ot: 1 min of silence

[Randallw]

Thanks Narf and everyone. I'm not a very emotional person so I'm not upset. The way I see it these things will happen eventually (I spent the last few years expecting it to happen someday anyway).

[dogscoff]

They should have let him retire years ago. IMHO it's cruel to expect someone to continue working in that condition. I'm sure he'd have said it's what he wanted, but only because that's what was expected of him: If he'd had the option of retiring gracefully at the age of (say) 70 then I don't doubt he'd have taken it.

The idea of "Pope for life" was probably dreamed up in the middle ages when your average Pope could expect to die of assassination/ good living/ some nasty medieval disease long before reaching old age or infirmity. Our (UK) royal family is facing a similar problem brought on by the same cause: Judging by the age the Queen Mum achieved before dying (about 110, I think), by the time Queen Liz dies, our Prince Charlie will probably be an octagenarian at least. He had his children comparatively late, but he can expect an even longer lifespan, due to improved medical science, so his son will also be old when he comes to the throne. Unless Charles passes the crown directly on and skips a generation (as I suspect he will) rather than take it for himself, we will never have a young monarch again. I'm not sure that it actually matters, mind you, but in these days when pontiffs and monarchs benefit from such a high level of medical care attention, life expectancies are too long for these "until death" roles to be viable.

I'm not a Catholic or a Christian so generally I don't really care what the vatican does or doesn't do as far as internal policy goes, but seeing that poor, ill old man struggle painfully to work through the years of his life that should have been given over to rest, recreation and reflection was just heartbreaking.

I'm not expecting Catholicism to drag itself out of the dark ages all at once, but I think they could at least offer the next Pope a retirement clause.

[El_Phil]

As I understood it he could of retired but didn't want to, I vaugely remember some fuss when a German cardinal suggested that he retire.

I can understand why he stayed on, I mean what do you do after being the pope? You can't really just fade into the background.

[dogscoff]

I can understand why he stayed on, I mean what do you do after being the pope? You can't really just fade into the background.

True. I mean it's not like he could sit back and watch the grandkids grow up like most old folks do...

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Narf, that would be paraffin. That is indeed candlewax, but it has been in use as a liquid fuel since the Industrial Revolution IIRC. And about the metals, yes, you are right, but if we plan to colonize our system we will need mucho mucho metallicos and that is present in the Asteroid Belt. I don't know/think that we will be able to make do with Earth's production once we get a few colonies up-and-running.

And I wasn't necessariy talking about the near future, it could be 200 years from now, or 1000, or 10000, I don't know. I was just stating that it could be plausible to mine asteroids.

[Strategia_In_Ultima]

Before 2050 is just what I think - or at least hope. Even if the US administration cancels the project, there are still the Europeans, and more recently the Chinese. Another administration might restart the project, there might be an international collaboration (think ISS but then bigger) that would attempt that, etc. etc. etc.

edit: repaired end bold tag

[El_Phil]

Hope I'll give you. I think we can discount the ESA, lets be honest they do struggle to get a rocket working properly. Chinese who really knows?

But we are talking a massively expensive project with no real benefit. There's almost nothing you couldn't get out of unmanned missions that a manned mission could do. I mean before attempting anything manned virtually bullet proof tech. would be needed, so just stick that in an unmanned probe and you slice costs by several orders of magnitude.

I think the moon race sums it up, the US loafs up there and.... Doesn't send men back because there's no reason to go. The moon race at least had the vauge justification of beating the Soviet Union, advances in missile technology, etc.

The only reason to go to Mars is the prestige or because its there. Hell of a reason for spending trillions of dollars.

[narf poit chez BOOM]

Why go into space? I think this explains it:

Subject: Re: Manty Money
Author: Graydon Saunders
Date: 01 Apr 2005 06:48 PM
On Thu, Mar 31, 2005 at 11:56:13PM -0500, honorverse Listmanager
scripsit:

[below]

> From: "Jonathan Briggs"
[snip]
> "Precious" metals are pretty to look at and hard to find or make for
> yourself. Metal is also good because the government can't just make
> more of it on demand. But, if paper money has those same qualities then
> it is equivalent.

Keep in mind that the tech level in the Honorverse is such that they
bulk-process asteroids.

Which, going by asteroids in this solar system, means they use platinum
for cheap cafeteria spoons and gold for costume jewelry.

1 cubic km of asteroidal nickel iron is a sphere 620 m in radius; it has
a mass of something like 24 billion tons, and if it's 0.02 % gold,
you're left with a mere 4.8 *million tons*.

[El_Phil]

Mining asteroids? *cough* b***ocks *cough*

Sorry about that but I am a minig engineer and the idea is ridiculous. The costs will be brutal, certainly epically in excess of any deposit on earth. Hell getting gold out of seawater would be cheaper.

Assuming dirt cheap space flight and all the other odds and ends to get enough gear to the asteroid, or move the asteroid to your mining site, you face two major problems.

1. Nickel-Iron compounds are very very tough. How on earth are you going to cheaply break them up?
2. So you have your small chunks of nickel-iron. How do you get the gold out. Any recovery process relies on communation (breaking down the ore) which as we've established is difficult/expensive and then there's actually getting to the gold.

Now of course the tech. for all this probably will be developed, but frankly my money would be on other planet mining happening. Mercury probably would be the best prospect, lots of solar energy and it's very dense which would suggest lots and lots of heavy metals in the crust.