11/19 "the bargain bin"

Actually, I have been thinking about taking it one step further. Since, as you pointed out, Cererean escape velocity is about one and a half kilometers per second, it would be possible to have a confined vehicle that would provide negative Gs to the passengers. In other words, it would zoom around Ceres inverted.

In fact, the "surface" transport system on Ceres in The Venus Belt did just that if I remember correctly.  My copy is one floor down, I'll check in an hour or two when I go downstairs to brine the turkey.  (First, I'm going to watch this past Monday's episode of "Heroes").

Actually, I have been thinking about taking it one step further. Since, as you pointed out, Cererean escape velocity is about one and a half kilometers per second, it would be possible to have a confined vehicle that would provide negative Gs to the passengers. In other words, it would zoom around Ceres inverted.

In fact, the "surface" transport system on Ceres in The Venus Belt did just that if I remember correctly.  My copy is one floor down, I'll check in an hour or two when I go downstairs to brine the turkey.  (First, I'm going to watch this past Monday's episode of "Heroes").

Dang! See what I mean about subconscious borrowing...?

Actually, I have been thinking about taking it one step further. Since, as you pointed out, Cererean escape velocity is about one and a half kilometers per second, it would be possible to have a confined vehicle that would provide negative Gs to the passengers. In other words, it would zoom around Ceres inverted.

Actually, L. Neil Smith had inverted super-highways on his version of Ceres in The Venus Belt.

I've moved the discussion about L. Neil's books that follows this over to "Talk Amongst Yourselves," since it doesn't really involve EFT anymore.

Yes, Guy.  It's called "entrepreneurialism", heh.  Yanno, lots of people owning lots of small enterprises    Yanno, those things the revenooers have spent two centuries trying to annihilate? 

Concerning today's panel.  Open mouth and insert foot Guy.  It's pretty clear that he substitutes
mindless rote that he gained growing up for concious thought.  I don't think he's going to last long.   

Concerning today's panel.  Open mouth and insert foot Guy.  It's pretty clear that he substitutes
mindless rote that he gained growing up for concious thought.  I don't think he's going to last long.   

Be surprised; be very surprised...

In one year of working in vacuum, in potentially unstable rock and ice surfaces involving vacuum, three fatalities and five serious injuries seems tiny.  When bridges get constructed, or buildings, the fatality and injury rate is usually about that.  Traditionally, mining often has higher casualties.

Was that a look of shock/surprise when belters made casual mention of nanotechnology?

In one year of working in vacuum, in potentially unstable rock and ice surfaces involving vacuum, three fatalities and five serious injuries seems tiny.  When bridges get constructed, or buildings, the fatality and injury rate is usually about that.  Traditionally, mining often has higher casualties.

Was that a look of shock/surprise when belters made casual mention of nanotechnology?

Considering the number of workers, that's a tiny amount of casualties proportionately compared to a closely controlled government operation such as NASA or even the Russian (if you include Soviet) records to date.  It's not bad compared to my grade school.  (Admittedly I went to grade school when the playground equipment was made of steel, not soft plastic).

In one year of working in vacuum, in potentially unstable rock and ice surfaces involving vacuum, three fatalities and five serious injuries seems tiny.  When bridges get constructed, or buildings, the fatality and injury rate is usually about that.  Traditionally, mining often has higher casualties.

They didn't say how many workers are on the asteroid, did they?  Three fatalities could be a very high percentage...

Corydon:  I would be willing to bet that it's not as much the percentage of the workers that makes the difference as it is that on Earth any socialist government (which is all that there is there) will go to extreme lengths not to show to their people that they were exposing any of the workers being killed through incompetence or just plain unsafe working conditions.  If the people on Earth learned that the per captia rate of mining accidents was much higher than on Ceres how good would the Earth government look?
   Case in point, after the soviet union collasped in 1989 America learned that the failure rate in the early days of USSR spaceflight was much higher than the soviets had admitted to.  They would look bad to the rest of the world if it was shown that the Americans has more respect for the lives of their people than the USSR did for theirs as well as their technical competence was inferior to the USA.

Corydon:  I would be willing to bet that it's not as much the percentage of the workers that makes the difference as it is that on Earth any socialist government (which is all that there is there) will go to extreme lengths not to show to their people that they were exposing any of the workers being killed through incompetence or just plain unsafe working conditions.  If the people on Earth learned that the per captia rate of mining accidents was much higher than on Ceres how good would the Earth government look?
   Case in point, after the soviet union collasped in 1989 America learned that the failure rate in the early days of USSR spaceflight was much higher than the soviets had admitted to.  They would look bad to the rest of the world if it was shown that the Americans has more respect for the lives of their people than the USSR did for theirs as well as their technical competence was inferior to the USA.

Right.  In socialist-land: doing hazardous work with a low regard for safety is respectable if it's for duty (to the state).  When it's done for money, it's greed and not good.  I don't know that NASA has more or less respect for the lives of their people than the soviets, but they've been much more transparent about it.

Right.  In socialist-land: doing hazardous work with a low regard for safety is respectable if it's for duty (to the state).  When it's done for money, it's greed and not good.  I don't know that NASA has more or less respect for the lives of their people than the soviets, but they've been much more transparent about it.

  Frank:  I call to your attention incidences that would have happened less than 20 years or so before the early days of manned spaceflight namely "The Great Patriotic War"  when the USSR was more than willing to throw poorly or even nonexistantly trained soviet troops with little more than a handful of ammo and an ancient (and lousy in my opinion) Mosin-Nagant M91 bolt action rifle against nazi troops armed with MP-40 and first generation assault rifles.   If you were a soviet conscript that saw how bad it was and tried to run back to the rear you would face an NKVD officer who would put a bullet in the back of your head from a nearly as old Nagant revolver.  It wasn't until practically the end of the war when they finally came up with a semi-auto rifle that was halfway decent namely the SKS.

  Frank:  I call to your attention incidences that would have happened less than 20 years or so before the early days of manned spaceflight namely "The Great Patriotic War"  when the USSR was more than willing to throw poorly or even nonexistantly trained soviet troops with little more than a handful of ammo and an ancient (and lousy in my opinion) Mosin-Nagant M91 bolt action rifle against nazi troops armed with MP-40 and first generation assault rifles.   If you were a soviet conscript that saw how bad it was and tried to run back to the rear you would face an NKVD officer who would put a bullet in the back of your head from a nearly as old Nagant revolver.  It wasn't until practically the end of the war when they finally came up with a semi-auto rifle that was halfway decent namely the SKS.

It was still better to run.  The NKVD asshole might miss.  The Germans didn't, with their rate-of-fire.  (Until they got too stretched out and Winter was closing in).

Sure, the USSR had a terrible safety record; but in addition to being communist, they were corrupt as hell and a totalitarian state to boot.  I'm sure that the Chinese mining has a terrible safety record, too, for the same reasons.

It seems like it wouldn't be hard to test the hypothesis that "socialism = unsafe conditions"; just compare mine safety in the US with that in, say, Swedish or German mines.