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#526 Re: Unmanned probes » Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) » 2006-09-30 02:02:18
and number two ...
http://hiroc.lpl.arizona.edu/images/TRA … 0825_2665/
Congrats to the HiRISE team. Just astounding.
Team blog is here ...
#527 Re: Not So Free Chat » Bow Down Before Iran? » 2006-09-30 01:52:55
That is just one man's opinion of what Islam is.
Or, in fact, the official position of USA Today, a newspaper with a readership of 5.7 million people - the nation's highest.
If you take the community of Christians and the community of Muslims you come up with certain tendencies among their societies which are very revealing about what these two religions represent.
Let's take a look, shall we?
US Population, nominally Christian: 350 million. Number of Fundamentalist Christians: 40-75 million. Believe the temple in Jerusalem must be rebuilt in order for Christ to come again. Actively work towards that goal. Be generous, call it 10% of the population.
Population of nominally Muslim nations: 1500 million. Number of Fundamentalist Muslims: 75-150 million. Believe the US is an agent of Satan actively attempting to dismantle their traditional society. Be ungenerous, call it 10% of the population.
That's right - both nations are infected with the same illness.
If most Muslims were moderates in the Palestinian territories, do you think they would have elected terrorists?
I don't think you can live in Palestine and be a moderate. But you are right there. The election of Hamas means all hope for peace there is gone. And it doesn't bring great tidings to the larger situation either.
If most Lebanese Muslims were moderates, do you think they would let a terrorist group control their territory in South Lebenon?
Actually, the largest, and ruling, ethnic group in Lebanon is Christian (or at least was, the political situation has made census difficult).
It is really interesting the the Lebanese weren't really offended at having a terrorist group occupy their country
I don't believe they are overjoyed at the presence of Hezbollah, but the presence and support of a half million Palestinian refugees makes it difficult to suppress the organization.
The bible doesn't say anything about letting your enemies harm you
But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also.
#528 Re: Terraformation » Plenty of volatiles supply in the Outer SolSys » 2006-09-29 16:42:20
The bigger problem is not identifing or how to get them from where they are, but how much of the same items that we seek, will we expend to get them from where they are, to where we need them.
Zubrin says ...
http://www.users.glbalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm[/url]"]Consider an asteroid made of frozen ammonia with a mass of 10 billion tonnes orbiting the sun at a distance of 12 AU. Such an object, if spherical, would have a diameter of about 2.6 km, and changing its orbit to intersect Saturn's (where it could get a trans-Mars gravity assist) would require a DV of 0.3 km/s. If a quartet of 5000 MW nuclear thermal rocket engines powered by either fission or fusion were used to heat some of its ammonia up to 2200 K (5000 MW fission NTRs operating at 2500 K were tested in the 1960s), they would produce an exhaust velocity of 4 km/s, which would allow them to move the asteroid onto its required course using only 8% of its material as propellant.
Gravity assist is our friend.
#529 Re: Terraformation » Plenty of volatiles supply in the Outer SolSys » 2006-09-29 16:34:55
Theres a reason why all those votiles are so abundant in the outer solar system and not in the inner sollar system.
How do we intend to insolate these objects on their journey inword?
I don't think we would. Just take boil-off into account when selecting the target.
#530 Re: Terraformation » Plenty of volatiles supply in the Outer SolSys » 2006-09-29 16:31:55
Or maybe even a direct impact with one of the moons might yield even more chemical goodies.
That's a really interesting idea. We'd have to be careful not to change the orbit of the moon too much - they aren't that big.
We could probably terra form Mars much easier without anyone living on it than we could with anyone there.
Anything we do would be a risk after it has colonists.
That's the dilemma. My guess is that there will be colonists before there is sufficient funding for terraforming.
I guess if we are bringing ammonia to mars we probably could alter the plant life to respond directly to is as a source of energy instead of nitrogen, or at minimum with little nitrogen.
I bet a few plants on earth already are pretty good at using bacteria to get energy directly form ammonia.
Actually ammonia + water = fertilizer, although ammonium nitrate (ammonia + nitric acid) is gentler on the soil.
I think the nitrogen problems on mars will be in the very long time scales before we have to worry about it anyway.
We will probably have a few hundred to few thousand years before any terra forming effort produces a stable enough place for plant life to exist on the surface.
Yeah, you're probably right. The atmosphere of Mars is 2.5% nitrogen already, so there'll be plenty to work with for the first settlers.
First stock to buy on Mars as a colonist will be anything to do with greenhouse equipment.
I think Mars Energy LLC might be a good buy as well 
#531 Re: Not So Free Chat » Bow Down Before Iran? » 2006-09-29 16:07:49
People who blow themselves up to kill other people are acting in an unchristian manner, so he cannot be said to be laying down his life for Christ when he is violating his principles.
Now where have I heard that before? Oh yes, from moderate Muslims ...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/islam.htm[/url]"]Q: How does Islam view terrorism?
A: Islam does not support terrorism under any circumstances. Terrorism goes against every principle in Islam. If a Muslim engages in terrorism, he is not following Islam. He may be wrongly using the name of Islam for political or financial gain.
http://www.glocaleye.org/binladen.htm[/url]"]All Muslims agree that terrorism is unIslamic
etc, etc.
Talking about un-Christian manners, what ever happened to "Love your enemies, bless them that curse you, do good to them that hate you" ? You'd think the words of Christ would carry some weight among Christians.
#532 Re: Not So Free Chat » Bow Down Before Iran? » 2006-09-28 23:18:35
There is no equivalent to fundamentalist Islam in Christianity
They cry, pray to Bush and wash out the devil - welcome to Jesus Camp
http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,,1883730,00.html
...
At one point Pastor Fischer equates the preparation she is giving children with the training of terrorists in the Middle East. "I want to see young people who are as committed to the cause of Jesus Christ as the young people are to the cause of Islam," she tells the camera. "I want to see them radically laying down their lives for the gospel, as they are over in Pakistan and Israel and Palestine."
...
<sarcasm> Yay. </sarcasm>
#533 Re: Science, Technology, and Astronomy » Fusion » 2006-09-28 06:33:16
China carries out test of fusion reactor
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/china_fusion
BEIJING - Scientists on Thursday carried out China's first successful test of an experimental fusion reactor ...
The Chinese facility is similar to the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor, or ITER ...
"It was important for China to show that it is part of the club, and that adds value to its participation in ITER," Marbach said.
"That is not to say that it is at the level of the Europeans or Americans," he said. However, he added, "We are rather admiring of the Chinese for conducting this test. It was conducted well, and they constructed (the machine) rather quickly." ...
#534 Re: Martian Chronicles » Quirks on planet travel » 2006-09-27 14:41:40
I guessing that nobody has responded to this because of the author's evident (albeit charming) psychosis.
#535 Re: Terraformation » Plenty of volatiles supply in the Outer SolSys » 2006-09-27 04:54:40
Maybe not an actual moon/asteroid capture for mars, but a very bad orbit that places lots of stress on the asteroid.
If the orbit is sloppy enough it will break up and fall in pieces to mars.
Even with this more gentle approach I wouldn't want to be living on mars at the time.
That's an interesting idea, but as you say the big pieces are still a threat. May be some automated moon miners could be set up to provide a steady stream of ammonia rain.
With so much rust and peroxide on mars i doubt the poles will have much co2, but ground chemistry below the surface might surprise us as to contents with warmth.
Well the atmosphere is currently 95% CO2, so it was a good guess that the poles were frozen CO2, but it doesn't seem to have turned out that way. You're right though, how the Martian soil responds to heating and changed atmospheric conditions is a big unknown right now. It may release a bunch of CO2 or it may soak it up like a sponge. Hopefully the planned MSL will give us a little bit more data on this front, but it won't be able to give us a wide area survey. We'll probably have to wait for a manned mission for solid results.
Nitrogen is only really needed for plants.
Peas and beans and a host of other plants do well with little, so engineering nitrogen fixing bacteria might go a long way to reducing nitrogen needs.Or we can grow everything in greenhouses that cycle what nitrogen we have introduced in an area.
But once plants can grow in the wild, they can really help the terraforming process - making oxygen, reducing albedo, stabilizing soil, providing habitat, the beginnings of a robust Martian biosphere - so it'd be great to have plenty of nitrogen for them. It might be harder to bring in more nitrogen later.
#536 Re: Meta New Mars » Spammer » 2006-09-27 03:30:51
I think you've done everything Josh. The next step would be to band together with other phpBB admins to make a blacklist. You'd think it'd have already been done, but a quick search didn't turn up anything. It is a major problem, and the phpBB developers are working on it, but our spammers seem to be real people rather than bots - that's hard to defend against automatically. If you like, I'll start posting the IP addresses of the spammers, but if you ban blocks of IP addresses you'll get innocent people as well. You could post a legal notice and try suing - lots of US states award $500 per spam - but if the IPs trace outside the US then you may have trouble collecting.
#537 Re: Terraformation » Plenty of volatiles supply in the Outer SolSys » 2006-09-27 02:45:02
I'm a little new to the quantitative side of the terraforming debate. Do you have any idea, how many bodies of such composition are believed/known to exist?
There are a group of suitable bodies between Saturn and Neptune called the Centaurs ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Centaur_%28planetoid%29
... all the ones we can see are way too large, but we have every reason to believe that such groupings obey a power law distribution (e.g., crater size on Luna and the planets) so we should be able to take our pick. If not, we will have to go out beyond Neptune to the Kuiper belt ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuiper_belt
... where there are very many suitable objects.
It seems to me harvesting volatiles from small cosmic bodies would be a realistic and relatively expedient way to import volatiles.
The thing that makes it work is that we can use the bodies' own volatiles to move it. Just add (probably nuclear) energy.
Of course the best course would probably be to start with greenhouse gases like Ammonia and Methane, to see if the caps really contain the amounts of CO2 that some seem to think. My guess is that there won't be anywhere near a bar's worth of CO2 in the caps
No, recent MARSIS (ground penetrating radar) data has the poles as nearly pure water ice with just a dusting of CO2. Good news in one way, bad news for terraforming though. The SHARAD instrument on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (safe in orbit, just about to begin science observations) should give us even more data.
but of course this is good for trying to create a biosphere, because there should be room to introduce Nitrogen and other gas volatile s, without creating an overpressured atmosphere.
There isn't going to be a problem with overpressure. Because of the lower gravity, it'll be a challenge hanging onto any volatiles that we do import. Also, a lot of nitrogen is needed for plant growth, and, of course, it would be nice to have an atmospheric composition closer to Earth's.
It seems like several asteroids of the right composition and size could put us on the relative fast track to a warmer Mars.
Yes indeed. There is a bit of a dilemma though. Should we postpone any colonization until after bombardment (the energies released will be unprecedented)? Or do we need to give Mars some new ammonia moons and the Martians a way to mine them?
#538 Re: Human missions » More Chinese space tech stuff » 2006-09-26 16:56:19
China and U.S. May Team Up on Space Exploration
http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/story?id=2488274
The United States has opened unprecedented conversations with the government of China in order to create cooperation on space exploration.
NASA Administrator Michael Griffin is in China at the invitation of Laiyan Sun, administrator of the China Space Agency.
#539 Re: Meta New Mars » Spammer » 2006-09-26 13:38:15
#540 Re: Terraformation » Plenty of volatiles supply in the Outer SolSys » 2006-09-25 22:11:28
I haven't thought extensively about the outer solar system, but how much solid mass in terms of frozen C02,N, or H would be required to create 1bar of pressure on Mars?
If a number of comets 100m-1km in diameter could be introduced to Mars, without an impact that obscures the surface, how many would it take?
Zubrin says 40 billion tons of ammonia (4 asteroids, each 2.6 km in diameter) ...
http://www.users.globalnet.co.uk/~mfogg/zubrin.htm
Welcome to New Mars, by the way.
#541 Re: Not So Free Chat » Has Multiculturalism Failed ? » 2006-09-25 12:29:11
War is messy, there is no help for it other than not fighting it, but sometimes not fighting it means surrender and then we have holocaust scenarios. Do you get my drift?
Yep. On this last, I agree with you.
#542 Re: Not So Free Chat » Has Multiculturalism Failed ? » 2006-09-25 02:24:38
Its hard to tell between the different Muslim Subcultures, they all look alike. From the point of view of the non-muslim, you just have to be wary everytime you see some obvious muslim, as Wahhabists rarely announce themselves before they attack. I have no terrorist detector, and if ever I find myself on a Muslim street, I'm going to have to be extra wary, and if that hurts any moderate muslim's feelings, then that's just too bad. My survival always comes first over nondescrimination.
I understand that to act any other way requires great courage. I pray that enough people will find that courage so as to gradually de-escalate tensions.
Hey this Catholic Church is really boring, no inquisitions, no forced confessions, no witch hunts that I read in the history books.
So you know that the Christian church behaved atrociously in the past. It's like being an ex-alcoholic preaching the evils of drink.
I really can't picture the above scenario really happening in any Christian community I know of. If a branch of Christianity openly encourages evil and murder, they typical reaction is recoil and horro, not attraction and "lets join up!"
Right, _today_ it is, just a few generations after the witch burnings. ( Although check out this guy http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/William_G._Boykin for a man who was born centuries too late ). In time, Muslim culture will self-criticize and correct. The primacy of the West is a blessing and a curse. A blessing because it demonstrates the obvious benefits of a liberal humanist society. A curse because it is already there - rubbing it in their face constantly. They still have to go through the feminist revolution, but they have to do it in view of a library of books detailing the rhetoric for and against. In one way everything is easier because of the example, but in another, the example is the problem - like a younger sibling resenting an older.
You know alot of the churchs in Gaza that were burned after the Pope's statement were not even Catholic.
And a lot of the religious buildings attacked in the US after 9/11 weren't mosques. "They wear turbins, they must be Muslim." Ignorance is everywhere.
#543 Re: Meta New Mars » Spammer » 2006-09-24 20:21:36
I can still access both their profiles, although I have deleted all the messages they posted. I don't get logged out or anything when I do that. I'm using Firefox v1.0.7.
#544 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Un- conventional ways to LEO » 2006-09-24 17:27:10
Sweet graph, thanks!
#545 Re: Not So Free Chat » Has Multiculturalism Failed ? » 2006-09-24 17:09:20
Why does Salman Rushdie live in fear? Is it just a figment of his prejudiced imagination? "I mean just because we see it in the news all the time doesn't mean their is any reality to it! I mean come on!"
I'm not saying that there aren't Muslim subcultures that need radical reformation - I hate Wahhabism as much as the next guy - I'm saying step up the maturity a notch from "us vs." an indiscriminate "them." At least delineate between hostiles, neutrals and friendlies. The subculture you save from war may be your own, etc.
#546 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Relativity drive: The end of wings and wheels? » 2006-09-24 16:37:48
Newtonian physics isn't basic physics? Correct me if I'm wrong, but I thought that's what you learn in high school.
Even Shawyer recognizes that the device can't work under Newtonian physics and appeals to some as yet unexplained relativistic effect.
#547 Re: Meta New Mars » New Message Board Software » 2006-09-24 16:15:02
I've been getting this regularly as well.
#548 Re: Interplanetary transportation » Relativity drive: The end of wings and wheels? » 2006-09-24 01:49:32
The critiques on the wikipedia article are devistating ...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/EmDrive#Analysis
( Shawyer published a clueless "theory" paper )
This guy shows where Shawyer likely went wrong in theory and in practice ...
http://uk.geocities.com/remicornwall/Mi … EMProp.pdf
The British space applications research community should publicly denounce him to avoid further sully of their reputation.
#549 Re: Not So Free Chat » Has Multiculturalism Failed ? » 2006-09-24 00:27:11
I don’t think a cold war works against Iran.
No, not Iran - China. In exchange for Iran's oil, China would effective declare Iran under its protection. The US may not opt for hot war with China because of the danger of escalation to nuclear, and because of the tremendous stresses they can place on China just with trade sanctions.
Muslims worship and idolise death.
Stop. Stop. The term "Muslim" covers 1.5 billion people. It is outright bigoted to make statements like the above. There are scary Muslims. There are scary Christians. There are scary atheists. I don't get how easy it is for intelligent people to swallow statements like that. I guess we have to start at the beginning: there are good Muslims, and there are bad Muslims. (Next week we'll explore colors of the spectrum beyond black and white - eventually we'll come to see Muslims as *gasp* human beings).
#550 Re: Not So Free Chat » Has Multiculturalism Failed ? » 2006-09-23 23:40:14
You don't get it do you.
Actually, I strongly support the current formation of international trade blocks since it will lead inevitably to world government.
Expanding the Republic is not the same thing as building an Empire.
Yeah. Yeah it is.
We already have an informal "Co-Prosperity sphere" as you term it ... in exchange for shoveling all that money the Mexican's way we'd get a larger country. I think that's not a bad deal, do you?
Seriously considered, I think annexing Mexico would be a disaster. I think you vastly underestimate the investment that would be required to bring Mexico's infrastructure and general education level up to US nominal. It would create an underclass that guaranteed limitless sorrow for generations to come. Besides, the whole idea of physical annexation is obsolete. As you have pointed out, economic annexation is progressing apace and Mexico's leadership is filled with a US educated (and thus memetically annexed) elite. The situation is massively profitable for the US. Only a swing to the far left (would require a near-miraculous evaporation of corruption) or Bushical style bungling (only God knows what he'll do next) can derail the current win/win.
I get tired of us offering assistance with no strings attached.
Puh-lease. Check out the "assistance" packages that the US puts together. I don't think you'll be disappointed. Only in the current Iraq fiasco is there no way for the US to benefit.
we liberated half of Europe and we only got reviled for it.
The US' late entry into WW2 and the peace and reconstruction deals negotiated from the resulting position of strength (all other parties were exhausted) established the basis for the US' current hegemony. There is no greater possible pay off.
I think we should finish the job in ... Iran
I wish that didn't have to happen - there is a high probability of it triggering WW3 - but I don't see any way out. The best that can happen is that China supports Iran triggering a new cold war.