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A way to stimulate research into space travel. $100 million dollars in diamonds is landed on Mars in a very tricky to get into enclosure, to discourage attempts by drones.
First person to retrieve them in person, gets to keep them.
I'm thinking this might provide the incentive for more people
to focus on ways to travel in space, and try out some of the more unconventional ideas.
I was thinking $100 million in Euro, but maybe such a big draw.
"Hat over the fence" to Space
_22Hat_20over_20the...nce_22_20to_20Space
[tatterdemalion, Apr 07 2012]
ISDC 2011 Keynote
http://www.youtube....watch?v=Wy2kIPLsUn0
Related to why boots-on-mars as an end in and of itself is kind of stupid. [Hive_Mind, Apr 08 2012]
Mars Attracts!
http://www.newscien...-made-of-glass.html
There may be some Rhinestones up there for a space cowboy... [4whom, Apr 16 2012]
[link]
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How about the first person to Mars gets to keep Mars? |
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Ok, and I'll throw in a handy barbecue set as well. |
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Erm, where are you going to keep it anyway? Be a devil trying to get that through Customs.. |
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And $100mil in diamonds wouldn't? |
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By the time anyone managed to build a ship and fly to Mars and back, inflation would mean that $100 million worth of diamonds would consist of three record styli and one of those tile cutting tools. |
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Inflation isn't going to reduce the value of this stash of diamonds, pocmloc, but technology might. |
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I'm having a hard time finding any information on whether Mars already has diamonds. |
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The value of diamonds adjusts with inflation, because the
people who control the diamond market set the prices.
Why diamonds have any value betond their practical uses, I
don't know, but inflation isn't an issue. $100m in diamonds
will always be worth +/- $100m |
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The value of diamonds is kept artificially high
through tight control of production and sales.
Among other things, that is why you cannot resell
diamonds for anything like their purchase price. |
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If you're trying to pick something with lasting value
precious metals
or colored stones (which are actually rare) are a far
better choice. |
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Real estate isn't a bad option, either. I believe someone
mentioned that already. |
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If you want an obscure one, current UK stamps, not the collectable ones. The first class ones are always usable, no matter when they were bought and the price only ever goes up. "A first-class stamp will rise in price from 46p to 60p from 30 April ". |
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That would also save on fuel for the return journey. |
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If you DHL'd yourself to Mars, who would sign for the delivery? |
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The janitor at the Giant Robot Space Rhinoceros dispatch
center. |
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//If you DHL'd yourself to Mars, who would sign for the delivery// |
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I'd sign it myself, I trust me implicitly...except around money, chocolate or the toy section of a department store. |
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There's also the basic problem that any conceivable
mission to Mars would require so much funding that a
mere $100M would account for far, far less than a
tenth of the funding. Not much incentive, that! |
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Plus, there's the problem that diamonds probably aren't
going to be worth much in the future, as a) as
mentioned, they aren't all that rare, and the artificial
scarcity might collapse, and b) diamonds are relatively
easy and cheap to make, which is likely to seriously
change the price of diamond in the future. |
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And here's another, more serious question: Why do we
<i>want</i> to go to Mars? No, seriously. Why? |
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Yes, it's out there, Yes it's almost habitable, Yes it's
cool, yes we've been wanting to go there for years...
but in the end, once you've planted your boots on
Mars, said some historically important lines, grabbed
the diamonds / artworks / fence-throwing hat or
whatever, taken some soil samples, collected some
rocks... what now? All you've done is just given us
Apollo, or at best ISS, all over again, except on Mars
this time:
awesome, horribly expensive, and ultimately a one-
shot that we'll eventually stop going to, just like we did
the Moon, because "science" or "because it's cool" just
isn't a good enough reason to spend the billions (or
trillions) and the several months and the horrid risk to
get there and back without any serious incentive. |
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If you really want to encourage space development,
what you might want to do is keep those valuables- or
rather, a much larger sum- and make them a prize,
with more reasonable scale. $10 billion for the first
person to go to the Moon and back for two or three
billion or less, for instance. Or, scaling back, take that
$100M and make it a prize for doing an orbit with a
reasonably sized vehicle for significantly cheaper than
we've ever done. These things would serve as
incentives to make access to space easier, which will
aid in developing space instead of just flinging
ourselves out there. |
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Or, if you /really/ want to encourage space
development in a way that ensures we actually stay up
there and keep going, spend those millions and the
billions more you would have spent on secretly sending
your cargo to Mars, and become an "angel" investor
and invest that money in private spaceflight startups.
Commercializing spaceflight and making it subject to
market pressures would be the best way to make it
accessible, reliable, and cheap, and as this would
ultimately lead to making money out of space travel
would incentivize people to start going and actually
doing things more than "but it's Mars! Wow!" ever
could. |
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//Why do we <i>want</i> to go to Mars? No, seriously. Why?// |
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To get the fecking diamonds, do pay attention! |
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^ Woke up the dogs laughing. And we're talking really lazy
dogs. |
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I found that pretty funny as well. |
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//Why do we <i>want</i> to go to Mars? No, seriously. Why?// |
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The shiny stuff, the ice, the big, big, big money is available. |
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[MikeD], you may have a better perspective on this than all
of us,
given your current environs. Nice to see you, by the way. |
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Of course, a rather more underhand person than myself would do the launch, and then "oh dear, oh dear, oh dear..did I forget to put the diamonds on the rocket.." |
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If you could get there in person, you could just claim it. Plant your flag. Even if you died on the way back your heirs could sell the property. |
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I'm just looking at this from the "well, you an build up your physics knowledge over the centuries to the point that you generate x-rays with a big machine, or you could just use a roll of sticky tape in a vacuum chamber to achieve exactly the same effect" point of view. |
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Give enough people a good enough incentive and one of them will find the way to get there that doesn't involve being strapped to an oversize firework. |
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//one of them will find the way to get there that doesn't involve being strapped to an oversize firework// |
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$100 million? Seriously? That's gonna be a pretty
crappy space jalopy, if that's all there is to offer at
the other end. |
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$100M will buy you just under 25 miles of 4-lane
asphalt roadway with shoulder section and median
strip; no bridges, no corners; no significant
levelling earthworks. Or it will get you about 500
feet of 4-lane bridge, give or take. |
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It's a fucking long way to Mars and back. |
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//$100 million dollars in diamonds is landed on Mars in a very tricky to get into enclosure, to discourage attempts by drones.// |
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I think it would be enough of an achievement to get anything back from mars, whether retrieved by person or robot. And I think $100 million would be sufficient incentive - make the incentive too big and you get inefficient solutions to the problem. |
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It might get you there, though probably not back. |
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// $100M will buy you just under 25 miles of 4-lane asphalt roadway with shoulder section and median strip// |
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Obviously my problem would be one of storage, kind of tricky to keep that in the spare cupboard. Unless miniaturised of course..hmmmm.. |
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//It might get you there, though probably not back.// Just reassign the lane to 'inbound' traffic. You'll need good brakes. |
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Major shooting self in foot exercise here, but I'm thinking of some way to impose "me" on something else. Presently 72kg mostly of water with carbon, hydrogen, oxygen is sitting here doing the typing on planet Earth. Mars has all of these, so the problem is how to get the "me" from here to there. So no big fireworks involved. |
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Wait wait wait wait wait. |
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UnaBubba's back? When did this happen? |
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Yesterday, to get the fecking diamonds, do pay
attention! |
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Thinking about it (an activity I rarely indulge in) it would be better just to send a load of carbon in an impactor. |
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Mars's atmosphere is pretty thin, so a fairly straight down trajectory into the side of Mt Olympus, should compress the carbon into diamond at a very wild guess. |
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Thanks, [Alterother]. It's nice to be seen. I took my telescope set-up (Starth Vader) out to a small outpost the day before the day before yesterday. Amazing views from there. Venus, Jupiter, Orion Nebula, Mars and Saturn.... in that order. 300X magnification of Mars in true color, and various color filters demonstrated no piles of diamonds, however. |
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Aside: That was Starth's fourth, fifth and sixth combat route-clearance missions. My favorite past-time is refusing TOC personnel their requests to "take a look" through Starth on account of them not having as many missions "outside the wire" as he does. |
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//I took my telescope set-up (Starth Vader) // |
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Would I be wrong in suspecting you have a small spotting scope called "Look" (best done with the Geordie long "o" vowel sound)? |
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