5BYv8cUJ

Starships on Moon

Astrochicken idea do outshined by what is known in my language as Von Neumann probes. Closest article here - Von Neumann probes. It is much easier to imagine them, but IMHO synergy/composite idea, when self replicating starships used for first couple generations, or even first few dozen generations, and then model switch to simple "build a single starship" for every star system out there would be more efficient, both in terms of complexity and in terms of speed of exploration. My current understanding (we talking about very distant future, like 70 years from now), there would be more economical to build not a Von Neumann probe per se ("just" a single one!), but instead robotic based industry on Moon or Eris, and use that body as a base to build a billion, or 5 hundreds billions probes to target every star system in Milky Way. If for any reason that would not be possible, then create similar base on nearby Alpha Centauri or any other nearby planetary system. And use it for mass production. But it looks like potential damage to Moon would be so negligible, thus Eris or close-by star systems do not have to be targeted. Not to mention trillions of bodies in Oort cloud... My original question was - how damaging would be such activity to the Moon? Hopefully no one cares about Eris. Seems that Moon still be pretty much intact after massproduction of billions of starships. Anyhow, here is science paper that was exploring different strategies of Milky Way exploration: http://www.rfreitas.com/Astro/ComparisonReproNov1980.htm Hope you find it interesting.

Please reply on original page, i.e. Ref desk/Science :)

76.64.30.242 (talk) 01:54, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

I linked to astrochicken not for the self-replication but for the size. Back when the Daedalus project was conceived most thinking run along lines best describe as "the bigger the better". Microelectronic was at its beginnings. A computer was something that filled a big room and a disk drive looked like a washing machine and had less capacity than a modern mobile. So, back to the point, for a mere reconnaissance, we don't need 500t of payload. 5BYv8cUJ (talk) 11:17, 19 June 2011 (UTC)

Banned?

As I said on WT:RD from what I can tell you were never banned so your user page appears to be misleading. The only reason you were even blocked as because of inappropriate usernames and shared IPs. Nil Einne (talk) 06:43, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

Banned or blocked, either way I can't make edits, so what's the difference to me? 5BYv8cUJ (talk) 11:54, 22 June 2011 (UTC)

There is a huge difference between being banned and blocked. A blocked user is in "timeout". The block goes away after a short time and the user (hopefully) stops doing whatever it was that caused the block. A banned user is not allowed to edit Wikipedia in any way with any account at any time. It takes a lot of time and effort to become a banned user. Therefore, not many banned users exist. The only ones that do exist evidently have severe mental problems because they invest a lot of time and resources into fighting against Wikipedia with no possibility of a positive outcome. I would really like to invest time into researching the thought process they use, but they don't like having honest discussions. -- kainaw™ 15:30, 22 June 2011 (UTC)