The RDA can't do physics

[Human No More]

[QUOTE=Clarke;154446]
You need a few micrometers of electronics for each particle. That's going to cost, what, a fraction of a penny each? I'm talking about building more cells of a SSD, not building multiple disks. You don't need most of the actual device to add more particles to it, you just need to duplicate a very small chunk.

I understand your logic there, but if a single one costs $7500/bit, then the cost is in the encoding process itself and not in anything associated with processing, or that would have already been done.

Gravitational time dilation. The time dilation factor between here and geosynchronous orbit is +664ps... per second. Put one end of your FTL communicator on a satellite for a year, and then take it back down to Earth, and the accumulated time difference will be as long as 20ms. In the context of high-frequency trading, that's a very long time indeed.

Now that is actually an interesting idea, but also completely irrelevant to ways people complain about Avatar.

In the 1950s, CPUs cost millions of dollars each. Look what happened.

I am going to assume you'd be pissed off if I said the same thing about energy.
The $7500/bit is form an official source, and your personal belief doesn't change that. Indeed, the cost per bit for FTL communication as it is is technically infinite today

Isn't that the default? That there is a window of a few fractions of a second where you transmit?

No, I meant that if you were fragmenting a packet across multiple simultaneous transmissions, there needs to be an indicator (e.g. 'this one is bytes 128-255').

Yet you said earlier that you would run into problems because you need to receive all the bits

Yes - do you even know what overhead is? It is the data that is necessary to include such as checksums, which is not a part of the actual data payload.
In order to determine if each bit is valid, there needs to be a value for every bit in the packet there. 0 is not the same as null. If one is missing, it will make other bits impossible to checksum. The greater the proportion of error bits, the chance is much higher that they can not be corrected and instead, the packet is simply flagged as corrupt and require retransmission. In addition, the more complex the scheme used, the greater the number of additional bits required for transmission - these bits can not be used to carry data.

What do you mean, "assuming others will?" Nobody will, because they're human.

Nobody follows traffic laws? I beg to differ.
Drive behind a driverless car at 90mph in a 30mph speed limit and you will cause a huge accident, becuase that is not within its parameters.

Seriously, WTF at the above quote.

And what do you mean, "huge repurcussions?" People die if your auto-car does something wrong, just as much as they die if your military computer does something wrong.

Someone potentially dying is not the same as losing the entire contract for unobtainium and likely facing huge sanctions and investigations.

It worked fine for the avatars. Then again, radio is easier to get working.

That was my point several posts ago. There is no reason to attempt to produce entirely synthetic brains to create a (two-way only) link (even if it would apply to such a signal rather than basic neural activity only) when radio does work, just not perfectly.

I am. IMO, the most practical way for the robots to communicate is with radio transmitters connected to them via optic fiber. That cancels out almost all your EM interference. The R&D comment was about what you do if you don't have these technologies completely lined up; you develop them, because they will save you tons of energy.

You seem to have this weird belief that R&D will give perfect results instantly and for free if it would be appropriate to perform - so why does Earth today not have fusion reactors?

It means that gambling that the technology does not advance gets riskier and riskier as time goes on.

For about the seventh time, that does not mean that things spontaneously appear. Such items required a convergence of numerous technologies which were in many cases decades in development, if not longer.

The location is irrelevant to the odds of whether the gamble will pay off. You're gambling astronomical amounts of energy on the assumption that technology will not advance in the wrong way. If it does, the price of unobtanium plummets and you've lost everything. Accepting that gamble is not good business sense.

Great way to ifnore what I actually said. Here's it rephrased in a form you should be able to understand:
1. Earth's system's resources will not last forever even with your nanotechnology fantasy
2. If humanity wants to keep growing, eventually it will run out of room
3. Based on 1 and 2, human expansion is inevitable if the conditions for 2 are met.
4. It does not matter what specific resources are there so much as that something useful is, and on a habitable world at that. A probe was even sent there on no other information than that it was potentially a habitable world.

Clear enough now?

And you'll find that the resources in the solar system will quite easily last long enough for the Sun to expand and destroy the inner planets. They just need to be exploited properly, which the RDA don't have the technology to do circa 2154.

...then they look for ones that are easier to do so with, which was the entire point.

Rent out O'Neil cylinders.

WTF does that have to do with 'better uses for energy' past getting to/from them?

...It'll be reachable if and only if it's cheaper.

But it is not currently reachable, which is the entire point.

If it's conceivable that ti could happen, it's not good business to send an ISV.

It's not good business to sit there without any (including the samples needed for your synthesis fantasy to be developed) waiting for 60+ years for it to become possible either, when all that time, an increasing amount could be in place and generating profit without subsequent fixed costs - so the earlier it is started, the higher profit is in the long term, and, as you conveniently convince yourself otherwise, even if synthesis did become possible, it does not suddenly destroy all ISVs, which should be used for exploration of other, further systems even. They are also a long term investment - you're thinking too short term again.

There's still an upper limit somewhere, probably limited by current more than B-field.

Yet based on current understanding, there's absolutely no indication of what it might be. 100T is over twice the strength of the highest sustained magnetic field that can currently be generated.

If the amount of infrastructure is growing, then you're pumping money into it. Obviously you're savings increase if your investment increases.

Exactly. Now you're stating the obvious, and actually backing up both points at once.

Then wait for it to be an option. You might have to invest trillions of dollars in research, but you will save 6 orders of magnitude for every penny you spend thereafter.

...and what happens if it proves impossible for long enough that those trillions cause a complete lack of funding in other areas?