The mini reactor that came out of MIT recently is the one to look at.
No fusion system of any kind has reached breakeven yet, which is Q=1 (power being released by the fusion reactions is equal to the required heating power). This is what the term "breakeven" means, unless qualifications are added to make it mean something else (to define lower bars to clear, generally, as at NIF), And classic breakeven, Q=1, is what ITER will do. Currently the highest Q value was JET (Joint European Torus) with 0.67.
You should have "looked it up" yourself, if you had you would have found you mis-remembered. No such thing happened. I think you are remembering something real, but you misinterpreted it. In papers on the plasma geometry of the MIT Alcator C-Mod (the MIT mini reactor to which you are referring) there are references to an esoteric plasma geometry parameter call the "inverse rotational transform profile (q)" or the "central safety factor q0" which indeed has values greater than 1, but this lower case q has nothing to do with Q, breakeven.
This is not to run down the MIT Alcator C-Mod, which is what you must be referring to - it holds the world record for volume averaged plasma pressure (2.05 bar). But ITER will hit 2.6 bar, over a much larger volume (830 cubic meters as opposed to one cubic meter in Alcator C-Mod).
But other tokamaks (like JET, above) have set other records: Tore Supra tokamak in France holds the record for the longest plasma duration time (6 minutes and 30 seconds), the Japanese JT-60 achieved the highest value of the fusion triple product. All of these are pushing forward some of the requirements of a successful demo power plant. ITER is the attempt to bring all of these together in one system.
All of this research has advanced the state of the art of tokamaks, moving toward reaching true breakeven.
So which of the three methods outlined in this 1976 clairvoyant report, from the which this magic graph was lifted, is the method that will provide us with practical fusion energy: is it the theta pinch, the mirror machine or the tokamak? Did you ever look at the actual report?
As it happens there is well funded effort to build a tokamak, which should demonstrate break-even in about 20 years. It is called ITER, and is mentioned in the summary. Unlimited funding would reduce the schedule but is unlikely to cut it in half no matter how much money was provided, since lots of experimentation will be needed to work out the technical issues. The roughly 226 tokamaks that have been built (yes, a lot of work has been done, and amazingly the U.S. government is not the only source of funding for research in the world) have provided a lot of experience to work with but more work needs to be done as it scales up.
The other two concepts in the document are dead as viable approaches at present.
The report envisions that a total of $65 billion (current dollars) would be needed (pretty much regardless of funding schedule) to produce a demonstration fusion reactor, the actual US expenditure since that time has been about $30 billion, but of course a large chunk of that (about $10 billion) went into the dead-end NIF which failed.
ITER expects to build that demonstration fusion reactor for a total cost of about $20 billion, and has a solid technical case to support it.
But the report writers, making a pitch for extravagant funding, really had no idea what funding or schedule made sense because they were guessing about technical feasibility of any of the concepts.
> but it's an experiment we can do, so why not do it?
That's a reasonable question. It's a profoundly expensive experiment in terms of electrical power, engineering and scientific time, and the exclusive use of one of the most demanded scientific resources in the world. So those are good reasons to weigh the potential scientific benefit of the results, and include the chance of any usable results.
Umm... what crucial experiments are being blocked by this? They do have a whole organization devoted to scrutinizing experimental proposals to determine the best use of the LHC. Did you not know that?
In the six years now since discovering the Higgs boson, "all" the LHC has done is confirm the standard model in various ways. No new physics at all. But confirming the standard model is a Good Thing, it can only be confirmed by testing it. This is another experiment in this line of tests of existing physics.
Every means of testing GR (and any other scientific theory) that can be tried, should be tried. Regardless of result we increase our knowledge - we may (with small probability) overturn the expected result, or we add yet another method of confirming our best model.
Look at how the left/dems are blocking nuke energy from replacing fossil fuels. We can do that rapidly, but the far left is stopping it.
The all powerful hippies are still crushing corporate America under their dirty Birkenstocks! Will hundred billion dollar energy companies never catch a break? Oh the humanity!
This is a fantasy that never dies, since it floats around without the least bit of evidence to support it (notice that Windbourne offers none).
The real truth is that nuclear power is in unattractive investment for capitalists, and without a lot of orders the industry has shriveled and become unreliable for those who do place orders. If you consult this handy industry webpage you will see that no fewer than eleven construction and operating licences for units have been approved since 2007, but of these seven have been withdrawn/cancelled, only two are still under constructions (the two Vogtle units) but which are way over budget (and in imminent danger of cancellation), and two more have yet to break ground. The DOE shares the costs of these license applications, and the U.S. government provides loan guarantees, as well as free insurance, yet no plants are being completed.
It isn't lawsuits, or protests, or public opinion, or "government regulations", bringing these projects down, it is hard-nose corporate bean counters pulling the plugs.
The report, written for the general public is documented with 281 references. The Living Planet Index maintained by the WWF is backed with solid research, some of which is also linked to in the references here.
So no, this is not "pure speculation", and yes there are absolutely massive observed decreases.
He wasn't. He was just off by a few hundred years.
Malthus wasn't off at all. He was absolutely correct when he wrote, and remained absolutely correct until 1938.
Malthus's claim (backed by valid data and argument) was that population was limited by land productivity. Crop production could only be increased by bringing uncultivated land into production, which could only be added in a linear fashion ("arithmetically") and had an absolute upper limit.
Despite the industrial revolution, and the increasing use of fertilizers (rare before the 20th Century), crop productivity per hectare did not increase measurably throughout the entire 19th Century and into the 20th Century. The best crop productivity increased at no more than about 0.01% a year, as it had for the previous few thousand years.
Then in 1938, in the United States, crop productivity started to climb at 2% a year every year. This was unexpected and for decades economists predicted that this was a temporary anomaly which would soon "correct". Instead it has continued unabated, and has spread to the rest of the world after 1950 and is now known as the "Green Revolution".
Until the Green Revolution occurred Malthus's account was an accurate description for agriculture and population for all of history.
One key aspect of the Green Revolution (there are many contributing factors that came together to create it) is the Haber Process for nitrogen fixation, used industrially beginning around the start of WWI. Natural nitrogen fixation is only able to support a world population of about 2 billion. About 70% of all nitrogen consumed by humans (meaning 70% of all the nitrogen atoms in an average human body, higher in the U.S.) was fixed by the Haber process. True organic farming "no fertilizers" cannot feed the world's existing population, it depends on a slight of hand, it is supported by Haber Process nitrogen that has been processed through cows into manure.
On the day that minimum wage went up 15%, all of the fast food restaurants increased prices by 25%.
I won't accuse you of lying, but I will credit you with "motivated mis-remembering". The reason why actual studies by actual economists are important is to understand what really happens rather than replying on made-up anecdotes.
Wages make up 25% of the cost of fast food on average. To cover a 15% wage increase not more than a 4% food price increase would be required.
The claim that "all of the fast food restaurants increased prices by 25%" fails the credibility test on several levels.
Fast food is a very competitive business based on low prices. All businesses increasing prices by 4% the same day due to the minimum wage increase would at least be plausible (but still probably made up, more likely the increases would be scattered over time). A huge jump in prices unrelated to wage increases on the same day is not plausible at all.
...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?
If you are here in this country illegally, you have criminally trespassed. You should be deported.
That is the current law.
No, current law is that when they reach the U.S. border they can legally make an application for asylum, and while that is being processes (including extreme vetting by the way, not Trump did not invent it), they are allowed to legally remain on U.S. soil. That is the actual law.
No one before 1875 needed "permission to immigrate" you only needed a boat ticket, and it was only Asians who were excluded then, Europeans just needed that boat ticket until 1891, when the first immigration system was set up. Since you specify ancestors five generations back you are specifying people who came through around 1860 or so.
So this story you tell is founded on BS. And the bit about "never met American Indians" is fairly astonishing. You know that for a fact? How?
So you self-justifying story of totally legal and approved ancestors who never did anything wrong is a fairy tale.
And right, Europeans who came to the U.S. never celebrated their country of origin (cough, cough, NY St. Patricks Day Parade).
What is that unarmed invading army of women and children (mostly) going to do when they reach the border? They are going to request asylum under U.S. law as they are legally permitted to do once they reach U.S. soil. OMG Invaders!
Trump has already said he plans on calling out the military to deal with the situation - just as you seem to endorse. I guess rather than taking asylum applications, the plan is to open fire?
Oh, every one of your ancestors came through after 1891. Understood.
Prior to the Immigration Act of 1891 all anyone (who was not Asian) had to do to immigrate to the U.S. was show up at the border (or any port). And prior to 1875 even Asians could immigrate freely.
In 1891 the U.S. population was 61 million. Anyone who has even one ancestor who was resident in the U.S. in 1891 is descended from someone who only had to show up to get in - everyone was automatically "legal".
Political patronage was also huge, Mass politicians kicked back federal money to their buddies, SOP.
You say that like its a bad thing.
Ba-dum-bum!
But really I'm making a serious point.
Graft is bad, and wrong, and illegal (three different things) - no question, full stop. But most of the "patronage" is actually paying people for the cost of inconvenience you are subjecting them too.
People here love to decry the horrors of NIMBYism, but in fact people have rights and interests and property, and are right to defend those things when they feel so moved. Big infrastructure projects impact many people and if you don't want them to exercise their right as a free people to take your ass to court you need to pay them for their trouble. This idea offends lots of geeks and nerds, but if so, they definitely should never be in charge of civil engineering project of any kind.
I think there is some really serious sidestepping in your piece you link to Geoffrey:
These materials, such as silicon, iron, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium etc. can be mined from the surface material,
which is apparently primarily a basaltic silicate. Access to the surface is relatively simple from an aerostat, since the thick atmosphere allows flight by airplanes or balloons... In an alternative scenario, an cable in the form of a high-temperature fullerene tether could be used to directly lift ore from the surface to the habitat. Since the habitat will be stationary with respect to the middle-atmosphere wind, the lifting will be done with the habitat in motion with respect to the surface.
Relatively simple? Relative to what? You did mention at the start of the piece the conditions on the surface (from 735K to in excess of 975 K, and a pressure of 96 atmospheres), but not addressing those very significant issues when suggesting that mining on the surface might be feasible seems more than a bit of an oversight. There are probably no ore forming processes on Venus (no water, thick atmosphere prevents asteroid impacts) so extracting useful elements from undifferentiated basaltic lava will be required. Ore, oops, raw crustal rock, processing on the surface seems infeasible, so I guess we will be hauling the rock up to the balloons to do any extraction.
We know surprisingly little about Earth's sea floor below 1 km (100 bar) even though the temperature is quite pleasant in comparison (3 C) and is not moving past us at 100 m/sec all the time. Sure the average pressure on the sea floor is higher - 360 bar not 98 - but it is only 3-4 km away, rather than 50 km, and that 735+ K (460 C) is a killer. It is easy to keep stuff warm where it is cold (insulation plus a heater), it is really hard to keep stuff cool where it is hot.
I can see simply scraping up rock perhaps with a simple mechanical system, and hauling it up with a balloon brigade (exotic metal foil balloons at the surface, exchanging once or twice with lighter lower temp balloons at higher altitudes) - and maybe 50 km nanotube cables cable of taking 460 C will one day exist - but it is a very heavy lift for a off-world colony to obtain materials they need from processing lava rock -- something we never do here on Earth, with a huge industrial base. I'm not convinced that simply getting processed stuff shipped from Earth will not be more practical.
Before that happens it is as likely that we build a sunshade to cool off Venus, which will take a several centuries to cool down. But then the balloon cities get too cold.
So what you are saying is that there is no way it will ever get hot enough to melt lead, it could only get hot enough to melt tin! I feel so much better!
I swear that when I saw the headline I thought it said "Some Google Pixel Owners' Camera Photos Aren't Worth Saving " and wondered how that could be a story.
Thanks for compiling a list of companies many of whom should be broken up. But pretending, as surely you know, that corporation break-up for monopolistic practices is the only remedy possible is deception.
Also your phrasing "has a >60% marketshare in something" is telling. When a diversified corporation (GE, say) has a monopoly position in some significant market, only that portion of the corporation needs to addressed, possibly by divesting in part of that business -- micro-breakup if you will.
Observation of existing anti-trust laws has been in abeyance for decades, so yes, there is a large backlog of violators to address. For example when the Travelers-Citigroup merger was announced, which definitely violated existing law, rather that having regulators step in to block it Congress passed the the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to retroactively make it legal a year later.
I absolutely do want all violators who really do have monopoly power in their major business space to be broken up. I don't give a damn about their "politics" (which is mostly all about favoring the color green, essentially no large corporations have any other politics).
You declaration that "I agree. Let's break them up. Let's break them all up." wouldn't be, you know, contrary to fact would it? The rhetorical use you put this declaration to suggest that you are much less than sincere.
Quite so, but modern capitalists love to use the 19th Century 'dark satanic mills' as the bar to measure everything to prove no matter how badly you are being treated now, you should be grateful to the "job creators".
Phobos and Deimos are neither large nor spheroidal in shape...
Right. Neither sphericity nor size counts in making something an astronomical moon. Which is why once we got space telescopes and adaptive optics and interplanetary probes talking about "how many moons does it have" for any of the gas giants became a pointless exercise.
Slashdot Mirror
Break-even was passed about a decade ago.
The mini reactor that came out of MIT recently is the one to look at.
No fusion system of any kind has reached breakeven yet, which is Q=1 (power being released by the fusion reactions is equal to the required heating power). This is what the term "breakeven" means, unless qualifications are added to make it mean something else (to define lower bars to clear, generally, as at NIF), And classic breakeven, Q=1, is what ITER will do. Currently the highest Q value was JET (Joint European Torus) with 0.67.
You should have "looked it up" yourself, if you had you would have found you mis-remembered. No such thing happened. I think you are remembering something real, but you misinterpreted it. In papers on the plasma geometry of the MIT Alcator C-Mod (the MIT mini reactor to which you are referring) there are references to an esoteric plasma geometry parameter call the "inverse rotational transform profile (q)" or the "central safety factor q0" which indeed has values greater than 1, but this lower case q has nothing to do with Q, breakeven.
This is not to run down the MIT Alcator C-Mod, which is what you must be referring to - it holds the world record for volume averaged plasma pressure (2.05 bar). But ITER will hit 2.6 bar, over a much larger volume (830 cubic meters as opposed to one cubic meter in Alcator C-Mod).
But other tokamaks (like JET, above) have set other records: Tore Supra tokamak in France holds the record for the longest plasma duration time (6 minutes and 30 seconds), the Japanese JT-60 achieved the highest value of the fusion triple product. All of these are pushing forward some of the requirements of a successful demo power plant. ITER is the attempt to bring all of these together in one system.
All of this research has advanced the state of the art of tokamaks, moving toward reaching true breakeven.
So which of the three methods outlined in this 1976 clairvoyant report, from the which this magic graph was lifted, is the method that will provide us with practical fusion energy: is it the theta pinch, the mirror machine or the tokamak? Did you ever look at the actual report?
As it happens there is well funded effort to build a tokamak, which should demonstrate break-even in about 20 years. It is called ITER, and is mentioned in the summary. Unlimited funding would reduce the schedule but is unlikely to cut it in half no matter how much money was provided, since lots of experimentation will be needed to work out the technical issues. The roughly 226 tokamaks that have been built (yes, a lot of work has been done, and amazingly the U.S. government is not the only source of funding for research in the world) have provided a lot of experience to work with but more work needs to be done as it scales up.
The other two concepts in the document are dead as viable approaches at present.
The report envisions that a total of $65 billion (current dollars) would be needed (pretty much regardless of funding schedule) to produce a demonstration fusion reactor, the actual US expenditure since that time has been about $30 billion, but of course a large chunk of that (about $10 billion) went into the dead-end NIF which failed.
ITER expects to build that demonstration fusion reactor for a total cost of about $20 billion, and has a solid technical case to support it.
But the report writers, making a pitch for extravagant funding, really had no idea what funding or schedule made sense because they were guessing about technical feasibility of any of the concepts.
It is time to give this chart a decent rest.
> but it's an experiment we can do, so why not do it?
That's a reasonable question. It's a profoundly expensive experiment in terms of electrical power, engineering and scientific time, and the exclusive use of one of the most demanded scientific resources in the world. So those are good reasons to weigh the potential scientific benefit of the results, and include the chance of any usable results.
Umm... what crucial experiments are being blocked by this? They do have a whole organization devoted to scrutinizing experimental proposals to determine the best use of the LHC. Did you not know that?
In the six years now since discovering the Higgs boson, "all" the LHC has done is confirm the standard model in various ways. No new physics at all. But confirming the standard model is a Good Thing, it can only be confirmed by testing it. This is another experiment in this line of tests of existing physics.
Every means of testing GR (and any other scientific theory) that can be tried, should be tried. Regardless of result we increase our knowledge - we may (with small probability) overturn the expected result, or we add yet another method of confirming our best model.
The XKCD strategy doesn't work. The True Believers always welsh* on their bets.
*There is no evidence that this is a slur against the Welsh.
Look at how the left/dems are blocking nuke energy from replacing fossil fuels. We can do that rapidly, but the far left is stopping it.
The all powerful hippies are still crushing corporate America under their dirty Birkenstocks! Will hundred billion dollar energy companies never catch a break? Oh the humanity!
This is a fantasy that never dies, since it floats around without the least bit of evidence to support it (notice that Windbourne offers none).
The real truth is that nuclear power is in unattractive investment for capitalists, and without a lot of orders the industry has shriveled and become unreliable for those who do place orders. If you consult this handy industry webpage you will see that no fewer than eleven construction and operating licences for units have been approved since 2007, but of these seven have been withdrawn/cancelled, only two are still under constructions (the two Vogtle units) but which are way over budget (and in imminent danger of cancellation), and two more have yet to break ground. The DOE shares the costs of these license applications, and the U.S. government provides loan guarantees, as well as free insurance, yet no plants are being completed.
It isn't lawsuits, or protests, or public opinion, or "government regulations", bringing these projects down, it is hard-nose corporate bean counters pulling the plugs.
The report, written for the general public is documented with 281 references. The Living Planet Index maintained by the WWF is backed with solid research, some of which is also linked to in the references here.
So no, this is not "pure speculation", and yes there are absolutely massive observed decreases.
Ignoring the science doesn't make it go away.
People still think Malthus was wrong.
He wasn't. He was just off by a few hundred years.
Malthus wasn't off at all. He was absolutely correct when he wrote, and remained absolutely correct until 1938.
Malthus's claim (backed by valid data and argument) was that population was limited by land productivity. Crop production could only be increased by bringing uncultivated land into production, which could only be added in a linear fashion ("arithmetically") and had an absolute upper limit.
Despite the industrial revolution, and the increasing use of fertilizers (rare before the 20th Century), crop productivity per hectare did not increase measurably throughout the entire 19th Century and into the 20th Century. The best crop productivity increased at no more than about 0.01% a year, as it had for the previous few thousand years.
Then in 1938, in the United States, crop productivity started to climb at 2% a year every year. This was unexpected and for decades economists predicted that this was a temporary anomaly which would soon "correct". Instead it has continued unabated, and has spread to the rest of the world after 1950 and is now known as the "Green Revolution".
Until the Green Revolution occurred Malthus's account was an accurate description for agriculture and population for all of history.
One key aspect of the Green Revolution (there are many contributing factors that came together to create it) is the Haber Process for nitrogen fixation, used industrially beginning around the start of WWI. Natural nitrogen fixation is only able to support a world population of about 2 billion. About 70% of all nitrogen consumed by humans (meaning 70% of all the nitrogen atoms in an average human body, higher in the U.S.) was fixed by the Haber process. True organic farming "no fertilizers" cannot feed the world's existing population, it depends on a slight of hand, it is supported by Haber Process nitrogen that has been processed through cows into manure.
The only possible goal for this action is to literally starve the people outside our nation. You are a monster.
If you don't let them starve, they'll make more people, and then more of them will starve after a few generations. You are a monster.
Thanos, is that you?
On the day that minimum wage went up 15%, all of the fast food restaurants increased prices by 25%.
I won't accuse you of lying, but I will credit you with "motivated mis-remembering". The reason why actual studies by actual economists are important is to understand what really happens rather than replying on made-up anecdotes.
Wages make up 25% of the cost of fast food on average. To cover a 15% wage increase not more than a 4% food price increase would be required.
The claim that "all of the fast food restaurants increased prices by 25%" fails the credibility test on several levels.
Fast food is a very competitive business based on low prices. All businesses increasing prices by 4% the same day due to the minimum wage increase would at least be plausible (but still probably made up, more likely the increases would be scattered over time). A huge jump in prices unrelated to wage increases on the same day is not plausible at all.
...what has happened so fundamentally in our country (US) where people don't care about actual citizenship, and protecting our borders?
If you are here in this country illegally, you have criminally trespassed. You should be deported.
That is the current law.
No, current law is that when they reach the U.S. border they can legally make an application for asylum, and while that is being processes (including extreme vetting by the way, not Trump did not invent it), they are allowed to legally remain on U.S. soil. That is the actual law.
No one before 1875 needed "permission to immigrate" you only needed a boat ticket, and it was only Asians who were excluded then, Europeans just needed that boat ticket until 1891, when the first immigration system was set up. Since you specify ancestors five generations back you are specifying people who came through around 1860 or so.
So this story you tell is founded on BS. And the bit about "never met American Indians" is fairly astonishing. You know that for a fact? How?
So you self-justifying story of totally legal and approved ancestors who never did anything wrong is a fairy tale.
And right, Europeans who came to the U.S. never celebrated their country of origin (cough, cough, NY St. Patricks Day Parade).
What is that unarmed invading army of women and children (mostly) going to do when they reach the border? They are going to request asylum under U.S. law as they are legally permitted to do once they reach U.S. soil. OMG Invaders!
Trump has already said he plans on calling out the military to deal with the situation - just as you seem to endorse. I guess rather than taking asylum applications, the plan is to open fire?
Oh, every one of your ancestors came through after 1891. Understood.
Prior to the Immigration Act of 1891 all anyone (who was not Asian) had to do to immigrate to the U.S. was show up at the border (or any port). And prior to 1875 even Asians could immigrate freely.
In 1891 the U.S. population was 61 million. Anyone who has even one ancestor who was resident in the U.S. in 1891 is descended from someone who only had to show up to get in - everyone was automatically "legal".
Is still not that bad for a 34 mile bridge considering here in the states a single bridge that spans a river can cost close to a billion.
It has been dubbed the "bridge of death" by some local media. At least nine workers on the Hong Kong side have died and officials told BBC News Chinese that nine had died on the mainland side, too.
That is better though than the Hoover Dam of Death (>100), or our own Brooklyn Bridge of Death (24), or the worst construction project in U.S. history the the Hawksnest Tunnel (476-1000). But worker safety standards are higher now, even in China.
Political patronage was also huge, Mass politicians kicked back federal money to their buddies, SOP.
You say that like its a bad thing.
Ba-dum-bum!
But really I'm making a serious point.
Graft is bad, and wrong, and illegal (three different things) - no question, full stop. But most of the "patronage" is actually paying people for the cost of inconvenience you are subjecting them too.
People here love to decry the horrors of NIMBYism, but in fact people have rights and interests and property, and are right to defend those things when they feel so moved. Big infrastructure projects impact many people and if you don't want them to exercise their right as a free people to take your ass to court you need to pay them for their trouble. This idea offends lots of geeks and nerds, but if so, they definitely should never be in charge of civil engineering project of any kind.
I think there is some really serious sidestepping in your piece you link to Geoffrey:
These materials, such as silicon, iron, aluminum, magnesium, calcium, potassium, sodium etc. can be mined from the surface material, which is apparently primarily a basaltic silicate. Access to the surface is relatively simple from an aerostat, since the thick atmosphere allows flight by airplanes or balloons... In an alternative scenario, an cable in the form of a high-temperature fullerene tether could be used to directly lift ore from the surface to the habitat. Since the habitat will be stationary with respect to the middle-atmosphere wind, the lifting will be done with the habitat in motion with respect to the surface.
Relatively simple? Relative to what? You did mention at the start of the piece the conditions on the surface (from 735K to in excess of 975 K, and a pressure of 96 atmospheres), but not addressing those very significant issues when suggesting that mining on the surface might be feasible seems more than a bit of an oversight. There are probably no ore forming processes on Venus (no water, thick atmosphere prevents asteroid impacts) so extracting useful elements from undifferentiated basaltic lava will be required. Ore, oops, raw crustal rock, processing on the surface seems infeasible, so I guess we will be hauling the rock up to the balloons to do any extraction.
We know surprisingly little about Earth's sea floor below 1 km (100 bar) even though the temperature is quite pleasant in comparison (3 C) and is not moving past us at 100 m/sec all the time. Sure the average pressure on the sea floor is higher - 360 bar not 98 - but it is only 3-4 km away, rather than 50 km, and that 735+ K (460 C) is a killer. It is easy to keep stuff warm where it is cold (insulation plus a heater), it is really hard to keep stuff cool where it is hot.
I can see simply scraping up rock perhaps with a simple mechanical system, and hauling it up with a balloon brigade (exotic metal foil balloons at the surface, exchanging once or twice with lighter lower temp balloons at higher altitudes) - and maybe 50 km nanotube cables cable of taking 460 C will one day exist - but it is a very heavy lift for a off-world colony to obtain materials they need from processing lava rock -- something we never do here on Earth, with a huge industrial base. I'm not convinced that simply getting processed stuff shipped from Earth will not be more practical.
Before that happens it is as likely that we build a sunshade to cool off Venus, which will take a several centuries to cool down. But then the balloon cities get too cold.
So what you are saying is that there is no way it will ever get hot enough to melt lead, it could only get hot enough to melt tin! I feel so much better!
I swear that when I saw the headline I thought it said "Some Google Pixel Owners' Camera Photos Aren't Worth Saving " and wondered how that could be a story.
Thanks for compiling a list of companies many of whom should be broken up. But pretending, as surely you know, that corporation break-up for monopolistic practices is the only remedy possible is deception.
Also your phrasing "has a >60% marketshare in something" is telling. When a diversified corporation (GE, say) has a monopoly position in some significant market, only that portion of the corporation needs to addressed, possibly by divesting in part of that business -- micro-breakup if you will.
Observation of existing anti-trust laws has been in abeyance for decades, so yes, there is a large backlog of violators to address. For example when the Travelers-Citigroup merger was announced, which definitely violated existing law, rather that having regulators step in to block it Congress passed the the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act to retroactively make it legal a year later.
I absolutely do want all violators who really do have monopoly power in their major business space to be broken up. I don't give a damn about their "politics" (which is mostly all about favoring the color green, essentially no large corporations have any other politics).
You declaration that "I agree. Let's break them up. Let's break them all up." wouldn't be, you know, contrary to fact would it? The rhetorical use you put this declaration to suggest that you are much less than sincere.
Quite so, but modern capitalists love to use the 19th Century 'dark satanic mills' as the bar to measure everything to prove no matter how badly you are being treated now, you should be grateful to the "job creators".
We would like to see numbers supporting your claims. It does not bode well that your exposition starts with "My guess..."
Perhaps Voice input and Virtual Keyboards (QWERTY) in VR workspaces will become a thing in another 25 years or so.
That is the solution to the open office workplace design I think.
This is rather funny.
I too miss the cow spam.
Phobos and Deimos are neither large nor spheroidal in shape...
Right. Neither sphericity nor size counts in making something an astronomical moon. Which is why once we got space telescopes and adaptive optics and interplanetary probes talking about "how many moons does it have" for any of the gas giants became a pointless exercise.