States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty.
Nations are required to regulate commercial activities. Doing so doesn't imply sovereignty. So legislation to register American commercial asteroid miners is perfectly within the limits of the Treaty, provided the US doesn't use such legislation to try to enforce sovereignty over other nations' activities.
The Moon has a blended surface due to repeated impacts throwing stuff around. It doesn't have the same kind of concentrated metals that a Type M asteroid does.
However, those same impacts (and the lack of oxidation) means that the lunar regolith contains several percent metal powder/filings from M-type asteroids, which can be separated from the regolith using just a magnet, and sintered into basic shapes using just a microwave emitter.
Combined with the high likelihood of a thick layer of water-ice at the poles (for fuel) and its nearness to Earth (allowing teleoperated robots, and much easier human presence), makes the moon a reasonable place for us to get started than an asteroid.
In general the idea is that your primary market is in space, and competes with Earth-launch costs. (Such as fuel.) Then incrementally grows as what is essentially a waste product from the first production becomes a product in the second, then the third... say bulk shielding, then simple bulk metal components, then dishes/antennas/etc, then manufactured products like solar arrays. Each competes only with the cost of sending up that product from Earth into space, but eventually you have enough industry going on up there that dumping a shipment of PGMs or even nickel all the way back to Earth is a small side trip that is worth the extra income, even though it can't possibly justify all that infrastructure in the first place. At that point, you are just starting to become competitive with Earth-side mining, and the development should increase exponentially after that.
The initial process of getting from here to that first product is also, by coincidence, the same requirements as doing interesting science.
It might not ever be economical. But the process of finding out that it's not economical is just relatively low-cost science. Unless we're stupid, we don't have to commit any more than that to find out that it is or isn't worth committing more.
Your maps don't include the 50-100 million garages with power-points that are suitable for overnight charging battery electric vehicles, and the zero garages with hydrogen production/storage/transfer equipment suitable for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Which, IMO, is the real difference. Commercial charging stations make battery electric vehicles more convenient, but for a decent chunk of the potential market they are not absolutely necessary. Hydrogen infrastructure is a requirement of buying a hydrogen vehicle, even if every other aspect of the vehicle suits you perfectly. You can't work around it, you can't add a charging station at work. You are completely dependent on industrial-scale hydrogen infrastructure existing before you can buy a hydrogen car.
30-40 minutes does not fully recharge the batteries. It will only add 100-150 miles to your range. You're looking at over an hour to fully charge at a "Supercharge" station, several hours at a regular high-amperage power-point, overnight at a 15-20A/220VAC power-point.
Battery electric vehicles are less convenient than conventionally fuelled vehicles, because we're piggybacking on a century of existing fuel infrastructure. However, the contrast here is with the technology in the article, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. People are saying that faffing around with hydrogen is a waste; battery-electric is already more usable in practice, even if its more limited in theory.
For most people, a regular 20-40A/240VAC plug in your garage is enough for a BEV as a second (local run-around) vehicle. A handy power-point in the car park at your workplace lets you use the BEV as your daily commuter vehicle. A higher powered 3-phase system in your garage adds even more flexibility. A "supercharge" station in the area merely adds another layer of backup, but isn't required to get started.
For hydrogen: You can't even consider buying a HFC vehicle until there's a hydrogen supply infrastructure in place, even if every other aspect of the vehicle is ideal for your lifestyle and driving habits. That eliminates most of your potential early adopters, which is why hydrogen has been limited to a very narrow range of fleet users.
The energy density of diesel is much higher than hydrogen and the lifespan of a large diesel engine is vastly more than the lifespan of a hydrogen ICE engine. HFC is probably worse. Hydrogen-ICE make sense for city buses from an emissions stand point, and HFC electric buses due to emissions plus improved noise. But long haul isn't suited to anything except diesel (**). Hydrogen is just a bad technology.
(** With modern electric motors, compact battery packs, and high efficiency diesel generators. I'm wondering if diesel-electric can now scale down to trucks or buses. Mechanically simpler, cleaner, more fuel efficient, less braking load, etc. Separating the power plant from the drive system opens up design efficiencies, potentially lowering manufacturing costs.)
Purely battery electrical vehicles give customers control of charging their cars. You only need a charging station if you are on a long range journey.
Agreed. Because you can charge your battery electric car in your garage using a regular power point, albeit slowly, you don't actually need a single dedicated fast-charging station in your whole city in to use a BEV. That lets early adopters buy BEVs without waiting for infrastructure to develop. OTOH, hydrogen vehicles aren't possible without the supply infrastructure, so even if they are suitable for more early adopters than BEVs, the early adopters themselves are prevented from owning them.
It's the same with commerical fuelling/charging stations: Hydrogen filling stations must be dedicated facilities like conventional fuel stations, with EIS and council planning (and protesting neighbours), and require special dedicated equipment. And then the station itself needs a yet larger scale hydrogen production/supply infrastructure to fill its own tanks before the station itself is practical, meaning that the filling stations themselves may be impossible in many regions that lack the industrial supply infrastructure.
But mains electricity is everywhere.
Any location with a commercial power supply can install a fast-charge station, and any location with any electricity can install trickle-charge plugs. It doesn't require special facilities (gas storage tanks, safety clearances). In most areas it probably doesn't even require special building approval. So a shopping mall can install charging stations in their car park since they already run power lines out to the car-park light-poles. Any commercial car park building can install charging stations. Your office or apartment building can install them in their private car park. Etc. It makes it much more likely that the infrastructure will develop rapidly and organically as the number of electrics on the road increases.
So even if there are more early adopters willing to drive medium-range hydrogen vehicles than short-range battery electrics, hydrogen is so restrictive that the overwhelming majority of those potential hydrogen early adopters are excluded. OTOH, almost all potential BEV buyers already have standard power-points they can immediately plug into; and every potential fleet buyer can install faster-charging stations at their depot/garage without special facilities or planning permission. That solves the chicken and egg problem.
The battery electric vehicles have a larger potential market in practice, in spite of being more limited in theory.
Right, the missile's trajectory would be pointing ahead of where the airliner is at the moment the image was taken (at least 2-3 plane lengths, at typical missile speeds). It's clearly not "cutting the course", it's pointing straight towards the airliner.
However, there's no sign of the "missile" manoeuvring. Ruler-straight line between the fighter and the airliner, even though the airliner would be moving 250m each second, or about four plane-lengths per second.
Remember the Mar's Beagle?? The probe made it to Mar's, just to have a spectacular crash.
Beagle 2 was a lander, not a probe. The ESA's Mars probe it was carried on was Mars Express, which is still operating successfully after ten years orbiting Mars.
Remember the Cassini–Huygens mission??
The flaw was on Cassini (run by NASA), not Huygens (run by ESA) which performed perfectly even though it was landing on a completely unmapped world with an unknown surface. (Could be rock-hard ice, could be liquid ethane, could be some kind of organic sludge. Turned out to be sludgy liquid with a thin hard crust.)
Launch 3500 tonnes at escape velocity in a single shot. Enough to kickstart a lunar colony. All for roughly the same cost as a single 20 tonne-to-LEO conventional rocket launch.
Drill a 2-3km shaft into a salt dome, excavate a cavity at the bottom, suspend a 150kT nuclear warhead at the centre surrounded by a reaction mass, such as water laced with a neutron absorber. Above the cavity, at the bottom of the shaft, put a large shock absorber (such as a few hundred metres of oil backed by an ablative-coated pusher plate), with your 3500 tonnes of payload on top.
Most of the radiation would be contained underground, and a dome over the launch site would capture most of the rest.
If you want to launch into LEO, you can have a much larger payload, over 10,000 tonnes, but you'll need a conventionally rocket as a "chase ship" to grab it and circularise the orbit. Likewise you'll need an insertion and landing burns for a lunar payload, however you can use Orion-type nuclear propulsion once you're past the Van Allen belts. Launch your delicate payloads (like people) via more conventional means.
This would be an ideal way for China to leap decades ahead of every other space power in just one or two (somewhat controversial) Verne launches. 3500 tonnes would be enough payload for not only a lunar base, but enough fuel stockpiled in lunar orbit to power a LEO-LLO ferry for the conventionally launched humans (and delicate payloads.) Pretty much as soon as they have their proposed space station built, they have enough technology and capacity to take advantage of the Verne payload.
Note: 150kT keeps you under the cut-off for the nuclear test ban treaty. However, in an emergency (say, asteroid threat) a 20MT warhead would be able to launch over 200,000 tonnes (almost two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.)
(the Earth, for example, would be considered "dark matter" under this definition)
No, the Earth absorbs and re-emits light in a spectrum related to its temperature. Enough conventional matter would alter the observable properties of galaxies, as indeed free gas and dust does. That's how they know that there isn't enough ordinary matter to do the job: "not dark enough".
How about the method of selection of the Doge of Venice? A mix of super-majority voting (to force compromise), combined with selection by lot (to break voting blocks). Works a bit like evolution by natural selection. Each round effectively selects better candidates for the next. Almost guarantees a wise and benevolent dictator.
You mean "let's", as in "let us". But who actually institutes the laws? That's the "power" that pushing-robot is referring to.
Give it to the people ("us") and it's mob rule. Give it to anyone else and they'll entrench their own power or the power of their supporters/backers/financiers.
Personally I think a systematic version of mob rule is the least dangerous, but there's something of a memetic-hatred of giving power to the masses, "Tytler Calumny" and all that.
There's nowhere near the mass required to create visible rings. We'd need to break up a decent size asteroid, say a few trillion tonnes, just to get wispy crap like the rings around Uranus.
[Saturn's rings mass about 30,000 times more than that. If they were collected into a single object, would make a medium sized moon or very large asteroid, about 400km wide.]
[If you mean Comicon-like conventions, have you "cosplayed" the casing as a SF/comic/video-game robot?]
painting the output onto the inside of a sphere with the viewer at the origin; the viewer also looks from inside the sphere, but isn't tied to the actual camera angle.
That is not just clever, but the more superior "obvious in hindsight" clever.
8/10th of a second? True, I didn't. I wasn't even accurate to three decimal places.
My point was that you can go as far as you need. A stop-watch can go to six or seven places. A clock to two or three. A digital watch to four or five. An atomic clock to fifteen. Your appointment calender to maybe one and a quarter.
Slashdot Mirror
In addition:
Article VI
States Parties to the Treaty shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried on by governmental agencies or by non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the present Treaty. The activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the Moon and other celestial bodies, shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party to the Treaty.
Nations are required to regulate commercial activities. Doing so doesn't imply sovereignty. So legislation to register American commercial asteroid miners is perfectly within the limits of the Treaty, provided the US doesn't use such legislation to try to enforce sovereignty over other nations' activities.
The Moon has a blended surface due to repeated impacts throwing stuff around. It doesn't have the same kind of concentrated metals that a Type M asteroid does.
However, those same impacts (and the lack of oxidation) means that the lunar regolith contains several percent metal powder/filings from M-type asteroids, which can be separated from the regolith using just a magnet, and sintered into basic shapes using just a microwave emitter.
Combined with the high likelihood of a thick layer of water-ice at the poles (for fuel) and its nearness to Earth (allowing teleoperated robots, and much easier human presence), makes the moon a reasonable place for us to get started than an asteroid.
In general the idea is that your primary market is in space, and competes with Earth-launch costs. (Such as fuel.) Then incrementally grows as what is essentially a waste product from the first production becomes a product in the second, then the third... say bulk shielding, then simple bulk metal components, then dishes/antennas/etc, then manufactured products like solar arrays. Each competes only with the cost of sending up that product from Earth into space, but eventually you have enough industry going on up there that dumping a shipment of PGMs or even nickel all the way back to Earth is a small side trip that is worth the extra income, even though it can't possibly justify all that infrastructure in the first place. At that point, you are just starting to become competitive with Earth-side mining, and the development should increase exponentially after that.
The initial process of getting from here to that first product is also, by coincidence, the same requirements as doing interesting science.
It might not ever be economical. But the process of finding out that it's not economical is just relatively low-cost science. Unless we're stupid, we don't have to commit any more than that to find out that it is or isn't worth committing more.
Your maps don't include the 50-100 million garages with power-points that are suitable for overnight charging battery electric vehicles, and the zero garages with hydrogen production/storage/transfer equipment suitable for hydrogen fuel-cell vehicles. Which, IMO, is the real difference. Commercial charging stations make battery electric vehicles more convenient, but for a decent chunk of the potential market they are not absolutely necessary. Hydrogen infrastructure is a requirement of buying a hydrogen vehicle, even if every other aspect of the vehicle suits you perfectly. You can't work around it, you can't add a charging station at work. You are completely dependent on industrial-scale hydrogen infrastructure existing before you can buy a hydrogen car.
30-40 minutes does not fully recharge the batteries. It will only add 100-150 miles to your range. You're looking at over an hour to fully charge at a "Supercharge" station, several hours at a regular high-amperage power-point, overnight at a 15-20A/220VAC power-point.
Battery electric vehicles are less convenient than conventionally fuelled vehicles, because we're piggybacking on a century of existing fuel infrastructure. However, the contrast here is with the technology in the article, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. People are saying that faffing around with hydrogen is a waste; battery-electric is already more usable in practice, even if its more limited in theory.
For most people, a regular 20-40A/240VAC plug in your garage is enough for a BEV as a second (local run-around) vehicle. A handy power-point in the car park at your workplace lets you use the BEV as your daily commuter vehicle. A higher powered 3-phase system in your garage adds even more flexibility. A "supercharge" station in the area merely adds another layer of backup, but isn't required to get started.
For hydrogen: You can't even consider buying a HFC vehicle until there's a hydrogen supply infrastructure in place, even if every other aspect of the vehicle is ideal for your lifestyle and driving habits. That eliminates most of your potential early adopters, which is why hydrogen has been limited to a very narrow range of fleet users.
The energy density of diesel is much higher than hydrogen and the lifespan of a large diesel engine is vastly more than the lifespan of a hydrogen ICE engine. HFC is probably worse. Hydrogen-ICE make sense for city buses from an emissions stand point, and HFC electric buses due to emissions plus improved noise. But long haul isn't suited to anything except diesel (**). Hydrogen is just a bad technology.
(** With modern electric motors, compact battery packs, and high efficiency diesel generators. I'm wondering if diesel-electric can now scale down to trucks or buses. Mechanically simpler, cleaner, more fuel efficient, less braking load, etc. Separating the power plant from the drive system opens up design efficiencies, potentially lowering manufacturing costs.)
Purely battery electrical vehicles give customers control of charging their cars. You only need a charging station if you are on a long range journey.
Agreed. Because you can charge your battery electric car in your garage using a regular power point, albeit slowly, you don't actually need a single dedicated fast-charging station in your whole city in to use a BEV. That lets early adopters buy BEVs without waiting for infrastructure to develop. OTOH, hydrogen vehicles aren't possible without the supply infrastructure, so even if they are suitable for more early adopters than BEVs, the early adopters themselves are prevented from owning them.
It's the same with commerical fuelling/charging stations: Hydrogen filling stations must be dedicated facilities like conventional fuel stations, with EIS and council planning (and protesting neighbours), and require special dedicated equipment. And then the station itself needs a yet larger scale hydrogen production/supply infrastructure to fill its own tanks before the station itself is practical, meaning that the filling stations themselves may be impossible in many regions that lack the industrial supply infrastructure.
But mains electricity is everywhere.
Any location with a commercial power supply can install a fast-charge station, and any location with any electricity can install trickle-charge plugs. It doesn't require special facilities (gas storage tanks, safety clearances). In most areas it probably doesn't even require special building approval. So a shopping mall can install charging stations in their car park since they already run power lines out to the car-park light-poles. Any commercial car park building can install charging stations. Your office or apartment building can install them in their private car park. Etc. It makes it much more likely that the infrastructure will develop rapidly and organically as the number of electrics on the road increases.
So even if there are more early adopters willing to drive medium-range hydrogen vehicles than short-range battery electrics, hydrogen is so restrictive that the overwhelming majority of those potential hydrogen early adopters are excluded. OTOH, almost all potential BEV buyers already have standard power-points they can immediately plug into; and every potential fleet buyer can install faster-charging stations at their depot/garage without special facilities or planning permission. That solves the chicken and egg problem.
The battery electric vehicles have a larger potential market in practice, in spite of being more limited in theory.
Right, the missile's trajectory would be pointing ahead of where the airliner is at the moment the image was taken (at least 2-3 plane lengths, at typical missile speeds). It's clearly not "cutting the course", it's pointing straight towards the airliner.
However, there's no sign of the "missile" manoeuvring. Ruler-straight line between the fighter and the airliner, even though the airliner would be moving 250m each second, or about four plane-lengths per second.
"The chips are available on the Internet, sold with a syringe for $99"
I'm going to inject something I bought over the internet into my hand.
Remember the Mar's Beagle?? The probe made it to Mar's, just to have a spectacular crash.
Beagle 2 was a lander, not a probe. The ESA's Mars probe it was carried on was Mars Express, which is still operating successfully after ten years orbiting Mars.
Remember the Cassini–Huygens mission??
The flaw was on Cassini (run by NASA), not Huygens (run by ESA) which performed perfectly even though it was landing on a completely unmapped world with an unknown surface. (Could be rock-hard ice, could be liquid ethane, could be some kind of organic sludge. Turned out to be sludgy liquid with a thin hard crust.)
That's a possessive, not a plural. "Made it to Mar's" means "Made it to the place owned by Mar."
What you really want is a Nuclear Verne Gun.
Launch 3500 tonnes at escape velocity in a single shot. Enough to kickstart a lunar colony. All for roughly the same cost as a single 20 tonne-to-LEO conventional rocket launch.
Drill a 2-3km shaft into a salt dome, excavate a cavity at the bottom, suspend a 150kT nuclear warhead at the centre surrounded by a reaction mass, such as water laced with a neutron absorber. Above the cavity, at the bottom of the shaft, put a large shock absorber (such as a few hundred metres of oil backed by an ablative-coated pusher plate), with your 3500 tonnes of payload on top.
Most of the radiation would be contained underground, and a dome over the launch site would capture most of the rest.
If you want to launch into LEO, you can have a much larger payload, over 10,000 tonnes, but you'll need a conventionally rocket as a "chase ship" to grab it and circularise the orbit. Likewise you'll need an insertion and landing burns for a lunar payload, however you can use Orion-type nuclear propulsion once you're past the Van Allen belts. Launch your delicate payloads (like people) via more conventional means.
This would be an ideal way for China to leap decades ahead of every other space power in just one or two (somewhat controversial) Verne launches. 3500 tonnes would be enough payload for not only a lunar base, but enough fuel stockpiled in lunar orbit to power a LEO-LLO ferry for the conventionally launched humans (and delicate payloads.) Pretty much as soon as they have their proposed space station built, they have enough technology and capacity to take advantage of the Verne payload.
Note: 150kT keeps you under the cut-off for the nuclear test ban treaty. However, in an emergency (say, asteroid threat) a 20MT warhead would be able to launch over 200,000 tonnes (almost two Nimitz-class aircraft carriers.)
Nice contrapedante, M'Lud.
(the Earth, for example, would be considered "dark matter" under this definition)
No, the Earth absorbs and re-emits light in a spectrum related to its temperature. Enough conventional matter would alter the observable properties of galaxies, as indeed free gas and dust does. That's how they know that there isn't enough ordinary matter to do the job: "not dark enough".
GP was quibbling over the "always" in the headline when TFS/TFA talks about it changing.
How about the method of selection of the Doge of Venice? A mix of super-majority voting (to force compromise), combined with selection by lot (to break voting blocks). Works a bit like evolution by natural selection. Each round effectively selects better candidates for the next. Almost guarantees a wise and benevolent dictator.
You mean "let's", as in "let us". But who actually institutes the laws? That's the "power" that pushing-robot is referring to.
Give it to the people ("us") and it's mob rule. Give it to anyone else and they'll entrench their own power or the power of their supporters/backers/financiers.
Personally I think a systematic version of mob rule is the least dangerous, but there's something of a memetic-hatred of giving power to the masses, "Tytler Calumny" and all that.
Kang's a genocidal alien monster.
I know! We should help clean up space junk by blowing it up
That's not how "cleaning" works.
or catching it with a giant net
That's not how "nets" work.
If they want to call it junk, that's the space equivalent of leaving it on the curb. Now it's public domain for the snatching!
That's not how international law works.
Even if it were space junk, that would still be a violation of the Outer Space Treaty and probably an act of war.
There's nowhere near the mass required to create visible rings. We'd need to break up a decent size asteroid, say a few trillion tonnes, just to get wispy crap like the rings around Uranus.
[Saturn's rings mass about 30,000 times more than that. If they were collected into a single object, would make a medium sized moon or very large asteroid, about 400km wide.]
so I started working on a telepresence bot.
Pics?
[If you mean Comicon-like conventions, have you "cosplayed" the casing as a SF/comic/video-game robot?]
painting the output onto the inside of a sphere with the viewer at the origin; the viewer also looks from inside the sphere, but isn't tied to the actual camera angle.
That is not just clever, but the more superior "obvious in hindsight" clever.
8/10th of a second? True, I didn't. I wasn't even accurate to three decimal places.
My point was that you can go as far as you need. A stop-watch can go to six or seven places. A clock to two or three. A digital watch to four or five. An atomic clock to fifteen. Your appointment calender to maybe one and a quarter.