UFO study finds no sign of aliens
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Novacane said:
I would agree fairly substantially here - I would submit that there's no reason anyone would travel thousands of light years out of some bestial ass-fetish. It just doesn't fly, no matter how perverted one's interest in 'exploration' might be.
Anyway - so if aliens were coming would they be likely to be peaceful or exploitive?
Manmadeflyingsaucers (topsecret, inertia synthesizing)
Raw ores and water probably won't do much for them but there might be a market in refined metals and manufactured goods. They won't necessarily have replicators that can fashion any microcircuit or other item that they need out of any material they have handy. They may actually still need smelters and all the rest to make a good pipe or piece of sheet metal. On the other hand they may have no trouble coming up with enough gold to pay for it all because even if they had to refine the gold, it would be one refinery that paid for all the rest. They could always set up shop on Earth, too, become part of the economy, sell a lot of can openers and home appliances and stuff. They could make more money on consumer commodities than on fantastic new technological applications.
There may be ships out there that are loaded with components bought from supply houses on Earth. A pipe is a pipe, a wire is a wire, a saw is a saw, a transistor is a transistor. If they still use electricity, they can use our technology.
There may be ships out there that are loaded with components bought from supply houses on Earth. A pipe is a pipe, a wire is a wire, a saw is a saw, a transistor is a transistor. If they still use electricity, they can use our technology.
Okay, let's say you were in command of a human interstellar spaceship. Your mission star happens to have intelligent life with production capabilities. If you have a spaceship with limited construction facilities, do youOli said:
A) try and make all the stuff you need by your self
B) buy some of the less technological stuff from the intelligent aliens
It's like the explorers trading with the American-Indians I guess
A ship with limited production capability? Wow,what size is the ship?
Any way, regardless of the capabilities of the ship I'd pick knowledge, rather than goods. Don't give me artefacts, give me the specs, the engineering drawings, the wiring diagrams.
Hell, give me the drawings used to build your manufacturing plants as well as the drawings used to manufacture the goods. Then I'll go home and set up my own factory.
The only goods (possibly) worth shipping (like with the Indians) would be artwork (originals only for collectors, copies can be printed off at home), comestibles not available at home, natural materials (rare wood, stones) maybe and the odd gew-gaw for curiosity value.
Pipework made on Betelgeuse 9? Pah, we can make it here for 1/10 the price. You have 200 litres of Sunberry wine? I can sell the lot at 1000% mark-up on whatever you want to charge me. And I'll take a couple of boxes of the shiny bracelets that the natives make.
Any way, regardless of the capabilities of the ship I'd pick knowledge, rather than goods. Don't give me artefacts, give me the specs, the engineering drawings, the wiring diagrams.
Hell, give me the drawings used to build your manufacturing plants as well as the drawings used to manufacture the goods. Then I'll go home and set up my own factory.
The only goods (possibly) worth shipping (like with the Indians) would be artwork (originals only for collectors, copies can be printed off at home), comestibles not available at home, natural materials (rare wood, stones) maybe and the odd gew-gaw for curiosity value.
Pipework made on Betelgeuse 9? Pah, we can make it here for 1/10 the price. You have 200 litres of Sunberry wine? I can sell the lot at 1000% mark-up on whatever you want to charge me. And I'll take a couple of boxes of the shiny bracelets that the natives make.
sigh
We make too many assumptions about alien cultures.
By the way, I didn't say that they would necessarily want to lug a lot of our technology home. It IS conceivable though, that due to a variety of circumstances, a culture might have warp drive technology and very nearly absolute crap for an electronics industry. It is also conceivable that someone would think that it was a good idea to build their ships here rather than at home. Our computer chips may well be among the best that they can obtain. We have no idea what they are like, what they are about, where they are from, how many there are. Maybe there is more than one path to a spacegoing society, and other paths do not include the proliferation of high technology. The high technology could be limited to guilds that are very strict about what they let others have, so you have to pay extra if you want your car to make left turns AND right turns. Maybe control is so tight that it costs a thousand of their dollars a foot for a length of wire, pretty much like government contractors and NASA.
For all we know, LCD screens and laptop computers may be worth more somewhere in a neighboring system than they are here, and that system may have FTL transportation that costs them little enough that they can afford to ship. I doubt that a spool of good wire is worth more to them than its weight in gold, but I won't rule it out.
By the way, I didn't say that they would necessarily want to lug a lot of our technology home. It IS conceivable though, that due to a variety of circumstances, a culture might have warp drive technology and very nearly absolute crap for an electronics industry. It is also conceivable that someone would think that it was a good idea to build their ships here rather than at home. Our computer chips may well be among the best that they can obtain. We have no idea what they are like, what they are about, where they are from, how many there are. Maybe there is more than one path to a spacegoing society, and other paths do not include the proliferation of high technology. The high technology could be limited to guilds that are very strict about what they let others have, so you have to pay extra if you want your car to make left turns AND right turns. Maybe control is so tight that it costs a thousand of their dollars a foot for a length of wire, pretty much like government contractors and NASA.
For all we know, LCD screens and laptop computers may be worth more somewhere in a neighboring system than they are here, and that system may have FTL transportation that costs them little enough that they can afford to ship. I doubt that a spool of good wire is worth more to them than its weight in gold, but I won't rule it out.
Whose to say that some group of advanced aliens from another solar system may have visited Earth around 100 million years ago. Maybe they landed their space ship somewhere in what is now the state of Montana. Spent a few weeks there, had a nice time, but decided that some of the T-Rexes were a little to annoying, so they decided to leave. Who knows, maybe someday a lucky dinosaur fossil hunter in Montana may dig up a 100 million year old beer can with the label 'Orion Beer' on it. If that's the case.......
MetaKron said:
Er, no, that's ludicrous. The building blocks for an electronics industry are very common earth crust elements; Silicon, iron for wires, doping elements such as potassium and sodium, Germanium is fairly abundant. If these people live on a planet orbiting a 2nd generation star (and they are going to have to!) they will have a similar abundance of elements
Maybe you forget the very rapid, and very recent development of electonics, we have everything we have from just over 100 years research and development. From large physical devices like 'valves' to microprocessors, and ubiquitous and pervasive use of the latter.
For a society to skip a mere 100 years of development in this area, but somehow succeed in warping space, which would take immense and careful planning and control, is farcical.
Our electronics industry is the practical result and benefit from theoretical physics. Physics that needs to be studied to learn how to warp space. The existence of Germanium was predicted by Mendeleyev, radio waves were predicted by Maxwell, so it is rather absurd to state that a bunch of theoretical physicists on another planet would not exploit these discoveries and put them to use for the betterment of their society, and instead, carry on making calculations to warp space using log books and slide rules.
phlogistician said:
Alpha Centauri.......So close yet so far away. I'll bet my money on Alpha Centauri having a lot of transistors and diodes >
http://homepage.sunrise.ch/homepage/schatzer/Alpha-Centauri.html
Well, there is definitely a reason why Phlogistician is on my "ignore" list.
The fact is that even with all of the know-how, Silicon Valley could have developed in a really stunted version. Social control is a real possibility. Like I said, a guild system could have made a lot of this stuff prohibitively expensive and inhibited progress greatly, perhaps stopped it altogether. Warp drive might be able to be controlled using vacuum tubes and relays. Maybe the genius who developed it used technology that he stripped from a junk automobile. Maybe it "just happened" that way and there is no big reason. Maybe no one saw the need for fast microchips until much later in the game. Hard-core conservativism knows no boundaries in its stupidity.
The fact is that even with all of the know-how, Silicon Valley could have developed in a really stunted version. Social control is a real possibility. Like I said, a guild system could have made a lot of this stuff prohibitively expensive and inhibited progress greatly, perhaps stopped it altogether. Warp drive might be able to be controlled using vacuum tubes and relays. Maybe the genius who developed it used technology that he stripped from a junk automobile. Maybe it "just happened" that way and there is no big reason. Maybe no one saw the need for fast microchips until much later in the game. Hard-core conservativism knows no boundaries in its stupidity.
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That assumption was already made when I was asked what I would put on my ship.
And that's why you'll learn nothing. Phlog is one of the most consistently readable posters on this forum...
So now we've gone from speculative planets to speculative intelligent(?) life forms for which you've invented a social system just to back up your ideas. Maybe they're all cartoon creatures and just erase themselves from where they are and get redrawn where they want to be. Much easier.
But let's run with the guild system. If that obtains then the structure of scientific development would be rigidly stratified and the odd genius would be heavily discouraged (leaving aside the ludicrousness of developing a warp drive from car components). "If it was good enough for great grandfather it's good enough for you. Stop messing about with things you don't understand and we don't want".
As for components being prohibitively expensive when you have warp drive you'd have to show how you can have a warp drive that uses very little energy - energy use is the dictator of cost, materials themselves are a minor factor. If you have warp drive you'd have extremely cheap energy (or if it's not cheap, i.e. only a limited number of drives available, then you wouldn't waste in bringing components back - you'd bring the knowledge of how to build them.)
Right. They did all the calculations for construction, testing, navigation, power feed etc etc by hand. And we went to computers because of the oh-so-much-much-more-difficult problem of shooting one moving warship from another and dropping a bomb/ artillery shell onto a static target.
MetaKron said:
So how do you know what I said, brainiac?
You mean like that Catholic Church tried to prevent scientific advancement right here on earth during the Renaissance? The Catholic Church that have successively lost their power and control over the years as science has advanced. So on your hypothetical planet, some similar organisation stifles mainstream science, but an individual can singly learn how to create a warp drive? Physics different in their corner of the Universe, is it? Space more pliable
? Doesn't require as much book learning?Oh please, this is getting ridiculous. You drop the term 'warp drive' as if it is a simple thing! Please understand the difficulty and energy requirements, before handwaving over the details! Do you really think that a single individual will come up with this in isolation, or that it would take a team of people to create it? And if so, why have _we_ not got it, as we have a plethora of scientists, and the simple level of technology that you think is required, and more besides??!!! According to your hypothesis, there is nothing to say that earth should not have this technology, but we don't, ... so is your hypothesis flawed maybe? THINK!
Things happen for a reason. Present a half baked reason at least.
Not a single entrepreneur on this planet then? 'Later on in the game' Jesus, aren't you listening, 100 years gets us from hot bits of wire to x-ray lithography of micro-circuits. Late? How far off do you think we are from a 'warp drive' so we can compare timescales of evolution? 100 years? 1000 years?
Maybe you don't understand 'paradigm shifts', is that your problem? You don't understand that some scientific inventions MUST exist for others to be built on top of them, leapfrogging is impossible. It can be argued that without the electric lightbulb, the computer could never have existed. Don't you grasp that? Same goes for your 'electronics industry' and 'warp drive'.