"Supplies" as in, self-assembling landing and launch pads?

People have successfully dropped autonomous robots onto Mars before. Wouldn't be out of the question to do so again, except that instead of rovers, the robots could be programmed to open up crates (dropped at the same time, or by a previous or future mission) and assemble what's inside into a landing or launch pad.

Would take a lot of prep missions, and might not be worth the cost, but in theory it's doable. Curiosity massed 900 kg and Perseverance massed 1025 kg according to Wikipedia, so dropping a metric ton of supplies for the robot to assemble would, again in theory, be feasible. (In practice the equipment for landing the supply crates safely would take up a good chunk of the mass budget, but there should be something left over in the mass budget for the crates to contain).

If you have robots like this, why send humans in the first place then? You've already got the bots that can do pretty much everything a human could want to do and you don't have to get them back off Mars.

Robots specialized in assembling one machine are not general-purpose robots. I doubt they would be able to "do pretty much everything a human could want to do".

Now, if someone does perfect a general-purpose, AI-driven robot, then yes, sending that robot on the Mars mission instead of a human would make a lot of sense. That's kind of, kind of, what we've done already with the rovers. But until such a general-purpose robot is actually created, human beings are still the most versatile, adaptable entities that could go to Mars.

It would possibly be more practical to store the return trip fuel in orbit around Mars.

Mass-wise, yes, but long term fuel storage and transfer in a vacuum is all completely theoretical at this point

I doubt it would be practical to pump fuel to another rocket. The obvious thing to do is store the fuel in orbit with its own rocket engine. Then you only have to dock with it and turn on the engine.

Solid-state boosters are potentially even better. No boil-off of fuel to worry about

Good idea! Although solid fuel rockets cannot be throttled or turned off.

You still have to land all the fuel to get the people off of Mars

Yes, but that's a lot less fuel than a return trip from Mars.

I take issue with your use of the word "bend" here.

Can you provide specific examples of where Elon has bent the levers of government?

Google Buzz is buzzing

It’s clear that maintaining everything in perpetuity is how you become #2

Yahoo would like a word with you

Turns out the entities you control / regulate less, tend to do things that are less in your interest and more in their own.

Insofar as grieving is an inherently, fundamentally a very particular chemical process, the answer is a resounding “no”.

If you simulate that chemical process in a computer, if necessary a quantum computer?

You don't even need quantum imo.

On a personal meatbag level emotions are magical and something ineffable.

From a scientific stance, chemical make brain go happy or sad and there's nothing special or magical about that. Every emotion we feel is because it was evolutionarily valuable for us to do so.

This is too mechanistic. You also choose which emotions to pay attention to.

This is too simple in itself.

When your afraid you can choose to ignore the fear, but you are still afraid and it has physical effects that can be measured. There is at least a trinary state of possible outcomes and as the situation space becomes more complex and solutions drift apart on all 3.

Then, logically speaking, you get a simulation of griefing.

And in what lies the difference?

That's a very closed definition of grieving. So by your definition a future perfectly simulated human brain cannot grieve because no chemicals are involved?

Lmao.

Whether anything a perfectly simulated human brain (or other organism see the fruit fly simulated brain) does is actually real - in the same sense it’s real for you and me - is still up for debate i think.

Assuming it’s possible to perfectly simulate a human brain

A “perfect simulation” is no longer a simulation.

The definition of the word “simulation” is:

> A simulation is the artificial imitation of a real-world process, system, or event using a model

As we know, “all models are wrong; some models are useful”.

A “perfect simulation” is, then, an oxymoron.

> I don't see how cutting pay for conductors is going to make anyone's lives better

It's going to make passengers' lives better by making their train rides more affordable, allowing them to improve their lives by leveraging those funds.

Or, it's going to make shareholders' lives better by increasing their profits.

Either way, some people will benefit from it. The question is -- what is the real, practical tradeoff, and is the tradeoff worth it to the participants in the system.

Can't the US producers sell oil outside of the United States, where it's more expensive, thus generating more profits for their shareholders, thus creating a shortage in the United States, thus dragging the prices up to the global equilibrium, thus dissipating any effects of the US producing more oil than it consumes?

I engraved mine for two practical reasons — tell mine apart from others and have contact info in case I lost it and it was found by a decent person.

And then an airplane: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michel_Lotito

"He was awarded a plaque, made of brass, by the publishers to commemorate his abilities. He ate his award".

Is "3rd world country" basically "Not a NATO country, but also not an Eastern Bloc country"?