Historically Irrelevant

Asteroid mining is big news these days. Just today, a new company by the name of Planetary Resources (bit of a misnomer, right?) was announced with the goal of extracting precious minerals from asteroids. But what does that even mean? Is it technologically or financially viable to mine asteroids? Even if it is, how is Planetary Resources going to actually do it? What does this mean for everyday life? I hope to answer all of these and more in this post.

In case you’re unaware, I’ve got a sort of obsession with space travel. Humanity is, without a doubt, destined to travel amongst the stars. And the founding of this company is a stepping stone to realizing that dream. Planetary Resources could perhaps one of the most important companies of the 21st century. That’s a huge claim, I know, but let me explain myself.

First and foremost, I find it would be helpful to explain what exactly Planetary Resources is, and what it isn’t. The company itself is a bit ambitious, but they’ve got the names behind them to do so. They’re being headed by Peter Diamandis, the creator of the X-Prize Foundation which provides financial prizes to those who advance space travel, and Eric Anderson, the chairman of the Space Spaceflight Federation, a consortium of private space companies that work with NASA and the FAA. Along for the ride is a former astronaut, one of the heads of the wildly sucessful Mars Opportunity and Spirit Rover program, and a myriad of engineers and physicists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab. Funding the company is a group of billionaires, including the famous movie director and financier of science, James Cameron, as well as the former and current CEOs of Google. These guys aren’t kidding around; they’ve got great talent as well as vast financial assets to essentially do as they like.

But what is it that they’re going to do exactly? Planetary Resources’ ultimate goal is to mine asteroids, but that’s rather ambitious. They’ve laid out a number of steps on how they plan to get to that point, and it all starts with the Leo Space Telescope, pictured to the left. It is being worked on by the company as you read, and will most likely be launched sometime in 2013. The purpose of Leo is to scan the space around Earth for potential near-Earth asteroids that could be mined by the company in the future. What makes Leo unique is that after its initial goal of identifying potential NE asteroids, it will be retooled to be the first private space telescope, available for rent by anybody on the globe for a prize. Essentially, it will serve as a private counterpoint to the Hubble Space Telescope.

After Leo has identified a few potential candidate asteroids, Planetary Resources will then send out a few probes to collect hard data on the asteroid. It will scan the asteroid to determine its composition and its path. These probes could be sent out relatively cheaply, and would be around as difficult as getting a probe to the Moon (the distance is around the same for most near-Earth asteroids). Planetary Resources estimates they’ll have their first probes out around 2015/16 if all goes according to plan. 

What happens next is the truly difficult part. Once an asteroids has been thoroughly cataloged, mining operations will begin. On this Planetary Resources have been rather vague on, but they plan that mining could begin as early as 2022. The substance they’ll be mining for (at least initially) will not be platinum group metals (as I originally expected) but water. 

Water? But we’ve got plenty of water down here on Earth! Why would they decide to spent billions of dollars to extract from asteroids that we can get right here on Earth? All valid questions indeed. What makes Planetary Resources so exciting is that they’re not mining water to bring it back to Earth. The reason they’re focusing on water first, and then moving on to platinum-group metals is that water is much easier to mine. Second, water is incredibly expensive to bring to space. Every single ounce of any material, including water, is tremendously expensive to haul from Earth to space because of our planet’s strong gravity well. However, if the water could be mined out in space rather than be brought from Earth, it would free up room for other materials to be brought on the trip into space, as well as cut down costs. Essentially, Planetary Resources wants to create a sort of fuel depot in space for NASA and other agencies to use for deep space travel. They could deliver water directly to the International Space Station. 

The uses for water in space don’t stop at water, either. By separating out hydrogen and oxygen from water, one can make a myriad of materials. Obviously oxygen is important for astronauts to breathe in space, and could be supplied to travels to Mars or other worlds. Likewise, hydrogen and oxygen can both be refined to create fuels vital for space travel. Being able to refuel spacecraft in space rather than haul the fuel up from Earth would cut down costs to a huge extent. In essence, Planetary Resources’ mining of water from asteroids could finally make deep space exploration a possibility.

Not to mention, the mining of water would net huge profits for the company. According to estimates, if Planetary Resources extracted only 0.5% of the potential water of a 500-meter asteroid, they would net over $50 billion worth of profit. Scale that up to 50%, and that’s $5 trillion worth of water. It has been said that the first trillionaire will be made in space; from those numbers, I tend to agree. 

But that’s not all. Once the mining of water is mastered, Planetary Resources plans to move on to mining metal from asteroids. If you thought mining water from asteroids was lucrative, metals are even more so. Asteroids are rich in metals like iron and nickel, and because the gravity of asteroids is far less than the Earth’s, the metals are evenly spread out and easy to extract compared to our own planet. (In fact, all the gold, iron, nickel, and platinum mined from Earth actually originally came from asteroid impacts) In an estimate from 1997, one 1.6 km near-Earth asteroid was estimated to have around $20 trillion worth of precious and rare-Earth metals available for mining. And that’s just one asteroid. A single 500-meter platinum-group rich asteroid would have almost double the amount of platinum and other rare-Earth metals ever mined on Earth alone. The potential profit for Planetary Resources is truly astounding. 

A huge abundance of rare-Earth metals would have massive impacts here on Earth for everybody, as well. Just like the huge explosion of aluminum mining and subsequent price drop in the 19th century allowed for a gigantic array of new products and uses to be created, an overabundance of platinum-group metals and gold would cause the price of both to fall drastically. Both platinum-group metals and gold are essential in the electronic products of the modern world, but are still expensive. Who knows what new products will be created and new uses found when those metals are hundreds of times cheaper than they are now? 

More importantly than new uses for metals here on Earth would be the idea of using resources in space to power space exploration. Planetary Resources would allow deep space travel on an unprecedented scale, and help bring humanity closer to traveling in the cosmos. It represents a new chapter in space exploration and exploitation, will greatly expand Earth’s global GDP, and pave the way for future scientific advances in the realm of space travel. With a bunch of billionaire financial backers, former NASA employees, and enormous potential profit margins, Planetary Resources looks like a promising and fascinating new company that I will surely be following closely. If you want to know more, check out their website at http://www.planetaryresources.com/.

SOPA. The Stop Online Piracy Act. For all those living under a hole for the last month or so, it is a law that, if passed, has the potential to destroy the internet as we know it. SOPA was created by the House, but the Senate has an equivalent of this law, the PIPA, or Protect IP Act, that has virtually the same provisions as SOPA. In protest of this law, I will be joining Reddit, Cyanide and Happiness, the Cheezburger Network (owners of Fail Blog, Know Your Meme, Memebase, and the like), and potentially Wikipedia in taking down my site on January 18th. Yes, I understand that quite a few of you depend on this website for the very sustenance that keeps you alive and kicking, but I’m sure you can spend one day without constantly and rapidly checking Historically Irrelevant. But enough about me, let’s talk about SOPA and what it does. 

What is SOPA? 

SOPA, at its core, is a bill designed to clamp down on copyright infringement that is so rampant across the internet. The provisions of the bill allow the US Department of Justice, as well as any holder of copyright that is being infringed upon, to file a court order against those who either a) actually infringe upon the copyrights of the party or b) facilitate said copyright infringement. The actions they could to take, according to the bill, are broad and far reaching. For one, the US government can block a site from dealing with online money management systems such as PayPal, as well as order search engines like Google to remove the site from search results. More drastic still is that SOPA allows for the government to order all US ISPs (Internet Service Providers, ie the guys who provide your internet access like Optimum Online, Comcast, etc.) to block all access to the site.

What’s so bad about SOPA?

The intentions of SOPA are good; internet copyright infringement and piracy are rampant problems that will eventually have to be dealt with. However, the way SOPA goes about trying to solve these problems shows a fundamental misunderstanding of how the internet works and what it stands for. First and foremost, it is clear that current copyright laws are not sufficient in the new Internet Age. Intellectual Property is an archaic idea that holds little to no weight in an age of remixes and lightning fast communication. According to current copyright laws, if SOPA passes, then sites like YouTube, Tumblr, Twitter, Facebook, and any other site that has user generated content will essentially guarantee its removal from the US Internet. Let’s say that a child decides to cover a song on YouTube. For instance, I’m sure you’ve all seen that adorable video of a small kid playing a cover of Jason Mraz’ “I’m Yours” on ukulele (if you haven’t, watch it here). Thanks to SOPA and the current copyright laws in place, that child would be imprisoned for up to five years for infringing upon copyright, and all of YouTube would be shut down thanks to that one video. Think of all the comedians, musicians, and the like that have come out of YouTube by covering other songs or talking about copyrighted items. If SOPA was in effect a few years ago, we’d have no Smosh, no Epic Rap Battles of History, no Justin Beiber (if that’s a good or bad thing is still in quesiton), and no other YouTube videos at all. YouTube wouldn’t be the only site shut down by the provisions of SOPA, however. Share a photo that was previously copyrighted on Flickr? You go to jail, the whole site gets shut down. Post a video of yourself singing “Friday” on Facebook? You go to jail, the whole site gets shut down. Sell a blanket with R2-D2 on it on Etsy? You go to jail, the whole site gets shut down. You get the picture. 

That’s not the only downside of SOPA, however. Not only will sites like YouTube be shut down, but it would be illegal for any US citizen to share a link to YouTube on sites like Twitter and Facebook. Essentially, the US government would be committing internet censorship by prohibiting you from sharing links to certain websites. Moreover, SOPA would stifle and effectively kill any more innovation on the Internet. The legal cost to try and create a site that abides by the provisions laid out in SOPA would be too high for small startups to afford. Likewise, the consortieum  angel investors who financed sites like YouTube, Twitter, and Facebook, allowing them to survive in their earlier years and morph into the internet giants today, have stated (according to a study conducted by Booz & Company that can be viewed here) that if SOPA is passed, it simply wouldn’t be worth their time to invest in internet companies any more. Essentially, we’d no longer have the potential for another website to come along and enrich our lives. Plus, the vast sums of money companies like Google pump into the US economy would dry up with limited innovation in the internet sphere. 

Worst of all, SOPA fails to address or attempt to fix the very reason it was created. SOPA’s stated purpose is to attempt to put an end to internet piracy and copyright infringement. However, all it does is penalize those who aren’t pirating anything in the first place. Sites like YouTube and Tumblr would be taken down for all US visitors, but the way that ISPs block the sites can easily be circumvented by somebody who knows what they’re doing. Because sites like YouTube would still be visible to the rest of the world, all one in the US would have to do is type in YouTube’s IP address in the URL bar of one’s browser rather than YouTube.com to get to the site. Not very hard, right? So SOPA itself is ineffective in blocking sites. Those who know their way around the internet, and those who are pirating bucket loads of content, will be inconvenienced by SOPA, but not much will change in terms of their browsing habits. The people it does hurt are those who are not familiar with the internet and don’t understand what an IP address is. It hurts the grandmother who just wants to talk to her grandchild on Facebook. It hurts the kid who just wants to listen to some music on YouTube. 

Who created SOPA?

SOPA was proposed by a few Congressmen in the House, but who in Congress proposed it is unimportant. The real culprits behind the creation of this bill is the motion picture and music industry. Companies like the MPAA (Motion Picture Association of America) and the RIAA (Recording Industry Association of America) have poured millions upon millions of dollars into both the House and the Senate in an effort to bribe Congressmen to vote for the bill. SOPA helps them, and hurts the rest of us. It represents a fundamental disconnect between the movie and music companies and general society. As the CEO of Valve, Gabe Newell, has stated numerous times, “Piracy is almost always a service problem and not a pricing problem.” The reason people pirate goods, at least most of the time, is because it’s simply easier to pirate than to go out to a brick and mortar store to buy a DVD, or download a movie that is riddled with DRM that prevents you from watching it on certain devices. Apple makes a ton of money off of iTunes because it’s easy, Valve makes a lot of money off of Steam because it’s easy, Netflix makes a lot of money because it’s easy. Most record and movie companies fail to see this, and instead come up with laws like SOPA. SOPA represents the entertainment industry’s inability and lack of willingness to innovate.

What can I do? 

Email your Congressman and tell them to vote down SOPA. Raise awareness amongst your friends and on the internet. Sign a petition. Visit http://americancensorship.org/.The more people who know about SOPA the better. The Internet is the last true bastion of free speech left on the planet. I refuse to allow the US government, or anybody for that matter, take it away. I hope you’ll join me in voicing your disapproval to Congress, and help to keep the internet free. 

Happy 2012 everybody! 2011 has been quite a year, but rather than recap the events of the year, which I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of other sites do countless times over, I’m just going to throw some statistics about my site this year out at you. Why? Well, mostly because I’m a narcissistic bastard who thinks that other people care about how many visitors my site had in 2011. If you don’t care, I’d recommend you leave this post right now. If you do, then prepare yourself for some numbers!

I only started tracking my site on Google Analytics on February 8, so these numbers may be missing a few visitors. Regardless, they’re still interesting. First, let’s start off with the big number: in 2011, Historically Irrelevant had 11,296 unique visitors; that is, individual people who visited the site at least once. That’s a ridiculously high number beyond my wildest dreams. So thanks to everybody who visited! It’s crazy to think that over 11,000 people read at least one of my articles. 

Of those 11,296 visitors, 9,088 of them were from the United States. The other 2,208 people came from 107 different countries from every continent except Antarctica. The top 10, from most visitors to least, comprised of: 

1. United States of America
2. Canada
3. United Kingdom
4. Australia
5. Germany
6. Netherlands
7. New Zealand
8. Republic of Ireland
9. Sweden
10. Mexico

Quite a list, eh? I’m honored to have visitors from around the world, and hope they keep coming back.

In terms of browser, 5,349 (around 44%) of all visitors used Google Chrome as their browser of choice. I, too, use Chrome (in fact, I’m typing this article in Chrome) and would recommend it above any other browser. Firefox came in second with 31% of all users using it. Internet Explorer and Safari came in third and fourth respectively, with each about 9% of visitors. 

For operating system, it was no surprise when Microsoft Windows was used by 66% (8,104) of all users, due to its dominance of the marketplace. It was surprising, however, that it only controlled 66% of the market, at least in terms of visitors to my site. OS X, Apple’s baby, had 24% (2,911) of visitors to the site. In third place, rather than Linux, came the iPad with 4% (431) and Linux in fourth with 3% (374). Rounding out the top five was the iPhone with 2% (219). Mobile devices, specifically Apple products, are slowly but surely chipping away the dominance of desktop based OSes. 

With the profile of each individual visitor established, it’s time to see where those visitors are coming from. The top place where people found my site from was Reddit, which netted me 5,229 visitors (46% of all visitors). So, thank you Redditors for visiting my site! In second place comes another discovery site, StumbleUpon, with 2,384 (21%) visitors. Search results from Google came in third place, with 1,231 (11%) visitors. Finally, in fourth and fifth place are the social networking sites that I’ve shared many a link to this site on. Facebook comes in fourth with 763 (7%) visitors. So to all those reading this via Facebook, thanks! In fifth comes Twitter, with 279 (3%) visitors. Again, I thank all my Twitter followers for visiting! In all, 93 different web sites linked to my site, but netted me a lot less followers than these big five. Thanks to all who deemed my site worthy enough of linking to! 

We’ve got where these visitors are coming from, where they’re located in the world, and what they’re using to visit my site. Now, let’s see what they’re actually looking at! The top two articles are neck and neck, with the most visited only beating out its opponent by 16 visitors. In first place comes What our legal drugs tell us about our society with 3,886 pageviews, accounting for 27% of all pageviews to the site. The next post narrowly lost the lead with 3,850 pageviews, my post about The street vendor who changed the world also accounted for 27% of pageviews. The next post drops off substantially, for it doesn’t even break the one thousand mark in terms of pageviews. In third place comes The history of contractions with 746 (5%) views. Fourth place was secured by my post about The beautiful game, and why it doesn’t need to be fixed with 530 (4%) views. Rounding out the top five is my post about Why I cried at the end of Bastion, and why I’m not afraid to admit it with 504 (4%) views. Overall, a fairly varied top five most viewed articles. 

A great year all around for Historically Irrelevant, one which I’d like to thank you for being a part of. This year, I hope to have some more great articles and intriguing ideas for you to read about, and hope that you’ll join me. Thanks for making 2011 a fantastic year, and help me make 2012 even better!

As many of you know, the college football world is currently being rocked by scandal. Coach Joe Paterno of Penn State’s football program has been sacked after allegations of covering up an alleged child molester. The public has almost unanimously approved of the firing, saying that it is morally reprehensible to protect somebody who takes advantage of children. Whilst Paterno did nothing criminally or legally wrong, morally his actions were unforgivable, and I agree that he should have been fired. It sends a message to other people who were thinking about putting the “brand” of a college over the life and mental health of a child. But there is a problem to this logic. There’s a sort of elephant in the room that we all seem to be overlooking. Yes, Paterno should have been sacked for covering up the case of one child molester. But what of a man who has covered up the cases of dozens, maybe even hundreds of child molesters? Surely he, too, should be sacked after a public outcry against his morally wrong actions? Sadly, I am here to report that this is not the case.

The man in question is Pope Benedict XVI. He has helped cover up dozens of priests who have sexually abused small children across the globe. It took him until 2010 to finally put out a policy in the Vatican that priests should report when other priests sexually abuse children, but only if it is the law. In essence, if it is not the law to report sexual abuse, a priest should not do it. Better to deal with the priest inside the Vatican and simply move him to another church than hand him over to the secular authorities. As of writing, the Catholic Church still has no zero-tolerance policy on child abuse. If a child is abused in a country where child abuse isn’t against the law, it’s a non-issue in the Church’s eyes. 

So I ask you, why should a religious leader get any different treatment than the coach of a football team? Both have consciously kept mute about child abuse cases (one many more times than the other), yet only one has been sacked whilst the other is revered by almost a billion people worldwide. Please, if somebody could explain to me why this is right and just, I would be eternally grateful.