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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday April 14 2020, @08:52AM   Printer-friendly
from the that's-just-loony dept.

Trump signs an executive order allowing mining the moon and asteroids:

In 2015, the Obama administration signed the U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act (CSLCA, or H.R. 2262) into law. This bill was intended to "facilitate a pro-growth environment for the developing commercial space industry" by making it legal for American companies and citizens to own and sell resources that they extract from asteroids and off-world locations (like the moon, Mars or beyond).

On April 6th, the Trump administration took things a step further by signing an executive order that formally recognizes the rights of private interests to claim resources in space. This order, titled "Encouraging International Support for the Recovery and Use of Space Resources," effectively ends the decades-long debate that began with the signing of the Outer Space Treaty in 1967.

This order builds on both the CSLCA and Space Directive-1 (SD-1), which the Trump administration signed into law on December 11th, 2017. It establishes that "Americans should have the right to engage in commercial exploration, recovery, and use of resources in outer space, consistent with applicable law," and that the United States does not view space as a "global commons."


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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Immerman on Tuesday April 14 2020, @03:07PM (11 children)

    by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday April 14 2020, @03:07PM (#982599)

    >With them in charge we'd have room for a lot more people here on earth.

    Not without some major changes we wouldn't. We're already grossly overtaxing the carrying capacity of the planet, strip-mining the ecology for short-term gains at thee expense of long-term viability. If we can get everyone on a diet of mostly yeast and microbes, consuming only energy produced from non-fossil-carbon sources, then yes, we could support a lot more people here. So long as we kept everyone in cities so that the surrounding ecology could recover to a state that could support our reduced demands. But it would still likely mean economic near-stagnation as per-capita energy consumption flatlined.

    Our economic growth has largely been driven by a doubling of per-capita energy consumption every twenty years or so (3% per year growth) Efficiency can help, but efficiency has been increasing for a long time too, so it's already included in to the 3% per year energy consumption growth. Current global energy demands could be served by covering Nevada in solar panels. In a century or so we'll need to cover the entire planet. Even advances to 100% efficient solar panels would only buy us another few decades. Either we expand into space, or we face eventual stagnation and decline on Earth in the not too distant future.

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  • (Score: 2) by exaeta on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:32PM (1 child)

    by exaeta (6957) on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:32PM (#982706) Homepage Journal
    Every exponential curve is really a logistic curve. Humankind cannot continue exponential power growth forever.
    --
    The Government is a Bird
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:10PM

      by Immerman (3985) on Tuesday April 14 2020, @09:10PM (#982775)

      Absolutely. Now - do you want to have that argument head-on with the same power structure that has kept a lead foot on the accelerator for centuries while they're rapidly destroying our world, quite possibly the only naturally habitable world humanity will ever know? Knowing that we probably have no more than a few centuries to to turn things around?

      Or shall we try redirect that avarice (and bounty - we all benefit immensely) towards the far vaster, richer, and (mostly?) lifeless opportunities in space? Once we have a solid foothold there, Earth will be small potatoes. It'll be a nice place to live, but doesn't really have much else to offer compared to the alternatives. We'll still reach the limits of exponential growth eventually - but it pushes the "drop dead date" back by millenia, and positions our precious green oasis of a world as a resort location with little else of value to attract those who would destroy it for profit.

      Personally, I think the latter option has a much better chance of preserving our world.

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by barbara hudson on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:45PM (3 children)

    by barbara hudson (6443) <barbara.Jane.hudson@icloud.com> on Tuesday April 14 2020, @06:45PM (#982715) Journal

    Either we expand into space, or we face eventual stagnation and decline on Earth in the not too distant future.

    "In COVID We Trust "

    One way or another the population is going to g o down.

    And once disease, hunger, and poverty get on a roll, the trend will feed off itself. One side effect of COVID19 is that hundreds of millions will not be vaccinated for measles. Multiply this by a few other diseases and much of the developing world is doomed.

    China is going to discover that its belt and road strategy bought it dominance over a burdensome hellhole in parts of Asia and Africa, not the billions of captive consumers they planned for.

    --
    SoylentNews is social media. Says so right in the slogan. Soylentnews is people, not tech.
    • (Score: -1, Spam) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @08:41PM

      by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 14 2020, @08:41PM (#982768)

      See subject & a NICE DOSE of PUBLIC HUMILIATION for your own local FREAK barbara hudson folks: I "apologized" to you TRANNY twisto https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?cid=937346&sid=35327 [soylentnews.org] ? FUCK NO, not ever: That's NOT me but I DESTROYED YOU PUBLICLY on every level including proving you barb stalk me on THIS SITE https://soylentnews.org/comments.pl?noupdate=1&sid=33430&page=1&cid=889582#commentwrap [soylentnews.org] with more proof QUOTED FROM YOU DIRECTLY barbara (tom) hudson proving are a technical incompetent brain-damaged transsexual fool BULLSHIT ARTIST FUCKUP worthless creep that also failed on tech vs. me.

      My post LITERALLY also shows links to stopping hundreds of threats of MANY KINDS via hosts (since 99% of malicious threats online use hostnames - block them as I do in hosts (less overhead vs. ANYTHING else by FAR & pure kernelmode TCP/IP stack efficient no less)? Can't TOUCH you nor you it. That's ONLY a 1 year only as a sample and I'd done TONS MORE many hundreds more at slashdot before that and yes 99% use hostnames so hosts work against them harming you).

      So much for your usual lies barb and useless online troll chatterbox you has never done better work and I fairly challenged you to show you did. You have not.

      NOW: You RESORTING TO IMPERSONATING ME on your end only PROVES I really got to you barb/tom hudson tranny.

      So much so you are reduced to showing us your true scum bag self in fact. Thought YOU were going to SUE me? LMAO for what? FACTS ABOUT YOU??? LOL!

      * YOU WILL ALWAYS FAIL vs. me just as you FAILED @ being a MAN & since you couldn't GET ANY PUSSY you (lmao) DECIDED in your DRUG ADDLED BRAIN to SLICE OFF YOUR COCK & build your OWN pussy (only way you'd "get some", ever).... OMG!

      APK

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    • (Score: 4, Interesting) by maxwell demon on Wednesday April 15 2020, @08:12AM (1 child)

      by maxwell demon (1608) on Wednesday April 15 2020, @08:12AM (#982975) Journal

      I don't think China's main goal is to win consumers in Africa and Asia. Rather they want the resources.

      --
      The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
      • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 15 2020, @07:12PM

        by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday April 15 2020, @07:12PM (#983162)

        I've got to agree - China seems to be looking for Africa to do for them, what they did for the U.S. and Europe - provide cheap resources, labor, and places to dump trash and pollution rather than their own back yard.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by Phoenix666 on Wednesday April 15 2020, @11:24AM (4 children)

    by Phoenix666 (552) on Wednesday April 15 2020, @11:24AM (#982998) Journal

    We are grossly overtaxing the carrying capacity of the planet by current methods of production. But we are on the cusp of another huge revolution in material science. Several, actually. Better energy storage via new battery technology is almost there. Better energy generation via renewable means is almost there (fusion won't be along for another 50 years). Additive manufacturing + better recycling will greatly alleviate human pressure on the environment. Carbon nanotubes and graphene by themselves revolutionize energy transport, storage, and computation, and serve many structural requirements, too; we have plenty carbon, enough to last us 1,000 lifetimes.

    So we don't need to eat a diet of yeast and microbes. Though I am curious to try Impossible Human (tm).

    And as far as room to put people goes, gosh do we ever have so, so much room to put more people if we want to. Even California, the most populous state in America, has gobs and gobs of room to put more people: there's almost as much room in that state east of the Sierra Nevadas as there is west of them. The Central Valley has tons of room, too (if you can bring yourself to live there). If we employed Japanese densities we could almost fit the population of the entire nation in California's area.

    --
    Washington DC delenda est.
    • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Wednesday April 15 2020, @02:11PM (3 children)

      by Immerman (3985) on Wednesday April 15 2020, @02:11PM (#983055)

      >So we don't need to eat a diet of yeast and microbes. Though I am curious to try Impossible Human (tm).
      So, what do we eat then? We're currently consuming a year's worth of ecological production in a few months, the rest of the year we "eat the capital", so that next year it takes longer to get the same amount of production (slightly, we've got a whole lot of capital, so the change over a single year is small - but you only need to compare oceanic "trophy fish" pictures from 50 - 100 years ago to see how quickly it adds up). It might not have to be microbes, but it can't be farmed "naturally", we'll need some sort of "industrial" food production with a drastically reduced ecological footprint.

      Space for people themselves is not the problem - space for all the things people need to survive (including a healthy global ecology) is the problem.

      And yes, large-scale recycling would help immensely, as would pivoting away from making non-recylable products. I don't see how additive manufacturing would have much effect though - the waste from subtractive manufacturing is generally extremely easy to recycle, and injection molding is far more efficient for everything except extremely small production runs.

      • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Thursday April 16 2020, @11:54AM (2 children)

        by Phoenix666 (552) on Thursday April 16 2020, @11:54AM (#983530) Journal

        Balderdash. We produce far more food than we need. We are not starving, and we are not eating our seed corn. And that's with traditional means of food production. If people repeal civic codes that prevent people from gardening and keeping food animals like chickens, then we'd produce even more food. If we get a little more creative we can raise that an order of magnitude (urban farming, hydroponics, etc).

        Additive manufacturing plus recycling lets you throw that broken bowl into the hopper and print yourself a new one. It costs energy to do that, but far less than shipping the thing from China and transporting it overland all over creation.

        Plunk a community down in Northwestern Colorado, in the middle of fucking nowhere, with efficient solar panels and they have all they need. You could do that with half the population of China and you'd have plenty of middle-of-fucking-nowhere in Colorado left over.

        We are not out of food. We are not out of space. We are not out of resources. We are not out of energy. Humanity has many tricks up its sleeve to play.

        But I am 1000% with you that the 19th century bullshit we've been coasting on must go. The miscreants who want us to keep coasting on it must go, preferably with rope.

        --
        Washington DC delenda est.
        • (Score: 2) by Immerman on Thursday April 16 2020, @01:10PM (1 child)

          by Immerman (3985) on Thursday April 16 2020, @01:10PM (#983561)

          The problem is not that we can't farm enough food - it's the ecological toll that farming takes. Which includes the damage from mining for fertilizers that get shipped halfway around the world, the poisoning of ecosystems downstream with herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizer overdoses, etc. Combine that with the tolls for livestock, fishing, lumber, etc., etc., etc. We make great demands on the planet's ecology, far more than it can recover from in a year. (I think current estimates are we consume about 3 years worth of ecological production per year)

          • (Score: 2) by Phoenix666 on Tuesday April 21 2020, @04:37AM

            by Phoenix666 (552) on Tuesday April 21 2020, @04:37AM (#985349) Journal

            Which includes the damage from mining for fertilizers that get shipped halfway around the world, the poisoning of ecosystems downstream with herbicides, insecticides, and fertilizer overdoses, etc.

            That's partly a matter of process, partly of perspective, and partly of time scale. Hog farms, for example, produce a lot of effluent. It has to be contained, remediated, before it can be released into a watershed. But that effluent is incredibly valuable fertilizer; at least, it would be if it were collected, composted, and returned to farms as an input. It would close the loop. It could even be further used to produce biogas as an energy source, to cut the costs of closing the loop further. That is, the process could change such that we think of closing loops in our economic processes instead of our old, linear processes that will always race to depletion.

            Whether the effluent being released into a watershed is a pollutant/poison is also a matter of perspective. When effluent is released into watersheds there are often algal blooms. Those are called negative effects by most current pundits. But for the algae, it's a mega bonanza. Suddenly, a rich, new food source has dropped out of the clear blue sky and boy are they thriving. Creatures that eat the algae also get a bonanza, as do the creatures that eat those creatures, and so on. So, for Life Writ Large, the pollution represents a win for some, and a loss for others. Who are we to say that humans deserve what they desire more than the algae do? That's specie-ist.

            Finally, there's timescale. Plastics were introduced on a large scale in the middle of last century. The stuff has been filling up landfills and fouling bodies of water since. But recently scientists have discovering microbes that seem to enjoy eating the stuff. If plastics stick around long enough, there will be other lifeforms that adapt to eat it. It's evolution at work, and only a matter of time until it exploits the new niche humans have created.

            In short, Life will be just fine on Earth no matter what we humans do, given a long enough timeline. Humans, on the other hand, might be screwed, but, then, we too are pretty goddamned adaptable. We didn't get to be kings of the Earth for nothing.

            --
            Washington DC delenda est.