Yeah, right.

I'm more interested in human immortality.

Call me when they return with results. I can't see this becoming a reality for another 5 years at least.

>Platinum-group metals — ruthenium, rhodium, palladium, osmium, iridium, and platinum — are found in low concentrations on Earth and can be tough to access, which is why they're so expensive.

>A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.

I cant wait to start investing into this new space venture. The possibilities are endless.

>>2780083
I'm too lazy too work forever

Ron Paul's plan is for Russia to take over the space industry.

Big fucking change that would be.

THAT'S WRONG YOU STUPID FUCKING LIBERTARDIAN ASSHOLE. ONLY THE GOVERNMENT CAN INTO SPACE!!!

How many children are you willing to put into poverty for your space program?

>>2780083
>How many children are you willing to put into poverty for your space program?

Every single child on earth for one sexy female alien.

Space mining? More proof that Paul tards are fucking insane. Recycling existing materials here on Earth will ALWAYS be cheaper, more practical, and more profitable then shooting millions of tons of mining equipment into space to lasso a space rock and drop it back down to Earth.

>>2780200
That's not how space mining works.

Libertarians always fail to see the risky and (fucking expensive) ventures and research that only government funded research can do. No company spends 6 billion dollars to build a Saturn 6 rocket, space is a very risky venture for capitalists because its not positive how much return (if any) it will bring.

>>2780199
Click. Draaaaaag. Drop. Into File F. F is for Fap.

free market 1 - 0 butthurt libruls

Oh god what if they crack an asteroid that has the.....Artifact
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yCP8HhY0skw

>>2780199
>Fucking blacks and asians breeding us out!
>Oh man, i really wanna be with an alien that's incompitable with my sperm!

>>2780223

Fucking pussy...

>>2780200
>Implying that the resources on earth are renewable forever

A week or so ago, many people on /pol/ were shitting on RP for not being a strong advocate of advancements into space.

Now the free market opens up the way for space mining. And we have faggots like you saying that we should just stay on earth instead of going to space.

>space truck driver
dream on prol. people who smell their own wipe and violently masturbate to poorly drawn animations dont qualify for operating spacecraft.

>>2780236
>implying you can't have kids with white woman while getting some alien pussy on the side

>>2779988
Just so everyone knows, this will not be a possibility for MANY years to come.

>>2780233
Make us whole again...

>>2780219

is that why japanese corporations are spending huge resources at developing robots that will be used in the future for helping the ageing population?

>>2780291
The morals of a white man, ladies and gentlemen. This is why you shouldn't trust them.

>>2780314
The groundwork is being put in place.

But I guess a jew like you wouldn't want the world to advance into a new era instead of fucking around in the middle east for another century.

>my 2¢
Fuck Ron Paul and fuck his mindless followers.

>>2780219
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aqCmX5dMYHg

>>2780354
>But I guess a jew like you wouldn't want the world to advance into a new era instead of fucking around in the middle east for another century.

Are you fucking kidding me?

The fact that the entirety of humanity is currently stuck on a single giant ball hurtling through space that gets smacked with kinetically devastating asteroids on a constant basis TERRIFIES THE SHIT OUT OF ME.

Colonization into space is crucial for the survival of humanity.

>>2780354
>groundwork
nigger what groundwork?
Where's google's rocket?
Look I fully support Cameron in this endeavor but don't fucking delude yourself that this shit is around the fucking corner or that it's guaranteed to succeed.

>hurr Jew
and this is why I say fuck Paul and fuck his followers.

>>2780396
>Look I fully support Cameron in this endeavor but don't fucking delude yourself that this shit is around the fucking corner or that it's guaranteed to succeed.

Realistically the time frame would be 5 years to get the technologies needed and another 5-10 years of seeing what works and not.

I am still excited that something like this is even mentioned as a possibility. The USA government is too busy with its national problems to focus on something such as space exploration, so seeing someone else actually wanting to move toward a future in which space mining is feasible makes me hopeful.

>>2780390
Why? It's unlikely we'll be hit with a big asteroid during your lifetime, and whether or not humanity colonizes space after you're dead doesn't affect you either way.

on the contrary I whole heartedly believe in the space program. The NASA space program. There is no corproate entity in the world that either could have nor would have accomplished the same in the same peiod of time. Corporation are too fucking obsessed with their own bottom line to EVER risk doing what you propose. Basic raw Materials have sustained Man kind for the last 6 thousand years (not a creationist reference) and recycling most of the same materials would sustain us for countless thousands more. The very reason asteroids even exist is because they didn't have the mass or composition to even clump together and become planetoids in the first place so how the hell can they possibly have enough raw materials in the same compositions found on earth to sustain us for any period length of time. We would use up more resources surveying and recovering said resources then we would receive. NASA is the only viable US based space program that has any viable future, if only the damn politicians will take off their leash.

>>2780361
>>2780376

I think their is a good market for helping elderly people seeing as their wants and needs will shift towards "needing to walk to the bathroom". Also, the research for robotics is fairly simple compared to space exploration.

I'm not saying space travel is capitalistically impossible, I'm saying that government is useful for its ability to do research in this field quicker before handing it over to private companies so they can utilize it.

>>2780510
Their research has nothing to do with recouping costs. That is the issue. NASA is a money pit

I'm surprised I don't see Elon Musk, the CEO of Space X, in those articles. Space X is the only company launching rockets into orbit. Will this new company be building their own rockets?

>>2780376

DARPA seriously scares me sometimes

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wuOnJWA3v44

Government should always be envolved in science.
What business is going to fund research into Number Theory? Or in theoretical physics like M-Theory?

How will a paradigm shift happen on privatized science?

>>2780557
Who knows.

Its too early too tell since the space mining announcement was only released a few days ago.

A lot of people seem to be deploring the idea due to our current tech being insufficient to accomplish it. Personally, I think they're missing the point entirely.

This kind of vision is exactly what we need to develop that technology. The impetus for technological innovation and humanistic unity is in a shared dream for the future; and advancing the human race outside of the sphere of Earth and into the cosmos is as beautiful a dream as any I've seen.

Pretty cool shit. One could maybe argue that government research early on helps, for example back in the 60s when there wasn't any economic incentive to go into space, technology developed by agencies like NASA and their contractors helped to advance technology to the point today where it's not becoming affordable enough to go into space that stuff like asteroid mining can be profitable. But asteroid mining, colonization, etc. will never take off without the market, it takes a profit motive to really advance technology and make it affordable. The internet was nothing more than an interesting (but pretty useless) research and educational network before companies began to use it for commerce. But then once the restrictions on commercial use of the internet were removed, businesses sprung up left and right to expand the capacity of this network and to offer new services on it (online search, online news, message boards, social networking, video streaming, internet radio, e-commerce, etc etc) that completely revolutionized society. Governments just can't match the creativity and ingenuity of business entrepreneurs.

>>2780584
why does it have to be a business? Why can't people donate into a trust/endowment that provides for that research?

>>2780619
I enjoy your optimistic view of people's ability to give, but realistically the amount of intricate areas in science is like the positions on the real-line. Finding enough to pay for all (or most) would be like an act of utopianism!

>>2780603
>>2780606
you guys get it.

I'm surprised that /pol/ is quick to dismiss the idea of space mining and it's advancements in space technology.

Just last week, /pol/ was crying that there wouldn't be anymore adventures into space.

sign up as a space truck driver?
you better get yourself a university education in physics or electrical engineering or robotics

hurry up

>>2780690
resources are limited. go figure. The government has the same problem with limited resources for funding.

The point of using a trust/endowment would be that it can grow and provide continued funding. The biggest problem I have with the "we need NASA!" crowd is they are "scientists" and business people second. All those TV shows about the universe could be produced by scientists and sold. They could generate their own revenue if the step aware from the science for a minute and look for opportunity. That and a good money manager

>>2780706
>>2780606
>>2780603
fuck the government

>>2780534

>Money Pit

>Half a percentage point of all the funding in the US

>>2780753
Well, there's a problem.
Business men doing science = profit.
Scientists doing science = discovery.

It's a good idea to have the scientists be the marble and the sculpter, but it wouldn't be very pure.

>>2780867
you aren't understanding how a trust/endowment works are you?

>>2780906
not samefag
but we do understand that government is inefficient and always disallows for open research which is what brings about the best innovations

>>2780906
Care to enlighten us?

>>2780906
Possibly not, no. I was talking about your idea of scientists being the funders of their own science.

Go into detail if you could..

>>2780941
The idea would be that people donate to the fund. The fund is managed in such a way as to generate growth while allowing some risk. This would allow the research budget the *potential* to increase over time. While new donations are excepted to continue growth out side of investment.

Colleges, 401ks, and insurance company already do this. I can't see why a place like CERN couldn't.

Space X did in a couple of years what NASA could not do in decades

and now private companies will mine asteroids and take us across the galaxy faster than NASA ever could

the only thing government douchebags and NASA ever did was restrict people from space activity

>thinking this can possibly be profitable
>thinking it isn't just a publicity stunt

How's that happening working for you, paulfags?

Stay delusional

Sooooooooooooooooooo


how are they going to do this? Space elevators with carbon tubing?

>>2780937

>Disallows for open research

>Is quite often the only point of open research because they are not worried about proffet.

You duuumb motherfucker.

>>2781062
It would have to be. It costs 10,000 to send a pound into space while it would only cost 100 with a space elevator.

>>2781050
Space X already posted that theyre profiting from it because countries including america are purchasing flights, they already have dozens of flights contracted. all this done in just a couple of years where NASA took decades

>>2781062

You could have asked Intel 20 years ago how they planned to manufacture multigate transistors with a 22nm feature size and your answer would have been, "Well, umm, err, I don't know." Doesn't mean it can't be done. Whatever Planetary Resources has planned is obviously pretty long term, they're not even close to the mining phase yet, sounds like first priority is prospecting and figuring out which asteroids would be the most profitable, then they can actually start thinking about how to actually get to the asteroids and get the resources off them. Sounds like it will be decades before any mining could be started.

>>2781050
>A single platinum-rich space rock 1,650 feet (500 meters) wide contains the equivalent of all the platinum-group metals ever mined throughout human history, company officials said.

>"When the availability of these metals increase[s], the cost will reduce on everything including defibrillators, hand-held devices, TV and computer monitors, catalysts and with the abundance of these metals, we’ll be able to use them in mass production, like in automotive fuel cells."

How can technological advancements not be profitable? You are just like those people who said that the internet couldn't be profitable.

>>2781112
Wrong, read up and learn that Space-X doesn't have enough investment to build half the shit it's promised, and most of the US funding has been pulled out, instead going to pay for us to use Russian Government rockets until NASA builds its next one
>>2781124
>I cannot into astronomical distances and the cost of navigating thereof
Thanks for letting us all know that you're retarded

>>2781153
http://www.spacex.com/usa.php

not wrong, its on their own website, so fuck off faggot. Space X is ALREADY a profitable company

>>2781050
read this newbie
>>2781011
its true, we went to the moon, usa showed off to russia some more

we got hubble

then we didnt do shit with any of it

>>2781082
except the part where they are worried about politics and small research facilities waste many of their budgets for lobbying and pleading with corpoliticians

>statists get told
>statists respond by getting mad and spouting easily refutable bullshit

>>2781124
>>2781124
yeah, fuck the naysayers
theyll just claim some stupid shit like flying cars or communism and strawmen their way to "winning internets"

>>2781348
use as necessary, sir

The public sector put a man in space 60 years ago.

What's keeping the private sector?

>>2781011
>Space X did in a couple of years what NASA could not do in decades

Which is? You realize that they aren't doing anything new or innovative, right? You also realize that SpaceX is heavily funded by the US federal government, right?

>>2781413
the public sector's monopoly, as usual

>>2781459
The public sector has a monopoly because the private sector simply isn't competing. There's no law against going into space, it's not an enforced monopoly.

>>2781413
>forced to compete against a monolithic arm of the government with billons and billions of dollars in funding

until the free market can tell me how it can effectively handle environmental preservation, i'm not interested.

>>2781508
So? There's enough profit to be made, so why isn't it attracting billions and billions of dollars from private investors?
Why isn't the market working?

>>2781481
the fuck ignorant shit are you spewing?
STATIST DETECTED FUCK
wow you are terrible bro

do you understand permits, regulations, taxes
no fuck it, i wont talk to trolltards like you

>>2781481
>>2781481
theres laws against shooting big rockets into the atmosphere without proper regulation, actually.

I'm pretty sure you need to sign alot of paperwork to go to space.

>>2781527
well until you can tell me how the state can handle it, i am not interested

bp gulf, was, 100% state fucked shit

they were disallowed from close shore drilling

then given permits to drill near usa shores, but not in the shallow parts

you fail life

statists are so ignorant, its funny

>>2780102
More like 50~250 years. It just isn't viable. It takes a lot of fuel to carry payloads into space and cost more to land it safely and this shit ain't cost effective at all.

>>2781561
>>2781529

ITT:

Statist scum completely ignore the massive boom in new technology that will result from space mining.

>>2781561
>>2781552
But the public sector needs to get through all this regulation as well.
Besides, there are private sector corporations that fire rockets all the time, that's obviously not the problem.

You're basically saying hurr durr how could the private sector ever master aviation with all these regulation and taxes and stuff.

>>2781597
thanks for going on with your hurr durr line
that made me really want to talk to you

im sure someone will give you the time of day, i dont have time for people that strawman and hyperbole all day

>>2781527
>environmental preservation
and how is the government doing on that front?

I don't normally trust the state but when I do, I trust them to fuck up.

So where are all my exploding space shuttles at?

>>2781597
The public sector makes the regulation. They don't pay the fees private companys do

>>2780083

>Doesn't know about the libertarian transhumanism movement

>>2781565

you've still failed to convert me. australian environmental protection laws may be a shitstorm of red tape, but they've saved countless species of animals, they've prevented mangrove destruction, and basically saved the fishing industry around my area.

building codes have been adapted to include environmental impact statements, so that we can't have a repeat of land being poisoned by the arsenic used to kill rodents in ex-banana plantation land.

who controls that kind of shit in the free market? who prevents private enterprise from spraying nearby residential areas?

i have not yet have a single person give me a persuasive argument for environmental preservation and all that jazz (excluding "BY THE GOODNESS OF OUR HEARTS WE WON'T! WE PROMISE!"), and until someone can do so, i refuse to accept it as a feasible policy.

>>2781623
all over the place

*bada dum*

>>2781625
Is there some specific fee that you're talking about? Because the private sector has gotten pretty close to getting into space, so obviously it is possible. I just want to know why it took them 60 years to round up the investors.
I mean, we can all agree commercial space travel is incredible profitable, right? So why did it take the market so long?

>>2781631
transhumanism taht doesnt trend towards a centralized hivemind totalitarian dictatorship of the state

requires pure anarchy, not libertarianism

>>2781636
Yeah.
It's the check and balance of power between the state and business that allows any society to do well.
Once one takes over the other it's always a disaster.

>>2779988

>Looks like Ron Paul is right again about the free market working

Fucking idiot.

Any private venture into space is built upon 70 years of knowledge acquired by vast Government investment of taxpayers dollars.

>>2781676
indeed. now watch as the libertarians on this board either ignore my post, create a strawman argument, or brush me off as a statist dropkick.

of course, they could just be trolling me incredibly effectively.

>>2781659
>>2781659
It costs a ton of money to get the government to say "yes you can send that into the air". If the government wants to send something up it simply does it.

>why it took them 60 years to round up the investors.

It takes huge sums of money to develop the launch system then you have to pay to get the OK from the government. Government says "no" and you are shit out of luck. High risk investment

>commercial space travel is incredible profitable, right?

depends on how you are defining that. If you mean going out and mining then yes. If you mean going to the moon and back no.

NASA has done a whole lot of nothing over those 60 years.

>inb4 but look at all these things that came from NASA

Anything that has come out of NASA has been a result of trying to do things of little worth and zero return on investment. the don't "invent" anything to make a return they do it to further their primary goal. The same way a corporation would. The difference being that a corporation uses its own money instead of the taxpayers

>>2781636
i know i know
listen, if you are a serious poster, and not trolling
you can give me a sign
can you do that? so far you are just trending towards definite troll

okay here goes

first, no one with an iq above 70 thinks mass spraying pesticide regularly is a smart option, we have learned something in the past 40 years, and it is that creating super resistant insects is a definite beginning to a plague of whatever you sprayed against as you have no more pesticides left

we also know that destroying the environment all around farms can reduce crop yield

now, if you cant tell me how the state preserves the environment,
then claiming that you will accept the state instead of the free market because we cant give you irrefutable proof, is really just nonsense

good day to you (i have a feeling you wont even attempt to prove that you arent a troll)

>>2781636
>>2781636
>who prevents private enterprise from spraying nearby residential areas?

You can't harm another persons property

>>2781659
that whole cold war and
"HOLY SHIT THEY ARE A COMMUNIST TRYING TO SPY US" thing had something to do with it
i dunno though, lol

>>2781744
>It costs a ton of money to get the government to say "yes you can send that into the air".
Well yes, it needs to actually be functional and adhere to safety standards. I'm not aware of any specific permit for space travel. You know the US government can't levy fees over space, since it doesn't own space, right?
>If the government wants to send something up it simply does it.
Well, if it adheres to its own safety standards (that the private sector also has to adhere to), sure.
>It takes huge sums of money to develop the launch system then you have to pay to get the OK from the government.
Pay to get the OK? Please expand on this.
>High risk investment
Higher reward.
>depends on how you are defining that. If you mean going out and mining then yes. If you mean going to the moon and back no.
Even space tourism would be profitable, just not as much.

>>2781710
here we go the statist flawed logic returns
now, even if we somehow eliminate government in everything

all private enterprise in the future will be indebted to the government

hey statist, do you think the blacks alive today should get reparations for slave owners centuries ago too?
fucking idiots, all statists

There is an ideology that they are attached to; it's the ideology of westward frontier expansion, the Myth of the West, the westward expansion of the United States between 1804 (the start of the Lewis and Clark expedition) and 1880 (the closing of the American western frontier). Leaving aside the matter of the dispossession and murder of the indigenous peoples, I tend to feel some sympathy for the grandchildren of this legend: it's a potent metaphor for freedom from social constraint combined with the opportunity to strike it rich by the sweat of one's brow, and they've grown up in the shadow of this legend in a progressively more regulated and complex society.

My problem, however, is that there is no equivalence between outer space and the American west.

>>2781744
>NASA has done a whole lot of nothing over those 60 years.

The amount of research they've done has been staggering. While human spaceflight is overrated, especially when done by government agencies, the probes they've sent into space and to other planets have given researchers a wealth of new knowledge. Such knowledge could not have been secured had we done away with NASA.

The private sector might have an interest in mining asteroids, but it doesn't have an interest in sending probes to Jupiter or Uranus to study the atmosphere of the planets.

>>2781762
Until you provide evidence for such a claim, it's just that. You've shown us that you have faith in the NAP, not that it will actually work out.

>>2781749
>first, no one with an iq above 70 thinks mass spraying pesticide regularly is a smart option
Not smart, but cheap. Cheap is more important than smart.

I postulate that the organization required for such exploration is utterly anathema to the ideology of the space cadets, because the political roots of the space colonization movement in the United States rise from taproots of nostalgia for the open frontier that give rise to a false consciousness of the problem of space colonization. In particular, the fetishization of autonomy, self-reliance, and progress through mechanical engineering — echoing the desire to escape the suffocating social conditions back east by simply running away — utterly undermine the program itself and are incompatible with life in a space colony (which is likely to be at a minimum somewhat more constrained than life in one of the more bureaucratically obsessive-compulsive European social democracies, and at worst will tend towards the state of North Korea in Space).

In other words: space colonization is implicitly incompatible with both libertarian ideology and the myth of the American frontier.

>>2781787
How is it flawed logic? Do you actually think the private sector is starting from the ground up? Reinventing the wheel (or rocketry, in this case)?
Of course not.

The novel The Rocket Company is a fictional but very realistic account of a company who sells a reasonably priced surface-to-orbit rocket. As part of their business model, the company is deliberately not in the business of selling surface-to-orbit boost services. They are just selling the rocket and the support infrastructure. This means that they can avoid all the cost and risk of insuring payload delivery. The package is attractive to small countries and large corporations who want an instant do-it-yourself space program. It is marketed more as a vehicle for "space access" rather than for "cargo delivery", since its 2,300 kg cargo capacity is quite small. For the low-low price of $400 million dollars down and a yearly cost of $100 million, you too can have your own complete space program.

The novel predicts that if such vehicles become common, the cost of delivering payload to orbit could drop to about $100 a kilogram.

The novel is important because it also covers the pitfalls such a company have to avoid due to regulatory and political issues. These are just as important as the technical and engineering issues. The actual rocket design is realistic, in fact the design is patented. I really recommend that you read this book.

I still have not heard ANY valid argument in favor of WHY Corporations would ever be in favor of "space mining". Especially int the face of a VASTLY cheaper, easier, and far mor profitable alternative of recyclying the Materials we alreaddy have here on Earth. Recycling is a multi billion dollar industry. IT's close to being even cheaper then mining raw materials in most fields. So Why would any corporation take such an enormous financial risk and liability to exploit possible resources hundreds of thousands of miles away?

>>2781803
well thats just like... your opinion man

>>2781749

and yet lobbyists are doing everything they can to cut the laws back about mining regulations in australia, because environment rehabilitation after open cut mining is a huge (and currently necessary) expenditure. if this isn't a feature of free market capitalism, we must be reading from different books on the subject, not just on the wrong page.

i accept the state because i myself have seen PROOF that state laws prevent overfishing, seagrass destruction, estuary fouling and countless other detrimental effects done by an unregulated industry.

you just have not yet specified what is holding back private enterprise from doing the exact thing the state has been effectively preventing since the 90's. i do not for a second believe that anyone -that- invested in free market capitalism would have the foresight to say 'oh shit, if we try to maximize profits, we can only sustain our industry for 30-odd years!'

i'm all for privatization of sustainable, artificial fisheries, but what is stopping someone from sweeping the seabed clean for the big bucks, then moving to somewhere else to rape and pillage, leaving an entire area, often entire species populations, decimated?

fisheries have moved from australia to indonesia and neighboring counties in recent years, which is hurting the industry, but it just shows that these companies just do not care by the fact they'd much rather move to a country that won't regulate them, rather than clean up their business practices.

i'm probably talking out of my arse by now, but it boils down to the fact that i don't trust institutions where profit gains priority over environmental wellbeing, and i think someone has to be bumfuck retarded to think that corporate activity with a bare, bare minimum of state regulation is a good thing.

Now, currently, pretty much all of the nations on Terra that have the industrial infrastructure to expand in to space tend to have capitalistic cultures. The implication is that the only way widespread expansion in to space will happen is via the free market and the profit motive (this does raise the interesting possibility of an Eastern non-profit motivated culture given access to the required industrial base, SF authors take note). The problem is that expanding in to space is so freaking expensive that there does not seem to be any way to make it turn a profit. SF author Charles Stross goes further, and states that if we expand into the solar system, we're not going to get there by rocket ship, at least not the conventional kind. A space elevator, maybe; a rocket is too inefficient.

In other words: a rocketpunk future will be created by chasing profit, but there isn't any profit to be had. Therefore, no rocketpunk future.

So the way I understand it, one can attack the elephant by:

reduce the cost per kilogram of delivering payload into space
reduce the support costs of keeping human beings alive in space
discover an incredibly valuable resource in space that requires human beings to harvest: "MacGuffinite"
all of the above

Plus the chance to do an end-run around the profit motive problem by utilizing a non-profit oriented Eastern culture.

>>2781781
>Well yes, it needs to actually be functional and adhere to safety standards. I'm not aware of any specific permit for space travel. You know the US government can't levy fees over space, since it doesn't own space, right?
The US government controls the air space need to enter space. They can prevent you from trying

>Well, if it adheres to its own safety standards (that the private sector also has to adhere to), sure.
The government makes the standard. If they decided that the material you used isn't "right" they can stop you from launching.

>Pay to get the OK? Please expand on this.
look at the FDA. It takes millions to develop a drug and then millions more to get it through the FDA process. If you don't have the money the FDA will not look at you.

>Higher reward.
Investors look at both. Just because it may have a high reward doesn't make it a good investment

>Even space tourism would be profitable, just not as much.
space tourism was tried by the Russians and failed

The sad fact of the matter is that it is about a thousand times cheaper to colonize Antarctica than it is to colonize Mars. Antarctica has plentiful water and breathable air, Mars does not. True, the temperature of Mars does occasionally grow warmer than Antarctica, but at its coldest Mars can get 50° C colder than Antarctica. In comparison to Mars, Antarctica is a garden spot.

Yet there is no Antarctican land-rush. One would suspect that there is no Martian land-rush either, except among a few who find the concept to be romantic.

>>2781880
you do realize not everything on earth can be recycled in an economically viable way right?

>>2781921
Thats a well known problem called "Tragedy of the commons". This is a problem which plagues Libertarians such as myself. Libertarians will argue that strong property rights would prevent this problem but I don't think so which makes me question my position of late.

I recently came across an amusing variation on the "If You Build it" argument. The subject was the US transcontinental railroad, with construction starting in the 1860s. In his book Railroaded: The Transcontinentals and the Making of Modern America, author Richard White points out that there was no economic reason for building the railroad. The motivation was mostly political.

Which is a plausible motive. After all, politics was the main driver behind NASA's Apollo moon program.

Western railroads, particularly the transcontinental railroads, would not have been built without public subsidies, without the granting of land and, more important than that, loans from the federal government ... because there is no business [in the West at that time,] there is absolutely no reason to build [railroads] except for political reasons and the hope that business will come."

"What we're talking about is 1,500 or more miles between the Missouri River and California, in which there are virtually no Anglo-Americans. Most railroad men look at this, including [railroad magnate Cornelius] Vanderbilt, and they want nothing to do with it."

God is behind Ron Pauls back supporting him all the way, even through his mistakes.

I pray to god he wins by some miracle.

This thread is pretty insane.
There's enough resources on earth to go
around for a very long time, we don't use a whole lot of it.

The problem is that it is not lucrative to extract too much of it because prices will fall. Get that shit together first, then start mining other rocks in space.

>>2781921
If you are worried about animal extinction then my question would be why is their no shortage of chickens?

"tax haven" is a state or a country or territory where certain taxes are levied at a low rate or not at all while offering due process, good governance and a low corruption rate. An offshore financial centre (OFC), ... is usually a small, low-tax jurisdiction specializing in providing corporate and commercial services to non-resident offshore companies, and for the investment of offshore funds. A free economic zone is a designated areas where companies are taxed very lightly or not at all to encourage development or for some other reason. A corporate haven is a jurisdiction with laws friendly to corporations thereby encouraging them to choose that jurisdiction as a legal domicile.

A related concept is that of a data haven. Wikipedia says "A data haven, like a corporate haven or tax haven, is a refuge for uninterrupted or unregulated data. Data havens are locations with legal environments that are friendly to the concept of a computer network freely holding data and even protecting its content and associated information. They tend to fit into three categories: a physical locality with weak information-system enforcement and extradition laws, a physical locality with intentionally strong protections of data, and..." Possible uses include access to free political speech, avoiding internet censorship, whistleblowing, copyright infringement, circumventing data protection laws, online gambling, and pornography.

Back in the 1970's, the unique virtues of free-fall manufacturing were touted. Just think, you can smelt ultra-pure compounds and not worry about contamination from the crucible! The compound will be floating in vacuum, touching nothing. One can also create materials that are almost impossible to manufacture in a gravity field: like foam steel. In free-fall, the bubbles have no tendency to float upwards, there is no "up". It also allows the creation of exotic alloys, where the components are reluctant to stay mixed. Not to mention perfectly spherical ball bearings.

This also has applications to Pharmaceutical manufacturing. Apparently free fall allows one to grow protein crystals of superior quality. Other applications include thin-film epitaxy of semiconductors, latex spheres for microscope calibration, manufacture of zeolites and aerogels, and microencapsulation.

A space station is also a safe place to experiment with quarantined items. Things like civilization-destroying biowarfare plagues or planet-eating nanotechnology.

Unfortunately, none of these items have turned out to be commercially viable so far. And in any event, they could just as easily be made in a satellite equipped with teleoperated arms controlled from the ground.

>>2782008
Because the demand for chicken is sufficient enough to keep their population high.

>>2781968
which leads me to believe that the 'libertarians' on /pol/ are either stupid, trolling, or treating anything even minimally associated with statism much as the US treated anything related to communism, however beneficial it would be to include in your political beliefs, during the cold war.

admitting that acceptable levels of corporate regulation isn't an inherently bad thing WILL NOT BRING THE SKY CRASHING DOWN ON YOUR HEADS.

but i do commend you on your ability to alter your opinion, man. you're a rare commodity here on /pol/.

>>2782023
And their is no risk of them going extinct, so the same logic can be used for fish

>>2781985
Thing is man, you are pretty much making a pro-rich argument. The taxpayer should fund unprofitable government projects (transcontinental railroad) so that the rich business owners can leech off that to create profitable endeavors. There are many things I hate but one of the top items is government supporters advocacy of socializing losses and privatizing profits. The bank bailouts was the most recent example of this

>>2782008
have you done any appropriate research into what would happen if the world's krill suddenly vanished?

thought about what would happen to tourism if the world's coral reefs died off, or natural world heritage sites were polluted, maybe?

>>2782026
>acceptable levels of corporate regulation
what the acceptable level is and how decides it is the issue. that is why they lean towards the free market as opposed to a central government

>>2782047
you completely missed the point I was making

>>2782036
We don't control the sea's fish population in the same way we control the population of chicken. Overfishing and pollution have become a huge problem for fish in the Mediterranean and Pacific, mostly due to the shortsightedness of private enterprises and the State.

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/19/mediterranean-fish-species-threatened-with-extinction/

>>2782036
I'll assume you have no background in marine biology, judging by the content of that post.

The term "plenty of fish in the sea" isn't going to be around forever.

>>2782066
>>2782071
you can grow fish in a closed environment like any animal. This is why chickens are abundant.

>>2782090
Yes, you can, but such initiatives are not done on a wide enough scale. It's not as profitable as traditional fishing methods.

>>2782090
But do you have the funding to do so?

If it were that easy, the seafood industry in Japan, New Zealand, and many other Pacific countries would have jumped aboard that train long ago.

One huge problem is that you actually can't grow some species of high-demand fish in enclosed spaces. Tuna and other pelagics being some of the more difficult ones and sought-after ones.

>>2782100
because fish are not scarce enough to warrant it. When the price of fish increases because of scarcity in the wild fish farms will become more lucrative

>>2782129
I don't generally eat fish so me having funding is irrelevant.

see >>2782135

>>2782135
So you'd prefer to wait until the species is threatened or nearing extinction before you move into that area?

That, my friend, is fucking stupid. Please, say no more until you've educated yourself more on the subject.

>>2782135
>fish are not scarce enough to warrant it

Uh...

>>2781716
um yea, when you respond like a reject by saying things with 0 proof, such as believing that the balance between rich business and corporation is somehow a beneficial thing....
do you really expect people to talk the way rational people talk to each other? anyone that cares to reply will laugh at you, and the more you rage, the less real conversation you get

statism is a religion, face it

>>2782163
only time anyone will care

>>2782166
obviously not low enough

>>2782186
The Canadian government had to declare a moratorium on cod fishing to prevent the species from going extinct in the area. The population still hasn't even begun to recover. It's definitely low enough.

The issue is that you don't have nearly enough room to raise Atlantic cod or many other commercially fished species in an aquarium or aquaponic system. It is not profitable to do so.

>>2781781
>You know the US government can't levy fees over space, since it doesn't own space, right?

typical statist bait and switch
where do you think space launches launch
>from

who taxes and regulates that

how many countries are suspicious of foreign investors launching things?

think carefully

>>2781790
strawman detected

>>2781800
that doesnt even make sense
we have learned in the last few decades just how unprofitable it is

cheap =/= profitable

>>2781803
>>2781790
lol
thats some sweet copy pasta

>>2781821
of course not
so why would you ask them to reinvent the wheel OR to forever be indebted to government

your polar argument is fail

>>2781852
thank you sir

>>2781880
>>2781880
why would anyone ever want to invest in americuh?
we got all this cheap shit in india and africa and europe itself
why these fools wouldnt make money even if they had a century, by 1700 they would still be confused, hah, i am going to go enjoy my serf delivered dinner

>>2782506

>indebted

The science, technological and engineering legwork for space exploration has been carried out by Government over the past 70 years because there is no profit in space. Space remains a high risk endeavor even for companies putting satellites into low Earth orbit.

To claim this announcement regarding asteroid mining is somehow a triumph of the free market is jumping the gun somewhat. I welcome the announcement, but, l understand that Government will be involved from the start, much like with SpaceX.

>Several scientists not involved in the project said they were simultaneously thrilled and skeptical, calling the plan daring, difficult - and highly expensive. They struggle to see how it could be cost-effective, even with platinum and gold worth nearly $1,600 an ounce. An upcoming NASA mission to return just 2 ounces (60 grams) of an asteroid to Earth will cost about $1 billion.

http://phys.org/news/2012-04-company-aims-rich-asteroids.html

>>2782611

>l understand that Government will be involved from the start, much like with SpaceX.

Indeed.

ALL SpaceX profits come from Government; until they can get paying passengers, they will be reliant on Government money for their bottom line.

SpaceX is funded by Government for a good reason, it is officially a private company, therefore Representatives on Capital Hill can't force SpaceX to spend their money on job creation programmes.

>>2782611
Exactly.
These private guys and companies aren't doing it for profit but for their own names and legacies.
Yeah lets go spend a billion dollars mining 2000 dollars worth of iron from and asteroid instead of just dinging it up here.
The space programs have been about communications and other weapons systems. That's our real wartime advantage these days.

>>2781921
well yea we must be understanding things differently

when you say free market capitalism, you are being redundant
no different than laissez-faire free market

>PROOF that state laws prevent overfishing, seagrass destruction, estuary fouling and countless other detrimental effects done by an unregulated industry.
I have seen proof especially for overfishing, that government causes much harm

quotas lead to people fishing until they can fill them (and sometimes more)

when a coast is owned privately (or even by a group that has control to close it off from others) then this does not happen, because long term sustainability is in their interest

Google will make more progress in a decade than NASA ever has, because they do it for PROFIT.

>>2781921
the parts i did not respond to, i am not ignoring, i just dont know what to say

>i'm all for privatization of sustainable, artificial fisheries, but what is stopping someone from sweeping the seabed clean for the big bucks, then moving to somewhere else to rape and pillage, leaving an entire area, often entire species populations, decimated?
same thing as now, property is useless if its main function is destroyed

>fisheries have moved from australia to indonesia and neighboring counties in recent years, which is hurting the industry, but it just shows that these companies just do not care by the fact they'd much rather move to a country that won't regulate them, rather than clean up their business practices.
this isnt proof of anything, it equally fits the idea that business is more profitable, as well as that business is greedy, and many other theories, not enough data

not to mention, that comparing a government area vs a government area to make a conclusion about free markets is quite disingenuous

>>2782767

>when a coast is owned privately (or even by a group that has control to close it off from others) then this does not happen...

It depends who owns the resource. I've seen companies move into shell fish areas and pick them clean until they are destroyed, the company then moves on, further up the coast and does the same again. They only care about the shareholders short term profits.

Once the shell fish are all gone they'll move onto another resource. We see the same thing happening in hard wood forests.

When profit is to be made, the money men don't give a fuck about sustainability.

>>2781936
or, first make space colonization profitable, which will be tourism heavy
then make mining that will deliver to those colonies (likely on smaller masses so delivery and takeoff wont be so dangerous and expensive) profitable

>>2782791

>Google will make more progress in a decade than NASA ever has...

70 years of NASA achievements tossed aside... If Google ever gets into space they will have over half a century of experience to draw upon thanks to NASA. I'll just remind you, NASA is on our side.

Stay classy

>>2781943
>strawman
>non sequitur
>circular logic
>lack of facts
anything i missed guise?

>>2781968
misinfo agent detected
if you truly questioned your position, you wouldnt be waiting for others to answer it for you

you would search the facts, think of scenarios that have not happened yet, search for more facts

and realize something that statists are scared of realizing

freedom and prosperity go hand in hand
waste/destruction and statism go hand in hand
fundamental truth

>>2781985
>was not economical at one time
>no one had foresight
*logical disconnect here*
>could not happen with government intervention

back to the drawing board, statist

>>2782892
>>2782892

Please leave the ideology at the door.

To get into space and expand the footprint of humanity will require a partnership between the State and the private sector.

>>2782008
because the magical government fairy provided for the masses

and without taxes, IT WOULD BE UNPOSSIBLE1!

ITT: ideology.

Theres nothing to stop private space development now. There are companies already trying to do it. If they suceed you will all love the free market and forget that the gubment developed computers, jet engines and rockets.
Also I don't think you have any ides about getting stuff down from space, you can't just tow an asteroid back to earth, you'll destroy earth! It would have to be mined in situ and then brought back in large re-entry vehicles.

>>2782913

Well said.

Any private venture into space will be built on decades of Government research and development. We cannot airbrush Government out of the picture; it has been vital for technological development, and will remain vital.

>>2782913

Any materials mined in space will stay in space. It isn't cost effective to return them to Earth,

>>2782907

An appeal to probability is a logical fallacy.

If Government hadn't spent decades researching projects that had no commercial applications you wouldn't be sitting in front of a computer right now posting on this thing called the internet.

>>2782931
>implying that only the government could have made space flight happen

>>2780219

> Thinking that government spending can get us into space.

God I can almost hear the stupid through the internet.

>>2782019
speculation
and defeatist perspective

cool story bro

>>2783000
>>2782991

Do you have any idea of the costs involved in manned space flight?

>>2782026
>>2782026
>>2782026
samefagging and stereotyping
you make me sick statists

you also made a strawman, libertarians and anti-statists do not believe in "no regulaton of any kind"
generally, other than when people like you pose as them and troll threads, libertarians believe in regulation by people voluntarily cooperating

>>2782042
fatal blow
statists can not recover
imminent government shutdown

>>2782991

>>doubting anything but the government could have made space flight happen

>>2782066
>and the state

thats exactly what we are saying

>>2783015

Do you have any idea how much money corporations like Google have?

As of today their total assets amount to 77 billion dollars, 40 billion of which is retained earnings.

http://ycharts.com/companies/GOOG/assets

They have more than enough to start a space program.

But I guess a little pro-government zombie like you wouldn't have known that, would you?

>>2783058

>Do you have any idea how much money corporations like Google have?
>As of today their total assets amount to 77 billion dollars,

Do you have any idea how small that amount of money is?

>>2782208
before the realization was made, the government allowed peple to fish there because everything was okay

if i had privately owned any part of that shore, and suddenly the 8000 cod that swim there turned into the rare sighted 1000 cod, i would go fucking crazy and fix that, the government didnt do much until much lower levels

if you do your research, some politicians were saying it is a natural cycle, and were willing to pay the fisherman that continued fishing the declining fish stocks to stay in business

PAYING THEM TO STAY IN BUSINESS
WHEN OTHERWISE THEY WOULD STOP FISHING

your arguments all fall flat when the facts are checked

the state faild

>>2779988
Sink infinite cash into a project that's guaranteed to lose money throughout the entire lifetimes of anyone involved in it...

...Why?

Sadly, investing in the long term survival of all life on the planet is not profitable.

>>2782611
and those satellites are highly regulated as well

>inb4 space debris
which was caused by government fuckups
holy shit statists fail at every point they attempt

>>2783069
Sadly, so unprofitable, even the government won't do it anymore.

Granted, that may just be a side effect of the fact that the government and corporations are no longer separable.

>>2783058

To put man on the moon the US spent nearly 5% of its GDP every year for nearly ten years. The Apollo program was built on a further ten years of Government R&D.


The is no company, or group of companies, that could afford this.

>>2782836
when people are told
::its okay the government is taking care of it::
they tend to think, government took care of it
that environment was protected

once again, governments allowing encroachment into natural areas OWNED by government, permits, etc
and then you try to say this is not a state failure

its like, im in bizzaro land, the people trying so hard to prove the state right, prove it wrong the most

>>2783080

>and those satellites are highly regulated as well

You are an idiot.

Anyone can put a satellite into space. Anyone. There is NO regulation.

A company called Sea Launch put satellites into orbit from international waters; no laws, no regulation.

http://www.sea-launch.com/

Idiot.

>>2783058

>As of today their total assets amount to 77 billion dollars, 40 billion of which is retained earnings.

That is a tiny amount of money.

>>2783058

It is apparent you have no idea how expensive a space program is.

>>2783129
77 billion could fund NASA for 6 or 7 years, or at Apollo level funding for 3 or 4 years

>>2782904
nonsense
giving the state power over space would be suicide
no.

I think most of you posting in this thread have missed the point. This announcement regards the establishment of a sustainable space program, a private and State venture.

This is exciting news, leave the ideology out of it.

>>2782913
thanks captain obvious :)

>>2783165

Which isn't much. Big NASA projects are decades in the making.

If Google, et al are proposing throwing the money at a space project, good luck to them. They have my full support. They will get more done if they join with SpaceX and NASA.

>>2782972
wow
definite disinfo agent or troll
it doesnt take too much research to notice that the internet was developing without government intervention
was an idea by a civilian
was an idea shared by more than that one man that the state hijacked the idea from
was a system that was developing naturally from the ability to use electricity

next thing you will tell us how if any time soneone makes a decision and appoints people to do certain tasks, they must thank government

people cant do anything without government!
its great that this magical entity that is smarter than people is helping humanity!

>>2783227
The Gemini Program was started and completed in 4 years. And they were starting from scratch

>>2783000
>>2783000

>>2783015
>>2783015
do you have any idea of the inefficiencies of bureaucracy?

>>2783233
>The Space Review estimated in 2010 the cost of Gemini from 1962 to 1967 as $1.3 billion in 1967 inflation-adjusted dollars, or $7.3 billion in 2010 dollars. Each manned flight cost $723 million in 2010 dollars

Google could buy almost 10 Gemini Programs

>>2783069
destroying is profitable
without the state
there is no poorfag funded police force to defend the corrupt businesses

when they have to pay for their own security, from every environmentalist soldier, the cost-profit ratio reality hits them in the face and rapes their dead body

you just dont want to admit that the state protects destruction of the environment whenever it benefits it, and puts on a pretty show for the voters so that they continue submitting

>>2783081
>>2783081
>corpoliticians
>corporatocracy
>totalitarian system

>>2783264
Yeah, if Google wanted to cease to exist... And the US government could buy a few billion of them, if wanted to print the money and similarly cease to exist.

But Google's publicly traded, so they can't, by law. They are legally required to be profitable. Similarly, in the government fantasy, there's some voting involved.