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Post by charleshelm on Aug 6, 2019 20:39:37 GMT -5
Our civilization faces existential threats in terms of genetic manipulation that may exceed anything faced by prior civilizations. In 100 years there is no telling whether people will be designed rather than born, and how much manipulation there will be.
Rome broke up into a series of successor states, each taking part of the Roman structure and grafting their own culture to it. I don't see the US looking like it does now in 500 years, but i don't have any idea what people will look like then...
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Post by charleshelm on Aug 6, 2019 20:47:34 GMT -5
The lime volcanic ash combination of Roman concrete may have had better binding qualities than say something like Portland cement. Whatever other short comings the material may have had in comparison to some of the concrete mixes used today, in conjunction with the aforementioned reinforcement, it was good enough to last the centuries in some instances, design factors in the construction of buildings certainly played a part of course. For instance, the Pantheon, made from Roman concrete is still standing. As for the Pyramids, even if our modern day civilisation attempted to replicate them they would be using modern power tools and construction machinery. The Egyptians as far as we know did all of it unplugged, not a single corded masonry /concrete cutting tool was found.
Sorry I missed this before. I believe it was the volcanic material that enabled the concrete to last so long underwater, but I am basing that on a documentary and not research so...
If you were emperor of the US I bet you could build something to rival the Pantheon...and the pyramids. We don't use the ancient Egyptian stone techniques because we have better ones...which is not an indication of the decline of civilization but progress.
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Post by zarono on Aug 6, 2019 22:03:34 GMT -5
Large scale food production is the fuel of civilization and without it a civilization collapses. The Peak Phosphorus theory has floated around for several years on the internet and depending on where you read about it the estimates swing wildly from depletion in 300 years to more frightening numbers like depletion in 50 years or less. But apparently it's going to become scarce someday and food production will decline as a result. Disruptions in supply could also cause major problems: www.energyandcapital.com/articles/peak-phosphorous-isn-t-really-the-problem/92797 |
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Post by kemp on Aug 7, 2019 6:57:28 GMT -5
Our civilization faces existential threats in terms of genetic manipulation that may exceed anything faced by prior civilizations. In 100 years there is no telling whether people will be designed rather than born, and how much manipulation there will be. Rome broke up into a series of successor states, each taking part of the Roman structure and grafting their own culture to it. I don't see the US looking like it does now in 500 years, but i don't have any idea what people will look like then... I think in the same way that parts of the Roman civilisation were taken by the smaller states that emerged with the fall of the empire, that parts of our civilisation will be adopted by future cultures, even if there is a decline. |
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Post by kemp on Aug 7, 2019 7:38:45 GMT -5
The lime volcanic ash combination of Roman concrete may have had better binding qualities than say something like Portland cement. Whatever other short comings the material may have had in comparison to some of the concrete mixes used today, in conjunction with the aforementioned reinforcement, it was good enough to last the centuries in some instances, design factors in the construction of buildings certainly played a part of course. For instance, the Pantheon, made from Roman concrete is still standing. As for the Pyramids, even if our modern day civilisation attempted to replicate them they would be using modern power tools and construction machinery. The Egyptians as far as we know did all of it unplugged, not a single corded masonry /concrete cutting tool was found.
Sorry I missed this before. I believe it was the volcanic material that enabled the concrete to last so long underwater, but I am basing that on a documentary and not research so...
If you were emperor of the US I bet you could build something to rival the Pantheon...and the pyramids. We don't use the ancient Egyptian stone techniques because we have better ones...which is not an indication of the decline of civilization but progress.
The pyramids are still standing over 4,000 years later, and you also have to take into account that they were built using solid granite rock ( different to modern concrete ) cut into large stones. Our modern buildings of glass, steel and concrete would weather and rust long before that. it's a monumental task, with some of the foundational stones weighing over 80 tons, and with a few of the obelisks in access of 500 short tons, average granite blocks about a few short tons. Modern cranes can lift close to 20 tons, although the largest land crawling cranes such as the Liebherr LR 13000 can lift 3000 tons, but would take days to move even a mile from the quarry to the pyramid, and we are talking about 500 miles from the pyramid site to the quarries they used. Myself, I think we have progressed in some ways, forgotten other ways, the ancient Egyptians could not do some of the things we are able to achieve today, but I tend to look at it as civilisation specialisation, that is, becoming experts in certain skills. Simply put, I think we could build the pyramids with an emperor mobilising the population for such tasks, but if we were relegated to the original techniques (no modern machinery or power tools, no diamond tipped cutters for the blocks) and with nothing more than the tools and equipment available to the original builders, than probably not nearly as well. |
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Post by kemp on Aug 7, 2019 7:51:51 GMT -5
Large scale food production is the fuel of civilization and without it a civilization collapses. The Peak Phosphorus theory has floated around for several years on the internet and depending on where you read about it the estimates swing wildly from depletion in 300 years to more frightening numbers like depletion in 50 years or less. But apparently it's going to become scarce someday and food production will decline as a result. Disruptions in supply could also cause major problems: www.energyandcapital.com/articles/peak-phosphorous-isn-t-really-the-problem/92797True, there seems to be a correlation between large scale food production in the recent century and the population growth. The world reached its first billion around the early 1800's, and doubled from 2.5 billion to 5 billion from 1950 to 1987. If our capability to produce food supplies is impacted in some monumental way it will have a dramatic effect on the population. |
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Post by charleshelm on Aug 7, 2019 21:20:49 GMT -5
The pyramids were built as they were in part because that material was available. I agree that buildings today are not designed for a useful life of 4000 years. How long will Mount Rushmore be there though? Buildings today are designed with a useful life in mind.
There is a lot we no longer do, but the only way we would be relegated to ancient techniques is if we had already lost civilization.
I suspect that a number of factors are in play to threaten civilization but I am not bothered by the retirement of the Concorde or a trend to smaller airliners. If the larger ones were called for by market forces, they woudl be built.
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Post by kemp on Aug 8, 2019 8:08:06 GMT -5
Yeah, myself I am not too bothered by the retirement of a few things from the twentieth century, but would still love tv to keep going for a long while yet. I just can't imagine people from a fallen civilisation in centuries to come sitting around a camp fire and talking about this.....  ......in the same way as they would about  |
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Post by kemp on Aug 8, 2019 8:32:07 GMT -5
How much did it cost to go to the moon !?!.......estimates vary, but somewhere in the ball park of $28 billion is what NASA spent on developing the rockets, spacecraft and ground systems needed for the Apollo program between the years of 1960 and 1973. According to a recent analysis by the Planetary Society, that translates into an estimated $288.1 billion in inflation adjusted dollars, roughly the equivalent to spending NASA’s current annual budget on a single project and sustaining that effort for more than a decade. I included this on another thread, but it should be here. NASA will have a lot of work on their to do list to get people back to the moon, including pulling the necessary budget for the project, effective partnership with the commercial space industries, prioritizing the development of new multipurpose rockets and spaceships for human missions to the moon and beyond, the Space Launch System SLS needs to be tested, and this was supposed to be done in 2017, the current plan is to test an un crewed rocket to the moon by 2021, the Orion space capsule which will contain the four astronauts needs to be completed, building and launching the massive lunar Gateway space station that will orbit the moon needs to get underway, and securing the funding for the eventual total cost of the mission which will be a blowout nightmare ( they will need some amazing PR to sell that to the public ), and market forces and world politics might have a further effect. The basic outline for a 2024 moon landing is that the Astronauts would take off aboard the Orion capsule, on the SLS, and fly to the Gateway space station. Then, they would board a lunar descent craft, go down to the moon, do some moon science, and return to the Gateway before the journey home.  |
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Post by kemp on Aug 9, 2019 9:15:41 GMT -5
‘Could the Apollo 11 moon landing be duplicated today? ‘Lots of luck with that’ www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-could-apollo-11-be-repeated-20190714-story.html‘The Apollo program’s stunning technical success depended on a government leadership culture, an industrial organization, a tolerance for risk and a political environment that do not exist today — even as NASA insists it will land humans on the moon in five years. Honeycutt was among more than a dozen Apollo-era leaders and contemporary space experts who agreed, in interviews, that changes in American society have made the idea of landing humans on the moon far more challenging now than it was 50 years ago.’ These legends of the Apollo era say the most important ingredient of the moon landing was not the technology, though it was one of the greatest bursts of engineering in human history, but the management, national commitment and personal motivation of the participants. “I fear that we no longer have the ability to do what we did in the 1960s,” wrote Don Eyles, a mathematics graduate who in his 20s helped produce the navigation software for the lunar module. Until then, “nobody knew much about programming a spacecraft guidance computer,” so the job went to someone just out of college, one player in a project that employed 400,000 Americans.’ It was an era of unquestioning trust of young engineers, trial-and-error design, blank checks to big aerospace corporations and gruff management practices. When mistakes were made, scapegoats were found. These were years of 60-to-80-hour work weeks. Engineers were run ragged. There were ulcers, heart attacks, heavy drinking, chain smoking, abandoned families, divorces and the ever-looming threat that the Soviet Union would steal the prize. And one other layer of complexity: valuable contributions from a staff of German rocket scientists who had worked for Adolf Hitler before their capture by the U.S. Army in World War II. Much of this management culture would be politically incorrect in 2019, a fact that Kranz readily acknowledged. “This would be a problem today,” he said. The country’s social needs were set aside to provide NASA funding that at its peak reached an inflation-adjusted $47 billion or more in a single year. NASA consumed 4.5% of the federal budget, compared with about 0.5% today, meaning that if it were to have the same share now its budget would not be the current $21.5 billion, but nearly $200 billion. “The way our society has changed, it is not clear whether we are equipped to make use of scientific and engineering resources,” said James Moore, a USC engineering professor who decided to become an engineer because of the Apollo moon landing. “Public authority seems to be more focused on process and less focused on performance.” |
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Post by kemp on Aug 9, 2019 9:18:59 GMT -5
From the same article.
'Efforts to grow the human spaceflight mission have repeatedly foundered. The U.S. space agency has not fully developed a new rocket engine since the space shuttle in the 1970s, and the industrial base has withered.
In 2004, President Bush announced development of the Orion spacecraft and Ares launch system that he said would help U.S. astronauts return to the moon as soon as 2015 as a first step to Mars.
NASA began work on the program in 2005, but schedule delays and cost increases piled up. In 2009, an independent review panel ordered by the Obama administration found the program faced a “mismatch between funding and program content” from the beginning.
In 2010, President Obama canceled the Constellation program, setting a new goal of a human landing on an asteroid using parts left over from main engines on the space shuttle and an enlarged version of the space shuttle solid rocket booster.
Those would be coupled with the Orion capsule that could carry four astronauts. It is this foundation that NASA is planning to use for the lunar mission in 2024.
“It is a new rocket, and anytime you build something new, you’re going to have development that’s complicated,” said Wayne Hale, former NASA space shuttle program manager and later a deputy associate administrator at the agency. “The real problem is this idea that we’re going to make this very complicated rocket on a shoestring budget.”
Public support for returning to the moon also is not the same as in the 1960s. A Pew Research poll last year found that only 13% of Americans thought putting astronauts on the moon should be a top NASA priority; the majority said the agency should focus on monitoring climate or tracking asteroids.’
That pretty much concludes it for me on the ‘return to the moon’ part of my study on the collapse of civilisation. Perhaps one of the benefits of the current enthusiasm by certain sectors on future manned space flight missions will be spin off technologies.
I don’t think we will be treading in any moon dust for a long time to come, but there will plenty of bull dust on the horizon.
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Post by kemp on Aug 9, 2019 9:26:15 GMT -5
I would like to touch upon on how the entertainment industry, notably films, have treated the subject of the collapse of civilisation. One of my favourite post apocalypse movies was Mad Max, including the sequels. A story about a former cop ( reluctant hero type ) played by Mel Gibson trying to survive in a future Australia where society has collapsed due to war and resource shortages. It depicts a new barbarian age with people surviving on the scraps of the 20th century, wastelands full of marauders. and small pockets of civilisation separated from one another.  I am trying to think of other post apocalypse futures depicted on film, but Mad Max is the first one that comes to mind for me. |
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Post by kemp on Aug 10, 2019 9:35:35 GMT -5
When it comes to the post apocalypse world/collapse of civilisation this has to be one of the most iconic scenes in movie history, at least for me.  Planet of the Apes, a future world partially littered with the remains of our civilisation and being dominated by intelligent apes riding and shooting from horses, and where the remaining humans are reduced to mute savages. I loved the sunny wide open arid spaces and canyons look, a feature I saw in more than a few 60’s and 70’s films and series. |
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Post by sorcerer on Aug 10, 2019 11:35:46 GMT -5
I just can't imagine people from a fallen civilisation in centuries to come sitting around a camp fire and talking about this.....
Unfortunately cell phones have had a much larger visible impact on day-to-day life than spaceflight. Never mind that cellular service depends on satellites for functions like gps, or that the techological underpinnings for much of the technology of a cell phone was developed during or as a result of manned missions into space; the current generation is hooked at the thumbs to their cell phones.
Also, apropos of Egypt - the Egyptians lived in an extremely favorable combination of climactic and geological factors: a desert wetland. The vast, cloudless blue sky poured bright sunlight into the Earth, allowing the great papyrus swamp of the Nile to bestow food, fuel, and raw materials on her people with a generous hand. Yet unlike savanahs and jungles where humidity stifles human activity and brings disease and decay, the arid subtropical atmosphere offered good cooling power and a tendency to dry and preserve rather than degrade. Countless Egyptian mummies, scrolls, and artifacts available to archeologists today would have been lost to the ages in a wetter climate.
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Post by charleshelm on Aug 10, 2019 14:14:33 GMT -5
The scene in Planet of the Apes with the Statue of Liberty is a classic, in fact the whole movie is great. The sequels are of questionable quality but I grew up on them. The reboots are wildly varying in quality.
The iconic moment though..."you cut out his brain you damn dirty apes!"
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