New Mars Forums

I wonder how small a collector they can use and how easy it will be to set up?

~10 km^2 with microwave.  Hmmm, guess they'd better go with laser.

Will the space beam give away their military position?

Depends on how sophisticated the opponent is.  Good thought though.

BTW, they're discussing it publicly here ...

http://spacesolarpower.wordpress.com/

It's good news, however most plans include basically waiting on the ITER results - but those aren't due until 2025.  Maybe one of the IEC Fusion ideas will work out.

Russian scientist calls for fusion research program by year's end
http://en.rian.ru/russia/20070816/71818954.html

A leading Russian nuclear scientist said the country must adopt a federal targeted program on the research and potential use of fusion power as an alternative energy source by the end of 2007.

A government meeting adopted Thursday the main provisions of a draft strategy for developing a fusion power industry up to 2015 and beyond, and instructed the Federal Agency for Nuclear Power to prepare a revised version of the document by October 1.

The strategy stipulates the allocation of 515 billion rubles (about $20 billion) for the development of a fusion power industry, including construction of commercial thermonuclear reactors, until 2050.
...

If the Tajmar result is true - that we can generate gravitational fields from EM fields at the level he describes - then all the rest follows.

But we can't 

Tajmar rules out his own result in his latest paper ...

Search for Frame-Dragging in the Vicinity of Spinning Superconductors
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.3806

He finds something else, but it is hyperweird ( signal when rotating clockwise but not counter-clockwise - WTF? ).

Blah.

That is kind of interesting. Isn’t Northrop Grumman Corp. a pretty big company?

Yes it's puzzling, isn't it.  I wonder what they'd use a suborbital transport for?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SUSTAIN_%28military%29

Yes and sometimes those little islands are in the wake of such things as huricanes, cyclones and just down right nasty weather...

As are oil rigs, existing islands, ... and well, just about every piece of coastal land.  Surface weather is hardly a show-stopper.

Because the resources are underwater.

Which resources?

Fish, animals, and plants grow better on the surface than they do in deep water.  The nutrients may be at the bottom, but that water can easily be pumped up.

Mineral, methane, and oil resources need some humans on the bottom of course, but the oil industry has shown that it's more economical to separate resource acquisition (which requires just a few people on the bottom) from processing and use which can be done more cheaply on the surface.

Why build underwater and deal with the issues of pressure, light, transportation, leaks, etc. when you could live on the surface (artificial islands)?

Just a thought.

The Griffin Space Fantasy

NASA boss Mike Griffin says we can do three Apollo-scale projects over the next 50 years without increasing the NASA budget. It sounds too good to be true - and it is. Griffin's analysis of NASA's past relies on questionable economics and his vision of the future includes political and technical impossibilities.

Mr Bell has unfortunatly got a chance to have a good bite into what is rapidly becoming clear that NASA just does not have the money to actually accomplish what it has promised.

The March 14 2007 issue of Aviation Week contained an article by NASA Administrator Mike Griffin which apparently is the most detailed statement yet of his long-range plans. In this article and related press interviews, Griffin makes a case that NASA is not really as underfunded as many critics say, and that the US can afford three major space projects on the scale of Project Apollo over the next 50 years without major budget increases.
Specifically, he argues that a steady budget of about 14 billion FY2000 dollars per year can comfortably accommodate the Moon landing, Moon base, and Mars landing programs proposed by President Bush in February 2004.

There has been surprisingly little discussion of this key article. Possibly many space advocates suspect that the news is too good to be true. After all, on March 16, Griffin appeared in person on Capitol Hill to argue for a major increase in NASA funding of exactly the kind he had claimed was unnecessary in this article. This contradiction should have tipped us all off that the AvWeek article is not a serious analysis.

He then goes into a cost analysis and details of inflation compared to needed rises in NASA's budget.

A bigger question is: why do so many space cadets still worship Griffin and believe everything he says, without the normal level of skepticism directed at the statements and actions of political appointees? The answer is that Griffin is a master at divining what we want to hear and telling us exactly that. We are so accustomed to seeing bland organization men at the helm of NASA that we have been blinded by the sheer novelty of an Administrator who shares our romantic vision of space. We need to open our eyes and demand some hard-nosed rational planning to back up that vision.

ouch

Just picturing the first balloon being setup in the Venus atmosphere so work can progress to build the city.

I can't see a willing soul brave enough to be on it until it's a pretty big and safe structure.
You will also need emergency escape vehicles for every colonist just incase of a disaster.(A few Saturn 1B earth to moon sized vehicles)

Might be an idea to include some means of a pretty close to fully machine built  floating city before anyone arrives to it.
That might be the un raveling of the idea as i think it would be a difficult project even on Earth.