"Project Starship"

[monart]

["Project Starship" is a very young and serious man's description of a romantic and philosophic vision of the future – and of the present, too. It's dedicated to the heroic genius of Ayn Rand, upon whose work this conception of starship is largely based. It's an answer to my previous post here, "What Can One Do?" ]

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Project Starship

3rd Edition

Monart Pon

© Copyright 1976, 2001, 2023 Monart Pon

 

The Starship (General)

In the boundless universe of stars, in a small region called the Milky Way Galaxy, is one star called the Sun. Spinning around this Sun, on a planet called Earth, is an organism called Man. This man is tapping the energy of the Sun and transforming the material of Earth to build his starship, his starship to seek, hold, and give the beauty that brings him his happiness.

The starship that man creates is an expression of his mastery over his own destiny, a mastery that breaks the circle of nature with a straight line, a line that reaches from this earth to touch the farthest stars.

The structure of the starship is the product of man’s shining his cool, strong light of reason upon the wilderness of reality to tame it into the home that supports his life. Growing from this work of discovering and unifying truth, goodness, and beauty, the starship is a selective re-arrangement of various aspects of reality into those forms that further his well-being.

Abstractly, starship is a complex concept, integrating the knowledge that leads to the success of human life. Concretely, the starship is an artificial planet, an earth re-created into a hierarchical unity of arts and machines, performing the functions of sustaining and enriching man’s spiritual/material health. Symbolically, the starship is a badge that signifies man’s ultimate purpose, his central activity, his highest achievement.

The starship for beautifying man can inspire him on his quest for new arts, new machines, new adventure: on a voyage that blasts off from this port of Earth and shoots outwards to other ports of other worlds--outwards to the countless stars of the countless galaxies of the unbounded universe.

The Project (Introduction)

Project Starship is an adventure to the stars, a romance for the ideal of starship--a consecration to the ultimate purpose of creating a world comprised of all those things from which comes the experience called happiness.

Project Starship grows from the acceptance and expression of one’s responsibility as a special kind of being, whose honor is one’s volition and whose glory is one’s starship.

Project Starship begins with understanding these facts:

a. Starship is the integrated structure of knowledge and processes, of arts and machines, of ideas, values, and inventions that, together, can nurture the continual growth of life and happiness.

b. The necessity of starship is based on the volitional nature of human life, the rational process of one’s consciousness, and the unlimited capability of one’s actions.

c. The starship’s vital core is one’s conceptual consciousness, one’s mind, one’s reason, the basic faculty that discovers and invents the ship’s knowledge and processes.

d. The starship’s most basic and crucial knowledge is philosophy, the knowledge of fundamental principles, the knowledge that integrates and guides all other knowledge, the knowledge that yields an attitude of romanticism for the wisdom as summarized in this way:

Man is a rational animal, whose existence in objective reality is sustained by the volitional operation of his conceptual consciousness called reason towards the cognition, evaluation, and invention of his starship to happiness.

I. The Basis

Man is a living, conscious, volitional being. Starship is an expression of this volitional nature.

Man, like all living things, is alive conditionally upon his generation of a series of successful internal-external actions to fulfill the needs for his life’s existence. Like other conscious living things, man uses his faculty of consciousness, his power of being aware of reality, to understand the meaning of the information gathered by his senses. This consciousness is a power to determine the good, or life-enhancing, and evil, or life-destroying, aspects of reality. It is a power to guide the course of actions towards the production of the good, and a power to experience, through emotion, the resulting state of life called happiness.

Unlike other conscious things, however, man has volition. He has direct control over the operation of his process of awareness, and, therefore, over his life. He can choose to be conscious and live, or to be unconscious and die. He can choose to be sharply or vaguely conscious: he can raise his level of awareness, sharpen its focus, enlarge its field, increase its cognitive efficacy, or he can blur, shrink, blank out and sabotage its processes. Volition begins with the choice to drive the mind to the highest achievement of successful life, or to leave it to stagnate to a rotting death.

Born ignorant and naked, man is innately ignorant of what is good or harmful to life, and is inherently naked of the tools to achieve the good and fight the evil. He has no instincts, no fur, fangs, or claws. To acquire knowledge and tools, man has to discover them by means of his mind. To fulfill the needs for his life’s health, he has to earn them by directing his mind towards the understanding of reality, the detection of possible good, and the invention of those extensions and augmentations to himself that can achieve the good. To attain the successful state of life called happiness, man must accept and express his responsibility as a volitional being: he must deserve his honor as the driver of his own mind, the master of his own life, the maker of his own destiny.

This honor and responsibility of volition grants man the freedom of a potentially unlimited capacity of awareness, a potential to know the simplest, or most complex, part of reality, a potential whose limit is essentially determined by man’s own choice and desire. At his command, man can enhance, elevate, focus, his level of awareness, from the automatic but limited, perceptual state of non-volitional beings, towards the virtually unlimited, conceptual field that only he can achieve. The conceptual mode of consciousness brings into his grasp a vivid understanding of the nature of himself and his world--an understanding that can transcend the immediate moment and place around him, to ultimately span an eternity of time and an infinity of space.

Given this kind of volitional awareness, an awareness unlimited in possibility of clarity, depth and scope, then the kind of actions possible to man is also unlimited. The sophistication of a conceptual consciousness can guide the most complex series of actions, the kind that can significantly alter the environment to suit human life, and that can enrich man’s health and extend his life-span.

Man’s possession of a conceptual, volitional consciousness distinguishes his life as, symbolically, a straight line, an endless line transcending the immediate bounds of this Earth, of this Sun, of this Galaxy, to ultimately touch all parts of the vast realm of stars. To complement this volitional life, to clothe his nakedness and replace his ignorance, to glorify his honor as a master, to seek his happiness--man creates the starship.

Starship could be the highest expression and achievement of human rational being. It is a ship of knowledge and processes: an integrated mobile environment that provides man with nourishment for growth, shelter against decay, and locomotion to explore his boundless realm. It is a starship because its primary source of energy and inspiration emanates from the stars. It is a starship because it is the kind of structure that can house and fly, comfort and move, man’s life on an astro-adventure. It is a starship because it can inspire man to be starbound, to seek new knowledge, new powers, new beauty--to seek his happiness and glory by sailing the endless sea of stars.

II. The Constitution

Starship is an integrated structure of the knowledge and processes, the arts and machines, the truths, goods, and beauties that, together, can enhance the continual growth of man’s life.

The starship’s vital core is man’s consciousness called reason. Reason is the creator, commander, coordinator, of the starship’s every part. Reason builds, organizes, integrates and maintains the ship’s entire structure by forming ideas, values, and inventions. It conducts the long and complex process that begins with raw materials and energies of the universe and ends with pro-man products. Reason is the basic generator of man’s happiness and the starship’s potent dynamo.

Reason performs the three general stages of starship-building: cognition, evaluation and re-creation. Cognition is the process of identifying the facts of reality, of discovering the properties and relationships of entities, of determining what is available for transformation. Evaluation is the process of detecting values and goals, the process of judging the possible good. Re-creation is the process of re-shaping, re-arranging, converting the raw elements of reality into those forms that can further life. The knowledge thus acquired, the ideas, values, and inventions, is integrated into the structure of the starship, constituting part of what may be called the starship’s intellect and spirit.

Reason’s supreme power of creativity is made possible by its conceptual manner of perceiving and understanding reality. The rational, conceptual process is one of perceiving, identifying, and integrating the data received by the senses, condensing the multitude of observations into simplified groups called concepts.

A concept is a mental unit concretized by a word and individualized by a definition. It is a condensed unit of knowledge formed by the differentiation and integration of essential attributes and relationships among entities. A concept reduces a multitude of facts about reality into easily grasped essentials, thereby freeing the mind from routine in order to study the new. Each concept thus formed is further combined with others to form larger concepts, or is divided into smaller ones, continuing this process of differentiating and integration indefinitely, bringing in ever-more organized knowledge, forever expanding the scope of man’s awareness.

The starship’s knowledge may be divided into science and technology. Science is the faculty of facts, the faculty that studies what is. Technology is the faculty of fancy, the faculty that, based on the sciences, studies what could be. Linking the two is ethics, the faculty of morals, the department of philosophy that studies what should be. Directing science and technology is philosophy, the faculty of axioms and fundamental principles--the faculty that studies the basic nature of, and relationship between, man, reality, and the starship.

Philosophy is the starship’s most crucial knowledge, the knowledge that unifies all the complexities of science and technology, the knowledge that gives a comprehensive framework of principles guiding and inspiring the conduct of all other knowledge.

Philosophy identifies the underlying nature of existence, of that which exists, of what is real, describing reality’s meta-laws, defining the principles of reason’s conceptual process, and prescribing the basic principles of life-seeking actions.

Two axiomatic concepts of existence that philosophy studies are “identity” and “causality”.

Identity is the concept that an existent, any existent, if it exists, then it exists with an identity--with a set of characteristics that distinguishes it from all other existents, making that existent a thing, not a nothing and not just anything, but a something. Identity thus distinguishes the real from the unreal, the natural from the supernatural.

Causality is the concept that an action or process is generated by specific entities, generated in a specific manner, resulting in a specific effect, according to the identity of the entity generating the action. Every action, every effect, presupposes an entity that generated or caused that effect. All of reality’s processes, including man’s, are accountable by certain properties or principles governing those processes. Causality thus distinguishes the kind of actions that an entity can generate from those it cannot, those actions that are explainable from those that are miraculous.

These axiomatic concepts are the basis, integrator and compass of all other concepts of the starship, guiding the ship’s science and technology to study the specific identities of entities and their actions. Applied to man’s actions, “identity” and “causality” yield the ethical derivatives of “honesty” and “justice”.

Honesty is the principle of being natural, of being true to reality, of perceiving reality as it is. It is the principle that since reality is objective and since man is a rational being, then to be true to nature, to be human, is to be conscious and conceptual. This means to pay attention, to understand reality with the clearest and fullest focus of the mind, with the widest context of knowledge, according to the law of identity. Honesty thus distinguishes the kind of thinking that man must perform to understand the nature and meaning of his life.

Justice is the principle of being fair, of being true to man, of treating men as they are. It is the principle of men acting to seek, grant, and accept only the earned and deserved from each other. It is the principle that since every effect presupposes its causal agent and since one’s desired effects are not achieved without cause, then every part of the starship must be earned, earned by exerting effort in a specific manner according to the law of causality. Justice thus distinguishes the kind of actions that man must perform to achieve the happiness of his life.

Honesty and justice form the basis of ethics, the set of principles (independence, integrity, courage, etc.) that guide the actions of the starship’s creation, the set of values that helps to unite the major faculties of science and technology, linking the facts of raw nature with the fancies of man’s desire.

Science is the faculty that scrutinizes the kinds of entities and processes that exist. Science systematically analyzes the properties of existents, determines their relationships, defines the methods of measurements, and categorizes the results into ideas.

Technology is the faculty that imagines the possible beauty that could come from the ideas of science and invents the techniques of re-creation to concretize the imagined ideals--creating the forms of artistry that enhance man’s spiritual life, and the forms of machinery that enhance man’s physical life.

Thus, the starship is generally a structure constituted by the knowledge of science and technology, and by the products of arts and machines, integrated by philosophy for the purpose of man’s happiness.

III. The Crew

The crew of a starship is a society of individuals. Each member of the starship’s crew is guided by the principles of honesty and justice. He is a specialist in some industry of the starship for a certain period of time, trading his particular service for that of other members. Some may be scientists trading with technologists or philosophers with artists. Whatever the relationship, each concentrates his energy on some specific profession, and combines his effort with others in trades that yield industries too difficult for one man. Some benefits of this co-operation are the diversity of services and products, an amplification in the power of an individual to seek his happiness, and a more efficient, faster creation of the starship.

The benefits of such a social starship are protected by an agency devoted towards the defense of a man’s right to his own life. This political instrument functions as a police and court to secure the individual from possible interference and destruction caused by the physical force of other men. It governs the retaliatory use of force to defend against initiated force, and may be called upon to resolve peaceful disputes.

Today’s government at times protects the freedom of men to pursue their happiness, and yet, other times, commits (for the sake of cowards and parasites) the very crimes against which it is commissioned to fight. This legalized violation of rights causes injury, hardships, and unnecessary obstacles, and must be opposed morally and politically, in order to free man’s achievement of his starship to happiness.

The Project (Conclusion)

. Project Starship is a life-long purpose, an industry of philosophy, science, and technology, a career of understanding man, reality, and the starship--a study and practice of creating the starship’s basis, constitution, and crew.

The first symbolic step in the starship project, for those who choose it, is the naming of one’s starship (e.g., Starship Pegasus, Starship Phoenix, Starship Prometheus). The name serves to symbolize and unify the specific stages of one’s project and serves as the banner of one’s quest, the emblem of one’s home.

In the name of one’s starship, an introductory study of philosophy is undertaken. The study of philosophy begins with gathering the knowledge with which to understand such subjects as: the nature of objective reality, the nature of man’s mind and emotion, the principles of moral action, the preconditions of a rightful society, and the nature of the romantic spirit. This knowledge will aid in the identification of what the starship is, why man needs it, and how he can build it.

The place to initiate the study of philosophy is Objectivism, the philosophy originated by Ayn Rand. Objectivist philosophy provides the principles for the starship project described in this article.

Specifically, the starting point is Ayn Rand's essay, “Apollo 11", in which she wrote:

"Nothing on earth or beyond it is closed to the power of reason. Yes, reason can solve human problems--but nothing else on earth or beyond it, can…. Let us hope that some men will learn it. But it will not be learned by most of today’s intellectuals, since the core and motor of all their incredible constructs is the attempt to establish human tyranny as an escape from what they call “the tyranny” of reason and reality….. If the lesson is learned in time, the flight of Apollo 11 will be the first achievement of a great new age; if not, it will be a glorious last--not forever, but for a long, long time to come."

("Apollo 11", The Objectivist, vol. 8, no.9, September, 1969; also in the anthology, Voice of Reason, 1989; also online )

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Edited March 5 by monart

[EC]

Mine is definitely Starship Prometheus in this allegory. The stuff I've spoken of is being done to me is being done because I possess the knowledge to create a non-allegorical Starship and other technology such as AGI and the powers-that-be falsely believe Man isn't ready for it, and also they are afraid of extreme asymmetry in terms of technology leading to immediate world war as soon as other nations learn that it is capable of being developed quickly here. Sounds like bs, I know, but I've been nearly murdered and have had my life destroyed because of it. They are purposely holding back the exponential advancement of mankind and technology while destroying, torturing, and murdering myself in the process just to stop it. It's evil done simply for the sake of evil. They made the asymmetry argument directly to me at the start of all of this,  so I'm not just speculating.  It was a direct assertion at the time. 

Edited March 6 by EC

[monart]

"Prometheus" - the Bringer of Fire and Light - a noble name. Mine is Starship Aurora - "Aurora", the Golden Dawn.

So you possess the knowledge to build advanced starship tech? And you're being persecuted because of that? How have you been protecting yourself? Have you been able to document your knowledge, maybe to file patents? With such valuable knowledge, have you tried getting onboard with Jeff Bezos' company, Blue Origin? Mr. Bezos was inspired by Gerard O'Neill's vision and plans for building autonomous orbital habitats for private citizens. Stay away from Elon Musk and SpaceX, whose aim, in contrast, is a planet-bound Mars colony for science/tech specialists. Hostile and dead Mars - compared to which, Antarctica is paradise.
 

[tadmjones]

Mars is less dead than the vacuum, though in either case I prefer a lot of organic material on hand, all the time

[Boydstun]

 

Elysium

[AlexL]

20 hours ago, EC said:

... Sounds like bs, I know

I hope it only sounds like BS, but I am not so sure, and this is very troubling for this OO forum...

[EC]

4 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Mars is less dead than the vacuum, though in either case I prefer a lot of organic material on hand, all the time

There's a finite but unbound number of earth-like habitable planets in the the Universe unpopulated by other rational entities (or still at a primitive state) open for colonization and without the need for teraforming that Mars would require that can be reached via new technology (actual warpdrive) instead of the primitive rocket technology we are ridiculously still using to send bots to uninhabitable rocks while not even being able to land them correctly most of the time. 

[EC]

1 minute ago, AlexL said:

I hope it only sounds like BS, but I am not so sure, and this is very troubling for this OO forum...

Not really, because it is the truth. 

[AlexL]

10 minutes ago, EC said:

Not really, because it is the truth. 

I hope it is.

[tadmjones]

2 hours ago, EC said:

There's a finite but unbound number of earth-like habitable planets in the the Universe unpopulated by other rational entities (or still at a primitive state) open for colonization and without the need for teraforming that Mars would require that can be reached via new technology (actual warpdrive) instead of the primitive rocket technology we are ridiculously still using to send bots to uninhabitable rocks while not even being able to land them correctly most of the time. 

Unbound or not traversing the distance is the stopper (for now?), so terraforming is probably more in the range of energy expenditure/production/directed utilization we can handle before we break out of our Newtonian limitations, so walk and chew gum ?

A ‘warp drive’ concept is in the realm of acceleration? Serious question , as my limited knowledge of physics makes me believe travel at the ‘speeds’ to make interstellar distances even conceivable for human survivability means developing systems that would sustain everything we know about stuff like the Kreb’s cycle and what know about metabolism is based on earth exact conditions , notwithstanding what effects such acceleration would and to the mix. I’ve heard the Higgs field is kind of sticky stuff with mass adds a little drag to the mix, too, no?

I also think this thread is more suited to an appreciation of the inspirational/ aspirational and physics would be better in a discussion on a separate thread.

[EC]

2 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Unbound or not traversing the distance is the stopper (for now?), so terraforming is probably more in the range of energy expenditure/production/directed utilization we can handle before we break out of our Newtonian limitations, so walk and chew gum ?

A ‘warp drive’ concept is in the realm of acceleration? Serious question , as my limited knowledge of physics makes me believe travel at the ‘speeds’ to make interstellar distances even conceivable for human survivability means developing systems that would sustain everything we know about stuff like the Kreb’s cycle and what know about metabolism is based on earth exact conditions , notwithstanding what effects such acceleration would and to the mix. I’ve heard the Higgs field is kind of sticky stuff with mass adds a little drag to the mix, too, no?

I also think this thread is more suited to an appreciation of the inspirational/ aspirational and physics would be better in a discussion on a separate thread.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

I know how to make this work in an efficient manner but that worth trillions of dollars at the very least so won't explain it here.  As for the acceleration problem there essentially is none because the ship bends spacetime such that the destination is much closer and surfs at normal sunlight speeds in the curvature. Also the fact that ER=EPR means wormhole creation is also possible but again won't go into details here but have already given many on this forum in many separate posts in many threads keeping most of it purposely in layman's terms and how it the Final Theory of Physics integrates without contradictions of any type with Objectivism/reality. For what it's worth since 2020 (and never before that) I have personally seen this type of craft on several occasions. Three times before I started working with Skinwalker Ranch as a volunteer which created the interest (never believed aliens were visiting Earth before that even though I was sure they existed somewhere) combined with my knowledge of the Final Theory of Physics I created in 2000 and the knowledge of how a warpdrive would work following from it. And then about 10 UAP during the summer of 2022 on their livestream which lead to several over the house I was renting at the time. Let's just say there was interest from far more than just our government. The Ranch itself was studying me. Then all this stuff started right after with drones flying all around the house that summer (this was about 8 houses down from the home I grew up in and was renting from lifetime family friends) and a fighter jet flew right down my street at less than 10000 feet. Just to give you a taste of the start of the destruction of my life.

For what it's worth, what started me on the path to the final theory was down the street at the house I grew up in when I was 12 I had one of those flat green Lego pieces that is supposed to be like grass sitting on my dresser. I had just woken up and was about to get ready for school.  I touched the flat green Lego and it shocked me like a static shock and right where I touched it glowed blue. It started shaking (I'm thinking is this an earthquake in Michigan or something?), then things got stranger as it shook and slowly slid to the edge of my dresser till it was about to fall.  That's when things really got strange because it didn't fall down but up in a slow spiral like a leaf to the ceiling and then slowly spiralled down spinning in the opposite manner until it landed in my GI Joe garbage can. I was in shock and fear and backed up and bumped into my bed and fell backwards across it and yelled for my Dad who finally came and, of course,  didn't believe the true story.  But the point is that this lead me down a lifelong path to explain what happened which lead finally to discovering the physics behind it. 

[Boydstun]

1 hour ago, EC said:

. . .

I know how to make this work in an efficient manner but that [that's] worth trillions of dollars at the very least so won't explain it here. . . .

Even were your accomplishments (not to be confused with your general drifts and aspirations) what you claim and presumably what you think you know, why ever would one want to leave this glorious earth and companion life here. The trush were singing out back waking me this morning. Human steps right on earth can travel unlimited roads if we love these steps and don't pretend we can get around them. I've had a much better quality of life than King Henry VIII. Not due to "recreational drugs," but the regular, amazing medicines of today. Also, due to music on CD's and the internal combustion engine and this electronic means of communication. Yes, there is still human failure, such as those who do not love their mind (and life and the lives of others) enough to stay away from recreational drugs. Leave them, not Earth and the glory on it. The humans going away with you are going to have none of what you want to get away from here on earth?

Seek out the good here (e.g. next post).

Edited March 7 by Boydstun

[Boydstun]

Sight of Superlative Achievement
Stephen Boydstun (2007)

My favorite character in Atlas Shrugged is John Galt. One of the crucial traits of this character is his extraordinary technical ability. I can adore a fictional character, and part of the reason I adore this one is his possession of that trait.

Adoration is one thing, admiration is another. Galt’s technical genius is admirable only in the derivative sense that I would admire that trait in a real person. I cannot admire a fictional character. I can admire the character’s creator as creator, but not the character.

Fortunately, there are in our time many individuals whose mathematical and scientific accomplishments are at the high level of the fictional character John Galt. They are not well known to the general public. I want to tell you about one such man.

Eli Yablonovitch invented the concept of a photonic band gap. He arrived at this concept in 1987 while doing research on making telecommunication lasers more efficient. Another physicist Sajeev John arrived at the concept independently that same year. John came to the concept in the course of pure research attempting to create light localization.

Four years later, Yablonovitch was the first to create a successful photonic band-gap crystal. He used a variant of the crystal structure of diamond, a variant now called yablonovite. The structure was formed by drilling three intersecting arrays of holes, 400 nanometers in diameter, into a block of ceramic material. This structure, at this scale, was able to eliminate the propagation of electromagnetic radiation in the microwave range. Photonic band-gap crystals are yielding a new generation of optical fibers capable of carrying much more information, and they are contributing to the realization of nanoscopic lasers and photonic integrated circuits.

The name photonic crystal sounds like a crystal made of light. That is incorrect. A photonic crystal is an artificial crystal (or quasicrystal) made usually of solids such as dielectrics or semiconductors. The electrical properties of a semiconductor are intermediate between a dielectric (an insulator) and a conductor.

In a dielectric material, the valence electrons of the atoms are tightly bound to them. They are confined to energy levels within the band of levels called the valence band. Above that band of levels is a broad band of energies inaccessible to the electrons under the laws of quantum mechanics. That forbidden band is called the band gap. Above the band gap is a band in which electrons could move freely in the material if only enough energy were applied to them to raise them to that band of energy levels. This band is called the conduction band.

In a semiconductor, the valence electrons are less tightly bound to atoms than they are in a dielectric. The band gap is smaller. A smaller boost of energy is needed to induce the flow of electrons, a current. The degree of electrical conductivity of a semiconductor can be precisely controlled by doping one semiconductor chemical element with small amounts of another.

When an electron is promoted across the band gap, an effective positive charge called a hole is created in the valence levels below the gap. The holes, like the electrons, can be entrained into currents. By controlling the supply of electrons and holes above and below the band gap, carefully designed semiconductors are able to perform electronic switching, modulating, and logic functions. They can also be contrived to serve as media for photo detectors, solid-state lasers, light-emitting diodes, thermistors, and solar cells.

The properties of an electronic band gap depend on the type of atoms and their crystal structure in the solid semiconductor. To comprehend and manipulate the electronic properties of matter, electrons and their alterations must be treated not only in their character as particles, but in their character as quantum-mechanical waves. The interatomic spacing of the atoms in matter is right for wave-interference effects among electrons. This circumstance yields the electronic band gaps in semiconductors as well as the conductive ability of conductors.

A photonic band gap is a range of energies of electromagnetic waves for which their propagation through the crystal is forbidden in every direction. The interatomic spacing in semiconductors are on the order of a few tenths of a nanometer, and that is too small for effecting photonic band gaps in the visible, infrared, microwave, or radio ranges of the spectrum. Creation of photonic band gaps for these very useful wavelengths requires spatial organizations in matter at scales on the order of a few hundred nanometers and above.

In the 70’s and 80’s, researchers had been forming, in semiconductors, structures called superlattices. These were periodic variations in semiconductor composition in which repetitions were at scales a few times larger than the repetitions in the atomic lattice. The variations could consist of alternating layers of two types of semiconductors or in cyclic variations in the amount of selected impurities in a single type of semiconductor. These artificial lattices allowed designers, guided by the quantum theory of solids, to create new types of electronic band gaps and new opticoelectronic properties in semiconductors.

Photonic crystals are superlattices in which the repeating variation is a variation in the refractive index of the medium. It is by refractions and internal partial reflections that photonic band gaps are created. The array of holes that Yablonovitch and his associates drilled for the first photonic crystal formed a superlattice of air in the surrounding dielectric solid. Additional workable forms of photonic-crystal superlattice have been demonstrated since that first one. Costas Soukoulis and colleagues created a crystal of crisscrossed rods, and it has yielded photonic band gaps in the infrared part of the spectrum. Photonic crystals have been created mostly in dielectric or semiconductor media, but Shawn Yu Lin and associates have created them in tungsten. These may prove useful in telecommunications and in the conversion of infrared radiation into electricity.

In 2001 Eli Yablonovitch co-founded the company Luxtera, which is now a leading commercial developer of silicon photonic products.

Photonic crystals, manipulators of light, they are alive “because they are the physical shape of the action of a living power—of the mind that had been able to grasp the whole of this complexity, to set its purpose, to give it form.” –AR 1957 (re diesel-electric) 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Scientific American

1983 (Nov) “Solid-State Superlattices” –G.H. Dohler

1984 (Aug) “Quasicrystals” –D.R. Nelson

1986 (Oct) “Photonic Materials” –J.M. Rowell

1991 (Nov) “Microlasers” –J.L. Jewell, J.P. Harbison, and A. Scherer

1998 (Mar) “Nanolasers” –P.L. Gourley

2001 (Dec) “Photonic Crystals: Semiconductors of Light” –E. Yablonovitch

2007 (Feb) “Making Silicon Lase” –B. Jalali

 

Science News

1991 (Nov 2) “Drilling Holes to Keep Photons in the Dark” –I. Peterson

1993 (Sep 25) “A Novel Architecture for Excluding Photons” –I. Peterson 

1996 (Nov 16) “Light Gets the Bends in a Photonic Crystal” –C. Wu

1998 (Oct 24) “Crystal Bends Light Hard, Saves Space” –P. Weiss

2003 (Oct 4) “Hot Crystal” –P. Weiss

2005 (Nov 5) “Light Pedaling” –P. Weiss

 

Nature Photonics

2007 (1:91–92) “Bandgap Engineering: Quasicrystals Enter Third Dimension” –C.T. Chan

 

Fundamental Papers – Physical Review Letters

1987 (May 18) “Inhibited Spontaneous Emission in Solid-State Physics and Electronics” –E. Yablonovitch

1987 (Jun 8 ) “Strong Localization of Photons in Certain Disordered Dielectric Superlattices” –S. John

1989 (Oct 30) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case” –E. Yablonovitch and T.M. Gmitter

1990 (Nov 19) “Full Vector Wave Calculation of Photonic Band Structures in Face-Centered-Cubic Dielectric Media” –K.M. Leung and Y.F. Liu

1990 (Nov 19) “Electromagnetic Wave Propagation in Periodic Structures: Bloch Wave Solution of Maxwell’s Equations” –Z. Zhang and S. Satpathy

1990 (Dec 17) “Existence of a Photonic Gap in Periodic Dielectric Structures” –K.M. Ho, C.T. Chan, and C.M. Soukoulis

1991 (Oct 21) “Photonic Band Structure: The Face-Centered-Cubic Case Employing Non-Spherical Atoms” –E. Yablonovitch, T.J. Gmitter, and K.M. Leung

Edited March 7 by Boydstun

[monart]

12 hours ago, tadmjones said:

Mars is less dead than the vacuum, though in either case I prefer a lot of organic material on hand, all the time

The O'Neill-type orbital habitats are in the vacuum of space, yes, but they are giant rotating pressure vessels containing air, forests, rivers, lakes, hills, even mountains -- orbiting the Earth-Moon system, absorbing the rich solar light for energy, and benefitting from access to variable gravity (centrifugally simulated). Mars' toxic atmosphere is as unbreathable as vacuum, its gravity is unchangeable, its solar light is far dimmer, and its colonists would be as nearly planet-gravity-bound as on Earth.

[tadmjones]

Nay, you shall see a bold fellow many times do Mahomet's miracle. Mahomet made the people believe that he would call an hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers, for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill. So these men, when they have promised great matters, and failed most shamefully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado. Bacon, Francis, chapter 12, Of Boldness, in his Essays.

[monart]

17 hours ago, Boydstun said:

 

Elysium

When I watched the movie Elysium I liked the well-produced, standard action story and the individualism of the protagonist, but not the usual anti-capitalist, rich vs. poor setting. The CG rendering of the space habitat added to the visual appeal.

[monart]

17 hours ago, EC said:

There's a finite but unbound number of earth-like habitable planets in the the Universe unpopulated by other rational entities (or still at a primitive state) open for colonization and without the need for teraforming that Mars would require that can be reached via new technology (actual warpdrive) instead of the primitive rocket technology we are ridiculously still using to send bots to uninhabitable rocks while not even being able to land them correctly most of the time. 

No need to "colonize" other planets here in this or other solar systems, not when artificial, earth-like "planets" in the form of rotating pressure vessels containing conducive ecosystems large enough to include prairies, rivers, lakes, hills, mountains, clouds, sunlight, and scheduled weather (even with random weather scheduled in.)

Voyages to the outer planets in this solar system or to other stars need not only be in the usually-depicted submarine-like ships with warp-drives. The artificial-earth habitats, with solar/nuclear power plants, are less-rushed, far more comfortable starships in which to live and travel, even across multiple generations

[Boydstun]

41 minutes ago, monart said:

When I watched the movie Elysium I liked the well-produced, standard action story and the individualism of the protagonist, but not the usual anti-capitalist, rich vs. poor setting. The CG rendering of the space habitat added to the visual appeal.

Likewise.

The great difference in standard of living between rich and middle/poor from the times of Carnegie to our times of Bezos is much publicized. But the rise in standard of living, in market economies, of middle/poor over that interval is where the attention should be, I'd say.

I did not like that in Elysium yet another recent futuristic dystopian background for the story was being predicated on overpopulation of the earth. In the first place, it is false that there is not land in the economic sense to support a population 100 times today's were rights-respecting minds left free to investigate and trade. And secondly, it is most galling that stories continue to use overpopulation of earth as fulcrum to the story, when the worried human population growth projections of several decades ago have not occurred. Since 1970 the world population doubled. But with the growth rate now, it is not projected to double again until 200 years from now have passed.

Edited March 7 by Boydstun

[monart]

15 hours ago, tadmjones said:

. . .

I also think this thread is more suited to an appreciation of the inspirational/ aspirational and physics would be better in a discussion on a separate thread.

Yes, if in line with the focus of the essay, "Project Starship", the discussion here would be more on the inspirational/aspirational and philosophical aspects. But some discussion of the engineering-tech aspects may help keep it concretized, even if a separate thread may spin off.

Edited March 7 by monart

[monart]

10 hours ago, Boydstun said:

. . . why ever would one want to leave this glorious earth and companion life here. The trush were singing out back waking me this morning. Human steps right on earth can travel unlimited roads if we love these steps and don't pretend we can get around them. I've had a much better quality of life than King Henry VIII. Not due to "recreational drugs," but the regular, amazing medicines of today. Also, due to music on CD's and the internal combustion engine and this electronic means of communication. Yes, there is still human failure, such as those who do not love their mind (and life and the lives of others) enough to stay away from recreational drugs. Leave them, not Earth and the glory on it. The humans going away with you are going to have none of what you want to get away from here on earth?

Seek out the good here (e.g. next post).

Yes, why leave the comforts of Earth for a spartan life in hostile space? Not many would, if that is the only choice. But another option is to live in space in earth-like habitats, with sunshine and birds, with music and merriment, with all the wonderful pleasures, conveniences, and security available here on Earth. Indeed, the earth-like habitat may be a politically autonomous, Objectivist free society, free from the failures, tyranny, and misery of altruists and collectivists. In either case, whether one wants to live in space or on Earth, it's still a starship one builds and lives in, from the perspective described in the essay, "Project Starship".

[tadmjones]

22 hours ago, EC said:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcubierre_drive

 

That type of conjecture is I think an example of ‘trying to create the territory out of the map’ fallacious framing. Not the conjecture qua conjecture , as much as treating the thesis of a possible feature of reality as sufficient cause to claim having  found a feature of reality. 
As science physics identifies features of reality and allows for predictions of the behavior of reality. The ‘maths’ allowed for the predictions that lead to the empirical proof of the possibility of atom splitting. And the splitting proved the maths.

I’m not versed in the history of the scientific development of knowledge of fusion and fission and the technologies that made manipulation of those forces possible, but I’d assumed it is in some sense based on the maths that were based on observations of star like objects. 
 

Are there analogous instances observed of Supra liminal phenomena or does some interpretation of ‘the maths’ lead to a possibility by interpretation alone? 
Quantifying the empirical evidence of the facts of reality doesn’t necessarily lead to  the ability to exploit the laws of physics in such a way as to create a ‘new’ phenomenon, do we not first need to identify an instance of super liminal motion before exploiting the forces ?

[tadmjones]

Oops too late for edit , liminal should be luminal 

[Boydstun]

@tadmjones

Here is an intellectual high-altitude perspective on possibility of superluminal signals, in flat spacetime, without getting into conflict with special relativity in its confines to E-M fields, etc. Although, the paper points to no known physical fields whose differential equations imply causal cones that do not coincide with light speed:

Faster than Light? by Robert Geroch (at 13 minutes in this lecture, he speaks of a theorem which, if I understand correctly, rules out the possibility of negative mass in GR which I gather is the situation under which Alcubierre drive would be possible.)  

Edited March 8 by Boydstun

[monart]

On 3/7/2024 at 7:47 AM, Boydstun said:

Likewise.

The great difference in standard of living between rich and middle/poor from the times of Carnegie to our times of Bezos is much publicized. But the rise in standard of living, in market economies, of middle/poor over that interval is where the attention should be, I'd say.

I did not like that in Elysium yet another recent futuristic dystopian background for the story was being predicated on overpopulation of the earth. In the first place, it is false that there is not land in the economic sense to support a population 100 times today's were rights-respecting minds left free to investigate and trade. And secondly, it is most galling that stories continue to use overpopulation of earth as fulcrum to the story, when the worried human population growth projections of several decades ago have not occurred. Since 1970 the world population doubled. But with the growth rate now, it is not projected to double again until 200 years from now have passed.

That's right, given the continual innovations in science/tech, not only is there plenty of land (and ocean) on Earth for habitation, as any orbital views of Earth show -- but also plenty of petroleum to be tapped, inexhaustible according to the claim of the abiogenesis of petroleum rising from deep in the Earth.

But whether or not overpopulation is a real problem and moving into space is a solution to it, living and working in space is a positive advancement in civilzation, not only an escape, just as the settlement of America was.

[monart]

On 3/7/2024 at 6:40 AM, tadmjones said:

Nay, you shall see a bold fellow many times do Mahomet's miracle. Mahomet made the people believe that he would call an hill to him, and from the top of it offer up his prayers, for the observers of his law. The people assembled; Mahomet called the hill to come to him, again and again; and when the hill stood still, he was never a whit abashed, but said, If the hill will not come to Mahomet, Mahomet will go to the hill. So these men, when they have promised great matters, and failed most shamefully, yet (if they have the perfection of boldness) they will but slight it over, and make a turn, and no more ado. Bacon, Francis, chapter 12, Of Boldness, in his Essays.

Is Bacon here expressing an aspect of what Rand calls "the metaphysical vs the man-made"?