New Mars Forums

I once heard a proposal for an SPS satellite that was essentially  a gas filled spherical balloon in space. One hemisphere of the balloon was transparent to let in light, while the other hemisphere's interior was reflective, producing a spherical reflector, that reflector would focus light on one spot with some spherical abberation, but it would get enough of the sunlight in one spot where the solar furnace is situated. The Solar furnace is of course on the opposite hemisphere from the reflective inner surface. The interior gas pressure of the balloon doesn't have to be that great to inflate in into a sphere that is situated in a vacuum, so not a lot of gas is required for this. The entire balloon's surface, whether reflective or transparent is a thin lightweight membrane, the heaviest part of the whole SPS is the Solar furnace, and the microwave transmitter antenna. This SPS comes all in one piece. Sunlight is not reflected down to the earth's surface or redirected to a seperate satellite, so no tracking is involved. Perhaps the opposite hemisphere is at the proper focal length and perhaps the solar furnace has to be situated further away on some framwork attached to the balloon. The balloon is in space by the way, not floating high in the atmosphere. Although I've heard proposals for floater Solar Furnaces high in the atmosphere too.

Do fission plants produce more power per unit weight than fusion plants? Fusion reactions are more energetic. If you just use the fusion plasma as a propellent, you get low thrust. My idea is to increase the reaction mass so that is comparable to a NERVA Rocket. We just substitute the source of the radiation that heats the hydrogen from a fission rod to a thermonuclear reactor. Larger ones will be more efficient that smaller ones.

I was actually thinking of a solar furnace in space along with the thin mirrors. The mirrors would focus the light onto the furnace, and some fluid would be heated, driving a generator and the generator would power a microwave transmitter which would transmit microwaves to a ground receiving station to be converted back into electricity.

There are two different kinds of scales of economy, one is that of repeated use and the other is that of size. What if we built a giant rocket to launch a single space station in one piece? A Sea Dragon, or a Nova might be just the sort of vehicle for that. I don't know when the day of the RLV will come, it keeps on receding into the future. NASA seems incapable of building one, it makes many fits and starts, but it seems each RLV project was a waste of money that could have been better spend on giant launch vehicles. Studies of the Project Orion seem to indicate that Saturn Vs aren't anywhere near the top of the scale for giant launch vehicles, excluding the nuclear issue, studies were done to determine the largest possible launch vehicle based on structural limitations, it turns out that a launch vehicle the size of a sky scrapper could be built. Chemical rocket engines could be scaled up, and with staging sizable payloads could be brought into orbit. One possibility if solar cells become light enough is to launch Solar Power Satellites that unfold upon deployment. You would want to launch those in the largest possible launch vehicles that one can build and in as few pieces as possible. The solar cells would have to be light and the launch vehicles gigantic to minimize launch costs, if the two could meet somewhere in the middle then the initial investment could be recouped through power generation.

What prevents the same in the United States?
Constitutional checks and balances, seperations of powers, and a bill of rights, that's what. If the people of Mars want a government that doesn't fall into tyranny, they should follow that successful model. Many governments leave certain things out of their constitutions because they want to be different from the United States and write their own original Constitution, and in the process they leave certain things out, perhaps intentinally, and this provide opportunities for tyrants to rise to power. The Russian Constitution made the office or President too powerful, and the result is a dictatorship, and a censored press. People sometimes want strong governments because it makes it easier for that government to solve problems if their is no debate or opposition, the problem is then, you no longer have the ability to get that government to do what you want.

Clark, you are a logic robot, the notion of fuzzy logic and human judgement and common sense seem beyond you. All you can do is run your code, exercise certian rules using your on/off circuits. Has it ever occured to you that the World is analog, not binary? You know why robots have such a hard time dealing with the real world and moving about in it? Because robots have computers for brains and computers see the world in binary as a bunch of ones and zeros. To get robots to function in the real world, programmers have to write code that interprets what the robots see into ones and zeros, and the computer has to be programmed to perform logic operations on those ones and zeros in such a way that it can move about and function in the real world by correctly interpreting those ones and zeros.

Humans don't see the World in binary, at least most humans don't, they realize that the world comes in shades, degrees, and colors, they don't worry about the exact number of hairs a bear needs for them to consider it fuzzy. Likewise if they see an enemy shooting at them, they know what to do, they don't try to deduce that its an enemy by using a series of If ... Then statements, they just use their gut insticts that have evolved over a million years to realize that they must kill them before they are killed by this threat. On the battlefield, you don't have time for rigourus logical analysis of every situation or to codify a rulebook on what to do given every possible situation that may be face, instead you have to go with your gut survival instinct. Your problem is you don't seem to have a survival instinct, you spend too much time worrying about what is right and what is wrong rather than how to win and how not to lose. If the enemy wins, that is a bad thing, it doesn't matter whether the evil is attributed to you, but if you refuse to fight the enemy for fear of doing evil, and evil triumphs due to your inaction what good is that?

Terrorism is evil! What your trying to do is formulate a logical argument for not fighting evil, and pretending that is a moral decision.

Example: Evil was done by Union troops to win the civil war and abolish slavery. People who reasoned like you would say, while they abhor slavery, they don't want to burn peoples houses down or destroy the supplies of the Confederate army, and the war seems to drag on and on if you don't do these things, so they would conclude that the Civil War must be "unwinnable" and that the best thing to do is let the Confederate States go and recognize them as a seperate country and thus end hostilities, and they can pat themselves in the back for eliminating slavery in the United States by making the United States smaller and avoiding bloodshed in the process.

We don't live in a perfect world Clark, the ideal solution doesn't always work to solve all problems, and sometimes we have to take less than idea actions to achieve the best outcome, apparently you don't recognize that possibility, so you prefer to do nothing and settle for the worse outcome whenever such a dilemma arises. War is bloody and evil, many innocent people died in World War II at allied hands, that is simply the nature of modern warfare, but inagine if we didn't fight at all? The evil would triumph and Hitler would conquer the World without resistance.
I am not willing to surrender my country to terrorists, maybe you are, but I'm not. I believe a compromise can be worked out between "Do no harm" and "Stop others from doing harm" Sometimes doing the second unavoidably means harming someone, and their is no perfect solution in an imperfect world.

Trying to construct a logic trap are you?
I'm not saying we should be all this or all that, what I'm saying is that we should use human judgement and set priorities rather than blindly adhere to a set of rules that the Insurgents can take advantage of. Our priorities in descending order should be the following:

1) Win the War!
2) Protect Lives
3) Protect Property

The higher numbers take precidence over the lower numbers, but the lower numbers are still important and should be followed as much as possible, out of moral considerations, so long as they don't interfere with the higher priorities.

What you seem to be saying is just forget 2 and 3 just concentrating on number 1. I think that's a mistake, because that is not the people we are.

We don't live in a logical true/false world, but I do think we should be trying to win the war as our number one priority. If you don't agree with winning the war, you may want to emphasise 2 and 3 over 1, and you might say things like: above all we should not send our soldiers into that mosque to root out those terrorists, we should not level that mosque and instead we should send our soldiers into that mosque so they can spring every trap the insurgents have set up, so they can ambush us in corridors and so forth, and our over all strategy should be simply to overwhelm them with numbers all the while trying to minimize damage to the mosque and all artifacts within, our soldiers should take off their boots when they enter show proper respect for their religion and then go after the insurgents very carefully, and then if the casualities are too high, then its an unwinnable war and we should pull out in disgrace anyway.

You see if you set conditions that are hard for our soldiers to fight under, then what you get is an unwinnable war so long as you try to meet those condition. I'm sorry, but my priority is winning the war, and that we should do what we have to in order to win. If we have to blow up that building the insurgents are in then fine, it better than taking an unacceptable level of casualities trying to root them out in corridor to corridor fighting.

Saddam was more ruthless than he needed to be, and we are not ruthless enough. In order to win the War, our soldiers must be allowed to fight, and not be so hamstringed by rules of engagement that we cannot initiate attacks against suspected insurgents. I don't want another Saddam-like dictator, and I don't wan't a religious dictator either, but our rules of engagement must be realistic enough to allow us to win. We mustn't be so concerned about civilian casualities that we cannot defeat the enemy. A prolonged and endless war is a worse evil than a war with some civilian casualities, even ones that were killed inadvertantly by US soldiers. I think we are focused too much on winning the "Hearts and Minds" and not enough on defeating the enemy. I think some human judgement needs to be employed here, and we mustn't be "logic robots" blindly following enumerated rules of engagement written by liberals. One of the tactics employed by the enemy is the use of human shields and to hide among the civilian populations. There are factions of the population that support the terrorists, if we judge that to be the case, we should raise their homes to the ground just like General Sherman did during the Civil War, it worked after all. Sherman tried not to kill too many civilians, his objective was to destroy property and not people, and he didn't enjoy this task, but winning the war was his overriding priority, and he figured not winning the war was the greater evil than burning these civilians homes. The problem with the troops in Iraq is that the rules of engagement put too much stress on the not doing wrong in the here and now and not enough emphasis in winning the War. The American people have shown their impatience with this by voting out members of congress, unfortunately they did so by voting in more "here and now" people and fewer "lets win the war and get this over with" people. I think we have at least a year to win this War before the Democrats defund it. The emphasis should be on training Iraqi troops so they can carry on the conflict in 2008, when the Democrats have their say. I think after January 1, 2008, the Democrats should be encouraged to provide funding assistance directly to the Iraqi government, and they should be allowed to buy military equipment from our defense contractors, but the Iraqi people should be prepared to continue this fight and do what is necessary to win it, and we should allow them to do what is needed.

A neotraditionalist would settle Mars because they don't like the direction their society is going. Same sex marriage and abortion might offend them for example, so they come to Mars intent on keeping their traditions alive without the interference of Modern Society in an increasingly global and interconnected world. Some people just don't want to be part of the Global Village, or have the Global Village imposing its idea on them.

On the Zubrin Mars Calendar, Christmas would be on Taurus 50th, exactly 1 week before Martian New Years day as is tradition. On our calendar Christmas also comes 3 days after Winter Solstice, which would put it on Pisces 4th. The date of Christmas is rather arbitrary anyway, in fact it was timed to be around the pagan traditional winter solstice celebration, so it would seem that Pisces the 4th would be appropriate.

Yeah, that's right the UK single-handedly beat the Germans without Lend-Lease, and it had the Nazis begging for Mercy when the USA joined in the African campaign. That is your revisionist history, not mine! Seems you seek to diminish the role of the USA in everything you say. I don't know why you hate my country so much, but I think you are off your rocker. The USA saved the World from certain tyranny in World War I & II, you just can't accept that, so you make up your own history. If the UK was beating Germany handily, then I think the USA would prefer to stay out of both wars, that was certainly their initial inclination, the main impetus for us getting involved was the perception that the UK might be defeated and we would have to face the Germans alone, but if it looked as if the British were winning all by themselves, then I think the US would have stayed out of the War and avoided the casualities, and in the case of Pearl Harbor, we could have confined our attacks to Japan if it looked as if the UK didn't need our help. That is your revisionist history however and not mine, and your version of events did not happened however much you'd like to diminish the role of the United States in the World. And I'm sure the British would have beaten the Russians to the Moon too. 

You brought up the subject of Star Wars, not I.
Yeah, I know what your trying to do, your trying to discredit an idea by using a perjoritive, by calling it names if you will. By associating missile defense with light sabers, X-wing fighters, and the Force, you hope to discredit the idea.

I never said you were, but the implication if you just give up on the Arabs ever having a democracy because they are constitutionally incompatible with democracy suggests a number of things with racial inferiority complexes inferred. Why can white christians have democracy and not Arab muslims? Does this suggest any sort of inferiority on the muslims part if they can't adopt democracy and so govern themselves? Why do they need a "Master" that never consults with them and rules them with an iron fist? Why must Arabs be slaves to an undemocratic government that rules over them with impunity? Why can't they free themselves from their religious masters that no one elected? George Bush for his part assumed they can, he assumes they are capable of governing themselves and choosing their own government just like white Christian caucasians can, if George Bush is wrong in making this assumption, at least it was a generouis assumption starting out by considering the Arabs to be our equals instead of our inferiors, which an assumption that they can't have democracy would imply. People are either masters of their own fate or slaves. If all Muslim Arabs can do is follow their masters blindly and give up their lives for them, then they are slaves. I think George Bush's assumption of them is more progressive then the liberal's standard argument that they are not ready for democracy, so any attempt to push democracy on them is a mistake. I for one think a democratic world is a safer would than one with a number of petty tyrants keeping large fractions of the World's population in their thrall.

When, I have't seen any Republicans supporting secession or slavery, quite the opposite in fact, we're trying to liberate the Arabs from their masters by pushing democracy on them, as Lincoln said, tyranny anywhere threatens freedom everywhere. I think in fact Lincoln would be in agreement with George Bushes policies in Iraq, and I also think he would view other issues such as same-sex marriage to be quite daft, he would probably view abortion as immoral. Lincoln believed in preserving the Union and so do the Modern Republicans. The Democrats in Lincoln's day were anti-war and guess what, so are the Democrats of today. In Lincolns time the Democrats supported a candidate, McClellan, who supported withdrawing and redeploying Federal troops out of the South and negotiation a Peace Treaty with the Confederacy, and that is the same sort of thing the Democrats want to do now only this time with the Terrorists and Iraqi insurgents, they always support something other than what George Bush is doing.

The only way to find out is to put Islam to the test, which is what George Bush is attempting to do in Iraq. If you are so sure the Iraqis will fail democracy, then you are prejudiced against their ability to live in a democratic society. What George Bush is doing is giving them a thorough rigourous test, such that if they fail, we'll know without a doubt that Islam and democracy are incompatible, but so far I think we know no such thing.

That depends on whether they are in the minority or the majority. If democracy cannot work in the Middle East because the people there are so messed up, then I don't see why we should let these same screwed up people into our country so they can try to mess up and sabotage our democracy. That is the other side of the coin. Whether democracy succeeds or fails in the Middle East says alot about the people that live there and whether we should let them live in our country.