This is a repost of a slightly crazy but thought provoking thread i made on ats before they kicked me off, lmao.
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Threads of Gold: Opinion -- Which Holds Greater Potential, Space Mining or Breakthroughs in Plasma Production Methods?
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ATS Members have flagged this thread 2 times Topic started on 4-10-2012 @ 01:13 AM by KhufuKeplerTriangle
There aren't as many common threads as you'd think holding cultures together -- through the series of natural disasters humans call "history". In fact, iirc the science fiction writer Frank Herbert once said, "Progress is an idea that humans cling to in order to distract themselves from the horror of natural disaster." He also had an awful lot to say about "He who controls the Spice". But that's another topic.
Back to common threads: Religions come and go, genepools fill and fail, entire countries occasionally sink beneath the waves, and cities burn in volcanic Hells or are buried by laharas. But some things stay the same. Just because life changes for humans doesn't mean things change for physics. What's possible tomorrow is possible today, and was possible yesterday, and in existence always. But we don't quite see that far, with our little human eyes.
For thousands of years, perhaps for more than that, scientists, mystics, sorcerors, and kings have been searching for the secrets of long life, great strength, good weather, favor with the gods, resistance to disease and illness, and abundant wealth. Yes, they sometimes go Buddha and search for other things too, but in most cases it is the material need of the world's denizens that drive the material value of the world, and it is those factors that drive the cycle of life itself.
What is my point? Well, most of you have heard of alchemy. All of you have heard of mining. And very few of you have not heard that soon, the space race will envelop the industry of mining -- or vice versa -- soon, automated shuttles will be zipping in and out of earth's atmosphere, carrying precious loads of Helium 3 and rare earths, gold, silver, and platinum, rare gems, you name it. Earth will be enriched beyond our wildest dreams, in terms of material wealth, if the space race is permitted to extend into the world of capitalism.
There is a company in Bellevue, Washington, that has a vested interest in mining asteroids, moons, planets, and more. It's called Planetary Resources and it just started up. They are hiring all kinds of people, but they really needed GAC mechanics and stuff like that last time I checked. This is a very exciting thing to read, because I used to be quite interested in NASA as a child (in a limited capacity, I understood the need to reach the stars as being very fundamentally linked to human experience and survival). Too many teachers try to herd their young scientists into the medical field, or into making better lightbulbs -- something equally banal. Not to say that medicine isn't a lofty aim -- I give at least as much time to that fine subject as any other, combined. But back to space travel...
The funny thing about technology booms is that there are often so many choices hanging low enough for us humans to reach, we don't know which one to take. And maybe even we go back in time a little, cling to what was popular last decade, last century -- we pretend to be ignorant and helpless because growing up takes too much effort. Or does it take more effort to lie?
How many of you read about CERN? If you read about CERN, you're definitely not stupid -- you either know something about nuclear science or you know something about chemistry, or both. Maybe you know something about gravity or time, and that led you to start researching the LHCs and Uranverein. But ultimately, some of you who went down the CERN rabbit hole found the issue of transmutation to be a central goal, whether expressedly or not.
Well, let me tell you something. If you didn't see it on the local rack, there was a new magazine last Spring. Around February, a rag called "IDEAS AND DISCOVERIES" Magazine hit the press. It had a whole lot of different content. It was pretty much a CT variety show for people who score high on the Stanford Binet LOL. But it had one very interesting article about binary star fusion.
The article said that binary star fusion, under the eyes of scientists, had answered the question of where gold comes from. Scientists said that when two stars, two perfectly matched and balanced stars, begin to annihilate each other, or rather fuse together, this intricate and beautiful process begins to manifest single atoms of pure gold. So I would imagine these pieces congeal into nuggets, or else are flung far out into space (because this is a magnetic process after all! and gold is VERY remotely reactive!!! magic even!) to be caught by the gravity of planets and other stars.
Well, you can see that there is somewhat of a dilemma here. I guess people should be wondering, what costs more, sending people into space for rocks, or simulating space so that the people here can manufacture rocks. Either method, frankly, sounds very wasteful if it can't be maximized. And we don't have space for REAL binary star fusion on eart -- but would that work at a smaller scale, if you COULD isolate two plasmas and PRETEND that they were binary stars? Nature doesn't care as long as the transmutation is balanced.
Isaac Newton: "Nature appears to be delighted with transmutations".
To sum up this horribly rambling article, I guess I want to know what readers think about precious metals and the space race, and what they think about precious metals and the CERN hush-hush on processes for terrestrial metal production.
I.E. I heard palladium glass was possible to make in a LHC or other machine, assuming you don't mind having an isotope with a radioactive halflife and all that. In this case, palladium seems decent in spite of this because the frequency of the radiation is very low iirc. It's not like living in a microwave in other words, if you live in a radioactive palladium house, it's not keyed to kill. In fact, I've proposed a building method involving nanoplasma and palladium isotope -- the robot would look like a plasma gun on wheels or arms, and it would extrude material like a glue gun to produce skyscrapers instead of men having to use cranes and pulleys to haul up large and dangerous pieces of material, like I-Beams and girders. Those are things of the past. Modular dwellings built to your specific need are the future. Not the death traps they try to sell you in the cities. Those are the places of the dead.
I want to know what the Living People think about the world they live in.
Thoughts/comments/gripes/critiques?
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http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread887638/pg
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Please read: THE CHASE OF THE GOLDEN METEOR by Jules Verne