TTA (microstory)

TTA:
 “Welcome, everyone” The moderator started the meeting.
“Does anyone have anything new to say since the last meeting?”
“Yes, I have something to say” replied Clarence.
“Well, welcome back Clarence.” Joseph replied who was acting as moderator.
Clarence cleared his throat, “Hi I’m Clarence. And I am a Time Traveler. I had been clean for 10 years but I just fell off the wagon recently.”
“We’d been wondering why you had missed the last few meetings.” Joseph added. “So what happened?”
“I had been shopping by the Apple store to get something for my son for his birthday. Then I noticed their newest iTime device,”
Nick chimed in “That’s the one with the time waypoint navigation, very nice!” Everyone looked at Nick. He looked down at his feet and blushed.
Clarence “I looked at it and thought I’ve been good, that I deserved this little break.”
“You know you need to stay well away from anything resembling temptation, Clarence.”
“I KNOW! It was so stupid. But I tried it and it felt so AWESOME! I really loved saving people’s lives back when was an addict. I wanted to feel that again.”
“You know messing up the timeline can have unforeseen consequences, even when you save one life. Saving a life could cost millions later, don’t ever forget that. Remember when someone went back and saved the life of Ghengis Khan?”
“But it could also save millions, right? Like saving the life of someone that cures a disease?” Clarence proffered sheepishly.
“Yes, but the paths not taken are not knowable beforehand, thus we cannot take chances to have even worse outcomes happen down-the-line.”
“Sorry everyone, I just was trying to help someone in need.” Clarence shed a tear.
“Cheer up, each of us has a slip every now and again. Just forgive yourself and keep trying.” Everyone was nodding.
“Well, the problem can’t be too bad, otherwise we wouldn’t be here talking about it.” Joseph said. “So what did you do?”
“I saved a fellow named George, poor guy was about to throw himself off a bridge. So I showed him what things would be like without him, as if he had never existed. This iTime device also has a nice sim-mode which I put George into.”
“Oooohhhh” Nick let out. He immediately closed his mouth as everyone looked at him again.
“But how could the device know what would happen?” asked another.
“Well, the manual said the simulation can only make guesses at what would happen and the user can add some data, so I spun it in a way so George could see his life has worth.” Clarence explained.
“But of course his life could take a million different turns good or bad, based on his own decisions, not fate” Joseph added.
Clarence conceded the point “Yes, but hopefully he got that message too.”
“You did at least remember the ‘I’m your guardian angel’ bit, right?” Joseph inquired.
“Yes, even the thing about getting my wings. You were wise in telling me about that trick. I know the past’s knowledge of time travel could itself change the timeline.” Clarence acknowledged.
“What’s done is done. Or that’s the way it should be, Clarence. Let’s try harder next time, ok?”
Copyright 2014

Rage, Rage against the dying of the light...

An inspiring video montage of scenes of space-related cinema. 

Talking to aliens?

Here's an interesting FW:Thinking podpast on "How to Talk to Aliens" or rather how difficult it likely would be to talk to aliens.  Some interesting challenges to consider.

Raven

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP “message from mission control, message from mission control”

Mission Control: “Raven Mission, this is Mission Control, you have 20minutes to begin initial phase of Mars descent. By the time you get our next transmission, you will be on the other side.  Godspeed to you all.”….

Raven Mission:  “This is Raven Mission, landing was textbook, your kit worked flawlessly.” 

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP “message from mission control, message from mission control”

MC:  “Glad to hear that Commander Williams, how’s the weather look?  From here, overhead bird says it’s clear.  Video and  hyperspectral Feeds looks clear.  Make it count.” 

RM: “Looks clear, nominal conditions outside, we will be taking the big step in few minutes.  Uploading diagnostics to you now.” 

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP

MC: “You know, I’ve been looking forward to this day for years.  I remember when I was young;  my parents got me a model rocket for Christmas.  I’ve been playing blast off ever since.  My rockethead phase never ended.”    MC said, his voice trailing off. 

RM:  “You’re not getting all nostalgic on us now are you, MC?” 

MC:  “Sorry.  It’s just a big day for us, a triumph for all humanity.  Call me John, by the way.”   His voice now with a noticeable tremor. 

RM:  “You’re not getting nervous for us now are you, John?   By the way, you look so pale.  Maybe after we're settled in, you can go get some sun on an island somewhere” 

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP “message from mission control, message from mission control”

“Who designed that alarm?”  Commander Williams thought to herself.  “It can wake the dead.”    

MC:  “No, No, I know you all are completely prepared for the mission” he replied evincing a renewed confidence this time.  “We are getting areolocation data now.  Return vehicle Valkyrie is approximately 100km due northeast from where you are.  Well, you will have lots to sightsee until you get there”

Raven Mission disembarked and mounted the rover which then lurched in a northeasterly direction.   

“I and the crew have been wondering about something.  All responses we get back from our families are vague on what is going on back home.  Is there something wrong?”  Williams pushed send.

Commander Williams looked out at the crimson sight of a rock outcrop to her right.  This really wasn’t like home.  Everything looked stained with blood.  She shuddered.

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP “message from mission control, message from mission control”

MC: “Nothing out of the ordinary, they are all doing well.  Maybe they don’t want to add anymore stress on you.”

RM:  Yes, maybe, but ever since the downlink was damaged 3months ago, we haven’t been able to get much news.

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP…

MC:  You already know we had to limit communications to mission-related data to save bandwidth.  I’m sorry it has been so hard for you all. I wish I could be there with you.  As a kid, all I could imagine was what it was like to be on another world.  A beautiful untouched world.  But the young inherit the world, as they say.”    

The rover has been driving to Valkyrie for over an hour.  She can see it in the distance.  Raven Mission dispatched another transmission. 

“Ok, John, we are almost to Valkyrie, but it doesn’t look right.  Looks different than what was shown in the training.   The thrusters look stowed somewhere.  Weird.” 

RV:  “Mission Control, is there something you aren’t telling us?  The computer says mass balance of the vehicle is not ballistically stable”

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP…

John cleared his throat and said in a raspy whisper “It isn’t a return vehicle.  It’s materials for a greenhouse.  Your mission has been changed.  I’m sorry”  He paused, “you will never come home.”

Visibly shaken, Commander Williams replied “why didn’t you tell us?”  It was an eternity before the reply came.  

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP…   “Would you have gone?”  John sent back. “You may be getting the better deal.”  His eyes looked weary.  “3years ago, the Sentinel telescope spotted a 10km wide object on course to impact with Earth.  We sent another mission to deflect it but that mission failed.  Your only mission now is to survive”

“When is estimated impact?” Williams was almost in tears.

CHIRP CHIRP CHIRP… “3months ago.  A few of us are in bunkers around the world.  It is thought we may replant in a few years after the dust has cleared.  But that is uncertain.  Your families are here.  I'm sorry we kept you in the dark, but it was thought best not to distract from the mission."

Williams thought back to Sunday school "Luke 12:24" she transmitted.

MC chirped back "yes, God feeds the ravens, I hope that is true Commander"

Copyright 2014

"Pax Americana and the Weaponization of Space"

Here is pretty good documentary on issues relating to weaponization of space.  In some future posts, I will discuss pros and cons of militarization of space.

Antares Rocket Failure

In case anyone missed it (pretty hard to  miss), an Antares rocket launch didn't go well. 

Brethren (microstory)

“Where’s Witch?” says Werewolf. “Don’t know, I’m sure she’ll show” says the Count. "How’ve you guys been?” interjects Ghost. “I’m fine” says Mummy. “Yes, you don’t look a day over 2000” says the Count. “Right back at ya, kid” smiles Mummy. Witch then shows up. “Hey Witch” all cry out. “Hi everybody!” “I want to suck your blood!” “Please, you wish, you know green blood is your poison” “so worth it” Count winks. “You’re such a cad!” Witch smiles. “Don’t you ever learn?” “I’ve had many years to learn.” His eyes sparkled.
“Can we get down to business?” Scarecrow says dourly.
“But we’re waiting for our gracious host” Ghost adds.
“Sorry I’m late” walks in Father Jones. “traffic.”
“Thank you all for coming, to get the proceedings underway, I hereby open the 9547th annual general assembly of the League of Stars. Are there any new issues to discuss this year? To start, as custom, I’ll cede the floor to our senior ambassador to bring opening remarks”
Mummy stands and starts “Thank you my galactic brothers and sisters. Ever since the end of the Great Star War 10,000 years ago, we have strived to keep dialog among our species in order to maintain peace and brotherhood in this sector of the galaxy. We must remain ever diligent in that mission. Now about an issue, my nation is still waiting for compensation in the Lupus incident.”
“That was over 8000 years ago!” roared Werewolf.
“Might as well be yesterday. Blowing up a star could be seen by some as an act of war” Mummy glared.
“You didn’t even have a valid claim to that system anyways. We were testing our zero-point propulsion technology at the time. Obviously there were a few ‘setbacks.’”
“You could say that” Count whispered over to Witch. Werewolf made a ‘polite’ gesture back at Count who laughed to himself. He and Werewolf didn’t have the best working relationship.
“Ok, that issue has already been raised and the suit is being arbitrated by the Interstellar Court. We’ll let them settle that” Witch added. “Anything else?”
“I’ve heard rumors that the snowmen are rebuilding their thermal inversion weapons? Has there been any intelligence to verify that?” Ghost inquired.
This time Werewolf replied “We have seen some irregular temperature readings on some of our systems. If they have rebuilt, it will be threat to peace. Before we turned the tide in the War, they had turned a couple thousand worlds into big ice-balls.”
“Yes, the last Ice Age did slow down progress somewhat” Father Jones replied wryly.
“Where is the representative from the snowmen, anyways?” Scarecrow added.
“I’m here, I’m here” says a voice as he was coming through the door. “Whew, it’s getting cold out there.”
“Haha, very funny” Witch says “we’ve heard that joke before”, “We were just talking about you.”
“All good I hope” the snowman said.
“Some of us are concerned that your nation is rebuilding its arsenal of thermal inversion weapons.”
“What!? Us, we are harmless, why would we want to start another war with our galactic brethren? And after so long with relative peace”
“Indeed” snarled Werewolf.
“I can assure you, we are not doing any such thing.”
Father Jones then breaks the tension by admonishing “Oh, it’s time to go and enjoy the parade, let’s adjourn and then we’ll come back to discuss this further.”
All of the ambassadors filed out into the street to join the other revelers.
Witch feels a snowflake alight onto her nose. “Burrr, it’s freezing out here, and so early” “Here borrow my cloak” the Count replies. “You are a persistent one” Witch opines. “You don’t live a thousand years by slacking off” he smirked.

Copyright 2014

Another Space Jump

Another world-record space jump.

Empathy Gap and Strategy

There are many instances in the history of warfare of a seemingly inferior opponent beating a provably superior opponent who had superior numbers or superior technology.  Yet somehow, the inferior opponent came out on top due to a several reasons.   Among some reasons are more resolve or will to win, willingness to sacrifice, patience to wait out the other guy, etc.  One aspect somewhat covered in papers on strategy and psychology/sociology is termed the “empathy gap.”

From Wikipedia page on the subject:  “Further conclusion can be made about empathy gap and power: the weaker party often doesn’t realize that being in a weaker party can actually give them more power to strategically think and make decision, leading to better outcomes. The weaker party has no idea what they are capable of doing. They convince themselves that being more powerful is often more advantageous. Whereas the powerful party lacks strategy and leads to a poor outcome.^"

So translation, the one with superior forces often has the luxury of using brute force methods to get the win whereas the weaker party almost always has to think strategically in order just  to survive.  Being forced to think strategically often then translates into eventual victory for the seemingly inferior force.   

Red (microstory)

Red

Daisy hunched over her marbles to ponder each whirring on the floor. This was her favorite activity. She would spin them over and over in circles on her little race track. Watching them zoom around was so mesmerizing. Such striking colors. Sitting behind her was Amos, an Elder, “I remember when I was your age, I had a dozen marbles. What endless fun! But at my initiation, I had to give all that up and become an adult. Daisy looked annoyed upon hearing the last words. She hadn’t been looking forward to the initiation. But it was her people’s way and that was that or that was what she had been taught ever since the dawn of her memory. Amos was an amiable old codger. His countenance was all whitened with advanced age and he had shrunk considerably from his glory days, about which of course he would always reminisce. “You have been a child long enough” Amos continued, “Everybody has to go through the ceremony, it is the most important transition in life.” She could feel her face getting hotter. She did not want to grow up, she was quite fine continuing as a bright and shiny child. Why would she want to be some dim old adult? All they did was sit and talk to each other all day. To her youthful ears, their subjects of conversation seemed sooooo boring! They gossiped about everybodys' goings-on in the town. She knew her ceremony was to be later that day. Already some of her friends had already gone through the rites. She thought to herself “we’ll see” and got up and started walking through the neighborhood along the spiral path which wended itself around the whole town. As she whimsically drifted along the path, she overheard 2 adults prattling on.
“Did you hear about Dave, the one that lives downtown? He was quite overweight and he ate like a giant.”
The other one replied “Yeah, I had heard from Steve about it but didn’t get the full story. What happened?”
“Well, he just collapsed. Such sad news. It sent a shockwave through the whole community.”
“That is sad news.”
“Do you know if he became a Shadow?”
“You know that is nonsense, there are no such things as Shadows”
“Shadows DO exist, I felt the presence of one once when I was a kid. Gave me the creeps.”
“Yes, but you didn’t SEE it, so how do you know they exist. You can’t just go on feelings, you need evidence.”
These 2 continued on with their argument while Daisy continued. She had heard of these Shadows. Some Elders, such as Amos, would always scare the neighborhood kids with tales of Shadows who could not be seen but would eat children if they got too close. They would chide the children not to be greedy since greed in one’s heart turns one into a Shadow in the afterlife. She wasn’t quite convinced, but thought there had to be something to it.
Soon, she heard behind her “It’s time.” She knew it was the priestess Helene waiting to perform her initiation rites. She wimpered “But I don’t want to!” “But child, you can’t wait forever. You have to grow up sometime.” Daisy knew deep down the truth, even if she wanted, she couldn’t forestall the inevitable. “Ok” she whispered, a tear rolling down her face. The priestess asked Daisy for her sacrifice. Daisy reluctantly held forth her beloved marbles. The priestess put them in an urn and gave Daisy a sip of a red liquid. She felt a tingle in her gut. “Now destroy them!” bellowed the priestess. Daisy turned a bright fiery red and felt her body expand manifold until the heat of her body completely vaporized all of her marbles. Her mind roiled. Helene asked her “How do you feel now that you are a Red Giant?”

Copyright 2014

Dissent Channel (microstory)

copyright 2014
Dissent Channel

“Utopia they said. Yeah right.” thought Jack as he viewed the latest work requests. “You know the story, we have revolutionary technology here that will change things ‘for the better’ blah blah blah, shit hits the fan, the law of unintended consequences, and now we live in this ‘utopia’” Jack further thought. Dave sent him a message, “you better keep your thoughts to yourself, man, the QUEEN will hear your thoughts.”
Jack replied, “yep that's the problem with utopias, no one can think for themselves.” “damn it Jack!” Dave yelped. “ok, ok, I’ll just be a good little drone and do my sums.” He sat and closed his eyes and let the implant download billions of bits of data to be processed by his sub-conscious mind and then uploaded back to the Quantum Unitary Electronic Expert Network. Ever since that prick Dr. Whats-his-name from HiveMind, Inc. figured out high bandwidth brain-machine interface, things have gone to shit. Yes, the economy went gangbusters and technology development all around multiplied by a hundreds of times. But still. It’s just that when everyone can be a rocket scientist or quantum physicist or surgeon overnight, it makes everyone unique in a ‘unique like a snowflake’ sort of way. Jack opened his eyes and thought “and we can’t have deviant thoughts infecting everybody now can we? can’t even think my own thoughts, utopia indeed.” “What the hell, Jack?” “Sorry, I was just thinking softly”
“You know what happens to strays right?” Dave inquired.
“Yeah, they get excommed. A particularly painful experience from what I hear” Jack replied.
“Yeah, that’s because the brain grows dependent on QUEEN and has a hard time adjusting.” Dave said.
Agent Melissa Johnson, a Thought-Contagion Control agent buzzed at their office door. “I have come to ask Jack Samson some questions regarding recent irregularities in a few recent uploads.”
Jack looked up with worry in his eyes.
“Can you explain these recent data irregularities?”
“No, I have just been doing my work as requested. I haven’t noticed anything out of the ordinary”
Dave blurted out “He has been having deviant thoughts lately.” “Shut up Dave!” Jack shouted out loud.
She looked at Dave, then back at Jack. Jack stood up and started to run but Agent Johnson blinked once and Jack just fell to the floor. “Not looking good, Mr. Samson.” She pulled him off the floor and took him away.
Jack awoke to find himself by a machine. Agent Johnson explained that he was guilty of thought deviance and for that he was to be excommunicated from QUEEN. Jack then heard something in his mind “Sorry Jack, it was for a worthy cause. They can’t hear us on this channel. Soon we will all be like you.” Dave whispered in his mind. “You made me a honeypot and a virus, clever boy, Dave, clever boy” Jack whispered back. The machine engaged the implant, synced up for afew seconds and removed it from Jack’s skull and then Jack was turned over to the half-way house manager. Agent Johnson returned to her office and linked up with QUEEN to get her next assignment.
A thought flashed across her mind “Agents of TCC: order number BEE23984: excomm 10,000,000,000 entities from QUEEN”
“Well, we can’t disappoint the QUEEN” she thought to herself.

What if the Moon were a giant computer?

I got to thinking the other day of the question of planet-sized computers and naturally to how much computing power would the moon have it were a computer?
First, what would the benefits be of having a moon-computer?  First, it would act as a backup of all of human knowledge in case the Earth gets wiped out for whatever reason such as an asteroid strike.  Obviously it would also act as relay points for the Interplanetary Internet.   Making other moons in the solar system computers for internet storage (and additional human knowledge backups) would also decrease latency for non-synchonous internet activities.  If I'm on Mars, I don't want to wait a half hour for my funny internet cat videos to download!  :)
Nerd_on/
Now some totally SWAG Rough Order Calculations: 
The mass of the moon is 7.34X10^22 kg and assuming a chip can execute at 3Ghz with nominal area and volume of a chip and support pad as 400mm^2 x 2mm= Volume 800mm^3 per chip.  Also further assuming that 96% of the moon mass would be support structure including memory supporting 4% mass that is turned into computer chips, the number of 3GHz chips would be on order of 1.43X10^24 chips (assuming a mass density of 2.57gram/cc).   If this were made to be perfectly but massively parallel system, it would result in a 4.28x10^24 GHz performance which roughly equates to 1.71x10^16 ExaFLOPs.  It has been said that to simulate a human brain it would take about 37PetaFLOPs of computational power, though how a brain works is totally different so comparing the 2 is rather moot.  Comparing the 2 numbers, one can simulate 4.66x10^17 human brains if the entire moon were a giant computer. 
 Nerd_off/
That is a LOT of computer power. That is assuming one can get enough power into the giant moon computer (I'll leave that for another post). But assuming one can get enough power via solar or nuclear (He-3!) for even a fraction of that computing power, the applications are unimaginable such as a rather good simulation of reality...  :)

Interstellar Trade

I came across interesting paper done by the well-known Nobel laureate economist Paul Krugman in his early career.  The paper explores implications of interstellar trade.  It comes to the conclusion that interest rates would reach parity (on 2 planets in same inertial frame) even with relativistic effects and distances involved.  Several assumptions are made to simplify the problem.  What is not addressed may be the differential characteristics of the counter-parties in the trade.  In conducting trade with an alien civilization some challenges would need to be overcome regarding these characteristics even setting aside problems of communications. 

First, the fundamental moral or ethical values of the counter-party could quite different stemming from totally different perspective on hierarchy of needs (i.e. Maslow's hierarchy).  The needs of individuals of an alien species could be vastly different than the traditional human hierarchy if indeed they would be considered "individuals."  An alien species could be a hivemind type of civilizations in which individuals don't serve their own self-interests but that of the collective.  One wonders how one would conduct trade with intelligent bees or the Borg of Star Trek.  Thus human need of self-actualization would have a counterpart of self-subsumation (total melding of individual into the collective mind) in such an alien society.  The need of the aliens could be different such as need for basics like water or food.  

Secondly in regard to interest rates and time, the alien civilization could be working on a whole different time sense.  Lifespan, sense of passage of time and speed of thought could be expected to be different than humans.  Difference in speed of thought and communications speed could make a difference in expectations for interest rates between human-alien trade.  As an extreme example, if humans encountered an intelligent species of tree-like aliens with very slow thought and comms speed and longer lifespans into the hundreds or thousands of years, the interest rate and term lengths expected by the trees would   most likely be lower and much longer (a thousand year mortgage anyone?).  Besides the excruciating process of communicating so slowly with them, how would humans trade with them?  Similarly, a race of super intelligent machines working at very fast speeds would also be challenging.  However, these differences could be arbitraged, at least by the first ones to make the trade.  Financial engineers would most likely come up with financial instruments to correct for these inter-species differences which would close any arbitrage gaps. Maybe this could be a "third theorem of interstellar trade", that inter-species financial differences would eventually reach parity by intermediaries arbitraging those differences.   Another subject of interest (pun intended) would be currency trading of human currencies and alien ones with these differences in mind.

References:
http://www.princeton.edu/~pkrugman/interstellar.pdf
Theory of Interstellar trade, by Paul Krugman 
 

Space Invading is Hard

Assuming an interstellar war between 2 Earth-sized civilizations, a question could be asked, “How many troops would I need to invade another world in another star system?” 

To answer this question would need several assumptions.  Just considering raw troop-numbers needed to invade that world one can arrive at a needed effectiveness ratio of said troop against an enemy defender.  Technology disparities between the antagonists would obviously be needed to reach a match between the invaders numbers vs. home world troop numbers as it can be conceived that home world defenders would vastly out-number invaders.  Thus invaders would need to make up the difference in technology superiority as well as better strategy.  An example may illustrate the thought experiment. 

Assuming Earth would invade another world of similar size and population in Alpha Centauri, how many operators would it need to do so?  Assuming number of operators would be 0.01% (according to 1^st Law of Interstellar Warfare) of current world active duty personnel would yield approximately ~2000 “shooters” that would go invade Centaurian home world.  On the flip-side, Centaurians would use all available combat power to defend themselves.  More or less all military able population between ages of 15 to 49 years of age.  Again only 10% would be combat troops while remaining 90% would make up logistical tail including manufacturing of war materiel to carry on the fight.  If A-C has a similar population to Earth of 7B people that yields about 350M combat troops to defeat in order to subjugate the Centaurian home world.  So a combat effectiveness of a Terran space marine would in fact need to be ~200k times a Centaurian warrior for rough tactical combat parity between defender and invader.  But in general, defenders always have an advantage, sometimes up to 3 to 1, so the effectiveness may well need to be much more.  So from a technology point-of-view, Earth technology would need to be on same order of betterness or 200k times more advanced than Centaurian.  Flipping it around with Centaurians invading Earth, they would need to be 200k more advanced technologically than Earth.  And that would just be for tactical parity which does not guarantee victory.  That comes to another consideration of strategy.    

To invade Centaurian home world, Earth would need superior technology (200k) plus superior strategic thought.  To make sure of victory strategies would need to be 10X better at least.  But why not just send robots to do it?  Right now, our computers can win at chess, but still even have a hard time with Go and those are games with known rules and no hidden information.  Artificial Intelligence would need to advance a fair amount to be able to compete in messy strategic conundrums such as warfare, let alone interstellar war.  And we sure don’t want to commit the Ludic Fallacy (hat tip Dr. Taleb) confusing games with Black Swanny real-life.   So in light of this, it could be thought that these 2,000 troops would be superior strategic thinkers (My name is KHAN!) who would be the generals-admirals directing fleets of robotic soldiers who could manage for themselves on a tactical-level. 

Concluding this thought experiment, one reason we haven’t been invaded by aliens is that being the invader would be ‘ahem’ challenging.  One’s civilization has to be advanced technologically which may take millions of years, while at the same time needing to span the gulf of space to get here.  One may conclude the best route strategically is not to fight and just look for uninhabited planets to colonize while avoiding any inhabited ones.  Of course, none of the above considers interstellar politics and rationales of why one would want to invade another star system. 

Space Pirates!

Currently under US Constitution, Congress can still issue Letters of Marque.  These letters authorized private merchant ships to pirate enemy ships during times of war.  These privateers were used by many powers in the 1600s through 1800s.  The practice largely ended with the Crimean War when the Great Powers in Europe signed the Paris Declaration Respecting Maritime Law.  The US never signed the declaration but has nevertheless abided by its terms.  It would not be clear if the US could effectively agree since letters of marque are in the Constitution so in theory any treaty that goes against the Constitution would be null as far as US law is concerned.  But as an aside, many regulators try this type of policy laundering to impose international rules onto US law.  Anyways, that is for the lawyers to argue. 

The same principle can be seen in future space warfare.  Treaties for use of Outer Space have been signed restricting nation-states to use of space for "peaceful purposes."  Each nation-state is responsible for "activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies..."  But there may be room for a loophole so-to-speak.  The government is responsible for the activities of its private citizens' activities but the nation-state itself (i.e. government) can only use space for peaceful purposes.  However, it may be that a nation-state could authorize space privateers by Letters of Marque to fight on behalf of that nation-state in a space war.  In such way, that government would be responsible via "authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty."  But that government itself would be using space for peaceful purposes, wink wink smile :).  So one day we may have space privateers and mercenaries fighting proxy wars in space as part of on-Earth conflicts.  In a farther future, privateers could be authorized (I use this term loosely) to take over asteroids being mined by enemy-flagged mining rigs or privateers invading and taking over whole colonies.  A nation-state could very well exercise 'responsible supervision' by telling its own space mercs to bomb enemy space installations.  In a war between 2 space-faring nations, these loophole violations of the Treaty would most likely be conveniently ignored.   In the case of an Earth nation conflict against an independent or break-away space-colony "nation" (presumably not a willing party to the Treaty), such violations would certainly be ignored as space (interplanetary) warfare would be the primary way in which such a war would be prosecuted.   

1st Law of Space Warfare

It's been stated as a rule-of-thumb and a pretty good one, that warfare is 90% logistics.  As far as space warfare is concerned, I would posit a law (and by law I mean a total S.W.A.G. unproven theory on my part)  that war in or from orbit is 99% logistics.  Interplanetary warfare would be 99.9% logistics and interstellar warfare would be 99.99% or more logistics.  It could be off by several factors but the main argument is that space warfare would be almost entirely mostly fighting for survival against the environment and not an 'enemy.'  Thus surviving longer than one's enemy is 'winning.'  This theory also has other implications politically concerning space colonization and eventual weaponization.   As the "logistics" part of space warfare would pretty much look exactly like its civilian use-of-space logistics, then space colonization IS space weaponization or close enough to make weaponization inevitable.  

  

High Frequency Trading across the 'Verse

Just read story about Michael Lewis' expose of HFT in his new book Flash Boys.  Interesting how times change but some things remain the same.  Such as stock brokers gaming investors for their own gain via front-running or in this case high frequency trading.  From what I can gather on the subject, traders use very fast computers to trade thousands of trade per second to reap a fraction of cents on each trade.  The brokerages even put their computers as close to the exchange as possible to gain and edge.  They even try to get the fastest methods to communicate futures prices from Chicago exchanges to the New York exchanges via line-of-sight microwave relays.  Not that it is all bad.  It can be argued that HFT creates liquidity and thereby keeps bid-ask spreads small.

But what of trading across the planets?

I'm sure in some future colony on Mars, there will be brokers there trying the same things.  But arbitraging price differences across the minutes it would take for interplanetary comms would almost certainly be impossible in context of high frequency trading.  But trading houses could take advantage by having outposts in the middle between the two planets.  Brokerages with outposts closer would have information before other brokers without outposts.  So in theory one would place the exchange itself in the middle to mediate trade of paper instruments, though these days of course these paper instruments are only 1 and 0s recorded in ledgers in the Cloud.  It would be in the middle or close to it (Lagrange points) as no doubt brokers would game interplanetary distance differences from both Earth-side and Mars-side.  So traders would put in orders which would route through relays on the Interplanetary Internet.   I suppose future space brokers would find some creative ways to fleece future colonists out of their hard-earned Marscoin. 

Où suis-je?

“Où suis-je?”  thought the patient.                                                                         

"Sure went sideways didn't it?" replied the General.

“Where is Marie?” 

“She got out on the latest ship, she is still in stasis and will be for another few days.  We got the printer working again.  It’s hard to get the right materials in this backwater. “ 

 “How long have I been out?”

“About one local orbit, or ‘year’ as these locals call it.” 

“So what went wrong exactly?” the patient asked.

“Well, the social scientists are working on it.  Consensus is that local technology development has shifted the ability of our Psy Ops to control the locals.  Their ability to get information to wider audiences has greatly improved these last couple hundred years.”

“You got that right!” 

“Well, in this case, these new ideas being spread around got a little ahead of us.  We are still assessing the consequences.”  the General stated.

“Has this been reported to High Command?” the patient intoned.   

“Yes, but as you know, the signal won’t reach them for another hundred years.  And then we won’t hear the response for another hundred after that.  That’s why High Command commissioned this study in the first place a decllenium ago.  We have to learn as we go along.  The paradigm was working for quite awhile now, but now there is something interesting happening here.  From this experiment, High Command hopes to learn better ways to administer the Dominion.” 

“So what now?”

“No need to worry,  Psy Ops is coming  up with something.  The admiral running that outfit has some clever ideas.  She has a theory that instead of fighting the technological development of the locals, we should co-opt it and seek to control that way and other ways.  She thinks we can play one nation off another but on a massive scale.  We will control critical thought by creating fear of an outsider bogeyman in order to maintain our infiltrated leadership cadres.  A clever fellow under her, an economist, I believe, has a few other ideas to try.  Something about replacing silver coins with paper currency and thereby creating unwitting debt-serfs.”

“Is that what happened to me?  There was no outside bogeyman to pin the blame on for the population’s anger?” the patient inquired.

“More or less.  Good thing we got there in time to recover your remains.  Otherwise, you may have wound up pickled in a jar somewhere.  That information-theoretic death is no joke.   We had to get you in stasis quick.  Finding the right materials took time which is why we had you in stasis for so long.”  

“Sure could use a glass of wine right about now.  I miss that, it was the best down there.” the patient wondered.

“Soon enough, but you have to wait a few more days.  The medics are still printing out your new body as we speak.  Once we reattach your head, then we can have a drink.” 

“Yeah, I hate having to go through the process.  It is so ‘incorporeal’ if you may pardon the pun.  Being awake for these pre-surgery diagnostics is just plain weird.”

“Well, we all go through it.  It’s just part of life.”

"Do I have a new assignment yet?”

 “Yes, that is all being worked out.  You’ll be good as new in a few days.  But rest a bit before we get into details.  You’ll need to get a new language implant, English, I believe.   You will test this new theory by ‘fighting’ against our agent already in place.  A good fellow, name is Napoleon” the General said. 

“I’ll have the medics call you when I’m ready for that drink.  Thanks for getting me outta there.  It was my first decapitation.  I don’t think I want to go through that again.” said the patient.

“Yeah, had a couple of those myself going back a couple hundred years.  Back in my operator days.    Definitely an unforgettable experience.  Lou,  by the way, how was Versailles?”

Copyright © 2014

3D Printing in Space and Patents

Currently, there is no overarching intellectual property law that is enforceable in space.  Or strike that, it is sort of in flux.  As far as US patent law, there is some enforce-ability if a patent is infringed on a US controlled (35 U.S.C. § 105) objects.  But even that has exceptions.  Here is a paper on the subject and a more "layman-accessible" article (by same author) on the subject of patents in space.  As space gets more commercialized, this area would get more interesting situations for technology development in space.
An area which is being actively researched is 3D printing in space.  It used to be that the argument could be made that patent infringement could be alleged for making a component on the ground in a country where the part was made.  Now with 3D printing in space, with existing patent law, actors will most likely be able to infringe because there would be no existing "space patent" to infringe.  Patents are territorial in which one holding the patent can bar someone else from making, using or selling that infringing component within the territory wherein the patent is issued.  With actors in space, there would be no "territory" except the ships or equipment that would be registered under a flag of a country.  But as in commercial shipping, most ships that sail on Earth's seas aren't flagged under G-8 nations, but under less "restrictive" flags.  The same thing could happen in space.  Another matter is for colonization of the Moon and Mars and other celestial objects.  Territory definitely does not extend to these objects (Outer Space Treaty).  Thus someone printing out objects on the Moon would not be infringing any patents.
As colonizing the Moon and outer space just might be a technologically intensive activity (in which new and useful inventions would be made in situ to solve local problems), some sort of patent regime is needed for space (orbit and cislunar) and outer space.
On one hand, "space patents" would incentivize invention for outer space problem solving, but on the other having no enforceable patents lets those in space make use or sell any invention, which also might be desirable by not disincentiviziing space commercialization.  Imagine floating around in your spacesuit and getting a  demand-letter from a space-patent troll.  :)  
I imagine some sort of space patent treaty as part of new space agreements would come into place.  It might be another "country" that is designated under a PCT patent filing.
But in the future when the Moon and other colonies get functioning governments, then they would come up with their own territorial patent law such as Lunar Republic patent law, etc.

Frankenstein on Kepler-22b

One if the challenges of human travel to other stars is the amount of time needed to travel.  Even at near luminal speed, travel-time would be years, at least from the point of view of an outside observer.  One solution as put forth in many science fiction is development of hypersleep or suspended animation of the travelers.  Such ability to suspend animation has yet to be proven practicable.  Much research has been done in the field of cryonics, mainly to freeze people that have died of terminal diseases with the hope of reanimating them at some future time when their lives can be extended with future medical advances.  Cryonically freezing interstellar travelers may offer a way to get to the stars, especially since interstellar space is already cold (2.7 Kelvin) so one would not need to maintain cryogenic fluids.  Assuming shielding can be developed to mitigate cosmic and gamma radiation, then the time to travel can be expanded to some maximal amount.  As entropy increases over time in the travelers' bodies and brains over a certain threshold the ability to reanimate would decrease.  The extreme cold would slow this entropy perhaps enough to keep the travelers viable for reanimation for several millennia.

Another technology which may have applications for interstellar travel is biological tissue and organ 3D printing.  

Ongoing research in this area will eventually obviate the need for organ donation, or that is the hope.  Scientists are researching the possibility of using a patient's own stem-cells to grow or print out spare organs.  Extrapolating this, one may speculate that one day, whole bodies can be "printed out."  Such printing out sidesteps many ethical issues of human cloning for spare parts.  

Speculating even further, one can envision a future where people getting on in age would have a new body from the neck down printed out and have a head transplant to switch their heads to younger (stem cell-wise) bodies.  Would an ostensibly young body rejuvenate an old head?  A 10 out of 10 on the Frankenstein creepiness scale no doubt.    

So back to implications for interstellar travel.  Logistically, freezing just the heads of the travelers would make travel to stars faster given less mass would accelerate a ship faster per thrust.  Thus after a long journey, the ship would use a sample of the traveler's stem cells to grow and print out a body from molecules taken from planets orbiting other stars.  

Discover of 700+ new Exoplanets

Yesterday, NASA announced discovery of over 700 more planets orbiting other stars. In the far, far future, humanity won't have any lack of places to explore. 

Strategic Pause

A strategic pause for posts of random interest. 
Here is a nice music video from Disturbed.  Not music to go to sleep to.  :)

I would've liked it to have a scene of a futuristic space soldier in some engagement, basically speculation on the future. 

Conquering the Galaxy via Dyson Spheres?

Here is an infographic posted on Space.com on the background of the concept of the Dyson Sphere, a way in which VERY advanced civilizations would harness the energy of a whole star.

The organization of a society to achieve such a feat would be hard to imagine, as the more complex the project, seemingly the more chances for things to go horribly wrong.  The time-scale for building such a large object might outlast the civilization which started it.  So, ostensibly some artificial intelligence would be put in charge to run the program.  But it, too, might be swayed by some sort of evolutionary pressure to adapt and do something else before the sphere is complete.  Or various versions of AI would be competing to work on the project and create roving armies of builder-bots which would take materials already built into Dyson sphere and continuously improve them.  The building over time might work like the growth of a biological organism with the building robots operating like cells within the body.  Some AI agents might decide to go rogue (those pesky gamma rays play havoc with electronics!), so an immune function would also be evolved as part of this Dyson "artificial super-organism."  So one can immagine large armies of immunocyte bots waging giant wars against disease bots on the surface and within the structure of the sphere.  Thus, like an organism, if the disease gets out-of-hand, it could spell eventual death to the sphere. 

Baby, it's Hoth Outside!

In a conflict with any alien civilization, the weather will be the main enemy.  As on terrestrial-based wars, weather and operational environments play a key strategic role within the dynamics of the conflict.
So-called "General Winter" was a key reason for the defeats of Napolean's Grande Armée in Russia as well as defeat of the German Wehrmacht more than a century later.   In the 1200s, a Mongol invasion of Japan was wrecked by a Typhoon giving rise to the Japanese term Kamikaze, or "divine wind."  Another armada which was impaired by a storm was the Spanish Armada in the year 1588. Likewise, other environments such as jungle or desert have unique challenges.
In a war between alien civilizations, the party which is fighting in an environment closer to its own "standard conditions" has less strategic impairment than the party which has a greater difference, all other things being equal.  But of course on alien planets and space conditions, one has to contend with added considerations such as gravity and radiation of the battlespace.  oh, and potentially toxic or no atmosphere to breath.  The greater the difference from standard conditions, the more logistics and technology would be needed to just maintain presence (thus it would be mainly fighting against the weather just to survive).  So when planning engagements, the side nearer to fighting in its own standard conditions would have the relative advantage.  In the case of being the weaker or technologically inferior party, the strategy would be to engage the enemy in environments which negate or greatly limit them on what they can do and that are closer to one's own standard environment. One would want to bog them down with logistical problems as much as possible.

 

Strange Alien Life

Came across review of 3 books on alien life in New Scientist.

The gist is that alien life may well be stranger than anybody can imagine.  If that is the case, then it may be that the universe is full of "life" but that it takes on forms which make no sense to us, and thus it may prove difficult to communicate even to relatively intelligent aliens.  Just as a thought experiment, it may be that intelligent species are on planets but make use of totally different senses for communication.  It is known that insects (such as ants) communicate primarilly through chemical-means.   Even if aliens communicated via aural/auditory means, the frequency of speech would be different based on alien atmosphere makeup and pressure differences compared with Earth.  So just getting to the communicating-basic-ideas phase with aliens will be difficult.  And what makes for "basic ideas" may be up for interpretation.  Advanced intelligent aliens may presume that Fermat's Last Theorem to be part of their kindergarten math curriculum.   

Storing Data and Colonizing other Stars

Came across this from Tech Review.  Researchers came up with memory storage method that may last up to a million or more years. 
 
Related to that, if humans are to go to the stars, then methods like these would need to be developed in order to spread our civilization.  If for instance, a ship-probe could be sent to nearby stars to seed human settlers there, one would need a memory storage that would last the journey, which could last millenia at current capabilities.  Such data could be in the form of DNA sequences and the information needed for the probe to clone humans from those sequences.  The probe would also need all the knowledge of earth's civilization and technologies and a way to raise the first generation of these new settlers at which point, they could keep the colony going (hopefully). 

One issue I would wonder about is how cosmic radiation would affect the memory over long-term exposures affecting data stability.  Although the near-zero temperature of interstellar space would keep entropy low which would help counteract this for long periods of time. 

Giving Pledges for NewSpace Development?

On Buzzfeed via Drudge, I saw news about giving pledges most notably of which Bill Gates and  Warren Buffet are pushing billionaires to pledge to give up to half their wealth to charitable causes.   Dubbed the "Giving Pledge", the concept was made public in 2010.
But what if some of these billiionaires were to give some of this wealth to development and commercialization of space?
If the Forbes 10 gave maybe 5%, that would amount to ~$23B for space industry development, more than NASA's annual budget (FY2012= $17.8B).  Throw in the Forbes 100 or 1000, we're talking real money.
If concentrated on one or two concrete objectives, such money may make a difference in commercialization and colonization of cislunar and interplanetary space.  Dennis Tito's planned Inspiration Mars mission to perform a flyby of Mars is projected to cost $1-2B, well within the affordability of just 1 or 2 of the Forbes 10 to fund.
The fund needn't be only for charity either.  Such an initiative may well be organized as a consortium of investors/donors and other organizations.  Technology development and resulting IP and high-tech product spin-out companies can be owned by this fund which would then make returns to its investors.  Commercial projects and infrastructure in space would also be developed and owned by such consortium which would be paid for use of infrastructure by companies and governments wanting to do business in space.