interface on gas stoves, at least here in the UK.

    751:

    Are you SURE that you haven't made a mistake? That's faster than the world record for 50 km, and the record for 1 mile is under 4.9 m/s. What's more, race-walking (like UCI-style cycling and most swimming) is not a natural form of locomotion, and people need extensive practice to adapt to it.

    For normal people, walking is more energy-efficient for under about 4 MPH (6.5 KPH, 1.8 m/s), running is for above about 6 MPH (10 KPH, 2.7 m/s), and they naturally change from one to the other somewhere in between, depending on the person and conditions.

    752:

    Paul All that applies in "Spades Redoubled" in the railway industry.

    There's a reason that railway signals clear backwards, behind a train going away from you. Here's a sequence of signals behind a train + the one in front of it: Green / Red / Single Yellow / Double Yellow / Green The train moves forward one "block", but the signals don't clear simultaneously, so that, with intervals of about 1-1.5 seconds, the sequence will read: R / R / SY / DY /G R / SY / SY / DY / G R / SY / DY / DY / G and finally ... R / SY / DY / G / G

    There was a nasty "Near Miss" down in S London, recently, where a maintenance train went into some stupid places, because the communications between the driver, the signallers & the other people on the ground were "Not following the checklist" - nor the approved comms procedures. RAIB got quite excited about it, & rightly so.

    Nojay Almost certainly Even my extremely ancient but large ( Second-hand & free & I had to dismantle it ) gas cooker/stove has all the control knobs in a line across the front. If they are all "flat" - then everything is "Off" - it's very easy to check that everything is, indeed, "off"

    753:

    Yes. Hence gastro-resistant capsules (e.g. PP inhibitors). But are many vaccines injected into a VEIN? All of the ones I know about are intramuscular or intradermal (excluding the Sabin vaccine).

    754:

    Good question!

    I'm unsure how the mRNA vaccines are delivered, but the logic for an intramuscular vaccination shot -- you're delivering a virus capsid payload, it'll diffuse gradually -- doesn't necessarily apply to fragile mRNA strands in liposomes. So I'm assuming it's intravenous for faster distribution ...

    755:
    I'm unsure how the mRNA vaccines are delivered, but the logic for an intramuscular vaccination shot -- you're delivering a virus capsid payload, it'll diffuse gradually -- doesn't necessarily apply to fragile mRNA strands in liposomes. So I'm assuming it's intravenous for faster distribution ...

    The Pfizer vaccine is intramuscular. Didn't look up the others, but I would guess the other mRNA vaccines are, too.

    An important thing to keep in mind about vaccines: you don't necessarily want them to be systemically distributed, the way you do a common chemical drug like metformin or insulin, which is supposed to reach all tissues (or perhaps all non-brain tissues). Rather, you want to present the antigen and adjuvants to cells of the immune system. It is the immune system's job to produce a response where it is needed, e.g. systemically for the antibodies.

    So, where do you want to deliver a vaccine? You want to deliver it where the appropriate antigen-presenting cells hang out. Not surprisingly, that often means places (under the skin, for example) that are exposed to insults from the outside world. An mRNA vaccine needs, additionally, to be delivered to cells that will express the mRNA (i.e., make protein from it).

    756:

    Cahrlie ( & others noting local progress ) I had my Pizer vaccine first-jab lat Tuesday. Intramuscular My neighbour, who is much younger than I had his this week, as he is Immune-Compromised. He had the Astra/Zeneca model at a different location.

    757:

    The Astrazeneca one is intramuscular, too, but I have no idea what they have done to make that work.

    758:

    Intramuscular is probably not a terribly uncommon route for real pathogen entry (although not Covid-19, obviously). Any moderately deep puncture wound or cut has the potential of introducing nasties into muscle. In fact, that's basically what an intramuscular injection is: a deep(ish) puncture wound made in as innocuous a way as possible.

    So it doesn't surprise me that professional antigen-presenting-cells (that's a specialized job, by the way) are to be found there.

    759:

    "The divers rigged it all. They pumped lots of air into the bags which should have lifted it, but it didn't move. So the divers went back in to add more lift bags. While they were down, the thing that had been stuck in the mud, unstuck. It raced past the divers. Hit the boat on the surface, burst all the lift bags, fell back past the divers and buried itself deep into the mud at the bottom of the dam."

    Isn't there a song about that?

    760:

    "it's very easy to check that everything is, indeed, "off""

    Counterexample: the one my parents have got. The state of the valves is indicated only by an arrow drawn on the fixed surface that points to some numbers written on the flat skirt of the knob. The fixed surface is horizontal and the valve spindles vertical, so unless you're looking straight down on it in a decent light you just don't have a clue.

    Also, there is very little dead movement between the "off" position engaged with its detent, and the point where it just starts to come on. And it is capable of sustaining a flame down to ridiculously low gas flow rates - as in if you peer closely at it while shading it from the light, you might just about be able to see some tiny faint cusps of blue right in the holes of the burner... but it is still putting out a much larger amount of heat than it looks like it has any right to. Basically it is really good at looking off when it's still on, and every now and then it does add a little entertainment to life.

    761:

    I'm unsure how the mRNA vaccines are delivered, but the logic for an intramuscular vaccination shot -- you're delivering a virus capsid payload, it'll diffuse gradually -- doesn't necessarily apply to fragile mRNA strands in liposomes. So I'm assuming it's intravenous for faster distribution ...

    Derek Lowe put out a couple of explainers for how the mRNA vaccine works, at

    https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/21/mrna-vaccines-what-happens

    and

    https://blogs.sciencemag.org/pipeline/archives/2021/01/11/rna-vaccines-and-their-lipids

    The problem with the lipids they coated the mRNA with is that, depending on how you inject them (intramuscular versus intravenous) they either stay near the injection site and probably go into the lymph nodes (good for immune response) or go into the blood stream, into the liver, and out of the body. The latter route is a great way to get treatments into the liver, but not so good for provoking an immune response.

    Worth reading, especially for the way they tested where stuff ended up, using lab mice rather than humans fortunately.

    762:

    As noted above, the mRNA vaccines go intramuscular, not intravenous. If you put the liposome into a vein, it ends up in the liver and doesn't stay there very long. If it goes into muscle, it stays there about a week and probably leaks into the lymphatic system, where it will also be taken up and used to prime the immune system. This is from the Derek Lowe's forthcoming book Immunology Is Too Complicated For Dummies (of which I definitely am one. This is the dumbed down version) (incidentally, /sarcasm on the book title).

    763:

    No. Space: 1889 was a role-playing game published by Game Designers Workshop in 1988.

    It's been called 'steampunk', but it isn't really — it's more retro-SF in the style of Verne and Kipling.

    I prefer the GDW version. The rules are kinda clunky, but the artwork etc makes it an obviously gender-neutral game. The recent Clockwork Publishing version is truer to the original fiction, in that men are the ones doing everything interesting, but that rubs me the wrong way.

    764:

    common mode failure (e.g. you have two engines, but they were overhauled by a mechanic who made the same mistake on both)

    You have two fibre trunks for redundancy, which your lowest-bid contractor laid together in a single trench so they can be severed by the same backhoe…

    (I started engineering in telecommunications, back when the system goal was one hour downtime in 40 years. It made for interesting conversations with chaps who came in from the computing end of the business, where 'save frequently' was the rule-of-thumb.)

    765:

    Operator errors are part of your FMEA.

    One of my favourite lines from Star Cops: "People are part of the system. It's dangerous to forget that."

    766:

    Re: 'If you can point to some single bit of kit that if it fails, you die, find a different way of doing things.'

    Thanks for posting this - very interesting reading!

    Paul (749) Re: 'And the worker's mental models of ...'

    Also an excellent post - thanks!

    Pilots have access to flight simulators. What do 'workers' have access to so that they can acquire and hone their mental models?

    767:

    You're right, I did. Looked at mph and thought km/h.

    I've occasionally walked past joggers in my local park. I frequently get told I walk fast. I think my gait settled in when I was a small child walking fast to keep up with my father.

    768:

    The Astrazeneca vaccine is an adenovirus. That's a somewhat different game, but not entirely different. It's a virus (no liposomes necessary) and uses adeno's infectious mechanisms to get into the cell. The package is DNA, so it has to go into the nucleus and go through the usual molto molto complicated process by which natural viral mRNAs are produced. (But adeno of course has optimized that process through evolution, so we're just tagging a ride.) Once the mRNA has been made and exported from the nucleus, it would work pretty much like an mRNA vaccine.

    The first step in a virus infecting a cell is recognition of a cell-surface receptor. This universal terminology may give you the misleading impression that cells welcome viruses. This of course is not the case -- the receptors are proteins that cells put on their surfaces for their own purposes, not to help out viruses, and which the virus hijacks. If the virus recognizes receptors that are only present on a specific cell type, the virus may only infect those cells. Adeno, though appears to use as receptors proteins (integrins inter alia) that every mammalian cell carries around.

    769:

    The Bricklayer, a monologue by Gerard Hoffnung.

    Various Hoffnung can be found on Youtube.

    770:

    Um, say what? NASA decides... then government gets involved?

    Mental mistake - meant politicians.

    771:

    Pigeon Basically it is really good at looking off when it's still on, and every now and then it does add a little entertainment to life. Like a large Gas Explosion if you are unlucky.

    772:

    Also as a song, "Why Paddy's Not At Work Today".

    773:

    I used to walk at 4-5 MPH, but now do at 3-4 MPH, for both breathing and knee reasons.

    774:

    I might also note that is, presumably, a parody of Space: 1999.

    And the problem I have with steampunk is too many of the heroes are noblemen. sigh

    I did a hall costume once for a steampunk-themed party at a con... as a socialist workingman.

    775:

    EC Indeed. The true heroes of Steampunk, as in the actual C19th were the Engineers, of various sorts. Form the Brunels, the Stephensons, on through people like Brassey & Bessemer to Parsons & Lanchester.

    776:

    I used to walk at 4-5 MPH, but now do at 3-4 MPH, for both breathing and knee reasons.

    I've always thought of 4 MPH as "walking speed". FWIW, Leslie Sansone's in-place walking videos(*) call miles at ~15 minute intervals.

    (*) They're more than walking, with various movements and exercises incorporated. We've been using them a fair amount during the time of the plague and like them considerably. Though having a bit of tolerance for her patter is recommended.

    Example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DYuw4f1c4xs

    777:

    Can your parents buy different knobs for their stove? Something with an easier-to-read shape? Those sound dangerous.

    778:

    I'm enjoying this conversation.

    I'd point out, from a conservation biology point of view, that much of the misery we're in today, with regards to biodiversity loss and climate change, is because few in our capitalist societies follow these procedures when dealing with the natural world. It's not that the problems are not known, it's just that too many people are afraid of how much incompetence will be exposed if we actually tried to do things right.

    It's easy to see the connections if people die immediately. But if you build a big housing development in a high fire area, you the developer are in there for about 10 years building stuff, then it becomes the responsibility of homeowners and the government and insurance companies, while you walk away with your profits and do it again. When the development burns down, government covers the damage, and someone (maybe you?) rebuilds it. You the developer could do the right thing and not build it (huge loss) or build it to be more fire resistant(lower profits), but it's cheaper to bribe politicians contribute to reelection campaigns and romance bureaucrats to get your projects passed. So that's what you do. So long as it doesn't burn down while you're building it, everything's fine.

    And as a result, we've got multi-billion dollar losses every year, people getting priced out of their fairly dangerous homes because they can no longer afford the insurance. They may have trouble selling them if they're uninsurable (potential buyers can't get a mortgage). We've also got the rise of a trillion dollar wildfire industrial complex to fight the fires to allow people to stay in harm's way. Who pays for that, and who benefits from doing stuff in emergency situations when normal rules are thrown out so that the "heroes" can do their thing?

    That's the cost of not doing decent safety engineering in the natural world. But as long as the people making the money aren't paying the cost, what stops them from doing it?

    779:

    Sinus trouble ensured that my diving career ended after a 2m pool taster session but I do engage in a couple of dangerous activities.

    I'll add that a protocol involving "shutting the fuck up" when someone else is doing something important is likely to be very important to martian colonists.

    I nearly died once because someone decided their relationship problems couldn't wait until /after/ I had run through a mental checklist that ended with "step off the cliff". Sometimes words really can kill.

    780:

    I've always thought of 4 MPH as "walking speed".

    It is a "brisk" walking speed for most folks. As my wife reminds me all the time when we walk together.

    781:

    Word! I really love the esthetics of steampunk and/or late 19th early 20th century (I'm known for now and then going out on the town dressed up in frock coat, cane, high hat and the works) but I am too a bit repulsed by the class view in many of the books

    Especially american writers have a tendency when making steampunk books to go absolutely overboard with "Lady This", "Lord That" and "Earl d'Another-Thynge". The working classes seems to mostly consist of hysterical maids who screams and faints a lot and gruff, dirty workermen who speaks parodical cockney etc etc

    Never stops amazing me how fascinated americans often are with aristocracy/monarchy/feudalism...

    782:

    I might also note that is, presumably, a parody of Space: 1999.

    Not at all. The name is a play on Space: 1999, of course, but the game has no relation to it — and at the time GDW was naming games as NAME: NUMBER (eg. Twilight: 2000) so it fit.

    And the problem I have with steampunk is too many of the heroes are noblemen.

    Not in Space: 1889, but then it wasn't really a steampunk game. Social rank was important but so were other attributes* — the ideal party was a mixture of types. One of the character backgrounds was manservant/maid, which meant you got an NPC who was your upper-class master/mistress, and who might have to be persuaded/conned into going on the adventure.

    *GDW described it as 'historical science fiction', which I think is accurate. No steam-powered replacement limbs, no cogs and gears everywhere, and so forth. Which makes sense, given that it was written before The Difference Engine kicked off the steampunk craze. GDW had a knack for publishing games in new genres before they because popular, thus missing the moment (eg. Dark Conspiracy before The X-Files made alien conspiracy theories cool).

    **Characters had six attributes, and you spread the numbers 1-6 among them, so every character had strengths and weaknesses.

    783:

    As my wife reminds me all the time when we walk together

    The combination of gait and size makes for a wide variation, even before you consider motivation. I'm tall and impatient, so normally walk just this side of jogging. A couple of friends who are my height vary, she walks at my speed and he walks like someone about 50cm shorter. And he really struggles to walk faster.

    I can also do the stupid Olympic power-walking if required, but my normal walking speed is such that anyone shorter had to jog to keep up. The pet midget struggled to run as fast as I can power walk, she could do it but only for a couple of hundred metres.

    I had a flatmate for a while who's about 2.1m tall, but he ambled. Serious ambling, I suspect for him 1mph was a comfortable pace.

    784:

    The true heroes of Steampunk, as in the actual C19th were the Engineers, of various sorts.

    One of the funnest character backgrounds in Space: 1889 was inventor/engineer. Game had detailed rules for inventions, so you could gradually refine/improve your devices over the course of a campaign. And don't forget maintenance — skip that and you were in trouble!

    Like I said before, Kipling, Wells, and Verne.

    Back cover has the blurb:

    Everything Jules Verne could have written. Everything H.G. Wells should have written. Everything A. Conan Doyle thought of but never published — because it was too fantastic.

    I think that gives the flavour as well as anything.

    785:

    As my wife reminds me all the time when we walk together.

    Heh. I'm 5'9", my wife is 5'0", both of average proportions and recommended weights for our genders. She has to circle back every few minutes while I catch up.

    786:

    whitroth @ 728: Many, many posts ago, I did post a link to an air-injector....

    So did I @ 199 - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector

    787:

    whitroth @ 734: You, um, do realize what you're saying? That for long-term micro or zero-G missions, we wind up with spherical astronauts of uniform density?

    Why should cows have all the fun?

    There's absolutely no reason for this link, but fuck it.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FQMbXvn2RNI

    788:

    Charlie Stross @ 754: Good question!

    I'm unsure how the mRNA vaccines are delivered, but the logic for an intramuscular vaccination shot -- you're delivering a virus capsid payload, it'll diffuse gradually -- doesn't necessarily apply to fragile mRNA strands in liposomes. So I'm assuming it's intravenous for faster distribution ...

    The Covid vaccine I received (Pfizer-BioNTech) was an intramuscular injection & according to what I've read about it in the news it's an mRNA vaccine.

    789:

    @ Everyone: Thanks for your commentary.

    RESOLVED * Humans should go to Mars * There is no economic rationale for doing so * Detailed remote exploration is currently unfeasible and may remain so due to time lag and other factors * Human life is precious, yet there will be unavoidable fatalities

    It's clear the great majority of tasks that we want done on Mars currently require humans to be there. * Precisely what tasks do we wish to accomplish on Mars? * What percentage of those tasks currently require humans to accomplish them? * What percentage of time would humans be working on these tasks? * Over the next 20-50 years, what currently-performed human-required tasks can be acceptably done through improved technology, and which are likely to require humans to do for the foreseeable future? .........................................

    • What is our overall purpose(s) for being on Mars?
    • Why do we want to do this/these?
    • What trade-offs (speed, quality, cost, safety, etc.) are we prepared to make to accomplish our overall purpose(s)?
    • What resources (energy, materials, time, capital labor, etc.) are required?
    • What are the most efficient ways to obtain these resources?

    Now folks, don't mistake my concerns for lack of interest in human Martian exploration. I WANT people to go there. Hell, I want to start terraforming the f**r within a couple hundred T-years if we get through the Slowpocalypse OK and there's no good reason NOT to do it. I just think we shouldn't do it with the “brute force + massive ignorance” approach based on a largely Modern Era, Western, male “ 'highest expression of the human spirit' yada-yada, 'to boldly go' yada-yada, 'human destiny' yada-yada'' rationale. There ain't no rush for this- let's do it right and do it smart per: Gasdive and Paul.

    790:

    Elderly Cynic @ 757: The Astrazeneca one is intramuscular, too, but I have no idea what they have done to make that work.

    I thought Astrazeneca was the consortium of U.S. pharmaceutical manufacturers set up to help people who can't afford their medications?** Apparently not, so what is that consortium named?

    ** Not altruism or anything like that, just propaganda aimed at staving off regulation of drug prices.

    791:

    Pigeon @ 759:

    "The divers rigged it all. They pumped lots of air into the bags which should have lifted it, but it didn't move. So the divers went back in to add more lift bags. While they were down, the thing that had been stuck in the mud, unstuck. It raced past the divers. Hit the boat on the surface, burst all the lift bags, fell back past the divers and buried itself deep into the mud at the bottom of the dam."

    Isn't there a song about that?

    The Dubliners - The Sick Note (Why Paddy's not at work today) - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=66cxc9emQgY

    Semi-related

    Stan Rogers - Mary Ellen Carter https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Fhop5VuLDIQ

    The Stan Rogers tale is tragically ironic. He was one of the calualties on board Air Canada Flight 797.

    792:

    no reason for this link, but fuck it.

    All I can think of it that cows with udders are "she", not "he".

    But maybe cattle are different in the USA.

    793:

    Moz @ 783:

    As my wife reminds me all the time when we walk together

    The combination of gait and size makes for a wide variation, even before you consider motivation. I'm tall and impatient, so normally walk just this side of jogging. A couple of friends who are my height vary, she walks at my speed and he walks like someone about 50cm shorter. And he really struggles to walk faster.

    I can also do the stupid Olympic power-walking if required, but my normal walking speed is such that anyone shorter had to jog to keep up. The pet midget struggled to run as fast as I can power walk, she could do it but only for a couple of hundred metres.

    I had a flatmate for a while who's about 2.1m tall, but he ambled. Serious ambling, I suspect for him 1mph was a comfortable pace.

    In the military you learn to march in formation, moving in unison. The standard military march for the UK (also used by Australian Armed Forces) is 116 beats per minute with a 30-inch (76 cm) step (with some variations). The U.S. & Canadian forces use 120 bpm/30 inch steps.

    It carries over into civilian life. It's still my "normal" gait even though I've been retired almost 15 years now. And whenever you get a couple of service members walking together they unconsciously fall into step.

    All that changed when I got my little doggie. He doesn't maintain a military pace. If I need to move that quickly, I have to pick him up and carry him.

    794:

    All I can think of it that cows with udders are "she", not "he".

    That was my first thought, too. But then I thought, "Hey, doesn't he get to choose his own preferred pronouns?"

    795:

    Moz @ 792:

    no reason for this link, but fuck it.

    All I can think of it that cows with udders are "she", not "he".

    But maybe cattle are different in the USA.

    Picky, picky! The whole concept is udderly ridiculous, so why single out that one thing? Besides, if it's male, it's not a cow ... it's a bull or a steer.

    796:

    I took it as "cows and cattle are the same thing" because terms like "male cow" are common. Wikipedia even has a disambiguation page for it.

    So you think the mistake is semantic rather than factual - probably sexism, because a significant actor can't possibly be female and therefore "he was packing an uzi" is the only acceptable pronoun choice, gender of the other terms notwithstanding?

    I agree that it's a fun song, but it's very much "don't think about it" material.

    797:

    Er, no. You transpondians had and have nothing to do with it. It was designed at the University of Oxford and is being produced and marketed by Astrazeneca.

    798:

    Or bullock, and oxen and steer were male, once. Also, calves, neats, runts and more can refer to male bovines.

    799:

    And died, literally, a hero. Burl Ives was on the plane, and survived, and said that Stan started singing to keep people calm, and sang until he couldn't sing any more.

    800:

    Tie your tools to you. You will lose them otherwise. ...

    There's a saying that if you lock a diver in an empty room with three ball bearings, and leave them there for an hour, when you come back one will be lost, one will be broken and one will be stolen.

    I've heard a version of this attributed to Napoleon. Take a private out to the desert and leave him there with a single cannonball. When you return in the evening he will have lost it, broken it, or dropped it on his foot.

    There's also the Terminal Lance strip which asks, "How the fuck did you lose a rifle, you stupid boot?" Service branches change but some things are eternal.

    Mars colonies had better have dummy cords because as soon as humans arrive they'll have dummies.

    801:

    In the US (west?) there are Rocky Mountain Oysters. What are they called elsewhere?

    And no, I never plan to eat them but they are a treat for some during the spring roundups.

    802:

    "In the US (west?) there are Rocky Mountain Oysters. What are they called elsewhere?"

    Around here, sweetbreads. Not that I've come across them much.

    JHomes

    803:

    Someone in who grew up around such in South Dakota said when the calves were old enough the vet would show up with his kit and ask if RM Oysters were desired. It cost a bit more as he had to collect them in somewhat cleaner buckets than if not.

    804:

    Looking for some answers to an issue I'm having on a networking setup and tripped across this. https://www.reddit.com/r/talesfromtechsupport/comments/kvydf4/a_failed_application_onesizefitsall_250_broken/

    If you have 500K people just how long before similar things happen? Hopefully on the entertainment system and not the food processing setup.

    805:

    Going back to the OP I expect the mayor and their most trusted aides will open the emergency planning files, dig around a while, then say “Implement emergency plan 17A, variant 2.”

    806:

    I expect the mayor and their most trusted aides will open the emergency planning files, dig around a while, then say “Implement emergency plan 17A, variant 2.”

    For competent management, certainly. Or maybe they threw out emergency plans left by the previous administration. Would that be too cartoonishly petty and incompetent to be believed?

    807:

    All I can think of it that cows with udders are "she", not "he".

    What if that's not how they see themselves? Surely a cow can choose their preferred pronoun?

    808:

    All that changed when I got my little doggie. He doesn't maintain a military pace.

    Not unless a military pace includes stopping and sniffing every few feet, no…

    809:

    In the US (west?) there are Rocky Mountain Oysters. What are they called elsewhere?

    We called them prairie oysters in Saskatchewan and Alberta.

    810:

    Surely a cow can choose their preferred pronoun?

    In which case they're all moo. Presumably that's where the expression "moo cow" comes from.

    811:

    The most heinous COBOL crime I ever discovered (in a frustrating late night debugging session in early 1980's of production code) was a GOTO that conditionally/occasionally went to a location outside the range of a block of code being PERFORMed (PERFORM X thru Y), and then sometime later try and "fall thru" that same piece of code which would then unexpectedly complete the prior PERFORM and RETURN when it got to Y.

    After that experience, I decided on a career change to learn Assembler (various - 360/370, PDP-11, PDP-10/DECsystem-10) and then C.

    812:

    Eh? Sweetbreads are pancreas, not testicles. Right?

    813:

    It appears that a whole bunch of glands can be subsumed under that label, including testes and ovaries

    814:

    Yes, though the normal meaning is specifically pancreas or thymus.

    My guess is that the word sweetbread started to be used for testicles in cooking because all of the other words had become obsolete or were deemed indecent. I have seen cullion used, but the OED says that it is obsolete. I have also seen parts used, which is a classic example of Victorian obfuscation. What's wrong with the Old English word bollock (or ballock), anyway? :-)

    Anyway, they're quite good, though apparently many men are squeamish about eating them.

    815:

    No thank you. I'll avoid "les rognons blancs" and stick to my soya-based false chicken this morning.

    816:

    So what does the constitution say about airlock control and monitoring?

    Seabed dweller here. The way things are organized in Holland to keep dry feet might be applicable to the Mars specific conditions of keep lungs filled with air.

    The water boards are independent regional government branches that maintain all the structures needed to keep the land dry and process waste water. Every waterboard raises its own taxes and has the legal instruments to make anyone comply to the regulations. Before the death penalty was abolished somewhere 19th century they had the power to sentence people to death and execute them for doing damage to dikes or polluting/damaging waterways. Things have improved in that regard, no more executions, but people who won't pay or do wrong will be dealt with in monetary rather unpleasant ways.

    I'd say that way of organizing all the essentials is directly applicable to Muskow or any other city on Mars. Local government with regulations adapted to the local conditions.

    817:

    Ugh. Sorry, but I absolutely do NOT do ersatz meat, whether nut cutlets, soya-based, or cheap British sausages. I am largely vegetarian, but it's real vegetarian recipes. Anyway, if I may divert, here is a recipe we learnt from my son-in-law, which I named moq-au-vin:

    Take whole shallots, mushrooms cut into largish chunks, and cook them long and slow in red wine. It's nothing like coq-au-vin, but very good.

    818:

    What kind of mushrooms do you use?

    819:

    Chestnut mushrooms, though I am sure any firmish mushroom would do. I checked with my wife, and I had forgotten to mention actual chestnuts. I also forgot to mentioned carrot, celery and herbs, because we put them in most things of that nature but, as with most such dishes, the details are a matter of taste.

    820:

    Re: 'What is our overall purpose(s) for being on Mars?'

    The 'why' and 'how' should be clearly spelled out well before any semi-permanent settlement because that will define the culture as well as environmental consequences going forward.

    Previous massive 'explorations' - all on Earth - were for the control/profit of a small group of investors using whatever methods/resources worked. Even Antarctica explorers were considered expendable all for the sake of 'conquering' that last continent. IMO, the first step is to keep any macho related descriptors from the objectives and means. That should help keep the overtly power/glory-hungry away. Emphasis on team work/collaboration/safety for all would help keep the passive-aggressives away.

    As for what work should be done by AI vs. humans - I want a fully automated 'paper-pusher'. Admin sucks time and mental/emotional energy away from the primary task. (IMO, that's the real reason behind the Peter Principle: You get someone good at 'job X' and you shove them into admin where they do zero'job X' - no wonder they suck!)

    821:
    As for what work should be done by AI vs. humans - I want a fully automated 'paper-pusher'. Admin sucks time and mental/emotional energy away from the primary task. (IMO, that's the real reason behind the Peter Principle: You get someone good at 'job X' and you shove them into admin where they do zero'job X' - no wonder they suck!)

    I think that goal is too utopian. It is true that admin is a huge and painful time suck. But it also tends to be the way that key decisions about what we know, what we want, and what we value get implemented. If you care about anything, a society without administrative tasks is almost certain to make you angry and unhappy.

    822:

    After that experience, I decided on a career change to learn Assembler (various - 360/370, PDP-11, PDP-10/DECsystem-10) and then C.

    In the 70s, I first learned to program in Fortran, using the Waterloo Fortran compiler, then the Fortran compiler that came with DEC DOS. Those Fortrans were astoundingly primitive.

    Eventually I learned PDP-11 assembly (and subsequently many others) because it was impossible in the available Fortran to tell the computer to do what I wanted and knew it was capable of. In fact, I found I could write clearer and more readable code in assembly.

    823:

    Anyway, they're quite good, though apparently many men are squeamish about eating them.

    It's all about what you grow up eating. I don't care for PMO, tongue, brains, or other assorted organs. Liver included. Uck. I'll stick to muscles for 99.99% of my meat intake thank you. It is what we ate growing up and this is when much of our meat came from my grandfather's/uncle's slaughter house. Small operation where I would go in the back and "watch" at times.

    824:

    PMO = Prime Minister's Office

    825:

    You make like this one.

    Back in the mid 70s when I was at university there was a "free" circuit analysis program that ran on the IBM mainframe we had. Cards and all that. It was written in Fortran and we had the source so I thought I might try and add some features. Reading through it there were all these huge static arrays full of double floating point constants. Once I figured out what was going on I put it aside and decided life was too short to work on it.

    What the authors of this code had done is written the simulation code as a series of assemble modules. Then figured out the double float constants that would result in the same bits in the bytes. Then when doing an analysis the Fortran code would branch into these float double arrays and back out for performance reasons.

    OMG

    826:

    Prime Minister's Office or Prairie Mountain Oysters

    Is there a difference?

    827:

    It's not all what you grew up eating. I like liver, though I didn't eat it much when growing up. But I don't eat much because that's where pesticides and heavy metals accumulate. There are similar arguments about kidneys, though I don't know the details because I don't like kidneys that much anyway.

    OTOH, I find gizzards truly delicious, and have since I first encountered them. Everyone in the family would let me have the livers and gizzards of the chicken because I was the only one that really liked them.

    828:

    Re: 'If you care about anything, a society without administrative tasks ...'

    Major problem is that what counts as 'important' in admin is usu. not what matters in evaluating the health/well-being of the human state(1). Admin is also typically fixated on the past - kinda dumb if you're supposedly doing 'forward' thinking and exploratory work which by definition is unknown(2).

    1- Your cancer therapy costs will not be covered by your HMO because you failed to notify us when you obtained a second mobile number - a required field in your contact info - even if we provided you with space for only one such number.

    2- Your project is being scrapped because you failed to anticipate the correct number of paper clips needed in filing paperwork submissions related to exploring 'astro object/physics particle/viroid Y'.

    Probably the most fundamental admin function is the assigning of some arbitrary $$ value to an activity which then gets massaged and finally totaled up into the GDP. GDP is still the preferred metric for assessing the 'health of a country/society/economy' even though its correlation with overall health of its human constituent parts continues to decrease.

    AI admin would help with accurate, more detailed, non-fudgable record-keeping which could then be mined to better understand what happened - including more in-depth examination of both what works and what doesn't work and why based on which data points are connected. Based on personal experience: Current admin tasks ain't doin' this. (Would be interesting to see what actual NASA folk - including astronauts - have to do as their admin.)

    829:
    What the authors of this code had done is written the simulation code as a series of assemble modules. Then figured out the double float constants that would result in the same bits in the bytes. Then when doing an analysis the Fortran code would branch into these float double arrays and back out for performance reasons.

    Cool! Gotta love a good kludge!

    Close to 100% of biology is like this.

    830:

    It's got SOME truth in it, but is over-generalised to the point of being closer to false. I never had such things as a child, and my preferred foods as an adult were and are very unlike what I was brought up on, with a few exceptions. Many people, especially in the UK and of my age (*), are similar.

    (*) Transpondians have no conception of how limited available foods were in the UK in the 1950s, outside the parts of London frequented by the plutocracy.

    831:

    I make a distinction between administration, which is what is needed to ensure that the corporate organisation functions, and bureaucracy, which is what you are describing.

    832:
    Major problem is that what counts as 'important' in admin is usu. not what matters in evaluating the health/well-being of the human state(1). Admin is also typically fixated on the past - kinda dumb if you're supposedly doing 'forward' thinking and exploratory work which by definition is unknown(2).

    Yes, clearly if you choose as your examples "All the bad things I have seen admins do", you're going to come to the conclusion that administration is bad. I think your Philippic lacks balance.

    As a professor, I had to do a lot of administrative work. And I hated every minute of it. But I cannot deny that it sometimes gave me the opportunity to thwart the forces of evil and even occasionally do good. It is very hard to strike the right balance. But I don't think "no human administrators" is where it lies.

    AI admin would help with accurate, more detailed, non-fudgable record-keeping

    Umm... and you believe this, Why? You think AI is never inaccurate, never elides important details, and is never biased?

    The main difference between AI and humans in this regard is that AI (as currently implemented) is really lousy at explaining itself.

    833:

    Elderly Cynic @830

    The UK was nearly totally bankrupt after the war, but they still had some money to make little movies. And eventually, they showed some of those movies on the CBC. the Canada Bubblegum Company.

    I forgot the titles and much of the plots but I remember in particular one that was supposed to be comedy about rationing in post-war GB. It was all about a tiny, independent (and fictional) duchy in the middle of London. Since it was independent they did not have to suffer the dire rationing that afflicted everyone around.

    836:

    I have to admit I was spoiled. I got my first job as a programmer at the community college I was studying at (part time studying), having taken all the programming courses.

    The majority of the programs running the college - financial, registration, etc... were in PL/1.

    Next job was COBOL, and the basica (C? no, basic. But...). I was so happy, after I taught myself C using TurboC, to get my first job in it in '89. C, that could compare or beat PL/1.

    837:

    the normal meaning is specifically pancreas or thymus

    As a USian, "sweetbread" always meant pancreas -- I don't remember coming across thymus. Slightly related, along the MXUS border "mollejas" (moh-YEH-khas) are beef pancreas or chicken gizzards, both very popular. I suspect the gizzard meaning came via thymus because they're both bi-lobate and from the neck region.

    838:

    "Huge static arrays of constants"? WHY?

    When I worked for the Scummy Mortgage Co, I had to make a few (I thought) fixes on a program that did nothing but print labels, like 6? 10? chars high of numbers, for account numbers to go on manila folders.

    You know, 11 22 11 22 11 2222

    Like that. I was horrified when I started to read the code. The woman who'd programmed it had worked her way from keypunch to lead programmer. And had 6? 10? arrays, each with ONE number.

    I rewrote the entire thing so that I had 10 numbers defined as arrays, and moved the structures into place in the array for printing. Well over 2000 lines of code to just over 600.

    839:

    If I understand it correctly, ISO 9000 and whatever it is that replaced that, would be a great use for AI: document exactly what happened.

    NOT planning ahead.

    840:

    I'm lost down the mental rabbit hole of the Martian economy.

    Each Martian requires a huge amount of resources, due to living in a hostile environment.

    At the same time, there's earth, which, in 50 years or so, is still likely to have a massive wealth disparity. Sure, Terrans may take 40 minutes to respond at the worst of time, but for a lot of issues, that's a fine turn around.

    Which means massive "off-planeting". Keep the Martians for what needs an immediate response now, or a quick OODA loop. Otherwise, hire Terrans.

    And this probably breaks down oddly, especially in situations where a local AI is competent enough to halt a process and flag it for review. Is it cheaper to hire Martians to oversee an automated factory to reduce downtime? Or is it cheaper to lose a few hours here and there while Terrans handle any problems?

    Which means, come Covid-70, there are some areas of the economy that barely change. And some areas of the economy must be handled by Martians. Between the two extremes are areas that were cost-effective to be handled by Martians before the pandemic but no longer are due to a shortage of Martians. (There will be a startup lag as Terrans are hired, automation is transferred over, etc.) Some of the jobs that could be transferred to Terrans will free up Martian workers, but humans aren't fungible resources - they have specific skills which may not transfer over to jobs experiencing shortages.

    841:

    EC Not just the limitation of foods 1947-55 or even 1960, but the ghastly, appalling revolting cooking of most people at the time. Hence the continuing revulsion against Brussels Sprouts ( for instance ) & other perfectly-edible & delicious things, that were destroyed - usually by prolonged boiling, shudder.

    842:

    Not just the limitation of foods 1947-55 or even 1960, but the ghastly, appalling revolting cooking of most people at the time.

    It went well beyond those eras.

    Looking at the food scene in the UK today it is easy to overlook how different it is compared to even 30 years ago.

    My parents bought a B&B in south Devon in 86 and always celebrated the end of the season in October because it meant they could start cooking with things like garlic again, or not having to overcook everything (because one of the joys of owning a B&B is that you east what the guests do).

    843:

    If I understand it correctly, ISO 9000 and whatever it is that replaced that

    All of ISO 9xxx (to me) comes down to:

    Say what you do, do what you say."

    But with classes and certificates and inspections and ...

    Replace say with document (verb) or similar.

    844:

    "Huge static arrays of constants"? WHY?

    So it could all be compiled by the Fortran compiler without any linking?

    I don't know. Hold a seance and ask the folks who wrote it. This was around 75/76.

    If you look at the code of developers who didn't have to go through big reviews you can find all kinds of things. Not too long after that someone going through some IBM code for the VM/CMS system found a branch to the label "Paris". All the comments down to Paris were in French. I'm sure someone was bored out of their gourd one night.

    845:

    Transpondians have no conception of how limited available foods were in the UK in the 1950s, outside the parts of London frequented by the plutocracy.

    In the US the 30s and through and just after the war were similar. But I didn't hear much about it personally. My father grew up on a working farm with a small slaughter house and sawmill. So they had electricity, cold storage, food, and income. We would consider it near poverty today but for then he lived better than 1/2 of the country. Some of his buddies who grew up on more subsistence farms described much less. My mother grew up in the 30s and 40s with a house and her father had jobs. Crappy jobs and I think he worked his butt off but he had work. But she would talk about the lack of most anything but the basics when it came to food. Butter was a big thing she craved and her father would trade for it.

    846:

    They've had it for 40 years, I don't think they're going to change the knobs now...

    But to answer the actual question... I very much doubt it. You certainly don't get a choice of knobs from the manufacturer, and you very nearly certainly won't be able to find a knob off anything else that fits. The number of variations is immense. The only things I've ever found that you stand a reasonable chance of being able to swap knobs on are standard 6mm potentiometer shafts, and even there it's dodgy; whether or not the shaft has a flat, how big is the flat, and measuring a random handful of pots out of the random pots drawer I find diameters between 5.8 and 6.2mm within the first five or so.

    With cooker valves (and also their electrical equivalent), the shafts are usually both a lot thinner and need more force to turn than a pot, so the tolerances on a "good fit" are a lot tighter. Any likely-looking alternative knob either won't go on or spins without turning the valve. And if you do manage to shim out a spinny one so it grips, and continues to grip for more than a couple of operations, it still won't line up with the visible parts of the cooker closely enough that it isn't instantly obvious what you've done, which wouldn't matter a monkey's to me but would be an absolute obstacle for my mum.

    Also, it wouldn't do a lot of good anyway; the rotation vs. opening characteristic of the valves is such that even if it did have obvious knobs, you'd still have to look quite closely to be sure.

    The valves do have a detent to try and discourage you from positioning them in the dodgy region between the bottom end of the marked low-to-high scale and the off position. But it doesn't actually stop you doing it if you try, and you quite often have to do it because otherwise you can't turn the burners down low enough to simmer something as gently as you want to, especially if it's something viscous that is liable to burn if you're not careful. And the "low" position is not abnormally powerful compared to the run of stoves, so even if they replaced the whole thing they would probably only find that a disadvantage which has only made itself noticeable in a minor and highly infrequent way over the years would be exchanged for a disadvantage which pisses them off every time they try to make gravy or something.

    Note that the problem is not any significant risk of a gas explosion. The problematic flow rate is incredibly low, and you probably achieve a greater concentration of unburnt gas in the air with the amount you release in the few seconds between turning a burner on and igniting it than the problematic trickle would ever manage to create in contest with the natural ventilation. What makes it a problem is that if the burners have been in use for a bit, so the hefty cast iron lump in the middle is thoroughly hot, they can still sustain stable combustion with this incredibly small flow; I suspect that what's going on is that the fuel/air mix being preheated as it passes through the cast iron lump gives it that bit of extra propensity to react when it reaches the combustion zone, and the heat of the combustion is enough to maintain the temperature of the lump. But the amount of combustion is so small that you really have to peer closely to see there's any going on at all, and the result is that a small part of the stove is still fucking hot long after you cease to have any reason to expect it to be, with results that vary depending on exactly how abruptly it is eventually brought to your attention.

    847:

    Each Martian requires a huge amount of resources, due to living in a hostile environment.

    At the same time, there's earth, which, in 50 years or so, is still likely to have a massive wealth disparity. Sure, Terrans may take 40 minutes to respond at the worst of time, but for a lot of issues, that's a fine turn around.

    Anyone know what the available bandwidth possibilities are Mars to Earth - at a reasonable cost?

    And what do you do for that few week period around every 2 years when solar conjunction happens that interrupts Mars - Earth communications? https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/20122/mars-in-a-minute-what-happens-when-the-sun-blocks-our-signal/

    You could perhaps set up a relay system, but that then increases the delay time as well as cost.

    Which means massive "off-planeting". Keep the Martians for what needs an immediate response now, or a quick OODA loop. Otherwise, hire Terrans.

    I think the biggest issue with this is that it assumes any person/organization on Earth will still be reliable in 30 years.

    We aren't dealing with climate change (article in Guardian today where ice melting is actually at the worst case of the predictions the IPCC) which means assuming stability on Earth is likely to be a bad assumption to base the running of ones Mars base on.

    848:

    Elderly Cynic @ 797: Er, no. You transpondians had and have nothing to do with it. It was designed at the University of Oxford and is being produced and marketed by Astrazeneca.

    Yeah, I'd already figured that part out for myself. What's the name of the Pharmaceutical Industry "organization" that's not Astrazeneca?

    849:

    Well, I do - or, at least I can tell you what the usual reasons were. Some of those of us who were on, er, in the game at that time (and even a decade earlier) are still alive. At least I think I am.

    One fairly common reason was that many dictatorial sysadmins had a down on assembler, and sometimes made it a privileged application. Yes, really. The excuses included security and efficiency; the former held water only if the only compilers allowed were things like WATFIV, but not otherwise; and the latter was because many assemblers were like C++ nowadays, and you could write truly revolting macros, but it was nonsense if you didn't. Putting code into tables bypassed their restrictions.

    Another was because linking wasn't as simple as it became later, not least because the linking (as distinct from calling) interface from quite a few high-level languages was ill-defined. If it was IBM Fortran G/G1/H/X/Q, this was not the case. But the sysadmins may well not have put the Programmers' Guides or Linkage Editor manual into the library (see above).

    A third was because the programmers simply liked being clever. Yes, there were plenty of such idiots, just as there are today. I did it a few times because it was a hell of a simpler if all you wanted to do was execute one instruction (e.g. CLCL or MVCL), but I wasn't deluded (*), and used integers rather than floating-point.

    Does that help?

    (*) I said deluded rather than insane, because there were myths that floating-point worked but integers didn't (and similarly for character handling in Fortran) - I never tracked down exactly where they came from, but I think that it was a hangover from a previous era of systems. It WAS true for some Fortrans (and possibly some Cobols), for language reasons I could explain, but anyone programming in assembler should damn well know whether it is or not for their system - and, of course, such code is not portable, so what happens on other systems is irrelevant.

    850:

    David L @ 801: In the US (west?) there are Rocky Mountain Oysters. What are they called elsewhere?

    And no, I never plan to eat them but they are a treat for some during the spring roundups.

    Around here I've only ever heard them referred to as "Mountain Oysters"; dropping "Rocky".

    851:

    "Hence the continuing revulsion against Brussels Sprouts ( for instance ) & other perfectly-edible & delicious things, that were destroyed - usually by prolonged boiling, shudder."

    No no no no no! Vegetables need to be cooked until every trace of structural cellulose has been decomposed. They should not ever be, to any degree at all, in whole or in part, crunchy. The modern trend of just sort of dunking them in hot water and serving them up all hard and basically raw is an abomination.

    The thing is, people know this. The reason it was a nigh-universal method in times when general shortage of food and money induced more rational thinking about what to do with it is that they taste better that way. After all, cooking them for a short time is actually less trouble; the longer you boil them for the more gas it uses; and you don't want to waste food when it's scarce and difficult to afford, so you're going to try and avoid cooking it in a way that fucks it up. If just sort of heating the vegetables up a bit had produced a better result, then people would certainly all have done it. Instead nobody did it, because it fucks them up, and since food was valuable, that was a serious consideration. It is only in these decadent times when apparently 50% of the food we are supplied with gets thrown away untouched that people can consider it of low enough value to mess around doing daft things with it because it's "trendy" and some tit on the telly tells them to.

    As for Brussels sprouts, it has been suggested on here before that what's going on there is that they (and probably also other brassicas) contain some chemical which some people can't taste at all but other people can and think it tastes vile. I think it is also possible that there is a third group of people who can taste it and think it tastes nice. Certainly ever since I was old enough to remember I have considered brassicas to be about the only vegetable which is actually pleasant to eat, as opposed to having to be forced down, and I know there are other people with similar tastes.

    852:
    As for Brussels sprouts, it has been suggested on here before that what's going on there is that they (and probably also other brassicas) contain some chemical which some people can't taste at all but other people can and think it tastes vile.

    Yeah. Amazingly (pretty sure you already know this) such things indeed exist.

    853:

    "In fact, I found I could write clearer and more readable code in assembly."

    I have been annoyed that there apparently isn't an editor that will allow you to edit java bytecode in hex and automate the process of moving all the subsequent code up a bit if what you edit it to needs to be longer than what was there originally. Once you learn the opcodes it is vastly easier to understand what the program is actually doing from the bytecode than to plough through all the ridiculous and confusing flannel that the "human readable" representation consists of. (Not to mention that it seems to be insuperably difficult to set up the obscenely bloated toolchain so as to make achieving the same resulting binary by decompiling, editing source, and recompiling actually possible.)

    854:

    It's changed in the US, too, immensely. Folks aren't just "meat and potatoes", period anymore.

    I knew things had changed when, around '98 or '99, my son and I were returning to Chicago after visiting friends in Cincinatti, and in the middle of Indiana, not near anything... was a billboard for an Indian restaurant (yes, I mean India Indian).

    855:

    I find that soaking kidneys in acidulated water for about 30 minutes before cooking takes a lot of the more objectionable taste out. (Slice in half lengthways to expose as much of the inside as possible, taking out the fatty bits, put in a bowl with a tablespoon of vinegar, cover with cold water. Once soaked, drain and rinse.)

    I also prefer lambs' kidneys to any other type; the flavour is more delicate.

    856:

    Yes, but every description I've ever seen of such substances seems to be written from the viewpoint that people either can't taste it, or can and don't like it. They never seem to consider the possibility that some people can taste it and do like it.

    That wikipedia article does technically only distinguish between people who can't taste it and people who can, but it also incorporates an inescapably strong implication that people who can taste it never like it. That seems to be the usual way of such descriptions. Consideration of people who have a preference for brassicas is not entirely absent, but I've never seen anything significantly more than just mentioning they exist.

    (As an aside, I cannot avoid wondering whether Blakeslee was in control of his own mind at the time...)

    857:

    Elderly Cynic @ 817: Ugh. Sorry, but I absolutely do NOT do ersatz meat, whether nut cutlets, soya-based, or cheap British sausages. I am largely vegetarian, but it's real vegetarian recipes. Anyway, if I may divert, here is a recipe we learnt from my son-in-law, which I named moq-au-vin:

    Take whole shallots, mushrooms cut into largish chunks, and cook them long and slow in red wine. It's nothing like coq-au-vin, but very good.

    To my way of thinking just about anything cooked long and slow in red wine is "very good"

    Coincidentally ... for about a month now I've had a package of Hebrew National all beef franks marinating in beer in the back of my refrigerator. Just before I read this I put them in bamboo steamer & am steaming them in a wok using the beer they were marinating in. Don't know how it's going to turn out, but I thought I'd give it a try.

    858:

    Remember, kim chi is a folk religion on the Korean peninsula. There are A LOT of people in the world who eat brassicas, and a lot depends on the preparation. Thing is, they're stereotypical poor peasants' food, so saying you like them and know how to cook them is saying you're poor or you're a cultural appropriator.

    As for Brussel's sprouts...The idiots who shave raw Brussels sprouts deserve the score they get, because the leaves are tough and bitter. Boil them and their mush. If you throw them under the broiler with oil and balsamic vinegar, let them caramelize until the outermost leaves are burned (discard them) and the inner leaves are soft, they're sweet, mildly bitter, and delicious. Note that I'm not a super-taster, so they don't bother me. Other people can't stand them regardless, but they're not fond of dark chocolate or chili peppers either.

    859:

    Elderly Cynic @ 830: It's got SOME truth in it, but is over-generalised to the point of being closer to false. I never had such things as a child, and my preferred foods as an adult were and are very unlike what I was brought up on, with a few exceptions. Many people, especially in the UK and of my age (*), are similar.

    (*) Transpondians have no conception of how limited available foods were in the UK in the 1950s, outside the parts of London frequented by the plutocracy.

    I wonder how economic limits on food availability stacks up against cultural limits.

    860:

    Not just the limitation of foods 1947-55 or even 1960, but the ghastly, appalling revolting cooking of most people at the time.

    "But the contest is next week! You must begin boiling the vegetables now!"

    (One of the funnier lines from Chef.

    861:

    over 2000 lines of code to just over 600.

    I have been there. A barcode scanner that had basically run out of persistent storage because the code was so big. I run through and cleaned it up, mostly applying the "extract method" refactoring by hand (Turbo Pascal ~3). Afterwards the question changed from "how man scans can we store" to "how many do we want to store/are we willing to lose" (they suffered mechanical failures, sometimes of the "run over by a train" type).

    You know how a lot of people work to the limit of their ability? I spend most of my time struggling to make my stupid code not catch fire, and wondering just how dumb I really am. Possibly too dumb to ever know...

    But then I have those moments of relief where I get to deal with other people's code, and often I just burn through fixing the obvious errors and the problem goes away. Sometimes that happens after I fix the compiler warnings, or linter warnings.

    Which reminds me that I'm not actually the worst programmer in the world.

    862:

    Quick followup on the hot dogs steamed in beer ... you can't taste the beer in the finished product, but they were goo-oood!

    863:

    anything cooked long and slow in red wine is "very good"

    To eat a boot, simmer in water/wine until soft, discard boot and drink water/wine?

    864:

    Oh, stop being such a wuss and use a simple hex or binary editor to write executable code straight into memory. It’s what I do.

    865:
    Yes, but every description I've ever seen of such substances seems to be written from the viewpoint that people either can't taste it, or can and don't like it. They never seem to consider the possibility that some people can taste it and do like it.

    I am certain that the researchers who do this work DO consider that possibility. (I used to have a colleague who researched TAS2R38.) It's just not what they observe. And yes, they have looked.

    866:

    Nah. Key the code in in raw binary using the console switches. Been there - done that :-)

    867:

    Does that help?

    I know all your reasons. I was responding to W. My point was I got a 9 track tape reel with the source code. Plus a page or two summary and a few comments in the Fortran. But that was it. Why wasn't mentioned.

    You're talking to someone who got fed up with the terminal card on a minicomputer from the 70s/80s and went out and bought the 8008 book from the book store and then wrote a disassembler for the 2K of code they loaded before use to make it work. I then re-wrote it to do what we wanted. :)

    We also were severely disk space constrained. So we had our own Y2K in the mid 80s as our date was 1 byte months after Jan 1970 then 1 byte for the day of the month. We got to convert to 11 bits for the year and 5 bits for the day of the month. As there were no bytes left in the 256 byte disk record and expanding it wasn't an option. (Sector size anyone?) Wheeeeee.

    At to why the mid 80s? The insurance market we served had policy expiration dates up to 5 years in the future.

    868:

    As for Brussels sprouts, it has been suggested on here before that what's going on there is that they (and probably also other brassicas) contain some chemical which some people can't taste at all but other people can and think it tastes vile.

    Raises his hand.

    Actually most greens don't have it or it is in varying amounts depending on which green. But apparently somewhere around 5% of the tested population in the US have a different protein in their DNA that is very slightly off from the rest of the people. And to us some/all greens taste vile.

    Yep. Sure. I also can't stand mustards, vinigars, and most any such flavors.

    869:

    But then I have those moments of relief where I get to deal with other people's code, and often I just burn through fixing the obvious errors and the problem goes away.

    Back around 1980. Newbie working at major insurance company in the US. Was newbie enough he had to take home the pager once or twice a week.

    It went off and in he went. COBOL report. He found the error and also noticed the program flow was odd. It was taking 2 files and merging them into one file. Read record from file A then from file B then write to file C. But the code opened and closed the files between each read and write. He moved the opens before the processing and the closes to after.

    Got called on the carpet the next day. His boss had been told he had obviously broken the report. It had always taken an hour to run and after his "fixes" it ran in a few minutes. He explained what he had done. He was told to put it back. It would have been too hard to get the operations staff and users to believe the original code was that bad.

    I became good friends with this newbie a few years later. He was a very smart newbie.

    870:
    Actually most greens don't have it or it is in varying amounts depending on which green. But apparently somewhere around 5% of the tested population in the US have a different protein in their DNA that is very slightly off from the rest of the people. And to us some/all greens taste vile.

    Got a reference? Are these rare alleles of TAST2R38, or is it some other receptor gene?

    871:

    We also were severely disk space constrained. So we had our own Y2K in the mid 80s as our date was 1 byte months after Jan 1970 then 1 byte for the day of the month. We got to convert to 11 bits for the year and 5 bits for the day of the month. As there were no bytes left in the 256 byte disk record and expanding it wasn't an option. (Sector size anyone?) Wheeeeee.

    That sounds ... inefficient?

    With 16 bits to play with, I'd have gone with:

    Two bytes, one for half-years counting from Jan 1, 1970, and the second for a day offset from either Jan 1 or July 1, depending on whether it's an odd half-year or an even half-year.

    There are only ever up to 183 days in a half-year, so that fits neatly in under a byte. And if you count in half-years from 1970, you can count up to 127 years into the future before you run into a Y2K-like situation: starting from 1970, that gets you to 2097.

    872:

    I CAN taste Brussels Sprouts ... Boiled they are repulsive & bitter & mushy. Sliced, stir-fried in oil, with a smidgen of garlic & root ginger they are delicious. [ The bitterness has gone, but the rest of the flavour is there, suitably modified ] Similarly, Leeks used to be served BOILED, ugggh - fried in butter, though, yes. OR - not so much cauliflower - but other similar Brassicas, where you are eating the flower-heads, again, don't ever boil them - fry or steam. Hint: "Chinese" styles help enormously.

    873:

    Teehee, I remember doing that on the Commodore Pet, which had the facility built in.

    The fancy option was Extramon, which could do assembly line by line, could also disassemble, and had a block move facility, although it was of limited use because 6502 code is not generally position-independent, and you still had to remember where all the addresses were that would be affected by the move and go through and change them all by hand.

    874:

    Peasants in Europe used human waste to fertilise their soil. They didn't prepare the fertiliser, they just threw buckets of human waste in the field.

    They would never eat freshly picked vegetables. They would put them in a soup and boil it for hours. The soup could end up tasting good, but any kind of texture was long gone by the time it got to the table.

    875:

    In that case, maybe there is some different and unrelated combination of chemical and genetic anomaly that does have a "some people like it" option.

    876:

    it's funny everyone talking about the old memory-constrained, program in assembly, self-modifying days as if they're gone. They're still here! Join the demoscene! Write some 6502 code. Enter a size-coding contest. Write BASIC programs to the apple II twitter bot (or the BBC micro bot if you prefer).

    https://www.pouet.net/prod.php?which=87462

    we need to keep in practice for when we're stranded on Mars and building core-memory out of compressed regolith

    877:

    But the code opened and closed the files between each read and write.

    I think a lot of less-experienced programmers don't have any notion of which operations are quick and which expensive.

    In the 90s NSF (Nation Science Foundation) wrote software for processing grant applications. It took hours for each one. I looked at the source and discovered that they had written their own case-independent string comparison that made an upper-case copy of each of the two strings in space malloc'ed from the heap, compared the copies, then freed them. This function got called many thousands of times. I replaced it with a byte-by-byte comparison (for some reason case-independent library functions were not available), and processing time went from hours to about a minute. The authors were unaware that heap operations are expensive.

    878:

    Magnets. Make the zeros and ones....

    879:

    In that case, maybe there is some different and unrelated combination of chemical and genetic anomaly that does have a "some people like it" option.

    I would bet the difference is mostly experience-dependent. Humans are unusual in that we can learn to like almost any taste. (Coffee and beer, for instance, taste vile to most naive humans.) Mice, for instance, basically can't. They like sugar, and they all like sugar, always.

    880:

    Why... next y'all are going to make fun of me for liking "peasant food".

    You know, like if we can have an in-person party this coming Labor Day (US), and I have some meat that's such a poor cut I have to cook it long. Like, 19 hours.

    'Course, I just call that Texas-style bbq....

    881:

    When I was working for the Scummy Mortgage Co. (skip this if you've read it before), about half-way through my (far too long) 18 month stint there, they fired the other CICS programmer. His desk was literally 2' high in green bar paper. Anyway, I had to work on one of his programs. And found his leap year "algorithm": if it was '76 or '80 or '84 or '88 or '92, it was a leap year. No, I wish I was making this up.

    I went to my boss and told him about it. "Don't fix it", he told me. "But it's broken - it'll break in a couple of years!" I said (this is a mortgage co - can you say 30 year mortgages?). He says, "Then we'll fix it when it breaks."

    I really do have about three pages of reasons for calling them what I do.

    882:

    AI admin would help with accurate, more detailed, non-fudgable record-keeping which could then be mined to better understand what happened - including more in-depth examination of both what works and what doesn't work and why based on which data points are connected. Based on personal experience: Current admin tasks ain't doin' this. (Would be interesting to see what actual NASA folk - including astronauts - have to do as their admin.)

    The computer is your friend. Trust the computer.

    The bigger point (ahem), as we in the US learned recently, is that bureaucratic inertia is a good thing sometimes, as when an authoritarian gets the command codes to ultimate power. Having a computer that does whatever an authoritarian wants can be a real nightmare.

    More to the point, in any space colony, there are going to be people who are invalided out of the astronaut corps: they survived an accident, they've been in freefall too long and their bones no longer meet spec, they've absorbed their lifetime dose of radiation and can't go outside again safely, they need glasses or other aids, their reflexes are too slow, etc. On the other hand, they know stuff, like how to survive in space for decades, so you don't want to just mulch them for atoms. Similarly, they know people very well. So what to do? Make them the knowledge keepers and certain functions of administrators. They're no longer the front line crew. Instead, their job is keeping the front line crew alive and making sure that crew's kids grow up safely to replace them. That's the purpose of human administration in a colony.

    Another class of people is those who are pregnant or who have small children. Note that I'm not gendering child-rearing. It could be done, but I think it makes at least as much sense for both parents to stay indoors and get to know their kids for a few years, before either or both re-certify as astronauts and start doing dangerous stuff again. These people can work in administration too.

    AFAIK, NASA keeps a fairly flat hierarchy in the astronaut corps. The permanent ranks are something like Astronaut candidate (learning) and Astronaut (doing). Most of the astronauts are not in space, their in support, training, administration, experimenting, etc. Hierarchical roles are assigned on a per mission based, not permanent, sort of like the Department Chair role in an academic department. That way, someone who's getting a critique one day will be giving a critique another. This apparently works better than having a strong hierarchy.* Chris Hadfield's book has a long list of all the stuff he did as a NASA astronaut. While some of it was in space, a lot of it wasn't.

    *AFAIK, the Russian Space service works with a similar flat hierarchy?

    883:

    I can remember something very similar to that. There was a need to make some minor alteration of the "change all A to B" type to 600 or so text files. So someone had written a function that went "read in file, change all A to B, write it back out again", and wrapped it in a directory iterator.

    Then the need had arisen to also change all C to D. So he had copied and pasted his original read/modify/write function in its entirety, altered "change A to B" to "change C to D", and added a call to the altered function immediately after the call to the original one.

    As time went on more such needs had cropped up every now and then, and had all been addressed in the same manner, until the listing ran to several pages of these nearly-identical functions and processing a batch of 600 files took all of the day.

    When I arrived I was given this pile of code, and told that the guy who wrote it had left a few months ago and my task was to deshitulate it. The abovedescribed program was the most conspicuously awful part of it and also the most obviously straightforward to tackle, so I started with that. I changed it to "read all the files as a continuous stream with next-file markers, do all the alterations in a single pass over the data as it comes past, write out the stream starting a new file when necessary", with the alterations specified in a config file instead of recompiling every time there was a new one required. The increase in speed was tremendous.

    Since the guy who had written the stuff wasn't there any more, I didn't feel any particular inhibition against taking the piss out of how amazingly shit the original program was, and we all had a good laugh about it. What I didn't realise was that that program was actually the only one of the bunch which had not been written by that guy; instead it had been written by the chap who was my immediate boss. It was quite a while before I figured out why he never seemed to like me very much.

    (I was both startled and amused to see him some years later on a clip on some "this is what Russian TV is like" show, sat bang in the middle of the front row of an audience in what looked like a school hall with his eyes absolutely bulging out of his head as he watched some strippers pouring shampoo over their twats.)

    884:

    Similar experience, and it happened to me.

    Sysprogs changed a runtime setting, so that integer overflow threw an exception instead of discarding the high order digits.

    This program had been running overnight, four hours a night, for years, and giving correct results. But now, exception. I got paged, went in (this was long before I could log in from home), and investigated.

    It turned out, the program was calculating some complete bullshit values, then starting again and overwriting the bullshit with the proper values. it was the bullshit calculations that had triggered the exception. After very carefully checking that the bullshit was not being used for anything whatsoever, I ripped the code out, recompiled, and got Operations to restart the job. Then unto home.

    No sooner had I got home than I was called again. "Help! Something's wrong. The job has finished already, and it's only been running for one hour."

    I did manage to convince them that this was not a problem.

    JHomes.

    885:

    I first learned to programm in FORTRAN in the early 70's. But I later learned to hate it in the commercial world, it was very much liked by scientists and engineers - in 70's and early 80's when I encountered it.

    I also discovered there were a couple of nasty features in FORTRAN that - combined - could introduce some really random bugs or side effects. Firstly - you did not need to pre-declare variables - they could be defined by their "first use". And spaces were generally ignored in the syntax.

    So if you looked at code of the form "IF ( .GT. ) THEN = ". Problem was that "THEN" is not a language construct in FORTRAN, so it just assigned a new variable whose name was prefixed by the characters "THEN" that value.

    We found the problem with this is a Radio Therapy Treatment Planning program that had been running for years. Discovered when we upgraded a compiler version that produced warning messages when it found variable names longer than 6 characters.

    We wondered how many patients had been unknowingly (miss)treated by overly large radiation doses.

    But I did like that FORTRAN had a COMPLEX variable type, though I never found a use for COMPLEX variables in the commercial world.

    886:

    Coffee, beer, olives, bitter greens, fishy tasting fish. All flavours I despised as a child but grew to enjoy and (in the case of coffee) become utterly dependent on to function.

    The trick is practice and not to close your mind. That being said, there are people like my long-suffering mother who cannot abide brussels sprouts (while my father would climb over a mountain of other foods to get a plate of sprouts).

    In the event of a famine we would all learn to love whatever food was available. Some of the more bizarre food delicacies I assume came from desperation or famine (i.e. maggot cheese, catshit coffee).

    887:

    Got a reference? Are these rare alleles of TAST2R38, or is it some other receptor gene?

    Pop sci version. 60 minutes segment 5 or more years ago.

    888:

    That sounds ... inefficient?

    With 16 bits to play with, I'd have gone with:

    That was one restraint. The other was lack of space for "cute" readable code. And no rewriting all kinds of installed code. And in the US P&C insurance agency market place there is a lot of calculations based on months. Or take a date and advance it one month. Or ...

    So directly using months made a lot of things easier to deal with the switch and still fit into memory.

    This was a case where we were #1 in our market because we were able to maximized our specific hardware/OS combination, make a decent profit, and be cheaper better than the competition. 10 years in we re-wrote a lot of it to make it more sane. As hardware costs had dropped and we could expand our system requirements. But that could only happen if we survived the first 10 years.

    889:

    I fear we could do old programmer stories all day :)

    One of my less favourite recent experiences was a multithreaded Delphi program. Back when the Windows event loop was relentlessly single threaded Borland introduced a keyword meaning "run this function in the GUI thread". It was genuinely essential.

    I got a job to "improve" a typical Delphi app, GUI over database, that did billing runs but was slow and did not produce the same answer twice. The former bothered the boss, the latter bothered me.

    To speed it up he'd made it multithreaded. There was a lot of cool stuff, all DI and message queues and what have you. And threads. Quite a few threads. But every time he'd run into a memory corruption or crashing problem (which was often) he put the offending bit of code into the magic "run this in the GUI thread" function and 99% of the time the problem went away.

    Yes, it was a multithreaded program that ran in one thread. Fixing it was hard because I basically had to un-thread it then re-design it to use threads properly, while maintaining the original in working condition. Fortunately(?) they stopped paying me so I quit before I completely lost my mind (within the six month wage guaranteed operated by the Australian government through the tax office - they will pay you up to six months wages if your employer defaults, and let the tax office chase the money).

    890:

    billing runs .... and did not produce the same answer twice.

    Something you sort of never want to see in a billing program. [eye roll]

    891:

    You just keep trying until you get an answer you like.

    892:

    Off topic.

    Many years ago I realised I didn't have my car keys. I was at work 30 km from home, no cash, no mobile phone and no one to ring who had a car. I walked back to the car hoping I'd left them in the ignition. Nope, not there. I was retracing my steps and noticed an A4 sheet with "FOUND KEYS" on it and an address a few doors away. I went and knocked on the door and Kerry O'Brien answered with my keys in hand. (Journalist for the public broadcaster on Australia)

    Fast forward 25 years.

    A nobody ex tennis player known for awful transphobic public comments and my saviour are both selected for Order of Australia awards. Kerry has said if the selection process is such that this horrible person gets an this award, he'd rather not have it thanks.

    My admiration for the man has just increased.

    893:

    Moz You just keep trying until you get an answer you like. Ever considered a career in Politics?

    894:

    Order of Australia awards. Kerry has said if the selection process is such that this horrible person gets an this award, he'd rather not have it thanks.

    Indeed.

    Although didn't someone disgusting give one of those awards to a filthy foreign toad a while ago? Prince Philip, now officially recognised as racist enough to be Australian?

    895:

    I don't think Phil is in the same league. He says all sorts of embarrassing things, but doesn't double down on them.

    https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2017/jun/03/margaret-court-astounding-champion-who-found-god-and-lost-the-respect-of-a-nation

    Quote;

    In 1970, Court kicked things off by praising South Africa’s apartheid policy (“South Africans have this thing better organised than any other country, particularly America,” she said. “I love South Africa. I’ll go back there any time.”), for which she received very little lasting scrutiny.

    896:

    I don't think politics is really a good place for antisocial misantropes. But OTOH I might break Mal's record for the shortest political career ever: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dt--SGmIKIQ

    897:

    Court is someone I actively try to avoid reading about and I can't really remember why. IIRC she's more objectionable than Germaine Greer without the intellectual foundations to be sensibly objectionable.

    Much better to work on my submission to the interim NZ climate change committee ... https://www.climatecommission.govt.nz/news/consultation/

    Media coverage: https://www.stuff.co.nz/environment/climate-news/124001781/the-change-thatll-make-rogernomics-look-like-a-trial-period

    898:
    But at the end of the day this isn't about public transit, it is about attempting to find anyone willing to give his company a contract so it can gain experience and test out his thoughts on tunneling that he will need for Mars.

    But using Miami as to gain experience for working on Mars is silly. Miami is obviously where you would get experience for working on Venus. (The wet one, not the real one).

    899:

    Moz Given Philip of Greece's WWII service in the Pacific against the Japanese, after having fought the Nazis ... you can eff right off. .... As gasdive says, much more politely.

    JH @ 898 😁

    900:

    It was operator error, but the blame for that error does NOT rest with the operator alone. Whoever trained him failed to do their job properly.
    Whoever designed the UI has the primary responsibility. The readout showed either the place you wanted destroyed or the place you were, with no indication of which it was showing. That's just insane. Make it flash 12:00 after a reset FFS.

    901:
    My concern taking a guitar to the ISS would be whether there's enough moisture in the atmosphere that it wouldn't damage the wood (guitars "like" moderately high humidity).

    You'd better get in contact with Chris Hadfield.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL2HBU-hWqdTRZvq_KsiTDZldrFBVLsjBD&v=KaOC9danxNo

    902:

    How dumb am I? Really need to have a coffee now.

    903:
    Sticking them in a liposome and injecting them directly into a vein is vastly easier than getting them through the skin or GI tract undegraded;

    There's always the French solution -- shove them up your bum.

    904:
    The problematic flow rate is incredibly low, and you probably achieve a greater concentration of unburnt gas in the air with the amount you release in the few seconds between turning a burner on and igniting it than the problematic trickle would ever manage to create in contest with the natural ventilation.

    The IKEA gas hobs I got recently: 1. you have to turn the knob 1/4 turn before any gas will come out. 2. and even then no gas will come out unless you press the knob in, which starts the ignition spark 3. and gas will stop coming out if you release the knob before the it has heated up enough. 4. and gas will stop coming out if the flame goes out and the burner cools down.

    It's very like the setup I saw on a canal boat many years ago.

    905:

    Make them the knowledge keepers and certain functions of administrators.

    You've just reinvented Elders.

    906:

    John Hughes @ 903

    There's yet another solution: Developping a COVID nasal spray "vaccine".

    https://med.uottawa.ca/en/news/virologist-leads-attempt-develop-coronavirus-nasal-spray-vaccine

    That's what I'm waiting for, to get "vaccinated".

    908:

    I fear we could do old programmer stories all day :)

    It's tradition.

    909:

    And as is often the case, the Russians did it first. A guitar was sent up to Salyut 7, then transferred to Mir by the first crew who popped over to Salyut 7 partway through their stay on Mir to tidy up. I had a feeling that the one now on the ISS was the same one having been returned to Earth by a shuttle flight, then relaunched on a later shuttle, but I can't find anything to suggest that. Salyut 6 also had a guitar sent up.

    910:

    There's yet another solution: Developping a COVID nasal spray "vaccine".

    Charlie Pooh-poohed the nasal route way up above (@15). I think he's wrong about this -- intranasal administration is very different from oral. I'm glad to hear that someone is working on it.

    911:

    No. He said it was a hard problem, not that it wasn't a reasonable idea. Yes, it's something worth pursuing, but the existing developments have been to get something as fast as possible - which, inter alia, means not adding any development tasks that aren't essential. Also, if I recall, he said earlier that nasal application isn't as easy as it might seem, as I can witness, and still needs trained people.

    912:

    Rbt Prior @ 905 Yes, so?

    913:

    I can't imagine why you're all so down on suppositories.

    :)

    914:

    But using Miami as to gain experience for working on Mars is silly.

    Not when it is the only option available to you.

    He has a bunch of ideas of what he needs for Mars, but even he can't fund all of it(*), hence his attempts to get others to either develop or pay for his hyperloop or tunnel making.

    The problem is few governments or private investors are jumping onto his ideas.

    So yes, Miami (at least in terms of geology) isn't ideal. But it still lets him work out other aspects like keeping the machines continuously operating with whatever innovations he has in mind, while hopefully providing something he can point to that will convince others to give his company contracts that will be more directly useful.

    915:
    I had a feeling that the one now on the ISS was the same one having been returned to Earth by a shuttle flight, then relaunched on a later shuttle, but I can't find anything to suggest that.

    I imagine that Larrivée would have mentioned if their guitar had been up so long, as it is they only say "Seen in this video is the Larrivée Parlor guitar that has found it's home on the ISS for the last decade".

    Also would the USSR have sent up a Canadian guitar?

    916:

    I can't imagine why you're all so down on suppositories.

    Yeah, I know you're not 100% serious, but it was enough to make me wonder if an immune response could be induced by that route. I first thought the answer would be "No", but Suppository-mediated DNA immunization induces mucosal immunity against bovine herpesvirus-1 in cattle.

    917:

    Obviously, it can, or people could not be infected with HPV or HIV that way. Whether it is a good route, and what would need to be done to make it function effectively, is less clear. It's also not great for people with chronic or recurrent diarrhoea, even if mild and intermittent, which is more common than you might think.

    918:

    Re: '... in any space colony, there are going to be people who are invalided out of the astronaut corps:'

    Agree - however I think it's risky to stack the overseer/admin role with any one particular demographic, area of expertise, etc. Too great a risk of some little known problem being ignored as irrelevant. Age does not always guarantee wisdom.

    Re: AI admin

    I didn't say that I want the AI to make decisions - that should be reserved for humans. However, AIs would be more reliable than humans in storing and compiling/analyzing details and flagging 'significant' changes. Basically, I'm saying we should play to each entity's strength and also not assume that strength in one area somehow miraculously confers strength/intelligence in any other area.

    Shifts/Work Hours

    Not sure whether anyone's mentioned work shifts - but unless Martian settlers are able to somehow reset their circadian clocks, this could become an issue. I'm guessing that we should strive for maximum efficiency/productivity (minimum errors) per hour on the job instead of the Earth practice of hiring fresh grads and working them 16 hrs/day or until they drop from fatigue then fire them and hire some more new grads. Anyways - optimizing on-the-job efficiency is likely to translate into fewer hours per day, e.g., 6 vs. 8 hrs depending on the job, worker's age/overall health and other factors. Assuming Martians keep the Earth calendar - why they should apart from coordinating tasks/shipments, not sure - this could mean about 8 shifts per week that will need to be appropriately staffed. Depending on the particular job, the fully staffed shift could be at a different time, i.e., 9am-4pm shift: office workers 9-4 (80% - the other 20% distributed across the other shifts to maintain emergency contact/reachability), medicos (40%), surgeons (60%), teachers (100%), child care* (40%), etc.

    Shorter 'work' hours however means more off hours and not just for rest/sleep and family/household chores but also socializing, activities, hobbies, continuing education, etc. which means more jobs in those sectors. Boredom can be as big a health/morale problem as fatigue.

    The below article is about medical staff but is worth considering given that any job on Mars could snowball into great risk to the population in the event of a screw-up.

    An Exhausted Workforce Increases the Risk of Errors https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2697084/

    • Child care services would have to be available for all shift workers vs. what we currently have in NA where it skews corp 'office hours'.
    919:

    Make them the knowledge keepers and certain functions of administrators. You've just reinvented Elders.

    Really? Do tell.

    I didn't reinvent them at all, just relabeled them to get around ageist prejudices. My take is that someone who survived 20 years of being an astronaut in the going-outside regularly sense is worth listening to, although you never assume they're infallible.

    Speaking of which, NASA normal policy is not to put both halves of a couple in orbit at the same time. This normally comes up in the "sex in space" conversations, but they're reasoning is more sound. Basically, they know how very risky space is, and they don't want both partners to die in the same accident. This is particularly true if they have children. While everyone is curious about how sex in space works, no one particularly wants to leave behind orphans as the result of a failed mission.

    The idea of normalizing work in vacuum to shift work really needs to take this into account. It isn't just about when to clock in and when to clock out, it's about dying or (if lucky) getting horribly maimed in what on Earth would be a fairly minor industrial accident leading to worker's comp. That's why I think that having young children is a good reason to keep people inside for a year or two. And the American obsession with sending the nurturing parent back into the dangerous parts of the workforce as fast as possible really needs to be throttled back.

    And on Mars, underground mining, in regolith (thick piles of rubble) that's somewhat cemented together with dust, salt, and/or ice? In a pressure suit? How many ways can that go wrong? Heck, even blasting through relatively homogeneous basalt would be bad enough.

    920:

    However, AIs would be more reliable than humans in storing and compiling/analyzing details and flagging 'significant' changes.

    Still trying to figure out why you believe this.

    921:

    Bet I could have a shorter one.

    Of course, if I ran, the question would be how good my body armor was.... Trust me, the white wing would start shooting by the second week.

    922:

    I didn't reinvent them at all, just relabeled them to get around ageist prejudices.

    That was sorta my point, given that our current society seems to worship newness and looks down on experience.

    923:

    About the AI admin... ah, right, so what you're describing is what my late wife and I came up with in the early nineties, and I've mentioned in a number of places, including here, over the years: an artificial stupid.

    AI would make guesses (Ghu, purple be His Name, Alexa has just had that announced as an upcoming feature, to control your house, turn on/off lights, etc.). An AS does not. "I know what to do with dat, I know what to do with dis, um, hey, human boss, what you want I should do wit' dis?"

    See? An AS. She decided that the company that first made them called them "George", and their slogan was, "Let George do it." A century or two later, the company long gone, but software doing that as popular as ever, everyone calls them george's.

    924:

    The Expanse Series does a credible job of trying to imagine the culture of Mars and points further a century from now. Rarely, the television series manages to be excellent and keep more or less true to the writing.

    A main character in the first novel is a 'cop' (security guard) who describes investigating an incident where someone had been pushed out an airlock. On discovering that the victim had been skimping on cleaning air filters and the investigation was closed - justifiable homicide.

    Mars is populated by highly motivated and regimented terraformers who are on a multigenerational mission to greenify the planet.

    925:

    Re: 'why you believe this.'

    Because AIs wouldn't forget or misremember or change the data set every single time they 'recalled' and re-saved it the way that humans do.

    I'm thinking of AIs as data storage, compiling and computational (stat-testing) devices that perform quite differently than humans and because of this when combined with human brains should provide a broader and more testable array of insights. This isn't making AIs into sky-fairies but figuring out how best/most safely unload what is a necessary task that many humans dislike (admin).

    BTW - I'm not a techie so my perception of AI capabilities is based on mass/popular media. Also - current AIs may not be capable of what I describe but given another 40-50 years at the current rate of progress they might be.

    926:

    Because AIs wouldn't forget or misremember or change the data set every single time they 'recalled' and re-saved it the way that humans do.

    Yes, there are some mistakes that humans make that AIs are less likely to make. There are some mistakes that AIs make that humans are less likely to make. There are some mistakes that both humans and AIs make. None of these facts justifies the conclusion that "AIs would be more reliable than humans in storing and compiling/analyzing details and flagging 'significant' changes."

    I'm thinking of AIs as data storage, compiling and computational (stat-testing) devices that perform quite differently than humans and because of this when combined with human brains should provide a broader and more testable array of insights.

    OK, now THAT makes more sense.

    I think part of the problem I'm seeing is that there's an assumption among some of the commenters here that report-writing is a trivial and easily automated process. But report-writing is WRITING, and writing is a difficult job that requires insight, creativity, and intelligence. (This blog is the domain of a man who is a very, very good writer, and whom we pay attention to because he is that.)

    It is possible to make report-writing a trivial business not requiring any higher mental abilities. You can do that if you want to write lousy reports. But reports don't have to be lousy. A good report can be hugely valuable. It can entertain, inspire, and instruct. Good reports can make history.

    927:

    Bet I could have a shorter one.

    Shorter than 28 seconds from the start of the first media appearance of your candidacy? That's a higher bar than I think you appreciate, and assassinating you that fast would definitely require a degree of organisation and risk tolerance we haven't seen from the white wing yet.

    928:

    Oh, I thought it was a week or two....

    929:

    Moz @ 863:

    anything cooked long and slow in red wine is "very good"

    To eat a boot, simmer in water/wine until soft, discard boot and drink water/wine?

    http://www.michaelppowers.com/prosperity/stonesoup.html

    I think this must be a re-write, because it's "(c) 1975" and I remember it from an illustrated children's book by the same author that I read back in grade school.

    And I understand the story is an old European folk tale that long predates my childhood.

    930:

    And then there's the recipe for cooking a coot…

    Which involved gutting the bird, inserting a brick, covering with clay and baking in a fire for a long time, cracking the clay, throwing away the coot and eating the brick :-)

    931:

    whitroth @ 880: Why... next y'all are going to make fun of me for liking "peasant food".

    You know, like if we can have an in-person party this coming Labor Day (US), and I have some meat that's such a poor cut I have to cook it long. Like, 19 hours.

    'Course, I just call that Texas-style bbq....

    Ever been to a "pig pickin'"?

    932:

    John Hughes @ 900:

    It was operator error, but the blame for that error does NOT rest with the operator alone. Whoever trained him failed to do their job properly.

    Whoever designed the UI has the primary responsibility. The readout showed either the place you wanted destroyed or the place you were, with no indication of which it was showing. That's just insane. Make it flash 12:00 after a reset FFS.

    Never forget that your equipment was supplied by the lowest bidder. There are plenty of ways the design could have been improved. But it wasn't. If you're in a life safety critical environment, you have to know & understand the limitations of your equipment. And train until you know how to overcome them without having to think about it. The PLGR was a piece of shit, but it was the piece of shit he was issued and he was responsible for using it correctly.

    John Hughes @ 901:

    My concern taking a guitar to the ISS would be whether there's enough moisture in the atmosphere that it wouldn't damage the wood (guitars "like" moderately high humidity).

    You'd better get in contact with Chris Hadfield.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?list=PL2HBU-hWqdTRZvq_KsiTDZldrFBVLsjBD&v=KaOC9danxNo

    Yeah, that's the video I was commenting on. If you're a celebrity the manufacturer will repair it even if you void the warranty by doing something obviously wrong (like subjecting a wooden guitar top to extreme low humidity causing it to split).

    933:

    whitroth @ 923: About the AI admin... ah, right, so what you're describing is what my late wife and I came up with in the early nineties, and I've mentioned in a number of places, including here, over the years: an artificial stupid.

    AI would make guesses (Ghu, purple be His Name, Alexa has just had that announced as an upcoming feature, to control your house, turn on/off lights, etc.). An AS does not. "I know what to do with dat, I know what to do with dis, um, hey, human boss, what you want I should do wit' dis?"

    See? An AS. She decided that the company that first made them called them "George", and their slogan was, "Let George do it." A century or two later, the company long gone, but software doing that as popular as ever, everyone calls them george's.

    Do you know who "George" was and why he got stuck with all those shit jobs?

    934:

    No idea what George you're talking about.

    935:

    Nope. But then... let's see, you're NC, and I've had bbq pulled pork on a small chain by I-95, and one down the road from where I was staying in a motel while I was working for seven months in N. Wilkesboro, NC, and I just don't care for Carolina bbq - too much vinegar.

    But we should drop this, because arguing which bbq is better is, of course, religious warfare....

    936:

    I think my most treasured mushroom recipe comes from Arora's Mushrooms Demystified, for Fomitopsis pinicola:

    “This woody conk is not often eaten, but in a pinch you can use the following recipe developed by my wife. Saw into 2-inch cubes, then marinate in olive oil and dandelion wine for at least 48 hours (be sure to use LOTS of garlic!). Roast slowly on skewers over charcoal indefinitely (minimum time - 20 hours). Cool. Pound vigorously with a large mallet between two pieces of thick leather. Pulverize in a meat grinder and then force through a braced sieve (several hours for this step). Wrap the resulting mess in several thicknesses of cheesecloth and hang up somewhere high and out of the way (on a clothesline or TV antenna). Allow to dangle for at least one week (Aging has a mellowing effect, so you may want to try one year.). Wring periodically, making sure to reserve the drippings for gravy or as a motor oil additive. To eat, boil for 24 hours, squeeze thoroughly, garnish with gravel, and serve forth.”

    The thing that makes this such a joy is that Mushrooms Demystified was the standard reference for Pacific coast mushrooms for decades, and this was in the notes of the species description for Fomitopsis pinicola. Fun book.

    937:

    just don't care for Carolina bbq - too much vinegar.

    JBS and I live maybe 5 miles apart as the bird files. I can't stand the BBQ around her for the same reasons as you. I like it further west where you get meat and add your own sauce. The PIT restaurant 500' from where I'm sitting just now is sort of that with sauce on the side.

    My point is that in NC their is NOT a uniform definition of BBQ.

    938:

    BARBEQUE! Cispondiams: Are there any British Isles traditions of cooking like this? Southern Hemispherians: What do you do and like re: food cooked like this? Vegehoovians: I really like vegetables cooked this way, especially the ones some people find very unpleasant to eat.

    While we're at(e) it, how soon do folks think we'll get really good and affordable carniculture?

    939:

    Perhaps... but whenever I've spoken with anyone about Carolina bbq, vinegar is always part of the story.

    940:

    All this talk of killing animals and eating them is making me think of the tale of St. Nicholas and the three children he resurrected, after they had been killed, chopped into small pieces, and thrown in a brine barrel by a butcher.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas#/media/File:Saint_Nicolas_Heures_d'Anne_de_Bretagne.jpg

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas#/media/File:De_Grey_Hours_f.57.r_St._Nicholas.png

    941:

    @847:

    Anyone know what the available bandwidth possibilities are Mars to Earth - at a reasonable cost?

    And what do you do for that few week period around every 2 years when solar conjunction happens that interrupts Mars - Earth communications? https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/20122/mars-in-a-minute-what-happens-when-the-sun-blocks-our-signal/

    You could perhaps set up a relay system, but that then increases the delay time as well as cost.

    If we're sending enough people to Mars to create a self-sustaining colony, I'm going to do a guess and assume that a few satellites in a close orbit to the sun won't be that expensive in comparison. It will increase reply times slightly.

    I think the biggest issue with this is that it assumes any person/organization on Earth will still be reliable in 30 years.

    We aren't dealing with climate change (article in Guardian today where ice melting is actually at the worst case of the predictions the IPCC) which means assuming stability on Earth is likely to be a bad assumption to base the running of ones Mars base on.

    I'm in no way trying to downplay climate change. I think we can all realize climate change it's going to be deadly, destabilizing, and expensive.

    That being said, there will be areas that will be worse off and areas that will be better off. (And before those of us in developed nations think they are immune, just simple sea level rise is going to be costly enough that some areas will be abandoned. New York or London may get levees, but the cost/benefit for poorer coastal regions is not as favorable.) That being said, someone in Toronto or Moscow is going to have to only adapt to warmer climate, a quickening global extinction (climate change + habitat fragmentation ain't good), disruptions in the supply chain, and the global economy going pearshaped a few times. It's not going to be good, but there's going to be enough areas that will survive with relative stability.

    Martians may be having their factories controlled by climate-displaced immigrants in Alberta, but that is going to be far cheaper than actual Martians.

    942:

    Mar's orbital eccentricity is over 6 times that of Earth, so yes, the weather varies. And there's no radiation shielding. And the atmosphere is unbreathable. And it's lethally cold except during equatorial summers.

    So here's the bottom line: if we can build a sustainable-ish settlement on Mars, we can definitely build sustainable settlements on Earth using the same technology.

    I wish people would get this through their skulls: if you have to run away from climate change on Earth, you're going to die on Mars. It's worse there in every regard. If you can live on Mars, you can live on Earth, because it's the same technology, the same skill sets, and the environment is more benign here by far. If you want to solve the problems involved in living on Mars, the solutions necessarily involve solving the problems with living on a climate changing Earth.

    The road to Mars is through surviving climate change. Mars is a potential prize for learning to live on Earth, not Planet B for survivors of our failure to adapt here.

    943:

    Dude, I totally hear you!

    944:

    but whenever I've spoken with anyone about Carolina bbq, vinegar is always part of the story.

    Being in a minority community can be hard at times. But this is a trivial minority to be in compared to others. Not getting one of my favorite foods when I want that is. I'll deal.

    945:

    For those that see Mars as a lifeboat for climate change, the problem is not the climate change per se: it's other people.

    Yes, if you're rich enough, you could survive any extend of climate change on Earth, and move to New Zealand or Patagonia, like many are already doing, but "hordes of differently colored people", displaced by climate change and "envious of your good fortune" (/sarcasm, just to be clear) could always manage to find you.

    It would be a bit more difficult for them to come all the way to Mars.

    946:

    Well, I think people maybe 40 or older can survive any extent of climate change on Earth, just by throwing enough money around to make things secure for themselves and their immediate circle.

    However, to let their kids survive, in my opinion there needs to be more than just holing up somewhere nice. The production chains for many things are quite global nowadays, and if something like computer production, or rubber, or whatever, starts to fail, it's very hard for any one place to replace it quickly enough. This gets harder the more things fail - I'm not sure Aotearoa or Patagonia is self-sufficient in food items, especially if they get more people (climate refugees), and that might be difficult if there are no new computers or oil or rubber.

    Kind of like the best strategy for the rich to survive would be to make sure everybody else survives, too...

    947:

    Hog roasts were not that common when I lived in Yorkshire but here in Norfolk every outdoor event I've been to has had a hog roast. Usually served on a bread roll with stuffing. There are lots of companies like this:

    http://www.thenorfolkhogroastingcompany.co.uk/

    The main farm animals in Norfolk are pigs (mostly reared outdoors) and sheep.

    948:

    Southern Hemispherians: What do you do and like re: food cooked like this?

    In various parts of Latin America, including those south of the equator, churrasco and barbacoa are things. Not exactly like USian BBQ, but the same theme of somewhat exuberant meat meals.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbacoa

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Churrasco

    949:

    Not to say, braaivleis, which was and is widespread over southern Africa.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_variations_of_barbecue#South_Africa

    950:

    Somewhat interesting article in the Guardian about UK COVID-19 deaths and death statistics. Most isn't particularly new, but this provides some numbers.

    https://www.theguardian.com/world/2021/jan/22/uk-official-covid-death-toll-undercounted-fatalities

    951:

    Heteroleles @ 942 : " I wish people would get this through their skulls: if you have to run away from climate change on Earth, you're going to die on Mars. It's worse there in every regard... ...Mars is a potential prize for learning to live on Earth, not Planet B for survivors of our failure to adapt here."

    Don't worry. The billionaires will soon come to understand that there is no such thing as a magically-thin radiation-proof window to look out from their radiation-proof mansion at their vast expaqnse of Martian lands, or such a thing as a magically easy to use space suit to wear while outside.

    All those billionaires (and quite few millionaires) will be coming to Mars with a return ticket and they'll be using it once they really, really understand that they'll spend the rest of their lives underground, in small tunnels, if they want to stay on Mars.

    Mars and the Moon are treasure boxes full of scientific knowledge that will benefit future generations, yet to be born. I think there are people who understand this, but there aren't enough of them to "fuel" Musk's colony, and perhaps not enough room for them in a Musk-style coloy.

    952:

    Here is some graphs. It is noticeable that the number of excess deaths and hospital admissions is even higher than the first wave; as Spiegelhalter says, the testing in the first wave was a complete shambles.

    https://imgur.com/a/rBuf6FK

    953:

    Here is some graphs

    I'm just seeing a blank screen when I follow that link.

    954:

    Two words: Jet Injectors

    When I was in-processing to the military back in 1986, everyone received numerous innoculations via jet injector. I'm not sure why it has fallen out of favor, especially in times of mass innoculations. It even has a lower required knowledge level for administration after initial setup.

    955:

    This might work better: http://i.imgur.com/ktwHUOh.jpg

    And on the subject of websites that cause people to post links to them that don't work: wtf is this crap with wikipedia in recent weeks that when people post a link to an image on it, it comes out composed of two URLs mashed together with a # in the middle? Example from further up the page: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas#/media/File:Saint_Nicolas_Heures_d'Anne_de_Bretagne.jpg

    Obviously from the context the intention was to post a link to the image page, which is http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Nicolas_Heures_d'Anne_de_Bretagne.jpg

    What it came out as, though, was a link to a named anchor, named "/media/File:SaintNicolasHeuresd'Annede_Bretagne.jpg", on the page of the article, "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Nicholas". And since there is apparently no such anchor, it just goes to the top of the article page, and you have to hunt through the article until you find the right image.

    The same thing seems to have happened every time anyone has tried to post a link to a wikipedia image page in recent weeks. Except me. I just right-click on the image page and select "copy address", or alternatively right-click on the link in the article to the image page and select "copy link address", and it gives the correct result, in this case "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Saint_Nicolas_Heures_d'Anne_de_Bretagne.jpg".

    I seem to spend more time on the web these days trying to deal with stupid breakages of this kind than I do actually reading stuff. This is how people end up holding views like "I think all people who call themselves web designers should be put up against a wall and shot".

    956:

    It seems to be a browser issue. I use Firefox Chrome and when I checked the link I posted to two images of St. Nic everything worked fine.

    957:

    Thanks. I posted in haste, and copied the link it was displaying without checking, and it was not the right one.

    958:

    Those things have been mentioned several times further up the thread. They have fallen out of favour because when the jet hits the patient it generates microscopic splashbacks of random biological crap, some of which then gets stuck in the nozzle of the injector and transfers infections to the next patient.

    In my first or second year of school we were all mass vaccinated against... I dunno, some standard childhood disease or other. I was standing in the queue with the natural fearful anticipation of syringes to come, and when I got to the doctor I was most pleased to see that he didn't have any. Instead he had this big thing that looked like a ray gun, and no needles in sight. And I thought "brilliant, that must be a thing that just sprays it so hard it goes through the skin without a needle. I didn't know you could actually do that. Yippee, no needles, it isn't going to hurt."

    It hurt like an absolute fucking bastard. Much worse than any ordinary needle based injection I had had (or have had since). Maybe a lot of it was down to shock because I had expected it not to hurt at all; not only was there no needle, but I had had the idea myself after having had injections before, and was very happy that someone had actually invented one and the school was using the very latest technology to be kind and not hurt us. So when it actually hurt an exceptionally large amount I was put in the position of needing to say words which were so rude I didn't know them yet. At any rate, I put the things down as one of the biggest disappointments ever.

    959:

    ** Allen Thompson: 4 m/s = 9 mph. That's a really brisk walk.

    * Robert Prior: It is? That's my normal walking speed. I can go faster if I'm in a hurry.

    The world record holder for racewalking moved at 4.8 m/s or 10.4 mph (1,500m @ 5:12.0) to set that record. No offense, but unless you're a competitive racewalker undergoing training every time you walk somewhere, I think you have your units confused.

    960:

    There were many problems with the 1980's jet injectors. Hopefully, these have been solved. One of them was that the injection stream picked up the crud in the 1st layer of the epidermis. Just swabbing with a disinfectant before injecting wasn't enough.

    961:

    It's not you, it's wikipedia. For the last few weeks every time anyone except me posts a link to an image page it comes out in a fucked up form, as "URL of article they found the image from" + "#/media/" + "filename of image page". I don't understand how or why this is happening, but it is.

    And the behaviour I see from such links is in fact the expected behaviour. The destination of the link is in truth the article page and not the image page. The bit before the # is the actual link to the page; the bit after the # then tells the browser to scroll the page so that the bit named with the non-user-visible label "/media/File:blahblahblahwhatever" is at the top of the screen. But since no such label actually exists anywhere in the page, it goes to the top of the page, just as it normally would if there was no # and following guff in the link to begin with.

    So my browser is behaving correctly when presented with those links, but the behaviour I observe is not what the person who posted the link intended.

    My browser is also behaving correctly when I try and post a link to a wikipedia image page myself, since the link it produces is indeed the actual URL of the image page, and it does not break it by mashing it together with some other URL so that the other URL is what it actually ends up pointing to.

    The weird links are something that started happening to everyone except me at the same time, so it can't be down to people's browsers, it has to be wikipedia itself. Some fucking idiot at wikipedia has decided to break something that has worked flawlessly for years, by fucking things up so that according to the same standard that has been defining how they work for all those years, the links are now wrong. Unfortunately they are also a rather ingenious fucking idiot who has somehow managed to propagate the breakage to most people's browsers, so that not only do those browsers apparently manage to un-break the link before using it, they don't seem to be able to acquire the correct and unbroken link to post it somewhere else.

    If there's anything distinctive about my browser it is that it has rejected infection by wikipedia's link-fucker, and is still behaving in a correct and standard manner, both when following a link and when copying and reposting one. The problem is that other people have started posting broken links, so when my browser interprets them in a correct and standard manner they do not produce the result the poster intended. And the fault is wikipedia's, for doing whatever weird and stupid thing it is they've done to force departure from standards.

    962:

    Pigeon It MIGHT be windoze10 ... it's just had an "update". Is the link-fucker still screwing with the links, or not?

    963:

    Oh, I think you're just getting mixed messages from having been inside so long.

    Perhaps if you went out to get a haircut, there's this nice barber down the block, name of Sweeney Todd....

    964:

    Now, my take on colonizing Mars starts with going out to Jupiter's rings, and accelerating LARGE chunks of ice to impact Mars, increasing available water, increasing the atmosphere, and adding some heat to the planet.

    After you've done that for a few years, and things settle down, then you go start your colony.

    965:

    Oh, come on, I've lived around the US: what kind of bbq is better is True Religion, and has, I have read, led to serious physical fights.

    966:

    Ooooh, you'll have fun playing with all that nice radiation around Jupiter. What fun!

    Seriously, why not collide Ceres with Mars while you're at it? You could do a bit of precision aerobraking to slow down Ceres so it doesn't just make a big splash...

    Bwa hah hah hah hah and hah.

    967:

    I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasee, or a ragoust.

    968:

    Agreed. The problem is that, for the overwhelming majority of the 1%, other people are not part of anything in their consciousness. The rest of us, other than occasionally an annoyance or a tool, are like the servants. You know, the people who are like robots, not human beings?

    Consider the Orange Florida Man as absolutely typical of the 1%, just missing 99% of all his filters on what he says or does.

    969:

    Do forget ye olde Polynesian Earth Oven (aka imu) is effectively barbacoa, and it's mostly southern hemisphere. There's no barbecue sauce involved. However, the Polynesians make puddings in their ovens. I'd like to see the pit masters around the US do as well.

    Now let's get to talking about smoking things to preserve them, which is what barbecue originally was.

    970:

    churrasco

    Places where they serve such in the Brazilian manner, called "churrascurias", have become very popular in the US. Thinking about it, I couldn't imagine that they're not to be found everywhere and indeed it turns out that there are many in the UK. Sometimes called "rodizios" because of the circulating waiters who carve off pieces of meat onto the diner's plate.

    Very much a carnivore thing, of course.

    971:

    Assuming no life on Mars, that's an excellent plan.

    972:

    If you can move that much mass, put a Titan in orbit around Mars. The tides might even restart a magnetic field, so you could keep any air or water you introduced, and a defrosted Titan might be worthwhile.

    973:

    Now, my take on colonizing Mars starts with going out to Jupiter's rings, and accelerating LARGE chunks of ice to impact Mars, increasing available water, increasing the atmosphere, and adding some heat to the planet.

    My take on that involves deorbiting icy objects in the Kuiper belt. Admittedly, it would require a bit of patience to do the deorbiting and wait for Mars to settle down after impact.

    974:

    I found that IMPLICIT NONE helped avoid lots of issues with FORTRAN variable declaration. Sadly, I have not had need to use it since 1999, but there must be 75,000 lines on github somewhere with my name next to it. I'm not sure when IMPLICIT NONE turned up: F77?

    975:

    Hunh? Ceres is a bit over 100 times smaller than Titan, and around 600 times smaller than Mars. Moreover, it's stuck in a rather deep gravity well, rather further from Mars than Jupiter is. Ceres is closer, and not bound in the gravity well of a gas giant.

    Of course I'm being facetious. The point is, if you've got the radiation shielding and usable energy available to move stuff out of Jupiter's rings, living on Mars without doing either of these things is actually pretty easy.

    Rather worse, the the rings of Jupiter are mostly very small dust particles (15 microns in diameter on average), and a lot of it is submicrometer, which means even a PM 2.5 mask won't save you, if you were stupid enough to breath it. Per the article, ices and other volatiles get routinely vaporized by Jupiter's radiation field.

    And, just saying, but shipping dust up and out of the Jovian system to transport it to Mars is rather more meaningless than shipping coals to Newcastle giving money to Trump.

    976:

    Fortran 90, actually. Modern Fortran (95 and onwards) is a much safer, more advanced and productive language - and rather more than C++, as well, though their strengths don't overlap much - without the massive costs of compilation and usually with smaller binaries.

    977:

    Oh, come on, I've lived around the US: what kind of bbq is better is True Religion, and has, I have read, led to serious physical fights.

    Some of us are more civil in our disagreements.

    978:

    It's playing JavaScript tricks. If you've got JavaScript enabled and you click on an image, it displays it as an overlay on the same page with pageurl#imageid as the name. If you don't have it enabled, clicking the image takes you to the image's own page.

    If JavaScript is enabled and you launch a pageurl#imageid link, the page understands this and opens with the overlay displayed.

    The fun comes, of course, when someone with JavaScript enabled clicks on the image and copies the URL; then someone with JavaScript disabled tries to follow it.

    If you have JavaScript enabled and want to get the proper URL of the image's page, the best solution I've found is to right-click the image and select "Copy link location".

    979:

    No, no, they picture themselves in the huge apartments on the cliffs, looking down at their happy Mars-adapted workers, out in dem Marscotton fields, singin' an' dancin'.

    980:

    That ain't gonna happen!

    981:

    Or what I refer to as the 100-yard nonchalant dash.

    982:

    Let us not forget that the reason for bbq is that the meat is really not good, and it takes that long to make it edible.

    I just &ltsatire&gttadore&lt/satire&gt some idiot telling you to get the best brisket you can buy for bbq.

    983:

    " Admin sucks time and mental/emotional energy away from the primary task. (IMO, that's the real reason behind the Peter Principle: You get someone good at 'job X' and you shove them into admin where they do zero'job X' - no wonder they suck!)"

    That's not Admin, that's management.

    Standard renumeration (and respect) schemes in large organizations are hierarchical: usually each boss earns more than the people who report to them. So in many organizations, to 'advance' their careers the best programmers stop being programmers and become managers. Which is wrong in all ways.

    This problem has written about consistently since regards IT at least the 70s (the book The Mythical Man Month looks at it), and fighting it was one of the motivations of the Agile Programming 'revolution' of the late 90s/early 00s. The health sector fights similar issues - I know a surgeon/professor who's struggling to be able to actually do surgery and teaching, and not just be a manager - but they tend to respect that a specialist should be paid well a a respected for just being good at their job.

    The real problem is that our social structures like to reward "being boss" more than "doing work". Our monkey brains just tend to do it that way. Organisations that respect the experts doing work more than the person managing them do exist, but they're few and far between. And implementing better AI isn't going to fix that.

    984:

    [g] If any of my old COBOL code is still running - and for all I know, it may be - there's a ton of PERFORM 1000-DUMMY-PARAGRAPH THROUGH 1000-DUMMY-PARAGRAPH-EXIT WHILE all the conditions I need to loop through an array and scan it.

    985:

    "BARBEQUE! ...Southern Hemispherians: What do you do and like re: food cooked like this?"

    Depends what you mean by "like this".

    The USA BBQ idea of spending a long time slow cooking tough food to give a tender results is the same approach as the Maori Hangi.

    A Hangi is an earth oven. Build a small bonfire, with big stones in it (a small knowledge of which types of stones split explosively in fires is useful here). Bury the hot embers and stones, with food wrapped in leaves buried with it. Dig it up 8 or 12 hours later. Eat the tender, falling-apart goodness that comes out.

    That's not a "smoking over a fire" tradition. And it's very much a "you cook for everyone" tradition - it's for feeding dozens of people.

    986:

    n many organizations, to 'advance' their careers the best programmers stop being programmers and become managers

    One second order effect is that you end up with a lot of senior technical staff who are what's left when all the smart people move into management.

    One reason I prefer smaller companies is that when you work directly for the guy that owns the company there's no problems being paid more than my manager (it happens, not often, but owning a small company does not necessarily mean raking in lots of money). The platonic ideal of this is working on the hobby project of a billionaire (like the old google X projects, Makani etc) or even better working on the obsession of a billionaire (I met someone who worked on privacy/secrecy software for a reasonably well know "foundation" that was effectively a billionaire with a few small donations from people like me). Those often pay ridiculously well and have insane perks but require you to be very tuned in to what the boss wants (not what they say they want, what they actually want).

    Perks like "come to my wedding, we're having it on the boss's yacht and he's sending his jet out to pick people up". I'm... not that sort of person, but thanks for the invite.

    987:

    Off-topic: sleepingroutine, I'd really like to have an off-list discussion with you about Putin, Navalny, and actual Russian politics, not "as presented by western media".

    Moderators, please feel free to give him my real email.

    988:

    Talking of C-19 Would people here like to devise a suitable punishment ( G&S "Mikado"-style ) for Utter evil tossers like this please, pretty please?

    989:

    We would have discovered this issue about 1980'ish. It was after said program had been ported from PDP-11 Fortran (under RT-11?) to DECsystem-10 FORTRAN under TOPS-10, and then running in that environment for a couple of years without any reported problems.

    We were responsible just upgrading the FORTRAN compileer and checking the new version didn't introduce any problems and the compiler spat out these warning messages...I don't believe IMPLICIT NONE was even an option back then.

    The new compiler version appeared to generate - by default - an implicit warning messsage about longer-than-standard variable names. We were quite young and naive as back then - I think the majority of our team was aged in their early to mid-20s - and quite horrified when this was discovered as to the possible ramifications of what undiscovered issues lurked in old code. Probably the first time we had realised what health consequences there was in our job.

    My involvement at the time was with the installation and testing of the new FORTRAN compiler but then had to call in the support team for the various FORTRAM programmes we had to help sort it out, and also generated a thorough review (once we discovered the root cause) to see how many other FORTRAN programs we had that included the IF (condition) THEN .. construct in it.

    I left that job about 1984, and don't think I ever had to deal with FORTRAN code ever again.

    990:

    Traditionally they're convicted then deported. But since in this case almost anywhere is safer from covid than the UK, Australia is out and you might have to ship them off to some third world hellhole like the USA.

    Or you could make them do community service, disinfecting everything that Boris touches seems appropriate.

    991:

    @ Naila: Thanks. Santa Claus- you are one scary mofo- creating pickle zombies. GROSS!

    @ Mike C, Allen T, Elderly C, Icehawk, and anybody I left out: thank you for the BBQ info.

    @ Everybody: re: Mars: I read recently (too lazy to dig up the source) that an estimate of Martian CO2 says there's only enough to kick up the surface pressure to about 70 mb from its current 6 mb. I like the Kuiper Belt Object idea, too, and would enjoy seeing how many 10 km iceteroids would be needed to create a 200+ mb O2 atmosphere, how much and where (unless it's Titan) you'd get N2 you'd need for a buffer gas, and without a 1 b+ CO2 atmosphere how much super-greenhouse gas you'd need to keep Mars at say, 285k. I'm one for cooking Mars with solar collectors very close to the sun, and raising the temperature to well above the (Terran surface) boiling point to volatilize whatever volatiles are there down to several hundred meters- (there may be a lot of H2O ice down there). *The math to calculate how long a continuous irradiated 1 m2 surface at say, 400k would take to warm up the Martian crust down to the 273k (or 373k) isotherm is beyond me.

    @ Greg Tingey: Over on the David Brin blog there's a guy who's downplaying/denying the Uyghur Genocide and seems like an apologist for the PRC government.

    *Think: teleport Mars to Mercury's orbit. How long would it take for the water to come out and boil?

    992:

    "and would enjoy seeing how many 10 km iceteroids would be needed to create a 200+ mb O2 atmosphere, how much and where (unless it's Titan) you'd get N2 you'd need for a buffer gas, and without a 1 b+ CO2 atmosphere how much super-greenhouse gas you'd need to keep Mars at say, 285k."

    Ask and ye shall receive:

    There are three main methods currently being discussed for terraforming Mars: the use of super-duper greenhouse gases like PFCs), large orbiting mirrors to concentrate sunlight, and impacting mars with frozen ammonia asteroids.

    And here are also three main deal breakers for Martian colonization: poisonous soils chock full of toxic perchlorates, lack of a protective magnetic field, and the absence of nitrogen as an atmospheric buffer gas and life sustaining n-cycle.

    If you can get it to rain on Mars, the toxics will eventually wash out of the soil. Establishing an atmosphere will provide most of the protection against radiation. Though a magnetic field would prevent long term loss of atmosphere it could be replenished as needed anyways.

    The big problem is lack of nitrogen. It exists in Martian soil and regolith, but the energy costs required to release it in sufficient quantities are insanely large. So the nitrogen will have to come from elsewhere in the form of a bombardment of frozen ammonia asteroids. Ammonia is itself a GHG and the impacts will release vast amounts of CO2 and water from Martian soil. Mirrors and PFCs could be used as adjuncts to this main process . How many? Here are some quick calculations for the amount of frozen ammonia needed to transform Mars:

  • Earth's Atm. Percent Volume (approximate)

    a. Nitrogen (N2) 78.09% b. Oxygen (O2) 20.95% c. Argon (Ar) 0.93% d. Air (with trace gases) 100.00%

  • Molecular weight of components (approximate)

    a. Nitrogen (N2) 28.01 kg/mole

    b. Oxygen (O2) 32.00 kg/mole

    c. Argon (Ar) 39.95 kg/mole

    d. Air (with trace gases) 28.97 kg/mole

  • Relative Mass (approximate)

    a. Nitrogen (N2) 21.87 kg

    b. Oxygen (O2) 6.70 kg

    c. Argon (Ar) 0.37 kg

    d. Air (with trace gases) 28.95 kg

  • Percent Mass (approximate)

    a. Nitrogen (N2) 75.56%

    b. Oxygen (O2) 23.16%

    c. Argon (Ar) 1.28%

    d. Air (with trace gases) 100.00%

  • By Total Mass (approximate)

    a. Nitrogen (N2) 3.85E+18 kg

    b. Oxygen (O2) 1.18E+18 kg

    c. Argon (Ar) 6.55E+16 kg

    d. Air (with trace gases) 5.10E+18 kg

  • Martian Atm. mass needed to create Standard Air Pressure (at Mars gravity = 0.375 g)

    a. Nitrogen (N2) 1.03E+19 kg

    b. Oxygen (O2) 3.15E+18 kg

    c. Argon (Ar) 1.75E+17 kg

    d. Air (with trace gases) 1.36E+19 kg

  • Ammonia Requirements

    a. Ammonia (NH3) 34.00 kg/mole

    b. Required mass of NH3 1.25E+19 kg

    c. Density of frozen NH3 820 kg/m^3

    d. Volume of frozen NH3 1.52E+16 m^3

    1.52E+07 km^3
  • Relative size of frozen NH3 Volume

    a. Radius of NH3 sphere 153.71 km

    95.30 miles

    (about the distance from New York to Philly)

    b. Radius of Ceres 476.00 km

    295.12 miles
  • The amount of frozen hydrogen estimated above represents about 1% of the volume of the asteroid belt. If insufficient ammonia is found in the belt, there will certainly be enough in Saturn's rings or in the Trojans associated with the Jovian worlds.

    Mars' atmosphere can be made to retain heat with PFCs, but what about retaining the atmosphere itself? It is the atmosphere that provides the bulk of protection against incoming radiation and cosmic rays, but over millennia the newly built atmosphere will be eroded away by solar wind. So, either the atmosphere needs to be replenished or protected by a magnetic field.

    Orbiting mirrors can be used to generate enough power for a magnetic field:

    http://nextbigfuture.com/2014/10/brute-force-terraforming-of-mars-moons.html

    "A superconducting magnetic loop, wrapped around the Martian equator, can be used, powered up to a magnetic field energy of ~620,000 trillion joules (620 petajoules), by about 12.4 seconds of energy from the solar-mirrors."

    993:

    Not really Covid-19 or Mars but ...

    Australian animals poop cubed turds?

    https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2021/01/how-do-wombats-poop-cubes-scientists-get-bottom-mystery

    994:

    Australian animals poop cubed turds?

    This isn't even in the top ten Weird Australian Animal Facts... but yes, wombat poop comes out in cubes.

    Perhaps, as the author suggests, so it won't roll away? Or maybe it's a sexual boasting signal to other wombats? Or maybe it's just another Weird Australian Thing.

    995:

    Hay, for wombats that's a square meal. What do you expect?

    996:

    Yes, and pademelons are known for building little forts from wombat poo. If you come across such a structure while bushwalking, you must follow strict Talk Like a Pirate Day protocols, especially if you spot a pademelon with a cutlass or wearing an eyepatch.

    997:

    A fortress of wombat poo? Do you have a picture?

    998:

    Moz @ 990 😁

    999:

    Oh heavens no. Anyone who photographs such a structure is immediately surrounded by pademelons and quokkas waving little cutlasses and tiny flintlock pistols, demanding the film, memory card or other media. One might find one's eye put out by a very small tricorn hat, wielded at high velocity by an overflying sugar glider. And that's before the koalas can bring their wee brass pivot guns to bear.

    1000:

    "Anyone who photographs such a structure is immediately surrounded by pademelons and quokkas waving little cutlasses and tiny flintlock pistols, demanding the film, memory card or other media."

    Where is Manfred MacX when you need him?

    1001:

    Parenthetically: my favourite dumb suggestion for why we should build a colony or exploration base on Titan (yes, really) is that there are lots of hydrocarbons there that we could burn for energy.

    I saw this brilliant idea advanced by an idiot with a PhD in one of the sciences who'd obviously slept through every chemistry class. Not to mention not having worked out that to burn hydrocarbons for energy you need an oxidizer, which Titan appears to be slightly short of ...

    1002:

    Would people here like to devise a suitable punishment ( G&S "Mikado"-style ) for Utter evil tossers like this please, pretty please?

    Indonesia has already got it covered: people convicted of breaking mask/quarantine/distancing regs get put to work digging graves and burying COVID victims. As it's a muslim country they have to be buried within 24 hours, in a simple cloth wrap rather than a coffin. (Yes, the burial crew have PPE. I suspect handling corpses may cure the denialists: if it doesn't, nothing else will.)

    1003:

    Charlie Love it! Meanwhile, a tory MP has shown that being complete fuckwits is not confined to the Corbyn clan.

    1004:

    you could make them do community service

    Years ago I worked for a municipality, alongside someone assigned to do community service. He actually slowed work down and lowered quality, because he didn't give a shit, broke equipment (either from not caring or actively trying, couldn't prove anything), and small high-value items would go missing…

    Community service is absolutely not what you want in a task that's actually important, unless you have people running the program who know how to get useful work out of reluctant/oppositional bodies.

    1005:

    "Community service is absolutely not what you want in a task that's actually important, unless you have people running the program who know how to get useful work out of reluctant/oppositional bodies."

    The Indonesians have form where knowing "how to get useful work out of reluctant/oppositional bodies" is concerned. Normally I'd be opposed to their methods, but I rather like the idea where COVIDiots are concerned. "See that body? Dead. Of COVID. Dress it for burial and dig the grave."

    1006:
    In my first or second year of school we were all mass vaccinated against... I dunno... Yippee, no needles, it isn't going to hurt."

    It hurt like an absolute fucking bastard. Much worse than any ordinary needle based injection I had had (or have had since).

    You know, that probably made it work better, in the sense of provoking a quick, strong immune response. Damaged tissue and activated pain receptors release chemical signals that attract and activate cells of the immune system.

    Note, I am absolutely NOT suggesting that subjecting children to unnecessary pain is a sensible way of reducing suffering.

    1007:

    Re: 'Good reports can make history.'

    Just finished reading this report - thanks!

    OOC - to what extent were the recommendations of this report acted upon post-WW2? Also wonder whether Eric Lander has read this report which still makes sense 75 years later.

    Looked up his bio on Wikipedia - he's also authored a few books - 'Science Is Not Enough' looks particularly interesting.

    1008:
    OOC - to what extent were the recommendations of this report acted upon post-WW2? Also wonder whether Eric Lander has read this report which still makes sense 75 years later.

    Extensively. It mapped out the structure of government-supported research for the next 50 years and is still influential today. The NSF (National Science Foundation) was created as a result of this report. It is also influential in the way that NIH (National Institutes of Health) support research, although NIH do more in-house research than NSF.

    Re Erik Lander. Here's something I posted elsewhere on him:

    I knew Erik Lander many years ago, and I am glad of this appointment.

    In 1984 I joined the lab of Bob Horvitz as a postdoc. Erik was there as a visiting researcher. It was evident right from the start that he was whip-smart. And very aware of it. But I will grant him this: I have known many arrogant people whose arrogance had no sound basis. Erik is not one of those. He is arrogant, but he has a right to it.

    Erik was a mathematician and a Harvard faculty member. (So he must have done something fairly notable as a mathematician -- Harvard does not hire mediocrities.) Erik was concerned about his place in history, or at least about his place among scholars. He told us that historically great mathematicians have usually made their great breakthroughs before the age of 30. Since Erik was approaching his 30s at this time, he figured that his chance at greatness as a mathematician had already gone. However, he noted that biology is not like that. Biologists have often made great advances late in life. So he decided to switch to biology. That's why he was in Bob's lab. (I'm sure Erik himself could, and probably did, give a smoother version of this, but that's the gist as I remember it.)

    I am not sure what Harvard department his appointment was in, what his rank was, or whether he had tenure, but I do know that he taught a class on negotiation in the Business School. So, this is the third thing to know about Erik (1. He's intelligent, 2. He's ambitious): 3. he is a good negotiator. I say that not just because he taught negotiation at Harvard biz, but because I have seen Erik bargain, and he is very, very good at it. Erik understands The Art of the Deal much better than a certain person I can think of who claims that expertise.

    One day he came in to the lab and told us all, "We won the Olympics". It transpired that Erik had been working as a consultant with a major TV network (there were only three, then) preparing a bid for the contract to cover the upcoming Olympics. The President of the host nation had made promises that no network covering the event could afford to fulfil. Erik had figured out a way to structure the bid so that the President got what he needed, and the network also got what they wanted, with little risk to either. And his network's bid won.

    Around this time pulsed-field gel electrophoresis was invented by Cantor and Schwarz. Some of you already know what that is -- for those who don't, the only important thing is that it requires a switching device that changes the direction in which electrical current flows. These devices are now commercially available, but they were not at the time. We had a new computer that Bob had just bought, and I realized that we could use the printer interface of this computer to control current flow, with the addition of a little external circuitry. Mike Finney and I showed Erik how to design and breadboard simple digital circuits. Erik built it, and soon we were running PF gels with the new computer.

    Now, in those days a computer was a major chunk of capital equipment. Eventually Bob got tired of us using his new computer to run gels. Mike and his brother John designed and built a controller run by an internal microprocessor.

    Those of you who have spent a lot of time in the lab have probably met This Guy: You don't want them within 3 meters of your bench. Wherever they go, experiments fail, along with electrical shorts and floods materializing. (To be clear, "this guy" can be a person of any gender.) In the Horvitz Lab, Erik was This Guy. The condition is not necessarily permanent. (Disclosure: for many years I was This Guy, but, in the immortal words of Monty Python and the Holy Grail, "I got better.") But I suspect Erik probably still is. I think he got around the problem by ceasing to be the guy at the bench and becoming the guy who supplies ideas to the guys at the bench.

    So, the Horvitz Lab not providing enough scope for Erik's ambitions, he eventually moved across the street to the Whitehead Institute, where he wangled a position running the genomics effort. He played a major role in getting the Human Genome sequenced ahead of time and under budget. He also made important contributions to human genetics, for instance mathematical tools for genome-wide association studies. Undoubtedly he has done other important things that I don't know about.

    Few things could surprise me less than that Erik would become the first cabinet-level science advisor in US history. He'll be great at it.

    I would bet quite a lot that Erik has read The Endless Frontier.

    1009:

    You mean they weren't suggesting containerizing it and shipping it back to Earth?

    The story I liked was one a few years back - this was a news story - that a new astronomical discovery would assure money being pumped into space travel, since a nebula had been found that had alcohol, so all fraternities and their trust funds would pump money in....

    1010:

    When you speak of "that guy", that's what I've read of theoretical physicists, that the better they are, the further they need to be kept away from a lab. There was a story that in the thirties, a famous physicist, might have been Heisenburg, was on a train in Europe, and the train stopped for half an hour, and 3.5 klicks away, in a lab, they broke a very large and expensive piece of glass labware....

    1011:

    When you speak of "that guy", that's what I've read of theoretical physicists, that the better they are, the further they need to be kept away from a lab.

    Like all stereotypes, this one needs to be approached with caution. Einstein invented some practical devices before becoming famous as a Theoretical Physicist. Fermi became famous for experimental physics well before developing his theory of beta decay (which is still a useful approximation today). Oppenheimer was a brilliant theoretical physicist before taking over the Manhattan Project, where, of course, a grasp of practical devices was essential. Feynman is famous now mainly as a theoretician, but at the Manhattan Project he was in charge of computing (with IBM devices that were not yet what we would call computers).

    1012:

    I saw this brilliant idea advanced by an idiot with a PhD in one of the sciences who'd obviously slept through every chemistry class. Not to mention not having worked out that to burn hydrocarbons for energy you need an oxidizer, which Titan appears to be slightly short of ...

    I've got one word for you: plastics. Titanian cryoplastics. They're worth going a billion miles for.

    Actually, for settlement purposes, if you want more free energy than you'd know what to do with, Io's definitely the moon to settle. It's got as much electromagnetic and geothermal energy as anyone could want, and it's all sustainable, without greenhouse gases to speak of.

    1013:

    to whitroth @987: Sounds intriguing, I would like to try out.

    1014:

    If they haven't given it to you yet, you can get hold of me - there's an email link on my writing website, mrw.5-cent.us

    1015:

    Re: 'I would bet quite a lot that Erik has read The Endless Frontier'

    Good (reassuring) to know - thanks!

    1016:

    Oppenheimer was a brilliant theoretical physicist before taking over the Manhattan Project, where, of course, a grasp of practical devices was essential.

    Well there was the story where he first said it could be done with 100 people. Give or take.

    oops

    1017:
    Well there was the story where he first said it could be done with 100 people. Give or take.

    oops

    Smart, practical people make mistakes. And learn from them.

    1018:

    "to burn hydrocarbons for energy you need an oxidizer, which Titan appears to be slightly short of"

    Simple, so you bring it in to Mars and mix it up with all those nice juicy perchlorates. Carefully.

    1019:

    Re: 'The real problem is that our social structures like to reward "being boss" more than "doing work". Our monkey brains just tend to do it that way.'

    Agree with the first sentence, disagree with the second. Social structures/systems vary considerably across cultures whereas the mix of 'monkey brains' is pretty consistent. Whichever ape makes it to the top, makes the rules re: rewards for those directly under their command as well as becomes a model for outsiders looking for a 'successful' example to mimic (to become as successful). Confusion between style and substance.

    'Organisations that respect the experts doing work more than the person managing them do exist, but they're few and far between. And implementing better AI isn't going to fix that.'

    Freeing the experts/people actually doing the work from 'admin/paperwork' would save time and reduce aggravation. There's a slew of admin/sales/project management software out there, i.e., in just about every corp office and it wastes hours every week to fill out the damned forms ... which the Suits feel are critical to corp planning. If this is truly so - that this info is critically important, - then I feel I'm perfectly justified in demanding more resources being put into developing an admin AI.

    Just read the below - yeah, also applicable to non-programming/computer project work.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mythical_Man-Month

    1020:
    Freeing the experts/people actually doing the work from 'admin/paperwork' would save time and reduce aggravation. There's a slew of admin/sales/project management software out there, i.e., in just about every corp office and it wastes hours every week to fill out the damned forms ... which the Suits feel are critical to corp planning. If this is truly so - that this info is critically important, - then I feel I'm perfectly justified in demanding more resources being put into developing an admin AI.

    It sounds like what you're trying to say is, "Better AI would be better, and might reduce the amount of nonproductive busy-work productive people do. Therefore we should continue trying to improve AI."

    Against whom do you imagine you're arguing?

    1021:

    community service, disinfecting everything that Boris touches

    The Indonesians have a much better idea than I did, but I'd like to point out that disinfecting Boris is useful but not essential, and any improvement in that area would be better than the current situation. My feeling is that if it inconvenienced Boris and slowed him down ... well, it would go against "never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake" but given the casualty count Boris is racking up it might be a good idea anyway.

    1022:

    ...immediately surrounded by pademelons and quokkas waving little cutlasses and tiny flintlock pistols...

    Just as illustrated by Ursula Vernon, no doubt. "...You're a shrew."

    Digger is naturally one of a thoughtful reader's sources for information on wombats.

    1023:

    Agreed.

    But he was off by a square amount. Not a zero.

    I'm betting there were some intense debates in Washington early in that project.

    1024:

    But he was off by a square amount. Not a zero.

    I don't understand that remark at all.

    1025:

    Re: 'Against whom do you imagine you're arguing?'

    With/against whomever is currently developing the marketing/sales strategy for AI companies. Guessing that with the tech skew among commenters here, there's probably at least one currently working at such an org -- maybe they could make a 'suggestion'. Probably not use this as the primary product positioning, just casually mention it in passing to a middle manager or two.

    OOC - just what is the current state of 'programming languages' anyway - converging into a universal language or diverging - and why? Human languages borrow from each other - do computer languages?

    1026:
    OOC - just what is the current state of 'programming languages' anyway - converging into a universal language or diverging - and why?

    I'm far from an expert on languages, but I get the impression of a lot of both going on. python and R are very popular in the (mostly academic) circles in which I move. C of course is the old standard, C++ is also used a lot, if you need an object-oriented C and don't mind the absurd complexity. Java, I get the impression, is waning in popularity. I also see frequent mention of ruby, and some of my colleagues have been vigorously urging me to use julia.

    Human languages borrow from each other - do computer languages?

    Absolutely. There are movements in language evolution. The first languages (not counting assembly, which is a direct representation of the machine opcodes) were Basic and Fortran (=Formula Translation), which were, in their initial incarnations, very simple languages that allowed you to tell the computer to do things in a certain order, which could be modified by conditions. Then Structural Programming came along (I think it was largely started by Algol, a now mostly forgotten language, but its innovations have become universal). Then more recent has been object-oriented programming. I think the first widely used OO language was SmallTalk, but it, like Algol, has faded away. Still, most new languages recently are OO (including python, Java, and C++, which I mentioned above), or at least can be. Then a more recent movement is towards functional languages. I don't know much of that landscape, although I do a lot of coding in one of them, the Wolfram language (the language of Mathematica).

    There are others here who know much more about this than I do.

    1027:

    Java is still widely used in systems integration, arguably it is "the" language for that, and in some ways people see that being what it is "for". Integration engines with non-java APIs exist but are less common, though I suspect that's changing.

    I think that javascript is the language consuming more CPU cycles on more devices than any other, by some wide margin. People write app servers in node.js so their client/server architecture is all in the same syntax (although quite different APIs, given that clients still depend on the DOM in the browser). But even app severs in .net/C++/C#, java, or whatever push out client code in javascript.

    It bears repeating for non-developers: java and javascript are unrelated, it's just that both came out around the same time and both were different approaches to code portability. Java went the same way as perl, python and friends: you need to install a runtime to use it locally, whereas javascript is simply built in to the user's web browser (or these days a standalone interpreter or app server API).

    I know of at least one integration engine with a javascript API, though as I understand it the heavy lifting interfaces (the ones that support thousands of messages per second) are still written in java, and so is the platform itself.

    I think that most major languages support different styles. Even the explicitly OO languages where everything is an object mostly support first class functions, closures and so on, while non-OO languages generally provide some sort of entity that works if used as a class or an object. And this is indeed an outcome of sharing and borrowing features from each other. There might be more enforcement of higher order patterns (MVC for instance) in specific implementations.

    1028:

    @ Duffy: Thank you very much! If we're ever to meet, I'll buy you drinks and/or dinner. (OGH: please feel free to reveal my email to Duffy., or however it's supposed to be done if I'm to do it.) I'd read this Next Big Future article years ago and forgotten it.

    Here's some math I CAN do: If it takes 50 years to thaw out/cook Mars with 17.5 PW, then (if math correct) if you had 10% overall efficiency converting solar energy into a directed laser at appropriate wavelength then this could be accomplished with about three dozen, 400 km2 O'Neill-type powersats at 0.01 AU. (This is also within an ~order of magnitude or two what's needed to produce an artificial Gg micro-black hole to power a starship.)

    I'd also expect that there'd be enough perchlorates available to manufacture the PFCs super-greenhouse gases. Assuming there's enough F on Mars to manufacture them (https://ntrs.nasa.gov/citations/20160003503), there's enough S (https://pubs.geoscienceworld.org/msa/elements/article-abstract/6/2/107/137846/Sulfur-on-Mars?redirectedFrom=fulltext) to make SF6 (23k times better as greenhouse gas than CO2).

    @ OGH: Re: Titan colony: http://toughsf.blogspot.com/2017/08/how-to-live-on-other-planets-saturn.html

    @ Everyone Re" Paperwork and AI: You don't improve the situation by giving it to AI, you improve the situation by reducing the amount of paperwork that anyone/thing has to do; otherwise, the amount of paperwork that still requires humans to do will increase again to an unpleasant level. It's like all the free time we DON'T have do to the development of automation and computing- instead of doing crap in 1/5 of the time, we're given 5 times more crap to do in the same time (but not 5 times more money)...It's also similar to traffic congestion- if you want to reduce it: you don't build more and better roads, you get people to stop driving as much on the roads you already have.

    1029:

    Java, I get the impression, is waning in popularity.

    It is big in large company real time DB applications. If it is rising, holding steady, or shrinking I don't know.

    1030:

    He thought 100 people. If you miss by a factor of 10 that's a big miss but not unusual in combined research/production moon shot type programs.

    He was off by 100x100 then times 13.

    So really off by more than the square of his original estimate.

    1031:

    He was off by 100x100 then times 13.

    According to Wikipedia, the Manhattan Project employed 130,000. So he was off by a factor of 1300, which is definitely less than the square of 100.

    1032:

    “I think the first widely used OO language was SmallTalk, but it, like Algol, has faded away. Still, most new languages recently are OO (including python, Java, and C++, which I mentioned above), or at least can be“

    Smalltalk - no capital ‘t’, please.

    And it is most definitely still in use. I’ve used it to make very nice living for nearly 40 years. I’ve written pedagogical systems, intelligence systems, financial systems, a medium-hard real-time operating system, kids learning systems (including Scratch for Raspberry Pi, something used by millions of kids all over the world and off it), weather monitoring systems, and the network handling communication system that is used to run several national/state level power grids. I’ve worked on developing the language implementation, and on the design of hardware to better support it, and managing the project teams involved in all the above.

    So yeah, still in use.

    It’s the only programming system good enough to be worth critiquing. Possibly, just possibly, excepting Lisp.

    C++ is history repeated as tragedy. Java is history repeated as farce.

    1033:

    And I'd like to point out that it wasn't me who suggested using community service to disinfect anything. You're replying to the wrong person.

    Personally, I think relying on community service (of the imposed kind, not the volunteer kind) to disinfect anything would be ineffective. Resentful workers would skive off as much as they could get away with, or actively sabotage it.

    1034:

    instead of doing crap in 1/5 of the time, we're given 5 times more crap to do in the same time

    This, except that (in education at least) the crap is increasing faster than the productivity gains.

    1035:

    It was me, I was critiquing your reply saying that hampering Boris is a bad idea. You've obviously forgotten what you replied to.

    1036:

    Returning to almost the starting subject ... How are people managing, as we approach a full year of C-19? If it wasn't for my allotment, I think I would have gone really bonkers ... what it's like for people in "high-rise" flats I shudder to think. Charlie, 3 (?) floors up in the New Town - how are you surviving - getting out - at all? I've noticed that my neighbours small daughters ( 10 & 8 ) are getting very quiet & subdued, which isn't like them, at all ...... Oddly enough, those of us who are genuinely older, who have either had the first vaccine jab, or have an appointment lined-up are probably better-off than those in - say - the 45=65 age grouping.

    1037:

    I'm loving it.

    My partner is home all day. I go out and get her a coffee at lunch. Sometimes we walk the dogs instead or take chairs and have lunch and coffee overlooking the beach.

    I hardly see a mask. I have to have data on my phone so I can sign in wherever I go, but apart from that there's no day to day impact.

    I can't do a lot of things that I wouldn't want to do, like go to a wedding with more than 300 guests, and it's a great excuse to refuse cinema invitations.

    I would like to go back to New Zealand at some point. That's looking unlikely. There was a brief moment when you could travel from NZ back to Australia, so I got my son back after his 3 week trip to NZ blew out to a year. That was hard while he was away, but I got lots of updates and he was obviously having a ball over there.

    1038:

    Charlie, 3 (?) floors up in the New Town - how are you surviving - getting out - at all?

    I'm mostly not getting out. I took a rubbish bag out to the communal bins last Saturday: have to do the same again today. I've been shopping (locally, just up the street) once in the past three weeks: getting online supermarket delivery, have cut back actual human in-person food-foraging trips to "stuff that we can't get from the supermarket has now run out", rather than "I need to stretch my legs, might as well swing by a shop and re-stock".

    It's pretty grim: luckily we've got a big flat, but we're both physically unfit (gym's closed, can't think why -- and not walking, either) and gradually going out of our skulls with boredom. And demotivation. And depression.

    Edinburgh is doing better overall than the Scottish average, and Scotland is doing much better on morbidity/mortality stats than England, Wales, or NI, but as the current UK average death toll is nearly double the US death toll that's not saying much.

    So self-imposed house arrest until the vaccine gets here seems like the lesser evil. (Official letter said "by end of April". But the latest news about squabbling over contracts between AZ and EU customers, and threats of EU export restrictions, do not give me the warm fuzzies: I expect our asshole Prime Minister to get all combative and kneecap the UK's supply of anything made in the EU, like the Pfizer vaccine.)

    1039:

    This weekend is going to be tough. In a normal year at the time of posting I'd be somewhere in between Kings Cross and Euston stations heading for North Wales and a reunion. Means I won't get to see several friends for at least another year.

    I found out several years ago that I rely on lip-reading for a lot of my understanding of speech. Trying to have a conversation with someone wearing a mask gets very stressful so I've been avoiding places where masked interaction is likely.

    One plus is that I took early retirement at Easter 2019 so haven't had to deal with any work issues, the downside is that I was going to purge my belongings (do I really need to hang on to 20 year old computers and monitors, or the old fridge?) and move last summer. The local tip shut for a long time and when it did reopen wouldn't take most of the stuff I need to get rid of so that's stalled.

    My Ingress playing has stalled. The local Smurfs were mostly Science Park workers so are almost all working from home. I get the occasional drive-by but otherwise everythign local tends to be green already.

    According to Boris I should get my first vaccine shot "by March" so hopefully by the summer I'll be able to do stuff again. The tip seems to have started taking everything but you need to book a slot so I'm trying to summon the enthusiasm for that again.

    TLDR: Twitchy. Very, very twitchy...

    1040:

    Also, wondering when the Home Office are going to suggest "vaccine cards". Purely voluntary of course, you just won't be allowed to participate in certain activities without one, and the machine readable biometrics are just to prevent fraud.

    1041:

    Vaccine cards make sense for travel, specifically trains, planes, coaches, and possibly ferries. Also hotels and conference centres. Maybe for events where social distancing isn't practical, e.g. pubs, clubs, theatres, opera, indoor sports grounds, concerts.

    (Not needed in the UK for medical practices because they've got access to patient health records.)

    I can see them being mandatory for crossing national borders, like visas: alternatively, being optional, but with a two week quarantine requirement if you don't have one.

    1042:

    Given that I'm on the Pfizer jab ... Actually, just for once, the EU seem to have screwed up by the numbers - hopefully the technocrats will solve the problem before any more politicians sound their mouths off. I suggest that you go to the local gardens/parks, at least once a week - both of you - especially if it's a fresh day, but without rain.

    Vulch TLDR: Twitchy. Very, very twitchy... Yes, that sums it up.

    I sincerely hope Vaccine Cards become A Thing ... I might even make it to Germany in August, then.

    1043:
    Returning to almost the starting subject ...

    How are people managing, as we approach a full year of C-19?

    Dilbert

    Actually, I had a great year. Completed my second PhD, bought a new apartment (which I love), got my application for Canadian permanent residency in, got a paper submitted and started work on another.

    Also, I discovered that grocery pickup is better than in-store shopping, and that I can cut my own hair.

    1044:

    If we do get vaccine cards I expect them to be ID cards by the back door. They won't ever go away and will start getting function creep.

    1045:

    I still have my old yellow card (WHO International Certificate of Inoculation and Vaccination, in English and French), which was needed for smallpox, yellow fever and typhus fever (and, later, cholera). I needed it for international travel from shortly after birth.

    1046:

    The leaders of the free world, France and Germany, have universal ID cards. Many other less-exalted nations also have them, Japan for instance. I don't know if there is any function creep involved with them them than proof of identity.

    1047:

    My Ingress playing has stalled. The local Smurfs were mostly Science Park workers so are almost all working from home. I get the occasional drive-by but otherwise everythign local tends to be green already.

    Yeah, mine too. I'm keeping my streaks going, and keeping a certain portal a few thousand kilometres away recharged, but otherwise there's 40 green P8s and nearly 30 green P7s within half a kilometre of home, and nothing blue in sight.

    1048:

    We don't need vaccine cards. All Canadians have provincial health insurance cards which (depending on the province) link them to their own total, digitized, health record.

    Some provinces are a bit lagging in interconnectivity but the biggest ones have it running in most places.

    1049:

    The problem with ID cards in the UK is basically: the Home Office.

    During WW2 they were imposed but didn't get much pushback because there was a war on. After the war the Home Office kept them, and the police used failure to show one on demand as an excuse to harass and arrest minorities. (This per my father who was an adult at the time and welcomed their abolition, despite being something of an old-school Tory.)

    Then the Blair government tried to reintroduce them. What generated pushback wasn't the ID card per se but a huge and intrusive Home Office database hanging off it, with draconian fines for failure to not only carry it but to keep the police and HO informed of any microscopic change in circumstances -- just move away from home for a week (on holiday in the Lake District or something) and you could potentially be committing an offense if you didn't notify them of your new address within 48 hours and pay a re-registration fee. When Cameron won the 2010 election he scrapped it immediately, ostensibly as a cost-saving measure, but the words "this is potentially Labour's poll tax issue -- I know this for sure, the poll tax was my fuck-up" were uttered by one former minister.

    What most folks at the time didn't notice was the Home Office getting most of the functionality anyway via the back door: the Identity and Passport Office collects the data in question, including biometrics, from the 80-85% of the population who have a passport, and they can fill in a bit of the rest by querying DVLA (the national driving/vehicle licensing agency). They don't get the compulsory 48 hour address updates or the sweeping police powers and new offenses, but they effectively got that by reintroducing and extending stop-and-search/suss laws over the past decade.

    Within Schengen the ID cards are used effectively as a lightweight passport substitute for identity verification. I suspect the way pervasive IP networking is going, the cops will no longer need "papers, please" within another few years: biometric capture and database lookup on a cop's force-issued smartphone doesn't require the subject's cooperation, after all, and isn't susceptible to forgery attacks.

    1050:
    We don't need vaccine cards. All Canadians have provincial health insurance cards which (depending on the province) link them to their own total, digitized, health record.

    Although there are people living in Canada (I'm one) who are ineligible and therefore don't have a provincial health card.

    1051:

    But you'll be able to get your health insurance card once you get your Permanent Resident status. So, right now you're in a large, predictable, canyon as opposed to those who fall in a miriad of cracks leading nowhere.

    1052:
    But you'll be able to get your health insurance card once you get your Permanent Resident status.

    Assuming that ever happens.

    (Actually, it turns out you don't quite need PR status for the OHIP card. You just need the letter from CIC saying that you have fulfilled all the requirements for PR. But I don't know when or even if I will get that. At the moment CIC's application processing is essentially stalled by the pandemic.)

    1053:

    How are people managing, as we approach a full year of C-19?

    I retired early to avoid having to work in a school with inadequate safety precautions*. This will affect my finances for the rest of my life. (But I probably increased my expected life span by doing so.)

    I haven't seen my family in a year (live apart, no travelling). This has been hardest.

    *Because "school" and "inadequate safety precautions for infectious diseases" are pretty much synonymous.

    1054:

    Vaccine cards make sense for travel, specifically trains, planes, coaches, and possibly ferries.

    Do vaccine cards make sense if the vaccines aren't sterilizing?

    I haven't kept up with the research on more than a superficial level*, but AFAIK there is evidence that vaccinated people still carry (and shed) the virus. If that is the case, then vaccinated people are more likely to be asymptomatic carriers, aren't they?

    (Seriously, an explanation (or pointer to one) would be greatly appreciated. Especially if suitable for a Bear of Very Little Brain.)

    *Ie. read the abstract and try to understand it, because I have not studied biology at all and almost invariably can't understand much of the papers.

    1055:

    Yes. And that is why the fascists in that welcomed COVID. Damn ID cards (which they largely have, as you say), but they can now collect all of your financial transactions, too. There have been calls to preserve cash, so as not to disenfranchise the people disfavoured by the banks (and too mentally fossilised to adapt), but the gummint is going to do fuck-all in that direction. I am pretty sure the concept of legal tender still holds, but they are quietly not enforcing the law and require its acceptance, and I would bet a bottle of Bowmore to a button that will not change when COVID is over.

    Inter alia, that allows them to track everyone who favours organisations they dislike, but even the Home Secretary doesn't have the brass neck to label as terrorist, as well as hassle the organisations (deniably) by closing their bank accounts at no notice, which is SOP at present. People who support human rights for Palestinians know that well.

    Amd, of course, all of that lovely data can be exported to the USA and sold to the less scrupulous multinationals.

    1056:

    As has been said before, there isn't a clear distinction between sterilising and protective vaccines, and never was (*). Yes, it makes a big difference even if the vaccine is way out on the protective limb, provided that that reduces the transmission risk (as is normal). If a vaccine primarily turned infected people into asymptomatic carriers, that would be different.

    (*) For example: https://www.cdc.gov/smallpox/vaccine-basics/index.html

    1057:

    Vulch Yes, that's the problem - OTOH I still have mY ORIGINAL "ID Card" from 1946-49, oops. ... ( And I'm still living at the last address given (!) - Charlie Yes - my Driver's Licence is effectively an ID card, as is my "Geriatric's Pass" for TfL usage.

    Meanwhile just to show that the EU can be just as stupid, arrogant fuckwitted arseholes as BoZo ... WHAT were they thinking? Were they thinking at all? The Brexshiteers are already all over this one. For a completely monumental & totally-avoidable "own goal" this really takes some beating.

    1058:

    Doing alright nearly a year on. Luckily we have a large enough house and garden the lack of going anywhere is not too bad; we're both working from home from the home office in the converted garage which allows us to separate work space from home space. We get out to the local outdoor markets (regular market Mondays and Fridays, Farmers Market twice monthly), and do a weekly shop.

    Online food shopping has been reserved for his mother - but she broke her wrist badly last week and we've moved her in with us while the bone knits. She's had her first vaccine, we're waiting to be called. I'll probably get called first (older and diabetic).

    Oddly, I've lost a bit of weight - probably because I'm doing a lot more housework and gardening (and eating less junk food). 3 hours+ commuting most days a week takes it out of you. What I've noticed is that I am now far less likely to read, and when I do, it's comfort reads rather than new material.

    1059:

    Java has been slowly going down. It's extremely heavyweight, for one.

    Oh, and as someone who was there in the late eighties, what java is, is a reimplementation of... Pascal. Really. I mean, even down to the command writeln.

    C stays in the top five. C++ goes up and down. Right now, python is moving up.

    This is all from surveys I see every year, over on slashdot, if not elsewhere.

    Ruby, to the best of my knowledge, is not growing. (ObDisclosure: as a sysadmin, I HATED it - one of our projects they built in Ruby-on-rails, and we couldn't update straight ruby, we had to stay on one version, because otherwise it would break.)

    1060:

    Paperwork and AI... yeah, about that. The real problem are managers who are Sure they know, I mean, Everything (and love the latest new buzzword fad)... and expect everyone under them to magically keep up with their lack of attention.

    Back in the mid/late 80's, at the Scummy Mortgage Co, in collections, they had an online system (m'frame), designed by the manager. All of the people working in collections passionately hated it, and would take information with pen and paper, and only do data entry as the last thing, because it was so poorly designed for end users.

    I don't see that having changed. Because too many friends don't read their email for a week or two, I've been more active on faceplant the last six months or so. Now, there is a piece of crapware that makes me want to use Windows (and y'all know how much I hate that). Zero consistency (ctrl-enter posts here, is a blank line, elsewhere that's reversed), no way to set actually desired settings (I cannot click on home, and have it automatically show me most recent, I have to tell it that every single time), I get notified of a response to a post... but it's rolled up, and I have no idea where (there might be hundreds of posts) and no way to "unroll all"....

    But I can keep going. Upper management rarely has any idea that the point of computers was to make things simpler and easier to use.

    1061:

    Lisp, the only one worth critiquing?

    Back about 20 years ago, on usenet, someone announced thta they'd broken into the Pentagon's computers, and found the source code for SDI... and that it was in lisp. He said that, for national security reasons, he obviously couldn't post it, but he would post the last five lines of code.

    Followed, of course, by five 72 column lines of ")".

    1062:

    Vaccine cards make sense for travel, specifically trains, planes, coaches, and possibly ferries. Also hotels and conference centres. Maybe for events where social distancing isn't practical, e.g. pubs, clubs, theatres, opera, indoor sports grounds, concerts.

    Um, not particularly. Let's skip the long debate over whether it's more problematic for a card to be forged or for a database to get hacked, and go straight to the second-hand gossip and biology.

    The gossip is that my wife's vaccine card (she got both shots at the hospital where she works), is a piece of paper with her name and the dates handwritten on it. It's for internal use only. Obviously. The funny thing is that it's kicked up all the formerly hidden anti-vaxxers she works with, including various people with doctorates who apparently spent too much time mainlining Republican propaganda and got all swivelly-eyed about having to get the shots. Then there was the secretary whose job was to give out the ID card stickers every year to the employees who got their flu shots. She apparently was giving herself a sticker every year and not bothering to get the shot. Now she's freaking out, because she's something of an anti-vaxxer.

    So that's what happens in a homebrewed system implemented by medical professionals, most of whom have doctorates, experience, and two floors full of covid patients that they're caring for. Perhaps they're not quite the right people for the job of determining what to put on an ID?

    Anyway, even a properly secured database that truthfully attests to needle stickitude has at least a 5% chance of not reporting your immunity status even if you got the best mRNA vaccine. Why? There's a non-zero failure rate on Covid vaccinations ranging from 0-50% or so. And worse, the viruses are mutating at a fairly steady clip, so a vaccine now may be less effective next year, just due to evolution in action.

    If you want an ID to insure that you're a reasonably low travel risk, it has to be based on an assay of your immune system against whatever viral strains are currently circulating. I'd suggest that getting vaccinated and then having your immunity checked will probably become the standard for travel, and it will be done via labs and doctor's offices. These already hook into a bunch of secure government databases*, so if it's implemented correctly (big if), it's not a huge problem. The upside is that people who survived the infection can also demonstrate that they're safe to go, without having to get a "show-shot" vaccine.

    *Mostly dealing with addictive drugs, for obvious reasons.

    1063:

    I was amazingly lucky. I retired, walking out of work for the last time, the first Wed. of Oct, 2019. Ellen moved in with me the April of 2019.

    I'm older, but she's more vulnerable, so she rarely goes out, so I go out shopping once a week (I'm trying to take a walk around the block a few times a week - "suburban" area, little traffic on the sidewalks, and trying to get her to join me on occasion), but she had a get-together every week, and is in the International Costumers' Guild, and is Recording Secretary for BSFS.

    We both also have the monthly BSFS meetings, and I have a 1st and 3rd Fri WSFA meeting. Plus we go to virtual cons... so we do stay connected.

    1064:
    I'd suggest that getting vaccinated and then having your immunity checked will probably become the standard for travel, and it will be done via labs and doctor's offices.

    It is actually very difficult to check someone's immunity. There's a lot of misunderstanding about this, because serological (antibody) tests are easy, and people think that's what serological tests do.

    However, immunity does not come from antibodies. It comes from memory cells. There are two types of memory cells: B and T. B memory cells give you the ability to rapidly increase antibody production when you are challenged with virus. Note the subtle but important distinction: you may have B memory cells (and therefore the ability to rapidly produce anti-SARS-Cov2 antibodies), yet not have circulating antibodies. Thus a serological test will not detect the antibodies.

    The situation is even worse with T memory cells. The adaptive immune system has two arms: the humoral arm -- that's the one that makes antibodies, and the cellular arm -- that's the one that kills infected cells. Usually the cellular arm is more important for virus immunity. T memory cells allow you to rapidly ramp up a killer T-cell response to a SARS-Cov2 infection. There is no quick and easy way to detect this.

    TLDR: Immunology is complicated. There's no quick and easy way to assess someone's immunity status.

    1066:

    "Airline trade association IATA is working on a secure mobile phone based solution that interfaces between passengers, their passport plus health data, labs, and airlines." https://runwaygirlnetwork.com/2021/01/27/inside-iatas-verified-covid-testing-vaccination-app/

    1067:

    You're right, of course.

    Still, serological tests in the short term are (I think!) more accurate than vaccination records. In the long run, we should use both, especially as Covid continues to evolve and new diseases spill over. Someone recorded as mounting a serological response to a vaccine or to the disease itself in the last few years can be presumed to be as immune as someone who received something like a J&J vaccination that is 60% effective.

    The big issue with a vaccination record is that it ignores all the people who caught Covid19 and we not hospitalized, which is, what, 80% of all symptomatic cases? If they're immune, that's a lot of vaccine doses to waste on them, just so that they can get a card saying they're vaccinated.

    1068:

    Up until now? Well now, if you include the what I call The Year of The Endless Endoscopy I had four procedures..you know that you are in potentially serious trouble when the first surgeon tells you that he had got most of the polyps/tumours whatever but he hadn't removed a largish lump that was in an awkward place and that he wanted his Boss The Senior Surgeon to 'have a look at it 'and remove the same ... and in the meantime he would put me down for a full body scan and ,of course, there would be biopsy's and a case conference. Anyway, a year later the Senior Consultant told me that I was in the clear of potential malignancy ..I've never seen such a HAPPY Doctor and I suppose that he had had a really BAD day giving people Really Bad News and I was his Special Treat to end the day for, all things considered they really did consider that I had Colon Rectal cancer. After this, and before the Covid 19 Emergency I was booked in to have an endoscopic exam every two years ..just in case? ..but that has been screwed up by the covid horrors, as has my participation in https://www.ukbiobank.ac.uk/ Rats! Oh, and just after the good news? I ruined a lifetime of not being clumsy by having a fall - over someone's slippery fast food discarded on the pavement - and broke my right arm ..with wasn't funny but which was Humerus ..well it was the humerus that was broken. Not to worry, for I too have had the First Injection of Pfizer coronavirus vaccine. The immunisation process was ever so smooth up here in Sunderland's Bunny Hill Primary Care Centre - yes it really is called that - and I'd have been in and out in five minutes if I wasn't required to wait 15minutes in case of an allergic reaction. All people being immunised should remember that they must jump up and down vigorously on the spot whilst waving their arms up and down so as to evenly distribute the vaccine throughout the body rather than having it pool in ones arm.Its surprising how many people dont know this. Ah well ..the year so far isn't entirely bad. See here ... "Female physicist invents new fusion rocket that could take the first humans to Mars " https://bbcbreakingnews.com/2021/01/29/female-physicist-invents-new-fusion-rocket-that-could-take-the-first-humans-to-mars/

    1069:

    Re: 'Paperwork and AI... yeah, about that. The real problem are managers who are Sure they know, I mean, Everything ...'

    Let me run this past you and all the other techie folks here ...

    For the past 20 years or so almost everything work-related has been using some form of 'computer': electronic ID card that opens the parking lot and unlocks the office/conference room doors, company-provided laptop/terminal/internet access, (landline) phone at the office and increasingly a company-provided mobile, corporate/office sites/servers/central project file directories.

    Let's face it - it's already possible to track every movement and interaction - so why not admit it and make this tracking/surveillance worthwhile for the employees. And, yes - probably it's the larger orgs that have these electronic ID cards, but they're also the ones with the ever-increasing admin.

    1070:

    Yeah. And there are fairies at the bottom of my garden, too.

    1071:

    I actually do have a 'vaccine card' which gives the relevant details ..batch number and so forth ..of the vaccine that they gave me , but which doesn't give a date for the second injection. I am nearly 72, but I suspect that they had decided that my medical history , and my younger sisters death of colon rectal cancer three years ago, means that I have a faulty immune system and that that is what drove me to the top of the list. The Card isn't all that impressive - just a tiny cardboard thing onto which the info is scrawled in the very finest medical ballpoint pen. So much for my hope of being able to flourish my ID whilst declaring "All we want are the facts, ma'am".

    1072:

    But, I forgot to mention that I did get a sticker, to put on my jacket, for Being Brave. The sticker fell off of my jacket shortly after the nurse had stuck it on. Not to worry they are bound to have better quality stickers for my second injection.

    1073:

    whitroth # 934: No idea what George you're talking about.

    The "George" who gets stuck with all the odd, additional jobs that need doing. In the U.S. Navy, "George" was the junior most officer assigned to a unit (ship or company or ...) and was usually saddled with all the additional jobs - mail officer, morale officer ...; hence "Let George do it".

    I think I may have gotten that from Starship Troopers.

    1074:

    Re: 'How are people managing, as we approach a full year of C-19?'

    So-so ... got used to working from home and 'distance socializing' a long time ago. The first time was the AML/PBSCT and then years later after my mother became bedridden. This time though with C-19 I'd just moved to a different city, therefore fewer local social connections and hadn't really gotten into a new routine. There is one family member here - younger generation with a full schedule - and we get together every week or so for lunch/dinner.

    Probably the biggest difference between my first two home-isolation experiences and this one is that: back then, I felt safe going into a hospital or doctor's office.

    I'm very grateful that Charlie is maintaining this blog: occasional cranky disagreements but a lot saner and friendlier than everything else that's going on.

    1075:

    How are people managing, as we approach a full year of C-19?

    I am starting to feel the strain of minimal social activity. Not having people renting rooms is costing me ~20,000 a year but that's inconvenient rather than crippling. Mostly life has stayed in the routine I established early on. Get up between 5:30 and 7am, go for a bike ride with a stretching break in the middle, come home, turn on computer and fart about most of the day. Go for a walk round the park some evenings (wearing a mask). Talk to the chickens, write silly things on various blogs. Order crap online, go shopping every few days. Carry a mask while biking, wear it while doing anything off the bike if there is anyone round/likely to be anyone round.

    The landcare group is operating but they have multiple sites with different organisers, and I'm only going to about half of the sites because some of the organisers/attendees are being idiots about separation/masks. Likewise the local RC groups are strict anti-maskers so I've given up on them.

    Can't wait for a vaccine to be available to me...

    1076:

    ROTFL! I didn't start reading XKCD until after that. However, the only cartoon I put up by my cube the last 20 years of work was https://xkcd.com/705 , and I told everyone at my last job that this was my personal mission statement.

    1077:

    it's already possible to track every movement and interaction

    I think it's more accurate to say that it's already common to generate huge quantities of low-quality tracking information. I do it at work, one customer generates 10k-100k of access records a day "card X opened door Y".

    But data quality is not great, we get direction of travel but tailgating is a real issue (someone who does not want to be tracked will find that easy) and granularity is low (most people scan 5-10x a day, so the level of detail is closer to "person is at work" than "Dave and Sam chatted in the cafeteria for 23 minutes").

    For covid tracking payroll have equivalent information in a much more accessible format "who was on site this week".

    Other similar sources of low-quality data exist with varying degrees of volume and accuracy. It's mostly useful after the fact to get a vague idea of who was in an area or roughly where a particular device went. Electronic data is much easier to work with than Stasis-style paperwork, but it's still useless for "whole stole muh cauliflowers, dang varmints"

    1078:

    JBS @ 1073: " "George" was the junior most officer assigned to a unit (ship or company or ...) and was usually saddled with all the additional jobs - mail officer, morale officer ...; hence "Let George do it". I think I may have gotten that from Starship Troopers."

    No, not from the novel Starship Troopers.

    Maybe from one of the movies or from one of the animated series bearing the same name or origin, but not from the novel.

    1079:

    whitroth @ 939: Perhaps... but whenever I've spoken with anyone about Carolina bbq, vinegar is always part of the story.

    Vinegar (and red peppers) are the basis for EASTERN North Carolina style barbecue; what you got at that place on I-95. I'm guessing maybe Parkers' in Rocky Mount, NC.

    For many years I-95 ended at what is now exit 145 north of Rocky Mount and began again at exit 107 just south of Kenly, NC. Traffic "detoured" onto US 301 through Rocky Mount & Wilson and there were numerous barbecue restaurants along that stretch of US 301.

    Whenever I mention barbecue, I mean EASTERN NC style. And the closer to where US 264 used run along with US 301 through Wilson, NC the better (35.708150, -77.908966).

    Western NC barbecue uses a tomato ketchup based sauce and they serve it sliced instead of chopped.

    There used to be a place on US 301 after you crossed the Potomac into Maryland that advertised "North Carolina BBQ". I never ate there, but I saw it every time we had Annual Training at Ft. AP Hill because we'd pass it when we made a trip up to a Crab Shack restaurant that's on the Maryland side of the Potomac. I'm guessing it served eastern NC style barbecue.

    A lot of those old BBQ places along US 301/I-95 served what was called "family style" - they'd bring serving dishes of barbecue, cole slaw, HUSH PUPPIES, Brunswick Stew & vegetables to the table for the patrons to divvy up between themselves. There were also family style seafood restaurants down in a town called Calabash off of US 17 down near the South Carolina state line.

    1080:

    Mike Collins @ 947: Hog roasts were not that common when I lived in Yorkshire but here in Norfolk every outdoor event I've been to has had a hog roast. Usually served on a bread roll with stuffing.
    There are lots of companies like this:

    http://www.thenorfolkhogroastingcompany.co.uk/

    The main farm animals in Norfolk are pigs (mostly reared outdoors) and sheep.

    Couldn't get barbecue in Iraq - very few swine, and you wouldn't want to eat the ones there were - but you could get roast goat or roast mutton.

    1081:

    Re: 'TLDR: Immunology is complicated. There's no quick and easy way to assess someone's immunity status.'

    Yes - as the ICU docs, immunologists, virologists, etc. keep repeating. And if they're not sure yet, let's not take any risks!

    A couple of articles that might be of interest:

    1-'New database to track neurological symptoms of COVID-19

    NeuroCOVID will be a resource of clinical information and biospecimens from people who experience neurological problems associated with SARS-CoV-2 infection.'

    https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/81771/new-database-to-track-neurological-symptoms-of-covid-19/

    Saw some headlines a while ago about a few other research groups that are or will be setting up similar C-19 databases to help coordinate and provide access for international research.

    2- 'Severe symptoms of COVID-19 are caused by brain infection in mice, finds study

    Researchers found that SARS-CoV-2 persists in the brain after it is cleared in the lungs and concluded the severest and longest lasting symptoms of COVID-19 may be caused by brain infection.'

    https://www.drugtargetreview.com/news/81152/severe-symptoms-of-covid-19-are-caused-by-brain-infection-in-mice-finds-study/

    1082:

    Definitely one of my faves!

    1083:

    Oddly enough, those of us who are genuinely older, who have either had the first vaccine jab, or have an appointment lined-up are probably better-off than those in - say - the 45=65 age grouping.

    Yeah, I am right in the middle of that age group! Grrr...

    1084:

    I did mention that I tried it at a non-chain "down the road" place in N. Wilkesboro, NC, which is what, an hour or so from Asheville? That's not eastern NC, and it had a lot of vinegar.

    1085:

    Elderly Cynic @ 967:

    I have been assured by a very knowing American of my acquaintance in London, that a young healthy child well nursed, is, at a year old, a most delicious nourishing and wholesome food, whether stewed, roasted, baked, or boiled; and I make no doubt that it will equally serve in a fricasee, or a ragoust.

    I don't know where Swift got that shit from? Swift wrote his Modest Proposal sixty years BEFORE the American Revolution. His acquaintance would have still been an Englishman.

    1086:

    In Montgomery Co, MD (DC 'burb), waiting for more shots, and my SO is in group 1B, so maybe next month or so, but I'm still under 75, and so I'm in 1C, March? Later? Depends on MoCo getting more doses.

    Btw, folks, my Eldest, who's a COTA, got her first shot (in sw Oregon) Monday or Tuesday (I forget what she said). Got it in the morning, was fine until around 19:00, when arm hurt, and a lot of time sleeping when she wasn't trying to work (which involves visiting people at home).

    I've been reading today DO NOT take NSAIDs before the shot. Later, yes, but not before - it will reduce the efficiency.

    1087:

    The Year of The Endless Endoscopy

    I had one thos winter. Good for another three years, apparently.

    Have you heard this one? Seems appropriate…

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_43f9RzAqMM

    1088:

    Yeah, I am right in the middle of that age group! Grrr...

    Me too. According to the app, I can expect my first dose July-September. I'm expecting September+, based on my experience with getting a flu shot last year and the documented tendency of the Ford government to allocate resources based on geography not population density or need…

    1089:

    I don't know where Swift got that shit from? Swift wrote his Modest Proposal sixty years BEFORE the American Revolution. His acquaintance would have still been an Englishman.

    American at the time meant someone who lived in one of the American colonies. Drift of the signified strikes again…

    1090:

    Sounds like an “EU First” sort of policy. “The Brexshiteers are already all over this one.” To which the obvious answer is “Too bad we didn’t stay in!”

    1091:

    Meanwhile try this Matt cartoon Seriously .. W.T.F. with the EU? Ursual von der L. seems to have pissed-off not only the Germans but ALL parties on both sides of the Irish internal border, oh dear how sad ..... if she & they carry on like that the IRA/UDF might come calling.

    RvdH Erm, no - otherwise we would be well-down the queue, because the EU (As a whole ) simply did NOT get its shit together over this one. No idea why, but they seem to have screwed-up-by-the-numbers as effectively as BoZo's crew did with "Test/Trace/Lockdown"

    1092:

    Arnold @ 1071: I actually do have a 'vaccine card' which gives the relevant details ..batch number and so forth ..of the vaccine that they gave me , but which doesn't give a date for the second injection. I am nearly 72, but I suspect that they had decided that my medical history , and my younger sisters death of colon rectal cancer three years ago, means that I have a faulty immune system and that that is what drove me to the top of the list. The Card isn't all that impressive - just a tiny cardboard thing onto which the info is scrawled in the very finest medical ballpoint pen. So much for my hope of being able to flourish my ID whilst declaring "All we want are the facts, ma'am".

    The CDC COVID-19 Vaccination Record Card I got has the Product Namd/Lot Number, date, and clinician's signature recorded on the front with a date reminder for the second dose on the back. Important because when you come back depends on which vaccine you got - three weeks for Pfizer, four weeks for Moderna.

    I always carry my own pen for filling out stuff like that for two reasons:
    1. The ball point pens they give you to fill out forms don't work for me. They always clog up or splotch or smear or tear the paper ...
    2. I can still hear my old First Sargent & what he'd have to say if I ever showed up without a pen (black ink only!) and a little notebook to write shit down in. I still carry my old green Memoranda book (FSC NSN: 7530-00-222-0078) even though I've been retired from the Army for almost 13 years now.

    1093:

    @ Everybody: Back to BBQ: I've read in South Carolina (in an area settled by Germans), they have a mustard-based BBQ sauce,
    but I've never had it or heard people talk about it. I know people argue about the sauces, I know in Texas they use mesquite wood, and I've heard of using hickory and possibly oak wood, but I don't know what other places use for woods (Kansas City? Memphis?) and I don't know what would happen if you used a particular type of wood (say, Texas's mesquite) with say, that part of South Carolina's (which uses a different kind of wood) mustard-based sauce. Would it be bad, good, or make little difference? Non-USAnians: for your BBQ equivalents, what (if any) types of sauces/rubs/etc. do you like and do you use any special wood?

    1094:

    I was going to purge my belongings (do I really need to hang on to 20 year old computers and monitors, or the old fridge?)...

    That's fine if you do it. Honestly we probably don't need most 20 year old computers - but I was thinking just this morning of my old VT-100 terminal, cleared out by a housemate on the reasoning that it was large and obsolete. That's not untrue but it was a nice memento for me of many fun things that I did on that terminal such as learning unix and reading Usenet news groups. I have no use for a text only terminal today - but I still miss it and wish it hadn't gone away.

    1095:

    I can still hear my old First Sargent & what he'd have to say if I ever showed up without a pen (black ink only!) and a little notebook to write shit down in. I still carry my old green Memoranda book (FSC NSN: 7530-00-222-0078) even though I've been retired from the Army for almost 13 years now.

    Do you know why it was black ink only? Yes, I know, Army Brain - but there might be a reason normal people could understand.

    Terminal Lance addressed Marine logbooks for both detail and filing; I'd imagine the Army is similar.

    1096:
    I was thinking just this morning of my old VT-100 terminal, cleared out by a housemate on the reasoning that it was large and obsolete.

    It's nice to know that the vt100 (or vt102, mostly) lives on in the cursor control escape codes of xterm and other terminal emulators.

    1097:

    130,000

    100^2 * 13 = 130,000

    But obviously we're talking past each other so never mind.

    1098:

    I found out several years ago that I rely on lip-reading for a lot of my understanding of speech.

    What I've discovered is I now have a very hard time telling if someone is making a comment, a joke, or is really pissed off. Facial clues are important.

    1099:

    Niala @ 1078: JBS @ 1073:

    " "George" was the junior most officer assigned to a unit (ship or company or ...) and was usually saddled with all the additional jobs - mail officer, morale officer ...; hence "Let George do it". I think I may have gotten that from Starship Troopers."

    No, not from the novel Starship Troopers.

    Maybe from one of the movies or from one of the animated series bearing the same name or origin, but not from the novel.

    NOT from the movie - I only saw the one and HATED IT! So I wouldn't know what might have been in the others

    I sort of remember it from one of the expository sequences about Army/Navy relationships Heinlein wrote for the section about Johnnie's probationary Third Lieutenant cruise, the stuff like why Captain Razak became a Major when the officers dined with the ship's officers (there's only one Captain on a Navy ship, so anyone holding that rank gets a courtesy bump).

    If it's not in the book, I don't remember where I got it from.

    1100:

    whitroth @ 1084: I did mention that I tried it at a non-chain "down the road" place in N. Wilkesboro, NC, which is what, an hour or so from Asheville? That's not eastern NC, and it had a lot of vinegar.

    It's more than an hour. But western NC barbecue does have vinegar. They also add ketchup to their sauce. In fact if you look at the ingredients in ketchup, the three main ones are vinegar, sugar & tomatoes.

    1101:

    Vaccine cards make sense for travel, specifically trains, planes, coaches, and possibly ferries.

    I wonder at what point they will be abandoned or turn into passport type quality.

    In the US going back in time you could take a seeing eye dog on airplanes. Then this entire industry of emotional support animals came about. (Not making a judgement here if this is a valid thing.) Then people started taking those on airplanes. Airlines started pushing back as it was getting out of hand. Uncaged ferrets? Miniature ponies? Uncaged birds? If an animal bites another passenger who is at fault and who pays the medical bills. So airlines started requiring more than "I need it" verbally at the gate. Then this entire industry sprang up in fake certificates and dog/cat "vests" with official looking labels and similar available on "big river". Airlines started having "desks" which got to do nothings but vet people's claims of "medical need". My wife was a few cubes down from one of these groups for a while. During this time one person wanted to fly with his emotional support half grown kangaroo. From Australia to the US. They found he had ties to traveling animal shows and turned him down.

    Finally the airlines in general started saying no to most anything that wasn't a dog or miniature pony(?!?!?!). And were still getting into arguments at the gates. Finally the US FAA said nothing but service dogs and you needed a certificate and other paperwork. Duly notarized at that.

    Anyway if vaccine certs become a thing I wonder how many hours before you can get one with same day delivery from "Big River". To be honest I haven't looked but I suspect you can get similar things now.

    1102:

    If it's not in the book, I don't remember where I got it from.

    It is in fact in the book. The full text of Starship Troopers is available here. Search it for "Geroge, and you will quickly find this passage:

    I was "George." Every outfit has a "George." He’s the most junior officer and has the extra jobs — athletics officer, mail censor, referee for competitions, school officer, correspondence courses officer, prosecutor courts-martial, treasurer of the welfare mutual loan fund, custodian of registered publications, stores officer, troopers’ mess officer, et cetera ad endless nauseam.
    1103:

    Ruby, to the best of my knowledge, is not growing. (ObDisclosure: as a sysadmin, I HATED it - one of our projects they built in Ruby-on-rails, and we couldn't update straight ruby, we had to stay on one version, because otherwise it would break.)

    This is true of most interpreted or semi interpreted languages.

    I use several utilities written in Bash or similar and the developers are constantly dealing with what versions to support or not.

    And when my wife was a business analyst for a large company a frustration was the there were something like a dozen or more iterations of WebSphere in use as each application had dependencies on specific versions.

    1104:

    Scott Sanford @ 1095:

    I can still hear my old First Sargent & what he'd have to say if I ever showed up without a pen (black ink only!) and a little notebook to write shit down in. I still carry my old green Memoranda book (FSC NSN: 7530-00-222-0078) even though I've been retired from the Army for almost 13 years now.

    Do you know why it was black ink only? Yes, I know, Army Brain - but there might be a reason normal people could understand.

    Terminal Lance addressed Marine logbooks for both detail and filing; I'd imagine the Army is similar.

    That's a bit of military trivia that I don't know. And oddly enough, the official standard was "black or blue/black ink", but if you used blue ink you were going to get yelled at. I dunno. Maybe the Air Force used blue ink and that's why the Army hated it.

    Dog help you if you were stupid enough to use RED ink! (Red ink has a specific use in Army Aviation for any write-up that grounds an aircraft. You do not use it for any other purpose.)

    1105:

    Re: 'How are people managing, as we approach a full year of C-19?'

    I'm surviving. I've had to make some changes to my routine to accommodate a semi-quarantine, but I didn't get out that much anyway; just a few club meetings every month and a weekly "folk" music session. All of those have gone by the wayside and I spend most of my time now sitting here at this computer.

    It's aged me more than just the year that has passed.

    Mostly I've just lost the physical activity that kept me healthy. I don't get enough exercise. Before Covid I had the body of a man 5 years younger than I was. Now I've got the body of a man 10 years older.

    Before Covid I would have gone out with my cameras to photograph stuff. And I would have traveled a bit.

    I had plans for road trips to visit some places I want to see before I die (mostly national parks). With my stamina deteriorating from too much sedentary living, I'm not sure if I'll ever recover enough to take those trips. I still don't know when it will be possible to take leisure trips again, so I don't know if I'll ever get to go now.

    I'm pretty sure the weekly jam sessions are gone forever. The guy who owned the coffee house where we met died back in late summer. I think it was cancer and not Covid.

    1106:

    Maybe the Air Force used blue ink and that's why the Army hated it.

    That sounds as plausible as anything else!

    1107:

    LAvery @ 1102 : "I was "George." Every outfit has a "George." He’s the most junior officer and has the extra jobs — "

    You're right, and so is JBS, and so is my edition of the novel, a Berkley Medallion 1968 book. The part on George starts right there on page 172. I haven't read that book enough times.

    1108:

    How are we doing?

    My work didn't change much, in fact it became more intense and had new dangers with the rise of Covid. However I changed jobs within the organization and am now working a somewhat-less-frontline position at a location that is a short walk from my house.

    Wifey is now working from home about 98% of the time, and she is the boss at her work so that is unlikely to change after Covid ends (if ever). She and all of her staff are happier and more productive without a commute.

    My kids are worst off. No visiting other homes, limited outside opportunities in winter. The teen is an athlete with a truncated season (no games, only practices) while the younger has slid into mostly tv/video games with some robot building and programming (with me) on the side. We are building a PC this weekend though, which should be fun.

    Against the trend our household income has gone way up and costs have gone down a bit. Being paranoid that just means paying off the home and trying to sock some away.

    We do like to travel and that has been a big loss. Wife has lost some family in Greece, including one to Covid so far. It could be years before we get back there.

    1109:

    There was a 1980s movie where the Home Secretary, at a new very upscale restaurant, blurts out indignantly: "This tastes like human flesh!" [1] I read that at least one Thatcherite hated it. (It is reported that The Right Honourable Priti Patel has said that she is not a vegetarian.)

    [1] NYTimes paywall counter can be reset by removing their cookies; the Cookie Remover plugin/extension (FF/Chrome) works including for this article. (I reloaded the page.)

    1110:

    Oh, I forgot about rentals....

    I've got a unit that should have been empty for about 6 weeks for repair. The body corporate waited until after my tenant left to tell me they're delaying the work for a year due to covid. So it's been empty for about 4 months instead of 6 weeks, and when not empty the rent has been about half. The other place the tenants called and said "we are working from home now, but we don't need to be in the city anymore, so you can cut our rent in half or we'll leave". They're not in any financial difficulty, in fact they're better off than they were before covid, but I'm out of pocket. The rents now don't cover the taxes and strata fees. I'm basically paying them to live there. So I'm living off a credit card. I can't get a pension or unemployment because I'm "rich".

    1111:

    we don't need to be in the city anymore

    Interestingly rents in the blue mountains seem to have droppd in some parts and risen in others - I think based on whether city people are trying to move there. And whether it's possible to insure them, there's a lot of cheap (re)building sites for sale "with development approval" that I suspect the current owners either can't afford to comply with the new fire-resilence regulations or have realised that living in a bushfire (zone) is no fun.

    I'm looking at renting up there to see how I go, before I buy. But it does mean I'm watching the rental market a bit ATM.

    I'm another "pay rise during covid" case, but not so much because of covid as my boss losing an argument about how little we're worth... someone found a better job. Sadly a chunk of money is now "bonus" so the bank won't count it as income until I've been paid it twice... so I can't afford to buy even a shack without selling my current house.

    For non-ozzies: in Australia the tax system makes it expensive to sell a house and buy a different one, but less expensive to borrow against a house to buy a second (third... tenth...) house. Standard global "boomers like buying houses" tax system in many way.

    1112:

    ... but the hassle is renting my current house out as w hole thing takes quite a bit of cleaning up, and I need to reconcile myself to the loss of the garden. Last tenants removed three trees including a fruiting fruit tree. I suspect I'll need to kill the mulberry because it needs vicious pruning at least once a year and I can't really expect tenants to do that (it's currently nearly spherical and about 5m across, but it's mostly skinny little branches - it won't survive a winter storm like that).

    Plus I have to remove all the battery solar stuff, or at least remove everything except the panels and unplug those just so no-one does anything too silly with the ~100V you can get out of them. The 3kW grid-interactive array can stay... but the last tenants paid someone to come out and turn it off!!

    And I either need to rent somewhere that will let me keep chickens, or palm the chickens off on someone.

    It's all a big hassle.

    1113:

    Ok, there is one bbq - it's a marinade for before and during the time it's over the charcoal - that we really like. We got the recipe when my late wife and I, back in the Immobile Home outside of Austin, bought an Old Smokey bbq. (Looks like one galvanized bucket on top of another, but it's very nice. For two or three, I do chicken or country ribs on it, so < 1 hr. Vineagar and powdered mustard, plus other stuff.

    https://www.oldsmokey.com/blogs/sauces-and-sides/14320109-world-famous-old-smokey-marinade?_pos=4&_sid=8833b5a66&_ss=r

    1114:

    For non-ozzies: in Australia the tax system makes it expensive to sell a house and buy a different one, but less expensive to borrow against a house to buy a second (third... tenth...) house.

    Obvious question is obvious: So what's the common dodge for Australians who just want to move somewhere else? The first that came to mind was to get a loan, buy the required second house, move, then rent the old house or otherwise kill time until a later fiscal year, and sell the superfluous one then, paying off the loan with the money.

    1115:

    There really isn't an obvious dodge - the $50,000 "stamp duty" hit is just there whenever you buy a house, and "negative gearing" (renting it out for less than the cost of owning it) will keep on making sense until there's a capital gains tax that actually taxes capital gains (it's deliberately ineffective).

    NSW is introducing an annual land value tax as an alternative to stamp duty but that only applies to those new buyers who choose to take up the option. Right now it's cheaper for ~10 years but obviously eventually that annual payment is more than the up front one, especially if inflation/interest rates go up.

    The way to kill the whole investment property game is to drop house prices. Australia doesn't have the (common?) US limit on recourse for a mortgage, so doing that would screw a lot of inheritors and make it even harder for people with mortgages to change houses.

    1116:

    In practice the low rate of house price increases, and the occasional small falls in some areas, mean that those tax-based investment strategies might not work. But as Jacinda Ardern* said recently "voters expect house prices to keep going up, so that's what we're going to deliver".

    Which means borrowing as much money as you to buy another house, writing off the interest against taxes, then selling it tax-free later on is probably still the safest investment strategy.

    • prime munster of Aotearoa rather than Australia, but the voting patterns are the same
    1117:

    (Long-time reader, hardly-ever commenter here): As for COVID, I'm getting by okay; I'm one of the lucky ones: able to work at home, a decent house with a biggish yard in a nice part of the world (California Central Coast) (there's plenty of yard work). I'm sufficiently solitary that going long periods of time w/o in-person contact is okay. (Living with two cats helps too.)

    (Though I do miss my main social activity--various kinds of partner dance (fusion, blues, contra), which had become a combo of yoga+spiritual practice for me (okay, perhaps I took it a little too seriously); that stuff probably won't re-commence for another six months, anyway.)

    Mask and social distancing compliance is high around here, and I feel reasonably safe when going out for the grocery shopping every two weeks, which is mainly only time I leave the house. I have not been to my office on campus for a almost year.

    Productivity is low and I am not getting enough exercise, so have put on some weight. But I have a feeling that much of that would have been taking place anyway.

    1118:

    No, not from the novel Starship Troopers.

    From the novel.

    The bit where the narrator is the most junior officer and ends up with all the scut jobs, including inventory which he insists on doing rather than just accepting the previous chap's count which results in discovering that a lot of gear has gone missing…

    1119:

    “Oh, and as someone who was there in the late eighties, what java is, is a reimplementation of... Pascal. Really. I mean, even down to the command writeln.” That would be very, very late 80’s... like nineteen eighty-twelve, at least. Java was originally named Oak and was an attempt at a) a language for a TV set top box - everyone was trying to get into that market back then; no internet so far as most of the world was concerned, cable TV was IT. b) doing all the good things that Smalltalk does without, y’know, actually doing them. After all, C syntax is the OnlyTrue Way, everyone knows that you can’t really have objects for everything, meta programming is too hard for all the Barbie head ‘programmers’ out there, etc.

    I had friends working on that project, I had colleagues who went on to direct Java work at SUN, etc, etc. Most of them actually wanted to do Smalltalk; some did, later. Some do, now.

    The thing that made java a name was desperation - SUN were in trouble, the net suddenly became visible, they dumped it out as free software when everyone else was still charging money for software development tools. Oh and it had cute mascot. It’s sad how important that was.

    Mostly, what java was was a failure of imagination. They thought that computers would be too slow to run a system like Smalltalk for years and years and that they had to compromise. Smalltalk on the other hand was a triumph of imagination- Alan and co. believed in a better future enough to buy it; they made their own super fast computers (for the time) in order to be able to get a ~5 year head start. They were right. A $5 Raspberry Pi Zero can run Smalltalk about 100 times faster than the “large house” price Dorado that PARC made.

    1120:

    and I've heard of using hickory and possibly oak wood, but I don't know what other places use for woods (Kansas City? Memphis?) and I don't know what would happen if you used a particular type of wood (say, Texas's mesquite) with say, that part of South Carolina's (which uses a different kind of wood) mustard-based sauce. Would it be bad, good, or make little difference?

    In far western Kentucky and the area within 100 miles or so of the Mississippi River near there (St Louis down to Memphis) we smoked meat over hickory wood for 12 to 36 hours. And the aroma of the particular wood plus the oils that drip down gives us a lot of the flavor. Smell is a big part of taste. And the best was small restaurants that had their own smoke rooms in the back. Trying to build similar in other areas typically involved long talks with inspection/building code people with a typical reaction of "You want to do WHAT?".

    Plus it is served as just meat. Beef, pork, or mutton. Sauce is something you add to taste. Most restaurants have private flavors in the mild, medium, and OMG range.

    If you want the other varieties being discussed you had to head east from where I grew up.

    1121:

    Do you know why it was black ink only? Yes, I know, Army Brain - but there might be a reason normal people could understand.

    The technology for the original Xerox copiers used a process that meant it would not copy blue very well if at all. So documents filled out/signed with blue ink had issues.

    My cousin was a Xerox salesman way back when and he had to deal with this in sales competitions all the time.

    1122:

    How are people managing, as we approach a full year of C-19?

    Wife got forced into retirement in mid summer. It was with an airline and in another city. Shutting down that apartment and moving everything back home was a fun 2 weeks. Since it was a US airline the federal Cares Acts have created a LOT of paper work fun and games since I'm just past 65 and she's not quite there. And the last Cars Act pasted just before the end of the year will put her back on the payroll for December through March. (Thank you US taxpayers.) But this has made it impossible to play retirement, taxes, etc... as we now get to wait for to see how the December pay figures into what year. And she was signed up for the unemployment system (but working in one state and now living in another adds a few dozen wrinkles) and the bonus amounts. But since she's going to retroactively put on the payroll for a 4 month stretch we need to play to give back much of that. But here pay is better so... But bored. You have no idea. She rides with me when I have to go out get to see something other than our front and back yards. The weather just now is terrible for walking unless you like 45F and drizzle.

    As to me, I've still got computer work supporting some small businesses that have shut down their offices. Moved servers to data center and cloud. Dropping things off / picking them up at people's front porch at times.

    My life hasn't changed much, except for Zoom/Teams instead of face to face. And instead working from home 70% of the time it is now 95% of the time or more. Last night was 2 hours at a data center to touch some buttons during a configuration change.

    Money.

    We've increased our giving to some local food bank / homeless groups. And have gotten somewhat irritated with friends (not so close now) who think this is blown out of proportion and why give handouts to those without jobs.

    We are doing fine. In some ways we feel a bit guilty that we're so well off compared to those who got caught in personal service industries.

    I have 2 grown children with SO's around 30 years old. They are also well off money wise and going stir crazy. They all work in jobs with either very high precautions when dealing with people or work from home works.

    My daughter had 2 large dogs who were 2 years old when this started. My son got a pup who is 8 months old. I hope they don't go nuts when their owners have to go back to work during the days.

    1123:

    Ruby, to the best of my knowledge, is not growing. (ObDisclosure: as a sysadmin, I HATED it - one of our projects they built in Ruby-on-rails, and we couldn't update straight ruby, we had to stay on one version, because otherwise it would break.)

    I used to work as a security consultant some years ago, doing mostly technical security assessments. (Mostly taking a look at the configurations, poking around the system a bit and then telling what they've done wrong and how they should go about fixing it.)

    One of the usual findings was unsupported Java versions. They could've been even years out of any updates, so were a security risk, even when not on public interfaces and moreso if that. The usual response to the report having that finding was "but we can't update because the thing we're using is not supported in more recent Java versions". It kind of taught me that it's important to plan for upgrades of your frameworks when doing stuff, and it might even be smart to re-implement stuff sometimes.

    Ruby was so rare that I don't think I ever saw one, as an audit target, during my time doing that. I've developed a Ruby on Rails business application, though.

    Currently I work with backend systems, using mostly Python and Java. I've seen some stuff done in Go, too, but it still feels a bit immature. For example, the standard library is still in the process of development and much of useful stuff is in third-party libraries. (Stuff I'd consider standard library stuff.)

    1124:

    https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/liz-cheney-2650177300/

    Would I be right in thinking a lot of Americans have confused "support the Democratic Party" with "support democracy" and hate them both with a firey passion?

    1125:

    Java: I worked for a while in a langaue that I recall being "jade, no the other one" but I could be wrong. It was a Java-like language that had bonus extra networking/rpc built in. The company behind it was bought by one of the various Java owners and folded into Java, to no benefit that I could ever see.

    The main thing I remember is having to do a talk to a bunch of "senior developers" about how you pass parameters, because as well as const/value reference you had the remote equivalents. That let you call a local service (server program instance) one way and the remote version of it another way. Because you don't want to pass big things by value... or perhaps you do. I did the talk, got a lot of blank looks, and switched to agitating for an early performance test. Which went really, really badly. Because indeed, much of the "design", "architecture" and "project management" had missed the things I did my little talk on.

    The language was ok, no special features that made it better or worse than any other c-with-objects language, except for the networking.

    Meanwhile Jade is still round, and still quite cool. Object database, multiplatform, good support for maintaining distributed systems (you version everything, including interfaces, and can do piecewise updates)

    https://www.jadeworld.com/jade-platform

    1126:

    JBS Same as it used to be that Red Ink was only used as a header for "Very Important" & usually confidential documentation. See also Nevil Shute:

    "Most Secret"

    - BUGGER, cant get HTML to colour text in this window!

    gasdive And that situation shows as merely one example, why a "wealth tax" would be a disaster. Because, inevitably, you would get the wrong people.

    Oh yes "languages" Bring back FORTRAN IV!

    EVERYBODY Many thanks to all of you for relating how you & we are doing in this second year of the Plague. Please keep them coming - this is social history & a valuable account. It may also help all of us - we are not alone, because we are connected via the Web, if no other means.

    Mind you, this was also said before, by a man who knew of another plague:

    No man is an island entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as any manner of thy friends or of thine own were; any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind. And therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.

    1127:

    Anyway, JBS ought to know better when posting on this blog. There are several other errors in his assumptions, too.

    1128:

    Would I be right in thinking a lot of Americans have confused "support the Democratic Party" with "support democracy" and hate them both with a firey passion?

    Nope.

    The article was interesting but your condensation from afar squeezed it down to something that isn't.

    The current situation and how we got here is complicated. I blame the D's in the decade up to 94 and the way they allowed the turd R's to gain power. And the R's then realized that being a turd (not all but enough) could be a way to win.

    And I've way over simplified it.

    Both sides in so many ways feel that wining is more important than being right. In the past that was always there as a sub theme. Now it is the main theme.

    1129:

    A VT-100?

    For shits and giggles you could shove a Raspberry Pi in it (talking via a USB serial port adapter). Then go hunting for a VAX emulator and run VMS on it.

    1130:

    A cheer-up photo for times of C-19 HERE Galanthus elwesii a couple of days ago

    1131:

    Greg Tingey @ 1126: "Many thanks to all of you for relating how you & we are doing in this second year of the Plague."

    On the whole I have found the last 9 months to be rather soothing. I don't have to take 2 hours of my time each day to go to an office, now that I work from home.

    I get the exact right dose of daily office "society" (complete with impromptu animated GIFs now and then) through Microsoft Teams, running on a dedicated laptop. I've always lived alone, so being "isolated" in my home, on a relatively large piece of wooded property, isn't a hardship for me.

    If I want a dose of nature all I have to do is to step out and shovel snow. I have tons of it. I have company: There are animal tracks of all kinds, here and there in the snow.

    1132:

    Wrt. JBS' point about the US army insisting on black ink only in notebooks (and the USAF using red ink for accident/defect reports), that this was probably a reaction after some joker got annoyed at having to carry a notebook so used green crayon or yellow highlighter pens and some Very Important Information was illegible and lives were lost as a result.

    It has that "paperclip audit" feel about it (institutional unreasonableness that actually turns out to be extremely sensible if you know the reason behind it, which involved a lot of screaming and running around on fire).

    1133:

    My apologies for going off subject, but things just got very interesting.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMGWLLDSA3c

    You see, natural viruses tend to become milder when they mutate (they really don't want to kill their hosts because like ever other life form viruses want to live).

    The newest UK and South African mutations of Covid-19 are more deadly.

    That should not be happening to a natural virus.

    But probably not weaponized. The term he uses is "gain of function research" where a virus is made nastier in a lab on purpose to learn ways to counter its more deadly form Those opposing this research worry about such a modified virus getting loose.

    Which may be what happened.

    (Good thing Trump listened to his science and medical advisors last February and acted with decisive leadership, otherwise this could have been a problem.... Yeah that was sarcasm)

    The worrisome thing is that the virus mutations are getting nastier.

    So these vaccines better damn well work

    Or the world will be looking at Covid-21, Covid-22, Covid-23....

    The more I think about it, the less likely it seems that the facility would be a bio-weapons lab.

    You don't site a secret military bio-warfare facility in the middle of downtown Wuhan - especially one developing weapons of mass destruction.

    There is a reason why American nuclear ICBM silos are placed in empty stretches' of Montana.

    1134:

    No, that's an anthropomorphic over-simplification. Let's ignore ones which spread like anthrax. The selection is for parasites that do not kill immediately, so that the infected hosts have longer to spread them, but mutations leading to deadlier strains are common. The effect is very weak in parasites that rarely kill (like COVID). If a mutation was associated with both higher infectivity and deadliness, then it would spread faster, as seems to be the case here.

    1136:

    Viruses don't tend to become milder when they mutate. They just mutate. In a widespread virus the mutants which are less likely to kill will be advantageous since they will reproduce more. But the new more infectious variants will produce more new viruses by infecting more hosts. There is also a process analogous to the the selection of antibiotic resistance in bacteria. Mutants which are better able to infect other humans despite the precautions like social distancing and masks are positively selected. Treatment of hospitalised patients with antibodies from recovered Covid-19 patients is another process with positive selection for a more virulent version. It's not an indication of an engineered virus. Natural selection is still a possible, maybe even probable cause of the new variants.

    1137:

    https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-viruses-evolve-180975343/

    One popular theory, endorsed by some experts, is that viruses often start off harming their hosts, but evolve toward a more benign coexistence. After all, many of the viruses we know of that trigger severe problems in a new host species cause mild or no disease in the host they originally came from. And from the virus’s perspective, this theory asserts, hosts that are less sick are more likely to be moving around, meeting others and spreading the infection onward.

    “I believe that viruses tend to become less pathogenic,” says Burtram Fielding, a coronavirologist at the University of the Western Cape, South Africa. “The ultimate aim of a pathogen is to reproduce, to make more of itself. Any pathogen that kills the host too fast will not give itself enough time to reproduce.” If SARS-CoV-2 can spread faster and further by killing or severely harming fewer of the people it infects, we might expect that over time, it will become less harmful — or, as virologists term it, less virulent.

    1138:

    One popular theory, endorsed by some experts, is that viruses often start off harming their hosts, but evolve toward a more benign coexistence.

    Yes, but read the rest of the article, and think about it critically. Notice that Dr Burtram Fielding does not actually cite any evidence in favor of his belief. He has this idea that OC43 did it, but the evidence is circumstantial.

    It probably happens sometimes that viruses evolve to become more benign. However, there are very few really clearly documented cases of that. The one clear case cited of a viral disease that evolved to lower virulence was myxomatosis in rabbits. But that was 99.8% lethal at the start. This is not really a relevant example. And there's at least equally good evidence for evolution towards higher virulence.

    Also, think about Covid-19. It is not the case that SARS-Cov2 is killing the people it infects too fast for them to transmit. It is not even CLOSE to being the case.

    Also, the argument that an engineered gain-of-function virus would not evolve as it spreads is just utterly silly. I'm sorry, there's no nice way to say it: it's just stupid.

    1139:

    Sorry, you're wrong. A search on oak language shows it created in 1991. I had a course in compiler design at Temple U in the spring of 1986, and we were writing the (pseudo)compiler in Pascal. And I could test using TurboPascal, before I had to upload it to the Cyber 6000 with the Noxious Operating System.... For a number of years in the eighties, Pascal was hot.

    And both of them used - and in some cases, still use - a P-machine, to compile-and-run on demand.

    1140:

    bonk It was getting late, and my mind was on several things. I should have said a marinade that had a lot of vinegar, but was mustard-based.

    1141:

    It has been and is making me rather depressed, because I have been unable to do things I really, really wanted to do, and won't be able to for all that much longer, due to old-age induced decrepitude. Also, I haven't had any real solitude since the summer of 2019 (that's me, alone, camping away from buildings, people and preferably roads), which is VERY beneficial for my mood. Most of the time, it was tolerable, because I have a large house and garden (by modern UK standards), but the past few months has been too wet to do much in the garden. I have tried digging the vegetable patch when the soil is sodden in the past, and it is counter-productive.

    1142:

    Partly, yes. The Democrats followed the GOP to the right, as Raygun was popular, and let the media sell that story, and the then-ultrawealthy and the big companies pushed it through the media and lobbyists, because they wanted the end of unions, and, while they were at it, the end of all New Deal programs, and maybe even end the income tax, because, I mean, 99% aren't Important People, or even Real People.

    Obama was the beginning of a change to that, but he still kept bending over backward to try to get bipartisanship, which the now white-wing GOP wouldn't do... plus, they still wanted all of the above (re New Deal). That, and the Orange Man, along with Bernie's run in '16, seriously began to energize and create a left-wing movement in the US. Occupy was nice, but useless, as they were not political. Socialism is now only hated by the white-wing, and a lot of young people are finding it a good idea... and are organizing, registering people to vote, and voting.

    So, "the Squad" is not the only left-moving part of the Democrats, and the "moderates" are feeling the pull.

    1143:

    Sorry, that demands that I log into google.

    1144:

    One could have hoped that the same might occur in England (and I mean England, not the UK), but there are no signs of it - indeed, the opposite seems to be the case :-( As OGH has pointed out, we are sliding down the slope to fascism, apparently with glee. This is just the latest example:

    https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/journalist-photographer-asylum-camp-napier-barracks-andy-aitchison-b1794907.html

    1145:

    So, a virtual Micro-Vax?

    1146:

    whitroth Sorry! IF I knew how to / my HTML was good enough, I would have posted a direct link, that would have put the picture up in this window/page. It's obviously do-able.

    1147:

    I blame Carter, and I blame the Democratic Party's reaction to Carter.

    When Reagan criticized Carter's "liberalism" Carter should have very much gone on the offensive and made a big point about why he was a liberal and what that did for his constituents, but I don't ever remember Carter fighting back.

    And the Democrats took the wrong lessons from what happened to Carter. What they learned from this was that you shouldn't be liberal. What the Democrats failed to learn was how someone should fight back!

    1148:

    Ok, so my 30 year ago memory was a year off. I shall hang my head in shame.

    There, done, 3 seconds is quite enough.

    @charlie - plenty of Vax emulator results for ‘raspberry pi vax’. Looks like it is just a load and run option. I’d quite like to have the sort of versioning file system my old 11/730 had. About the only thing I’ve ever missed about it.

    1149:

    David L @ 1121:

    Do you know why it was black ink only? Yes, I know, Army Brain - but there might be a reason normal people could understand.

    The technology for the original Xerox copiers used a process that meant it would not copy blue very well if at all. So documents filled out/signed with blue ink had issues.

    My cousin was a Xerox salesman way back when and he had to deal with this in sales competitions all the time.

    Sounds plausible, although back when I joined up, the Army didn't accept Xerox copies of signatures. If it was a form to be filled out, you were allowed to fill it in with a typewriter using carbon paper for the duplicates ... but you still had to sign each of the copies individually.

    When we first got PCs, there was a program to fill out forms using a typewriter that had an interface with the computer, so you could record the information as you filled in the form on the typewriter (including spacing across, tabs & carriage returns1) and then have the computer play it back to fill in additional copies of the form. But you still had to sign all the copies individually.

    1 If you tried to replay it later after someone had changed the typewriter's tab settings to fill in a different form it wouldn't print correctly.

    1150:

    Moz @ 1124: https://www.alternet.org/2021/01/liz-cheney-2650177300/

    Would I be right in thinking a lot of Americans have confused "support the Democratic Party" with "support democracy" and hate them both with a firey passion?

    Cart before the horse, but essentially correct. Plus, I don't think the mainstream media in the U.S. has yet figured out that Trumpism is NOT "conservative".

    It's reactionary anarcho-fascism (I can do anything I want because FREEDUMB, but you better not step out of line without my permission). There hasn't been a conservative in the GOP since Teddy Roosevelt left the party.

    1151:

    I think that was a big part of it. But liberals tend to not fight... and the fight was chased out when Joe McCarthy gave COMMUNISTS UNDER YOUR BED to the GOP.

    1152:

    Liberals tend not to engage in violence, but fighting is certainly something Liberals have done historically.

    1153:

    Especially in Australia, where the Liberal Party is the right wing conservative one. Up here "small-l liberal" used to be the common way to describe liberals in the Liberal Party but that problem has gone away as the party moves in various illiberal directions (right, authoritarian, brown... they've gone all the ways).

    1155:

    reaction after some joker got annoyed at having to carry a notebook so used green crayon or yellow highlighter pens and some Very Important Information was illegible and lives were lost as a result.

    It has that "paperclip audit" feel about it (institutional unreasonableness that actually turns out to be extremely sensible if you know the reason behind it, which involved a lot of screaming and running around on fire).

    I don't know what the USAF says about black/blue/red ink. The USAF split off to become its own military branch before I was born. Army Aviation is NOT the USAF. And they're the only part of the Army that I know of who are allowed to use red ink.

    The whole black vs blue ink thing was set in stone before I joined up. I think you're right that there probably IS a good reason for it, but I have no idea what it might be.

    I use black ink exclusively because I found it less stressful to make it a habit instead of getting yelled at by the First Sergeant.

    1156:

    Re virus.

    A virus will mutate into anything, but the mutations that prosper are the ones that get it into a new host.

    With the partial (and that's key) lockdown, a virus that makes you feel a bit off colour will keep you at home. Boo hisss says the virus. I can't be transmitted that way! A virus that has no symptoms at all might be taken out shopping and have a chance to jump across, but it's hard to be shedding enough viral particles without symptoms particularly if people stand 2m apart.

    What's really good is if you make the host really really sick. Then they have to go to a nice crowded hospital. Lots of lovely nurses and doctors with stupid ineffective PPE have to lean right over the host and get a good face full of particles. Then those doctors and nurses can go talk to concerned relatives hosts, treat other potential hosts and take it all back to their nurse's accommodation/family /wherever.

    I for one have been surprised it's taken this long to get more virulent and further surprised that the new strains aren't significantly more deadly.

    1157:

    Duffy @ 1133: My apologies for going off subject, but things just got very interesting.

    My apologies for going off subject, but things just got very interesting.

    Stealth anti-vaxxer wingnuts.

    1158:

    As I said. And I've way over simplified it.

    1159:

    JBS @ 1155: Somehow I managed to chop off the first part of the comment I was replying to. I apologize for that. I do try to accurately quote the comments I'm replying to

    1160:

    Well of course Australian Liberals are conservatives. Why wouldn't they be? The whole damn country is upside down!

    1161:

    Voting for Carter in 1976 is something I regret, his policies were neoliberal (With added ethics), Reagan largely turned Carter's policies to 11 and shitcanned the ethics. If Reagan had a hypothetical 2nd term Ford administration to build on, it might've delayed the jump to the right.

    1162:

    In Canada the country is right side up, so everything is all right: The Conservatives are fascists, the New Democratic Party is socialist and the Liberals are shape-shifters.

    1163:

    In Canada the country is right side up, so everything is all right: The Conservatives are fascists, the New Democratic Party is socialist and the Liberals are shape-shifters.

    1164:

    Carter certainly wasn't all that, and his legacy isn't what it's made out to be... but he was a substantially more ethical person than any of the presidents who followed him. I think it's an absolute shame that the two presidents I'd describe as "least bad" were Carter and the first Bush, and they were both one-term presidents. I'm not sure we've had a president who can really be described as "great" since Eisenhower, and I'd give a lot for a Truman or Roosevelt right about now!

    1165:

    In Australia we have a diverse group of parliamentarians, including at least one who would likely respond to being called a fascist with "no, I'm a nazi". Fraser Anning is special. But the whole "Pauline Hanson's One Nation" (is opposed to all the other "One Nation" parties), and then Clive Palmer's United Australia Party (animatronic dinosaur not included)...look, I can't describe this stuff, it's just head-desk, facepalm, cringe material. Diverse, that's what it is... in the sense that there's many different ways to be wrong.

    But the point remains that if you call our conservatives fascists they just point to the actual fascists and say "no, they're the fascists". So we get a nice blokey face on our fascism... just as Hitler copied so much from the USA, we've not only done the same but we've innovated and update those old, tired ideas. Admittedly some of it is just obvious, where the UK uses semi-privatised operations to avoid scrutiny of their bad spending decisions we use it to keep doctors and (god forbid!) reporters out of our concentration camps. Sorry, "immigration detention centres" ... no need for nasty machinery, our inmates kill themselves!

    Australia is also leading the fight against foreign "personal data collectors"... because they compete with our state operated ones. Of course right now all eyes are on the "Rupert can't keep subsiding unprofitable propaganda all by himself, google and facebook have to help". ("The Australian" has AFAIK not been profitable for decades, and it's in many ways the far right equivalent of Pravda... all the news the boss wants you to know about)

    https://theconversation.com/the-secret-history-of-news-corp-a-media-empire-built-on-spreading-propaganda-116992

    And of course that media empire also has a problem with women leaders. I'm not sure that's a coincidence - they didn't like Shipley much, although IIRC he was quite keen on Thatcher.

    https://theconversation.com/theres-a-big-problem-with-the-murdoch-media-no-one-is-talking-about-how-it-treats-women-leaders-149986

    1166:

    Moz use it to keep doctors and (god forbid!) reporters out of our concentration camps. Sorry, "immigration detention centres" You WERE SAYING?

    that media empire also has a problem with women leaders. What's the Murdoch take on Ardern?

    1167:

    Re: '... the argument that an engineered gain-of-function virus would not evolve as it spreads is just utterly silly.'

    Below is an excerpt from an August 2017 article that may help illustrate how viruses change. (Includes a tree with lineages.)

    https://www.acsh.org/news/2017/08/04/ebola-mutation-map-suggests-virus-may-evolve-become-more-lethal-11654

    'When the team linked their Ebola genetics data with patient outcomes, they found that some mutations made an Ebola lineage more lethal, while other mutations made a lineage less lethal. (See diagram below.)

    Take lineage SL3.2, for instance. The case-fatality rate was 66%. But when this virus picked up a mutation called T5849C, the case-fatality rate increased to 73%. When the virus gained yet another mutation, called G17848A, the case-fatality rate leapt to 81.5%. Clearly, viral genetic factors played a key role in determining whether a patient lived or died.'

    Every infection (host) provides a huge raw materials inventory for virus reproduction and it's an n-sided die toss whether the next gen of that virus will include variants that are more virulent/transmissible, more deadly, or more whatever.

    What I'd like to know now is:

    What are the most similar ACE-2 receptor-like molecules and where (which tissues/organs) are they found?

    1168:
    What are the most similar ACE-2 receptor-like molecules and where (which tissues/organs) are they found?

    angiotensin converting enzyme 2 at NCBI

    1169:

    No. Bush I was a nasty bastard - did you miss, years ago, the declassified KGB file that THEY HAD AN AGENT IN THE ROOM as Bush, running for VP with Raygun in '80, made the arms-for-hostages deal with Iran? And the whole invasion was after he gave Iraq mixed signals, when they asked if the US would object if they invaded... because Kuwait was stealing their oil using a technique called horizontal drilling, to go under the border?

    The last US President of real stature, many years ago I can to consider the protagonist of a Greek tragedy: LBJ. He wanted the Civil Rights Act, and the Voting Rights Act, and the War on Poverty to be his legacy... and because that asshole MacNamara didn't have the cojones to come out soon enough (which he admitted in the nineties before he died) to tell LBJ we couldn't win, he got 'Nam.

    1170:

    I'm not sure I agree with you on either Bush I or LBJ.

    Bush I was willing to raise taxes when he needed to and he was smart-enough not to occupy Iraq. I don't think he's directly responsible for the poor communications between Iraq and the U.S. (though I agree that "the buck stops here.") That was a fuck-up between the State Dept., the Dept of Defense (apparently the Sec. Def. Cheney told the Kuwaitis we would defend them) and while I'd speculate that the problems probably resulted from Bush not holding a cabinet meeting and making sure everyone was on the same page, it's also true that Cheney was never, ever the type to go rogue! /sarc

    On the subject of LBJ, I think you're right as far as it goes on the domestic stuff, but by the time he had to make decisions about Vietnam he'd seen the Mau Mau and Korea, and he'd watched France and the U.K. fail in a dozen former colonies, including India, then he'd watched the N. Vietnamese wipe the floor with the French (and they didn't do badly against the Japenese in WWII either) while all the while Ho Chi Min had been asking the U.S. for help since he was part of the wait-staff at Versailles! To say LBJ got blindsided is MUCH too generous! (IMHO the guy who created the Civil Rights Act and the Voting Rights Act should have taken any estimates of how we'd do against "little foreign people" with a gigantic grain of salt!)

    1171:

    I happen to agree that George Herbert Walker Bush, former CIA director and president who was (in)directly responsible for 100,000-odd people dying of AIDS, was a polite person, but not terribly moral by most standards. He was (according to scurrilous and likely distorted rumor) the kind of person that a West Texas wildcatter would get a written contract from, in an era when they normally dealt on handshake deals, not that any of them were terribly honest.

    LBJ was also a not terribly moral person, of the kind that discerning women didn't let themselves be in the room alone with. Not that this reflects on his wife, or his skill as a politician. Just his character. Slick Willie Clinton had analogous failings.

    That said, I don't think McNamara saddled LBJ with the Vietnam War. If you believe the Ken Burns' documentary on the war, pretty much every president from JFK on knew it was unwinnable. The problem was that the political butchers' bill for pulling out was as bad as the one for staying in. Plus letting the commies with the Cold War was double-plus ungood. LBJ did sacrifice considerable political capital to do the right thing with the Civil Rights Act, the Voting Right Act, and the War On Poverty, and he did sacrifice his presidency on the bloody altar of the War, but...it's possible that he realized that he was screwed well before he announced he wouldn't seek re-election, and decided that, since his future was toast, he was going to go out with a bang rather than futilely sacrifice all progress for a second term.

    And you're right, that takes gonads of considerable size. Indeed, we could probably sort Washington politicians into parties fairly accurately based on the sized of the gonads they use in decision-making.

    1172:

    What's the Murdoch take on Ardern?

    From the article I linked to...

    When Ardern won the election in a historic landslide, The Australian responded with a piece describing her as “grossly incompetent” and “the worst person to lead New Zealand through this economic turbulence”.

    Yes. It's rare to see anything positive about her from Limited News.

    Also, the point about the privatised prisons is that media aren't allowed in. For our offshore camps that's literal and blatant - reporters are barred from Christmas Island and won't be given visas to visit Nauru which is a client state proudly independent nation that just happens to do whatever Australia asks.

    1173:

    Apparently 42 really is the number of life, the universe, and everything, at least according to a recently released physics paper. It contains sentences like "Specifically, the count factor 42 of θsi determines the value of the fundamental fine structure constant...."

    Can someone tell me whether this is real or an over-long joke?

    1174:

    Meanwhile, in expected news, the federal government anticipates an economic recover and is taking measures to prevent it.

    But while trying to persuade Australians to spend and invest, Morrison will also set the scene for the withdrawal of the popular pandemic payments that have provided support to the economy during the public health crisis.

    The holy market will provide, the government can withdraw and focus on making sure nothing stands in the way of extractive industries.

    http://www.ecopella.org/makesomemusic.htm

    I hate the Liberal Party with a passion deep and hearty So I voted for the Labor Party man But the lying little weevil turned out just as bloody evil It's clear he's out to break us if he can

    Listen: https://soundcloud.com/ian-curr/paul-spencer-make-some-music

    Read: https://commonslibrary.org/listen-and-watch-40-years-of-australian-blockading-songs/

    1175:
    Can someone tell me whether this is real or an over-long joke?

    Based on a quick look -- and I could well be wrong -- it is neither. Rather it appears to be madness. I think this Jody Geiger has a deep, sincere, and probably entirely mistaken belief that he has stumbled on a fundamental truth of the universe.

    You get this a lot. My old boss, Bob Horvitz, once he became famous, used to get long letters from people who were utterly convinced that they had discovered the Fundamental Truths of Biology. I read some of these letters -- they were nonsense.

    In physics you get people who put numbers together in complicated ways and discover approximate mathematical coincidences that they take to be deeply significant. That's what this paper looks like to me.

    1176:

    When I was doing my PhD in physics, many years ago before most people had email, people who thought they'd invented perpetual motion machines or other such would send letters to the Physics Department. Many of the letters were put in the coffee room for us grad students to try to spot the flaws. It was instructive; some of the flaws were not at all obvious.

    1177:

    US presidents since Eisenhower ... nobody has mentioned his successor, who - of course - never even got a chance at a second term. [ And, yes, I can remember what I was doing that day. ]

    1178:

    I was being born. My mother told me that she remembered being in labor and watching Kennedy's funeral.

    1179:
    I was being born. My mother told me that she remembered being in labor and watching Kennedy's funeral.

    I was eight. The main thing I remember is hearing people talk about how young Kennedy was to die -- he was in his 40s, and to me that seemed pretty old.

    1180:

    In Oz, the word "conservative" is generally used to describe the Liberal-National coalition when it's too complicated to get into the specific parties involved. In most of Australia the Liberals are the urban conservatives while the Nationals are the rural agrarian socialist conservatives, except in Queensland where they have merged into a single Liberal-National Party (LNP). People do use the term LNP to describe the coalition in other states too, but it's a bit misleading. People aligned with Labor* or the Greens often refer to conservatives as "tories", while LNP-aligned people hate that usage... which means it's really surprising it isn't more common.

    There's also this cartoon representing the current leader of the opposition, in a statement about internal ALP leadership challenges back when he was a junior minister in the Rudd-Gillard-Rudd government.

    *While the word "labour" normally follows the UK English spelling in writing in Australia, when the Australian Labor Party was formed in the 1890s they deliberately adopted the US English spelling as a sort of progressive declaration. The ALP managed to form a government in Queensland before the turn of the century (that is, before Australian federation), which made them the first modern western social-democrat government in any jurisdiction in the world.

    1181:

    Damian @ 1180

    For all my information needs on the Australien government I rely on these videos and others from the same source:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V41-uYPXw6I

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ippYOXR65sQ

    1182:

    Don't forget the Country Liberal Party in the NT - you can't leave the Counts out of the Liberal Party, it just wouldn't be the same. It really is the LiberalNationalLiberalNationalCountryLiberal Coalition. And remember, Tony Abbott promised that he would never lead a minority government, despite his party never having led a majority one. He almost didn't lie about that though... he lost the leadership shortly after the election.

    And yes, Giovanni is awesome and I treasure my "Department of Genuine Satire" T shirt. As they say "you couldn't make this up".

    1183:

    The thing about LBJ and MacNamara is that, as MacNamara said, LBJ asked him if we could win. MacNamara knew, and didn't have the balls, to tell him that we could not win in 'Nam under any acceptable conditions (nukes were not acceptable), and after him saying 'yes', then LBJ committed, publicly, half a million troops to 'Nam. Wether that was before the Gulf of Tonkin incident, I don't remember... but a month later MacNamara finally admitted it to LBJ, but he had committed, and that made it too late.

    1184:

    I get it. I just think that LBJ was insufficiently skeptical.

    Check my logic here: You don't push for equal rights, as LBJ did, unless you believe in equal ability. And if you believe in equal ability and you've just watched the Vietnamese kick France's ass in a nasty guerilla war, and you know they did quite well against the Japanese during WWII, and you've spent the last fifteen years watching France and the U.K. get kicked out of their various colonies... maybe there are some conclusions you should draw - and LBJ didn't come remotely close to drawing them.

    What I might concede is that thinking this way was a very new thing in the early sixties, and that LBJ wasn't yet good at it, but I can't imagine being LBJ and having access to the highest levels of intelligence, and not getting that McNamara was, perhaps, being overly optimistic.

    1185:

    I would note that the author is "the informativity institute" (apparently these two fine gentlemen). And I would note that Scientific and Academic Publishing, the well(ish. Well, sort of -ish) known open access publisher of this paper and at least 200 other fine journals, is on Beall's List. Although I cannot testify to the accuracy of Beall's List, since I was merely looking around for lists of potentially(!) predatory publishers.

    My conclusion is that I can't tell, without looking at the science, whether this is legit, whether this is someone who's deluded and purchased publication of an article, whether paper was written by someone like me, who self-published a book on climate change without being a climatologist but who warned everybody of the high likelihood of bogosity, or whether this paper is involved in someone's effort to build and/or finance some great idea. If the last, great! I've enjoyed reading the now-expired patents on antigravity devices and the like.

    Further research is needed. Ahem!*

    *Note, this was written with UK libel law in mind. Ahem.

    1186:

    In physics you get people who put numbers together in complicated ways and discover approximate mathematical coincidences that they take to be deeply significant. That's what this paper looks like to me.

    My favorite HL Mencken quote still applies: "For every complicated problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." Which is a demonstration that a misogynistic racist can still say useful things.

    1187:

    Ah. Got it. Thanks.

    1188:

    there is a dirty old rubish heap at the botom of mine.

    1189:

    I thought George was the autopilot. (Mike is on another shift.)

    1190:

    My favorite HL Mencken quote still applies: "For every complicated problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

    Huh. For some reason I thought it was Heinlein who said that.

    1191:

    I think he was quoting Mencken.

    1192:

    Troutwaxer Also the Brits, when asked to "help" in Viet Nam going: "No sir! Beeen there in 1945, not going there again - & you are doing it wrong ... " Should have told them something?

    And - yes - it was Mencken

    1193:

    Those are cool, and I'm pretty sure there are also people who will agree that everything worth knowing about Canadia can be gleaned from reruns of 70s Wayne and Schuster sketches. I'm not one, I think you need to watch Seeing Things too. Similarly, you need to round off surprisingly accurate announcements by the Australien government with a steady diet of Skippy, or at least Neighbours.

    Of course, the USA is entirely summarised by Gilligan's Island, just not in the way the producers would like (and if the fourth wall remains too solidly in place, you need to add The Magnificent Seven, but pretend it's set in Oklahoma rather than Mexico).

    Sorry, what were we talking about again?

    1194:

    Oops, forgot to supply evidence.

    1195:
    I still have my old yellow card (WHO International Certificate of Inoculation and Vaccination, in English and French), which was needed for smallpox, yellow fever and typhus fever (and, later, cholera). I needed it for international travel from shortly after birth.

    It's still needed in many places, I show mine every time I go to the Côte d'Ivoire to visit.

    They have decided that the yellow fever vaccine is for life, we don't have to get it re-done every 10 years.

    1196:
    My favorite HL Mencken quote still applies: "For every complicated problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong." Which is a demonstration that a misogynistic racist can still say useful things.

    I have always disliked that quote, because I hold more to the view the Mencken is parodying. In any case, it fails as a description of Measurement Quantization Describes the Physical Constants, since the adjectives "clear and simple" manifestly don't apply.

    1197:
    My favorite HL Mencken quote still applies: "For every complicated problem, there is an answer that is clear, simple, and wrong."

    Huh. For some reason I thought it was Heinlein who said that.

    I think what you're remembering is a parody by Heinlein of Mencken's parody, something like, "For every complicated problem, there is an answer that is obscure, even more complicated, and completely wrong." (I'm going from memory here, so that quote is certainly not accurate.)

    1198:

    Up-thread there was a discussion of jet injectors. I just came across this on the (London) Science Museum web page:

    https://collection.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/objects/co8061806/ped-o-jet-mass-inoculation-gun-inoculation-gun

    You know it must be old because nobody would call something the "Ped-O-Jet" today. It sounds like a bad joke from a Wallace and Grommit movie.

    1199:

    maybe there are some conclusions you should draw - and LBJ didn't come remotely close to drawing them

    American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug!

    Yes, the Vietnamese kicked Japanese ass and French ass, but American ingenuity and know-how is qualitatively different than those other decadent imperial powers, right? (And anyway, America isn't an imperial power. Ahem: pay no attention to the Monroe doctrine, the Philippines, etc etc ...)

    1200:
    LBJ was also a not terribly moral person, of the kind that discerning women didn't let themselves be in the room alone with. Not that this reflects on his wife, or his skill as a politician. Just his character.

    Robert Caro's massive and still-incomplete biography of LBJ leaves no doubt on that head. LBJ was an immoral snake and a coward, whose political success depended on fraud.

    1201:

    You're preaching to the choir, my friend.

    1202:

    As a friend of mine always says: "Americans shouldn't be allowed into foreign affairs without adult supervision"

    (But where that adult supervision should come from is of course another question...)

    1203:

    @ Damian, Niala, Robert Prior and any other of our Northern Neighbors:

    My Amerhoovian impression is that all one needs to know about Canada and Canadians could be learned from watching "*Letter Kenny" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pI6p7GRcdb0, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7wD-6oPPIg0) (snark).

    *This is reminiscent of where I grew up in a small New Mexico town in the '60s and '70s.

    1204:

    Damian Non-USA-ians haven't the faintest idea AT ALL what "Gilligans' Island" is or was, other than a TV programme. Explain, please.

    1205:

    chuckle Gilligan's Island became what would now be called viral. Gilligan (first and only mate) and the Skipper take some tourists to Hawaii, I think, out on a three-hour cruise. Storm hits drives them to the middle of the Pacific, and smashes them onto a not-so-desert island. The millionaire and his wife, the science teacher, the girl from a small town, and a movie starlet are on board. They survive.

    I will note that the island seems to be the major hub for the entire region around the Pacific for drug smugglers and spies, but no one ever reports them to get them rescued. Nor does anyone tell them how to get to either an island with communications or shipping lanes.

    It has also been impressed upon me that any song in the world can be sung to the tune of the theme song. If anyone has some brain bleach handy, I'd really like to get Alice's Restaurant sung to that tune out of my head....

    1206:

    I don't think of LBJ as a coward. Having lived in Texas, I have some clues. But with MacNamara - who admitted that he didn't have the balls to tell LBJ when LBJ asked him, not until later. I gather LBJ ripped him several new ones when he did tell him, but it was too late, and LBJ didn't feel he could back up, not with the GOP ready to scream SOFT ON COMMUNISIM!!! in 72 point type.

    1207:

    whitroth I THEN did the obvious thing & googled it .... Oh dearie me ... "Hotel California" on an island. With US-exceptionalism & Trumpist levels of incompetence, played as a joke. Yes?

    1208:

    I don't think of LBJ as a coward either. You want to be replying to LAvery, not me. I said LBJ was "insufficiently skeptical."

    1209:

    It was a very silly sitcom. Taking it as anything indicative of the American mind is probably a mistake.

    1210:

    I don't think of LBJ as a coward either.

    I'm going to guess that neither of you has read Caro's biography of LBJ.

    1211:

    By 2070 lab produced milk could possibly be as good if not better than the real thing. Already seems quite far along - https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/lab-milk#comparison https://www.nytimes.com/2019/08/02/science/lab-grown-milk.html

    1212:

    Actually, the Gilligan's Island tune was how I memorized a big chunk of Rime of the Ancient Mariner for a school assignment. It's not a perfect match, but it's pretty close.

    1213:

    Well okay. You probably need F Troop too, which provides a slightly more nuanced representation of contact.

    But you must really appreciate the forced-logic fatalism of the commitment to status quo ante in Gilligan, which has to explain more things than are reasonable to explain while the fourth wall remains intact. This is mostly of the pattern: "if you can build an X, surely you can build a boat, so the reason you can't is Y", but it carries into all aspects. There's a constant requirement to suspend disbelief around these semi-absurdist propositions. Maybe it's more a Brechtian representation of the human condition than a specifically US-focused one, but still.

    1214:

    Always worth (re)reading the history of the Great Game, if you've got any pretensions that UK imperialism was better than the US's (or Russia's for that matter). Also, (re)read a book like Dark Emu if you have any pretensions that the Brits were thoughtful conquerors. I'm sure there are similar books on Canada, and Russian history in the steppes and Siberia, and Chinese history along its borders, for that matter.

    My general take on empire building is that comparing the business of empire to sausage-making slanders the care and skill of sausage-makers. It's more of a wreck-to-own type of enterprise, really.

    1215:

    Greg, since you started out with a statement that is trivially and obviously false, I had to google just what the situation was for the UK. There's a longish* discussion here:

    https://forums.digitalspy.com/discussion/1967860/ten-famous-us-shows-that-were-never-shown-in-the-uk

    The TL;DR is that it was shown on ITV, but ITV London pulled it after 13 episodes. Other ITV regions definitely played it all and had reruns, and apparently Granada played reruns, but Londoners might have missed it (and still got The Beverly Hillbillies, Batman and The Addams Family).

    It was on one of the commercial stations here, played in the after-school timeslot for most of the 70s and 80s when I was doing my after-school television watching. So it was in the same general mix as The Goodies and Doctor Who, as well as local stuff like Skippy and Adventure Island.

    • Actually quite short and concise by the standards of the present company, but you know what I mean.
    1216:

    If you want to do more than joke about it, you could watch the seventies sitcom "All In The Family." Offhand I can't think of a better way to get the average (white person) in the U.S. I'm not sure I can speak for the views of any other race.

    1217:

    Isn't that one a remake of a British sitcom? I was a little young for both of those, which were in fact not played as reruns here all through the 80s like the others mentioned (and like the Brady Bunch and the Partridge family were). I remember Eight is Enough and Family Ties, which I guess both were on the margins of the seam of ideation you're describing.

    The Australian equivalent to All in the Family/Till Death Us Do Part was called Kingswood Country and is one that people would most likely mention as revealing of Australia in the exact same way you describe here too.

    1218:

    According to Wikipedia, it's based on a British sitcom called "'Til Death Do Us Part."

    The current issues, of course, are different than the issues in All In The Family, but the dynamics are exactly the same.

    1219:

    Damian Um ... I gave up watching TV in about 1975 I never, ever watched any ITV programmes - they have advertising. I had never - ever - heard of "GI" until I came across a reference in some SF/F novel a few years back & I just let it pass. OK?

    "The Goodies" was also on the radio - as was "Hitchiker", later. ( I never saw the TV "Hitchiker" either. )

    1220:

    Gilligan was made and first broadcast in the 60s, though I recall there were "cast reunion" TV movies made in the 70s. Commercial breaks were for visiting the loo or buttering your toast, otherwise you were stuck (or worse, you missed something important). It's interesting to see the spread across generations on this, as current ones don't have the same experience with commercials or timing (despite YouTube putting them in at exactly the wrong time these days, unless you subscribe). We all remember when one of the selling points of DVRs was that you could "pause live television", but that's very twee these days of course.

    HHGTTG was radio first, then the novels, then the TV series based on the novels and finally the movie with Martin Freeman. I liked the movie but don't see it as canonical... but I was already "old" when it was made, being del mezzo del cammin (that is 35), and that's the prejudice isn't it: you see the real things as being the ones you learned, or even better, found out for yourself, when you were young(er than that).

    1221:

    Not quite any song, just the ones in so-called Common Metre, i.e. ones where you have a line of iambic tetrameter followed by a line of iambic trimeter. So, you know, "Amazing Grace", "The Yellow Rose of Texas", the US Marine Corps hymn, "Clementine", the poems of Emily Dickinson...

    1222:

    Australia's national anthem Advance Australia Fair is in common metre, which has previously led to performances of it to the tune of Working Class Man by the Australian band Cold Chisel ("whoah-oh-oh-oh our land is girt by sea!"). I think that it works better to the tune of Gilligan's Island, but of course what this means is that the converse is also true: all the common metre things work to the tune of either Working Class Man or Advance Australia Fair. There is much opportunity for mischief, more than one filker (not looking at anyone in particular Mark) can handle on their own).

    1223:

    It's close enough to the truth. Gilligan's Island is one of a certain category of shows that if you've heard of them at all it's because you've seen, often enough that you can remember it, passing references to the name in things written by Americans who assume that all you have to do is mention those two words in isolation and everyone will immediately understand the whole of the concept you're referring to. Only since you're not American, you don't have a clue, so you just shrug it off and let it pass. The first page of the thread also mentions Saturday Night Live and The Ed Sullivan Show, which are other examples of the same category. And The Beverly Hillbillies, even though they're trying to say it isn't.

    Of course these shows were never shown on British TV because no fucker ever mentions them over here. It makes no difference that it is now possible to hunt down obscure internet threads with people saying that actually they were shown, fifty years after the fact; the fact is that at the time they weren't shown, which is why no fucker ever knows about them, and the people on the internet threads have the same problem as the people who deny the eight faces.

    I Love Lucy is kind of a special case because it's so old that it is by now widely known about - but as a reference. Still nobody actually saw it, but you can use it as a stock reference to a particular type of comedic situation and stand a reasonable chance of getting the message across.

    The Addams Family? I must admit I did once know a chap called Lurch, but I never understood why; I thought it was a reference to him frequently losing physical coordination due to getting drunk, which he did, and I'm fairly sure that I thought that because someone else told me it. Quite possibly everyone thought that and he'd just brought the name with him. When many years later I finally saw a picture of the original Lurch, the real reason was instantly obvious - the words "dead ringer" are appropriate - but it was highly obscure at the time. It's more widely known now, but that's because there was a film of it some time in the 90s.

    Makes me laugh to see the thread being started with "when all we had was the four main channels". Should have been "before we had as many as four", because the transition is relevant to the subject for the avoidance of silly answers. We had Channel 4 start up, and we had the start of this idea that TV channels can't shut down in the middle of the night whether or not they actually have anything to show, so we were already having it become really really obvious that there was far more broadcast time available than we had any need for, and they were going frantic trying to stop people everywhere actually realising this. So, especially on Channel 4 and especially in the middle of the night, they used to churn out any old cheap shite just to fill up the capacity, and they found a vast and convenient source of old cheap shite in the archives of American TV stations.

    As a result, from that time onwards it has become technically true that a lot of previously geographically imprisoned American TV shows were shown on British TV, but they were "shown" in such a way that nobody watched them. So all the people on that thread saying "I remember so-and-so was on in the 80s" are only there because a forum thread can concentrate the observations of night-time security guards and whiz-heads and similar minorities, and when you're considering whether or not something was properly "on British TV", as in some random person in the street would probably be able to talk about it for at least a couple of sentences, those replies don't count.

    1224:

    I've just tried to sing Amazing Grace to the tune of Clementine, and it fits incredibly badly. I can't make it work at all.

    1225:

    "commercials or timing (despite YouTube putting them in at exactly the wrong time these days, unless you subscribe)."

    Youtube has adverts?

    apt-get install youtube-dl

    I don't watch youtube stuff in the browser; I don't want to watch it in the browser, in any case, so I consider using a command line tool to download it as something I would be doing no matter what. But not only does it come without adverts, the help text for youtube-dl says that the option to make it include adverts is new, under development, and doesn't work properly. Dunno why they're even bothering, but they are, and they are finding it difficult, even though they in particular ought to be good at that sort of thing.

    So if it's actually easier to make the video work without adverts than to put them in, I would expect browser-based ad blockers to be able to block youtube ads without even breaking a sweat. Yet the things people say give the impression that they don't function at all. (Though it has to be said that I do assume that people who don't have an ad blocker installed are a tiny minority of loonies who are not numerous enough to bother noticing; I am technically aware that this is not the case, but I can't really think that, because for some unfathomable reason I still find it hard to accept that mindbending stupidity really is a characteristic of the vast majority of the human race as opposed to just looking that way due to observation bias.)

    1226:

    Just for fun, here's the "All In The Family" theme. Much better than the Gilligan song, IMHO.

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0d8FTPv955I

    1227:

    Well I started by saying that Greg's statement was false, and it's the same statement that you repeat partially. You are using "outside the USA" as though it were indistinguishable from "in the UK", and that's where you're going wrong. For Australians, and it turns out a lot of others, this American programming came to us in the same format and level as quite a bit of the British programming you're happy to assume everyone knows about. And the latter bit is fair to an extent.

    And you missed the context. One of our Canadian regulars referred to a specific series of videos made for online consumption via YouTube by a small Australian media organisation as "all you need to know", and my own contribution was a subthread drawing out the same pattern with the tables turned. You expect a lot of people to complain how unfair the comparison is in such circumstances, no matter how light you make the comment. But Greg's (and to a lesser extent your) contribution is if anything more strained than that: "I demand that you refrain from mentioning anything I've never heard of". I'm not saying you need to have seen it, and I accept it's unusual for brits to have done so, but that doesn't make exploring the how and why it's like that uninteresting either.

    1228:

    Troutwaxer @ 1170: I'm not sure I agree with you on either Bush I or LBJ.

    You're wrong about both of them. Bush I sold out the hostages in Iran for political gain; undermining the national interest to pursue self interest. Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait was the pay off for pursuing the U.S.'s war against Iran for eight years (which was itself blowback from Reagan's "arms for hostages" deals; both the one he agreed to before the election and the subsequent ones he agreed to because Iran had him by the balls & knew he'd have to knuckle under. The whole Iraq/Iran war was Reagan/Bush duplicity because they started out in the hole from the treason committed to get elected.

    The only reason for Desert Shield/Desert Storm was Margret Thatcher publicly shamed him for not having any backbone. And then he fucked that up with premature withdrawal.

    LBJ didn't want the Vietnam war precisely because he knew it would cost him his "Great Society". "Guns or Butter" - LBJ wanted butter, but the hawks in the Democratic Party (scarred by McCarthyism) wouldn't support him in that unless he prosecuted the Vietnam War.

    And then half of them bolted to the Republicans anyway in response to the Civil Rights & Voting Rights acts.

    Bush I had no principles other than self aggrandizement. He was the prototype for Trumpolini.

    1229:

    LAvery @ 1179:

    I was being born. My mother told me that she remembered being in labor and watching Kennedy's funeral.

    I was eight. The main thing I remember is hearing people talk about how young Kennedy was to die -- he was in his 40s, and to me that seemed pretty old.

    The 1960 election was the first one I remember being interested in as a child.

    I was 14 when Kennedy was murdered. I was in gym class in the 9th grade. Those of us who were not coordinated enough to play basketball were outside on the playground playing "soccer" - essentially "every man for himself" trying to kick the ball towards one end of the field or the other (there were no goals, just some clothing in a couple of piles at each end to mark the goal lines) and no one keeping score - when the Coach came out to tell us Kennedy had been shot.

    I can still see it in my mind like it was only today. One of the kids said "I'm glad" and it's the only time I ever heard a teacher curse at a student.

    The school board decided not to close school the day of the funeral, although I don't think anyone was counted absent if they stayed home, and they set the school's TV up in the auditorium and more or less suspended classes so we could go sit in there and watch the funeral.

    1230:

    "You are using "outside the USA" as though it were indistinguishable from "in the UK", and that's where you're going wrong."

    I was replying to your comments about the UK situation, and specifically mentioned British TV a few times. I made no comment on your final paragraph about Australia. The point is that while there are quite a few American TV shows for which it is possible to look stuff up and find surprising references to it being broadcast in Britain (even before Channel 4), as far as anyone you ever actually talk to is concerned, they've either never heard of it or only know from Americans talking about it. Whether "never shown here" is technically untrue or not, it's true enough to be considered as true.

    "I demand that you refrain from mentioning anything I've never heard of".

    No, I didn't say that. I do often feel like that, because so often if I do go as far as looking it up it turns out to be a load of shit and I become pissed off at the waste of effort, but I do refrain from actually demanding it, which would obviously be unreasonable, and I don't see how you can get even the feeling from my post in question.

    1231:

    I don't see how you can get even the feeling from my post in question.

    That's fair enough, I was mostly responding to someone else's comments. Also: whether or not something that is otherwise pretty universal in the West, especially the English speaking West, is actually unknown in the UK... that is actually not typically knowable in advance. So for the most part when this is discovered it's interesting at a descriptive level, that is when we talk about what has in fact happened, but not so much at a prescriptive one, where we would consider what should have happened (ie, someone should have known about something... which is obviously absurd). That's as far as it goes. Arguing about it prescriptively is distinctly uninteresting, why should Australians and Americans care whether people in the UK saw that stuff? I don't think you missed out on anything. It's just a cultural artefact that is common enough for references, and I'm happy to apologise for making references that people don't get.

    There, phew. Of course now you're going to tell me that Skippy is too obscure a reference too... :P

    1232:

    John Hughes @ 1195:

    I still have my old yellow card (WHO International Certificate of Inoculation and Vaccination, in English and French), which was needed for smallpox, yellow fever and typhus fever (and, later, cholera). I needed it for international travel from shortly after birth.

    It's still needed in many places, I show mine every time I go to the Côte d'Ivoire to visit.

    They have decided that the yellow fever vaccine is for life, we don't have to get it re-done every 10 years.

    I got one when I went through Basic Training. I still have it around here somewhere but I'd really have to search for it. The last time I remember them adding an entry was some time before Desert Storm. After that I guess they didn't need it any more. I think maybe that was about the time the medical records were computerized.

    They didn't want to see it when I was getting ready to go to Iraq and didn't add the vaccinations I got then.

    1233:

    Damian @ 1231: " Of course now you're going to tell me that Skippy is too obscure a reference too... :P"

    If the title song is sung in French, yes:

    "Skippy, Skyppy, regardez tous avec nous, Skippy, Skippy, notre ami le kangourou."

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JY9zIFRin78

    1234:

    Well that's the thing: I was aware that it's been dubbed into a bunch of languages, definitely including French, German, Danish and Japanese, even presumably including American English. I would be impressed but not surprised to learn it was also dubbed into Quebec French, and really surprised to learn it was done in Acadian or Cajun French.

    1235:

    So if it's actually easier to make the video work without adverts than to put them in, I would expect browser-based ad blockers to be able to block youtube ads without even breaking a sweat. Yet the things people say give the impression that they don't function at all.

    I have some ad-blocker in my home browser, and it basically strips all the ads from Youtube videos. Recently though the videos have shown a blank screen and a "skip ads" button when starting a video, but I can't really be bothered about that. When I watch Youtube videos on some other device I get annoyed quickly.

    I also run Pi-hole, which is a DNS server designed to block known ad sites, and it seems to work reasonably well for most stuff.

    1236:
    So if it's actually easier to make the video work without adverts than to put them in, I would expect browser-based ad blockers to be able to block youtube ads without even breaking a sweat. Yet the things people say give the impression that they don't function at all.

    Ublock Origin, aka U0, works perfectly for stripping ads out of youtube.

    1237:

    Yeah, but arriving in a country with a bunch of mates in the same clothes and lots of expensive military hardware is not the same as getting off the scheduled Air France flight.

    It's the medical authorities at the port of entry who ask to see your carnet de vaccination and drag you off to have a yellow fever shot if you don't have it on you.

    1238:

    I also run Pi-hole, which is a DNS server designed to block known ad sites, and it seems to work reasonably well for most stuff.

    I've done something similar in the past, but not with a dedicated tool. I just used the named that came with OpenBSD as a DNS resolver for the entire house, and a published list of ad server names, which I resolved to a vhost on a local apache which served up either nothing, or a 1px white dot, depending on what the page was asking for. This beat subscribing to an external resolver latency-wise, and updating the list manually and sporadically was just fine functionality-wise. I only stopped when browser-based blockers became commonplace; these days the wifi routers have anti malware and other goodies.

    1239:

    This beat subscribing to an external resolver latency-wise, and updating the list manually and sporadically was just fine functionality-wise.

    I run the Pi-hole in a dedicated Raspberry pi, so there's really no latency, as it's on the same network segment as the other computers.

    1240:

    I have always disliked that quote, because I hold more to the view the Mencken is parodying.

    Most of the Trumpers I know feel that all problems have simple solutions. And it's the evil ones, deep state, scientist conspiratorial ones, etc... who want to impose complicated solutions so the common person can't function without paying off those evil ones.

    Now I don't say this makes any sense. But they really really really believe it.

    1241:

    American exceptionalism is a hell of a drug!

    There was also the anti-hippy factor. For most of the 60s the opposition was centered around those godless, lazy, leaching off society hippies. So to come out against the war was to go against mom, motherhood, and apple pie.

    So we had 17 year olds being sent home from school because their sideburns were below the center of the ear or their hair touched their collar. The war seriously split US society in the mid 60s and you were either on one side or the other.

    Hmmm. Sounds familiar doesn't it.

    Note: there is some deep sarcasm buried in my comment.

    1242:

    It was a very silly sitcom

    Understatement of the last century. But the memes from it are almost universally known in the US by anyone over the age of 30 or 40.

    Or just the mention of the characters names/titles.

    If say "the professor" most of us over 30 in the US think of Gilligan's Island.

    1243:

    John Hughes @ 1237: Yeah, but arriving in a country with a bunch of mates in the same clothes and lots of expensive military hardware is not the same as getting off the scheduled Air France flight.

    It's the medical authorities at the port of entry who ask to see your carnet de vaccination and drag you off to have a yellow fever shot if you don't have it on you.

    That's why I wanted the Army to update it for all the shots I got before I went to Iraq, but they said no.

    1244:

    That's why I wanted the Army to update it for all the shots I got before I went to Iraq, but they said no.
    Luckily the only one you need for travel* is Yellow Fever, and that one is now considered good for life.

    (The only stamp I mean. Lots of vaccines are recommended).

    1245:

    Gilligan's Island is Hell:

    “Some theorists believe that the setting of Gilligan’s Island is not an island, but rather Hell, and that its sinful inhabitants all perished in the crash of the SS Minnow. According to this theory, each character on Gilligan’s Island represents one of the Seven Deadly Sins. The millionaire Mr. Howell represents Greed, while his work-averse wife represents Sloth. Sexy movie star Ginger stands in for Lust, while innocent farm girl Mary Ann envies Ginger’s beauty and lifestyle. The smart Professor is prideful because he can’t admit that he is unable to fix the ship or get them off the island. Skipper, meanwhile, symbolizes two deadly sins: Gluttony and Wrath, because he’s always taking something out on poor Gilligan. Not that you should feel bad for the titular dimwit; these fans believe that Gilligan represents Satan. He’s constantly screwing up the group’s plans for rescue, and what’s more, he’s always wearing red. ”

    And if anyone asks "Ginger or Mary Ann?", the correct answer is Mary Ann.

    1246:

    "Kirk or Picard?"

    "Sisco."

    1247:

    I notice that Russia with Sputnik V (which appears to be a very respectable vaccine) and China with Sinovac (not so much so, but not useless) are moving out into the n-th world with substantial offers of doses. The US and Europe are not doing that..

    No very explicit quid pro quo that I've seen yet, but building up some good will in such matters couldn't hurt, could it? Russia helped Mexico in time of need, where was the US?

    1248:

    I notice that Russia with Sputnik V (which appears to be a very respectable vaccine) and China with Sinovac (not so much so, but not useless) are moving out into the n-th world with substantial offers of doses. The US and Europe are not doing that..

    No very explicit quid pro quo that I've seen yet, but building up some good will in such matters couldn't hurt, could it? Russia helped Mexico in time of need, where was the US?

    1249:

    My Florida high school classmates started kvetching a few weeks ago about their atrocious vaccine reservation system and the impossibility of getting a 'ticket' for The Jab. That software is Evenbrite, which I had encountered before as a ticket assignment for much smaller missions.

    Having worked in the state's public health system before I ran away to Oregon three decades ago, I was very surprised that no dedicated app existed, as that was the kind of thing the Department of Health was intubating the county health agencies in. (Using MUMPS, of all things.)

    Why Eventbrite? Turns out a major component in the public-private circus which is Operation Warp Speed was a no-bid contract let to Deloitte for vaccine distribution software which is very problematic. Urgh. https://www.technologyreview.com/2021/01/30/1017086/cdc-44-million-vaccine-data-vams-problems/

    1250:

    A former boss used to say, “Opinions are like a55ho1e5, everybody’s got one.” Certainly true in my case, I do have an opinion on most topics. Here are mine from 2017 on LBJ and Gilligan’s Island, which might now qualify as strange attractors for thousand comment discussions, along with nuclear energy, the comparative merits of weapon systems, and early programming kludges.

    keithmasterson@yahoo.com replied to this comment from Heteromeles | September 26, 2017 17:49 796: In spite of my vicarious enjoyment at seeing posters display hard-won tech expertise as they vie and contend over fighter jet details, it may be time to put this thread to sleep. So in the interest of encouraging O.G.H. to suggest an alternate topic, I'll just stink up the chatroom with the following: I've been watching the Vietnam series too, and it's sad to remember how much LBJ impaired a genuine progressive social agenda with all the desperate attempts at proving his commie-fighter credentials. Largely forgotten was his brief try at business management after forgoing a second term, as CEO of a small regional carrier renamed LBJ Airways in his honor. Memorable only for its stewardesses' greeting, "Coffee, milk or our famous LBJ tea?" Just too far ahead of its time.

    keithmasterson@yahoo.com replied to this comment from Charlie Stross | December 24, 2017 22:59 58: "an American TV show that was never broadcast in the UK?" The Beatles are the first I remember to have explained how the Atlantic serves as a cultural filter. I forget which one said it, but the point was that Brit teens thought U.S. 50s rock was generally better than homegrown because the really dumb stuff never got imported to their airwaves. Here we've got PBS still showing Britcoms like 'Are You Being Served' from the 70s, 'Keeping Up Appearances' and 'Last of the Summer Wine' from the 90s, and they do seem somewhat more content rich than comparable U.S product of the time, so maybe that's the filter effect in action. But I think money factors usually prevail in what's selected, 'Gilligan' was such a huge hit in the 60s they probably overpriced it for offshore distribution. Now it's 50 plus years old and would seem too dated to pay for, unless they released it virtually free. Might find an appreciative U.K. audience though, it's so old the creators had to have gotten their start in vaudeville theater and radio shows of the 30s, and just recycled a lot of classic slapstick material with surefire broad appeal not dependent on context. The gag I'll never forget is when Gilligan blew on a container of some kind of powder, which erupted in a cloud covering his eyes and face so that he panicked and ran headlong into a palm tree, knocking himself out. Okay so far, but really just a setup to let the camera pan back to the tree, which now showed a white powder imprint of his face on the trunk. Bits like that could trace their lineage back to improv at the Globe Theater. Speaking of which, Neal Stephenson's 'Rise and Fall of D.O.D.O' has a scene at the Globe. Anybody else read this? The whole concept of a secret government agency specializing in magic, based on quantum multiverse effects somehow seems oddly familiar....wonder where he got that idea from.

    1251:

    I forget which one said it, but the point was that Brit teens thought U.S. 50s rock was generally better than homegrown because the really dumb stuff never got imported to their airwaves.

    I said something similar in the early 1990s about Japanese animation, back when it took real effort to get any of it over here in the US. What we did get averaged considerably better than the domestic product.

    1252:

    Keithmasterson @ 1250: A former boss used to say, “Opinions are like a55ho1e5, everybody’s got one.”

    You left out the second part: "... and everybody thinks theirs is the only one that doesn't stink!"

    1253:

    Interesting thought that hit me today: what happens when folks retire - will they, having lived at .3G for many years, be sent back to good old 1G Earth?

    1254:

    This is one of those "nobody talks about" issues. What do you do with 70 year olds who can't live on Earth due to acclimation to Mars gravity. All they are at this point to the Mars colony is a resource since. There not being a The Villages, Florida for them to move to.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Villages,_Florida

    I can't imagine. The last thing I want to do is retire to where I'm surrounded by old farts.

    1255:

    Indeed. I expect there will be a lot of "supervise the young adults" in short bursts (an hour or so at a time, perhaps) - experience is valuable. But for those who can't manage that, there doesn't seem to be a way to do "quiet retirement".

    There will obviously be a high rate of "unfortunate suit accidents" in the near-elderly, most of which will be exactly what they seem to be (and others will be disguised suicide). But convincing the population that that's true? That might be hard.

    1256:

    Senicide?

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Senicide

    When I was in Ilulissat in 2019, a young woman told a story she heard from her grandmother, about a cliff where old people would jump from when food was short. Hearsay story, told to tourists, so no idea how much truth it contained. The cliff was only 4-5 m high, so it didn't look immediately fatal (ie. a painful way to go).

    https://nowheremag.com/2015/04/growing-old-with-the-inuit-3/

    1257:

    Also given what's happening in Ontario, I suspect that elderly Martians will not have long happy retirements…

    https://www.thestar.com/news/investigations/2021/02/07/whats-changed-since-we-ran-natalies-story-of-neglect-in-two-ontario-nursing-homes-not-a-damn-thing-her-granddaughter-says.html

    TLDR: Problems highlighted in 2003 weren't fixed. For-profit homes still killing residents through neglect (before Covid). And the government has recently released them from civil liability unless gross negligence can be proven — so no real consequences for making money off substandard care.

    1258:

    I suspect that the kind of people who would willingly move into frozen desert for the rest of their lives, already know about Inuits leaving their old on the ice floes and why. No, there won't be any pretend "suit malfunctions". Far more likely there will be a ceremony, where a person who can no longer stand even in Mars gravity, will solemnly roll their wheelchair out of the airlock, say their last goodbyes, and slowly lift the faceplate as their children and grandchildren kneel in a circle.

    1260:

    This is one of those "nobody talks about" issues. What do you do with 70 year olds who can't live on Earth due to acclimation to Mars gravity.

    When the state pension was first introduced in the UK in 1908 it was a means-tested benefit available to over-70s. As mean life expectancy at adulthood was in the 60s back then, very few people actually claimed it, and those who did didn't live on it for very long. On the other hand, there was no argument over whether or not they needed it: poor healthcare and less automation meant most were worn out well before that age and physically unproductive.

    My guess is that Mars won't have retirement as a thing, for the first 50-100 years. Instead it'll have end-of-life subsistence, so that folks with a diagnosed terminal illness or disability (including dementia) won't be expected to work. In other words, you work until you can work no more, and then your end of life will be managed (hopefully without any need to walk out onto an ice floe and freeze yourself).

    Certainly the boomer default expectation of retiring at 60-65 and living another 20-odd years simply won't be manageable on the surplus productivity of an early (and growing) colony.

    1261:

    Carousel!

    More or less, yes. Except it would be most likely determined by the person's physical condition rather than age.

    1262:

    Charlie Stross @ 1260:

    This is one of those "nobody talks about" issues. What do you do with 70 year olds who can't live on Earth due to acclimation to Mars gravity.

    When the state pension was first introduced in the UK in 1908 it was a means-tested benefit available to over-70s. As mean life expectancy at adulthood was in the 60s back then, very few people actually claimed it, and those who did didn't live on it for very long. On the other hand, there was no argument over whether or not they needed it: poor healthcare and less automation meant most were worn out well before that age and physically unproductive.

    My guess is that Mars won't have retirement as a thing, for the first 50-100 years. Instead it'll have end-of-life subsistence, so that folks with a diagnosed terminal illness or disability (including dementia) won't be expected to work. In other words, you work until you can work no more, and then your end of life will be managed (hopefully without any need to walk out onto an ice floe and freeze yourself).

    Certainly the boomer default expectation of retiring at 60-65 and living another 20-odd years simply won't be manageable on the surplus productivity of an early (and growing) colony.

    In 1935, when FDR signed the Social Security Act which set the retirement age at 65, average life expectancy was 60.7 years (that's why they chose 65, because most working people wouldn't live long enough to collect).

    Average life expectancy didn't get above 65 until 1938 (for women) and 1949 (for men). In some ways it's the old age & survivor's benefits that increased life expectancy in the US because before that old people were a burden on a family and were usually neglected to death even if they weren't deliberately exposed on an ice floe.

    Without Social Security (and Medicare) the Boomers wouldn't have any life expectancy beyond retirement.

    1263:

    Pigeon @ 1259: Carousel!

    I'm guessing this is not a reference to the 1945 Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II Broadway musical?

    1264:

    "In 1935, when FDR signed the Social Security Act which set the retirement age at 65, average life expectancy was 60.7 years (that's why they chose 65, because most working people wouldn't live long enough to collect)."

    That's not how life expectancy works, exactly. Lower values of life expectancy are associated with mortality at both ends of the age distribution. So high levels of child mortality pull the expected value downwards. Once a person survives childhood their life expectancy is now more than the average for the population because they did not die at childbirth, or at age 2, etc.

    Today the life expectancy for a newborn in the US is 78.54 years. It was lower when I was born in 1959. However, since I've survived to age 61, according to the US Social Security Administration's Life Expectancy calculator, I should anticipate living to age 83.3

    1265:

    Logan's Run

    The film isn't bad, the books are better.

    1266:

    wroehl @ 1264:

    "In 1935, when FDR signed the Social Security Act which set the retirement age at 65, average life expectancy was 60.7 years (that's why they chose 65, because most working people wouldn't live long enough to collect)."

    That's not how life expectancy works, exactly. Lower values of life expectancy are associated with mortality at both ends of the age distribution. So high levels of child mortality pull the expected value downwards. Once a person survives childhood their life expectancy is now more than the average for the population because they did not die at childbirth, or at age 2, etc.

    Today the life expectancy for a newborn in the US is 78.54 years. It was lower when I was born in 1959. However, since I've survived to age 61, according to the US Social Security Administration's Life Expectancy calculator, I should anticipate living to age 83.3

    It may not be the way Life Expectancy works, but it IS the way Congress works.

    1267:

    Interesting article about how SARS-Cov2 variants were observed to arise in a persistent infection in an immunocompromised patient.

    This is not about "long Covid". In typical long Covid, an acute SARS-Cov2 infection ends fairly quickly, but produces damage that has long-term consequences, causing chronic disease. Rather, in this immunocompromised patient an active SARS-Cov2 infection persisted for five months (then he died). He remained infectious throughout that time.

    What's remarkable about this case is that the doctors took samples throughout the course of the disease. And they saw the virus evolve in real time.

    This patient suggests the problematic variants we're all worried about now may not be the result of a totally natural viral disease progression. A century or so ago there would not have been so many immunocompromised persons around as there are now -- they would have been killed by common infections. Also, a SARS-Cov2 infection would not last five months in such a patient. He would die much sooner than that.

    So, in Covid-19 we may be dealing in part with an iatrogenic (caused by doctors) disease.

    The only viable solution, I think, is to vaccinate everyone fast. The anti-vaxers may yet kill us all.

    Specials

    Merchandise

    About this Entry

    This page contains a single entry by Charlie Stross published on January 18, 2021 12:12 PM.

    What happens now? was the previous entry in this blog.

    A Quick Infomercial is the next entry in this blog.

    Find recent content on the main index or look in the archives to find all content.

    Search this blog

    Propaganda