You are not logged in.
For RobertDyck re new topic and long tenure with NewMars....
It is good to see you back on the board, after an absence ...
Best wishes for success with the new topic. It seems to me it has potential for a long and robust life, because we are just in the early stages of the evolution of the space suit, from Gagarin to the latest SpaceX or Blue Origin designs.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re History reminder .... https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 75#p234975
Thanks for a very nice addition to the forum archive!
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re history reminder:
Thanks for another very nice addition to the forum archive.
May I share with you an idea I've been mulling:
It appears I did not copy the text I just composed. Instead, here is a link to an article that I was reading:
https://daily.jstor.org/the-fifteenth-a … annotated/
The idea I was considering (this is a reconstruction) is to eliminate the traditional construction of Congressional Districts based upon land.
That is how we've been allocating voting since the founding of the US, and it may well go back to England before then.
With modern electronics, we can create Digital Districts within States, and each Congressional District (of 435) would be allocated based upon voter registration by approved parties. This would (among other things, mean small parties (like (can't remember name) or ???) might have enough members within a State to win a Congressional seat.
Would this work in Canada?
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re Ford 150 to be built in Canada...
https://newmars.com/forums/viewtopic.ph … 99#p235099
Thanks for this encouraging news! The vehicles built in a single facility should cost less, and Ford share holders should benefit.
It seems to me as though this is Sensible Capitalism at work.
I would like to point out that the new plant will require IT workers in great numbers, because so much will be automated.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re new topic on War Drones...
Thanks for explaining the focus of the new topic...
My idea is not to replace current FPV drones used in Ukraine. The mini quadcopters are reconnaissance. When a drone finds a Russian soldier, it will radio that fact back to base. Then a current combat FPV drone will be sent to take him out.
Please go back to Post #1 of your new series, and edit the title to more clearly indicate the focus your new topic will pursue.
Doing this will open the door for others who might wish to cover some other aspect of the general topic "War Drones"
No doubt you are aware that the reason Ukraine has gone to fiber is the success of Russian jamming techniques.
Your idea of the reconnaissance drone "radioing" back to base assumes you are operating in a jam free environment.
Such an environment is possible if you are deploying your equipment in a third world country.
Apparently such equipment would fail if deployed in Ukraine.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re drones ...
The topic of drones in timely and important...
This post is offered to try to encourage you to think more deeply about the topic than you have done so far.
kbd512 seems to be offering some insights that might be helpful.
Your idea of bumpers around the tips of drones for indoor flight has been around for a while. I saw a demonstration of a consumer drone years ago indoors at a local maker space. It had a bumper and it needed it.
You have not yet dealt with the problem of jamming. A radio transmitter in the correct frequency bands would be a reasonable defensive measure for a first world fighting force. However, as you may have pointed out, such jammers would not be available to terrorists or hostage takers.
If you are planning to conduct urban warfare against the Russians or Chinese, you might want to find a solution that does not depend upon radio. In any case, you have opened a topic that has a lot of potential.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re geography around Lake Ontario...
Thanks for the clarification ... I had forgotten that Lake Ontario runs almost East-West. In fact, the line along the border between US and Canada is exactly East-West for a considerable distance bisecting the Lake.
I'll have to ask Kal the next time we "meet".
Perhaps the correct location is ** East ** of Toronto, but I'll ask.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re images of Large Ship ...
Thanks for news of your adventure with AI artwork. A presenter at NSS North Houston gave a presentation on an entire series of AI generated Mars Habitat images she commissioned. That was a months long project, and I'm sure there must have been plenty of failures, but the presentation showed some pretty amazing artwork, selected to include the features she asked for.
Your experience may be similar.
It will be interesting to see the images you select to show us, from the many that miss the mark.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re posts in Politics ...
Thank you for your reports on Canadian politics, and your observations about American.
As I watch the turmoil that occurs when humans try to live on the same planet, I find it difficult to imagine that humans will do any better on another planet.
You are probably aware of the film series being broadcast in the US in recent days. It is an attempt to cover the American Revolution, and while I've not been able to see all of it, I ** did ** catch several sequences about parts of American history that I've not seen before, or might have read about but the video makes words come alive.
One detail that I learned was the massive investment Britain made in evacuating it's own citizens, loyalists and thousands of slaves from a number of major cities along the eastern coast of what became the US. That was a profoundly honorable thing to do.
I note, however, that King George was forced to accept the terms of settlement by a change of Parliament. In fact, I believe there were ** two ** changes of government before the dust settled.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re ? mission statement ? for this forum....
You are (by far) the longest serving member of the Admin team ...
You've made a significant number of contributions over the years.
It occurred to me today to ask what the "mission" of the forum might have been in the past, or even if there ever was one.
I'd like to bring this video to your attention:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kP50QEzV64k
This is part of the collection of items for the Engineering Design competition for 2025.
The opening presentation in the hour+ long video is by a JPL scientist.
What I'd like to bring to your attention is the students where were present in the Zoom call.
It seems to me that those are the folks who are going to be working on Mars, or working on Mars related projects, and who would benefit by joining a forum like this one, not to impress each other with how smart they are, but instead to help each other to make academic progress and then career progress.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re new topic about Money
It is good to see you back on the board with another interesting and thought provoking topic.
What you proposed is NOT going to happen, because no one other than a very small number of select persons would want to try such an antiquated idea.
However, you revealed the answer in your opening post, and the United States already implements the answer for part of the population.
The answer is the consumer price index.... in other words, ** all ** matter and all ** fabrications ** of matter take part in the definition of monetary value.
The reason your idea will never by implemented is the arbitrary selection of one element when all elements need to be included in the collection of value, and all fabrications of elements into structures of various kinds need to be included.
Your careful and thoughtful elucidation of the history of money helps the rest of us to see why one element will never be chosen as the single standard for definition of monetary value.
The answer is right there in your essay ... The US uses the consumer price index to determine the value of money for pensioners. That idea can and should be extended to ** all ** monetary transactions, and we now have the computing tools to achieve that.
Please harness your energy to working out how an instantaneous cost-of-living adjustment would be applied to every transaction.
This would allow us as a collection of people to go back even further than gold. It would allow us to go back all the way to barter, but it would allow us to dispense with the time wasting process of trying to get value out of flint arrow heads we exchanged for beaver pelts.
This new topic of yours has the potential to become a "gold standard" for the new monetary system to be implemented on Mars. There will never be a shortage of matter as long as the Universe remains, and there will be no need for hoarding of a physical substance, unless there is a non-monetary reason to do so, such as accumulating regolith to make bricks, as Calliban has proposed.
In short ... You have a promising new topic ... please see what you can do with it!
Update: After re-reading this post, I remembered that energy is ** also ** a measure of wealth! An individual human who possesses a store of energy has more wealth (something to trade) than a person without. The same goes for knowledge, and a related asset... skill won through education and practice.
Your digital instantaneous cost-of-living adjustment needs to take the entire set of value in the Universe (of concern to the population you are serving) into account.
You could write a book about this, and you could start with chapter nugget-sized posts right here in this forum.
The opening post could easily serve as the opening page of your book.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck re new topic on money
The post you added to the new topic today, about discovery of a huge nugget of gold and how it was handled, provides you an opportunity to help all of us to better understand the difference between the global (UK dominated) economy of 1869, and the economy of today.
I am trying to avoid putting a spin on my ideas here.
If that same nugget were found by an American today, we would (presumably) see something similar happen.
The gold would be accepted by a bank, which would deal with the central bank if necessary, but the outcome would be a credit to the account of the discoverers, based upon the then current value of gold on the open market. At the end of the year, tax assessors would expect to receive a portion of the credit.
1) National government
2) State government
3) Local government
Now, let us assume the finders invest the remaining credit in an investment fund that includes every stock.
The value of the account would increase (fluctuate but generally increase) with the stock market
Meanwhile, inflation would decrease the value of the account.
It would be possible to compute the values of this scenario if we set the discovery date in the past, such as the year 2000.
I expect the net (real) value of the account would increase over the five years.
*** We should be able to do the same thing for the 1869 discovery.
The gold was exchanged for paper money. The tax assessors would have asked for a portion. It would be interesting to know which entities took what amounts. Then we should be able to determine what the value of the account would have been if the funds were invested in the index of all available stocks of the time, and likewise, the pace of inflation should be a matter of historical record.
My guess is that the value of the modern account would grow more rapidly despite the headwinds, because technology has advanced, and available supplies of energy have increased dramatically since 1869.
A reasonable comparison would be how many ounces of gold the two accounts could buy after five years?
I don't know how the numbers would turn out, but I would most ** definitely ** be interested in seeing a report.
In other words, using gold itself as the measure of performance of the respective economies, how would the 1869 vs 2000 comparison play out?
I'm betting on the 2000 scenario, but actually have no idea.
You have reported NO interactions with modern AI systems, but you may have been deeply involved in learning how to interact with them as I have. It should be possible to establish a "project" with one of the systems (or more than one if you have the time and energy), and lead the system(s) to generate the data I've requested, plus whatever you think is needed in addition.
Records from 1869 may be difficult to find, and especially for Australia, but those for 2000 should be readily available.
Other comparisons are possible...
For example, how many loaves of bread could each fund have purchased after five years?
How many tons of coal could each fund have purchased after five years?
How many tons of refined iron (to some defined purity)?
How many tons of any metal you might want to investigate?
How many tons of wood of various kinds?
How many tons of various foods that existed in both eras?
All the commodity comparisons need to be adjusted so we have apples-to-apples comparisons. That may be difficult. 1869 was long ago.
It seems to me there is a lot of potential for interesting results to study.
Your thesis appears to be that using a single element of the periodic table as a marker for money is a good idea.
My thesis is that using the entire basket of elements, compounds, alloys and everything else humans value is a better procedure.
If you have the time and energy, it seems to me you have an opportunity to collect and present insights that are not readily available to the NewMars audience.
At the same time, there are entire books written about money, and great numbers of human beings who have devoted their lives to academic study of money and monetary systems. You have the opportunity to distill some of the wealth of knowledge accumulated since Adam Smith, and to offer it to NewMars readers.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck about Money on Mars...
Gold will be essentially valueless on Mars.
On the other hand, Oxygen, Nitrogen and the compound water will be essential and highly valued.
In addition, carbon and hydrogen would appear to be high on the essentials list.
After them would come the essential trace elements such a phosphorus needed to make DNA.
***
There is another aspect to life on Mars...
Every human there will have to earn the daily intake of these essential elements and compounds, along with a constant supply of energy.
Gold is totally useless in that context. It might be useful for ornament if a person is wealthy enough to be able to splurge to show off a bit.
I think most people will find display of gold to be in poor taste.
On the ** other ** hand, perhaps gold could be used as a medium of inter-planetary exchange.
So there might be a future for someone who hoards gold on Mars.
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here
For RobertDyck ... thanks for the news of your latest adventure in support of the Canadian Postal Service, and for details on the Metroliner!
Best wishes for success with the service. I hope all the parts are present and findable!
(th)
Offline
Like button can go here