Bay 12 Games Forum

What I think is it's not economically sound NOW under EARTH economy point of view. It's like the very early stage of a new industries, like in pre-train industry world with no railroad, not even with a workable coal supply and mining industry. Every new technology needs time to build it's related infrastructure (this time in space) before it's profitable and sustainable in the future.

The initial investment needs the visions, and people willing to take the chances and having dreams. That's what I think is lacking right now in general views (in some area of the world at least). But it should be done someday in the future. I just hope it won't be in some very distant future.

P.S. SBSP system really is more expensive to generate energy right NOW. The cost of the fuel to send massive equipment up to earth orbit along is enormous. And you still need to build the prototypes and pioneer productions. And you need to maintain it as well. Unless there is a chance that its energy infrastructures is built for some reasons (or by government funds), it's will not be able to compete with the current well-developed power grid. 

And this is the decade of FUN.

redundant post again , bad keyboard

If you are interested in the original concept of space colonization in Gerard K. O'Neill's vision, you will see that it's exactly because there is excessive space "in space", hence it's viable to colonize the solar system. He imagine that the total solar system population inhabited in space will be near the asteroid belt, using the design of O'Neil cylinders (about 800 km2 inside the cylinder). And the estimate population sustainable in the space colonies is about 100 trillions, and some even suggested up to 5 quintillion.

And the raw materials are everywhere. The soil in Mars are suitable for agriculture. The minerals in asteroid belt. The water on other planets and satellites are not that scarce, even the abundant Helium-3 on the moon is also valuable if nuclear fusion is available commercially. The space colonies should be self sustain units of their own. But all these seem to be far gone from people's imagination now. (except for a few and in science fiction) And their visions died out. But all the technologies to construct them already existed (even 30 years ago). It's the amount of efforts and political environment seems to disappear gradually for the last 2 decades.

P.S. The abundance of energy is one thing. To transform or transfer the energy and using it to production is anther matter. You can't transport pure energy. Or we already done that with thousands of satellites in orbit. We need somehow receive the energy back on Earth. You can not plug a super long cable from orbit to the ground. Many crazy ideas had been proposed like using giant mirrors in space and beam down super concentrated light/microwaves back to earth, but they are not that appeal under current economy. Since it's much cheaper to build solar panels on the grounds with existing infrastructures. We are still thinking and limiting by the term of "earth-bound" economy, and if space colonization really works, then the resulting economy will be very different as of right now.

A big brand of soy source manufacturer product menu in here where I live. (With English lists)
http://www.kimlan.com/en/e_products01.php
See the soy source series.

Dark is just richer and more concentrate usually. In fact, there are some soy source that are actually sweet, or low sodium soy sources. I am not sure how you can buy them in foreign country though.

For someone lived in a "country" next to China, the scenario of voting the "red" isn't that funny and unlikely. In fact our political parties of "Blue and Green" are often citing the threat of "Red element" in election years. And I can tell you it's definitely very effective to manipulate voters. (They will say someone or some groups are "pro-China" and all Hell break lose)

This is quite an old news. The field of AR (Augmented Reality) is very close linked to the rise of smart phone right now. Many new developments regarding Ambient Intelligence had be done more than prototypes. The problem right now is not how to do it, but how to do it economically and commercially possible. (It used to be called LBS - Location Based Service, but many different terms described the same things.)

The past week, stock markets had voted their lack of confidence due to this stalemate, drop about 3~4% in indices world wide. From the beginning of the week, when there was still hope for a solution and it might resolve eventually, to the weekend that everyone was convinced the event would very likely happen.

Before this week, most of the news and everyone I knew (outside U.S.) were not that particularly aware the situations. But with the fall of stock price, many were made aware of it. Originally most thought it's just another political drama happens in the U.S. But now it's made everyone think twice about investing their money. (Even European debts are as skew as U.S.)

As one of the residents lives in the unfortunately heavy U.S foreign debtors in Asia - China, Japan, Taiwan, Hong-Kong. (Number 1, 2, 5, 6). We do feel the weight of the pressure when some governments may not pay their debt on time. And remember that we lent those money to you Americans and other European governments to spend.

Quote from: counting on July 26, 2011, 10:58:42 am

5th page - Preface
This Congressional Budget Office (CBO) report examines the pressures on the federal budget by presenting the agency’s projections of federal spending and revenues over the coming decades. ...

Yes, if you were to say what the effect of something in the future we're, that would be called a projection.  This is a projection of current law.  What would you rather it be called?

For some funny reason, I get the idea that you dont read CBO forecasts all the often.  Am I right here?

Just Projection.

As I am not a native English user, I don't understand the difference between THE PROJECTION and a projection made from something in semantic meanings. They are all just predictions/projections in my minds, regardless what the assumptions are.

And no, I don't read CBO forecast very often (probably just once a year is enough). I don't think it's necessary. But I DO know that predicting the future are often bias by people who made the prediction as my original post means. And the fact that regardless the prediction in mid 2010 were, they are clearly not the case what really happens in 2010, and 2011. The reality is future are not that predictable, and people always wish and look what they wanted. And if politicians make choices base on projections, it will be very dangerous.