(June 10, 2019 at 12:38 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote:

(June 10, 2019 at 11:42 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: *shrug*  Nothing for me to cave about.  I gave you figures and - implicitly - the opportunity to dispute them.  You declined.

And, just for my own morbid curiosity, can you tell me which of the following statements is made less credible by the addition of 'full stop'?

-Gregory Peck won an Academy Award for his portrayal of Atticus Finch, full stop.

-The atomic number of aluminium is 13, full stop.

-Herman Melville died in 1891, full stop.

-Beef is meat from cattle, full stop.

-The Amazon River is in South America, full stop.

Boru

These examples you cite in your own defense are rhetorically fundamentally different from the statement you attempt to defend.    In the examples you cite, the statement itself is not indispute.   So while the "full stop"s that follow may exhibit a rather unpleasantly emphatic speaking style, it serves as rhetorical dead wood that plays no substantive part, and can thus be ignored.

In what you attempt to defend, the statement itself is the core of contention.   So the full stop plays the rhetorically discreditable role of attempting to browbeat the opposition side into agreement without first offering any reason why the original statement is in any way creditable.

It would have done, if I hadn't given you reasons why it is a demonstrably true statement.  Reasons which, I might add, you chose to ignore.

Boru

(June 10, 2019 at 10:47 am)Anomalocaris Wrote: Clever, but no.

Our moon didn’t form until long after the solar nebula collapsed.

Observation of other protoplanetary discs and computational modeling suggest the protoplanetary disk collapsed very quickly, in less than 10 million years, possibly as little as 3 million.   At the end of this any gas remaining in protoplanetary nebula that were not incorporated into jupiter and Saturn were blown away by T Tauri phase of the sun, and all the major planets currently in our inner solar system inside the orbit of Uranus, including the earth and mars, have accreted vast majority of their masses.  The nebula is gone, and only the planets, a collection of planetesimals, and a dense debris disc remains.

It was another 50 million years after that before one of the smaller remaining terrestrial planets collided with the earth in a glancing blow to form the moon.

You're pounding on an open door. All that I am claiming is that the atoms that formed the Moon were present at the time of the solar nebulae collapse.

(June 10, 2019 at 1:04 pm)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(June 10, 2019 at 12:38 pm)Anomalocaris Wrote: These examples you cite in your own defense are rhetorically fundamentally different from the statement you attempt to defend.    In the examples you cite, the statement itself is not indispute.   So while the "full stop"s that follow may exhibit a rather unpleasantly emphatic speaking style, it serves as rhetorical dead wood that plays no substantive part, and can thus be ignored.

In what you attempt to defend, the statement itself is the core of contention.   So the full stop plays the rhetorically discreditable role of attempting to browbeat the opposition side into agreement without first offering any reason why the original statement is in any way creditable.

It would have done, if I hadn't given you reasons why it is a demonstrably true statement.  Reasons which, I might add, you chose to ignore.

Boru

I have not ignored any reasons why it is demonstrably true, because none of the reasons you gave demonstrates it is true.

"USians spent more on cosmetics over the same period. The cost per day in then-dollars was about .05 for every person in the US - one could argue that the US got to the moon on a cup of coffee."  - That does not demonstrate what was spent on the Apollo program came at the expense of cosmetics or coffees, and not other potentially more targeted and efficient R&D, or other non R&D activities, such as infrastructure or education, which in the long run can bring comparable value.


 "The resulting spinoff technologies in insulating materials, industrial monitoring systems, remote health sensors, microminiaturization, lubricants, anti-corrosion surfactants, flame retarding textiles, improved dialysis, athletic wear, medical devices, and too many more to mention - have generated far more economic activity than the money spent getting to the moon. " - Again it is not clear what percentage of the spin off actually was responsible for majority of the additional economic activity, whether the the potential of a subset of the R&D to spur economic activity would have been recognized anyway, and specifically useful R&D targeted to achieve these would have been done anyway with and without Apollo, all Apollo did that no-Apollo would not have done was to spur a series of spin offs of limited value outside Apollo itself.

I do not subscribe to the build it ("a dream") and they will come model of scientific development.    I think they will generally come sooner, come in better shape, and come with fewer deadbeats and hangers on if you are thoughtful in assessing what you wish to achieve and practical in picking what to build to achieve it.

Do you find this uplifting?

A future astronaut looks for signs of ancient life on Mars, pictured in NASA concept art by Pat Rawlings, 1996.

What could that future astronaut do that a robotic, roving lander couldn't do as well or better?

Boru

(June 16, 2019 at 10:44 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: What could that future astronaut do that a robotic, roving lander couldn't do as well or better?

Boru

Look over there and see something interesting.

(June 16, 2019 at 10:52 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(June 16, 2019 at 10:44 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: What could that future astronaut do that a robotic, roving lander couldn't do as well or better?

Boru

Look over there and see something interesting.

But you can teach the robots what's interesting, what to look for, where to look, and so on. Failing that, you can have human controllers on Earth who can tell the robot, 'Swivel your main camera 22 degrees. Send us the pictures.  Wait for further instructions.'  And an hour later, they can tell the robot, 'Proceed to the smaller of the two rocks that are north of you and perform tests C, J and L-17.'


Boru

(June 16, 2019 at 11:03 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote:

(June 16, 2019 at 10:52 am)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote: Look over there and see something interesting.

But you can teach the robots what's interesting, what to look for, where to look, and so on. Failing that, you can have human controllers on Earth who can tell the robot, 'Swivel your main camera 22 degrees. Send us the pictures.  Wait for further instructions.'  And an hour later, they can tell the robot, 'Proceed to the smaller of the two rocks that are north of you and perform tests C, J and L-17.'


Boru

Crap. They're limited to the imagination of the programmers. They could walk right past a tin can dropped by a tourist from Betelgeuse.

(June 16, 2019 at 12:23 pm)Gawdzilla Sama Wrote:

(June 16, 2019 at 11:03 am)BrianSoddingBoru4 Wrote: But you can teach the robots what's interesting, what to look for, where to look, and so on. Failing that, you can have human controllers on Earth who can tell the robot, 'Swivel your main camera 22 degrees. Send us the pictures.  Wait for further instructions.'  And an hour later, they can tell the robot, 'Proceed to the smaller of the two rocks that are north of you and perform tests C, J and L-17.'


Boru

Crap. They're limited to the imagination of the programmers. They could walk right past a tin can dropped by a tourist from Betelgeuse.

Double crap on YOU, so there. 

And an astronaut in situ is limited to the imagination of the astronaut.  Which is why you can take a reasonably intelligent robot and have it directed by human controllers on Earth.  People remotely controlling a Mars rover are more likely to be imaginative than is an astronaut on the surface, who is probably too worried about her spacesuit springing a leak or some such to spot that tin can.

Boru

I for one appreciate our robot overlords, but I don't see them as being more imaginative and/or perceptive than a human.