UKC

Great observation, when e commerce has taken over and people can no longer take peek at a product then go online to buy it cheaper which is far from ethical I wonder who will be crying then?

As for people who claim never to pay RRP, how can that be so, shops would not exist if no one bought the products at the said asking price?

(footnote : As for second hand kit, even if it is new, at least I know what price to set it at now. Thanks for that one folks. Part of me thinks giving it to my local charity shop LORO's would be better, but only if they can sell it at above the 50% of the RRP people on here seem to want to buy stuff at)

 

 

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I imagine the retailers who have failed to embrace e-commerce will be the ones crying. What’s your point?

RRP and asking price are two entirely different things. The retailer can choose to reduce their margin to gain the sale versus another retailer. Again, what’s your point?

What’s 50% of RRP got to do with anything? If you donate it to charity shop, any money they make is a bonus. You sound bitter that you’ve sold second hand gear and didn’t get as much as you’d have liked - if you don’t want to sell that low, don’t sell.

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

This is something I dislike intently and I have had many arguments about it with both friends and online van sales places. The van guys will undercut the dealers because they don't have a test fleet nor workshop's etc and are quick to advise you to book a drive at a local garage then they will beat the price. I buy plenty on line but if its something I feel I need to see or try in person I will either order then return or go to a physical shop and buy it there.

Again a source of disagreement between a mate and myself. I don't mind trying for a bit of discount from the large chains but my mate recons I'm mad for paying the ticket price on a bit of custom jewelry from a craft fair. As far as I was concerned the work that went in to it was well worth the asking price so I was happy to pay it. 

Second hand is always a tough one. To me it depends on the item, the condition and who I am buying it from. If I could get something new for £100 I wouldn't pay more than £50 for it second hand even if it was as new but if something was £1000 new I might go £750 for as new second hand. It all depends on what it is and what warrenty I might be giving up. I certainly wouldn't buy anything in the ppe category second hand (this would include climbing hardware) , again a mate of mine turned up yesterday on his motorbike wearing a helmet he got from an auto jumble. No thanks I like to know the exact history of anything that may save my life. 

 

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I buy online from small shops.  I won’t use amazon.  

In reply to marsbar:

Why not? 

 

In reply to marsbar:

Nor will I. I refuse to buy from conglomerate on line organisations whose ultimate aim is to deliver goods to your door without using human workers in the process of picking packing despatching and delivering. When the only beneficiaries to an organisation are the management team and the share holders it's time to stop giving your money to that organisation.

In reply to Gone for good:

I take the opposite view.  I want to support the guys who are designing products, advancing technology, buying computer and network equipment and saving me money.   I don't particularly want to support bricks and mortar businesses where a big chunk of the money I spend goes to whoever owns the building and in tax to the local council.   I prefer to buy online than take time which I could be using for work or exercise to go to a shop and I'd rather learn about a product by reading reviews than talking to a salesperson.

When money spent in Amazon also helps Jeff Bezos fund Blue Origin then that is icing on the cake.  Right now our best chance of getting colonies on Mars or the moon in my lifetime is Mr Musk and Mr Bezos.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Taken right out of the "f*ck you, I'm alright Jack " book of philosophy.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

At least the tax to the local council helps to pay for services, which is important during these times of austerity, and one can read up online about things before buying them from a bricks and mortar shop (sometimes).

Amazon treats it's warehouse staff quite shockingly, too.

I can't fault you for valuing your time, but how one shops can have a certain impact on society.

In reply to Timmd:

I hope it does: I hope spending money with Amazon results in society making technical progress faster and opening new possibilities for everyone.

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Does how it's warehouse staff are treated (or it's keenness to avoid paying tax) not concern you?

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Maybe society will progress faster if companies like Amazon paid the going rate of tax on it's real UK profits. There could be a mini Einstein or Tesla sat in a classroom down the road from you... but sadly they are in a class 30 plus kids and struggling to shine..  if only the government had more money for education in your own country. 

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I blame these new fangled "supermarkets" . Selling everything under one roof, it'll be the death of the corner shop you know.

Mind you, those corner shops were the death of growing your own food and raising your own pigs and chickens, so stuff them.

In reply to Timmd:

I don't know anything about how its warehouse staff are treated.  I hope they are treated properly but I imagine they are treated much the same as relatively unskilled staff in every other large warehouse including those owned by high street chains i.e. not that great.    

I think it is pretty clear that Amazon's intention is to automate its warehouses as much as possible and it will probably get there a fair bit faster than its rivals because it has more tech expertise.   Fairly soon  Amazon will have a small number of relatively skilled and well paid people in the warehouses. 

I'm not sure what tax you are concerned about Amazon not paying?  Corporation tax?  VAT? Business Rates?  Like every company it is going to try and pay less tax.   Quite a bit of its advantage is operating from warehouses outside of town rather than paying the levels of rent and business rates high street shops need to pay.  I don't have a problem with that: shifting money from rent on property and taxes to technology and savings for the customer is a good thing.

As a general point I think we tax the wrong things in the UK.  For example there is no VAT on services supplied by banks and gains from selling a house don't attract the same tax as income from actual work or investing in a productive company.  In contrast useful products like an iPhone get 20% VAT stuck on top of the price which means, given that customers only have so much money to spend, the tech industry that creates the product gets less of the cake.   I'd like to see the tax burden switched away from useful goods and services to financial services and property. 

In reply to aln:

They treat their staff badly and I don't want to see small businesses close down.  

It started when they were mainly selling books.  Bookshops are wonderful places to browse, to relax, have a coffee.  I wanted to support my local bookshop.  

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

Some are commenting from the point of view that everyone has a choice, great if you do have that choice but slightly presumptuous and failing to consider others not so fortunate.

The sole reason my wife and I are not scared of living in our house through old age is internet shopping. We live in a small country village with no public transport, 7 miles from a small town and 25 miles from a supermarket, further for any large shopping centre with choice.

2 supermarkets deliver to our door and much of what we buy is online (Amazon or not), we need a new kettle - are we really going on a 50 mile drive (if we still drive, add that cost) to look at some or order it in 5 minutes online?

Given internet access, internet shopping is the big game changer for future elderly, remote living and the poor without transport. 

I will buy from a local shop where practical but internet is our lifeline in the countryside.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

You consider a phone more essential or useful than housing? 

Ps. Profit from a home that is not your residence is taxed. 

In reply to marsbar:

I always use Amazon if possible. Being able to buy stuff without being driven nuts by going through endless "account creation", retrieving forgotten passwords etc make it a no brainer for me. Amazon have virtually everything, my laptop knows my Amazon password and Amazon know my credit card details - completely stress free online shopping!

I also consider online shopping environmentally friendly - much better that a single van drives around delivering stuff than loads of people drive independently into town. Not to mention the saving of time.

In reply to summo:

I consider designing and building a phone and in the process advancing technology in many different fields far more useful than sitting on a house that someone built decades ago and making 14% a year for doing nothing.

 

In reply to Moley:

As I said, I do sometimes shop online.  I’m not against online shopping entirely, supermarket online shopping is probably much more efficient in terms of fuel for example.  I don’t like Amazon, due to their lack of ethics, not the same thing.  

However you do make it sound like it’s entirely random that you ended up in the countryside. You did and do have a choice to live there.  

In reply to Robert Durran:

This is something I really don’t like.  I’d rather the hassle of entering them than have them saved by amazon.  

Can’t disagree with this.  

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Ok... you own a house, you are 40 years old and you get a job building researching those fantastic devices with a chip company in Cambridge..  you have to move. You sell your house, the tax man takes a slice of that increase in value and now you can't afford to move your family? 

Folk wouldn't be down sizing, they would have to down value every move. 

Edit. I do see your point, but your model wouldn't work in it's current form. In sweden you only pay tax on the profit, if the money is not reinvested in another home. To cash out, so to speak. 

In reply to aln:

Again with the dislikes, 4 dislikes for asking a question.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I'd go further and like to see VAT abolished which would create a huge boost in productivity by not having to administer it. Overall I'd like to see that tax burden switched even more towards income tax, as individuals rather than business  are what actually produce wealth.

 

 

In reply to marsbar:

They certainly do. I worked in an Amazon warehouse through the Christmas period 5 years ago and I actually enjoyed the order picking part of it, but hated the interaction with team leaders, the daily team talks etc. Hard working conscientious staff were constantly berated as if they were work shy layabouts, and no matter how much you did it was never enough. When I eventually had to leave due to transport problems I was treated appallingly, but that's a long story I won't go in to here. 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

People aren't getting 14% on their houses for doing nothing, they are contributing to the supply and demand gap by opposing the building of enough new houses by opposing local planning applications and voting for candidates in local and national elections that will maintain the status quo.

 

In reply to Jon Greengrass:

'I'd go further and like to see VAT abolished which would create a huge boost in productivity by not having to administer it. '

I'm not sure I agree with that. If a business can't deal with VAT efficiently then it can't be doing its accounts very efficiently.

In reply to Rob Exile Ward:

there is nothing more efficient that not having to do something at all.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

And what do you think that tax to the local council gets spent on?

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

What about supporting shops that put something back into your community, by which I mean wall base Independent shops. The revenue generated from our shop contributes to the provision of climbing.

You normally come across as someone that cares about others but n this thread you seem to be all about you. Amazon are not nice!

In reply to aln:

The dislikes are odd.  Perfectly reasonable question.  

In reply to Graeme Alderson:

As a matter of fact Tiso at Ratho sell me a few hundred quid worth of shoes and ropes a year.   Tiso do a better job for climbing shoes and ropes than Amazon.

I feel differently about Amazon because I'm in the tech industry.  I think some of the things they are doing in Amazon Web Services and with products like Alexa are highly innovative and should be encouraged.   I also like Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk putting money into space travel and that's another reason for me to back their businesses.

 

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I think it’s a bit rich that Bezos brags about he can’t spend all the money he’s got and fritters it away on spaceships while treating his workers like robots. 

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

Ftfy 

 

In reply to Gone for good:

A bit strong, they get paid a humongous 17p over the minimum wage.

In reply to Lusk:

I for one welcome our new tech entrepreneur overlords... 17p an hour over the minimum wage, what a bright future awaits mankind.

In reply to Yanis Nayu:

I'm not much into royalty but I'm pretty glad the Spanish royal family 'frittered their money away' backing Christopher Columbus.     I also don't like the way that tech industry concentrates wealth on a few individuals like Bezos and Gates.   However, I think it is great that somebody who gets that wealthy is putting their money into something as important as space travel.  

This is not about rockets for a few rich people to be space tourists.  The opportunity is accessing pretty much limitless natural resources and limitless energy instead of fighting over one small planet and arguing about and probably eventually fighting over how to distribute limited resources.  It is also about spreading our species out so it can't be wiped out by a single event.   We are at a stage like when Europe developed the ships and navigation systems which allowed them to access the wealth of the American continent.     Bezos sees the big picture in the same way as he saw the big picture with Amazon 25 years ago and he is willing to spend huge amounts of money to realise it. 

In an ideal world governments would be creating a planetary scale space program with a trillion dollar budget and getting us to the moon and mars but our governments are run by dickheads with no vision or interest in space like Trump and May.    That leaves Bezos and Musk as the only game in town.

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/innovation/rocketeer-jeff-bezos-winner-smith...

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

No point worrying about the future generations if you are treating your current employees like $hit or dodging tax to fund your hobby whilst depriving governments of revenue that can help all citizens now. 

In reply to Lusk:

Yes, that's great. And the company makes sure that they're paid accurately by docking any "excessive" time they take for toilet breaks etc, as well. A lot of workers use pee bottles because the toilets are located so far away from their work areas that they wouldn't be able to get there and back in the time allowed, or be able to reach their productivity targets! 

Don't see that happening much in bricks and mortar stores

In reply to summo:

So the Spanish royals should not have funded Columbus until all the social ills in Spain at that time were addressed?  

If we take that approach today the social ills will never be addressed, in fact they will get worse as more and more people fight for limited resources.   Redistributing wealth is a much harder problem than creating more wealth.  Accessing space and using biotechnology and artificial intelligence are the best chance of creating more wealth.

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

youtube.com/watch?v=5H161gLkvuo&

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I presume you are pro austerity then? No desire for the treasury to fund services better?

I would say it's about getting the basics right, but with more taxation revenue why can't you have both, more tech development and better services. 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

The idealism, naivety and ignorance in this post is shocking. 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I'm not sure that building spaceships that set off into the unknown to find new places to exploit, pillage and ultimately destroy is the best use for Bezos's fortune. Could he not use his wealth to contribute to the clean up of the planet we're living on now in order for it to be a sustainable home for future generations? He could start by tackling the rampant consumption that his company encourages.

 

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

The stupidity if qouting that whole long post, just to post your one line insult is lost on you I suppose.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

How much is Bozo spending on Star Trek type terra-forming to make Mars habitable for billions of humans that are going to inhabit the place?  What are his plans for stopping all these billions of skeletons and muscles wasting away under third of Earth's gravity?

He's got you well and truly fooled!

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I don't think the people who were already living in the Americas were quite so keen on Columbus and the other European invaders that followed.

In reply to Tony Jones:

How do you 'pillage and destroy' the moon.  It doesn't have an atmosphere or life but it does have vast amounts of minerals and pretty much unlimited solar energy.   So why not move some energy intensive industry or industry which would be risky to carry out on earth to the moon and use the moon as a base to explore the rest of the solar system.  If you construct a spacecraft on the moon with low gravity and no atmosphere you have avoided the problems of launching from earth.

Fundamentally, if we want our species to survive long term we need to exist outside the earth.  Otherwise we are just a war, pandemic, super-volcano or asteroid strike away from extinction.  The situation with the earth now and 7 billion people is like everyone in the UK was living on the Isle of Wight and arguing about how best to fit in and share the available land instead of working out how to cross the sea. 

I don't think the 'everybody cut back' and 'rich people cut your standard of living by a factor of 5 so the poor people can have more'  thing is going to work.  Most people don't want to reduce consumption or give stuff up so others can close the gap with them.  If you try compulsion people get angry and eventually violent.   As a global society we need huge challenges like space exploration to give us a common focus beyond nation to nation and region to region rivalry because our technology has reached the point where military conflict is becoming unacceptably dangerous.

 

In reply to Lusk:

Why should he have plans for that?  He's identified some pretty basic needs and opportunities i.e. the need to exist outside the earth if our species is to survive a single disastrous event and the opportunity of the huge amount of mineral resource and energy available in space.  He has also identified an achievable first and second steps: i.e. reusable rockets and a base on the moon.  You don't solve challenges this big all at once, you bite off the next bit you know how to do and proceed incrementally.  It is going to take far more than Bezos and Musk to get a large scale human colony on Mars but somebody needs to take the first step and governments are doing a really sh*tty job at the moment.

 

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

What always surprises me is just how little most peope understand about how much affordable access to space is going to change things in the long run.

The long run only happens because some people start generations before the real payoff.

It’s not “fix earth” or “leave earth”.  It’s both.  Lots of people are pouring their wealth into the former and a few in to the later.  Why heap scorn and derision on the later?  

Humans have a built in drive to explore and expand.  It’s in our nature.  It’s why we aren’t a dead and forgotten species.  That urge exists for good reason and we are as a species lost now we can’t follow it, turning in on ourselves with war and division.  

There’s a real chance that Olympus Mons will be climbed in my lifetime, or a marathon run on the moon.  How this can’t excite people who go hiking and climbing for recreational pleasure is beyond me

 

 

In reply to Big Ger:

Alright, not the most verbose or intelligent reply I've ever posted. I'll edit before the mods do and I get a ban.

In reply to Big Ger:

 

And I suppose the irony of you jumping into the discussion merely to post that, is lost on you?

 

Again, UKC must thank you for your constructive input. You really do f*ck this site up for people who wish to take part in intelligent debate on important issues. 

 

I insulted no-one. I pointed out what I saw as the issues in the **post**. 

 

However when it comes to you, you've proved yourself time and again. You really are a nasty insufferable little c*ck. Nothing I wouldn't say to your face. 

 

 

In reply to wintertree:

It's expecting a bit much of Mountain Rescue to help out if need be!

 

In reply to rj_townsend:

The problem is that the small in-town retailers simply cannot compete with Amazons - the cost of doing e-commerce don't make economic sense for them as they don't have the sales volumes to compensate for the additional cost.

 

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

You said:

That’s all you said.  If you had given some examples of what the naivety and ignorance were then perhaps those terms combined with the word “shocking” would not come across as insulting to some readers.

There is nothing shocking about idealism, other than that some people manage to keep it despite the grind of real world compromises and the naysayers.

In reply to wintertree:

I'm sure TiE is grateful that you're jumping in to defend his post. 

Insulting, really? I find it hard to engage with people so easily triggered that the word ‘shocking’ constitutes an insult. I didn't even 'insult' you or Big Ger, but you've each taken it on yourselves to pursue this line, presumably without asking the poster I was actually replying to if he felt offended?!

Whatever.

In response to the rest of your post which is reasonable if somewhat vicarious, I didn’t have much time to reply.

I was shocked (see also surprised, taken aback) to see someone whose posts are usually considered and rational, engage in such naive idealism and seemingly wilful ignorance.

There. Happy now?

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

I don’t beleive I said anything in my 14:31 post to which you reply in defence of TiE’s post.

Your post didn’t really “engage” with anything.  It “judged”.  For such a post to count as “engaging” I would expect to see reasons as well as judgement.  

I didn’t claim that you insulted me.  I’m not involving myself in anything between you and Big Ger...

As someone who sometimes insults people quite unintentionally I don’t mind taking it upon myself to comment occasionally - I’m sure you didn’t mean to insult but insults are infered by both the receipted and by other readers, so you can insult without meaning to and I for one found your post quite insulting.  Even if you didn’t mean it.  I wasn’t going to weigh in but seeing as you and BG opened a conversation on the subject...

 

In reply to marsbar:

Lots of small traders who have shops have an on line presence on Amazon. A few years ago I was having a lot of done on the house we had just moved into. I needed a special wood varnish. I remember being surprised at how expensive this stuff locally in Kendal was so I did a search on Amazon which resulted me in sourcing it from a retailer in Plymouth and saved over a third which was substantial. It arrived the next dat and I bought more stuff from the same shop through Amazon.  A win win situation in my opinion.

 

 

 

In reply to wintertree:

Ok I must admit, fair points all. Apologies for an overly snarky reply to you.

I stand by my intention of what I meant in response to Tom's post - I remain taken aback by the tone and content. And I disagree with the idea of my original reply being insulting. However you've made a valid point. Insulting or not, if one is going to be critical, one owes an explanation of some sort.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

Cool beans.  

I see where you are coming from.  I’m very positive about the changes in space access that are happening; and a lot more uniformly positive about it than I am in my views on the historical “western conquest” of the new world.

I doubt I will live to see any of the really big consequences for humanity, but I don’t doubt their potential.

Now is a very enthusiastic time for me - I see SpaceX and Blue Origin as really undoing 30 years of bad decisions and being poised to transform what is possible.  

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

Just thought I'd point out your intrusion. I had posted my views on the OP, albeit in a rather satirical way, earlier. I managed it without being insulting too. You could learn from that. 

There used to be a polite request on the forum that users do not quote entire posts, I just thought I'd remind you of it

Saying of  someone's post;  "The idealism, naivety and ignorance in this post is shocking. " without ever refuting a single word if it, while perhaps not insulting per se, does not show a great deal of respect for someone who has laid out reasonable and thoughtful opinion.

Ooh, aren't you the brave one! Do you have anything to say on the discussion now?

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

Threats to beat me up, or just insults, this time? You really don't like it when you're exposed do you?

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

It's worth noting that others have engaged with Tom's points and made replies that I agree with; the plight of Native Americans at the hands of Europeans is a stain on our history, and lends itself well to understanding how humans in positions of technological dominance tend to behave. This exact tendency is also shown in the horrifying employment practices of Amazon; there is absolutely no reason to believe that Bezos is going to start behaving compassionately towards his employees, or employees of his suppliers, or in fact anyone at all, at any point. Near-total automation or not.

If through Government inaction Bezos and Musk are granted a near-total monopoly and autonomy in space, we as citizens of our planet have made the most egregious error. Power corrupts; the checks and balances built in to modern systems of government have enabled the progress of our species. Indeed checks and balances (such as environmental regulation) offer humanity's only real hope - at least humanity in the form we know it, where not only the super-rich get to survive and procreate.

TiE is certainly correct in describing space as essential to humankind's survival. But Tom IMO you're deluded to think you're advancing something great and good by endorsing a business owner with profoundly questionable ethics; even if those leading such programmes are benevolent in their intentions, where's their accountability? 

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

I think it's just a game to these billionaire yanks, the race to say 'I put the first man on Mars.'

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

How do you think that would occur? Both require govt permission to build facilities,  as well as permission and information in order to proceed beyond the geostationary orbit zone.

 

See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_law

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

I'm not insulted but on the other hand I'm not bothered engaging with a naked assertion like "The idealism, naivety and ignorance in this post is shocking".  I don't see anything wrong with idealism and if you want to argue the post is naive or ignorant you need to be specific.

I've spent more than 30 years working in technology industry and my consistent observation is that technical problems are usually easier and faster to solve than social/political ones.   For example, building a railway is easier than persuading people who own land that the railway will use to give it up.  Figuring out how to give everyone a better standard of living than they have now is an easier problem than persuading people to reduce their standard of living.

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh: while i dont doubt that there will be considerable long term benefits from space exploration there are going to be more immediate social problems if there is an increasing concentration and inequality of wealth.  If you grow the economy but only 1% benefit then you are soon Trouble - the Notion of 'trickle down ' is debunked in this situation

 

Both need to be actively worked on , and theres no reason not to.

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Yes - and I can understand you not engaging with such. My intention was not to insult, but it was an unnecessarily brief and offhand response. 

I do think your evaluation is naive and ignorant. Your comparisons with Columbus are prescient. Many, many people suffer today with the consequences of European colonial expansion at the hands of callous privateers and mercenaries. The institutions which profited hugely from this economic expansion were not quick to share that wealth. Indeed it took the efforts of unions and those engaged in pursuit of universal suffrage, for society to become basically *fair* enough to enable the technological revolution of the last 100 years – a revolution you’ve benefited from and taken part in.

The tendency of individuals with power is to accumulate that power. This naturally leads to a less and less equal society. In today’s world as at any time, this means things such as education, clean water, and physical safety becoming a privilege. If your parents or carers were denied such, would they have been able to ensure you had the education to benefit in the ways you have? Of course not. 

You're seeing this in terms of a technical challenge, and of course it is. However I think you're wilfully denying the potential for harm here. If you think Messrs Bezos and Musk are the only game in town, it's because people have become apathetic and lazily voted for lazy politicians.

We are the change we want to see. If we want nothing but on-demand TV (and meals / detergent / Xmas presents delivered to the door, all courtesy Mr Bezos) we have only ourselves to blame. But effectively ceding the rights to space exploration to a private, unaccountable company is foolhardy in the extreme.

If humanity is going to benefit from space travel, humanity (via its elected representatives and their agencies) needs to be involved. The rewards should belong to everyone who's prepared to take part. 

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

The egregious error we are making is not putting vastly greater resources into space, biotechnology and artificial intelligence in order to reap their rewards sooner.  It would be great if the US and EU would get involved in Apollo scale programs but it isn't going to happen when people like Trump and May are in office.   Instead they are walking us backwards from the global viewpoint into national and regional competition and actively ignoring science and expert opinion.   

I don't think Bezos and Musk are going to end up 'owning' space.  They are like the first explorers on a new continent.  They will most likely burn through their money (and I think they realise this).  But their progress will inspire other, more cautious, organisations and governments to see that there is a real chance of success if vastly greater resources are applied.  It's the settlers that reap the rewards, not the pioneers.

 

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I agree with your first point completely. As developed nations, instead of spending on education (particularly STEM) we squander our wealth on tax cuts for the wealthy. This then enables the wealthy to accrue sufficient money and power to... Oh irony. 

I'm not so sure about your second point. I'd venture that in allowing such entities to own such power, you are looking at the total dissolution of meaningful nation-states within perhaps just a few generations. Not perhaps a bad thing in itself, but I'm cynical of human nature and would note that those who own the game, dictate its rules. 

 

 

 

In reply to The Ice Doctor:

I’m currently not enjoying a purchase online from the shop that bore the phrase ‘ man at M———s’

Theyve sent the wrong item and are not being good at replacing it. So far 3 different ‘advisors’ have doubted that I hadn’t received the item and told me to check my shed, doubted my integrity and insisted that the item be sent back before they replace it and the last one told me I wasn’t the purchaser and under GDPR couldn’t speak to me.

I payed on credit card, can they help? 

In reply to Big Ger:

Now I know where you live, I'm going to knock your pint over yer cornish ... see you pal

In reply to Tony Jones:

What if space is a part of that?  We could move all sorts of nasty industrial processes into space to prevent pollution - mining and processing of ores, radioisotope generation, power generation.  

Very few individuals are pushing space compared to more local technologies.  All can potentially play a role in making things better on earth.

In reply to Lusk:

If people are born, live and die on mars, what does it matter if they have mars-strength bones and muscles?  

My ancestors lost the bulk of their melanin production 10,000 years ago.  I’ve literally never worried about it because I’m not suddenly going to find myself living near the equator in Africa without any clothes.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

Somwone has been nicking the cheese from it with a great big spoon! It’s up there now! Have a look at the feckin holes!

 

In reply to Murderous_Crow:

I would suggest that the great innovators are rarely accountable in their own time, but are judged by future generations.  I don’t say this is good, but it is.  Mind you we rarely judge the creators of past transport technology but those who went on to exploit it.

I’m a lot less worried about the intentions of Musk and Bezos as individuals than you appear to be.

What worries me - more than almost anything else really - is that collectively they are going to hand a staggering level of access to space over to the US military on a plate.  

The political games holding NASA back and the turf war between NASA and the USAF have for 25 years kept the US from militarising space.  Jeff Bezos built his core rocketry team around the old McDonnal Douglas “Delta Clipper” team - a vertical takeoff and landing rocket experiment for the USAF 25 years ago.  (Check out the YouTube videos and you’ll understand how slow we have been to exploit the possible).  Political games had that project transferred to NASA who managed to literally blow it up and then shut it down.  

Trump has set in motion the formation of a US Space Force.  Elon Musk is building - and testing components of - a rocket that in three aunches can put into orbit the equivalent mass of the ISS, which took over 30 launches.  The total cost of this - including non recurring design costs - could be less than the total cost of one space shuttle flight.  Bezos’ next rocket will be similar.  A comparison of per-launch costs excluding NRE will probably be less than 5% of the cost of the current way.

Nobody else is anywhere close to this.  Russia is failing at quality control on old technology.  Russia and Arienspace (Europe) are hemhoraging business to the current generation of SpaceX hardware - let alone the next generation.  The UK has Skylon which is looking uncompetitive with really big reusable rockets.  Perhaps synergy between the engine technology for space and hypersonic terrestrial will boost it, but it’s dependance on liquid hydrogen fuel is hard to overcome.  China is starting its photocopiers.  It’s no secret that they are aggressively hacking western defence firms for designs, or that SpaceX basically designed their IT systems around this threat.

Access to space is a new arms race, and only one side is playing.

It’s no coincidence that the US is testing in-space docking of “repair” satellites, or testing hypervelocity kinetic impactors, or building the largest baseline optical interferometer in the world.

This could be the largest imbalance of power since the time only the US has nuclear fission weapons.  The difference to then is that now the other countries have all sorts of horrifying WMDs.  

The more I think about this, and the more SpaceX and Blue Origin demonstrate their capability, the more worried I am.

So I’m very worried about the risks, but I’m also very positive about the positives that can be unlocked by the imminent changes to space accesss - significant off-world population; a literal first step to other stars, access to a mind boggling - and technologically transformative - quantity of precious metals, space based solar power becoming affordable, enabling giant space based astronomical observatories, me taking a holiday to the moon, putting enough business in space to justify the development costs of non-rocket spacelaunch (which drops costs even more), opening a frontier for humans to explore and move outwards ending the increasingly volatile and disruptive phase of existence we are in in our shrinking world; perhaps significant off world life is the key to unifying earth governance.

We survived the atom bomb; it gave us nuclear medicine which has prolonged far more lives than the bomb shortened.  Will we survive affordable space long enough to see the benefits?

In reply to wintertree:

Ah. You've not heard about the latest post-Brexit plans to simultaneously atone for our colonial past and forge new alliances with sub-saharan Africa by donating large swathes of our population to work as slaves, then?

The melanin thing has recently been in my mind as a way to introduce a talk (on polymer science. It will make sense, though I'm not sure anyone will believe it until the last thirty seconds of what I say, at which point hopefully it will seem fitting, apt and unusually creative. Or I'll look a prize chump; we'll have to see). My parents had a picture taken of me and my elder sister when I was about 18 months old and my sister nearly 3. She's a blue-eyed, blonde-haired girl and I'm, essentially, a black kid. There's no doubt that I'm my father's son, as he was his father's son in turn. I know my family tree back several generations, and 31 of my 32 great great great grandparents came from Ireland; Cork, Kerry, Clare and areas around. The one that didn't came from Chesterfield and before that, farms in Derbyshire. So where did the genes come from that made me look the way I did as a child?

Much to ponder, and apologies for veering even further off topic.

T.

 

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

There’s a growing number of reports about almost Lamarckian evolution where some stress induced gene promotors are passed down between generations through the gametes.  So it could be that the genes are within us all but were promoted by the life experiences of your father or grandmother at the time your progenitor gametes were created.

The mammalian dive reflex is another wonderful area for learning about our latent genetic potential just waiting to be realised.

Then there’s the harnessing of an ancient HIV relative by mammals to enable several different aspects of mammalian pregnancy.  What about all our other “dormant” HERVs? If endogenous retroviruses can contribute positively to the totality of our being, could contemporary ones?  So far the only known positive ones are in clinical gene theropies.

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/m/pubmed/19407656/

Then there’s the growing field of learning around the interaction of a human and it’s symbiotic and parasitic bacteria - the biome.

We are far more than the direct genetic descendants of our ancestors.  We don’t enough know enough to know what areas we don’t understand yet.

Except for albinos, all Caucasians can produce melanin and in all of us apart from gingers that melanin makes us dark skinned just like our ancient ancestors.  Any number of factors apart from your ancestors human DNA could have led to you producing more dark-skinned melanin.

Or you’ve been misled as to your family tree

In reply to wintertree:

They better breed quick then. If the colonists bodies atrophy as quickly as the space station boys do ...

In reply to Lusk:

We have data points for muscle wastage at 0 g and 1 g.  There is nothing compelling I know of to suggest a “worse than linear” model to fit this data.  1/3 g on mars is very different to 0 g.  

It’s not exactly news to us as climbers that muscle mass respond to demand.  I don’t see a polynomial grater than first order demand/response when training, so I wouldn’t expect that if “under training” in reduced g.

Rather than speculate more, let’s wait a year or two for mouse data from the JAXA (Japanese) “MARS” experiment.  They recently published a control experiment on 0 g and 1 g mice on the ISS - https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-10998-4

I would happily bet serious cash that they show mice in 1/X g (where 1 < X < 6) tends towards a resultant bone density and muscle strength of 1/X earth normal.

Sadly, NASA’s human scale centrifuge module is rotting away in a car park somewhere.

In reply to wintertree:

The whole area of epigenetics is a fascinating one.  As a complete non-expert, but (I hope) as a moderately intelligent one, it strikes me as a field that's rich in the potential for both the type of insight that brings Nobel prizes in its wake and for misunderstanding and false trails of the sort that may take decades to correct.  I suspect that - assuming my family tree is all as it should be of course, and there isn't the potential for a throwback to someone from a shipwreck on the rocky coast of county Cork  - the answer to my question about the skin colour of my youth will probably lie somewhere in there, but that by the time anyone is able to offer a definite answer, I'll be long past caring.

T.

In reply to Pursued by a bear:

Only on UKC could a debate on online vs "real" retailers evolve into a discussion on epigenetics!

In reply to Lusk:

You and whose army?

In reply to Big Ger:

It has always been one of the site's delights and frustrations; but chiefly, delights.

T.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

How to you know it's going to do that and not some other more dystopian outcome?

In reply to pasbury:

I'm pretty sure it is going to result in making technical progress faster.  For example Amazon are doing some pretty impressive things in Amazon Web Services and the Alexa product and Bezos is putting a lot of money into Blue Origin.   I hope that technical progress will result in more opportunities for everyone but I think our economic and political systems are so screwed up that finding mechanisms to fairly distribute the wealth created by technology is going to be far more difficult than creating the wealth. 

However, the fact that social problems are difficult is not a good reason to slow the rate at which we solve technical ones.  A colony on Mars or the Moon could also be an opportunity to evolve co-operative social systems more suited to a society with really advanced technology without being tied down by the way things are currently done.

 

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I think the idea of colonising mars is interesting but irrelevant. It won't happen for many decades and even if it does will contain a few thousand individuals compared to the billions back here in our home.

Musk has stated that the Mars colony can act as a backup for humanity. This isn't a message of hope for the Earth is it?

The problems we have can't be solved by throwing devices at them, or computing the hell out of them. They are problems of governance; inequality, social justice, broken economic models. Only solvable by human intelligence and ethical evolution.

In reply to pasbury:

There is no hope for Earth.  The atmosphere, the oceans and all life will be boiled away into space when the sun goes nova.  It’s almost at the tipping point where life on Earth has existed for longer in the past than it can possibly continue for in the future.

Sure - an almost infinitely distant concern for us now.  But ultimately it is hopeless.  In the mean time there are far more pressing risks to humanities continued existence, some of which will be reduced by sustainable off world living.  I’m sure there will be news ones as a result as well - people on the moon could really mess us up by throwing rocks at us...

 

In reply to pasbury:

Social structures tend to change because of step changes in technology.  For example the industrial revolution and the invention of printing.    It's the technical change which makes the existing structures untenable, otherwise with a bit of coercion things like feudalism can go on forever.  I think AI, biotech and colonisation of space are step changes in technology which will make existing socio-economic structures untenable.   Neither capitalism or old-fashioned socialism are going to work when machines create the wealth.

 

In reply to wintertree:

This sort of trust in an as yet unproven technology to get us out of a mess without having to really engage with it now is the ultimate form of hopelessness.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

I agree with you on the impacts of AI, though we really need to clarify what aspect of AI we're really talking about. I just think the colonisation of space schtick is a bit Howard Hughes.

In reply to tom_in_edinburgh:

So nothing to do with the Black Death then?

 

In reply to pasbury:

(I don’t see the relevance of your reply to my post).

Once unproven technology now gets us out of all sorts of past messes in ways that were not predictable at the time.

I see some emerging technologies having a big role in fixing some current problems.  I don’t think this will happen by magic, but it gets tiresome to have others beat down the very suggestion it might have a role to play.

In reply to wintertree:

Yes it might, but imagine if our domestic energy policy involved a phased shutting down of all our power stations and a ban on all renewable energy investment because we ‘trusted’ that nuclear fusion would be viable in 5 years.