New Mars Forums

Looking over at Iran, wondering when the panic buying starts. Filled up my tank just in case. There were people there with containers to fill, petrol not diesel, so you're capped at 30L unless you notify the fire service. Diesel has no such limits because a spark won't cause an inferno.

In domestic news, looking forward to the Manchester by-election. Not unlikely Reform take it, causing much wailing and gnashing of teeth. Fun times, though St George's Day could be funner. Depends on how many more girls get raped by dinghymen between now and then, perhaps.

Britain, the country of the Henry Hoover and creator of The Best Plug In The World, should be all over this. Amongst other ruggedised simple equipment.

I have suggested before that hexagonal blocks would be a good design for a Lunar city. Can fit a circular pressure wall sandwiched between two layers of radiation shielding, and the blocks tesselate so the city can be expanded without creating expanses of empty space between blocks. Some blocks allocated as parks. Can be different heights -- imagine a central block being redeveloped with a tower.

Finally have a loicense to drive my car. Yay! No more reliance on overpriced underreliable trains that get hit with the ocassional wildcat strike!

Depends where you are. Cheapest is probably going to be solar (thermal) in deserts. Best for Britain, if not nuclear then wind, though possibly low temp solar thermal in summer for interseasonal storage.

There are a lot of energy intensive industries that could be located near deserts. Aluminum refining, for example. Glass making. Smelting with electrolysed hydrogen? Australia has a lot of the raw resources and a big desert for providing the power.

Spaniard,

If energy use is roughly proportional to economic activity, having to use half your energy to rebuild your energy infrastructure means half your economic activity is dedicated to energy production. We haven't been in this situation since... the British Agricultural Revolution? If it's fully automated luxury gay space communism I guess that's manageable, since the robots are doing all the work. Though in the case of solar you're going to be taking up a lot of land if you need to devote most of it to making more solar panels.

Tbh, it doesn't seem unlikely that, with decent thermal storage and a focus on using power when it is generated, as well as a good wind power generation supply, biofuel would be enough to cover the small amount of mechanical/electrical power that needs to be generated on demand. A fair few energy intensive tasks can be made intermittent to run on wind, including I would expect grinding and crushing processes. Desalination, too. Britain has 5GW of nuclear still, and that would be enough for the domestic grid if we picked the low hanging fruit for intermittent power use (large tanks of hot water, including kettles; appliances that use the hot water supply instead of heating water with electricity; not running the tumble dryer if it's an expensive electricity day).

Void,

Colocating demand might reduce the necessary building out of the grid, but aside from the transformers the grid is built of steel and aluminum, both very abundant metals. You're still going to need a lot of copper.

A torus is one option. A pole to pole cylinder is another. Not exclusive, either -- a world could have a few such tracks hollowed out. The cylinder does have the benefit of having the greatest counterbalancing mass, allowing for internal habitat to be quite deep. Instead of a few metres of soil, they could have shallow seas. If we want to replicate expansive 1g (shallow) oceanic environments, it may be the most practical option. Of course, lower gravity allows for deeper seas. Blue whales can dive down to about 300m, but it's unlikely this is essential. 100m deep 0.5g whale cylinder, maybe? 1000km long by 100km diameter would be... smaller than the North Sea, but hopefully big enough for them.

On smaller world we can have shallower seas and islands. A torus would be most adventure friendly. Sail far enough and you're back home.

Did you ever get an answer?

It's also a poetic name for the island, with connotations of myth and wonder.

For all his faults, if he deports the Boriswave and stops putting up boat people in scarce housing he'll have done a far better job than his predecessor. Some damage is a lot easier to reverse.

The thing about Keir is, he has no opinions or beliefs of his own. He's committed to doing whatever a court tells him to do. If they'd said trans women are women, instead of ruling trans women must use the men's toilets, he would commit to defending that instead. If a court had told him the Chagos Islands belong to the Maldives, he would be very clear that the Chagos Islands belong the Maldives. Whether or not Acts of Parliament can overrule judges in his mind, I don't know. Perhaps. If Parliament changes the immigration rules, he might be a very keen defender of the new rules...

Hey it's my Twitter mutual!

I haven't got a clear answer yet on why they're focused on natural gas first. Think it's because there's an existing market, whereas Propane/DME would require modifying engines. But the latter at least are more storable yes.

Honestly, solar powered desalination and biofuel crops in deserts might be quite cheap. Though perhaps not abundant enough for a 1-to-1 replacement for fossil fuels. But for the things where we absolutely need energy dense liquid fuels maybe.