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http://www.spacedaily.com/news/aust-03a.html

They haven't rebuilt, and never will. Partly due to disputes with the insurer. Partly due to apathy from government. Partly for the very good technical reason that there is too much light pollution there now.

Unlike a missile, a meteor has a predictable path of flight. Given the speed at which a meteor enters the earth's atmosphere, the typical meteor is white hot and should be easily detected by the infrared detector in these laser systems. An AMLS, with some slight modification for tracking a meteor, could easily blast it out of the sky.

Just a day ago, I read another article claiming that the impact predates the extinction event by 300000 years. The last thing hasn't been said about the dinosaurs, that's for sure. I really like the way David Polly puts it in the article (the one linked to by /.): "Finding conclusive evidence, however, is a difficult matter when the crime scene is 65 million years old".

he Chinese will soon deploy a new hypersonic anti-ship ballistic missile that is a Mach 10 problem for the Navy

Citation?

here and here

The Phalanx is being replaced by the RAM. More important than replacing the Phalanx though is investing in fighter aircraft that can keep the launching platforms from getting into range to begin with. It's much easier to shoot down a bomber carrying missiles (or a scout plane trying to find your location so shore/ship based ones can be fired) than it is to shoot down the missiles after launch. In that vein I think it was a mistake to retire the F-14 and the Phoenix missile -- we should have fielded upgraded versions of both -- but DoD apparently thought differently.

Attacking the launch platform with fighters is not useful a missile has a range of 1200 miles. Notice how ineffective that strategy was vs. Saddam's mobile scuds in Gulf War I. Next time, we must assume the opponent has missiles that can actually fly in one piece to the target.

Carrier operations in the Persian gulf vs. Iran would be a tricky proposition right now and I doubt they will try it.

Says who? All those missiles are useless if you can't locate the carrier to begin with. To locate the carrier you need to get an aircraft, ship or satellite within radar range. All three of those platforms can be detected, engaged and destroyed during wartime. The Iranian missile threat is cause for concern but I doubt they've negated our navy.

Locating a carrier is not all that tough when you have satellites. Taking them out would be super-critical. Are you sure we can find and hit ALL of them? And what happens if Russia shares their satellite intel with China -- just like the US did with the UK during the Falklands war? Do we attack their satellites too?

There is nothing especially stealthy about a carrier battle group, and to be useful it has to be within a reasonable distance of the battle zone. We cannot expect to be undetectable. The anti-missile defenses need more refinement vs. supersonic ASMs and the hypersonic ballistic missile threat needs to be dealt with. The Chinese will have that missile flying before we have a reliable defense.

I am more concerned about a barrage of supersonic ASMs, which Russia is selling in bulk to all customers. A 95% shoot-down rate is not good enough against a barrage of 50 missiles.

A conflict with China or Iran would NOT be the usual lopsided battle scenario that the Navy has faced in the past. If we lost so much as ONE carrier, the rest of the fleet would be effectively removed from the battle. Do you imagine Obama having the guts to take such a loss and risk another?

According to this article Close-In Planets Mass Loss "gliese 581 e" might not at all be earth like planet but the core of a gas giant whose atmosphere was "eaten" by the star. What is left is probably a giant diamond. So pack your laser drills and lets go :)

When I read it, I thought "Sounds a lot like CliffBot. (lots more)

I like the story of gamma rays first being detected because we were looking for evidence of the Soviets using Nukes on the Moon. DoD projects that help develop tech for NASA projects could be a good thing.

As long as they don't start developing plans for bringing liberty to the hydrocarbon rich populace of Titan.

WHAT???

What are you, one of them effete Europaens?

Do not attempt to tell an AMERICAN space agency what they can and cannot do!

Why so upset?

Is it because of outsourcing to India?

Oh and, you misspelled Europeans.
And fucking.

It's not just fuel. The radiation from Jupiter is very intense and gets worse the closer you get.

Courtesy a few minutes of googling "Raytheon +"non lethal". I'm really surprised this wasn't on /. last year. It was on Fark and my other regular sites, and I have lousy memory. Anyway here are some links to the "non lethal" techno in the parent:

link to Raytheon's article
best title for an article so far
article about why not to be in a riot when this is used I will keep this in mind next time I'm downtown in Denver and one of the teams wins or loses...CO people like to riot?!?
a fairly descriptive article that sounds more like it should be on the food network
a tiny article about how it affected stock
this site/article is definitely not biased or anything

Oh, and by the way, please elaborate on the proven viability of SS2.

For years, I was warning people that Scaled was playing fast and loose with safety. I wrote this in 2006 (and updated with the latter link in early 2007, before the accident):

"Rutan, on the other hand, nearly killed his test pilot by launching in high wind shear conditions, and launching before resolving the cause of wild rolls at rocket ignition. With just a small handful of flights. On a task that is incredibly easy compared to reaching orbit. Some view the rocketplane tourism industry as a disaster waiting to happen."

I would rather have been proven wrong.

Scientist have believed the Martian polar cap are water ice since 2003: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-water-science-03c.html

Interesting how few people here actually realize the painful reality of X PRIZE's attitudes about human life. It is well known to many insiders that XPRIZE and their "royalty" do not care about the sacrifices other people make to help achieve their goals. It is a just cause to RISK another human's life to achieve their dreams.

While what X PRIZE does is very cool, everyone should remember these words:

Tragedy in the new space race - MSNBC July 29, 2007

"This was an industrial accident. This has nothing to do with spaceflight," he was quoted as saying. "I have complete confidence that they are building a safe and robust spaceship."

Totalitarian Temptation in Space - SPACEDAILY May 21, 2006

DIAMANDIS: If you look back at what von Braun did in Nazi Germany it was incredible what you can do with literally a dictatorship. Look at the numbers. 6,000 V-2s built. 6,000 missiles were built in Nazi Germany. The recurring cost was $13,000 a launch for those vehicles. You can bring the cost down with mass production. We'll come back to what will drive ... [Multiple audience comments -- "SLAVE LABOR"]
DIAMANDIS: Yea, and slave labor, Sorry.
[NERVOUS LAUGHTER]
DIAMANDIS: But you know - again to you, the rest of us would happily be slave labor for that mission... Can you erase that from the video tape?

Deep insights into the man running the show.

These are just a few of the quotes that are in press that really show their/his true colors. Don't get me wrong, there are very good people within X PRIZE that are still hanging on in hopes it will get better, but sadly these last, very underpaid "nice-guys" and girls are drinking the Kool-Aid.

To Dr. Rosen, Ms Castleman, evangellydonut and the rest of the SELENE team I say Bravo! Thank you for taking the high road. Good for you for having a BRAIN to understand where the real innovations in space activities need to occur; for having a HEART and caring about how X PRIZE treats people and the public, and a SPINE to stand on your principles and walk out of this project.

Actually, Russians DO write similar articles. This article is on spacedaily and several mainstream russian papers. In addition, they DO point out our failures. It is obvious that you do not read russian papers.

You're right, they don't...
Overview - [1] [2]
Chicxulub - [1] [2]
Shiva - [1] [2]
Boltysh - [1] [2]
And probably more, such as the Silverpit crater, although that's a bit more debated.

Just build the thing in space! You get 1/2 hour down time once a year.

From Google-fu with Space Based Solar Power
http://www.spacedaily.com/news/ssp-03b.html
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_power_satellite

Problem is we'll need a space fountain to put it up there.

I didn't realize that was something they try to keep quiet. Internally, they talk about them like they'd talk about a car battery. Are you saying there's a concerted effort not to mention that, for example, the New Horizon mission is powered by a radioisotope generator?

Better tell Space Daily to hush up!

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/LockMart_Thermoelectric_Generator_Powers_NASA_Pluto_New_Horizons_Probe.html

To find out if this is happening, Terada and his colleagues targeted AE Aquarii with Suzaku in October 2005 and October 2006. The white dwarf resides in a binary system with a normal companion star. Gas from the star spirals toward the white dwarf and heats up, giving off a glow of low-energy (soft) X-rays. But Suzaku also detected sharp pulses of hard X-rays. After analyzing the data, the team realized that the hard X-ray pulses match the white dwarf's spin period of once every 33 seconds.

The hard X-ray pulsations are very similar to those of the pulsar in the center of the Crab Nebula. In both objects, the pulses appear to be radiated like a lighthouse beam, and a rotating magnetic field is thought to be controlling the beam. Astronomers think that the extremely powerful magnetic fields are trapping charged particles and then flinging them outward at near-light speed. When the particles interact with the magnetic field, they radiate X-rays.

You realize that terrestrial lightning releases x-rays too, right?

That article points to similarities in x-ray emissions to the Crab Nebula, which flickers at 30 times per second. From http://www.thunderbolts.info/tpod/2004/arch/040916nebula.htm ...

The high-resolution picture of the Crab Nebula above (upper), taken by the Very Large Telescope (VLT), shows the filamentation produced by magnetic fields and electric currents, as material races away from the nebula's core at half the speed of light--a "higher speed than expected from a free explosion", according to NASA reports. Acceleration of particles is a trademark of electrical activity, and no other force in space is known to achieve this feat.

In the lower photograph taken by the Chandra X-Ray Telescope, we see the internal dynamics of the Crab Nebula, revealing structure typical of the intensely energetic activity observed in decades of laboratory experiments with electrical discharge in plasma. That these dynamics are revealed by x-rays is significant because x-ray activity always accompanies high-energy electrical interactions. The internal polar configuration is of particular interest. A torus or wheel-like structure revolves around an axial column--presenting what some have called a "doughnut on a stick". Polar columns or jets are expected in intense plasma discharge.

In their discussion of the Crab Nebula, NASA spokesmen refer to "a scintillating halo, and an intense knot of emission dancing, sprite-like, above the pulsar's pole". Though gravitational theories never envisioned the polar "jets", "haloes", and "knots" of the Crab Nebula, we can now recognize these as prime examples of electrical forces in the universe.

This object is the homopolar motor. Let me quote "The Electric Sky" on what a homopolar motor is:

"The general shape of a rotating disk carrying electric currents in the shape shown in figure 49 defines what is called the 'homopolar motor'. In 1831 Michael Faraday was the first to use this mechanism as a way to generate an electric current by moving a conducting path through a magnetic field.

When electric current is supplied to the disk, instead of being withdrawn from it, a mechanical torque is produced. Thus Faraday's device can be either an electric motor or a generator of electric power. The homopolar motor is the main element in the electric company's watt-hour meter on our homes. Its shape has been called a 'disk on a stick' or a 'doughnut on a stick'.

Not only do

In an older article he is actually cited as saying:

"According to Weldon, it's imperative that lawmakers who believe human space flight is important and who come from states with a strong NASA presence -- both Democrats and Republicans -- put their political capital on the line to save NASA funding from the new leadership's chopping block."

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Weldon_Says_Democrats_Set_To_Cripple_Manned_Space_Program_999.html

Well obviously there is nothing wrong with keeping jobs (especially high tech) in your state, that is certainly what people voted you for. But should it go as far as to impede any new program? Given that Ares is probably launching from Florida too and that it is a manned program what is he so scared about? Is there another election coming up during the spaceship gap?

Live tropical sea surface temperature on the web http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003300/a003376/
El nino linked to deadly disease http://www.spacedaily.com/news/pacific-02a.html

It may improve bandwidth so we can transfer more data, but I'd say we're doing pretty good in that department already, I'm not sure what a HDTV feed from Mars would give us.

They supplied part of the computer system and the O2 Generator.

The Russians also provide two or three components and a second maneuvering system. They provide the only reliable supply vehicles and as I understand it, there's a considerable part of the orbit that's over Russian space.

Only three times the mass of MIR and you claim it's "WELL" beyond something the Russians have done? Nonsense. As I see it, there are a number of innovations in the structure and construction of the ISS, but the raw size isn't one of them.

Heck, look at China. Their space program is now outspending yearly what Apollo did at its' height. And with that, they launch a fraction of the flights that did and currently do. That is because they are busy trying to acquire the same technology (generally buying it from Russia or simply stealing it from NASA and RSA).

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/spacelaw-03b.html

There is a lot more going on with the whole "Life On Mars" thing than you will see really published anywhere. I'm not saying there are little green men on mars, but it seems like every article I read, this one included, downplays the significance of finding Life Outside Earth. That is a Big Deal.

If you're interested, there is quite a bit of background material surrounding Life on Mars and the really famous '76 Viking Lander experiments that were completely glossed over in the article.

One absolutely interesting bit of research (that I'm surprised wasn't mentioned in the article) has to do with circadian rhythms.

IIRC the '76 viking lander had 3 types of experiments on board that would conduct various kinds of tests to determine if there was life on mars. One of those was cell respiration.. another a test for known organic compounds or organic materials. Two of the three tests showed signs for life in at least one of the experimental runs.. but the test for "organic material" consistently failed. I met one of the folks at a conference that claimed to have worked on this and he made it very clear that NASA's usual policy was 2/3 experiments w/positive results == Strong Indications for Life. Yet for some reason NASA announced something to the effect of "No Organics, No Life" . He was very bitter about it because he was absolutely convinced there was life on Mars.

In 2000 someone thought to analyze the cell respiration study that already indicated there was life or at least a life-like biological process. SURPRISE! The cell respiration data seemed to indicate cell respiration with circadian rhythms. Could not possibly be a simple chemical reaction. The whole idea of Circadian rhytms did not even exist in 1976! But the data fits. Not only that, but the rhythm itself was tuned to a martian day! I quietly decided there was life on mars at that moment. See this or here.

This new article is interesting, but it is Yet Another Analysis of 30 year old data!! I'd love to see what would happen if NASA (or CNN. I'd take CNN) would announce, in big bold letters, "HEY! We found very conclusive signs of life on another planet! Short of going there and looking at the soil under a microscope ourselves, we're 95% sure the planet is not quite dead and has new and unique life!" Maybe I'm cynical but it seems like we should be actually doing modern experiments to compare with the '76 experiments. It seems more like a pissing contest to see which person/group/agency is right more than The Search for Truth and Knowledge. "Why do we need to search for life on mars? We already found out there isn't life, right?"

http://mars.spherix.com/

In 1997 he presented a paper showing that after 21 years of study of the data he felt that:

Objective application of the scientific process to 21 years of continued research and to new developments on Mars and Earth forced this conclusion. Of all the many hypotheses offered over the years to explain the LR Mars results, the only possibility fitting all the relevant data is that microbial life exists in the top layer of the Martian surface.

The main argument against Levin's conclusions was that the Viking lander's Gas Chromatography-Mass Spectrometry (GCMS) experiment showed no evidence for the presence of organic compounds in the Martian soil. As an analytical chemist who has worked in the field of GCMS since before the time of the Viking probes, I have my doubts about the Viking GCMS experiment having enough sensitivity and reliability to exclude the low level presence of organic material in the Martian soil.

In 2000, Dr. Steven A. Benner published a paper concluding that the Viking GCMS was insensitive to certain organic molecules including those left behind by any microbial life that might have been on Mars. At the same time Dr Joseph Miller reanalyzed the original Viking labelled release experiment data and concluded that it showed circadian rhythms thus supporting the case for Martian life.

http://www.spacedaily.com/news/mars-life-00g.html

Now Joop Houtkooper proposes further evidence that Levin was right. I think Levin will go down in scientific history like Wigner the proposer of the continental drift theory in the 1920's, as a researcher whose ideas were scorned by large sections of the scientific community at the time, but that were eventually proved right.

According to this article, the meteorite went missing last June, but they only reported it now. HELLO? It's still on Lavbin's desk, right where he left it, but his desk is actually MORE MESSY than mine.

The reason I "waste so many words on 'colonizing the universe'" is because that's exactly what I'm talking about. I unfortunately used the term "space exploration" in my post, once, as a synonym for the oft-repeated and unwieldy "space colonization," but in no way am I against the exploration of the galaxy: probes, landers, Spirit and Opportunity, Mir, the Hubble telescope...all of these are technologically-innovative-and-engendering endeavors, and undoubtedly imaginatively inspiring.

The source of our disagreement can probably be found in your assertion that colonizing space "is little different from exploring space." However, this is exactly what I was getting at when I said that "colonizing the galaxy--or, more in tune with the boundless vanity of the human species, colonizing the entire universe--is a structurally simple idea that consists in nearly all of its variegated versions as a fantasy of exploration, eradication of any species contrary to the human will (probably followed by their appropriation, sterilization, domestication and finally "appreciation"), and succeeded by a long reign of utter dominance by 'us.'" I listed "exploration" there as merely the first stage in my definition of colonization, but in no way does space exploration == colonization, as you wrote. By doing so, however, you inadvertently lent support to my having correctly linked these two different human drives into "what we might call the D&D drive, the seemingly irrepressable urge to Discover & Dominate."

It's also interesting that you wrote the following:

"...the part of the human psyche which instinctually strives to discover and dominate, like a slime mold which oozes away from the light and toward the darkness..." Riiight. Sorry. "oozing away from the light" does not really sound like "discover and dominate". Quite the opposite.

You evidently thought I was trying to simplistically link the drive to "discover and dominate" with the concept of darkness (the negative element in the light-dark binary pair), and wanted to reverse it so that discovery and domination are linked with "light," i.e. the "good." But I was really just sillily comparing images (the slime mold instinctively move toward the darkness just like geeks seek to move into outer space to colonize it) and, by extension, hyperbolically making the secondary point that the human D&D drive is as basic and instinctual as the drive of the slime mold's. Humor's strength again exhausted in explanation. Whoosh!

I actually agree with you 'mankind' doesn't fund research programs any more than 'mankind' sponsored Columbus to sail to the 'Indies'. Spain did. And she was eventually made very wealthy from her investment. So what is the problem here?

Yes, you're right: Spain did sponsor Columbus. And then the Spanish empire was "eventually," i.e. shortly thereafter, ruined by a severe recession brought about by inflation caused by the flood of New World silver onto the European silver market and Spain's consequent bellicose borrowing to pay her war debts. I suppose you could have also mentioned the wonderful effects that colonization had upon the native civilizations of the Americas, but why browbeat a point well-made?

You suggested that I "at least try reading some good sci-fi or 'speculative fiction;'" I suggest that you read some actual history, as you seem to ascribe to a "model is that is based on a false heroic image of Columbus created by the writers of high-school history texts." That quote is from an op-ed on spacedaily.com which starts with the author saying, "Lately I have been seeing lots of bad historical analogies drawn from a somewhat later time, the great age of European sea exploration," and ends with his remark that "today's space advocates...often show the same mixture of technical incompetence, slanted data, fanatical devotion to the cause, and brilliant salesmanship that led Columbus and Spain to disaster."

Throughout another article, they look down their noses at the efforts being undertaken referring to the engineering behind it all. We have ruled out the idea of a simple rocket, which can not be used again, or of a small vessel attached to a large plane, the idea chosen by Virgin Galactic of Richard Branson, but which seems to us less safe IOW, they knock spacex, t-space, and scaled composites. This is the SAME group that is taking forever to do the A-380, which is poorly engineered and in trouble due to nationalistic politics. In addition, they had to obtain more funding from EU to do another aircraft to compete against the 787. But they promised that the 380 would be the last.

Now, they say that Burt Rutan has horrible engineering. Burt's multitudes of aircrafts have set a number of records. Even later in that article, they speak of using hamocks which is straight out of one of the poor American companies (t-space). Spacex is looking at having rockets launch at a fraction of the price of the ariane V with slightly more payload due to "poor" engineering (and that is without the rocket re-use that they will employ). And all of that is without any gov. subsidy.

As to the design behind Scaled's work, it has been the EXACT same idea that NASA wanted in the 70's (but nixon killed). In addition, so did EU, at first, before settling on Ariane's design. The idea being to not carry the jets and their covers to space. By taking the approach that they suggest, they will either have to take 3 tanks to space or use a dropped fuel tank. IOW, they have not learned the lessons that the American Shuttle vs. The Russian Shuttle (a theft, but better designed by moving the engines off the shuttle). Scaled did. They will be able to get to space MUCH sooner than EADS just due to this one item. Scaled's WK II will be used to carry not just the sub-orbital rocket (SS1.5), but will also carry SS2. It will be far easier to convert the SS1.5 to SS2. And they will not have to worry about WK.

Griffin did not dispute the reality of global warming, he's just not sure it is worth doing anything about it. This is strange coming from an engineer since one would think the basic reaction would be "Wow! If we can change the planet with out meaning to, what could we do if we engineered it?" but he seems to have some philosophical hangup about not interfering in how we are interfering with the planet. Here's a summary: http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/NASA_Administrat or_Michael_Griffin_Not_Sure_Global_Warming_A_Probl em_999.html.

More to the point on emissions from various countries, here is a recent Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences tabulation of emission trends. http://www.pnas.org/cgi/reprint/0700609104v1. China appears to be primarily responsible for the acceleration of emissions. With the US reducing it's emissions 1.3% between 2005 and 2006 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18831796/, it look as though China will continue to dominate the acceleration.

While TFA has some valid points, the main thing is that industrialized countries have a better opportunity to slow or reduce emissions since, for them, efficiency improvements can pace growth while for developing nations efficiency cannot help with a growth from zero situation.
--
Out pace growth: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Well, just yesterday I read two articles on spacedaily:

1) Griffin Not Sure Global Warming A Problem
2) NASA Research Suggest Earth Climate Approaching Dangerous Point

Somehow I have problems reconciling these two standpoints.

Blaming people for the early extinction of megafauna in North America has been trendy, and also has some circumstantial evidence behind it. But, there is a new theory covered recently on slashdot http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/05/2 2/2023212 that might have legs. This one looks at a carbon rich layer deposited 12,000 years ago that contains siderophile materials. Here is another link http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/New_Clovis_Age_C omet_Impact_Theory_999.html since the New Scientist link seems to be dead. I wonder if there is any connection with Hopi kiva traditions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiva.
--
Good stuff from space: http://mdsolar.blogspot.com/2007/01/slashdot-users -selling-solar.html

Hey, Yank, care to send some of that water that you are speaking of?

Count on it.

India is planning on a Moon Mission and a Mars Mission and discussing Manned Space Flight.

There's already a lot of International co-operation in space R&D. Take for example the Australian satellite Fedsat. Bus design by SIL of the UK, completed and re-engineered by Auspace in Australia, Star Camera from Stellenbosch in South Africa, Attitude Control System by Dynacon Canada, GPS system by NASA, USA. Telemetry standards by the European Space Agency. And launched on a Japanase H2A booster.

With a design lifetime of 3 years, it's been operational for 4, and was the first satellite to demonstrate self-healing of radiation damage in Space.

The key is to minimise bureaucracy, and have a single systems integrator. Probably not in the US due to some eccentric export control restrictions you have.

And yes, I had the honour and privelege of heading the on-board computer development team. I spent most of my time sorting out inconsistencies between the many different Universities in Australia involved, not to mention the International partners. Having to make decisions - one experiment suddenly needed more resources, who can I rob? Fortunately I always kept a reserve... so no-one ended up losing, and I could even give them a bit more than they asked for in the end.

Best thing about it? Well, at age 10 in 1968 I watched Kubrick's 2001: A Space Odyssey and vowed I'd be working on a space programme in 2001. That, and being entitled to wear a T-shirt saying "As a matter of fact, I am a Rocket Scientist!".

According to this document, 5.8 firefighters die per 100,000 fires. The fatality rate for an astronaut onboard the shuttle corresponds to the rate of shuttle accidents: 2 in 117 launches. Now, most people in the astronaut program will never even get to go up on the shuttle. However, just one shuttle ride is the risk of several lifetimes worth of fighting fires.

And it's not that the shuttle is bad by worldwide standards. Despite all the criticism, it's failed about as often as manned Soyuz launches, and less often than Soyuz launches as a whole (luckily, the unmanned Soyuz launches have had the brunt of the failures). Launch failures are a part of rocketry.

Which brings me to this article about how the "space tourism" industry is flirting with financial ruin.

The operational safety and environmental impact of solar needs to be considered though. A typical nuclear reactor generates in the 1000MW range, and even at 30% efficiency (higher than we're likely to get to any time soon) and absolutely no cloud cover you are looking at something like 320*0.3 W/m^2 = 100W/m^2, so and equivalent solar plant is going to occupy 1000,000,000 W / (100 W/m^2) = 10,000,000 m^2, or ten million square meters just for the collectors. If you are going to replace all of the existing capacity with solar you will need roughly a thousand of these (1,000,000 MW total US capacity / 1000 MW per plant), or ten billion m^2 of collectors.

To put it in perspective, you are talking about an roughly the size of the greater Los Angeles metropolitan area. There are going to be safety and environmental consequences of operating anything this large, no matter how you slice it. Clearly there will be industrial accidents on a regular basis if you run it as a single monolithic structure (even if just moving people and materials around), and it gets worse (though harder to track) if you split it up into lots of little facilities (say, one on every roof top).

Assuming the active surfaces weighs 1 Kg/m^2 (an underestimate) and last on average 50 years (an over estimate) you will still have 20,000 metric tons of toxic waste a year (not counting manufacturing waste to deal with). While still much better than fossil fuels (which produce that much in well under a day) it needs to be considered.

--MarkusQ

P.S. I think we both agree on the gals here, and the quibbles are about means. My preferred solar power scenario is to put it (and much of our industry) out in space. But even your "solar panels everywhere" scenario is better than what we have now.

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

JPG: Xiaoyun Wang

At first, I thought this was going to be similar to the method of generating hires images from a small number of sensors utilized by jumping spiders. Basically, they vibrate their retinas, recording datapoints from the in-between locations to get in-between pixels.

Its probably because 90% of the people who post/track articles are on holidays and only basic staff are on hand.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Comet_McNaught_M akes_For_Stellar_A_First_Light_Present_For_STEREO_ Telescope_999.html

Jan 15!!!

We still have time to see it though, but yeah, could have been earlier, curse you space websites/magazines.

Link

Here you demonstrate my point suscinctly.

2) It may be dangerous. It may not be.

Hence the need for further study, both on the effects and implementation. Hence, it is currently not an option.

3) So do the other options - but at least this one I know about! Mirrors in space are actually quit cheap

Now you demonstrate the problem with pretending that you know what you're talking about when you're not involved in the field. Apparently you define "cheap" as launching 20 million tonnes to L1.

Yes, the mass production this would require would reduce launch costs. No, not *that* much. And lets not even get into how long it would take to scale up to that point. BTW, it's generally a good sign of a researcher saying "I've got nothing" when their calculations involve reducing launch prices to $20 per pound to try and make their math work.

Actually, I like the cooking robot better. I have seen the photo of the robot in some Chinese forum. It was released in a few days ago at the same time as the annual tradeshow in Guangzhou. It looks like a large fridge with two arms. It can do stir fried etc. It has been programmed to cook hundreds of local dishes. While it may not be that advanced in terms of robotics, the idea is just so cool. I would definitely try that out if there is a robot theme restaurant. In the longer run, it can actually be a very sucessful commerical project (just imagine a vending machine style self serve restaurant that operates 24hr in places like airport). I look forward for that.

http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Chinese_Scientis ts_Develop_Improved_Cooking_Robot_999.html

I think you should visit the country. Visit the occupied territories. Speak to the Palestinians there. Ask them why they live the way they do, and ask them what they want. Their answers may surprise you. I visited the arab neighborhoods of Jerusalem. Unless you are arab you will feel very uncomfortable. If you are particularly interested, you should visit Bethlehem, or Gaza. Show your support for the Palestinians and see how safe you really feel there. I highly suggest you visit the places of which you speak.

I not only saw arab villages, I saw Druze villages, Bedouin camps, and met Arab-Israelis. Not all arabs are bad. They make the best hummus and pita! The arabs were and will continue to be a nomadic people. They had no interest in settling the land. They moved to where it suited them. Not until colonialism in the late 1800s did they even experience structured government... Just over 100 years being governed, and it wasn't even by themselves. The arabs are not a stupid, lazy people.

I knew after seeing this article on Slashdot, that it would soon degenerate away from 'news for nerds'. Lets discuss cool technology from the region, like what is being developed to shoot down rockets using lasers: http://www.spacedaily.com/news/laser-00g.html

Permafrost layers have been shown to release tremendous amounts of captive CO2 when melted. http://www.spacedaily.com/news/greenhouse-04d.html

As for your "only a couple of sources of CO2", you need to realize that IPCC themselves recognize over 20 separate CO2 sources and sinks in the climate model, few of which are of a "known" quantity. The carbon cycle is one of the largest and least understood cycles of the atmosphere, simply because it is so complex. http://www.enviroliteracy.org/article.php/439.html

And as for doing this without links, I refuse to do that, since the very next response would be "WHERE'S YOUR CITATIONS, LOSER!"

Besides, the whole article is about how, prior to human influence, the CO2 levels followed climate trends. So are you claiming that prior to the last ice age the neanderthals and cro-magnons were driving SUVs?

Last I heard, there were no practical ways to deal with radiation in space.

Does this mean NASA doesn't consider radiation to be a problem, or think it has a workable solution? Is so, what is it? And isn't it irresponsible to begin contracting if they don't have a solution?

Freescale's MRAM technology isn't all that new...it's an old Motorola technology that they kept running with when they were spun off. It's taken them a few years to get going again, but it's already been done for a while.

That said, MRAM ain't a HD replacement yet. No one outside the aerospace industry is using it for storage right now that I'm aware of, and even if someone was, making a large enough FRAM based drive with 4Mb chips is HARD. 2 chips for every MB. 2048 chips for every GB. a 500GB FRAM disk would require 1,024,000 of these chips, requiring nearly 2,500 sqft of PCB space, and more power than a pile of overclocked P4s (~9mA * 3.3V * 1,024,000 chips = 30.4128kW at IDLE). Even if someone could build that, it'd be farking huge, run inconcievably hot, be incredibly power hungry, and sell for an obscenely expensive price, even for the most extr33m gadget hunters.

Wait for 32 and 64Mb chips. Then we'll talk.

Right now I'm too busy working with a serial FRAM from Ramtron to write more.