New plans for the future eras

[Joij21]

I don't think this is real. Why would Podesta be linked with NASA? But if it is it sounds like the guy is just telling some sort of sarcastic joke to him and not really being serious. After all most of the e-mail is a bunch of links regarding the topic of space warfare to inform him. The zero point energy thing is just mentioned in one sentence almost sarcastically at the beginning and then again at the end from the astronaut referring to himself as the "zero point energy consultant".

 

[Thunderbrd]

I don't think this is real. Why would Podesta be linked with NASA? But if it is it sounds like the guy is just telling some sort of sarcastic joke to him and not really being serious. After all most of the e-mail is a bunch of links regarding the topic of space warfare to inform him. The zero point energy thing is just mentioned in one sentence almost sarcastically at the beginning and then again at the end from the astronaut referring to himself as the "zero point energy consultant".

This is only one of the emails mentioning this. There were more. If you look into the person saying it you will see it would not be a topic for sarcasm. Podesta was Hillarys campaign manager and was thick into the highest levels of political insider knowledge. Hillary was openly stating how she wanted to finally divulge publically what the gov knows about our dealings with ufos and aliens. Bill said he wanted that on a saturday and the following monday we had the news of Monica Lewinski and that drowned out the whole thing. This was never suspected to become public so was spoken as an understood matter... a reminder.

Trump keeps pushing for a space force for a reason. If you are planning war anyhow forget about any cause to uphold the treaty banning weapons deployment to space.

 

[Toffer90]

I respect Edgar Mitchell for his avocation that the US should sign the 2008 proposal from China and Russia that would ban weapons in space outright, and for his general wish for a more peaceful humanity.
On the other hand I find him eccentric and unreliable as a source on some of these fringe matters, he believed in remote healing, claiming a 21 year old in Vancouver had cured him of cancer.
He had a religious experience while in space about how everything is connected, he later built on that idea with quantum mechanic theory like the quantum entanglement phenomena, he claimed it like a fact that parents can know when something bad has happened to their child without any reason to suspect it, and that this intuition should not be called a sixths sense, but rather the first as it is more fundamental to reality than our other senses are. I suspect this idea took on a life of its own for Mitchell where it self re-enforced into a belief, a belief based on assumptions that he may very well have used as basis for new assumptions afterwards.

It is obvious that he was convinced that aliens would grant us knowledge if we can prove that we are worthy, and that governments have covered up all knowledge of extraterrestrial interaction. (I believe these are assumptions he's drawed out of his belief, assumptions that would make his belief make more sense)
He reached out a lot to podesta over many e-mails and kept mentioning ZPE, why does he mention ZPE specifically, perhaps he use it symbolically to represent any knowledge the aliens may provide us as ZPE is a sort of scientific legend or holy grail. From what I understand Podesta never accepted to meet, or hold the skype conference that Mitchell wanted, and those leaked e-mails show a one sided conversation where one is claiming a lot and the other is probably not taking it entirely seriously and playing along polity. It was well known that Podesta wanted the US government to disclose more to the public while running Clinton's campaign, and was probably the reason why Mitchell reached out to him, though Podesta didn't claim the US government was actually keeping back info about exteraterrestial intelligence, but rather that the US in general was keeping too much from the american public.
In some of Mitchells mails he talked about his catholic colleges Terry Mansfeld, and Suzanne Mendelssohn;

Spoiler who are this kind of religious zealots :

They are the highest form of intelligence working directly with God.
Their purpose is to assist us humans who are eager to bring powerful, safe, clean, cheap, sustainable, ubiquitous, infinite ZERO POINT ENERGY application as THE energy source to our viable Earth. This ZPE energy is centered on the Tau neutrino.
When ETI want to make themselves known, they do so with specific colors, sound, touch, scent, taste and manipulation of matter. Examples abound. They frequently turn on lights in our homes when they want our attention. ETI want only what is best for humanity to evolve spiritually, demand obedience given by free will choice, respond with compassion and / or justice, when required.

When I consider the kind of company Mitchell held I have to reevaluate my respect for him slightly, maybe he was becoming a bit soft in the head from old age at the end, though he seemed lucid enough in interviews made shortly before his demise.

Those leaked e-mails are somewhat interesting, though all in all the context of them are vague, what earlier conversations or inside understanding may we have missed between sender and recipient that may cloud the meaning of what is said here, do they talk in code once in a while or is everything plainly spoken. We should be careful to make assumption about the recipient based on what the sender is writing too.

The US has been in perpetual war for 20 years soon, so any hope of gaining the aliens favour is quite slim. lol. ^^

 

[Yudishtira]

Even if the whole story is true:
Firstly I don't think ZPE sounds anything like free energy - I think solar, wind, tidal, geothermal etc. are probably cheaper as well as not relying on manipulative and condescending aliens.

Secondly these aliens so far have given us the same as that Nigerian prince has. Namely nothing, and they seem to be asking a lot in advance for their future "free gift".

Personally I'd say thanks but no thanks.

 

[Thunderbrd]

The US has been in perpetual war for 20 years soon, so any hope of gaining the aliens favour is quite slim. lol

Yeah that was one part that did get me... like... we haven't disqualified ourselves already here? Jeez... talk about tolerant.

I have a feeling there is something to his stance, something we could easily discount that has some reality to it, but it's hard to say exactly what and how it all actually fits. He wouldn't be the first to be contacted and made an 'ambassador' and being an astronaut, it sounds fairly plausible to see why he'd be selected as such. Further, those guys are usually pretty well psych vetted before they go, and he's NOT the only astronaut who has some things he'd like to say about the subject, some of them just hinting that they have a lot they want to say but can't. That said, could he simply be nuts? Sure. And yes, there were aspects of those emails that indeed sounded a bit one sided and less fully engaged than one might expect if it was something actually on an agenda level discussion.

Firstly I don't think ZPE sounds anything like free energy - I think solar, wind, tidal, geothermal etc. are probably cheaper as well as not relying on manipulative and condescending aliens.

I've believed in this before it was ever something I heard about. If 0=infinity, then you could potentially really wire into a void, if you knew how, and blam, have as much energy as you can possibly tap for whatever purpose you want. It violates the whole idea that energy cannot be created nor destroyed and suggests that it actually can, both ways, just not through any means we've yet observed and not through any common natural occurrence. If we found a way to do that, no amount of alternative energy source to derive energy from already existing sources would even begin to compare - we could have all the energy we'd ever want to create matter itself.

One does have to remain suspect of any alien interactions though. Talk about hard to gauge motives, huh? There's no way they could present themselves that would put them above suspicion. But much of that is due to how we understand ourselves to be and that...is quite a statement in itself. A society that DOES have access to limitless energy/matter of its creation would have no need to conquer. It could be universally seen as the true key to peace.

 

[Faustmouse]

Just Because energy is free, it does not mean it is easy to get. Think about solar as comparison. It is virtually free, but you need to construct solar panels first. The sun delivers easily enough energy for us to meet all our needs, and we have enough space in the deserts to build up a giant solar power plant to harness this energy. Yet we didn't. I expect ZPE, if it can be harnessed in any meaningful way, to be even more expensive to build up the required hardware, therefore it might not even be I economically attractive.

 

[pepper2000]

Going back to @Yudishtira on Venus Colony, the rationale is that the first generation of Venus colonies float above the clouds. See this article (among many others) that detail the concept.

https://medium.com/our-space/a-colony-on-venus-994182f3ea41

While less known to the public that the prospect of colonizing Mars, there are rationales to going to Venus first and I think it should be of comparable difficulty. Since I'm not actively modding, I would defer to the wishes of those who are, but I just don't see the rationale of moving Venus colonies later. There really isn't any technology required that we can't engineer today; as with many other things, the main barriers are cost and logistics.

Cities on the surface of Venus are not available until Abyss Colonization in the Transhuman Era, and terraforming in the Galactic Era.

EDIT:

It now occurs to me that maybe there is a rationale to moving colonization of Venus a bit later. Right now there are many fewer buildings available on Venus than other major space zones except Titan, and so to cut down on long periods where Venus cities are sitting there with nothing to build, compressing the Venus building trees would help alleviate the problem. I would insist that we stick with the pattern of floating cities coming first, and surface cities later. One could further argue that Cislunar Space, the Moon, and Mars already become available in fairly rapid succession at the start of the Nanotech Era, so moving the earliest Venus stuff might be better from a pacing perspective.

One rule I tried to keep was to insure that every tech has at least three new pieces of content that become available at it. Rearranging content like this would probably break the rule, though I'm not sure if anyone other than me really cares.

 

[Yudishtira]

One rule I tried to keep was to insure that every tech has at least three new pieces of content that become available at it. Rearranging content like this would probably break the rule, though I'm not sure if anyone other than me really cares.

FWIW I strongly feel a 'cisplanetary' space station/colony has got to be a different tech from a rocky-surface colony. For more content, there are near-Earth asteroid bases and maybe even colonizable comets that would use the 'same' technology as Mars.

That said, my suggested placement assumes you will be dealing with the atmosphere, heat and pressure by genetic modification (frankly I was impatient for a tech that could maybe handle it somehow and so settled for that one). The space station colony could come quite a bit earlier, maybe even before Mars as you say, since its closer.

ETA: Your article (confess I only skimmed it belatedly) is suggesting a floating colony in the atmosphere, which still has to deal with the sulphuric acid among other things. Above the atmosphere makes more sense for pre-Transhuman.

 

[raxo2222]

I've believed in this before it was ever something I heard about. If 0=infinity, then you could potentially really wire into a void, if you knew how, and blam, have as much energy as you can possibly tap for whatever purpose you want. It violates the whole idea that energy cannot be created nor destroyed and suggests that it actually can, both ways, just not through any means we've yet observed and not through any common natural occurrence. If we found a way to do that, no amount of alternative energy source to derive energy from already existing sources would even begin to compare - we could have all the energy we'd ever want to create matter itself.

Even if energy source itself is cheap and safe to use, you still need to take care of thermodynamics and logistics.
Also you can use only so much energy on given space if you don't want to melt surroundings.
If you would use it to create matter from energy, then waste heat would be way bigger problem. Also radioactive isotopes would be serious problem too.

By the way why they didn't go to Japan or Switzerland?
USA most of time was at war with something.

 

[pepper2000]

FWIW I strongly feel a 'cisplanetary' space station/colony has got to be a different tech from a rocky-surface colony. For more content, there are near-Earth asteroid bases and maybe even colonizable comets that would use the 'same' technology as Mars.

OK, I think you make a good argument. Somewhere earlier in the thread you said something about a new tech for atmospheric settlement, which might go mid- to late-Nanotech. I would support that.

What do you mean by 'cisplanetary'? Is that in the vacuum of space and not in orbit around Earth? That's what Deep Space Colonies are for. There is plenty of scope for debate about where exactly that should go. I initially had those at Orbital Megastructures, then decided that was too late and made a separate Deep Space Colonies tech. That also fits into the pattern I like of each new future era opening up with a new colonization zone. Technically they could come earlier, but I think that would mess up the pacing. Then there's Kuiper Belt Exploration, which is a catch-all for settlement of outer solar system moons (except Titan) and asteroids.

Economics are another matter to consider. There is a difference between when we can technically do something and when there is an economic justification for doing so. Personally I think that space settlement is going to occur much more slowly that many futurists (and the C2C tech tree) would suggest because the economic rationale simply isn't there yet. But I would object to moving space settlement in general to be later in the tech tree on these grounds because expanding into space is such an important part of how the future eras should ultimately play. Anyway, Deep Space Colonies is where it is because I think it will be necessary to have a thriving cislunar economy (not just a few space stations) for major further expansion to make sense.

Thanks for thinking about these issues. It's probably impossible to simultaneously get good gameplay flow and technical realism right, but I do think there is scope for improvement.

 

[Yudishtira]

Cisplanetary in the current context is used to mean orbiting Venus but outside the atmosphere. Different from Deep Space Colonies, which I have no problem with.

Yeah I think I said Exoatmospheric Colonies. Colonies in Venus' atmosphere I suggest are roughly as challenging as ones in Jupiter's.

 

[Thunderbrd]

By the way why they didn't go to Japan or Switzerland?
USA most of time was at war with something.

I suspect for a species outside of Earth, we're very primitive to not be united as one nation here. So they refuse to actually give us anything until we are. And we've gotta do it without massive warfare.

As for all the other matters about ZPE, sure like any energy the transmission of it, managing of it when you have it, the construction of how to get it, all of that would have to be also efficient and effective technology as well to make it worthwhile. Generation of energy is a small part of the issue.

 

[Toffer90]

Some of what's discussed here made me want to check out the "Ancient Aliens" show that I had randomly seen 1 or 2 episodes of several years ago on a typical boring/brainless tv night.

So I watched the first two seasons chronologically (about 20 hours), before feeling the need to write down a small review which I named ****oo's Nest:

Spoiler review :

Ancient Astronaut theorists, aka: One Flew Over the ****oo's Nest.
Laughter inducing, and incredibly gullible loonies who's thought process is dominated by flawed logic.

They are convinced that ancient humans were incapable of describing abstracts in their arts and stories; that fantasy, metaphors, and abstractions of reality is a modern invention.
Their main argument for this theory is that ancient humans were not stupid, and that this means that they always described historical facts in all art and writing (indirectly saying stupidity was developed later through evolution).
One has to wonder if they have Asperger syndrome when they are unable to interpret ancient artifacts as something with an abstract inspiration and/or meaning. (no offense intended to anyone with said syndrome, as I understand it one with it can be quite wise about how regular folks think, though the guys in this tv-show are apparently not wise whatever it is that may explain their mindsets)

After doing that I watched the third season just because I found the show funny in a non-flattering way.
Throughout the show one is fed one tall story/claim after another and every time they said "there can be no other explanation" while I as a viewer sat with multiple plausible explanations and questions that I felt they should address or look deeper into.
e.g. they never base their assessments of what they interpret out of ancient writings or artifacts on an actual investigation into the culture in question, the show seems consistently ignorant that there even is a culture to analyse behind the text and artifact.

During some episodes I googled stuff I was curious about like Sumerian translations, specific ruins, and the general mysteries, and I usually found stuff that directly contradicted what was presented.

Two days ago I thought stuff like this can't exist without some kind of counter response existing, that there must exist some documentary or scholarly work that directly address/contradicts or even weakens the claims presented in this show.
And then I found this (see link), which I feel should be shared here as I know there are some around here that takes this show, and its theory, somewhat more seriously than they should.
▬ LINK ▬
This documentary is well made and meticulously counters key stuff presented in "ancient aliens" while providing good source references throughout each topic.
It goes a bit religious at the end, nothing extreme, though that's ok imo considering the 2 hours of strong rationality preceding it.

I recommend anyone to watch it even if they haven't seen the "Ancient Alien" show aired on the history channel, it provides insight into a modern phenomena that could pop up in discussions from time to time in anyone's life, and hopefully someone will be around to counter at least the silliest claims and notions of this kind that floats about.
I especially recommend it to anyone who gets overly exited about what they've seen on the Ancient Alien show.

 

[Thunderbrd]

Some of what's discussed here made me want to check out the "Ancient Aliens" show that I had randomly seen 1 or 2 episodes of several years ago on a typical boring/brainless tv night.

So I watched the first two seasons chronologically (about 20 hours), before feeling the need to write down a small review which I named ****oo's Nest:

Spoiler review :

Ancient Astronaut theorists, aka: One Flew Over the ****oo's Nest.
Laughter inducing, and incredibly gullible loonies who's thought process is dominated by flawed logic.

They are convinced that ancient humans were incapable of describing abstracts in their arts and stories; that fantasy, metaphors, and abstractions of reality is a modern invention.
Their main argument for this theory is that ancient humans were not stupid, and that this means that they always described historical facts in all art and writing (indirectly saying stupidity was developed later through evolution).
One has to wonder if they have Asperger syndrome when they are unable to interpret ancient artifacts as something with an abstract inspiration and/or meaning. (no offense intended to anyone with said syndrome, as I understand it one can be quite wise about how regular folks think with it, though the guys in this tv-show are probably not wise whatever it is that may explain their mindsets)

After doing that I watched the third season just because I found the show funny in a non-flattering way.
Throughout the show one is fed one tall story/claim after another and every time they said "there can be no other explanation" while I as a viewer sat with multiple plausible explanations and questions that I felt they should address or look deeper into.
e.g. they never base their assessments of what they interpret out of ancient writings or artifacts on an actual investigation into the culture in question, the show seems consistently ignorant that there even is a culture to analyse behind the text and artifact.

During some episodes I googled stuff I was curious about like Sumerian translations, specific ruins, and the general mysteries, and I usually found stuff that directly contradicted what was presented.

Two days ago I thought stuff like this can't exist without some kind of counter response existing, that there must exist some documentary or scholarly work that directly address/contradicts or even weakens the claims presented in this show.
And then I found this (see link), which I feel should be shared here as I know there are some around here that takes this show, and its theory, somewhat more seriously than they should.
▬ LINK ▬
This documentary is well made and meticulously counters key stuff presented in "ancient aliens" while providing good source references throughout each topic.
It goes a bit religious at the end, nothing extreme, though that's ok imo considering the 2 hours of strong rationality preceding it.

I recommend anyone to watch it even if they haven't seen the "Ancient Alien" show aired on the history channel, it provides insight into a modern phenomena that could pop up in discussions from time to time in anyone's life, and hopefully someone will be around to counter at least the silliest claims and notions of this kind that floats about.
I especially recommend it to anyone who gets overly exited about what they've seen on the Ancient Alien show.

Just to clarify, I think the show is pretty much terrible. It is designed to specifically make a lot of its content come across as less believable rather than more. It's largely a coverup attempt to make some reasonable conclusions appear UN reasonable because the way they present it actually strips it of the validity that the core, unfragmented data presents. Just a perspective. They've made a few interesting points and that's about it but generally it's part of the problem rather than any kind of channel of truth.

Personally, I was reading and investigating into the subject long beforehand and feel that a wider more serious approach will find a great deal of evidence while discarding a lot of the obvious crap proposals that many AA researchers come up with. This show, sadly, embraces them all as if they all are valid, when clearly many are not. And for each one they embrace that is obvious crap, it insults the intelligence of the smarter viewer enough to invite it all to be thrown out. However... there are some babies in that bathwater.

EDIT: After reading everything he stated, I'm intrigued to learn some of his perspectives. I'm not trying to challenge them but he makes some of the same end conclusions I feel I see as well and yet then somehow ends on the whole theory being invalid where I suppose I feel there's stronger validation found in the things he cannot dismiss.

TBH, most of my AA views are formed from having some trust that the Bible is actually telling us one of the cleanest versions of the story. It is in some of its inconsistencies and little quirks in the telling that I find the most evidence. The archaeology is still coming together to show whatever it shows. This author, I feel, is just as guilty of presenting a 'side' to this story and is also avoiding certain subjects in preference of only speaking of what he can dismantle. Sure some of those things are easily broken down. And yes, a few he poses some good information on that I had not heard. It's always good to hear all sides.

I know when I did my own research into Chaco Canyon (and am returning later this year) and Mesa Verde, I realized some of the things stated in AA theory circles are total garbage. There's a few things that aren't though, and what it actually MEANS is still a little mysterious. But yeah, I get frustrated that anyone that wants to write anything on the subject, pro or con to the theory as a whole, seems to have a motive to pull the wool over the eyes of the reader more than anything and much is left questionable.