• 32 Posts
  • 587 Comments
Joined 1 year ago
cake
Cake day: June 8th, 2023

help-circle



  • A lot of this dives deep into wishful thinking territory. We will need to spend trillions of dollars to make a pure renewable energy solution viable. People will find out that nuclear is not magically guaranteed to be more expensive. If it wasn’t the case, why are new nuclear reactors still being built and more are being planned?

    Germany is definitely rethinking it’s anti-nuclear position. Ignore the viewpoints of the current political group in charge. They are deeply unpopular. Politicians outside of that group are advocating for a return to nuclear.

    France is keeping and building more reactors. This is not a “more complicated story.” It is simple proof that nuclear is viable.










  • In the end, the solution will be to just ban most firearms and make it nearly impossible to get one outside of specific circumstances. It’s the same way gun violence was stopped in every country, and the rhetoric against that is the same broken record for 30+ years.

    Eventually, the concept of a “right to mass-murder/terrorism” will self-destruct, no matter how deeply embedded it is in legal the system. Even the constitution will eventually self-destruct if it gets too far away from meeting the necessities of modern life, something it is well on the path to doing so. So it’s time to stop pretending there is a trick solution to the problem, and start recognizing the problem exactly as it is.



  • Hypx@kbin.socialtoWebcomics@kbin.socialSuper Bowl Jesus
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    4
    ·
    edit-2
    8 months ago

    People need to realize that the modern church is functionally a cult. It primarily exists to trick millions of people into giving them money. The church itself gets fabulously wealthy while nearly all of its followers get nothing.

    Think about it: how else are they affording Super Bowl ads? And more importantly, how is it that they think of buying ads instead of giving to the poor directly? It’s basically the same idea as Scientology, except it is old enough that we accept it as normal.















  • The cheapest materials would be what can be acquired in space without having to launch from Earth. As a result, you’re going to want to build your O’Neill cylinder out of some combination of iron, aluminum, titanium, and silicon dioxide.

    The last of which might be particularly useful, as it is the main ingredient of fiberglass while also being the most common substance on Moon and asteroids. As a result, you probably want to build your cylinder primarily out of fiberglass. You can get pretty decently sized cylinders, as fiberglass has a higher strength-to-weight ratio than steel. Apparently, 24km diameter is a viable figure. Scale up length the same way, and you’ll get 96km. So a 24km x 96km O’Neill cylinder made out of fiberglass.

    That would be about 7238 km^2 of usable surface area. Half that to 3619 km^2 to make room for windows (as originally envisioned by O’Neill), and assuming a density comparable to New York City (about 11,300 people/km^2), you’ll get around 40 million people. Or about the population of Tokyo.

    That’s seems plenty for any sensible space colonization strategy we might adopt in the future. And what’s best is that you don’t really need any fancy technology. Just use solar power to power mass drivers and deliver raw materials from the moon or asteroid via electricity. And it won’t be any special materials either. Raw regolith can be made into fiberglass, so cost can be kept surprisingly low. The only question is scaling it all up, which may unfortunately be too expensive or will take a very long time to happen. Ultimately, this is still sci-fi, albeit on the hard side of it, since no fancy new technology is require.