Silent Emptiness

I'm not convinced we'll only want to rent self-driving taxis.  There are benefits to having a car with personal space: leaving things in your car such as a sweater for when a restaurant puts the AC too high, or storing packages purchased in different stores while out shopping, or simply having confidence that if you accidentally leave something in the car it'll still be there when you go back.  But there's a possible compromise.  Design for separable carriage and passenger/cargo pods.  Your personal pop sits along the street or in a garage.  You order a shared carriage, then sit in your pod to relax and listen to tunes, or start working.  In a few minutes a generic taxi-carriage comes along, slides under the pod to pick it up, and drives off with you.  There would be security features so no one else can order a carriage to pick up your pod from the street (i.e. steal it).   You could order a carriage with better range for long trips - more flexibi...

While trying to find a reliable way to insure secure and unique identification for purposes of tracking Newk (New Coin) creation and obligations, I realized that one approach might derive from the thought that no one can be in two places at the same time. While not convenient for anyone who has a regular job, the system might, at scheduled times, have everyone in a region (who wishes to obtain Newks) take a walk to meet random other persons who are also creating coins.  The two would exchange randomly generated half-keys transmitted when they say they have met, to verify that they are in fact physically in each others' presence.  Those half-keys, plus the other half-key transmitted directly to each individual, would be logged as newly created Newks. To get a full allotment of Newks, each person would have to meet at least that number of other people.  If an appointment is missed, the system would generate another meeting place and person - if necessary giving out a fe...

Achieving Minimum Guaranteed Income with a Cryptocurrency Suppose we were to create a new cryptocurrency in which EVERYONE who participates, gets free coins on a regular basis.   1 a day to start, eventually perhaps 10 a day. Call it NewCoin (TM) - "Newk" for short.   (FreeCoin is sort of taken, or it could have been "Freeks") Declare a starting value of $1 for simplicity.  Or 1 euro.  It will float with market forces, but should not change as rapidly or as much as Bitcoin (TM) has.  It isn't intended to be a speculative instrument, nor a long term store of value.  With NewCoin, there's no need for government involvement to establish a guaranteed minimum income.   The prospect of regular free money for anyone signing up should make this currency very popular, taking off with consumers FAR faster than Bitcoin has.   [Yes, I know, somehow we'd need to make sure no one is able to sign up multiple times....

[One of my older speculations - feasibility unknown, slightly updated for posting] Mars' atmosphere is severely lacking, from a human perspective.  Near vacuum pressure, mostly poisonous carbon dioxide and nearly lacking in free oxygen, unable to provide any decent radiation shielding.  Yet it's sufficient to support world-encompassing dust storms that can last long enough to be a major problem for any human colonists trying to use solar as an energy source.  If the atmospheric pressure could be increased and free oxygen added, humans might be able to go 'outside' on Mars with just warm clothing and a sort of artificial 'gill' to extract and concentrate the oxygen. It seems reasonable to suspect that if Mars were given a denser and somewhat warmer atmosphere,  Mars soil might release frozen carbon dioxide and water to make the atmosphere even denser. Synthetic biology has been making great strides over the past decade, closing in on the ability to create s...

Bitcoin has some features that might be considered 'bugs'.  I'll propose here a couple of changes that might be improvements. Bitcoin is currently deflationary - the number of coins increases at a declining pace, while the number of users has been increasing rapidly.  This has the benefit of making it very profitable to create bitcoins and hold bitcoins as an investment since they increase in value - encouraging people to mine them and merchants to accept them, though it also somewhat discourages spending them. But even if Bitcoin becomes the sole currency for every person in the world, usage will eventually plateau and the currency will mostly cease to deflate.   With the end of deflation, more people will spend their coins instead of saving them, so that more coins will chase goods and services, which will begin driving down the value of a bitcoin.   Seeing inflation coming, the "smart money" types will dump their bitcoins as soon as they think Bitcoi...

Any advocate of "wind power" should go through the “Electrical Energy, Science & You” presentation by John Droz, which very capably dissects the problems of wind power . However, many of the conclusions derive from lack of a way to store wind energy, and I’m not yet convinced that is a dead end. Regardless of the validity of the CO2 global warming hypothesis, we’re now politically on a path to CO2 reduction, so it makes sense to do it as economically as possible. Since there is also a lot of pressure to use wind power, we should also see if we can overcome as many as possible of the (quite reasonable) objections in the presentation, finding a way to make wind technology affordable and efficient enough to be picked up even in developing nations that are rapidly expanding their electricity production. Rather than generating electricity and distributing it, wind power could be used locally to generate storable, transportable, useful products. While production would va...

It should be possible to improve upon Robert Zubrin's " Mars Direct " plan: Zubrin's plan is good, but we could make the mission much safer. There are two main potential failure points in Mars Direct that are risky for humans: Will the crew vehicle be able to aerobrake into orbit and land; and will the ERV be able to lift successfully from Mars? Reduce both risks by simply not landing humans in the first few missions. Instead, land robots to be tele-operated from a Mars orbital station. Eliminating the mass of the lander and aerobraking shield allows the ship to arrive with enough fuel to get into Mars orbit using the 3rd stage rocket. Even better, use two rockets, providing backup, and to act as each other's counter-balance when rotating for artificial gravity - no need to discard the 3rd stage rockets. Instead, the crew can return to Earth on the same ship(s) in which they arrived. They just need fuel for the return trip - and Zubrin's approach can be us...

Perhaps we should have "science insurance", instead of the "Precautionary Principle". "You want to do a nuclear fission chain reaction experiment - but you don't think it will *really* destroy the world? OK, we set the potential damages at $1 x 10^16, and an independent panel of experts reviewing your research sets the probability that you are incorrect at around 1 x 10^-8 - so pay $100 million up front." "No refunds if you're correct - the money will be spent on amelioration (e.g. efforts to get humanity off the planet)." "Your biological experiment would only cause $1 x 10^12 in damages? We agree with your projection of 99.9999% certainty it won't. So pay $1 million and go ahead." "What's that? You say you can add some controls that will reduce the chance from 1 in a million to 1 in a hundred million? OK, if you can do that, the cost drops to $20,000. Why not $10,000? You should have come up with better sa...

RepRap just doesn't hit any sweet spot with their current design. Too limited and crude to create much of interest for developed nations, other than RepRap hobbyists. Too high-tech and limited (and I am guessing unreliable, if one tried using it for regular production) to be of interest in less developed nations. In order for it to take off, it must offer easily accessible high value, to excite potential users who don't "get" that it's "just so darn cool!" AND be able to produce most of its own parts. A computer controlled wood milling machine, with a 3D scanner to capture designs from hand carved wood parts, would at least have had a real market. Wood-working hobbyists in developed nations would pick it up fairly quickly. Craftsmen in less developed nations could use it to turn out copies of hand-carved furniture parts, decorations, bowls, etc. Where RepRap needs steel structural members, a wood milling system could turn out thick structural par...

Michio Kaku interviewed on Fox News about Molecular Manufacturing I wonder if Kaku understands what he's saying when he says "second industrial revolution". If you count everything since the printing press, molecular manufacturing is likely NOT going to be THAT revolutionary. We've had about 4 industrial revolutions, each one re-shuffling society: Peasants; nobility ***Printing Press, ocean-going ships** Peasants/slaves; craftsmen/merchants; nobility & colonial exploiters ***Steam power & steel** Farmers & servants; factory & store workers; Capitalists ***electricity and Internal Combustion Engines** Factory & store workers; office workers; Management & owners ***Electronic automation/computers/internet** Store workers and govt dole recipients; government and management and specialists; Entrepreneurs & owners NEXT : ***Molecular manufacturing** hierarchy workers and govt dole recipients; entrepreneurs & specialists; owners & retire...

Charles Ponzi - after whom "Ponzi scheme" was named - convinced people to invest in postage stamps. This plan was widely criticized, because it promised profits, when in fact all it did was pay off early investors with a fraction of the money put into the scheme by newer investors. These days, anyone who isn't self-deceived recognizes that this is the entire basis for Social Security, and increasingly all government spending. The entire idea behind the national debt is that someone will pay it off later - someone who must be a lot smarter than we are today, or perhaps a lot harder working, or perhaps just really stupid to pay off such a huge debt without having ever gotten any benefits and having no realistic chance of ever getting such benefits themself. So ultimately, as no one seems willing to admit, the debt will be retired in one of two ways - repudiation, or inflation. Probably a combination - inflation to reduce the value, then some complex "currency re-valuat...

Wolfram Research is planning to introduce a web tool/service that is apparently supposed to be "google with math" - searching for information and calculating answers to quantitative questions such as "How much did it rain in Boston last year?". I'm a bit skeptical that it'll be able to do much more than point to numerical sources. E.g. how would it handle a query like "Based on US federal government budgets, how much was spent on wages in 2005?" Could it really pull together all the sources needed to asnwer such a question? Even if Wolfram Alpha works, I'm not enthusiastic about the creation of a "mathematical oracle" that people just have to trust knows what it's doing. Oh, I'm sure it'll provide references to where it got its data, and perhaps even allow you to peek at the equations it applied, if it does more than extract data it finds. It'd be much more useful to define "web-math" - i.e. the HTML eq...

Laser launch technology could replace conventional chemical rockets with a more efficient, higher specific impulse (ISP) form of rocketry. The basic idea is to shine a powerful laser - or a bunch of less powerful lasers - onto a rocket to deliver energy to heat reaction mass to a high enough temperature to make it expand rapidly and drive the rocket in reaction as it is expelled. Jordin Kare has suggested a form of rocket that is quite simple - a heat exchanger and a big tank of liquid hydrogen. The problem is that this technology requires a substantial amount of investment in fundamental technologies - improved lasers, the heat exchanger, development of tracking systems, etc. And even once it's working, it requires a very substantial investment in infrastructure before you could make a rocket that could fly into orbit - fields of lasers being the biggest investment. It seems to me that laser launch could be dramatically accelerated, by finding short term goals worth investing i...

What would it take to make a good (or even great) Blade Runner sequel? The original became a cult hit mainly because (a) it had an interesting, well textured setting (b) it projected a very clear style or mood that fit well with (c) an interesting moral question about what makes one "human" that is ultimately left up to the viewer, (d) while including enough action directly related to the question to keep it interesting on first viewing. I think a good sequel would need to (a) replicate and build on the setting (b) choose a DIFFERENT question, or perhaps deeper examination of the original moral question to examine; and (c) fit the style/mood to that examination - and of course (d) driving it all with some cool action scenes. Forget the off-world colonies - it's far more interesting to look at how alien Earth would have become, to our eyes. The original looked at an organic mix of decaying remnants of today's cities threaded and overshadowed by ultra-tech future stuff,...

To the moon, naked and screaming... Let's extend the idea of "naked and screaming" to a mission direct from Earth to the moon. If all we cared about was getting a couple of people to the moon, alive, and we wanted to do it as cheaply as possible, we'd have a one-way rocket. It'd have no pressurized capsule. The astronauts would have space suits and a frame to strap into on top of a stack of rockets and fuel and some electronics. Their vehicle would have a single, reliable engine and plenty of fuel tanks that can be ejected once empty. Since they don't want to land with a heavier engine than they really need, it's not a particularly large rocket. That may mean they take a bit longer getting to the moon - circling the earth an extra time or so for the most efficient engine burns. Same for the moon - an extra orbit or so - but they aren't going to take the time to establish a nice circular orbit either, as they aren't leaving a "return mod...

I've got a term for how we can get the costs of human space launches down. I call it "Naked and Screaming". It's based on the idea that the cheapest possible way to get someone into space, would be to simply strap them onto the nose of a rocket, and launch them "naked and screaming" to low earth orbit. Start from that perspective, then work your way backwards to the minimum cost method of getting someone safely and reliably to LEO. If we assume an 80kg astronaut, at perhaps $10000/kg to LEO - the "naked and screaming" price might be $800,000. Not exactly the price of a vacation plane ticket - but perhaps affordable for a corporation that needed a human operating in space. But obviously we can't *really* send them up naked. No one could hear them scream out there, anyhow... And perhaps we'd like to somehow be able to send them somewhere useful? That's where most manned space programs start to go wrong, I think. They start thi...

A replacement for the "strike" is needed. It's a crude and destructive tactic, for all sides: workers lose wages, employers lose sales and profits and market share to competitors, customers are inconvenienced, suppliers may go broke, governments lose tax revenues, etc. The long term harm a strike causes both sides creates anger that gets in the way of negotiating and considering the other side's point of view. An alternative would be to keep the factories or services rolling - but workers would not be paid, and 100% of income from sales of products and services would go into an escrow account, out of the control of both sides, and neither side could borrow against its value. It's easily "tweaked" to balance the incentives on both sides and encourage fast resolution. Perhaps after two weeks, all profits must be donated to charity, along with 10% of escrowed wages. Both sides might be required to put up a "good faith" bond, that they'd sacrif...

What I'm posting to Obama's new Change.gov site : Create a NEW PATH INTO SPACE, challenging NASA to begin delivering robots, equipment and materials to the moon by the beginning of 2011, using the ARES I rocket. The robots *must* be controlled by human operators on Earth, creating tremenduous flexibility. The ultimate goal will be extraction and use of lunar resources to reduce the amount of material that must be launched from Earth in the future, slashing the cost of access to space. Establish a "STEPPING STONE TO SPACE" program, in which any group - academic, commerical, or even private volunteers - will be able to purchase or obtain a grant of time using the lunar robots and equipment, or space on a robotic delivery to the moon. Announcing this early should get a lot of people excited, including small for-profit companies, if NASA establishes a series of prizes and contracts aimed at encouraging development of useful lunar capabilities. Finally, begin AIMING...

Proposed Presidential Vision and Five Point Plan for re-directing NASA to more sensible, efficient and far-sighted human-in-space operations : 1) Challenge NASA with a new PLAN FOR SPACE - to begin delivering robots, supplies and equipment to the moon within TWO YEARS. The robots should be simple but dextrous, durable and repairable - in order to carry out a mission of long-term exploration, research and development focused on establishing industrial production capabilities on the moon. Since the moon is relatively close, the robots will be directly (though remotely) controlled by human operators on Earth. Controlling the robots will be tedious and slow, due to radio communication delays between Earth and the moon. But one remote controlled robot, operated in 24-7 shifts, should be able to accomplish at least as much per day as one space-suited human, and keep at it for years (with repairs), at roughly 1/100th the cost of a "manned" program and with no peril to human lif...

My pet space project - take advantage of the moon being only light-seconds away and always facing Earth. Immediately start launching robots to set up an industrial base there. They could be quite simple robots initially. No need to build in *any* AI - they can be remotely controlled by human operators on Earth. We could download AI software as we develop it later, to reduce the inconvenience of the light-speed delay. Of course they won't be as capable as humans on site. Though humans would be encumbered by space suits. And they'd be limited to a few hours work outside each day. And of course, each human would require many (many) tons of life-support equipment as well as a reliable ride home in case things go wrong. While each remote controlled robot would probably be 10x slower than a human on site, they can work 24 hours (with multiple shifts of operators on Earth), so they'll get about the same amount done per day, for perhaps 1/100th the cost. If we started from ...