Of Freemasons, Flat Earth and Steampunk

[The Glyphstone]

Relevant:

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZUs4V


Also, lets get back on track somewhat before the thread is locked due to being irretrievably off-topic. Hint, Hint.

[GreatWyrmGold]

Spoiler

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We did it here in the US, as well. Tens of thousands of (mostly) women were sterilized without their consent in the 20th century, continuing into the 1960's and 70's.

I was more commenting on how eugenics were run, drawing parallels to two of the most monstrously inefficient dictatorships in recent history.

Seconded on both parts. It's evil but I see no reason why it shouldn't work.
Especially since it sure seems to work on show dogs and farm animals.
Any practical problem would more likely resemble the problems faced in dog breeding and animal husbandry, resulting from shallow goals that haven't been thought all the way through and that have bad side-effects, rather than resulting from an inability to actually achieve those goals. Like breeding a dog with big cute eyes that...oops they've fallen out, call a vetrinarian.

It's theoretically feasible. There are no theoretical barriers to human eugenics. However, there are two major problems which would crop up in practice:
1. Time. Human generations are, roughly speaking, an order of magnitude longer than canine generations, meaning you'd need about 10 times as long for comparable change. Considering that the authoritarian regimes prone to trying eugenics have trouble consistently maintaining the previous regime's pet projects over a transfer of power, this is an absolutely crippling issue.
2. If you're trying to increase the size of a dog breed's eyes, you have to be able to accurately measure eye size and minimize environmental influences on it. This isn't too much of an issue for dogs, but it's trickier in humans. Selection for eye size (or other physical characteristics like height or maybe physical strength) isn't too tricky if you can keep the program running for a few centuries, but more ephemeral traits like intelligence or loyalty are difficult to measure objectively (not to mention more prone to cheating). This isn't helped by the fact that it is very difficult to truly standardize living conditions across a group of any size, even for authoritarian regimes. After all, that would mean forcing political allies to live in the same conditions as the proletariat. (And, you know, things like a black market where people can trade unwanted luxuries for more produce or vise versa. And the effects of different lifestyles, which are required for specialization to work.)

A successful eugenics program is unlikely to succeed unless it is either run by a stable authoritarian regime willing to subject itself to severe standards of control and either restricts itself to easily-measured traits or finds an accurate, foolproof method to measure more ephemeral traits...or it needs to be run by an authoritarian government with access to extremely detailed and accurate data about what genes do what and is capable of running detailed genetic tests on its entire population. Neither seems plausible, at least not without some extreme advances in science and technology.

Ninja'd by a mod. Sadly, I think the original topic has mostly run out of discussion.

[Keltest]

Relevant:

https://imgur.com/gallery/ZUs4V


Also, lets get back on track somewhat before the thread is locked due to being irretrievably off-topic. Hint, Hint.

I'm horrified that that is a thing.

[137beth]

1,800 feet? He does realise he could quite easily see the Earth from 30,000 feet plus if he just booked an airline flight with a window seat? Or from 14,115 feet if he just took a trip to the top of Pikes Peak...

Which is why I mentioned Pikes Peak, since you can literally drive up to the top of it!

Well, that's only if you buy into the lies about Pikes Peak allegedly being 14,000 feet high! Every knows it is only 100 feet tall, the Round Earthers are just spreading fake news about its height.

[Tvtyrant]

The real question is what uses are there for a steam powered rocket if he can get it to work?

[Anonymouswizard]

The real question is what uses are there for a steam powered rocket if he can get it to work?

Making tea on the journey to orbit, what else?

This from somebody who's country came up with putting kettles in tanks so the crew could have tea whenever they want.

[GreatWyrmGold]

The real question is what uses are there for a steam powered rocket if he can get it to work?

A really good story to tell at the local watering hole? Downside is, everyone there will have heard of it before he landed.

[Strigon]

Clearly the best use of a steam-powered rocket ship is to simply leave it in orbit around the sun and spark philosophical debates.

[Excession]

The real question is what uses are there for a steam powered rocket if he can get it to work?

There are some ideas of powering rockets using transmitted microwaves rather than chemical reactions. I think the idea is you beam power from a big ground station, and use that power to superheat the propellant which can then have a higher exhaust velocity than a chemical rocket. If the propellant is water, then that is technically a steam rocket, but I have no idea if water is useful in this case.

The downside is that the ground station needs to be enormous to overcome diffraction. I seem to remember estimates of a square kilometre or more.

Bonus awesome points if you're beaming power from an orbital solar farm instead of the ground.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Bonus awesome points if you're beaming power from an orbital solar farm instead of the ground.

The climbers of a space elevator would be powered by both: a laser at the base, and another on orbit.

GW

[NichG]

There are some ideas of powering rockets using transmitted microwaves rather than chemical reactions. I think the idea is you beam power from a big ground station, and use that power to superheat the propellant which can then have a higher exhaust velocity than a chemical rocket. If the propellant is water, then that is technically a steam rocket, but I have no idea if water is useful in this case.

The downside is that the ground station needs to be enormous to overcome diffraction. I seem to remember estimates of a square kilometre or more.

Bonus awesome points if you're beaming power from an orbital solar farm instead of the ground.

These are such a pain to launch in Kerbal. When you start the gravity turn, the angle between the receiver element and the microwave source changes, so your thrust-to-weight also ends up changing by 50% or so. So you get very strange launch profiles.

[JoshL]

The general idea of someone becoming a flat-earther in 2017, I kinda get. Question everything. Do not take anything for given. Anything that's proven, recheck the math. But the problem is staying a flat-earther for more than a month. It's relatively easy and inexpensive to check that one. A few years back, tech website The Register started a project to launch a paper airplane in space. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_...sed_Into_Space It took a year of engineering, because the "paper airplane" part was the part they were interested in, and it was a fun ride reading the progress as it was happening. They weren't trying to prove the curve of the earth (they're techies interested in space, they've already done the math) but with the launch they got some pretty awesome video/stills from 17 miles up, clearly showing the curve. https://www.youtube.com/user/RegisterParis/videos

I guess you'd need to trust cameras, but they did it all for under 10K, and if you aren't worried about the paper airplane, you could probably do it cheaper.

Of course, that isn't going to stop rapper/flat-earther B.o.B. from trying to raise $1M https://www.gofundme.com/showBoBthecurve I find some sort of peace in the universe knowing that after two months he's only up to almost 7k. Though he could probably do it for that....

As for the guy launching himself, as mentioned he's a flat-earther for the publicity, trying to get someone to back his hobby and Evel Knievel fantasies. Seriously hope he doesn't hurt himself, but if he does at least he's doing what he wants to.

[SaintRidley]

1,800 feet? He does realise he could quite easily see the Earth from 30,000 feet plus if he just booked an airline flight with a window seat? Or from 14,115 feet if he just took a trip to the top of Pikes Peak...

Flat earthers believe that airplane windows are elaborate computer screens meant to trick you. Not kidding.

Considering the Great Ice Ball Earth theory, I wonder how that particular variety of flat earther feels about climate change.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Flat earthers believe that airplane windows are elaborate computer screens meant to trick you. Not kidding.

Not all of them. In fact, I suspect that what a flat earther pretends to believe depends exclusively on what is most convenient to the argument at hand. The thing about thought-free argumentation is that, like a child's "Why X?" game, there is always another "prove it" or "that's what they want you to believe" that they can throw out rather than confronting their tottering pile of BS.

GW

[OracleofWuffing]

Not all of them. In fact, I suspect that what a flat earther pretends to believe depends exclusively on what is most convenient to the argument at hand. The thing about thought-free argumentation is that, like a child's "Why X?" game, there is always another "prove it" or "that's what they want you to believe" that they can throw out rather than confronting their tottering pile of BS.

That's what they want you to believe. (Case in point.)

[Eldan]

These are such a pain to launch in Kerbal. When you start the gravity turn, the angle between the receiver element and the microwave source changes, so your thrust-to-weight also ends up changing by 50% or so. So you get very strange launch profiles.

I remember trying that. In the end, I launched a superheavy, extremely unwieldy and inefficient first stage straight up for about 100K, then jettisoned it and went into orbit using chemical rockets.

That was probably one of the most wasteful launches I've ever done.

[Eldan]

Flat earthers believe that airplane windows are elaborate computer screens meant to trick you. Not kidding.

Considering the Great Ice Ball Earth theory, I wonder how that particular variety of flat earther feels about climate change.

OH MY GOD I'M IN LOVE. Why have I never seen that one before, it's utter genius.

[pendell]

Back to the topic of why steam-powered rockets: While I believe it's not really practical for any serious use, if we could make it work it'd be a much more environmentally friendly solution to fueling a rocket than our current chemical mixes; steam is just water vapor, after all.

I don't have the math but I'd be shocked if it was ever practical, however; if it were possible to launch a steam-powered rocket into orbit I'm sure a nation-state would have tried it by now. So at this point it's never going to be anything more than a curiosity and a testament to human ... folly? Ingenuity? Both?

Respectfully,

Brian P.

[Anonymouswizard]

I believe there's designs where you essentially fuse hydrogen and oxygen into steam, not sure if they're anywhere near viable though.

[factotum]

Back to the topic of why steam-powered rockets: While I believe it's not really practical for any serious use, if we could make it work it'd be a much more environmentally friendly solution to fueling a rocket than our current chemical mixes; steam is just water vapor, after all.

And that's all you get from a rocket burning oxygen and hydrogen, too, which we already use and are known to work--the Shuttle main engines used that, so it's only the solid rocket boosters that were kicking anything nasty into the atmosphere.

[Lord Torath]

I suppose you could design the space capsule as a projectile from a ground-based steam-powered cannon. Get enough pressure and force behind the capsule to accelerate it to escape velocity, and voila. Whether anyone could survive such an acceleration on the other hand...

[Grey_Wolf_c]

I suppose you could design the space capsule as a projectile from a ground-based steam-powered cannon. Get enough pressure and force behind the capsule to accelerate it to escape velocity, and voila. Whether anyone could survive such an acceleration on the other hand...

Don't use it for people. Use it to take up the heavy stuff you need (such as water) that won't care if you subject it to 1000 gs on the way up.

Mind you, I don't think you'd be able to orbit with a steam canon (the actual ground-based canon I've seen involves nuclear bombs detonated in an underground cavern plugged at the top with the payload), but separating the human and other delicate component payloads from the hardy, mass-heavy payloads is an idea that is bandied around often.

For example, an actual concern for the space elevator is how long the crawler spends outside of the magnetosphere's protection, and thus how dangerous that could be for a human in it - so it is suggested that humans would not ride the elevator, they'd still get blasted via rocket.

Grey Wolf

[GreatWyrmGold]

Considering the Great Ice Ball Earth theory, I wonder how that particular variety of flat earther feels about climate change.

I now have a new idea for a campaign setting.

In fact, I suspect that what a flat earther pretends to believe depends exclusively on what is most convenient to the argument at hand.

That's pretty much certain, considering how silly all of their explanations look put together. Look at CoolHardLogic's Testing Flattards* series for an example. Though the first episode focuses on the conflict between observed distances and expected discworld distances, and most of the really hilarious trainwrecking got put in the Testing Geocentrism series (geocentrism not being strictly required for a flat Earth, but a heliocentric diskworld would have even tougher-to-explain properties).
*Hey, I didn't name it. Also, fair warning, CHL is...not entirely respectful to those maintaining beliefs debunked when Greece was young.

Back to the topic of why steam-powered rockets: While I believe it's not really practical for any serious use, if we could make it work it'd be a much more environmentally friendly solution to fueling a rocket than our current chemical mixes; steam is just water vapor, after all.

One small problem: You would need some source of energy turning water into steam. The classic choice is burning coal. This has some byproducts which most educated people believe are more harmful than water vapor.

I believe there's designs where you essentially fuse hydrogen and oxygen into steam, not sure if they're anywhere near viable though.

...You mean, they burn hydrogen? Yeah, that's pretty viable. The biggest problem is that the hydrogen tanks need to be pretty big.

Steam cannons!

Oh, a steam-powered mass driver? Interesting idea! Thanks for giving me an excuse to link Isaac Arthur's video on the subject. Okay, it's not about steam-powered ones specifically, but cut me some slack.

[Lord Joeltion]

Considering the Great Ice Ball Earth theory, I wonder how that particular variety of flat earther feels about climate change.

I'm... I'm... I think my brain just encountered and error and must shut down for a while...

I don't have the math but I'd be shocked if it was ever practical, however; if it were possible to launch a steam-powered rocket into orbit I'm sure a nation-state would have tried it by now. So at this point it's never going to be anything more than a curiosity and a testament to human ... folly? Ingenuity? Both?

(emphasis mine)
That's not necessarily true. We have more efficient fuels than those we use today; but the "practical" efficiency is also related to the refinement to the fuel and of the engine in question (and also the method of recollection for the fuels). IIRC, oil was known to be better than carbon long before we dropped the latter; but for practical/economic reasons keeping carbon around for a while was still better, despite the energy ratios. We are still in that moment of history where humanity has spent so many resources in oil refinement that it is still cheaper to produce oil based fuel than to research further in new energy sources; despite scarcity showing to be a problem today.

I believe there's designs where you essentially fuse hydrogen and oxygen into steam, not sure if they're anywhere near viable though.

Ninja'd by factotum.

Also, if we managed to efficiently split water we could garner a better fuel (for general use) without the scarcity concerns. Not saying it's necessarily greener, tho.

[Strigon]

Considering the Great Ice Ball Earth theory, I wonder how that particular variety of flat earther feels about climate change.

Is this a legitimate belief? Do people actually think this, or is it a clear satire? I understand it's hard to tell, but does the person who posted it claim to be a believer, at least?

Because... that's great. A successful marriage of the most ridiculous claims of a flat earth together with a sphere earth that wouldn't work out all that well. Somehow it makes even less sense than an actual flat earth model, and it's flipping fantastic.

[Grey_Wolf_c]

Is this a legitimate belief? Do people actually think this, or is it a clear satire? I understand it's hard to tell, but does the person who posted it claim to be a believer, at least?

Because... that's great. A successful marriage of the most ridiculous claims of a flat earth together with a sphere earth that wouldn't work out all that well. Somehow it makes even less sense than an actual flat earth model, and it's flipping fantastic.

As per Poe's law, it's impossible to tell, but the "woke" in the corner tells me that it's meant as parody.

GW

[wumpus]

There are some ideas of powering rockets using transmitted microwaves rather than chemical reactions. I think the idea is you beam power from a big ground station, and use that power to superheat the propellant which can then have a higher exhaust velocity than a chemical rocket. If the propellant is water, then that is technically a steam rocket, but I have no idea if water is useful in this case.

The downside is that the ground station needs to be enormous to overcome diffraction. I seem to remember estimates of a square kilometre or more.

Bonus awesome points if you're beaming power from an orbital solar farm instead of the ground.

There was a company pushing this idea called escape dynamics. It is simply impossible to "heat to higher exhaust velocity than a chemical propellant" simply because modern chemical rockets are already limited by the heat of the propellant. If the "themal chamber" has to be hotter than the propellant, no further gains are possible.

The *real* advantage is using hydrogen as a propellant. It is the ideal exhaust product (having the highest exhaust velocity for any temperature) but not available for chemical exhaust (engines that burn hydrogen and oxygen typically run "fuel rich" to both cool the exhaust product down to avoid melting but also to salt the output with more hydrogen to increase efficiency. Expect ISPs to start around 800 (for those unfamiliar with rocket science, those numbers are in the "magic" range and likely enough for Single Stage to Orbit).

If I had such a beast, I'd look strongly into using both water and hydrogen. Start with water (Isp probably around 300) simply to have a smaller rocket (hydrogen's lack of density is outrageous, even in liquid form). Expect the laser/microwave/whatever to be so inefficient that cost of water/hydrogen simply isn't a consideration, but having a wildly more compact spacecraft would justify the water on its own.

This might as well be a 22nd century tech (and there is a good chance that space elevators will happen first and obsolete the idea), and don't expect one any time soon. I suspect Escape Dynamics was expecting the US Navy's laser programs to come along faster, they are probably the main issue in such tech (and while they may supply enough power, they really only care about doing so for milliseconds or less).

[The Glyphstone]

I guessed it was a parody at the 'Possibly hollow' comment.

[Lord Torath]

As per Poe's law, it's impossible to tell, but the "woke" in the corner tells me that it's meant as parody.

GW

A quick DuckDuckGo search provides many "Snowball Earth" hits (theory that Earth at one point circa 650 million years ago was completely covered by ice), but nothing showing the Great Ice Ball Flat Earth theory. I'm going to assume it's satire.

[Bohandas]

Is this a legitimate belief? Do people actually think this, or is it a clear satire? I understand it's hard to tell, but does the person who posted it claim to be a believer, at least?

Because... that's great. A successful marriage of the most ridiculous claims of a flat earth together with a sphere earth that wouldn't work out all that well. Somehow it makes even less sense than an actual flat earth model, and it's flipping fantastic.

Don't forget that it's hollow too, so they worked in hollow earth as well

Also, fair warning, CHL is...not entirely respectful to those maintaining beliefs debunked when Greece was young.

As well he shouldn't