Former Director of the ISS Division At NASA Talks About Science Behind 'Elysium' 366
Nerval's Lobster writes "In the new movie 'Elysium,' Earth a century and a half from now is an overtaxed slum, low on niceties like clean water and riddled with crime and sickness. The ultra-rich have abandoned terra firma in favor of Elysium, an orbital space station where the champagne flows freely and the medical care is the best possible. Mark Uhran, former director of the International Space Station Division at NASA headquarters, talked with Slashdot about what it would take (and how much it would cost) to actually build a space station like that for civilians. It turns out NASA did a report way back in 1975 describing what it would take to build a Stanford torus space station like the one in the movie: rotation for artificial gravity, a separate shield for radiation and debris, the ability to mine materials from astroids or possibly the moon, and $190.8 billion in 1975 dollars (the equivalent of $828.11 billion today). Looks like the ultra-rich are stuck on Earth for the time being."
And still artificial gravity experiments languish.
5.4 Trillion Dollars. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:the idea behind the movie is dumb (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the movie is about exactly why this dystopian idea is dumb: people don't give up, especially when they have little to lose. The movie just shows the 'during', not the 'after'.
Re:Stuck?? (Score:5, Interesting)
Global private wealth is about $50 trillion. The top thousand could handle $800 billion without exhausting their resources.
The problem is the economic instability it would create, as so much of the world's production capacity is devoted to a vanity project useless to 99.99999% of the population. Plus there is the fact that wealth is only as real as everyone else believing it is yours. Something like this would spawn a global class war, and rightly so.
Re:the idea behind the movie is dumb (Score:2, Interesting)
big deal
its illegal to sing happy birthday to make money off it, when someone gets sued for singing it in their backyard or chuck e cheese, call me
water is dirty in the ground, costs money to clean it. clean water always cost money
go make your own character, people do it every day
people have been paying patent royalties for decades. nothing new is made in a vacuum. get over it. part of doing business. that's why we have standards based patent pools
lots of us old people did a lot of work over the years to get computing and tech to where it is today. if you want to profit off it, pay up or write your own OS and all the software from scratch
Re:who pays for maintenance? (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, the connection becomes more tenuous. They can be absentee landlords, which is a common theme in history. As long as their agents planetside are properly taken care of, it can work, sort of.
Of course in that situation there is a lot of corruption and waste, which might be why a society that can build a space station also has everyone else living in slums. The Absentee Landlords blast off, their overseers start skimming profits, or using force and their derived authority to over charge the peasants so that the landlords get their cut and the overseers get extra money.
It would probably look much like the Ferme générale in France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ferme_g%C3%A9n%C3%A9rale [wikipedia.org]
And like the Farm, it could well touch off a Revolution, although that is no bar to them trying to set that up anyway. Short term thinking and all that.
Re:who pays for maintenance? (Score:2, Interesting)
Man, this thought process just elludes me.
You and others seem to have this picture in your head, of Rich Uncle Moneybags, with mustache and top hat, being super wealthy and going out of his way to keep the poor man down...
I dunno where you get this. Most people I know that are rich or at least wealthy, do *NOT* have the time to take out of their busy day (often working and thinking of ways to make their money and grow their wealth) to get out there and put a jackboot on the throat of some poor person.
I get the same feeling when I hear some blacks out there complaining about the "white man keepin' us down". Really? I've never seen a white person, especially one who was going quite well for himself, even have the time to take off to put down some black guy...not even one of them.
Get over it. No one in the world really cares at ALL about you, certainly they don't care enough to go out of their way to put you down or keep you down.
Generally, the people at the top are waaaay too busy trying to be successful. The time and effort others use to clamor that they are being "kept down", is used by the successful to become....well, successful.
Re:who pays for maintenance? (Score:3, Interesting)
Why?
What you suggest would necessarily involve someone or something (the govt presumable) to constantly take from those more successful and give to those less successful, less talented and less motivated.
Otherwise, unless everyone lives at the same level, has the same level of eductation...how do you ensure equal footing starting life out?
If you pander to the lowest common denominator, well...you get to keep the world at a low, mediocre level. If you hold back those that are motivated to succeed and gather wealth, prestige, etc....and give it to those that don't have it, at some point, don't you just take away all incentive for anyone to succeed....and hence, no breadwinners to take from to give to the less blessed?
Its the way the world works.
Some people are born to families that value education more and push their kids that way....some born to people with more means...some are just born with better genes for doing something (for instance, I'll never make it in the NBA)....
It is just life and nature...trying to pretend it is an utopia, and everyone should have the same things is just not reasonable thinking.
I agree, everyone should have the same opportunity, no one should be discriminated against by the govt....they should be free to do as they wish to try to do what they can (legally) to better their lives and their families' lives. But there is no way to ensure a level playfield to start at for all...some will have to work harder than others, that's just the way life is.
Equal opportunity != Equal Outcomes