Daily Archives: August 3, 2006

Survey Says…

Continuing our week-long blogiversary celebration, one of the popular new features we added this year is surveys. So far we have done one on the Singularity, another on God and the Singularity, a survey on the Future of Space Development, and still another on the lieklihood of the Space Ark scenario.

Before running any official surveys, we did a poll related to a report that Sweden is planning to build a moon colony. Here are the results. Note how low Japan scored in the ranking of likely moon-colonizers.

moonresults.jpg

Very interesting in light of this item from today’s news (via GeekPress):

Japan sees manned moon station in 2030

Japan’s space agency has set a goal of constructing a manned lunar base in 2030.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has revealed its ambition to an international conference in Tokyo this week but has not yet been allotted the budget for the ambitious project.

JAXA hopes to launch a satellite into lunar orbit next year, followed by an unmanned spacecraft that will land on the moon and a probe ship that will collect samples from the moon.

So this raises a couple of interesting follow-up questions:

1. Will they make it by 2030?

2. If so, will that be the first permanent moon settlement?

Tour de Enhancement

The New York Times reported on Tuesday that the extra testosterone found in Floyd Landis’s blood was not from a natural source. I don’t see him fighting back from that. It seems certain that he’ll have his Tour de France title stripped from him. This and the allegations against Lance Armstrong have delivered a one-two punch to U.S. cycling.

UPDATE: Per Phil (and CBS News) Lance Armstrong has been cleared of the doping allegation.

The sports commentary I’ve heard all seems to contain the hope that cycling will be able to get it’s act cleaned up. I’m not sure that’s possible.

The ultimate problem is that doping works. And it’s not just the guys in the back of the pack that are being helped to finish in the middle. Modern performance enhancement boosts the performance of leaders like Floyd Landis too. And doping will improve as the technology improves.

A world-wide event like the Tour de France attracts the best athletes in the world. All competitors – even the ones doping – have trained their bodies to peak condition. They’ve put everything into their sport. If they think their chance of winning would be increased by performance enhancing drugs, then the temptation will be huge for someone who competes at that level.

This problem is not going away. Tests will get more sophisticated, but doping will too. It’s an arms race that will predictably produce scandals and crackdowns.

Some of these athletes may even think that winning requires doping. Whether or not that’s true now, the situation will become absurd when performance enhancement becomes common. How fun will it be to watch sports when 13-year-olds are outperforming highly trained “clean” athletes?

Performance enhancement has already begun entering society as a medical treatment for some muscular and neurological conditions. But more and more these drugs will be seen as life-style choice. Most people would like to increase their strength and endurance IF they could do so safely. The market is there.

In 100 years humanity will have very different physical limits from today. Obviously athletes at that time will reflect that reality. Between then and now we may be in for a bumpy ride.