Greatest Engineering Challenges?

The first stellar flight of a spacecraft to another solar system would be a huge investment and require enormous technological breakthroughs. Much like the mission to the Moon.

08 and beyond should look forward to make a perfect world by all each and every one

should be motivated trained to do so

Alright. Maybe understanding women might be a bigger one.

In line with your first comment, I was thinking perhaps a permanent colony on the moon or on Mars.

As for your second comment .... let's not reach for the impossible

I think a permanent colony on the Moon is pretty easy and will be achieved before 2050 (given steady state development). Mars is probably very doable, too before 2100. However, I don't feel that either one is a stretch goal that would require the radical technilogical advancements that we saw in the 10 years required for NASA's Moon landing. That was pushing the envolope.

What we want is something that pushes that achievement by nearly an order of magnitude and lights the fires and imagination of the people so that there is a will to do something extraordinary. However, today's society has a hard time focusing on projects that exceed 5 years, let alone 90! So, I think we will always be underachievers that lack focus and your goals may be more in line with reality. I hope that I am wrong!

I would like to see a biological challenge to breed a species of cats that is fully grown 3 inches long for in hole mousing.

I think they would be cute!!

But would they be like their larger kin, cuddly, etc.

Getting buses and trains to run on time?

Mussolini did that. So did Hitler. There were downsides to their social achievements, however, so let's not worry about this one.

Having prime hand infos on what was happening in Italy at that time I can assure you:

Mussolini and the Fascism obliged everibody to say that trains were in time,
but during twenties and thirties trains in Italy were late.
Duyring forties there were no more trains: someone else had to bomb the railways !

No news about Hitler in Germany: likely seems a similar story.

That is very disappointing. I thought Il Duce was good for something! I guess that confirms my observation that we'd all be better off without any politicians at all.

For what it's worth, the trains in Switzerland run on time without Fascism or Nazism. On the rare occassions when they don't, it's a national scandal.

"Alright. Maybe understanding women might be a bigger one."

We are looking for something that can be achieved in a century not a millennium. Anyway as soon as you think you understand how a woman thinks she changes her mind.

As for a pie in the sky technology that is like the space shuttle and the International Space Station were when the Wright Brothers, how about a completely autonomous android or robot?

My friend Masu. Don't forget the television. Imagine trying to come up with that. Not only do you need to invent the TV, you need to invent the TV camera. Blows my mind it was so long ago. To me one of the greatest. Thank you Philo Farnsworth a man ahead of his time. I believe the first television picture sent was of a dollar sign. "$" Makes sense, but I'm sure he didn't see any.

Farnsworth was brilliant with his solution but the concept had been developed by Baird and was tested in England prior to WWII. Baird's concept was a mechanical system though while Farnsworth's solution was purely electronic. I guess it took the pressure of WWII and the rapid advances in electronics to make an electronic solution feasible. That doesn't detract form either man, both were brilliant and ahead of their time.

I agee regarding the mechanical television and Baird. We can forget DeForest either when vacuum tubes came about well before WWII at the turn of the century. Transistor discussion coming lol! I find it all interesting and glad I registered here. This forum is excellent. I need to get some work done, but you guys are so intellegent, your keeping me from getting her done, because the discussions are so good. I'll try to ignore you all until later on hehe.

1) What if we diverge a river going to the Atlantic in the west of Africa (West of Nigeria) and throught the mountains (may be in a tunnel) the water is brought to fertilize Sahara desert ? or can we search and find the sea of nearly sweet water that is said to lie under that desert?

Can this help to reverse the weather change in more useful way ?

2) About Women:
I do not ask to understand them all, it would be nice just to be able to undestand your own wife ! !

But what about women that are engineers ?

Evaluation of the albedo before and after would determine the environmental desirability of such a scheme. What is the difference in albedo between a surface of 100% rough sand and a similar surface covered with a percentage of water and vegetation (rhetorical question)? If the after-albedo were less than the before-, then the effect may be undesirable, leading to an increase in local surface temperatures, thereby reducing the viability of such a scheme. Still worthy of theoretical pursuit, though...

Some how i don't think diverting one habitat to destroy another would get past the enviroactivists and the EIR

You are right: working and living, people do change their habitat ! they always did.
The new challendge is to change it, without getting it worse or dammaging it.

May be the result of diverging a river is a new desert, then it is a bas idea; but the challendge stays the same :

Can we make flourish the desert ? can we provide food and dignity to many more people ?

I expect the ambientalist and our sons are not against such an aim.

It is a challendge, its biggest difficulty is, to make it in a balanced way, and, as far as possible, recovering previous mistakes.

Our staff of 15 engineers includes two female engineers. Our CTO says that if all women were like those two, "the world would be a perfect place!"

How about re-engineering human bodies so that they work absolutely perfectly for, say, 100 years; and then, on our 100th birthday, after writing all our goodbye notes and kissing our loved ones farewell, we go "all at once, and nothing first, just as bubbles do when they burst" (from The Deacon's Masterpiece by OW Holmes).
Anything else is just fooling around with gadgets.

P.S. We're not good enough for an Old Testament-like 800 years.

The biggest challenge is renewable energy. Earth based nuclear power is an environmentally dirty option. The focus should be on using/converting the power of the Sun (the solar systems largest nuclear reactor).

Perhaps someone could figure out how "photosynthesis" works in lab conditions. (This hasn't been done) Perhaps a "photosynthesis cell" could be developed to convert sunlight and other necessary constituents into sugars which could be used to power the machines and technology we rely on.

Lets face it coal and oil aren't going to last long at the rate were are using them. Also, as the supply decreases the price will increase so there will be a point in time where no one can afford the coal and oil we have left... This will come far in advance of actually "running out of fuel".

I'm betting that renewable energy will happen much faster than you think.

Let's be honest here...people stopped using windmills, waterwheels and Ox-driven wheels because we wanted the cheap, abundant energy that was suddenly available only about a hundred years ago.

It's only in the last few years that people started asking for "renewable" energy once again, and companies even as big as GE started stepping in and making things happen.

We already have a broad range of renewable options; some of which I'm using already on my farm.

The market is doing their part, but we'll still need to get our politicians out of subsidizing the grid/ancient tech companies before all other options become cheap and available to the masses.

I say we're almost there.

Unfortunately, once we gave up windmills, waterwheels, and ox-drive wheels, we used the cheap, stored solar energy in fossil fuels to inflate the population of the Earth beyond the carrying capacity of those simple technologies. We can't just build more wind turbines and solar arrays, we have to figure out how to produce much more energy (orders of magnitude) from renewables than is possible right now.

Don't you think we're getting close? Not generating and transmitting through huge plants and inefficient grids...point-of-service generation that's infinitely reproducible?

I've got a windmill aerating my pond, I've got solar lights, and I'm considering hydro on the two creeks that run through my property. We may go completely off the grid when we build our "dream house" at the clear end of a windy field.

This is the sort of power scheme most of the world needs, isn't it? Improving existing technologies is one part of the problem. Making it cheaper is another. Coming up with new things on the way is another. Once you get the free market entrepreneurs, inventors and, of course, engineers involved, all that will happen as a day's business.

Unfortunately, I don't think we're close. You're an exception, living in a rural area with plenty of land. I applaud your efforts (how about posting some stories & pictures?), but they don't scale well.

Most people in the U.S. get much of their food from over 2000 miles away. We drive everywhere (unless it's far away, then we fly). The greater New York City area has a population of 18 million people, and it's only one major metropolitan area in the U.S.. They can't all put up wind turbines and hydro. "Big power" is essential.

But a different power generation scheme would create a different transportation/infrastructure scheme as well. If we could generate energy and get water in our vast, mostly uninhabited arid regions, we could maximize biodensity in what should be forested regions and thereby kill several birds (or perhaps save them) with one blow.

Just a thought. But you know that cities and towns now look the way they do because of the needs of cars...not of people by themselves. We'd never make acres of parking lots to walk over if our politicians hadn't decided that public transportation was a "trust" that needed busting (and subsidized roads, auto industries, etc.).

True.

But if you're talking about re-engineering society then you've found your "100 year Grand Challenge."

There's an interesting book (although he goes waaay over the top) that talks about the same ideas:

The Long Emergency: Surviving the End of Oil, Climate Change, and Other Converging Catastrophes of the Twenty-First Century (Paperback)

by James Howard Kunstler

It's a decent read, however, as I warned you, he's too shrill, his scenarios are "over the top" and he gets diverted at times.

Are you suggesting a challenge of inventing a new kind of transports ?

Is it feasible "dematerializing" people and or goods send them as radio signals and at the arrival reconstruct the molecular structure ?
how much energy does it cost ?

Smaller challendge: is there a pubblic transport, that is cheaper, at least as flexible and comfortable, less energy thirsty and fast as private cars ?

We are engineers . . . can we invent it ?

After sleeping on it and just thinking at loud voice:

in past months there was emphasys on cohoperation between engineers and physicians:

Sometime we heard about "Universe Shortcuts" or "Spatial Doors", meaning a position where you can instantly get to another place much faster than light, apparently with no energy consumption or other difficulties.

In 100 yrs can we design a machine to look for and find these shortcuts ?

MASS TRANSIT ... convenient

Consider the Hydraulic hybrid (HHV) 7.5 ton UPS delivery van being tested in Atlanta. If it gets between 12 and 16 mpg average ... then couldn't it be the basis for a mid-size, say 36, passenger/transist bus?

It could economically service lower density routes at a much lower cost per passenger mile. In large metropolitan areas these vehicles could provide "concentrater" serve to "express links" for shorter travel times, greater convenience, lower cost, and hopefully greater rider participation.

How about just as school busses? How much fuel consumption and polution could be avoided?

I was involved with some work on hybrid transit buses at GE R&D in the early '90's. We developed a hybrid city transit bus that reduced emissions ~ 90% over those of a conventional city bus. They went to the prototype stage with the Orion bus company and Lockheed-Martin Aerospace Systems (now BAE), I lost track of the program that, but it looks like they've started to commercialize the technology. The results of the pilot study are available here on the Department of Energy web site.

School buses are good candidates for hybrid technology. Another great candidate is the garbage truck - almost nothing stops and starts as frequently as a garbage truck. Making them hybrid would cut fuel consumption, emissions, and early-morning noise!

What about affordable geothermal energy?

What about affordable energy full stop..!!

My energy bills are crippling me.... I'm thinking of sticking a windmill on my roof, digging a well in my garden and trading my car in for a horse... As for my nuclear powered wheelbarrow, well I can't do without that now can I???

John.

I don't know about the whole century, but in the near future the perfect battery would be the biggest breakthrough in the for all fields of technology. Something that stores lots of energy in vey limited volume and mass. Think about it: your laptop would run for a whole week of work. Your iPod would run for a whole vacation. The electric car would be finally more than just a joke. Think about artificial body parts, think about robots. Let's face it, everything in this world tends to go electric and the biggest drawback is not the cost of electrical power but the batteries.

Hmmmm but don't forget that energy still has to come from somewhere, batteries don't charge themselves, power stations do that, the chemicals used still need digging up and refining and then replacing as well as disposing of.

Just because a battery lasts a lot longer doesn't make it better for the environment... The same with electric cars that people keep on about, they still need to be charged up from an electricity source powered by a power station somewhere...

John.

Consider the population by the 21st Century, how do we feed that many people with dwindling ariable lands, how do we house them, how do we supply potable water?Many of the great engineering achivements are driven by the needs of a growing population. A moon station isn't going to hold a few hundren million people, what do we do with the possibly 6 to 8 billion people. The higher energy demands and other effects of such a population will accelerate greenhouse effects. sea levels will be higher, meaning less available land for housing and farming. The weather will likely be worse, meaning higher risk of disaster.

Correct me if I'm wrong, please...but aren't all such problems political problems, and not engineering problems? Africa's poverty is caused by truly wicked politicians. Europe's population is dwindling to the point that their immigrants are likely to replace them. Germany is even paying Germans to have babies now!

We have terrible politicians worldwide. It has almost always been so...so maybe the thing to do is invent RoboPols (TM); androids that give long speeches and shake hands, but do nothing else at all. Just think, with robopols that have no needs or ambitions, there's be no oppression, slavery, genocide or war.

Hmmm.... And it'd take very little engineering to make such a perfect politician.

Ladies and gentlemen, I think we have our challenge for '08!

Think hydroponics! Remeber Thomas Malthus, his theory on arithmatic and geomatric growth for food production and population growth respectively! or what about India, presumably its population was too large for feed(this was about 40 years ago), but now its a nett exporter of agri. produce!-a variety of them, and not all the varieties are edible! As for energy, well a lot of people were screaming when the oil price went up(they still are), but did that stop them from their weekend speed boat/ jetski meet or stop them from buying pick-up trucks with engines big enough for a train! There still is a sizable amount of fossil fuel reserves out there. It's just more difficult to extract. Then again, difficult is a subjective word here, oil and gas engineering and equipment available now is getting the job done just fine. Gas hydrates is already being pumped and oil shale is old hat already! There is a recent find(oil shale) in the Colorado region that seem to rival the entire middle east reserve! Canada has plenty of it too. The dutch are already farming their seas with wind mills-guess which technology they borrowed from - (no marks for guessing) - the offshore oil and gas industry, floating production/storage platforms. Rising sea water level may not even matter, submarine habitats sound interesting and very achievable, and the knowhow has been around for some time now.

Within a century, I think we could put all industry into orbit.

Weightlessness allows you to handle huge loads with small effort. Near-vacuum helps cut down contamination of materials. Hazardous waste can be stored on designated asteroids, or even launched into the Sun. With advanced robotics and tele-presence, very few humans are needed on-site.

Best of all: the bio-friendly environment of Earth is left to the bio-forms: apple trees, tuna, sheep, grizzly bears - and people!

Maybe. That certainly sounds cool. But there's a lot of junk up there already. We don't want to blot out the sun, or even the stars with all the crud we'd throw up there...or deal with the flaming return of same. We'd probably want to put stuff into the moon's orbit.

But what of the energy it takes to get up there? There's a challenge in itself; to make it worth the extra transport costs.

These industries would have to be almost entirely automated, because people don't work as well in zero gravity as do our machines. We lose bone mass and change in strange ways that'd make it unreasonable to expect people to stay up there for long.

About blocking the Sun: There's a lot of space in Space! With improved communication infrastructure, we won't need to use the crowded geosynchronous belt, we'll put things much farther out. Also, orbiting factories can be much smaller than their terrestrial counterparts: less mass is needed for support structures in weightlessness. Also, no parking lots or restrooms or cafeterias. And I'm betting on extreme miniaturization in the next century.

About energy costs: As long as we're sending non-living loads, we can use mass drivers. Space elevators are a neat idea, but I'm not sure we can craft a material strong enough for the cable, so my money's on mass drivers.

About automation: Absolutely - I'm counting on it! Today, we can control Mars rovers from Houston. In a hundred years, running orbiting factories from Grand Rapids should be a piece of cake.

I do think humans in space will be big business, though. Think of weightless nursing homes: less pressure on fragile joints, less stress on the cardiopulmonary system. Think of weightless theme parks and weightless honeymoon hotels! Yowza. Again, all we need is the infrastructure.

everiday to go to work i need to make 50 miles :

this cost time and pollution !

what if to go to work i need to go in the orbit becoming a spatial commuter ?

I have big estimation and respect for women as for engineeers (i try to be a good one) but it is nice to joke about them.

Engineering challendge: often hospital and health are administred by Medics or by accounter . . . . sometimes by politician, seldom by an engineer or an organization expert.

Is it feasible that on administration, politics or generally on life, we give up emotions and fears remembering that we are rational, so we can use scientific principles and efficiency optimization ?

I'm not speacking about Swiss Hospitals, we all are aware:
none get ill in Switzerland !

Launching our hazardous waste into the Sun would not be a good idea... Who knows what adverse long term effects that might have. If the Sun goes out or starts to emit light in a different wavelength the ecosystems on Earth are going to be destroyed are a result...

Bad idea... The Sun is not a good place for our trash or hazardous material...

it would be energetically very expensive to fire waste into the sun, but there are no bad side effects, the sun is a nuclear furnace that turns matter into energy at the rate of 4.3 million tons per second and you could drop the whole earth into it and it would carry on unchanged.

solar mass =1.988 435×10 KG (332,946 Earths)
According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sun

Launching waste from the Earth to the Sun would indeed be very expensive. But in my scenario, waste is generated in orbit, so firing it into the Sun is easy!

And you're right about the minuscule effect on the Sun. It already absorbs tons of space trash daily - whole comets, even! - without so much as a hiccup.

well, there will be a few things you make cheaper in orbit if you also get the raw ingredients from the moon or asteroid belt....in that case why not have the factories in the asteroid belt far from the van Allen radiation bands. Once you reach orbit the cost to belt and back is minimal(but not zero). Probably having these factories in a far orbit would be better 100,000 miles out. There is a Lagrange point

https://www.space.com/30302-lagrange-points.html

where things stay put and in the same relative spot.

This will all be 100 years off, if ever

"well, there will be a few things you make cheaper in orbit if you also get the raw ingredients from the moon or asteroid belt"

That's not necessarily the case. If you take something from the moon or asteroid belt and move it to low Earth orbit it is effectively in free fall all the way. As a result it arrives at low earth orbit at pretty close to escape velocity. To inject it into orbit you need to slow it down to orbital velocity and this consumes considerable amounts of fuel, fuel that you need to take with you when you leave Earth initially.

There was a thread some time ago that discussed using the space shuttle to go to the moon and back. When I did the calculations on the fuel it would need to fly from Earth orbit to the moon and back the tank ended up some 300 times the size of the existing tank.

Given that the escape and orbital velocities are roughly

Earth_{Escape Velocity} = 11.2 Kms-1

Earth_{Orbital Velocity} = 7.0 Kms-1

That means if an object is approaching earth from a great distance we need to slow it down from 11.2 Kms^-1 to 7 Kms^-1 ant therefore

KE_{Earth Orbit} = ½ m 7,000² = m 24.5 x 10⁶

KE_{Earth Escape} = ½ m 11,200² = m 67.2 x 10⁶

KE_{Earth Orbit Injection} = m 38.22 x 10⁶

As you can see the amount of energy that you need to expend decelerating something that arrives from the Moon or asteroid belt is greater than the amount of energy that you would need to expend if you fired it from Earth in the first place. This also doesn't take into account the fact that you need to take all that fuel with you to the Moon or asteroid belt in the first place and that blows the whole thing out of the water even further.

The upshot is that with the current engines, burning chemical propellants, it is more efficient to shoot something from Earth than it is to shoot something from the Moon to a space station in Earth orbit.

What you smokin' boy?

The upshot is that with the current engines, burning chemical propellants, it is more efficient to shoot something from Earth than it is to shoot something from the Moon to a space station in Earth orbit.

I mentioned a far earth orbit, and a possible Lagrange point. These are energetically closer to escape velocity and if you use minimum energy trajectories the energetics get a lot more favorable

http://www.google.ca/search?hl=en&safe=off&q=%22transfer+trajectories+%22&btnG=Search

Masu, why use "considerable amounts of fuel to slow it down to get into Earth orbit...."???

The standard way to decellerate into an earth orbit is to use the earth's gravity and air resistance to enter an elipitcal orbit skimming the atmosphere until speed is reduced sufficiently to all ow insertion into the orbit required...

This requires no fuel at all, in fact as 'air braking' generates large amounts of heat this heat could be used to recharge batteries etc...

John.

Aero breaking is a possible answer but it requires considerable shielding to prevent whatever you have from vaporizing. Another thing you need to take into account is the sun. If you take something that is in orbit around the asteroid belt and move it to earth it will end up going too fast and either shoot back to a higher orbit or end up in an elliptical orbit that shoots past Earth even faster than the escape velocity of Earth.

Ultimately if you want something to be in orbit around the earth it needs to be traveling around 7 Kms^-1 in relation to Earth. For an object from outside Earth orbit that means getting rid of a lot of energy and for an object on earth it means adding a lot of energy. The current problem is the mass of the fuel and the amount of fuel you need to burn to get that fuel to where you need it. When they did the calculations for the Apollo missions the only fuel that had the energy density high enough was liquid H₂ and O₂. If you used any other fuel it would not be possible as the energy density would not be high enough to accelerate the fuel sufficiently let alone the spacecraft. Look at the mass of the space shuttle orbiter and compare it to the mass of the fuel. The ratio is staggering.

When propulsion systems like the ion drive are perfected then it my be possible to mine the Moon and asteroids but at the moment the huge amounts of fuel needed just kill it.

There is indeed a gradation in speeds as you get closer, however you failed to read the minimum energy trajectory web sites.

To reach earth orbit from the asteroid belt requires a little energy to start and infall path, and as it falls towards the sun if goes faster and with a little thrust it can be made to arrive in earth's orbital path and from the to the earth's orbit, moons or one of the Lagrange points.

The problem with these minumum energy paths is thay take 2-3 years. This is OK for ore transport, but not good for people, so the people get a far more energetic powered transit, which can take a few eeks or more, as the available power decrees.

Hi Aurizon, in you last post you stated

"There is indeed a gradation in speeds as you get closer, however you failed to read the minimum energy trajectory web sites.

To reach earth orbit from the asteroid belt requires a little energy to start and infall path, and as it falls towards the sun if goes faster and with a little thrust it can be made to arrive in earth's orbital path and from the to the earth's orbit, moons or one of the Lagrange points."

Were you talking about the Minimum-Fuel site? I understand what they are talking about but unfortunately the site doesn't show the equations so there is no way to work out the fuel or energy consumption.

Have a look at the mission profile of the recent Venus_Express spacecraft that I believe used a similar sort of trajectory. The orbit insertion burn when it got to Venus took 50 minutes.

I can see where you are coming from but my orbital mechanics isn't that good. The calculations that I did for the space shuttle to the moon thread were based on the fuel consumption and profile of the Apollo missions. If Jorrie is reading this thread maybe he can jump in and work out the difference in energy, between the orbit of an asteroid in the asteroid belt and the same asteroid in low earth orbit? Failing that I will try and locate the appropriate orbital equations and try and figure it out.

PS the enlarged and strange fonts are an accident and have no significance. I don't know haw it happened but if I can figure out why it's happening it could be useful in the future.

"And you're right about the minuscule effect on the Sun. It already absorbs tons of space trash daily - whole comets, even! - without so much as a hiccup."

That's not really the case, things like comets get vaporized and boil off into space long before they get anywhere near the Sun so no it doesn't absorb them, it fries them to oblivion.

My vote goes to using worm holes for space travel.

It is very clear that personal mobility is here to stay; whether you do it by car/plane/rocket/horse or other yet to be proven concepts or technologies.

As I have done on a number of occassions, I propose VTOL.

Throughout history men's great achievements were mostly individual driven-it's always a one man's dream scenario when it comes to major contribution to society, so let's forget about politicians, they're likely to be there to engineer or affect mass mobilisation(if it suits them). Besides, aren't we all a part of any given politician-we put them there,remember!

Nanatechnology guys! lets build things one molecule/atom at a time.

Man oh man! ...I sure don't want the average driver bobbing and weaving over MY head!

If we're to fly, it ought to be in big, soft bubbles that are automatically piloted so that you could sip tea and read the paper on your way to work.

I should confess that I crashed a light helicopter into downtown Indianapolis in '99. ...Ooops! Sheesh!

I was running for Mayor of Indianapolis at the time, and that was the only time I ever made it into the front section of the Indianapolis Star newspaper. What a world it is when a politician can't get people's attention without falling from the sky...

Do you know a worm hole close to Earth? Or you want to create an artificial one? What amouny of energy you need for that?

I don't understand the concept myself - apart from Star Trek Deep Space 9

However, I read a special issue of Scientific American about time and travel where they indicate the science is there

Consider safe energy comming from atomic reaction, mass aniquilation, or something like this. We have to stop consuming fossile energy, I don't wan't to believe that the world has passed the non-return point of global heating. Or, maybe, finding a way to turn the global heating effect back would be a real chalenge, not to say impossible...

Respectable colleagues,

this forum is going to be a very exciting one, thanks for all contributions that are interesting.

Let us take a step back to propose again another question:

Likey the last attempt to apply rational principles to administration have been "Scientific Socialism", the controversial results of its last mutation into Sovietic comunism generated a sort of politic fear between the community of Engineers and technician.

Is there a way to remember that politic is something to serious to leave it to politicians, protesting people and advertizing creative only ?

More specific question: Is possible to get freedom and a real democracy if not motivating people to be honest ?

Corruption is the real dark side of power and politics.

This is true in all undeveloped communities. Anyone has a different experience ?

What can be the contribution of engineers ?

is it feasible in 100 yrs ?

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"The greater the obstacle, the more glory in overcoming it." -- David Hume (Scottish Philosopher)

qiuseppe, I like you mentor's(I presume) quote.

Throughout history, humanity and more specifically the human spirit has survived all kinds off ideological/theological/political/philosophical...etc mutation of one type or the other. It did this by transcending all these social/ethereal phenomenon(what else could you call it?!), but we're not quite done yet.

I keep reading this, exactly how do you define 'real democracy' anyway?

If one take power to be the potential to bring about change per se, I feel that it should be accepted as a neutral force, good or bad is a matter perspective, even then, in retrospect only. Strange how all solutions are perfect in retrospect!

Well, I guess, as engineers, our great(est) challenge would be to find a way to transcend politics (as it is practised today) or any other social milieu hindering growth of the free human enterprize.

I won't go off on one of my political dithyrambs...this isn't the place for it. If you look me up on the web you'll see that I do, indeed, go off on politics!

But I'd caution y'all about three key things:

1. We are not evolving in any way you'd like to think we are. Science and technology evolve, but we are doing the same dumb things we've always done. There is nothing new with us.

2. Good people tend to stay clear of politics, leaving exactly who to run things?

3. We tend to ignore opportunity costs and the "unseen" phenomena early libertarian economists spoke of. We thus tend to think that if politicians didn't build bridges and roads, that we'd have no roads. We tend to think that if we didn't have political policies, taxes, subsidies and prohibitions regarding the sale of cabbage, that we'd have no cabbage, and that madness would result in the vacuum of legislation.

I believe that engineers, scientists, doctors, artists, entrepreneurs and innovators in general are our best defense against politics, by adding new things in our lives that have not yet been controlled/perverted by politics. Compare the computer industry to medicine...see how costs drop and quality/supply increase under a less-controlled market? This is no coincidence.

It is our job to improve life in every way possible. We can help make people live longer, more productive lives. Government, on the other hand, is nothing more or less than force. It is guns and bombs...it is not virtue and gentle sweetness.

We must never forget that whatever politicians (and other criminals) do, they do by force. Whatever everybody else does, is by mutual agreement.

"...Government, on the other hand, is nothing more or less than force. It is guns and bombs...it is not virtue and gentle sweetness." you know Andy, that's exactly what Adam Smith said in his 'The Wealth of Nations'.

...if someone else( nation(s), these days) is capable of doing what you need cheaper and better, grab it! You'll have to do something else if you wan to survive. Politically manipulating economic events just so some groups are pacified just won't cut it! That's why we need to constantly innovate, add value to the global community.

I'm a generally a von Mises/Rothbard man myself, but you're absolutely correct. George Washington also said something similar. All our best politicians, economists and historians know it as well. But it's not common knowledge because it's certainly not taught in our government schools, and that's a crime.

Engineers, doctors, entrepreneurs and even the barristas at Starbucks solve a lot more problems every day than politicians ever have.

So my challenge still stands...engineer an electable android that does absolutely nothing, and we'll all live in peace and prosperity.

Until then, we must innovate and create at a rate just a little faster than tax increases...

Andyhorning stated in post #60

"Government, on the other hand, is nothing more or less than force. It is guns and bombs...it is not virtue and gentle sweetness. "

and

"We must never forget that whatever politicians (and other criminals) do, they do by force. Whatever everybody else does, is by mutual agreement."

But in a modern western democracy is not the government meant to represent the people? Is not its primary function to establish laws, regulations and standards that, amongst other things, are designed to limit the damage and repression that can results from the greed of self serving individuals and organizations?

For any community to functions there must be some form of mutually agreed law, regulation and standardization. Anarchy is a non regulated system where people do what they want when they want wherever they want and to date has always resulted in the suppression of the many by the few.

If, in a democratic state, a government is not representing the us is it not us that is a fault for allowing it to fail in its primary function?

Democracy, or majority rule, is of course antithetical to Rule of Law. If you have a bad constitution and a good populace, that can be a good thing. But such a condition never exists among people, does it?

Humanity's biggest villain has always been the politician, right? Is there any disagreement on this?

And I don't know your country mates as well as I know mine, but I know that there are many of us who can tell you the vertical jump height of their favorite basketball star, but can't even name their own state's governor.

We know less about our constitution (which takes a half-hour to read) than we know about Oprah Winfrey's latest diet plan. We know more about everything, in fact, than we know about our worst potential enemies, the people who hold our health, education and welfare in their well-greased palms.

This is why we were never intended to have a "Western Democracy" which has only recently become the buzzword. "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch." - Benjamin Franklin.

We were supposed to have Rule of Law under the U.S. Constitution; a contract with the sole purpose of restraining history's only agent of oppression, slavery, genocide and war.

And there are some things, like rights to property and life, that should not be put to a vote, right?

there are things far worse than politicians. They call them priests, of all stripes and types

"Humanity's biggest villain has always been the politician, right? Is there any disagreement on this?"

This may well be the case but since in a democratic state we put them there we are to blame.

"And I don't know your country mates as well as I know mine, but I know that there are many of us who can tell you the vertical jump height of their favorite basketball star, but can't even name their own state's governor. "

This I think you will find is true to some extent everywhere but you can't blame our leaders for the apathy of the majority. Politicians may lie, scheme and contrive but ultimately it is us that gave them the power.

Do you blame the fox that was left in charge of the hen house or the idiot left the fox in charge of the hen house in the first place. If we don't hold our leaders accountable for the actions and continually forgive them for breaking the promises they have made then we no one to blame but ourselves.

If every politician that lied, schemed or contrived to swindle us only lasted for one term it would not take long to get rid of all the liars, schemers and swindlers. Unfortunately though when the next election comes around we seem to forget about the myriad of indiscretion and re-elect them thus rewarding them for their treachery. If a single act of deception lost every politician their seat at the next election it wouldn't take long to get rid of all the self serving schemers that we seem to be intent on reelecting.

If you were an employer that had an employee that acted like most of the politicians do would you not dismiss them?

You'll get no argument from me...I agree with you absolutely. Voters are to blame for their politicians.

And to go even further, I bet you agree that all governements, whether democratic or not, are ultimately by consent of the governed.

I wish I could remember the quote off the top of my head (and I'm too lazy to look it up), but former slave Frederick Douglass once (more eloquently) said that whatever oppression we'll tolerate is the exact measure of it we'll get.

It is definitely our fault that we never learn this.

That's why I wish we'd invent a device that can tell, for certain, when somebody is lying, and more importantly, when somebody is telling the truth.

There really are truthful politicians, and there are many political candidates who tell the truth. Of course most lie, and they generally run the world. Nice people mostly stay out of politics.

Wouldn't it be nice to know which is which?

They can now tell lying with a high res brain scan.

Apparently when you use the mind as a look up reference there are different areas involved in metabolic uptake than when you construct something that differs with the looped up memory.

Some people feel this is contrary to the right against self incrimination, however I say it is not. The person can refuse to answer or simply not think about what was asked.

I can see this as a great 20 questions tool for military interrogarion.

What I'm looking for is an easier-to-do analysis of voice/face/whatever that could be done while taping a debate.

The idea is that there'd be something like a meter that appears below the politicians' condescending/earnest smile, that shows the degree of falsehood/truth.

We'd have some sort of graphic at the end of the debate that shows who lied the most or, in a really surprising and hope-filled turn of events, was telling the truth.