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the problem i see with nuclear power is not one of safety- in many years, there have been only 2 really major incidents, but one of disposal. with a half-life of around 88,000 years (if i remember correctly), the leftover isnt going anywhere fast. i dont think we can really rely on fission to power people, maybe spaceships, but not people. in fact, i would wait for fusion to power either, unless ion drives work well.
fusion produces a negligble amount of waste, and its theoretically much safer, so all the downside is really gone.
anybody have aim or icq? just wondering, checked some profiles, didnt see anything.
not an exact replica. i live 20 miles away from the city, so ive seen them many, many times. they lacked style, they were literally 100 story tall rectangles. they should be rebuilt, but with beauty. ive seen structural concepts, forgot what its called (torqued?) where the building is sort of spiraling, which adds strength to the building, and it looks really amazing.
and who cares how much anybody can bench? i play 3 sports, and i wont even discuss what i can do in a weight room. what does it matter here? this is an intellectual forum, not a locker room.
id be embarrassed if i couldnt stand up for myself without my friends there. we dont need to know about your friend, i dont care if hes jackie chan.
if you cant handle the issue at hand, why bother coming here?
in a word, no. the un is a token symbol. if the world relied on the un to solve its problems, nothing would happen. going to the un is more of a show of grace than anything. its a nice political show, but in terms of what it accomplishes, the un cant provide much more support than the us has.
either the countries arent willing or arent able to provide force, or both. the us, and a few other countries, wield power, but other than that, countries are important based on their economic and political stances, which may be completely unrelated to the issue at hand.
the beauty of expanding to multiple planets or extraterrestrial bodies is that if, say earth, were to become a planet of cyborgs, other human havens could be sufficiently isolated to stay human. people could become many different things. eating different foods may well be a huge catalyst for evolution. we take in different quantities of proteins, amino acids, etc., our bodies would adapt to fit our diet.
defining an advanced species is key. using radio waves might be somewhat useless--what if our target ET is using huge amounts of radio traffic, and our signal gets lost? we may have contacted ET many times over, and they just didnt notice.
i live on long island. not much better for stargazing.
sounds like a harrier without propellers.
doubtful. likely, theyd be much taller. for me, thats a drawback...
theres a difference, i think. on a trip to mars, the crew could keep themselves busy for as long as they want. there will always be something that can be done. and like zubrin said, e-mails, games, and the like would help to keep the crew happy when they get overworked, or just tired.
since our congress likes to throw in pork, to sneak it in, maybe we might want to have them sneak a thing here, another there. small things in the bill, barely noticeable, but adding up.
for those who dont know, pork is throwing in an unrelated issue, like kansas farm irrigation in a star wars defense bill. it is a common way of shoving political agendas through.
wouldnt a sort of real estate center have to be established before settlement could occur? i mean, realisitcally, this would be important. Maybe parcels of land could be sold to companies, up to a maximum. If one company could secure the best parts of a resource lode, other companies might seek out other places. it is never a good idea to set up shop right next to your competition. logistically, its stupid.
but back to real estate, there should be a loose "zoning" of land before private industry moves in. we dont want people spread out in communities of 20 all over mars. we want a few strong cores first, a few industrial development areas, and a huge amount of areas given to scientific interests, for experiments, terraforming, farming, etc.
in zubrins book, he mentions mars being a waypoint for asteroid mining. if the payload could be transported cheaply enough, $150 billion for a run of the mill asteroid is not a bad deal, if it can be mined in a reasonable amount of time.
interesting site. i entered the middle numbers suggested by the guide (for example, it said 0-100, i assumed 50 for NH3), and i came out with 89% habitable. not bad. tropical temperatures of about 110-120 F (47ish C) max. mean of 17.7 C overall. thats not too far below earth's room temperature. in essence, conservative estimates yield a very comfortable, livable planet.
why couldnt they be used together? maybe the sails could be deployed for turning or breaking, so that the thrusters wouldnt have to be used to break the ship or turn it, reducing the cost of missions, or the time, depending on whats more important. the sails would be completely reusable too.
but im sure people would want to return from time to time. nobody wants to be in a desolate place forever.
i dont think this will work. i think there will be a community farm, with one or two people working there. since the farming can be done with a bunch of huge domes, i can see rows of domes with say, 20 people working to maintain them (maybe 5 acres worth of crops), but them being employed by the government. the only place i see for real wide-scale socialism is in the first stages of mars...when there arent the people to support a free market. once there are around 500 to 1000 people, i would place the land under private control (with regulation), and allow supermarkets, etc.
but i dont really envision a farming community, so to speak. farming will be important, but there will be many things just as important, like science, building, etc.
forgive me if i missed the point, but i was just posting based on what ive gathered so far in this topic.
what i was envisioning was a downsize from what we have. not in payload, but in price and mass. from all that ive read, you can have a larger capacity ship with less mass and price than current ships, based on current technology.
i've seen articles here and there about warp drives. obviously this is something that isnt going to be done tomorrow, but is there any mathematical basis against warp systems?
i know einstein said that light speed travel is impossible-but what if it isnt? do we know this? also, how can we be sure that time dilates at the speed of light? what if it doesnt? when was the last time we traveled at light speed to know this?
im not trying to say that all these theories are wrong- in fact, im curious as to the concrete evidence theyre true.
but my whole point was, is warp drive possible? and could we in fact "break" the light barrier?
how have we terraformed earth? farms, cities, planting trees, crops, domesticating animals, driving species to extinction, deforesting, mining, developing, weeding...we've woven the earth to our liking...weve terraformed it.
how to prevent the atmosphere from escaping? it already has an atmosphere, and so does earth, do these just disappear?
unless you want to live on this planet forever, were gonna have to go to mars. and its a fairly bad idea to live in spacesuits and lugging around breathing gear forever. theres nothing WRONG with terraforming. if youve got reservations about disturbing natural habitats, dont use wood to build anything. the wood was once some animal's home.
the best example of terraforming in this day and age-greenhouse gassing-we're good at. thats what we'd do to terraform mars. convenient, isnt it?
paying one representative is not a good idea. unless there is some overseeing entity, who knows where the money will go. a new government is a good way to get rid of some of the excessive "pork" and bureaucracy in American government. Here are some laws to this effect that I think would help:
1. No inclusion of unrelated issues into bills just to get these issues through. (i.e. organic corn in an oil bill)
2. An annual, or better, quarterly report of spending from each representative (or "state") in concise language, easily understandable by common people.
3. Representatives can only serve for a maximum of 10 years (or using 4 year terms, 12 years).
4. The public should be made aware of bills, they should be wirtten in clear language, easy for common people to read, and available for common people.
These might help a little. Im not one to push the freedom of information acts though--the government has the right to do certain things without us knowing. if we had to know everything, very little in the way of high-tech advancements (nuclear energy, airplanes, etc) would occur. people think they know everything best, which is why a government, like a parent, has to do things for the people that the people never know about. there is some truth to the adage, people are stupid.
wouldnt you save energy by avoiding the necessary escape velocity from earth or mars?
we need something fresh to revitalize the industry. the same stagnation has occured that has occured in the defense aircraft industry. theres nothing new look at the raptor (f-21). its just a remake of the tomcat. and the whopping 2 planes per year does nothing for the industry. if something new came out, the industry might experience a boom like ww2's. atm, its dead.
the spacecraft industry isnt as lifeless, but nothing really new has come out since the 80s. If something new came out, and jobs were created (especially in this time), a huge case could be made to the public- "Look, you need jobs, we have jobs." And politicians can make themselves look good on stage, giving jobs to the people, for a patriotic cause. the ISS was good for business, and people were excited by it. whenever something new happens in space, people rush to it.
so, after my long-winded typing, my point is that using old technology isnt going to help us in the long run. we need a truly new innovation, not just for revitalization, but because the old stuff is so obsolete.
i really doubt china has the capacity to build spaceships to mars. they can hardly build jet planes. otherwise, they wouldnt contract airbus and boeing to do it for them. a robotic arm is a long way off from a mars mission. so is a manned space mission. we had men in space years before we even got to the moon.
and the technology to get there isnt coming from us, unless they somehow get their hands on a stray ERV.
I was wondering-is there any completely safe way to store nuclear fuel through atmospheric delivery (not use, store)? If this could be done, nuclear vessels could be used between planets, since they wouldnt have to be launched from Earth (at least, they wouldnt have to launch themselves), avoiding the environmental and political arguments against nuclear fuel.
why cant civilizations exist for millions of years? The Drake Equation assumes too much. It's an open question-so an open answer is easy to give. For example, before modern astronomical observations calculating the number of visible stars, anyone could say with certainty, there were x number of stars, because they couldnt be proven wrong. With the Drake equation, plug in some numbers that sound good, and voila! I mean, life isnt something you can put an equation on, at least not one so simple. Its too complex a process.
I think there are MANY alien species. perhaps they havent found our tiny corner of the galaxy yet? Or its too unimportant? Who knows? We certainly dont-yet.
i was on vacation for the past few days, re-reading zubrin, and i thought of something. what if we could have permanently cycling ships delivering cargo between Earth and Mars? I pictured 2 cargo points, and later 3 to 12 (bear with me).
1) A cargo point in Earth orbit and one in Mars orbit. A lift vehicle brings cargo to orbit, deposits it at the "warehouse" and goes back. I pictured Zubrin's rocketplane in this role (I was reading his books, remember). An SSTO would be perfect in this role, especially a scramjet. It could even deliver the cargo while en route to another location on the globe. Several of these deliveries could occur, and a tanker could pick it up, do a throwaround Earth back towards Mars, and vice versa. I pictured an NTR or fusion ship in this role - low fuel needs, and fast travel.
2) Same concept, except cargo points are also put in locations between Earth and Mars, maybe one for each seasonal location (i.e. 3/21, 6/21, etc). This way, the "tankers" could drop off loads of cargo (it's half the distance), and they wouldn't have to wait for the 2 year cycle to occur- they could just drop it off at the most convenient point, and Mars could pick it up within a few months. More loads could be delivered, and relatively small ships are needed (each only needs a minimal fuel content). Since atmospheric launches arent needed, the tankers could be HUGE. Maybe assembled in orbit? (NOT huge orbital hangars, just parts assembled like the ISS).
Ideas, comments, criticism?