OT: Space Station Fun

They had a lot of practise using ridable, tethered gliders in the wind, essentially kites. That probably trained them in the required control skills.

The bicycle control connection is interesting. They accepted that a person could learn to control an inherently unstable machine.

They may not have been DNA based at all. Maybe they invented it.

Gents, Please take this discussion to sci.electronics.naanaanaapoopoo where it belongs.

Phil Hobbs

But we're talking about LEO, or at most geosynchronous orbit.

But isn't your proposition that they populated the universe with their DNA?

I knew quite a bit before Wikipedia ever existed, but it's handy to cite the relevant page for the benefit of the less well-informed.

And Douglas Adams did imagine that the civilisation that got rid of telephone sanitizers perished because of a plague spread via telephone ear-pieces. I miss Douglas Adams, probably more than you do.

Not so much stupid as ill-informed.

I never said that. If they were sufficiently intelligent, they would have created metabolisms for all sorts of environments: water-based, gas giants, liquid hydrogen, liquid sulfur, whatever. DNA just happens to work here.

Once one were really good at software and robotics, one could create self-replicating robots and factories and stuff, and turn them loose on the universe, synthesizing and seeding all sorts of fun stuff.

It's not so crazy; I think it's probable. Our colonizing the solar system with chemical rockets is crazy.

DNA is essentially carbon, hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, but life as we know it depends on heavier elements - magnesium in chlorophyll, iron in haemoglobin, copper in the arthropod equivalent.

Ten or so billion years ago, anything heavier than helium was in relatively short supply because the super-novas that create the heavier elements were still going on.

Their DNA would have coded for enzymes different from the one we use.

Indicative of the precision of your thinking. No wonder you keep your development cycles short.

The word usually applied is narcissistic. and it's applied quite frequently. Google finds 4,670 examples of the coupling, not all to our John Larkin.

The world is full of pointy-headed bosses. Government-funded agencies have their fair share, but no more than that.

Because government funded agencies get scrutinised from time to time, their share of pointy-headed bosses gets more publicity than those in private industry, but the breed is ubiquitous.

Then they'd have been clever enough to invent an error-detecting and -correcting system at the same time.

DNA clearly needs this, and hasn't got it. This is clearly another version of Stupid Design, the creationist alternative to evolution.

I just scroll down and move on.

George H.

That's actually one of the better arguments in favour of our being alone in the Galaxy--if there were lots of them, somebody somewhere would have sent out self-replicating robots on solar sails, which would be everywhere in a small fraction of the lifetime of the Galaxy, and none are observed.

I forget who did the calculation, but it's a much better argument than Dra ke's equation.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

If they were that clever, their DNA would have included error-detection and -correction. Ours doesn't. End of theory.

Your thinking isn't well-informed - in fact calling it thinking as opposed to fantasising is probably a breach of the trade descriptions regulations.

We aren't colonising at the moment - merely exploring - and chemical rockets are all that we've got right now.

There are loads of better ways of getting out of our gravity well, but they are all seriously capital-intensive. We might invest that capital if we had something out there to exploit.

That's actually one of the better arguments in favour of our being alone in the Galaxy--if there were lots of them, somebody somewhere would have sent out self-replicating robots on solar sails, which would be everywhere in a small fraction of the lifetime of the Galaxy, and none are observed.

I forget who did the calculation, but it's a much better argument than Dra ke's equation.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Over 50 years ago we learned that sparks in a primordial soup make amino acids.

Occam's razor likes that idea better.

We have no launch vehicle. We certainly have none that match the payload delivery capacity of a Proton-M.

They have been a huge commercial launch company for years. Quite a large number of satellites have bee boosted into orbit at the Baikonur Cosmodrome.

You must have been sleeping in a cave for the last 15 years.