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Today is Google Meeting Day for NewMars....
if present plans hold, we will open the Waiting Room a bit before 1 AM UTC, 7 PM Houston, 8 PM New Hampshire.
Reminder for optical discussion: The paper at the link below is from 2008 - Use of optical cable to feed thermal process:
https://www.lpi.usra.edu/meetings/leagi … ra4011.pdf
Solar Thermal Power System for Oxygen
Production from Lunar Regolith:
Engineering System Development
Topics for this week might include:
Optical fiber discoveries
Space tugs, Three Phases, other items
SpaceNut's house project (if he is able to stop in)
kbd512's analysis of air forces
Welding not needed but what instead?
New items
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Equipment check ... Equipment and software seem to be working.
I am unsure if anyone is going to want to think about space tonight ... The US is putting on the Super Bowl, and much of the Nation's attention is going to be focused there. We have not seen any of our European members, and the late hour in Europe is an understandable reason.
I've been invited to watch the Super Bowl with friends, and am planning to head over shortly.
I'm the only Admin set up to host the Google Meeting at this point.
Decision time! I'll plan to return home to see if anyone is in the Waiting Room at the top of the hour.
If no one is present, I'll assume the Super Bowl has priority.
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Waiting Room is open
I'm not expecting anyone but to be consistent, the meeting needs to open every week.
The Philadelphia Eagles are ahead 17 to 0 ...
kbd512 dropped in .. we're off and running ...
GW joined ... We ended up with a ** very ** interesting discussion.
We started with a deep dive into ion propulsion, and the document at the link below will provide a glimpse of the knowledge available.
https://electricrocket.org/2019/259.pdf
Document ... in space propulsion ... electric propulsion
Update later: The Eagles ended up with a solid 40 and the Chiefs reached 22 during the final five minutes.
Some feedback I picked up on the way home was that this was a blowout rather than a slugfest, and a bit disappointing on that score.
However, another way of looking at this is that Pittsburgh was simply up for this game, and everything they tried worked.
The week ahead in NewMars forum is sure to bring new surprises as members investigate areas of interest, and share glimpses with the rest of us via posts.
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The Google Meeting for Sunday February 16th 2025 is on schedule.
If all goes to plan, the waiting room will open a bit before 1 AM UTC, 7 PM Houston, 8 PM New Hampshire.
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The Google Meeting is set up for this evening...
The Waiting room is open.
Time is 55:39
GW Johnson is already here.
kbd512 joined and we were off to the races!
Post meeting report:
This was another interesting and productive meeting.
We covered several topics in which kbd512 is a participant, and several in which GW is a participant.
Two really interesting ideas came out of the meeting, and probably others that I missed.
First, kbd512 took up Calliban's Steam Balloon idea and after a look at GW's Steam Image, kbd512 thought of using a Fresnel lense to heat water to keep a steam balloon aloft. We had started down the track of using photovoltaics to heat water to keep the balloon aloft, when kbd512 suggested just cutting out the middle man. The system would depend upon solar energy to stay aloft, so there would be a concern about the day/night cycle on Earth.
The group considered the use of microwaves to heat water inside a balloon. That system could probably be used to achieve a Guiness Book of Records listing, for whatever that is worth.
GW's cows are safely back in the pasture after finding a way out. Fortunately these were more cooperative critters than might have been the case.
kbd512 brought us up to date on his study of optical systems.
The second idea is related to the diameter of optical fiber needed to collect power from a solar sail system. I gather that there is a limit to how much power an optical fiber can carry, so (hopefully) kbd512 will be updating his post about that
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