Decadence Is Not A Cause - It Is An Effect

[williatw]

Now if we can get the M-E thrusters working properly and open up a truly golden age of human spaceflight,

Polywell rockets would give at least 70% of that effect and it is a surer technology.

I doubt that. Remember, we've had the science down for decades how to build fission rockets and that has not yielded a single fusion rocket, and remember that although fusion has a higher conversion efficiency, the system efficiency is significantly worse than fission. So the fission rockets we've never built are a good indicator whether we'd ever build a fusion rocket. Probably not. The only advantage is the lack of fission products and the thrust/mass would be worse than fission, which is worse than chemical.

We didn't deploy (we did "build" the NERVA) fission rockets for two basic reasons: 1)Cost; having an upper stage that was nuclear didn't address the issue of high cost to orbit with expendable chemical rockets. Whatever magic propulsion wise nuclear could do from orbit, it cost just as much to put it up in the first place. Musk's reusable rockets would of course dramatically change that, if they work out as hoped. 2) the Public's exaggerated fears of anything nuclear; what if it crashed "spewing radioactivity" ? Chernobyl in space etc.; this of course would also preempt the possibility of any type of nuclear rocket to orbit lower stage (or SSTO) like GCNR to say nothing a NPR. Fusion rockets would (hopefully) be less "scary" to the public but who knows? Maybe one of the propellant less drive schemes will work out, not sure I would count on it.

[MSimon]

I doubt that. Remember, we've had the science down for decades how to build fission rockets and that has not yielded a single fusion rocket, and remember that although fusion has a higher conversion efficiency, the system efficiency is significantly worse than fission. So the fission rockets we've never built are a good indicator whether we'd ever build a fusion rocket. Probably not. The only advantage is the lack of fission products and the thrust/mass would be worse than fission, which is worse than chemical.

You have to test rockets on the ground. And then launch them into space. Fission rockets would be significantly radioactive at launch. And a launch accident (even if launched on chem rockets for "to orbit") would be scary. Not to mention unplanned criticality.

Polywell may over come those objections (turns off with a switch).

And I think you got thrust to mass wrong.

1. Polywell
2. Fission
3. Chemical

I did a BOE a long time ago with Polywell and water reaction mass. Looked good to me.

[Diogenes]

BTW GIT doesn't it gall you that a bunch of brain dead drugged up dopers are handing you your a$$ all over the country? How is that possible?

Well, Obama is President. And for the same reason.


What are lesser disasters to that?

[kurt9]

Now if we can get the M-E thrusters working properly and open up a truly golden age of human spaceflight,

Polywell rockets would give at least 70% of that effect and it is a surer technology.

I doubt that. Remember, we've had the science down for decades how to build fission rockets and that has not yielded a single fusion rocket, and remember that although fusion has a higher conversion efficiency, the system efficiency is significantly worse than fission. So the fission rockets we've never built are a good indicator whether we'd ever build a fusion rocket. Probably not. The only advantage is the lack of fission products and the thrust/mass would be worse than fission, which is worse than chemical.

Its still an open question if the M-E effect can be scaled up to produce 1G or more of thrust.

[MSimon]

BTW GIT doesn't it gall you that a bunch of brain dead drugged up dopers are handing you your a$$ all over the country? How is that possible?

Well, Obama is President. And for the same reason.

What are lesser disasters to that?

Last I looked Obama was not exactly a supporter of ending Prohibition. He could change the scheduling of pot by executive order. He has done no such thing.

The FDA could change it by admitting that it has medical value. They have done no such thing.

It will go down like alcohol prohibition did. The States will rescind it. And the Feds will then decide it is not worth the effort.

Palin territory will be next come this November. How do you explain that? Is Obama the Governor of Alaska too?

In Florida Medical Legalization is running 66% to 70% among likely voters. Jeb Bush is adamantly against it. Among the voting age population it runs 88%. With Republicans at around 60%.

So what has Perry of Texas said? Well he is against it. But it is a 10th Amendment issue. A position Republicans who are anti are in general taking. Evidently they can read the handwriting on the wall.

[GIThruster]

Its still an open question if the M-E effect can be scaled up to produce 1G or more of thrust.

It is. Time we found out, don't you think?

[Diogenes]

BTW GIT doesn't it gall you that a bunch of brain dead drugged up dopers are handing you your a$$ all over the country? How is that possible?

Well, Obama is President. And for the same reason.

What are lesser disasters to that?

Last I looked Obama was not exactly a supporter of ending Prohibition. He could change the scheduling of pot by executive order. He has done no such thing.

I don't think you and I are linking at the same baud rate. Your responses haven't been making any sense to me for a long time.


MY point is that both your issue, and Obama are occurring because we have entered a phase of irreversible social collapse.


This guy put it pretty succinctly.


Weimar America
Groobers, Shickle and Otherwise

A sort of insanity rules, warning of stress building along many political San Andreas faults waiting for the Big One. A pathologically aggressive United States bombs countries almost at random while little boys are dragged from school in handcuffs for pointing a finger and saying “Bang.” Girls suffer from bulimia and anorexia, lunacies nonexistent in psychically healthy societies. A crack-brained feminism makes cockamamie circuses of the universities. Bastardy runs at a perilous thirty percent among white women, verging on cultural disintegration, and seventy percent among blacks. The epicene young grow in sheltered, meaningless hothouse-suburbs, never having worked, baited a hook, been in a schoolyard fight, or existed outside of a feckless bored helplessness.

From the cellars come prancing homosexuals, men in dresses and panties, the surgically altered inverts and sadomasochistic hobbyists. The high schools are become drug markets, differing only slightly from the middle schools. Life is a cabaret, old chum, here in Caligula’s bedroom.

[MSimon]

Weimar was caused by an imbalance in the M/F ratio.

http://www.issues.org/13.2/courtw.htm

Fix that and "Weimar" goes away.

And of course I'm not making sense to you. I am making sense to enough people though to reverse the policy of heavily armed police raids at 3AM. Say - aren't those raiders buddy's of yours?

[palladin9479]

MSimon your a bit off here, it's not the M:F ratio, that's an effect not a cause. It's about female hypergamy and how restricted it is. Conservative cultures use social norms and accepted rules to restrict that hypergamy and thus ensure the males settle down and make family units, liberal cultures, in the name of feminist, remove those social restricts and females hypergamistic nature kicks in. Males, left to their own devices, will always, without fail, seek to f*ck as many females as possible, males are naturally polygamistic. Females will only seek to f*ck males who have above themselves in SMV, preferably in the top 20% of available males (lots of research keeps arriving at that 80:20 ratio where 80% of females only want sex with the top 20% of males). This creates a situation where you have males competing for females attention and feeding tons of validation, entitlement, social approval and the resultant dopamine hits into those females which in turn creates a sort of false reality. Universities have become the jungle for human nature. You have this environment where females have zero consequences from following their animal natures and their entire reality becomes centered on their sexuality.

It's an interesting topic to discuss, how humans animal nature is suppressed in society and how those society's that fail to suppress that animal nature end up collapsing.

You get female hypergamy as we see it today when females are in excess. When females are in excess they go after the "top" males and shun those lower down the ladder. The M/F ratio controls hypergamy expression. And "excess" need not be in numbers alone. "Eligibility" is also a large factor.

We had the roaring 20s and Weimar when females were in excess. The 60s are another case. Good economic times tend to dampen hypergamy. Bad times exaggerate it.

The homosexual "explosion" we are seeing was also seen in Weimar. Deviance was celebrated. If men can't find a female (the tops are getting them) they will bond with each other.

Female hypergamy is genetic, its not created by social forces. Due to the relative biological costs in pregnancy proto-human females needed to be extremely careful with who got access to their womb and needed to make sure they stayed around afterwards. Thus we have hidden ovulation and female hypergamy. The numbers are pretty brutal, 80% of women are only attracted to the top 20% of men. If your not in that top 20% then you don't exist as a sexual entity, aka deadbedrooms. The idea of one to one marital relationships being the human norm is a myth, we simply aren't built that way. Men who are in the top 20% have many options to have sex and have it as often as they want with whomever they want. The only necessity of commitment is if one of them has a child and it might (no way to be sure) be his. But he can easily provide for more then one women, up to about five or so. From a purely anthropological point of view, top male humans would have small harems of the more fertile / nubile females in the tribe while lower males would have to content with sharing the less fertile / attractive females. As we left the stone age and discovered agriculture and fishing the concepts of property and organizations larger then small tribes were created. Marriage/union/whatever-you-call-it, and the lethal consequences to women if they were broken, was the answer to limiting female hypergamy and thus creating an incentive for the lower 80% of males to do something beneficial to the social unit while also providing a clear way to pass on inherited property. A side effect was that the top males didn't need to mate guard all the darn time to prevent their females from sneaking off and getting pregnant from another top male while her primary male was busy getting food for them. Primates can get very violent when mates are pouched. That is why marriage and the family unit is absolutely important to a functioning society. Without some sort of severe negative consequences a female human's natural instinct is to have as much sex as possible with the most genetically fit males as she can during her most fertile years. Basically from 15~29 her instincts are screaming at her to have lines of bad boys, bikers, criminals and athletes run trains on her in an attempt to pass on those genetics to her offspring and advantage them vs other offspring in the jungle. That system worked great for the jungle but is completely dysfunctional for any kind of organized society.

What I'm telling you is that it's dumb to blame social forces for female hypergamy when it's part of their genetic instincts. It would be the same as blaming social forces for dogs barking or for human males getting erections around scantily clad human females.

[Diogenes]

Female hypergamy is genetic, its not created by social forces. Due to the relative biological costs in pregnancy proto-human females needed to be extremely careful with who got access to their womb and needed to make sure they stayed around afterwards. Thus we have hidden ovulation and female hypergamy. The numbers are pretty brutal, 80% of women are only attracted to the top 20% of men. If your not in that top 20% then you don't exist as a sexual entity, aka deadbedrooms. The idea of one to one marital relationships being the human norm is a myth, we simply aren't built that way. Men who are in the top 20% have many options to have sex and have it as often as they want with whomever they want. The only necessity of commitment is if one of them has a child and it might (no way to be sure) be his. But he can easily provide for more then one women, up to about five or so. From a purely anthropological point of view, top male humans would have small harems of the more fertile / nubile females in the tribe while lower males would have to content with sharing the less fertile / attractive females. As we left the stone age and discovered agriculture and fishing the concepts of property and organizations larger then small tribes were created. Marriage/union/whatever-you-call-it, and the lethal consequences to women if they were broken, was the answer to limiting female hypergamy and thus creating an incentive for the lower 80% of males to do something beneficial to the social unit while also providing a clear way to pass on inherited property. A side effect was that the top males didn't need to mate guard all the darn time to prevent their females from sneaking off and getting pregnant from another top male while her primary male was busy getting food for them. Primates can get very violent when mates are pouched. That is why marriage and the family unit is absolutely important to a functioning society. Without some sort of severe negative consequences a female human's natural instinct is to have as much sex as possible with the most genetically fit males as she can during her most fertile years. Basically from 15~29 her instincts are screaming at her to have lines of bad boys, bikers, criminals and athletes run trains on her in an attempt to pass on those genetics to her offspring and advantage them vs other offspring in the jungle. That system worked great for the jungle but is completely dysfunctional for any kind of organized society.

What I'm telling you is that it's dumb to blame social forces for female hypergamy when it's part of their genetic instincts. It would be the same as blaming social forces for dogs barking or for human males getting erections around scantily clad human females.

I have to say that is the most insightful thing I have ever seen from you. I don't see a bit of it with which I disagree.