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from the nothing-lasts-more-than-8-years dept.
Mankind has a history of long term projects. The Pyramids, Stonehenge, The Great Wall, getting Mickey Mouse into the Public Domain...
Some of these projects took multiple centuries of effort. Not a single person present at the start of those saw them completed. This is made worse when you consider lifespans that were half or less what they are currently.
But what was the LAST project that spanned lifetimes? Do you know of any going on today?
The Great Wall was started in 300 B.C. and completed some 1900 years later.
As humanity considers things like colonizing other planets and space megastructures we are talking about activities that will take centuries of effort. This turns into millennia as we look at things like terraforming and actually spreading humanity beyond our own star.
Does humanity in the current instant gratification social media quarterly results era have the appetite for projects that our grandchildren won't see completed?
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @10:30PM (16 children)
And maybe places out past that, too.
If that ain't long-term, I don't know what is.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday December 25 2018, @01:12AM (15 children)
I want to do a lot of things - that doesn't necessarily mean that I'm always willing to pay the price for them. For example, wingsuits look incredibly fun - but I have no appetite for the associated risk profile.
I hope enough people have an appetite to see humanity move slowly towards the stars to keep the ball rolling. I suspect that most people, even among space enthusiasts, will have no appetite to actually emmigrate from Earth, to severely limited artificial habitats in the harshness of space or other worlds. If there's a genetic component to that sort of multi-generational vision, then I suspect space colonization will lead to a truly interesting new breed of human.
(Score: 2, Disagree) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:19AM (10 children)
Severely limited artificial habitats also happen on Earth too. And there are ideologies inclined to make this problem worse even when there's no reason to do so. For example, an AC posted [soylentnews.org] recently:
That belief in the need to conserve a plentiful resource in the face of urgent need for energy didn't come about in a vacuum. Get enough people like that in positions of power and life will be a hell. They'll optimize all kinds of resource usage above everyone's welfare (except possibly the elite running the show, of course). That can make Earth-side habitats more difficult to live in relative to that harsh space habitat. At that point, what is the difference between an Earth-side habitat where one has to rigorous conserve all kinds of resources, no matter how plentiful and needed, because some religious nutcases mandate conservation over all, and a space-side habitat where resources are conserved because common sense.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @09:53AM (9 children)
I'm that AC. Electricity is not plentiful but scarce. Of course you can fire up a coal plant and get plenty of electricity but doing so will completely fuck the planet, as science has so amply proven. Humanity has existed for millions of years and has only used electricity for the last 200 years or we can live perfectly well without any of it. And the very wellfare of people and nature requires that we don't use it like we do today, in huge amounts and towards stupid and useless and downright evil goals. I'm not religious at all by the way, I'm all for reason and responsibility.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:49PM (4 children)
The 1kw per square meter of sunlight falling everywhere on Earth, four to five more orders of magnitude more energy than humanity uses for all its purposes including agriculture indicates otherwise.
No AC or refrigeration, no instant global communication, no huge multipliers of our labor from electricity-based tools, no cheap lighting, and a huge drop in our ability to manufacture the stuff we want and need. I can point to numerous, important uses for each of these. The refrigeration of spoilable food and medicines, the ability to widen one's mind by communicating with people around the global; the work- and time-saving devices to make our lives better; lighting to improve the quality of our living habitats; and the amazing variety of goods and services, powered by electricity, that we use to shape our world and better our lives. Sure, you can live with stone clubs and whatnot, but if you want to do something more than merely live, that requires some of the furnishings of the modern world.
Because living less well and using resources even more inefficiently than we do now, will be so much better for people and nature than now. As I noted earlier, you're ignoring both that the power sources for electricity are remarkably plentiful, even going past solar power, while the needs and wants are significant. Calling it "useless and downright evil goals" is merely an abuse of the semantics of morality. It's not, thus you are wasting our time with spurious and wrong accusations.
Then you would be saying different things. Your words here demonstrate your true outlook.
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @07:55PM (1 child)
AKA industry will continue unhindered by environmental concerns!
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @08:02PM
Because that is the only other option, amirite? Either we halt all human progress to save our extremely precious electricity which is the most important thing in the world, or we allow industry to run riot over the lands and turn the place into a parking lot. There is no other possible course of action - what we're doing now must somehow fall into one of those two pigeon holes. But it doesn't seem to fit. Maybe if we whacked on the logic harder?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 28 2018, @09:21AM (1 child)
I thought we were discussion electricity, not energy or sunlight... After you've covered the entire surface of the planet with 100% efficient solar panels and promised to maintain those in perpetuity we will resume discussion...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 31 2018, @05:17PM
Electricity can be obtained as reasonable efficiency from sunlight and of course, from energy. When you have a bunch of orders of magnitude more than you need, a little inefficiency is not that important.
Why in the world would we bother to do that when we only need two to three orders of magnitude less (counting the inefficiency of the solar panels)? Agriculture in comparison uses up about a third of the Earth's land area, which is crudely an order of magnitude less than the Earth's total surface area. Thus, agriculture already uses up one to two orders of magnitude more land area than we would need with 10% efficient solar panels (counting clouds, night, angle of the Sun, etc).
What is insane here is that you're speaking of electricity as if it is a resource so scarce that we need to conserve to an extreme its consumption, even though there's plenty of evidence that's nonsense. In an economic sense, sure, electricity like all finite resources is scarce. But at the same time it is plentiful and there's plenty more we could be doing than merely optimizing its usage.
We don't generate electricity because we hate Mother Earth. We do it because we use that electricity for all sorts of useful things. And the incredible cheapness of electricity, particularly when compared to the cost of the things we do with it (rarely is electricity or energy usage a significant cost of a human activity!), indicates that your concern is greatly misplaced.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:36PM (3 children)
If electricity was scarce to me I certainly wouldn't be using it to post on SN.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday December 28 2018, @09:17AM (2 children)
I think if my words light a bulb in your or somebody else's head so to speak then they might not be wasted after all. Unlikely but yet possible.
You and I use electricity carelessly because it's dirt cheap. How can it be scarce if it's cheap? Externalities. Were we to pay the real full cost neither of use could afford it. And that's the way it should be.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 31 2018, @05:52PM
Nonsense. Externalities of electricity generation are greatly overstated. For example, an IMF study [imf.org] provided an exaggerated estimate of externalities (providing a numerical estimate of roughly $4 trillion which it then terms a "subsidy"). Drilling down, one sees that most of that externality is decided to be respiratory illnesses, with about half as much due to the allegedly dire effects of CO2 emissions on global warming. There's no awareness, for example, of the effects of overly clean living on asthma and other autoimmune diseases which are a significant contributor to the respiratory illness situation. Coal burning didn't force your kids to stay inside most of their lives.
Second, the above study means that most of the damage that is actual, comes from countries that haven't adopted developed world pollution standards yet. In the developed world, there probably are modest health-related externalities from the residual pollution from electricity production, but it's not as much as you claim. Third, we don't even know that there is a net negative externality from CO2 production. The costs have been greatly fluffed up while benefits (less extreme cold weather, more arable land, and the Northwest passage around Canada) are slighted.
But even if we just take this externality on faith, it is still only $23 per MwH ($0.23 per KwH) of energy consumed globally with electricity being somewhat lower (better efficiency and less dependence on fossil fuel burning). Sorry, even using these exaggerated numbers electricity would be no more than triple its current price (and probably not even that). That's not even remotely going to make electricity usage unaffordable in the developed world where most of us reside.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 31 2018, @06:13PM
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:16AM (3 children)
Obviously, some sliver of people will/would take on the challenge of Martian colonization. You've got people who have proven their chops on places like the ISS or in Antarctica. You've got people who live indoors most of their lives, either in hospitals or as no-sunshine NEETs.
We'll want relatively healthy people to go in the very first missions. And people obviously have access to more luxuries when cooped up inside on Earth, even at McMurdo. But if we go to Mars with a focus on living off the land, colonists should be able to at least expand their living spaces, create indoor green spaces, and create some basic goods (how about plant-based recreational drugs?). Further into the future, we should see huge structures encapsulating breathable atmosphere and greenery, such as domes. I'm pretty uncertain about the prospect of terraforming Mars since if it is done incorrectly, the Sun will just blast off the atmosphere and surface water as it has during Mars's past. It would be very wasteful to start a terraforming project if it is all going to leak away in centuries.
New developments could help people ease into it... especially advanced VR headsets.
Finally, if SpaceX Starship ends up being relatively cheap to fly with hundreds of flights to Mars planned, ships will start to accumulate on the surface. These can be refueled on Mars, and people can go back to Earth. Flight times between Earth and Mars could be as little as 40 days [nextbigfuture.com], rather than the 3-6 months you often hear thrown around.
My point being that people might be a little more willing to explore Mars if they can come back after 1-2 years, rather than being forced to remain and die there.
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(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:29AM (2 children)
Yeah, I suspect at the very least cannabis, alcohol, and caffeine will be locally produced in short order. Probably other plant-based drugs as well, but those are the really popular ones, and all easy to produce (though proper coffee may be a bit finicky)
There's also several useful construction materials that can be grown - bamboo at least, and maybe proper lumber with big enough greenhouses. Most plant-waste could also be (partially) converted to clay-like microcellulose that would be useful for lots of rough construction (with the waste being compostable), and with a bit more thermo-mechanical processing, into nanocellulose - which is transparent, gas-impermeable, and has a tensile strength comparable to aluminum. Greenhouse-dome material perhaps? Unfortunately it softens when wet, so some sort of protective layer would be needed - but that also makes it easily repairable/recyclable. And even compostable, since it hasn't undergone any chemical processing. At least assuming it can be easily separated from any moisture barriers applied to it - which it should be - break the seal and immerse the thing in water until you've got a protective shell suspended in a gel thin enough to allow easy extraction. Takes a lot of water, but it's not consumed by the process, so it should be feasible.
I don't know that there's any permanent solution to a terraformed atmosphere leaking away - there's no way with current technology to even begin to consider jump-starting a planetary magnetic dynamo - we're not even completely sure how they operate. And without a magnetosphere, the solar wind will inevitably strip away any atmosphere generated. However, if it does so over the course of millenia, then regenerating it, steadily or periodically, might well be a viable option. It'd pretty much come down to the mass-flow rate of atmospheric loss, and the industrial capacity available to dedicate to the project. If Earth were losing it's atmosphere (much more rapidly), but 10% of global industrial capacity could replenish it fast enough to forestall any problems indefinitely, then that would probably be well worth the investment, don't you think?
As for a return trip - that would certainly increase the number of people willing to give it a go - however, like coming to America in the early decades, I don't know that a return trip would be realistically affordable by most colonists. Of course, unless there's some valuable trade good on Mars to fill the ships, they'll be returning empty anyway, so return fare might be quite affordable - assuming warm bodies aren't in high enough demand to put artificial barriers in place - and the PR consequences of that might well backfire. Still - I've seen estimate that the fuel for a single fully-loaded Starship launch from Earth to orbit will run about $10M, or $100k per person assuming a 100-person capacity. Which probably puts the minimum cost of a ticket to Mars at several times that, once you factor in the multiple launches to refuel Starship for a trip to Mars. I believe I've heard that the return trip can be made Mars-surface to Earth without refueling (at least a couple designs ago), but it's still going to be a serious expense. Though possibly an expense that's mostly paid up front - after all, a ticket to Mars will presumably include your share of the expense of returning the empty rocket afterwards.
(Score: 2) by takyon on Thursday December 27 2018, @02:41AM (1 child)
Don't forget myco [bbc.com] materials [bbc.com].
Yeah, simply doubling the ticket price might be the best option, with full refund available at any time (could be passed on to family if colonist dies).
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Friday December 28 2018, @03:11AM
Indeed - some very cool things being done with fungi - though since they are oxygen breathers, their usage will be limited by surplus oxygen production, which might be an issue. Creating materials out of (pressurized) atmospheric CO2 may have an edge there - especially early on.
(Score: 2, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @10:31PM
The US Interstate Highway System (federal parts) go back to the 1950s(?) Still being extended, so it's not completed yet.
Nuclear waste dumps are going to be around for generations...
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @10:36PM (8 children)
The solution to so many issues is to build long-term durable structures from cast limestone like they used to do: https://www.geopolymer.org/faq/faq-for-artificial-stone-supporters/ [geopolymer.org]
1) Lock up carbon in rocks and emit less CO2 that portland cement (for people who think that is an issue)
2) Can survive natural disasters
3) Requires minimal maintenance
4) Last for generations, creating a psychological link between present and past
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @01:33AM (7 children)
The site you linked to demonstrates top notch skills in brainwashing. I know nothing about geopolymers and have no opinion about their use in Egypt. I'm talking about methods. For example:
The geopolymer theory does not need a book or a throng of believers. It only needs a proof - and given that the work was, purportedly, done by ancient Egyptians, it surely can be done by a modern PhD, a bucket and a shovel. The quarry and Nile are still there. Get a few students and build a small pyramid - say, fifty feet tall. Publish your findings.
Personally, I think that the three pyramids have more in common with the Sphinx and the nearby megalithic complex than with step pyramids and Egyptians. Egyptians did not make the big pyramids, they imitated them by building a multitude of smaller ones. They certainly did not create the Sphinx due to its age, but it is the obvious focal point of all surface objects on the site.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:21AM (5 children)
They did do this and found it to be like 1000 times more efficient than dragging stones around.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=znQk_yBHre4 [youtube.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @07:55PM (3 children)
And yet where's the proof that the Egyptians did it that way?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:26AM
The various evidence is shared here:
https://www.geopolymer.org/faq/faq-for-artificial-stone-supporters/ [geopolymer.org]
In short, when chemical engineers interpret various stele they see they describe the process of making limestone concrete. Also, went artificial limestone is sent for analysis the geologists dont notice anything strange. Finally, it is just so much easier to do and explains all the stuff that "ancient aliens" type theories have fixated upon.
And this isn't just the pyramids, it is megalithic architecture found from all around the world.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @01:47PM (1 child)
The video mentions the use of Lime. Where and how do they produce it? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lime_(material)#Production
Converting CaCO3 to CaO releases CO2.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @06:18PM
Just look up "geopolymer CO2":
http://www.geopolymer.org/fichiers_pdf/False-CO2-values.pdf [geopolymer.org]
https://core.ac.uk/download/pdf/39268269.pdf [core.ac.uk]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 31 2018, @06:00PM
Making lime is not 1000 times more efficient. Nor is breaking up the limestone. And you still have to drag this stuff around no matter what form it's in.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:24AM
Who else was there to make them? Occam's razor - you have a society capable of making the Giza Pyramids, you have historical evidence backing that (with particular leaders and engineers named as responsible!), the pyramids in question are consistent with the time span and engineering practices of ancient Egypt, and there's nobody else around to make the pyramids.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday December 24 2018, @10:38PM (11 children)
America is not exactly synonymous to humanity. America has lost it's appetite for grand projects, but humanity still seems to be doing some cool stuff. But, even in America, there are some people thinking of grand scales. Multiple private individuals are getting into space, along with the companies they fund. Others work on a somewhat smaller scale, and they are building a wall on the border.
Just some food for thought, people!!
(Score: 4, Interesting) by richtopia on Tuesday December 25 2018, @12:30AM (5 children)
One of the quirks with democracy is the difficulty with long-term projects. If you are on a four year election cycle you need to deliver results within that scope. This is exacerbated with changing administrations in-line with the election cycle. I would point to China with their Belt and Road Initiative, Three-North Shelter Forest Program, Three Gorges Dam as examples of an administration that can act without constant approval of the populace.
I'm not advocating dictatorships; we still are accomplishing mega-projects around the world ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_megaprojects [wikipedia.org] ). If we keep the definition based on duration only, then perhaps an unchanging ruler helps with the project. We aren't sure how Stonehenge was built, but the Pyramids and Great Wall both fall under the totalitarian category.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Tuesday December 25 2018, @01:16AM (3 children)
Yes, you seem to be correct. At least in this particular time and place.
And, yet, our grandfathers accomplished great things, didn't they? Someone has already mentioned Eisenhower's Interstate highway system. There was the Hoover dam. The TVA and their great flood control project. World War Two, and the various engineering feats accomplished during that war.
All of those things, and more, were accomplished within the framework of the same democracy we have today.
Something has changed. Maybe that "something" has to do with those MBA's that we've allowed to take control of everything? And, THOSE creatures can be blamed on our failed education system.
If we line all of those highly educated witless wonders up against the wall, and blow their tiny little brains out, more intelligent men and women might step forward.
Let's do a Bush, and demand a regime change, ehhh?
(Score: 2) by crafoo on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:28AM (1 child)
Businesses run by MBAs plan short-term to 1 quarter, long term to 1 year.
Government plans short term to 1 year, long term to 4 years or so.
In the USA, those are our only two real institutions for deciding what society does with it's time and money. Scientific and engineering institutions are at the whims of lawyers controlling the budgets. It's a completely impractical system for embarking on a long-term project. No long-term projects can survive in such a system.
Our only real hope is extremely successful private mega-corporations with no shareholders or board of directors and enough bribery cash to lock up government oversight. It's not an exactly ideal alternative, I must admit.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by https on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:44PM
Thanks to the tax-exempt trusts system of the USA, the Kochs and Olins, etc. have their decades-long attempts to eradicate capitalism, education, and democracy.
Offended and laughing about it.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 27 2018, @02:03AM
However, none of those were particularly long-term projects - a few decades at the longest. Most of the people alive when they were started were still alive when they were completed. Heck, even most of the soldiers were still alive. Contrast with many of the great religious and ??? projects of the past which, as initially planned, would take 10x as long, so that even the great-grandchildren of those who started the projects would not live to see them completed.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:38AM
Only if you're doing long-term projects by government. When you're not, those aren't problems.
And what is the value of those projects? Let us keep in mind that the Three-North Shelter Forest Program, for a prominent example, is probably clean up for up to a century of authoritarian bad planning by China, Mongolia, and Russia. The old USSR messed up badly with their long term exploitation of the Aral Sea.
In the developed world, one can do long term projects without involving a lot of other people. They just need enough support to do it which can come from anywhere. But the project has to be justified to the supporters in order to be supported. Governments on the other hand do all kinds of stupid and terrible ideas. Nor is it uncommon for a short term bit of greed or ambition to disguise itself as a long term project (Three Gorges Dam or the latest and greatest US military weapon, for example).
The envy that many feel in the developed world for the ambitious projects of the Chinese government and the like needs to be tempered by the fact that the interests of the Chinese government match no one else's, particularly their citizens. They are as likely to spend money for generations on the Great Firewall as they are actual infrastructure that people need.
(Score: 2) by number11 on Tuesday December 25 2018, @01:12AM (3 children)
American capitalism has, anyhow. Anything that rates results based on a quarterly timescale (that is, any C-level management whose bonus depends on it) is a problem. Government does better at using a long time horizon (not that government's choice of projects is always good), because they don't have the pressure to turn a profit. Japanese capitalism seemed good at long horizons at one time, no idea if it's still true.
It seems to me that capitalism was better at it in the age of robber barons, when there were no hedge or vulture capitalist funds.
(Score: 2) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 25 2018, @01:33AM (2 children)
American capitalism never had much appetite for the long term, including the age of robber barons. In the 1860s, the Transcontinental Railroad took a bit under a decade, which is much less time than multigenerational, but that was still too long and risky for the market to stomach. Took a great deal of government aid in the form of huge loans to induce the capitalists to try. The ones who stepped up to give it a shot had a rough start fighting off vulture capitalists who were hoping they'd fail, and even tried a few things to up the odds of failure, so as to stifle competition, and perhaps so their assets could be picked up for pennies on the dollar. Even after the Transcontinental Railroad succeeded, they still needed the government loans to build other transcontinental lines. The Panama Canal, another extremely valuable infrastructure project, took a great deal of government patronage to make it happen.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:32AM (1 child)
I love witnessing this echo chamber of people who can't figure out that the government doing something isnt capitalism. Its like nothing is wrong about what you are saying except you are applying the wrong label since you were somehow taught the wrong definition.
(Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday December 27 2018, @02:24AM
You're a little off-target. The government didn't build a trans-continental railway. Nor did it build the Panama canal. Capitalists did that - the government just gave them massive incentive to do so.
Without that incentive it can be reasonably assumed that things would have continued on the same path as before it was offered - and the capitalists would have continued investing in things with a much shorter return on investment, while the large-scale infrastructure remained a pipe dream.
Which seems to be rather the parent's point.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @08:54PM
So true. Look, a project that's gonna tale eons: Brexit.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @10:38PM (2 children)
This has been going on for generations. Close to completion now since 69% of school aged children in the country can't do basic math or reading.
(Score: 1) by Moof123 on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:12AM (1 child)
74% of all statistics are made up on the spot.
(Score: 2) by All Your Lawn Are Belong To Us on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:40PM
With a 30% standard deviation in that.
This sig for rent.
(Score: 0, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @10:41PM
Americans have been working for centuries on this... but the problem is half are pushing for more rights and half for less. Poor colored folks be caught in the middle.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by takyon on Monday December 24 2018, @10:45PM (5 children)
Clock of the Long Now [wikipedia.org]: Not a multi-generation project, but represents multi-generation thinking.
ITER [wikipedia.org] is a project spanning multiple decades, and longer (into the 2050s) if that is the track we need to ride on to reach a commercial reactor. But I don't think ITER's longevity is so great.
In fact, the premise seems wrong. Why do we need to do something in 1,000 years of time if it can be completed in 10? We may not be attempting projects that take centuries of effort, but we are getting an incredible amount done in a shorter amount of time. The end result is what matters, not the time taken. Although if we are rushing things that should take longer, causing accidents or lowering quality, then we might have a problem.
Then you have stuff like city planning and sewer management. Ongoing, never-ending projects on incredibly massive scales that have spanned over a century or two in some cases (in America).
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(Score: 4, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:24AM (4 children)
If you look at small scale projects (not necessarily involving thousands of people), they are literally everywhere... any decent scholar knows this. In science there's classic stuff like the pitch drop experiment (been running for about 90 years). Something that immediately occurred to me that's a bit larger scale is the Oxford English Dictionary, whose first edition took about 70 years to compile and publish... and is obviously ongoing.
On smaller scales, these multigeneration research or scholarly projects are quite common. I can think of quite a few sources I've had to cite for publication dates that have spanned decades... I was just consulting one a few days ago: the edited correspondence of Marin Mersenne, who is sometimes known as the "Secretary of the Scientific Revolution" due to his voluminous correspondence with scientists around the world in the 1600s. The 20th-century edition of that correspondence took 57 years to publish (and longer before the first volume appeared to plan the project and begin work). The reasons for such lengthy projects are manifold -- in this case, it was likely a combination of the many languages and topics in the edited correspondence that required attention and expertise (as well as finding scholars to devote chunks of their time to such a project).
And that's just an editorial project -- producing new knowledge is obviously a larger issue... in some ways, we can view ongoing scientific disciplines as multigenerational research projects. They may not always have centralized organization, but they are certainly cumulative endeavors that every scientist realizes is likely never "complete."
(Score: 4, Insightful) by takyon on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:59AM (3 children)
I've heard of the pitch drop experiment.
RandomFactor is asking about large-scale, ambitious projects. In the sciences, ITER, LHC, and ISS come to mind. RF mentions infrastructure and building projects such as the Great Wall and pyramids. And of course, space colonization, which is certain to be a long-term effort and represents an indefinite time commitment since, as I pointed out, a city and its infrastructure are maintained continuously by various projects.
RF asks:
Again, you see the answer in our cities. They start out small but expand over time. They require some degree of planning and flexibility. They need supporting infrastructure such as sewers. Buildings come down and pop up. Things need to be repaired, replaced, and modernized. The work is never truly over. Building a colony on Mars is like building a city or industrial factories on Earth. It won't be done in a day, and it will be continuously expanded over time. The first colonists may never get to see what the colony ends up looking like 100 years later, but each generation will gradually push towards that outcome. Things like asteroid mining will definitely occur if the economics of it are right. It would start out slow but eventually all rocks in the solar system will be under our control or at least observation. Hopefully we reach a point where all incoming interstellar asteroids are captured and put into solar orbit.
Ambitious projects needn't take centuries. They should take whatever amount of time is optimal. But if that time can be reduced with no ill effects, it should. I'm not seeing a good example here of a future megaproject where we are forced to commit centuries of effort with little return in the meantime. Maybe geoengineering to fight climate change? Even then we should see some measurable impact before the project is over (if it ends). If we are talking megastructures, the Dyson sphere looks physically impossible. A Dyson swarm looks achievable... but you can benefit from it one swarmlet at a time and just keep on adding more.
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(Score: 2) by AthanasiusKircher on Tuesday December 25 2018, @10:20AM (2 children)
Not sure why you want to be so argumentative when I was agreeing with you.
I don't think most cities are great examples, since urban planning has been a disaster in most places -- consider Boston (awful, due to not knowing the need for future expansion) vs. many recent cities in the West and Southwest that grew up in the past century or so, which are needlessly spread out and therefore dependent on individuals driving cars everywhere... sometime now seen as environmentally problematic.
It's all fumbling around in the dark from generation to generation... with massive corrections made as you get common problems of growth (inner ciry decay vs. revitalization cycles) etc. Not saying my examples of science knowledge growth are different -- but surely scientific knowledge is a "large scale ambitious project" for humanity, perhaps THE most important.
And what of my OED example?? Trying to classify and document the entirety of a language and its history isn't "ambitious"?
And the question was whether humans still are interested in such long-term projects. My point is that there are scholars everywhere who always do such things... who are invested more in the "long-term" rather than next quarter's business returns.
It's proof that there's a strand of humans who have that dedication. Who do you think drove the "ambitious" projects mentioned in the question, like the Great Pyramid? Do you really think most of the workers in such projects cared about much more than where they were getting their next meal? Most likely they cared about not getting whipped by a slave driver.
"Humanity" didn't have the ambition for long-term projects like the pyramids or the Great Wall or medieval cathedrals. They were spearheaded by small groups of elite visionaries... who in the past literally would tend to kill those who didn't obey them. We may not prefer such feudal or autocratic systems anymore, but that doesn't mean our scholars and engineers and leaders can't have a vision for long-term projects...
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:00PM (1 child)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @05:00PM
i had to do a find to see if anyone had thought to mention gnu/linux.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @10:54PM
The asymptotic approach to thermonuclear fusion as a viable power generation technology assures us that we can constantly get closer and closer to break-even for as long as we'd like. Forever, even! Forever seems fairly long term, doesn't it?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @11:25PM (4 children)
> made worse when you consider lifespans that were half or less what they are currently.
Obviously we are still struggling with the long term project of making people understand the difference between average life expectancy and longevity.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @11:33PM (2 children)
That's right! Methuselah lived to 969, you don't see that sort of longevity anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:35AM (1 child)
Methusala lived to about 4,850 years old according to carbon dating. But hes not even the oldest. The oldest so far is 5,068 years.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday December 26 2018, @07:31AM
Lazarus Long is older, right?
(Score: 5, Insightful) by takyon on Monday December 24 2018, @11:36PM
On another note, if we cure aging, maybe we will have more 1,000+ year projects.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 4, Interesting) by CZB on Monday December 24 2018, @11:35PM (2 children)
Building cathedrals, temples, pyramids, walls, and other mega projects require a unified community with a lot of extra resources, or a powerful dynasty with a consistent surplus of resources.
I've looked at building a pyramid, but "just because it would be cool" isn't enough to motivate a large enough group of people.
What would motivate you to join a mega construction project? (Other than the local tyrant making it mandatory.)
(Score: 5, Interesting) by NotSanguine on Tuesday December 25 2018, @12:17AM (1 child)
An excellent point. The Cathedral of St. John the Divine [wikipedia.org] is a good counterexample [stjohndivine.org]:
It's been more than 100 years and the cathedral is still unfinished. IIUC, when (if ever) finished, it will be the largest cathedral in North America. It's taken this long, among other reasons, because resources haven't been sufficient to complete the work.
Since there hasn't been a patron (governmental or otherwise), raising funds for further construction has been a significant limiting factor. In the 21 century, the cathedral has entered into long term leases [nytimes.com] with developers on several parcels of the land.
This provides a revenue stream other than patrons and individual donations.
As an aside, while I'm not a christian, I find that the cathedral is both beautiful and quite impressive. If you've never visited, I highly recommend it.
No, no, you're not thinking; you're just being logical. --Niels Bohr
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday December 25 2018, @09:16PM
Sagrada Família [wikipedia.org] - started 1882, Gaudi took over in 1883.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @11:37PM (6 children)
China is and has been playing the long game to become the sole world superpower (uber-power?).
Western democracies cannot think long term, as the next term's election results are all that matters to those in power.
Democracies still are better than authoritarian governments (as when authoritarian governments go off the rails, they go off really bad), but 'foresight' is a difficult problem to solve in democracy (especially when the electorate doesn't know any better with dumb voting choices (either party) that are often made..)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:47AM (3 children)
China is threatening to go to war over the China Sea [telegraph.co.uk] even though an international court has rejected territorial claims [theguardian.com] made by China.
World war 3 here we come.
China's long term project may very well be to rule over the planet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:52AM (2 children)
consider the bright side
they may be successful in wiping out islam
(Score: 3, Interesting) by takyon on Tuesday December 25 2018, @05:09AM (1 child)
They don't seem to be accomplishing that in Xinjiang, although they are putting Muslims under surveillance [wsj.com]:
We'll see what the "assimilation" part means and if it works.
China may not be able to conquer its own territories, much less the world. If the one party government ever falls, the autonomous regions, Taiwan, etc. will get a chance to permanently break away. In the meantime, they could try flooding these places with Han Chinese mainlanders to dilute local cultures. But China is facing population decline and shrinkage [soylentnews.org] in the next 50-100 years.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @11:55AM
The chinese population will eradicated by heatwaves soon enough
https://edition.cnn.com/2018/08/01/asia/china-climate-heatwaves/index.html [cnn.com]
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:01AM
Like what? I won't claim that running a large country like China is easy. But the key long term planning they need to make is to merely get out of the way. Sure, there's things like pollution, shoddy products, fraud, etc that need policing, but that's not what people laud them for when they speak of the "long game".
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday December 26 2018, @03:12AM
What long game? The long game of polluting all of its land and water to hell? The long game of skyrocketing lung cancer rates? The long game of rampant and systemic corruption? The long game of raising a miseducated population? The long game on basing decisions on what's most beneficial for a single politician to keep his power? The long game of exporting swathes of wealth to foreign nations for hiding?
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday December 24 2018, @11:49PM (5 children)
PAYING OFF THE NATIONAL DEBT
(Score: 3, Interesting) by RandomFactor on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:53AM (4 children)
Is it a project if there is no start date?
В «Правде» нет известий, в «Известиях» нет правды
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Tuesday December 25 2018, @09:31PM (3 children)
The worst is not lacking the start date, but the end one.
The formal definition [wikipedia.org] requires: uniqueness of deliverable, well defined start and end.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday December 26 2018, @06:57AM (2 children)
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday December 27 2018, @12:12AM (1 child)
(Score: 1) by khallow on Monday December 31 2018, @07:06AM
(Score: 2, Touché) by Sulla on Tuesday December 25 2018, @03:47AM (4 children)
Slave labor makes it a whole lot easier to make the decision to expend peoples lives and time.
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by dry on Tuesday December 25 2018, @07:25AM (3 children)
OTOH, the pyramids are a good example of what can be accomplished by treating your workforce well. At that, what multi-generational projects have used mostly slave labour? And by slave labour, I mean the type where the slaves are outright owned and have zero rights rather then conscription or having to work off debt and such.
Quickly Googling, it seems unclear as the ancient projects don't have much in the way of documentation left, so lots of guesses.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @08:30AM (2 children)
Your theory of how the pyramids were built was devised by people who loved slave labor. There are others, which are thousands of times more efficient...
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @11:52AM (1 child)
is the modern workplace any better?
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @06:58PM
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:41AM (2 children)
https://www.news.com.au/technology/innovation/over-budget-underused-and-in-some-cases-never-even-opened-these-are-the-globes-multibillion-dollar-mega-project-disasters/news-story/f05b236e123b499ce0cb722138c37eea [news.com.au]
They’re the massively expensive global infrastructure projects that have either busted their budget or are absolutely useless. And some of the biggest balls ups are in Australia.
According to a 2014 analysis by Oxford University economic geographer Bent Flyvbjerg nine out of ten so-called “mega projects” have suffered from cost overruns, many of around 50 per cent or more.
Ref: https://arxiv.org/ftp/arxiv/papers/1409/1409.0003.pdf [arxiv.org]
Ciudad Real Central Airport, Spain
Cost: $1.5bn, abandoned
Opened in 2009, this $1.5 billion Spanish airport was built as an alternative to Madrid’s busy Barajas hub. Built for 10 million passengers, only a smattering of passengers ever used the state of the art facility.
In 2011, the last airline flew its final service.
Ryugyong Hotel, North Korea
Cost so far: $1 billion
An economic crisis halted work on the hubris hotel. In 2011, an Egyptian telecoms firm paid for the exterior of the building to be glazed so at least it looks complete. But inside it’s still empty and remains the world’s largest unfinished building.
Russky Island Bridge, Russia
Cost: $1.5bn
Dubbed the “billion dollar vanity project” at 1104 metres long the Russky Island Bridge, in Vladivostok in Russia’s Far East, is the longest cable stayed bridge in the world. Problem is it doesn’t really have a reason for existing.
VC Summer nuclear power station, USA
Cost: $2.5 billion, abandoned
An advanced energy plant in South Carolina, construction at the VC nuclear power station was halted in 2017 with only one-third complete.
Australia’s desalination plants
Cost: $10 billion for many to sit idle
At the height of the early 2000s drought, various state governments went on a spending splurge building hugely expensive desalination plants that could filter salt from seawater and pump it to homes should the dams run dry. Problem is, the dams then went and filled up again.
Berlin Brandenburg Airport, Germany
Cost so far: $10 billion, may never open
The lights are on at Berlin’s new airport but no one is home. The first flights were supposed to land in 2012 but, just weeks out from opening, final safety checks revealed the fire safety system was kaput.
East West Link, Melbourne
Cost: $1.1bn not to build
On face value, $1bn for an 18km long motorway is reasonable. But in the case of the infamous East West Link, which would have gone through Melbourne’s inner northern suburbs, that’s a billion dollars for a road not to be built.
Sydney Opera House
Cost: $1 billion, massive overspend
massive increase in costs made the Sydney Opera House, designed by Jorn Utzon, the world’s biggest ever mega project budget blowout.
“The real regret — and real cost — of the Opera House (was) the overrun and the following controversy destroyed Utzon’s career and kept him from building more masterpieces.”
Not mentioned:
The WPIT project has had billions sunk into it. Accenture is being brought in. [itnews.com.au]. SAP was brought in to work on it [itnews.com.au]. There are still complaints about the system. Billions spent in licensing and IT and contractors. WPIT may very well be the Opera House of our age. If it is ever finished.
(Score: 4, Informative) by takyon on Tuesday December 25 2018, @05:21AM (1 child)
I can't really take this list of failed megaprojects and overruns too seriously when we have the F-35 [wikipedia.org] showing how to really bust budgets.
The Sydney Opera House is an iconic landmark. The F-35 may or may not kill its pilots. [acsh.org] And it's only a couple hundred billion over budget.
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(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @11:48AM
Shh. We're pretending that the F-35 project doesn't exist.
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @07:29AM
Copyleft movement is playing long-term as well.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @09:57AM (1 child)
Less than four years long projects, top eight, are what you mostly will get all the funding for from congresscritters.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:43PM
(Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday December 25 2018, @01:42PM
If we're entering the age of robots and automation, then maybe the horizon of completing big projects will grow nearer. We could be standing on the threshold of an explosion of big projects that might once have taken decades but will now be done in a couple years.
Washington DC delenda est.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday December 25 2018, @04:28PM
No, mankind has lost nothing of that kind. It is just that those who begin something great are murdered by the cabal. And the cabal has its own appetite for long term projects, namely, enslaving the entire human population and murdering them mercilessly. They have been working on it for centuries. Look into Pythagoras and those who came after and what they have been plotting against us humans.
Expose the cabal/satanists so we can all live and have long term projects that are in the best interest of us all.