New Mars Forums

Your post makes no sense. 

Profitability is judged by your competition.  Fair is abiding the laws, and giving a reasonable price.  In a capitalist system, competition drives the economy.  "Fair" is being able to use your talents to make a profit, instead of being held back by a system that forces conformity and suppresses freedom of choice.

Should I not be allowed to use my talents to carve a better life for myself? 

You can do with your property what you want, within the law.  You can arbitrariliy set prices too, but that doesn't mean people will buy.  The force of competition regulates prices-look at the computer industry.  You can now get computers for $500 because online warehouse-type companies have brought the price down.

Regulations are in place to protect people.  You can't bash a law that prevents exploitation while similarly bashing the system for exploitation.

Or the OSP should be designed to reach geosynch orbit?  I heard that it's going to be designed with increased manuverability.  This orbit seems to be the best.

isp is lower than an NTR, and thrust is higher.  Your resupply ships can run better on NTRs-40% fuel mass to launch, and higher isp.  NERVA was built, Orion wasn't. 

A crack in your pusher plate, and you've got a problem.  Your pusher plate is no more of an enabler than a NTR reactor. 

I'd like to see figures on the exhaust velocity and thrust of Orion, if you could provide them.

What if we used solar panels to maintain our fusion reaction?

Development of liquid and gas core nuclear thermal rockets could greatly improve our space capabilities, outside of orbit.

Perhaps a hybrid NTR/VASMIR spacecraft would be an ideal planetary cruiser until more advanced propulsion methods were developed. 

The problem today is that we are really focusing on one option or another, instead of approaching a few different systems.  For example, a single shuttle design is not the best approach.  As others have said, scaleable vehicles should be designed for specific purposes.

Perhaps R&D will eventually lead to plasma sail/fusion/GCNR/solar planetary cruisers, if we let it.

ILS Atlas 5 with Hellas Sat 2 from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station.

I think a main problem with these systems is what I've said before-resources will constantly have to be redistributed, because the more talented/motivated/intelligent people will always find a way to get ahead, unless they are held back.

If, then, I produce more than my neighbor, shouldn't I be allowed to keep this extra?  We are to be "paid" the same (food, shelter, etc.), so would it not be unequal to produce unequal quantities/qualities and still receive the same compensation?  Would it also then not be theft to take the extra and not reward my harder/better work? 

Unless you limit my productivity, which is in itself unfair and counterproductive, would this not be an unbalanced system?  There is a concept of economic Darwinism-the smartest, most cunning, etc. get ahead.  In my view, capitalism has been in existence throughout human history-Smith was just the first to provide a detailed description just as Machiavelli and Freud commented on human nature (as they saw it).

I do see what you're saying about Marx.  I wouldn't say he was a power-monger, I would say he was stubbornly fixed to his ideas.  He wouldn't deviate from his set of ideas-at least until his elder years, when he began to be more of a capitalist, ironically.

Marx didn't see much beyond a proletariat revolution, and I don't know what you mean by him seeing it from Proudhon-Marx had envisioned this all along.

I really don't think Marx was a power-monger--he had an endless stream of money, and yet he devoted endless time to bringing down capitalism.  He and Engels could have been powerful capitalists if they had wanted to.

A "lay buyer" was my term for the average computer user (like your average soccer mom or whatever).  Marx had said that new machines (i.e. technological advance) would be sold for their "value."  This assumes the value is static, which I was addressing in my example.  The computer is more valuable to a hotshot programmer than to you or I.

dicktice: I read your comment about subsidizing the Soyuz, and I agree, but I disagree.

We shouldn't subsidize the Soyuz or Progress.  We should build our own.  The OSP should arrive at 2 vehicles-an unmanned cargo vehicle (ala Progress) that should be capsulized, and a manned taxi-no payload, varying design possilbities.  We don't need a $500 million shuttle.  But we can't rely on the Russians-they don't have the money, and they have defaulted on many contracts for the ISS.

So, we need an American Soyuz and Progress.

I'll put it in the right spot.

You could probably have "themes" that allow you to have whatever gesture, or non-gesture, setup that you wanted.  I could use my little bar, and you could use your gestures.  If it was designed by a skilled programmer, and not using lazy coding (i.e. using English instead of real code to write the program), this could be a small, small file.  Even using lazy coding, this could probably be made under 10 megabytes, which, considering we can have 10 gigabyte DVD's, and 200 gigabyte HD's (commercially, and compact-large network hard drives can be multi-terrabyte), 10 mb is less than your average memory leak.

On another note-a major reason why we need paper on Earth is because it's fast, and not everybody has access to the same information.  Data transfer can be long and tedious (now that more and more broadband is used, we see more e-commerce usage-I just did an e-commerce business plan, and I was very humbled by the 400% increase in B2B e-commerce from 1997 to 2000). 

Mars gives us a unique chance, then.  What if we had a central information server, that everybody could connect to?  You needn't put your valuable information there-in fact, it could be on a completely separate connection than your private data.  But this way, you could upload information right to your server, and somebody over at Technocorp could get their data right away.  Download it onto a DVD, put it in their Tablet, and pass it to the right employee.  Lose it, just get it from the server again.

First of all, it doesn't shoot out plasma, it leaks out plasma.  No force is required to release the plasma-it leaves because you place a "leaky" magnet at the thrust end of the drive.   

Second of all, the fusion reactor generates power, that can sustain the reaction itself.  ITER plans to have a reactor that has a net gain of 14x the input power in a sustained fusion reaction by 2014.