--- Log opened Wed Apr 20 00:00:00 2022
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06:34 < docl> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fission-fragment_rocket
06:35 < docl> "The efficiency of the system is surprising; specific impulses of greater than 100,000s are possible using existing materials. This is high performance, although the weight of the reactor core and other elements would make the overall performance of the fission-fragment system lower. Nonetheless, the system provides the sort of performance levels that would make an interstellar precursor mission 
06:35 < docl> possible."
06:50 < lsneff> Fission rockets always creep me out
06:51 < lsneff> But they sure are a lot simpler than fusion rockets
06:51 < lsneff> I’d love to see more research into antimatter catalyzed fusion
06:54 < docl> gotta wonder how dirty that exhaust is... might not be very safe to use a fission fragment rocket to launch from Earth, from a pollution standpoint
06:54 < superkuh> A fission fragment rocket doesn't have the thrust to lift to orbit. It's purely for in-space acceleration.
06:57 < lsneff> AFAIK, the only plausible high-efficiency engine that could have a twr > 1 is Orion 
07:01 < docl> space only would be my null hypothesis, but I'm not sure whether it applies to every concievable design
07:03 < lsneff> Sure
07:03 < lsneff> When we reach that point, surface to orbit is probably best served by orbital rings anyhow
07:03 < docl> hmm. say you have a stream of tiny rockets and launch them straight up along the path of a neutron beam
07:05 < docl> they could be fairly low mass relative to typical reactors, since the neutron source is external
07:08 < lsneff> I imagine focused neutron beams are pretty difficult to make
07:08 < docl> not specific to the tiny rockets idea, come to think of it. it's just a variant on beamed propulsion, albeit with the beam being a catalyst instead of primary energy source
07:09 < lsneff> It is a good idea
07:11 < docl> seems like you can use a long tube with one end stuck in a reactor, only the ones moving straight will make it to the end
07:23 < docl> I'm thinking neutron beam scattering might be too much for it to work in an atmosphere over much range. otherwise neutron beam weaponry would be something we've heard about (would be pretty terrifying)
08:04 < lsneff> Since that doesn’t involve collimation, I think you’d get an Infinitesimal beam intensity at distances due to the inverse square level
08:04 < lsneff> *law
08:19 < docl> it should collimate, since any neutrons moving laterally hit the wall of the tube
09:13 < lsneff> The intensity would asymptotically approach zero
09:14 < lsneff> Still governed by inverse square law
09:51 < docl> technically no laser is perfectly collimated
09:51 < docl> a perfectly collimated light source would be like seeing an infinitely bright star at an infinite distance, i.e. a point source
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10:22 < muurkha> maaku: Adam Smith was mostly describing a free market, not capitalism.  the term "capitalism" didn't exist yet and the capitalist mode of production was only a tiny fraction of the economy in Smith's time
10:25 < muurkha> I mean there was some wage labor but mostly in the form of "the owner and his helpers" or "the master and his apprentices"
10:31 < maaku> muurkha: I think we're talking past each other / using different definitions.
10:31 < maaku> probably off-topic for this channel though
10:34 < muurkha> probably, yeah
10:35 < muurkha> the definition of capitalism is a little fuzzy because people do use different definitions; the introductory section of https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism has a reasonable definition
10:35 < maaku> lsneff: fusion torch drives could certainly achieve twr>1, no?
10:37 < maaku> I guess it depends on scaling limits
10:37 < muurkha> I thought torch drives were matter/antimatter?  which is not known to be feasible?
10:38 < maaku> "torch drive" is a scifi term so I guess it could be anything, but I've understood it to be any high-thrust, high-ISP drive capable of long-duration use
10:39 < muurkha> definitions definitions
10:39 < maaku> muurkha: people tend to conflate capitalism (private ownership of the means of production) with the implications/downstream effects that come from that
10:40 < lsneff> From what I’ve read, it’s definitely possible to have a pulsed fusion torch with a twr > 1, but probably wouldn’t work in atmo 
10:40 < lsneff> If it did work in atmo, you’d get a lot more thrust though (but lower efficiency)
10:40 < muurkha> anyway I was wrong: http://www.projectrho.com/public_html/rocket/torchships.php
10:40 < maaku> like, wage slavery is not capitalism. but it's what you get when the means of production are monopolized by rent-seekers
10:41 < muurkha> maaku: "private ownership of the means of production" is not an adequate definition of capitalism, which is why the introductory paragraph of that article is three sentences long
10:41 < muurkha> with fuzzy words like "Central characteristics of capitalism include"
10:43 < maaku> lsneff: yeah I vaguely recall reading about fusion spaceship designs that could be built on Earth and launch to orbit empty, then achieve 0.25-0.5 G thrust when fully provisioned
10:43 < muurkha> probably Marx was the person most responsible for describing capitalism as an economic system (and for the idea that discrete, different economic systems exist in the first place) and as I understand it he saw wage labor as its most defining characteristic
10:43 < maaku> of course these all invovle drawing a black box around the fusion engine, writing "magic happens here" and making up a number for the weight
10:44 < muurkha> though he didn't use either the term "capitalism" or the term "wage slavery" 
10:44 < maaku> muurkha: the second two sentences don't contribute anything to the definition. those are implications not the basic prinincple
10:45 < muurkha> I don't think that's true at all
10:45 < muurkha> it's not *any* economic system based on the private ownership of the means of production; that would include things like feudalism, which is a central example of the category of things that aren't capitalism
10:46 < muurkha> hmm, could you use a Farnsworth fusor as a very low thrust fusion engine and still get a high specific impulse?
10:47 < maaku> alright well my position argued above is this: if you start with (1) everyone is a rational (profit-seeking) actor, and (2) means of production are owned by some of those actors, and (3) no other rules which hinder free exchange, then all of what we recognize as capitalism follows from that
10:47 < docl> henry george had a theory (well, it was really more ricardo's idea) that land rent plays a significant role in keeping part of the population impoverished despite progress. land isn't quite the same thing as capital
10:48 < maaku> that's basically all I was saying yesterday
10:48 < muurkha> like, surround the fusor with a foil with a hole in the direction you want your exhaust to go, and put an additional couple of grids in it that electrostatically captures any stray charged particles that aren't spewing out at a significant fraction of c
10:48 < maaku> I'm not making a statement about whether this is morally justified or not, whether this results in the best societies or not, or whether we should have capitalist-owned means of production, etc.
10:49 < muurkha> maaku: I think that often in those cases you end up with monopolists or monopsonists destroying the free market
10:49 < maaku> just observing that capitalism is a local theory (in the physics or biological sense of locality) about the emergent behavior of economic actors given a starting condition of private property and free exchange
10:50 < muurkha> I don't think that's true; it describes some of the consequences that can result from those initial conditions but excludes others
10:51 < maaku> docl: I'm probably the biggest Georgist here. land definitately isn't the capital, and neither is money either (as Silvio Gesell pointed out)
10:51 < muurkha> gift economies are another central example of the category of things that aren't capitalism, and they can also result from those conditions: people choose the recipients of their gifts in a tit-for-tat way
10:52 < docl> maaku: high five, fellow georgist :)
10:52 < muurkha> yeah, George's analysis is based on the classical division of the factors of production into land, labor, and capital
10:53 < muurkha> some economists today suggest that energy and/or information merit recognition on an equal footing with those
10:53 < docl> my econ professor divided it 4 ways: labor, land, capital, and entrepreneurship
10:53 < muurkha> heh
10:53 < muurkha> that's a new one on me
10:53 < maaku> that's how it was taught at my university too.
10:53 < maaku> i think it's bs, but that seems to be a common way to teach econ 101
10:54 < docl> kinda makes sense that raw coordinating power has to fit somewhere even if it's sort of a labor subcategory
10:56 < docl> I guess the classical representation would be energy as land, sort of
10:57 < muurkha> right
10:57 < muurkha> and information as labor, usually
10:58 < docl> these days data seems a bit more capital-ish. but then, capital is just automated labor anyway right?
10:59 < muurkha> I don't think so
11:00 < muurkha> capital includes barns, hand axes, and pottery kilns
11:00 < docl> would self replicating robot factories count as labor or capital?
11:00 < muurkha> capital, I think, sort of; but they'd eliminate the scarcity of capital as a factor of production
11:01 < muurkha> pottery kilns aren't automated labor because you can't fire pottery without one no matter how hard you rub it by hand
11:01 < muurkha> you have to build some sort of kiln, even if it's just a pit
11:02 < muurkha> similarly you can't cut down a tree by hand or shelter cows from a snowstorm by hand
11:04 < docl> maybe it's labor that's a subcategory of capital then? if you had the right biology you could do those things, but we only categorize as labor the things that baseline humans can do
11:07 < muurkha> the labor/capital distinction is surely contingent on biological facts, yes
11:08 < muurkha> herders count their cattle as capital; brewers don't count their yeast because it's not scarce
11:09 < maaku> docl: raw coordinating power is just part of the 'people are rational actors' part imho. not a separate capability
11:09 < maaku> what the entrepreneurship thing ignores is the reason why most people don't innovate: entrenched rentiers and regulatory capture
11:11 < muurkha> those are definitely important reasons
11:40 < docl> hmm. most jobs could be done by independent contractors, but we have this employee/employer thing instead. not sure it's really a regulatory thing
11:49 < docl> if anything, independent contractor means less regulated... we seem to usually gravitate to employee status because there's a more of a cookie-cutter approach / less independent planning needed. I think there might be a combinatorial complexity kind of reason for this, and maybe some stag hunt type game theory. like, it's easier to gain conformity where that's demanded (and it is demanded, for a lot of 
11:49 < docl> stuff) where there's a clear hierarchy of boss / employee
11:50 < docl> ("we" as in most humans, not necessarily representative of people here)
11:54 < muurkha> docl: you will probably enjoy reading about The Nature of the Firm
11:54 < muurkha> which is where the concept of "transaction costs" arose
11:56 < docl> thanks, haven't read it
11:57 < docl> although I've heard of the coase theorum
11:57 < docl> http://www3.nccu.edu.tw/~jsfeng/CPEC11.pdf
11:58 < muurkha> it's particularly relevant to the contradiction between free markets and the capitalist form of production (as described in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capitalism#As_a_mode_of_production)
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13:11 < TMA> docl: as an employee, you do not generally want to become a contractor. basically your negotiation power is not good enough to forgo the weight of regulatory backing you have as an employee (in .cz it is pros: 4 weeks paid vacations, 2 months notice cons: heftier social security "insurance"/tax, no deductible expenses)
13:13 < TMA> docl: also, the reporting requirements are more onerous for the contractor
13:17 < TMA> muurkha: I see capital as something that is not destroyed by extracting value from it. (milk/dairy from cattle, meat (the herd remains and it is able to reproduce and replenish itself)) labor is spent and nothing remains; a servant/slave/employee is therefore a form oof capital; their output is labor
13:18 < muurkha> TMA: that's an interesting way to analyze the situation.  be aware that all such models are somewhat arbitrary, and their main benefit is providing a common language in which to communicate with other people
13:25 < TMA> muurkha: it fits well with the common usage in my opinion; it just suggests a different way to look at the otherwise somewhat arbitrary division; in modern terms it is not the (wage-)slave, it is the _contract_ that is the capital. (and that's why employment contracts can be transferred in a corporate action, because they have this capitalship characteristic, they are really a form of property)
13:28 < muurkha> interesting perspective
13:29 < TMA> muurkha: ad "similarly you can't cut down a tree by hand or shelter cows from a snowstorm by hand" sure you can, it just takes more intermediate steps (like: find two stones with certain properties, mash them together about right, use the sharp chips to chop down the tree.)
13:31 < TMA> with enough logs obtained in the process above, just pile them up in a certain fashion and you have a shelter :) [gross oversimplification]
13:31 < muurkha> that's precisely the process of capital accumulation though
13:32 < muurkha> you use labor, land, and possibly capital to create more capital
13:32 < TMA> exactly. but in a sense, the only input you gave is the labor
13:32 < muurkha> right, because you're looking at it from the laborer's perspective
13:33 < muurkha> the landowner's perspective is that all he provided was the land
13:33 < muurkha> or, seen differently, not killing the laborer when the laborer started cutting trees
13:33 < TMA> so in this perspective, you can cut down a tree with only some amount of labor...
13:34 < muurkha> yes, if you first invest some of the labor in accumulating capital, and you also have the land
13:34 < TMA> yes. but even the landowner needs some labor to have the tree felled.
13:35 < docl> technically the laborer is made up of mass which is energy which is "land"
13:35 < TMA> even in the "future" they need to perform the labor of saying 
13:35 < TMA> "computer, cut down that tree"
13:36 < muurkha> right.  so cutting down a tree is a good microcosm of a productive process where you need all three of those factors
13:36 < muurkha> you probably also need energy, perhaps in the form of food, which is sometimes distinguished from the land it grew on
13:36 < muurkha> and knowledge so the tree doesn't squish you
13:37 < TMA> yep. tree (==land) tool (==capital) energy expenditure (==labor)
13:38 < muurkha> labor is often distinguished from energy expenditure because even an esports gamer tapping buttons on a D-pad is engaged in "labor"
13:38 < muurkha> however little energy she may be expending
13:38 < muurkha> it's more traditional to identify the energy, as docl says, with the land
13:39 < muurkha> since you can get energy by digging up coal or allowing corn to grow in the sun
13:41 < TMA> well, in a sense there is a yellow star nearby that does expend some energy by which process the corn can get those fotons to cause the RuBisCo protein to assemble glucosis from water and carbon dioxide...
13:41 < TMA> so the Sun does the laboring
13:43 < docl> or heavenly bodies are land and we just gain the energy benefit from our location
13:47 < TMA> mass is a dense energy anyway, the conversion formula looks like ªcmE backwards :) 
14:06 < muurkha> that's where Wile E. Coyote gets his high-energy-density materials
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16:15 < fenn> docl: if you're considering external neutron sources to reduce the mass of a fission reactor, well, don't. reactors can be built with large quantities of neutron emitting isotopes inside already, but they usually aren't made that way for safety. with a deep space propulsion system, if it blows up you've just lost the mission; there's not a big cleanup afterward. the numbers for KRUSTY and other
16:16 < fenn> kilopower conecpts are really bad because they are not using highly enriched uranium or any neutron emitting initiators
16:22 < fenn> where does "IP" or other information stuff fit into this model
16:24 < fenn> it's an increasingly large fraction of the economy
16:31 < muurkha> which model
16:31 < fenn> the mainstream definition of capitalism model
16:32 < fenn> "how it's taught in economics 101"
16:32 < muurkha> there's a few different points of view on it
16:32 < muurkha> but it certainly wasn't a significant concern of Marx's when he was first formulating the concept
16:38 < muurkha> you can analyze IP as government-granted monopolies, as a new kind of land, or as capital goods (the means of production, in Marx's terms)
16:39 < muurkha> but more broadly nobody has a good account in that framework of how knowledge is produced and reproduced and how it affects the other factors' productivity
16:39 < fenn> lots of economically relevant information is not due to government granted monopolies, for example brand value, market research data, CAD designs, trade secrets, employee skills (so called "human capital")
16:39 < muurkha> Shapiro and Varian's book is maybe the closest thing
16:40 < muurkha> yeah
16:40 < fenn> these things were created so they aren't "land" at all
16:42 < muurkha> not conventionally, but there's a lot of land in the Netherlands that was created
16:42 < fenn> most of them can't be "moved" to a different company since they simply aren't relevant to the other company's processes or business, so i have a hard time imagining it as "capital"
16:42 < muurkha> factories can't either
16:42 < muurkha> but they're uncontroversially capital
16:43 < muurkha> brand value is actually information other people have about you, similar to a credit rating
16:43 < fenn> i guess brands do get bought and sold now, for shame
16:43 < muurkha> a surprisingly large amount of the land created by human hands in the Netherlands was, incidentally, created by joint-stock companies starting in the 16th century
16:45 < muurkha> would weather control good enough to irrigate the Sahara count as "creating land"?
16:45 < fenn> no
16:46 < fenn> space colonies are basically capital
16:46 < maaku> fenn: this is somewhat of a georgist argument not econ 101,  but "land" in economic terms are things which exist that can be exclusively owned and rented
16:46 < maaku> IP fits that definition of land..
16:46 < maaku> you can make more of it, but it is non-fungible
16:46 < fenn> ok
16:46 < muurkha> maaku: that definition of "land" also covers lathes, so it must be wrong
16:46 < fenn> lathes are fungible
16:47 < maaku> muurkha: the non-fungible part should have been in my first sentence
16:47 < muurkha> lathes are only somewhat fungible
16:47 < maaku> land is things you can't make more of
16:48 < muurkha> how about an O'Neill cylinder?
16:48 < maaku> you can make more cartoon characters, but you can't make more Micky Mouse
16:48 < muurkha> fenn says it's basically capital
16:48 < muurkha> right
16:48 < maaku> the oribit it resides in is land. the structure itself is improvements on that land, like a building
16:49 < muurkha> cornfields in Iowa are pretty fungible, while NOS Burroughs Nixie tubes are, though fairly fungible, not manufacturable
16:49 < fenn> i look forward to the day when we're running out of orbits :)
16:50 < maaku> fenn: i know what you mean, but we already are with respect to GEO orbits
16:50 < maaku> although that has more to do with communication standards than actual physical space
16:50 < muurkha> GEO orbits really are sort of land-like
16:51 < fenn> GEO is full of tiny little boxes that could easily be upgraded
16:51 < fenn> i could see a situation where GEO squatters impede progress
16:51 < muurkha> other orbits don't seem very land-like to me
16:51 < maaku> muurkha: any orbit would be land-like if it were so congested that access had to be regulated
16:52 < muurkha> not just because orbital parameters form a six-dimensional space, that's kind of a detail, but because every orbit collides with a huge number of other orbits, not just one
16:52 < maaku> GEO orbits are the only ones which meet that criteria now.  Space is big so it's kinda hard to imagine other places being physically congested.
16:52 < fenn> SSO has limited slots, ISS's orbit excludes other stuff due to safety. low altitude polar orbits are starting to get congested
16:52 < maaku> But megaconstellations in LEO are approaching that threshold
16:53 < muurkha> exponential growth will get us there within decades
16:54 < maaku> muurkha: there will soon be regulations regarding orbit ownership. managing figuring that out is part of the space force mission
16:54 < fenn> nobody ever asked *me* about any of this
16:55 < maaku> yes orbits collide with other orbits, but we can figure out paticular altitudes and inclinations that are useful, break them up into different orbit segments with relatively prime resonances, etc.
16:55 < muurkha> maaku: that's just the US though, and though they're maybe ahead at the moment due to SpaceX, they're not really in any position to impose their will on Mercury or the asteroid belt
16:55 < fenn> the artemis accords pretty much just came out of the blue with no previous public discussion
16:56 < maaku> muurkha: time will tell...
16:57 < maaku> artemis accords are laying the foundaiton for governments to protect space-based and international commerce
16:57 < fenn> i think it's laying the foundation for governments to claim space-based land, under the pretense of 'safety zones'
16:57 < maaku> there's a lot to figure out of course, but the idea is the space force of your country (Japan, France, and others are standing up equivalent bodies) is responsible for protecting assets registered to that nation
16:59 < maaku> and that would naturally extend to making international agreements about orbits & controlled spaces, then enforcing them
16:59 < muurkha> it'll be interesting to see how that will shake out
16:59 < maaku> the US has a distinct legal advantage due to ITAR and a head start here, but no doubt there will be other space force entities protecting commerce out there
17:00 < muurkha> ITAR is as much a disadvantage as an advantage
17:01 < muurkha> ITAR means that if you want to do spacy things, you have to do them meticulously outside the poisonous US, or the US owns your ass and you can't sell to anyone else without special permission
17:02 < fenn> it makes sense from the perspective of a government that's funding most of the research and development
17:02 < muurkha> so there are lots of people doing spacy things in Canada, Switzerland, Argentina, China, Russia, etc., being careful to avoid any US involvement
17:02 < muurkha> it makes sense from the perspective of 01975
17:02 < fenn> well there are still relatively few ICBM capable states, so that's something i guess
17:03 < fenn> personally i wouldn't have made that tradeoff
17:05 < maaku> I guess it makes some sense for dual-use stuff like rockets and hypersonic entry material
17:05 < maaku> But what's really annoying is basically anything related to spacecraft construction is also ITAR controlled
17:05 < muurkha> when I was at Satellogic we got launches from Russia and China.  we couldn't consider US launches
17:05 < muurkha> and lots of other companies are faced with the same tradeoff
17:06 < fenn> yeah payloads shouldn't be covered by ITAR
17:06 < fenn> IMHO
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