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#426 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Possible Lunar Lava Tubes per Grail probe. » 2016-12-21 22:37:23
http://phys.org/news/2016-04-grail-lava-tubes-moon.html
http://www.universetoday.com/128208/buried-lave-tubes/
Quote:Where the Marius Hole is located, the team spotted a gravitational signature that was indicative of a subsurface cavity. But that was not all. Distributed across the Moon’s near side, Sood and his colleagues also noted that the GRAIL data indicated at least ten signatures that could resemble lava tubes. All are located near the dark areas left by ancient volcanic seas, with some measuring more than 100 km long and several kilometers wide.
Naturally, there are some doubts as to whether or not the readings are indicative of actual lava tubes. As the team indicated in their paper – “Detection of Buried Empty Lunar Lava Tubes Using Grail Gravity Data“, which contains the findings they presented at the 47th Lunar and Planetary Science Conference – the structures they were looking for were similar or smaller in scale than the resolution of the gravity data.
As a result, it was difficult to determine whether or not the signals they spotted were in fact a sign of an underground recess, or a numerical artifact in the data. Because of this, proving the existence of stable, subsurface lava tubes will require a next-generation mission, one that has instruments which will be able to penetrate the lunar surface and confirm the presence of recesses.So if ground penetrating radar confirms this, then rather big lava tubes to place cities in on the Moon.
I have often wondered what you would use to enhance lava tubes, but Antius might have provided something in a another topic.Timbrel vaulting.
http://www.lowtechmagazine.com/2008/11/ … aults.html
Multiple layers of tiles glued together, are immensely strong.
Glue on the Moon could be a problem relative to Mars, but I believe that there is CO and Hydrogen in the shadowed polar craters, or so it is thought.
And if you really want to do something interesting, you could fill them with ice covered lakes! (I need to do that).
Really, if that was useful, you could possibly get more ice from other locations and crash it on the Moon in the night side, much if it will not vaporize. Perhaps from Ceres?
But if you are going to have a lava tube habitat, why not seal it and have a temperate farmland in it. Pretty far fetched, but then again, if you did have a fraction of habitable land on the Moon err.. Under it's surface, it would really make it more valuable/habitable/useful.
As for the gravity question, I think Hypertoobs modified could offer a solution to keep humans healthy.
http://phys.org/news/2015-03-theoretica … .html#nRlv
Quote:
http://cdn.phys.org/newman/csz/news/800 … ticals.jpgThe city of Philadelphia is shown inside a theoretical lunar lava tube. A Purdue University team of researchers explored whether lava tubes more than 1 kilometer wide could remain structurally stable on the moon. Credit: Purdue University/courtesy of David Blair
I could have added this to a "Moon" related thread, but you do that if you want to.
You know this is about the size of a bernal sphere.
Actually two bernal spheres placed side by side, as the diameter I believe is 500 meters. So a colony of 10,000 could fit within a lava tube, we can then place solar panels on the roof and power some artificial lighting within the cave. We would need a larger area covered with solar panels than the area to be artificially illuminated. A polar location would be ideal, as we wouldn't need energy storage, and we can turn on and off he lights to suit us. the hard part would be producing the solar panels and artificial lighting equipment, and of course creating the atmosphere to pressurize the whole thing.
#427 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2016-12-21 22:21:51
The votes have already been cast and counted, its over! We have to move on. The electors cast their votes, more were faithless toward Hillary Clinton than towards Donald Trump. Donald Trump is our next President. I hear he favors building a base on the Moon, it is something that is easily within our reach, he had a meeting with some space entrepreneurs recently, so he may do a public/private partnership to save money and insert a profit motive to bring in some private investment. This stuff about Hillary Clinton's e-mails is something for the Justice Department to consider now. Our votes have been cast, the electors votes have been cast, this campaign is over, the only thing to decide now is whether or not the Clintons will be prosecuted and possibly go to jail. Obama has not pardoned them, I don't think Trump will, it will be up to his attorney general on whether to proceed with the case, or else the Clintons could skip the country before Trump is sworn in, it would have to be a country that we have no extradition treaty with.
#428 Re: Not So Free Chat » Election Meddling » 2016-12-20 21:01:57
In my opinion false news is produced by the News Media, particularly ABC, the New York Times, the Washington Post, CBS, NBC, CNN. There reporting of the election was way off, their polls were not intended to be accurate but to influence public opinion, they made Clinton's win look to be inevitable and they portrayed Trump's campaign as having a slim to none chance of winning, and back then you all seemed to agree with that assessment. The Media was not doing its job, it instead seemed interested in influencing the race through slanted reporting WikiLeaks was the odd man out, it probably had a lot to do with Hillary's defeat, if it weren't for all that e-mail that was uncovered all we would have gotten was the main stream media's propaganda. If the Russians had a hand in it, then I'm not going to question the source. I don't view the Russians as automatically evil, I don't agree with their invading Ukraine, to me that is more offensive than their influencing the Presidential campaign through releasing hacked data. I mean the media was not doing its job, if a foreign source is what it takes to break their monopoly or near monopoly on information, then I don't have a problem with it. WikiLeaks by the way says their source was not the Russians, it that it would matter if it was. A lot of people who'd take Russia's side in the Ukraine conflict are suddenly trying to make Russia the bogeyman to explain Hillary's defeat. in my mind the answer is simple, Hillary was a lousy candidate, and the Mainstream Media was not powerful enough to overcome her inadequacies! Also she was unable to differentiate herself from Obama, because things are not going well with the economy and the war on Terrorism.
#429 Re: Not So Free Chat » Election Meddling » 2016-12-20 00:09:41
Tom:
I do not believe you actually understood what I wrote. Your "analysis" has little or nothing to do with what I wrote! You might want to listen to something other than Faux News or that 24/7 cable nonsense, now and then. Your vision might then clear enough to actually see and read what someone else has written.
I SAID I didn't like either one of them: not Trump, not Clinton. I don't much care for either major party, either. Both value political wins above the good of the country. And I really DO consider THAT to be treason.
GOP taxation policy is based on trickle-down economics, which has proven to be an utter lie since the time of Reagan and the right-wing takeover of the GOP,
I seem to remember quite robust growth in the economy during the Reagan years, seems that trickle down economics was working much better than whatever Obama was trying over the past 8 years which produced an average of around 2% growth, the Reagan years had an average of 3.5% with 4.9 percent growth after the recession.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/kylesmith/2 … 364b913c92
3 decades ago. Actually, we've known it was BS a lot longer than that. Democratic overspending policy is also BS. What needs to be done is in between those poles, and there is much room for experimentation, as those poles are very far apart. Driven there for over-hyped politicking.
Russian hacking is confirmed. I'm NOT INTERESTED in changing the election outcome. But if hostile foreign powers interfered trying to sway voters,
Have we not done the same in other countries? There are some leaders we would prefer to have in other countries than in others. For instance, having Fidel Castro as leader of Cuba has not been very helpful to our national interests, and we have tried to influence the politics of that country. Have you ever heard of the Voice of America? We've broadcasted into Eastern Block countries in an attempt to influence the politics of those countries, there is nothing wrong with that. Russia likewise has the right to say they like Trump over Clinton and tell us why, there is nothing wrong with them giving their opinion. and if they find something criminal that Hillary is doing, why shouldn't they tell us about it? So long as its true. You see spying is only good for finding out the truth, if they wanted to lie to us, they wouldn't need spies or hackers, they would only need propagandists. So if Russia is completely fabricating stuff to influence our elections, it is not backing into the DNC, because it doesn't need to in order to write fiction. If they find something that is true, why shouldn't they tell us? If it is something that is going to affect our vote, don't you think we have a right to know? Russia is under no obligation to keep Hillary's secrets. We spy on Russia after all, and if the Russians were running a gulag in Siberia using slave labor of inmates to drill for oil, are we obliged to keep that a secret also? That is an illegal activity, if we find out about that going on in Russia, why shouldn't we tell? and if that causes the Russians to overthrow their government, is that a bad thing?
and I believe they did, then I want them to suffer for it, once we are sure about it.
Have you heard about the Russian Ambassador to Turkey who was assassinated by an off-duty cop? Andrey Karlov
http://www.msn.com/en-us/news/world/rus … smsnnews11
Karlov was born on February 4, 1954. In 1976, he graduated from the School of International Economic Relations of Moscow State Institute of International Relations.
In 1992, Karlov graduated from the Diplomatic Academy of the Russian Foreign Ministry. He worked for the ministry since 1976. In 1976-2008, Karlov held various diplomatic positions in the central apparatus of the ministry and its foreign offices. In 2001-2006, he served as the Russian ambassador to North Korea. © YoutubeChaos in Ankara at the Scene of Russian Ambassador's MurderIn 2007-2009, he was a deputy director of the Consular Department of the Russian Foreign Ministry. On January 27, 2009 he was appointed the director of the Consular Department. On July 12, 2013, Karlov was appointed ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary of Russia to Turkey. Karlov was proficient in English and Korean languages. The ambassador was married and had a son.
Read more: https://sputniknews.com/middleeast/2016 … or-turkey/
So he was married and has a son, there are at least two Russians who are suffering today!
That's Putin's Russia. Putin preferred Trump over Clinton, because he thinks he can deal with, or manipulate, Trump, and he knew that wild-card "populist" Trump would spread chaos. He knew he could not manipulate or deal with Clinton.
You think Clinton is smart and Trump is not?! What a weird backwards world you live in. Is Einstein also stupid? Einstein was successful in their field of physics just as Trump is successful in the field of finance. I guess you underrate the amount of smarts it takes to be successful in their field of finance, you think any only dope can stumble into a fortune like Forrest Gump? Did Trump invest in a "Fruit Company" that turned out o be Apple Incorporated? You know Forrest Gump is fiction and Donald Trump is not, don't you?
Russian false news / disinformation is both confirmed, and long known to be a standard practice of theirs.
Well you know, the Russians don't have to hack into anyone's e-mails to spread false information, don't you? writing fiction doesn't not require stealing information! If Russia wants to tell he truth about Hillary, it is going to have to find out the truth first, if Russia is going to tell a lie about Hillary, there is nothing to find out, they can just make it up! Writing fiction is perfectly legal, it is a part of free speech.
The US is but the latest victim, this has been going on in Europe for many years now. It has provoked the rise of "tear it all down" (to misuse an old word) "populists" there, and now here. Disruption and chaos makes us weaker, less able to resist Russian ambitions. Or Iranian. Or Chinese. Or North Korean. THAT'S what Putin wants.
We're we strong under Obama? Nope! What has Obama done to stop the alleged hacking? Nothing! Stoping Russian spying was Obama's Job as President of the United States, his Administration was supposed to prevent that and it failed. Obama has not been a strong President, he was in fact a weak President and Putin took advantage of him and of Hillary, but invading Ukraine for one, and what has Obama and Hillary done to stop him? Nothing!
Now you say Trump is weak and easy to manipulate, but so far it has been Obama and Hillary that have demonstrated how weak they were,, their inept government did not stop the hacking, an Hillary keeping her government e-mails on a private server did not help either!
There's no doubt that the US helped influence the revolt in Ukraine that replaced a Putin stooge with an anti-Putin incompetent.
So in other words you are calling the Ukrainian people too stupid to govern themselves, that they cannot be trusted to elect their own government, so Putin must impose one on them using the might of the Russian armed forces, what does that sound like? Kind of sounds like the British government trying to bring to "rebellious American colonists" to heel doesn't it!
There's also no doubt that Putin personally directed Russian troops in eastern Ukraine attempting the pro-Russian revolt there. That same crowd led by that same Putin bear responsibility for shooting down that airliner. We have the photos and the emails to prove all of this. But our government is proving too feckless to make use of that data to discredit Putin in public.
That is our government run by Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton was a part of that government, Trump was not!
McCarthy? I remember McCarthy. I thought he was a dangerous asshole then, and that seems to be the general consensus in recent decades. He ruined people's lives for political gain. Evil person. So too were the ones who let him get away with it so long.
Hillary Clinton ruined peoples lives too, remember those "Bimbo eruptions?" Hillary also employed smear tactics against those women who accused Bill Clinton of inappropriate behavior including rape!
I also remember that in the 1960's the conservative southern Democrats left the Democratic party and went to the Republican party.
Now why would they do that? The Republican Party is the Party of Abraham Lincoln and it still is, much more so in fact than the Democratic Party is the Party of Andrew Jackson! You know Andrew Jackson was the first President of the Democratic Party, just as Lincoln was the first President of the Republican Party. Can you think of anything Trump stands for that Abe Lincoln would disagree with? In some things Trump is more liberal that Abraham Lincoln. Abraham Lincoln wanted to deport freed slaves back to Africa, Trump never suggested that.
These were the far-right-wing racists who for half a century had imposed Jim Crow and KKK-type violence. They still do try to do these evils, and have recently come out of the woodwork, as Republicans. The GOP has NOT been the party of Lincoln since the robber baron / gilded age.
That is just Democrat smear, Donald Trump was never a member of the KKK, can you prove that he was?
Problem is, since not long after WW2, the Democrats have turned out to be just as evil. Both lie, cheat, and steal to perpetuate the giant corporate welfare state, run by the rich giants who own them. The political agendas have become meaningless except as distractions to keep the people diverted from knowing what is being done to them. Bread-and-circuses. Nothing more.
As you can see, I think both major parties have idiotic agendas, and both do a lot of evil. Your "conservatism" is the same kind of evil hogwash as that of the "liberals" that I see you despise. Different slogans, same evil.
So there.
GW
So you think people who resist change are evil? Are the Amish evil, they resist change? Amish people ride around in horse and buggies, they don't like new fangled things such as cars, telephones, and electricity, that by definition is a conservative. Should we force them to change and if so change into what? Liberals have been trying to force their kind of changes onto us, they say it is evil that we resist their change, they snap their fingers and demand we make changes to save the planet from global warming! They snap their fingers and demand we accept same sex marriage! They snap their fingers and demand that we pay more in taxes and accept a larger role of government in our lives! they don't want to have a discussion, they just make demands and they demand that we accept their ideas and their changes rather than remaining the same. Remaining the same is less controversial than going with a particular change, because there are many possible changes we can make, not all of them good, but if what we have had works and we want to stick with that, that is what conservatism is all about, because change entails risk! not all changes are good, some changes will make our lives much worse than they are now. If we don't trust a change because we perceive risk, we should not be forced to make a change at the point of a government gun!
#430 Re: Not So Free Chat » Emolument Clause » 2016-12-19 23:08:14
So
the U.S. Constitution or Alexander Hamilton’s writing in Federalist Paper No. 68, which states that the meeting of the electoral college “affords a moral certainty, that the office of President will never fall to the lot of any man who is not in an eminent degree endowed with the requisite qualifications.” their job is not necessarily to certify the results, but to have a reasonable discussion over whether the public made the right decision.
is meaningless to you as its “not intended to be a rubber stamp.”
Trump has been violating a clause in the Constitution that prevents presidents from receiving gifts and funds from foreign governments due to Trump Towers...Not publicly disclosed his tax returns as well for the extent of his businesses...
How can he violate that clause if he is not President yet? You cannot convict someone of a crime that has not yet been committed. No one gave Donald Trump any gifts while he was President of the United States because he hasn't been President of the United States, and he won't be President of the United States until he I sworn in on the steps of the US Capitol building at 12:01 pm on January 20, 2017. All of Trump companies are privately held, they are not required to publicly publish their tax returns, there are no stockholders in Trump's companies, they are family businesses, Much as SpaceX is, you cannot buy stock in SpaceX.
#431 Re: Not So Free Chat » NAFTA nation for lack of a better name » 2016-12-19 01:46:12
It's not an either-or choice whether to build pipelines or import oil. Turning it into a either-or choice is just political bullshit. The real problem is just a technical and economic problem, and it is easily solved.
the real question is how expensive do you want your oil and gasoline. You can spend a lot of money with fail safes and for fail safes when the fail safes fail. You can get real paranoid about oil spill and pay $10 for a gallon of gasoline, just to make super secure pipelines within pipelines within pipelines, installing runner seals in case of earthquakes and posting sentries along the entire length of the pipeline in case of terrorist attack. How paranoid do you want to be and how much do you want to pay for that paranoia?
#432 Re: Not So Free Chat » NAFTA nation for lack of a better name » 2016-12-18 07:51:09
GW, I think you have it right.
Granted, I would like to see the USA / North America & CO. have a very long term energy independence from those locations on the planet which have proven to be our cultural predators.
However, I can see that water and food are important, even if the USA is one of the most fortunate for farm land.
I would be willing to live with some energy importation if that is necessary, but would rather get any such imports from culturally friendly societies, that don't have sinister intentions.
The think is tanker ships leak and they sink. If oil spills on land, the result is better than if it spills at sea, and the oil we buy from the Persian Gulf sometimes funds terrorism and the development of nuclear weapons to be used in terrorism. Just because pipelines leak, doesn't mean we should buy from the Arabs or the Russians, just because they are more willing to risk polluting their lands than we are! The ground acts as a filter for spilt oil just as it does for everything else. One can also filter one's water as it comes out of the tap. The question is do we use the environment as an excuse not to drill for our own oil?
#433 Re: Interplanetary transportation » The EM-Drive Starship » 2016-12-17 20:36:31
I don't know, since I can't avoid death, I guess I have no choice but to go through with it. Be nice if there would be some medical discovery in 20 to 30 years that would allow me to postpone my death.
#434 Re: Not So Free Chat » Election Meddling » 2016-12-17 20:13:13
I think the point is that (1) the Russians did not hack into voting machine vote counts, so what was counted was what was cast, with only the usual shenanigans that do not upset overall outcomes, and (2) the Russians did hack into various files and email accounts, looking for information about nefarious activities they could dribble out through WikiLeaks, hoping to sway which way voters would cast their ballots. Plus there is a huge false news effort instigated by the Russians. All of this is documented, and confirmed, no matter what Trump tweets.
If the Russians were instigating false news, why would they hack into Democrat accounts? Also why should Putin care if Trump was President? Hillary was a phony Cold Warrior, she was just using the Russians as a scapegoat to avoid responsibility for losing the election. Besides Trump is not such a terrible person, did he do anything to you? You don't always get the President you want, neither do I, now its my turn, you had your 8 years of Obama. If the Russians didn't actually hack the vote, then they have the right to free speech just like anyone else does in this country, if they found some bad stuff on Clinton that happens to be true, then its Hillary's fault for having something to be found, that the Russians found it, if they found it is beside the point! The point is that it was there to be found! Hillary was getting rich from her government influence and that's wrong!
To the extent that the Russians managed to sway voters to Trump with WikiLeaks info adverse to Democrats, and with the false news story plants, then the Russians did indeed sway the outcome of this election. That extent is as yet unknown, but in my book, this meddling is an act of war. Deserving of war in retribution. Combat, economic, cyber, some sort of war.
If the Russians are swaying the electorate by telling the truth, then that is their right, if they are lying then they don't need to hack into anyone's account to spread false information, as it is fiction.
My guess (and it is only a guess) is that the Russians also hacked the Republican party and several of its members. Release of adverse information on them is the extortion by which the Russians have the GOP-at-large discounting the effects of the Russian hack into this election process. I am utterly disappointed in the GOP for soft-pedalling such a grave threat from Putin's Russia. Extortion would explain why.
You are assuming that there is adverse information for the Russians to find, that is not a given. You are assuming everyone is guilty, hey just need to be found out, so what bad things did you do that you deserve to go to prison for? Do you think the Russians can find out what you did wrong if they just looked hard enough? I don't think that's true of everybody, and it really is a cynical position to say that it is!
It'll take time to settle this, but things do not look good for either Trump,
Sure it does, your just grasping at straws! We've changed the presidency from political party to political party many times in this nation's history, if you want one-party rule, I hope you'll be disappointed, sometimes your party wins and sometimes it loses, your party lost because it nominated a lousy candidate and it rigged the primary process to guarantee Hillary's victory when she did not deserve one! Perhaps the Democrats ought to get rid of their super delegates for one!
who is in hoc to the Russian mafia that supports Putin, or for the divided GOP as a whole.
Who is the one who supports Russia's invasion of Ukraine except when they need a scapegoat to blame Hillary's defeat on? I'm pretty sure Hillary and Obama are pissing Putin off right now! Putin has been doing the same to the United States, blaming the CIA for instigating a coup against the Ukrainian President and installing a pro-western one, and now Clinton and Obama are trying to do the same thing back to Putin. Putin's "Russia First" agenda and Trump's "America First" agenda are bound to come into conflict, because Putin believes that Russia can only advance at America's expense. Why would he want rump to be President? I can't think of any good reason, can you? You are climbing Mount Improbably with this conspiracy theory by the way.
I smell borderline treason here, maybe not so borderline in some cases. The next 4 years (at least) portend vast chaos. More than Clinton would have brought, and that is saying something. And I did predict this over at my "exrocketman" site.
There is nothing treasonous about the Russians exposing Hillary's "Dirty Laundry", and more that it is treasonous for us to call Putin a murderer, which he is! Seems Clinton and Obama were not overly concerned about the murders of various Russians that opposed Putin, only when it affected Hillary's election and they needed a scapegoat did they suddenly become "anti-Russian!"
I didn't want either one of them. But I thought Clinton was very slightly the lesser of two very great evils. And I did not find the other two parties to be credible options.
GW
Well Hillary lost, the election is past, I don' see why it is worth the trouble to prolong this election to get the "lesser evil." You hae to consider the stability of he country for one thing, if you can't accept losing an election, what do you think the Republicans are going to do is you somehow manage to flip the electoral votes? Do you want another Civil War? Changing the results of an election without another election is very destabilizing, and I say it is better to have Trump as President than to go through this!
Do you know who this was?
Meet Senator Joe McCarthy! Senator Hillary Clinton is doing the same thing he was, finding scapegoats! Perhaps more so than he was.
#435 Terraformation » Venus Ringworld » 2016-12-17 18:32:02
- Tom Kalbfus
- Replies: 0
In Entering Space, Robert Zubrin mentioned disassembling Venus and forming a ringworld out of it a 1 AU radius.
Niven's Ringworld is thus clearly a much more practical concept than a Dyson sphere, but its obviously a rather big project. To see how big, let's calculate just the energy requirements to disassemble Venus and then move its mass from its present orbit (at 0.72 AU) to the 1-AU distance required for the Ringworld, to melt it into a solid ring, and then to accelerate the ring so that it spins about the Sun with sufficient velocity to create Earth-normal gravity at its inner surface.
Well, Venus has a mass (M) of 4.87 x 10^24 kg and a radius (R) of 6,051,000 m, so its total gravitational energy (given by GM^2/R) of 2.6 x 10^32 joules (where G is the universal gravitational constant). To move the mass from Venus to Earth's orbit requires a delta-V of 5,355 m/s, which implies an energy (given by (MV^2)/2) of another 0.7 x 10^32 joules. If we assume a megajoule to melt every kilogram, that's another 4.87 x 10^30 joules. But then to spin it up to create earth-normal gravity, we need to accelerate the ring to a speed of 1,212,435 m/s. This will need an energy of 3.6 x 10^36 joules, a requirement that makes the rest insignificant. To put the mater in perspective, 3.6 x 10^35 joules is 11 million billion times the amount of power humanity currently uses in a year; it is equal to the total amount of power output from the Sun over a period of three centuries! So short of the development of picotechnology, not even a Ringworld (Let alone a Dyson sphere) will ever be constructed.
Lets play around with this idea for a bit.
What if instead of moving Venus' mass to Earth orbit, we left it in Venusian orbit and constructed a ringworld there? With a shorter radius, the rotational velocity will be less, we would also spread Venus' mass less thinly
What if we used Mercury instead and build a ringworld at Mercury's average radius.
granted those locations get too much Sun, but ringworlds typically have shadow squares anyway to produce night, we can control the amount of light the ringworld receives if we assume he ability to build one.
What if we built a ringworld with a radius of 3,678,100 km using the mass of Mercury? This is the 1-G distance. The radius of the Sun is by comparison 695,842 km, this is 5.285826 solar radii. To spin at 2-G would require a tangential velocity of 268.588 km/sec with an angular velocity of 0.004183947262292175 degrees per second. or 86043 seconds per rotation, or 23.9 hours rotation! The outward centripedal force is 1-g after subtracting the Sun's gravity. We can split the ring into two parts, one that is spinning at this speed and an equal mass ring on the outside that is not spinning. The outer ring experiences the 1-g pull of the Sun, the inner ring experiences the 1-g of outward net centrifugal force. and of course we'll need a shield to block most of the Sun's light. I think Tungsten might do the trick, we need something solid to block the sunlight from the inner surface. Maybe reflect it at an angle into space.
#436 Re: Not So Free Chat » Election Meddling » 2016-12-17 17:22:43
The election wasn't hacked, the ballots were counted.
#437 Re: Interplanetary transportation » The EM-Drive Starship » 2016-12-17 09:44:42
If they unambiguously demonstrate an (apparently) reactionless thrust, we will know something is wrong with our understanding of the universe - though it probably won't be the conservation laws (on the other hand, the existence of the universe demonstrates that either the first or second laws of thermodynamics aren't always true). There would likely be a reaction somewhere, whether against the entire universe (Mach Effect), virtual particles (I'm still not sure how that's meant to work...), or dark matter. Until they demonstrate it, though, I'm not going to make plans for using it. But I also won't rule it out.
One possibility is the Universe we live in is a simulation, and the EM drive is taking advantage in a loophole of this imperfect simulation of the Universe, or maybe it was meant to be some low hanging fruit. After all, why simulate all those stars if we can't get to them?
#438 Re: Terraformation » Venus » 2016-12-16 11:15:15
Use the SpaceX Interplanetary Transport System, if it can get to Mars, it can also get to Venus.
It should be able to carry quite a sizable Balloon to Venus.
#439 Re: Terraformation » Venus » 2016-12-15 00:52:13
Living on a balloon in Venus' atmosphere is about as practical as living on an airship in Earth's atmosphere.
Easier to do it on Venus, as there is no one to shoot you down if you drift into someone's airspace. The Russians have been know to shoot down balloons that happened to drift into their airspace on the wind currents. On Venus, there is no one on the ground with ground to air missiles to shoot down your balloon! Another think about Venus' atmosphere is you have a practically endless supply of lifting gas. You pump in the Venusian atmosphere and using solar power, you freeze the carbon-dioxide into dry ice leaving only nitrogen behind, you fill your balloon with Venusian nitrogen, if you balloon drifts to high, you let out some nitrogen, if it drifts too low, you pump in some more nitrogen from the atmosphere.
#440 Re: Not So Free Chat » NAFTA nation for lack of a better name » 2016-12-13 00:00:28
At $50 a barrel, there are 55 gallons in a barrel of oil, therefore 3200 barrels of oil were spilled, and that is worth $160,000. Lets the oil company pay the farmer $1,600,000 for damages and be done with it. That should be enough to buy the farmer a new farm.
#441 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2016-12-12 23:53:40
Well, in Canada education is a provincial responsibility. We don't have a federal education department. I think Homeland Security has gone way too far. You could separate out border security and immigration, like they were before. In Canada housing and urban development is also provincial responsibility, we don't have a federal one. So I wouldn't have a problem with your country doing that. But the Department of Energy handles nuclear weapons. Atomic Energy Defense Activities have a budget of $19.001 billion for 2016, the rest is $5.34 billion. According to the budget poster, which gets its figures from the President's budget request.
Nuclear weapons are weapons, thus it belongs with the Defense Department. We could transfer the facilities and employees over to the Defense Department. and to do research on fusion, that could be transferred to the National Science Foundation, as for all the regulation the Energy Department does, that could be transferred to the States, though I think the States should tread lightly here! Pollution is not an energy concern but an environmental concern. I don't think we need a post office anymore, we can privatize that.
#442 Re: Not So Free Chat » NAFTA nation for lack of a better name » 2016-12-12 11:15:31
Do the slaves own the plantation? Cubans try to escape their country because right now it doesn't belong to them, it belongs to Raul Castro, and they are his property! Would you want to live next to a Plantation full of slaves and mind your own business? Cuba is a Slave Plantation, that's what it is, it is called a "People's Republic" but those are just words, the reality of it is, the Cuban people who reside in Cuba are all slaves, Raul Castro is the master and he owns them, and as the master, he gets to decide who lives and who dies, and he does not want his property running off without his permission!
#443 Re: Not So Free Chat » The state of US Education » 2016-12-12 11:07:34
Okay, eliminate the Education Department, the EPA, The Department of Homeland Security, eliminate the Department of Housing and Urban Development, Eliminate the Department of Energy. We can survive without those Departments. The thing about these departments is they have counterparts in state governments. No need to duplicate the responsibilities of the States at the Federal level. What is not duplicated in the military, and the way you keep the peace is you don't give the Enemy any notion in his head that he can win if he starts a war! So we need a military that can totally destroy the Enemy, so he doesn't think he can tangle with us, that is how the peace is maintained!
#444 Re: Not So Free Chat » Politics » 2016-12-12 09:45:52
If the government goes bankrupt, then you lose your social security, or else the government just prints money. You can only retire if other people work to provide you services. If you go to a supermarket to buy food, other people have a job of putting that food on the supermarket shelves so you can buy it. Saving the system means people have to make sacrifices, one thing that should not be sacrificed is economic growth, because economic growth is what solves the deficit and debt, and if you do things like raise taxes to pay for social security, that hampers economic growth. Do you really want to impose a stagnant economy with rising unemployment in order to pay for retired people's social security? I think Social Security can be privatized, and I think tat's better than it going bankrupt. The big picture is the economy needs to function in order for you to retire. I am hopingsome other developments come first, like automation.
#445 Re: Not So Free Chat » NAFTA nation for lack of a better name » 2016-12-12 09:27:48
Blah blah blah. You continue to claim communism is slavery, while claiming capitalism is perfect.
I never made the claim that Capitalism is perfect, but still that does not justify Communism. Nothing in this world is perfect, but some things are better than others! Your claiming that because two things aren't perfect, they are the same, that is flawed logic!
What do you call a system where you get arrested for trying to leave the country? "Help, my property is escaping!"
You know what the real problem with Communism is? It is a means of avoiding competition, Fidel Castro didn't have to worry about challengers and running for reelection, because even though there were a whole bunch of people that would be better at running Cuba that he was, he could just have them arrested and executed, so Cuba ends up with a lousy leader for life. I notice a lot of undemocratic countries hold on to the same head of state for long periods of time. Cuba since the Cuban Revolution had just one head of state, and then he passed it on to his brother, basically as far as he is concerned, Cuba is his property and he just passed in on to his brother as an inheritance. So much for the so called "People's Republic" it is no republic at all. Most Communist states devolve into monarchies over time if they don't just collapse.
Bull shit. Reality is we currently have a mixture. Labour unions are an extension from communism. If you want to try to claim that's slavery, try saying that to the face of a teamster. A lot of modern labour law is from labour unions. I feel unions today have too much power, but events a couple centuries ago demonstrate the need. And you claim there isn't theft here? What about tax? That's actually government theft. And what about expropriation? Community laws restricting whether you can build a vegetable garden in your front yard, or how often you have to mow your lawn, whether you have a lawn at all, are all unreasonable intrusions into private property.
The reason there was a revolution in Cuba was average workers were so poor. The people complaining about Castro were themselves treating workers as slaves. Middle class were unemployed, and upset that President Batista outlawed all political parties other than his own. Wikipedia image, slum housing in Havana 1954, 4 years before the communist revolution. In the background is a baseball stadium, with advertising for a nearby casino on the stadium light tower.
https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/ … ms1954.jpg
And they are all rich now? What would Cuba be like today if the Communist revolution hadn't happened? Would Cubans be better off or worse off? The Casino and stadium provided employment for Cubans. Some Cubans did very well, and they had their property stolen by the Castro regime. Are the Cuban people better off because of that theft? People do well in a Capitalism economy because they have talent, other people do not and so are poor. You are trying to conflate he politics of envy with that of poverty, they are two separate issues! Punishing success didn't solve Cuba's problems, it just made them worse!
#446 Re: Interplanetary transportation » The EM-Drive Starship » 2016-12-11 23:58:52
There is one idea I haven't thought of before. What if the EM drive accelerates the positive components of virtual particles leaving the negative components to float around in space for a while. Lets say those negative particles are hurled away from the ship, and they each encounter interstellar protons and nullify those? ever hear of the Bussard Ramjet? Imagine we separate out virtual partical pairs and fuse the protons in a fusion reactor, hurling the negative mass particles away from the ship so they can nullify protons in interstellar space. Now here we just did the job of a magnetic scoop. The protons that arise up out of the quantum foam travel on average at the same speed as the ship whatever that is. The negative mass particles collide with positive particles at relativistic velocities. There is no drag on the ship, because it is not plowing ions in front of it, and therefore there is little drag!
This is another way of building an interstellar ramjet!
#447 Re: Not So Free Chat » NAFTA nation for lack of a better name » 2016-12-11 23:31:59
Antius wrote:I have never understood the sanctions against Cuba, the motivation behind them or why they are remotely in US interests. There is an opportunity for Cuba to become a holiday destination for US citizens and a supplier of agricultural goods. Lifting sanctions would allow the necessary investment to be brought in.
The answer is a couple reasons. Rich powerful interests really hate communism. They didn't want any communist country in the Americas, and they certainly didn't want a country that was influenced by the Soviet Union. The Soviet Union threatened all-out war if America invaded Cuba, so the United States tried to starve them until they quit. They thought sanctions would starve Cuba until they quit any association with the Soviet Union, and quit communism. It didn't work.
Have you ever seen the movie "Gone with the Wind"? Do you see the slave in this picture, do you recall how the slaves were depicted in the movie "Gone with the Wind"? They were happy, they just "loved" serving their white masters, and didn't mind being slaves at all! The Civil War was such a bother to them, the Yankees came and burned the mansion down! This is what your typical left wing liberal thinks of the ordinary Cubans, they should be "happy slaves" just as in the movie "Gone with the Wind", and they don't understand why some are not so happy, and why they foolishly risk an over sea crossing in rickety old boats to get to America, because they think they have it so good in Cuba under the "beneficent master" Fidel Castro!
The other reason is many wealthy individuals in Cuba had their property seized when Castro took over. These individuals fled to Miami. They and their descendants are highly resentful of armed robbery from the Castro regime. They hate Castro with a passion. They're a large voting block in Miami and the surrounding area, so any politician who wants votes from Florida will pander to these people. It's long since over. The revolution in Cuba occurred before I was born. Reading Wikipedia, various revolutionary groups rose against the government of Cuba throughout the 1950s. Castro's group became the leading revolutionary group in 1958, president Batista fled on January 1, 1959. So this is 58 years old. But if any politician wants votes from the Miami area of Florida, they had to maintain sanctions against Cuba. It's just politics.
It is just theft, why should they mind being robbed? Would you like to be robbed? Castro is a thief, he is a bandit who stole a lot of private property, but I guess it isn't a big deal it it wasn't your private property he stole. Most of those Cubans weren't millionaires.
As you said, Trump is all about the white working class. Obama re-established normal relations with Cuba. If Trump really wants to take a business approach, he'll establish normal business with Cuba. Cuba is missing practically everything, it's an excellent market opportunity.
You know what? Fidel Castro was white, a lot of Cubans aren't, so they too worked for a white master just as in a Southern Plantation before the Civil War. Southern Propaganda was that of the Happy Slave, who couldn't find work if freed, and so were better off is they remained property. This is pretty much the status of Cubans today, they are property of the government, they get free health care because they belong to the government of Cuba, just as a slave belonged to his master. If a slave got sick, the master would get a doctor to examine him, and help him get better so he can return to the field and do the master's work, it is much the same for ordinary people in Cuba.
#448 Re: Not So Free Chat » NAFTA nation for lack of a better name » 2016-12-11 23:00:07
Tom Kalbfus wrote:RobertDyck wrote:What's up with your obsession over expansion?
Trump is all about expansion, throughout his career h has sought to expand his business, and as President of the United States, why shouldn't be seek to expand it as well? I think Cuba is a ripe fruit about to fall from the tree. Do you know it was a Republican Administration that was responsible for its independence from the Spanish Empire? I think Cuba is a piece of unfinished Republican business. Cuba is a sister state to Puerto Rico.
http://img06.deviantart.net/14b2/i/2009 … ey23ep.jpg
http://s1.bwallpapers.com/wallpapers/20 … 249202.png
Maybe we can bring these two sisters back together, what do you think? I think an even number of stars would look good on the flag of the United States, so we should add two at a time.Why would you want you want to bring a pathetically poor Hispanic country into the United States? Trump is widely considered to be a man with White Nationalist sympathies. Bringing Cuba into the US would lead to a surge in Hispanic immigration. It would be an unbelievably stupid move for a man whose campaign was all about helping the white working class.
I have never understood the sanctions against Cuba, the motivation behind them or why they are remotely in US interests. There is an opportunity for Cuba to become a holiday destination for US citizens and a supplier of agricultural goods. Lifting sanctions would allow the necessary investment to be brought in.
Well you know that the Republican Party started out as an anti-slavery party don't you? What has been going on in Cuba during the rule of Castro was slavery plain and simple. under Communism, the state owns everything including its citizens, that is why, Cubans needed exit visas to leave Cuba, and why many Cubans took to boats and rafts to escape Cuba, this is the modern version of the Underground Railroad. Bringing Cuba into the United States would bring in a lot of Hispanics with no illusions about the nature of Communism, and would balance out all the Mexican-Americans and other Latinos that harbor these illusions, because they have been fed positive propaganda about Communism courtesy of the Castro Regime. Cuba would be a Hispanic "Poland", people who grew up under Communism and want no part of it! Also whatever happens to Cuba, it still remains only 90 miles south of Miami, we don't want a Cuba that descends into chaos after he fall of Communism, and then have a Cuban version of Putin when people grow impatient with market reforms. In a Cuba that is part of the United States, the Cuban people can simply migrate off island to where the jobs are, much as the East Germans did after they were reunited with the rest of Germany. With Cuba as part of the United States, we don't have to worr about it destabilizing other parts of Latin America.
#449 Re: Human missions » Moon mission today - Dragon & Mars hab » 2016-12-11 12:04:58
Orion is what we got now, perhaps it can be lifted by a falcon 9 rocket, then the falcon can land, get more fuel and launch again, add fuel to the Orion or a rocket stage so it can make a TLI with lander.
#450 Re: Interplanetary transportation » The EM-Drive Starship » 2016-12-11 11:54:44
You know if it sounds too good to be true, it probably is, but I may be wrong, in which case we found a "loophole" in physics, so I assume we would be extracting energy from the universe itself to accomplish this. We are using virtual particles as reaction mass, so we accelerate them and then they disappear as they merge with their negative component. One interesting question is at what velocity these virtual particles move relative to the spaceship as the come into being before they disappear, assuming you can extert a force on them, would you not also be exerting a force on their negative mass component as well? Suppose you exert a force only on the positive mass component, that particle then becomes a real particle, the negative mass component is left behind, and it nullifies some other real particle, such as a proton for instance, making it cease to exist. The particle it nullifies probably comes out of the ship itself. Is there any advantage in doing that. I believe if you accelerate a negative mass particle you don't get an equal and opposite reaction, but and equal and same reaction. So if you accelerate a proton in one direction you accelerate in the opposite direction, but if that proton is part of a virtual particle pair, you either accelerate its negative mass twin and you cancel out the acceleration from accelerating the proton, or the negative mass twin gets left behind and it hits the wall of the chamber nullifying another proton instead, the effect is the same as if you accelerated that proton that got nullified in the first place.
So the question left is why does this work? Physics states that it shouldn't, but if I works anyway, maybe what it is that some real particles emerge out of the quantum foam as the Universe expands, that would mean that as the Universe expands its mass increases, maybe instead of a big bang, the Universe is continuously expanding, and real particles some into existence into the expanding space, so maybe that is what he EM drive is accelerating.