The usefulness of a weapon in preventing wars is directly proportional to the odds of it killing politicians. I mean its all fun and games sending off the flower of a country's youth to perish on some distant battlefield while you sit there sipping bourbon, and if worst comes to worst you can usually come to some sort of gentleman's agreement with your counterpart, but with nukes the supply of fine spirits gets rapidly curtailed along with oh, everything else.
Therefore the more self interested a politician is, the less likely they are to actually use serious weapons of mass destruction. Thus given the temperment of politicians everywhere, we should arm every country that's not a complete asylum with nukes, in order to secure world peace.
What India lacks is indoor plumbing for much of the population. I don't even know where to start with that place, but internet censorship isn't high on the to do list. Don't get me wrong, I love India, some of the most beautiful women in the world, ancient culture etc, but so many of them are living the exact same lifestyles as people did there a thousand years ago.
This case in particular is a prime example, the sites blocked were only in certain regions and at the behest of a production studio that had a new movie coming out while also owning several ISPs. Corruption that would stagger most of us in the west is everday life in India.
I'm not really sure what finding life on Mars will do for us though. It will show us that life on another planet is possible (something I personally believe already), but other than that knowledge, what will we gain from it? It won't help solve our current environmental, economic of political problems, will it?
Well, the human race can multitask, after all. If that really is a sign of complex life on Mars, and it looks uncannily biological, it will give us our first glimpse of a completely new permutation of life. If its similar to our own, we have immediately given huge weight to innumerable theories, and undermined many more. If its something completely alien, the same applies in reverse. What practical uses we might put the knowledge to are a complete unknown at this point. Maybe it will help cure cancer, maybe it will be nothing. We won't know until we go, though.
This. Personally I can see all-electric cars being even more capable than fossil fuel cars, at a lower cost, and cheaper to run, over the coming twenty years.
Mars is a really challenging environment, between the radiation, near-vacuum atmosphere, where there is water its -150, where its warm there is no water, with a boiling point of something like -40. Is it more or less challenging than tens of meters below the Pacific sea floor? I would guess more, although this is not insurmountable. Maybe if we merged these organisms with ice worms or snow algae (which is red, interestingly), we could have a viable hybrid. Of course maybe nature beat us to it:
And JAXA's and your $/W figures don't work out given current technologies, they are obviously still 1-2 orders of magnitude off.
Really, ah, so thats why JAXA stated launch costs would have to be a hundredth of what they are for SPSs to be economical. And golly gosh, look, here's Star Tram to do just that.
Only as a tax payer,
This, I doubt. I mean you probably pay taxes somewhere, but I'd be surprised if that was the reason for this frenetic and slightly entertaining mud-stirring operation.
who doesn't want to see his taxes wasted on another stupid and expensive government-funded "alternative" energy system.
Now either put up some real numbers justifying your $/W figures or shut up.
The numbers have already been supplied in abundance. It has been made clear over and over again that SPSs don't work without the Star Tram. On that front, keep your taxes, Star Tram doesn't want them. Keep your little two-sides-of-the-same-coin political squabbles, keep your "angle", whatever it may be, keep your jingoism. Keep your government, your pork, and your lobbyists. None of them will change a thing.
I mean have you any idea what the Star Tram actually is? Is the silk road to space, the highway to the heavens, its as cheap as it is possible to get within the known laws of physics, it even beats out space elevators if they are possible. Its bifrost, its the stairway to the stars. Solar power satellites? That's the tip of the iceberg, the lowest of the low hanging fruit.
In a world where JAXA and private industry are willing to put down $21 billion on an SPS they know for a fact can't ever turn a profit, where billionaires embrace an asteroid mining concept without even a business plan to its name, do you think that a gargantuan enabler with the ability to put the global economy into a permanent unending boom like the ST will need government funding?
Please.
I doubt SPSs or any number of revolutionary technologies will need government funding either once its built, since the reasons for the current massive capital costs are mostly just launching the stuff up there. Just stop and think about it for a minute, think about the implications.
What matters is: increase of efficiency of space over ground, kg/W and $/kg launch costs.
You really must have a horse in this race. What matters is $/W, and that is all that matters. Fairly impressive tap dancing trying to avoid that however, although I might just give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you actually don't know what you're talking about, rather than deliberately trying to obfuscate the facts.
The rest of your post follows on from that, really.
The pro-space-power discussion says "rocket launches will also need to be cut to a hundredth of the current cost". Hence, the approach is not cost effective even according to its proponents. And that discussion doesn't explain how a factor of 2-4 gain in efficiency offsets the launch and maintenance costs.
Star Tram can reduce launch costs to 0.004 of their previous amount.
Finally, proponents still haven't explained who should actually get control over what is, in effect, a large collection of massive radiation-based weapons platforms orbiting earth. Why would we let any nation put that kind of device into orbit?
As I've already said, a bird could fly through the rectenna beam without harm.
To be competitive, the satellite needs to be around $1-2 million per installed megawatt. Given it weighs in the region of 1500 to 1900 tons, launch costs must be 90%+ of its $21 billion pricetag. Reducing these to a trivial sum means, as JAXA have said, it becomes competitive, and until we have further information, I'm prepared to take it that JAXA knows whereof they speak.
I've already answered the weaponisation question elsewhere in the thread, and its all on wikipedia too. As for large amounts of solar energy, take a look at this picture:
That nice red square right there is the amount of surface area that would be receiving twice as much energy as usual, and thats after a century of unprecedented satellite building. Its not much energy and its not a large area, particularly since it will be spread out into small sites all over the world. Actually it should be a lot less space since rectennas are more efficient than solar cells, but you get the idea anyway.
All of these questions and more can be answered when you hire me as your research assistant, or alternately look it up on wikipedia and the links I supplied earlier.
Sorry, ran ahead of myself there as I have a tendency to do. The document referenced also mentions 1GW produced from a rectenna south of 2 km as the modern standard. So, close enough.
What's with all the ACs in this thread, come on guys its healthy frank and open discussion, sign in!
That guy's math was wrong too, but with the fixes: Charanka Solar Park - 15.44 sq miles per GW. His space example - 4.48 sq miles per GW
Surface area to get US needs: Charanka Solar Park - 1580GW * 15.44 sq miles/GW = 24395 sq miles or 156 miles by 156 miles on the ground His space example - 1580GW * 4.48 sq miles/GW = 7584 sq miles or 87 miles by 87 miles in space
The only difference between your math and mine is I didn't bother with the decimal places, hence the use of the term "approximately". Ground area covered in space hasn't been mentioned since there is neither ground nor a shortage of space in space. Basically, nobody cares.
especially if we can get solar more efficient & cheaper and get its longevity in the centuries range instead of a couple decades.
And I have almost invented time travelling sneakers! I have the sneakers finished but there's still the time travelling part to work out...
Look, the bottom line is neither the Star Tram nor SPSs need any drastically new technology, new materials, or new laws of physics to happen. Its looking very like they will produce power more cheaply than any other solution. So, they are going to happen.
Star tram does not eliminate your launch costs if you are going beyond LEO. You still need rockets to hit a transfer orbit.
Star Tram can hit GEO as well, costs a little more, like $80 a kilo, but its not really a problem. The initial configuration which will determine the range of uses has yet to be finalised from the options available. There may even be a passenger capable 1.5 version.
How are you going to build a star tram without taxpayers? Private industry? Right now, you can't get investments for ANYTHING without a likely profit within 1 year. Charity? good luck.
Start small my friend. The ST team is putting an entry in for the NASA business plan competition, then going for the NASA nano launch prize, and building from there. Believe it or not there are many large private investors willing to take the long view. For example, Planetary Resources and indeed, JAXA's own solar satellites. Besides, as every investor knows, its not what you spend, its what you earn.
How are you going to get right of way for the airspace around a structure 20k tall (or more) and 100s of k long?
That's the generation 2. Generation 1 is only 100km long and goes up a mountain.
I said solar thermal, not photovoltaic. Solar thermal can produce power steadily around the clock.
You are being as ridiculously optimistic.
Great, go for it, as I said, what's stopping you? If solar thermal can revolutionise the world, what are you sitting here talking to me for? When can we expect the first ten gigawatts installed mark to be reached?
2. You have no figures to back this up, you're considering LEO which is not where SPSs will be (also reducing or removing erosion issues), and if JAXA says it will competitive at 1% of launch costs, it will be even more competitive at half that. Competitive in this case means ~a million per installed MW. Unlike earth based solar or wind it will work around the clock as well. And I calculated recently that you'd need to roll out a new 1GW SPS every couple of hours for twenty years to completely take over the global energy market, so industrial economies of scale would be enormously significant even if a tenth of that production rate could be reached.
Hell, even at the higher price level, my own distinctly unsunny country could spend a tiny amount of our annual revenue and have all of our electricity needs covered permanently, barring drastic rises in demand decades away. There will be a queue around the corner and into the street for this stuff.
You need to shake off the rocket restrictions we've all had drummed into our heads, they belong in a museum now.
3. Star Tram ain't looking for money from the taxpayer.;)
Slashdot Mirror
www.startram.com
Yeah I'm beating that drum, and I will be for the foreseeable future.
Put me down for €50,000 on (2), I'm good for it.
The sooner we move on from strapping bombs to our butts and setting them on fire, the better.
The usefulness of a weapon in preventing wars is directly proportional to the odds of it killing politicians. I mean its all fun and games sending off the flower of a country's youth to perish on some distant battlefield while you sit there sipping bourbon, and if worst comes to worst you can usually come to some sort of gentleman's agreement with your counterpart, but with nukes the supply of fine spirits gets rapidly curtailed along with oh, everything else.
Therefore the more self interested a politician is, the less likely they are to actually use serious weapons of mass destruction. Thus given the temperment of politicians everywhere, we should arm every country that's not a complete asylum with nukes, in order to secure world peace.
Yeah I'm a little jaded.
What India lacks is indoor plumbing for much of the population. I don't even know where to start with that place, but internet censorship isn't high on the to do list. Don't get me wrong, I love India, some of the most beautiful women in the world, ancient culture etc, but so many of them are living the exact same lifestyles as people did there a thousand years ago.
This case in particular is a prime example, the sites blocked were only in certain regions and at the behest of a production studio that had a new movie coming out while also owning several ISPs. Corruption that would stagger most of us in the west is everday life in India.
With NASA's budget, SpaceX could do a lot more than launch delivery ships, would be the point.
I'd say SpaceX would be only delighted to have NASA's budget. And imagine what they could do with it.
It means "I approve of the above message which neatly encapsulates most of my feelings on the matter".
I'm not really sure what finding life on Mars will do for us though. It will show us that life on another planet is possible (something I personally believe already), but other than that knowledge, what will we gain from it? It won't help solve our current environmental, economic of political problems, will it?
Well, the human race can multitask, after all. If that really is a sign of complex life on Mars, and it looks uncannily biological, it will give us our first glimpse of a completely new permutation of life. If its similar to our own, we have immediately given huge weight to innumerable theories, and undermined many more. If its something completely alien, the same applies in reverse. What practical uses we might put the knowledge to are a complete unknown at this point. Maybe it will help cure cancer, maybe it will be nothing. We won't know until we go, though.
This. Personally I can see all-electric cars being even more capable than fossil fuel cars, at a lower cost, and cheaper to run, over the coming twenty years.
Seems a bit redundant really, I mean everything is moving over the next two decades to electric anyway.
Mars is a really challenging environment, between the radiation, near-vacuum atmosphere, where there is water its -150, where its warm there is no water, with a boiling point of something like -40. Is it more or less challenging than tens of meters below the Pacific sea floor? I would guess more, although this is not insurmountable. Maybe if we merged these organisms with ice worms or snow algae (which is red, interestingly), we could have a viable hybrid. Of course maybe nature beat us to it:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_geyser
And JAXA's and your $/W figures don't work out given current technologies, they are obviously still 1-2 orders of magnitude off.
Really, ah, so thats why JAXA stated launch costs would have to be a hundredth of what they are for SPSs to be economical. And golly gosh, look, here's Star Tram to do just that.
Only as a tax payer,
This, I doubt. I mean you probably pay taxes somewhere, but I'd be surprised if that was the reason for this frenetic and slightly entertaining mud-stirring operation.
who doesn't want to see his taxes wasted on another stupid and expensive government-funded "alternative" energy system.
Now either put up some real numbers justifying your $/W figures or shut up.
The numbers have already been supplied in abundance. It has been made clear over and over again that SPSs don't work without the Star Tram. On that front, keep your taxes, Star Tram doesn't want them. Keep your little two-sides-of-the-same-coin political squabbles, keep your "angle", whatever it may be, keep your jingoism. Keep your government, your pork, and your lobbyists. None of them will change a thing.
I mean have you any idea what the Star Tram actually is? Is the silk road to space, the highway to the heavens, its as cheap as it is possible to get within the known laws of physics, it even beats out space elevators if they are possible. Its bifrost, its the stairway to the stars. Solar power satellites? That's the tip of the iceberg, the lowest of the low hanging fruit.
In a world where JAXA and private industry are willing to put down $21 billion on an SPS they know for a fact can't ever turn a profit, where billionaires embrace an asteroid mining concept without even a business plan to its name, do you think that a gargantuan enabler with the ability to put the global economy into a permanent unending boom like the ST will need government funding?
Please.
I doubt SPSs or any number of revolutionary technologies will need government funding either once its built, since the reasons for the current massive capital costs are mostly just launching the stuff up there. Just stop and think about it for a minute, think about the implications.
Same exact thing in Ireland too, word for bloody word. What do you call it when the regulators are the ones doing the regulatory capture?
What matters is: increase of efficiency of space over ground, kg/W and $/kg launch costs.
You really must have a horse in this race. What matters is $/W, and that is all that matters. Fairly impressive tap dancing trying to avoid that however, although I might just give you the benefit of the doubt and assume you actually don't know what you're talking about, rather than deliberately trying to obfuscate the facts.
The rest of your post follows on from that, really.
I have to say at this stage I genuninely have no idea what you're talking about.
It was only a matter of time before we discovered that facebook caused cancer, in fairness.
The pro-space-power discussion says "rocket launches will also need to be cut to a hundredth of the current cost". Hence, the approach is not cost effective even according to its proponents. And that discussion doesn't explain how a factor of 2-4 gain in efficiency offsets the launch and maintenance costs.
Star Tram can reduce launch costs to 0.004 of their previous amount.
Finally, proponents still haven't explained who should actually get control over what is, in effect, a large collection of massive radiation-based weapons platforms orbiting earth. Why would we let any nation put that kind of device into orbit?
As I've already said, a bird could fly through the rectenna beam without harm.
To be competitive, the satellite needs to be around $1-2 million per installed megawatt. Given it weighs in the region of 1500 to 1900 tons, launch costs must be 90%+ of its $21 billion pricetag. Reducing these to a trivial sum means, as JAXA have said, it becomes competitive, and until we have further information, I'm prepared to take it that JAXA knows whereof they speak.
I've already answered the weaponisation question elsewhere in the thread, and its all on wikipedia too. As for large amounts of solar energy, take a look at this picture:
http://www.desertec.org/uploads/media/stage-start_en.jpg
That nice red square right there is the amount of surface area that would be receiving twice as much energy as usual, and thats after a century of unprecedented satellite building. Its not much energy and its not a large area, particularly since it will be spread out into small sites all over the world. Actually it should be a lot less space since rectennas are more efficient than solar cells, but you get the idea anyway.
All of these questions and more can be answered when you hire me as your research assistant, or alternately look it up on wikipedia and the links I supplied earlier.
Not sure, ask me when I'm 300.
Sorry, ran ahead of myself there as I have a tendency to do. The document referenced also mentions 1GW produced from a rectenna south of 2 km as the modern standard. So, close enough.
What's with all the ACs in this thread, come on guys its healthy frank and open discussion, sign in!
That guy's math was wrong too, but with the fixes:
Charanka Solar Park - 15.44 sq miles per GW.
His space example - 4.48 sq miles per GW
Surface area to get US needs:
Charanka Solar Park - 1580GW * 15.44 sq miles/GW = 24395 sq miles or 156 miles by 156 miles on the ground
His space example - 1580GW * 4.48 sq miles/GW = 7584 sq miles or 87 miles by 87 miles in space
The only difference between your math and mine is I didn't bother with the decimal places, hence the use of the term "approximately". Ground area covered in space hasn't been mentioned since there is neither ground nor a shortage of space in space. Basically, nobody cares.
especially if we can get solar more efficient & cheaper and get its longevity in the centuries range instead of a couple decades.
And I have almost invented time travelling sneakers! I have the sneakers finished but there's still the time travelling part to work out...
Look, the bottom line is neither the Star Tram nor SPSs need any drastically new technology, new materials, or new laws of physics to happen. Its looking very like they will produce power more cheaply than any other solution. So, they are going to happen.
My suggestion is to invest in an SPS company.
Star tram does not eliminate your launch costs if you are going beyond LEO. You still need rockets to hit a transfer orbit.
Star Tram can hit GEO as well, costs a little more, like $80 a kilo, but its not really a problem. The initial configuration which will determine the range of uses has yet to be finalised from the options available. There may even be a passenger capable 1.5 version.
How are you going to build a star tram without taxpayers? Private industry? Right now, you can't get investments for ANYTHING without a likely profit within 1 year. Charity? good luck.
Start small my friend. The ST team is putting an entry in for the NASA business plan competition, then going for the NASA nano launch prize, and building from there. Believe it or not there are many large private investors willing to take the long view. For example, Planetary Resources and indeed, JAXA's own solar satellites. Besides, as every investor knows, its not what you spend, its what you earn.
How are you going to get right of way for the airspace around a structure 20k tall (or more) and 100s of k long?
That's the generation 2. Generation 1 is only 100km long and goes up a mountain.
I said solar thermal, not photovoltaic. Solar thermal can produce power steadily around the clock.
You are being as ridiculously optimistic.
Great, go for it, as I said, what's stopping you? If solar thermal can revolutionise the world, what are you sitting here talking to me for? When can we expect the first ten gigawatts installed mark to be reached?
1, Go for it, whats stopping you!
2. You have no figures to back this up, you're considering LEO which is not where SPSs will be (also reducing or removing erosion issues), and if JAXA says it will competitive at 1% of launch costs, it will be even more competitive at half that. Competitive in this case means ~a million per installed MW. Unlike earth based solar or wind it will work around the clock as well. And I calculated recently that you'd need to roll out a new 1GW SPS every couple of hours for twenty years to completely take over the global energy market, so industrial economies of scale would be enormously significant even if a tenth of that production rate could be reached.
Hell, even at the higher price level, my own distinctly unsunny country could spend a tiny amount of our annual revenue and have all of our electricity needs covered permanently, barring drastic rises in demand decades away. There will be a queue around the corner and into the street for this stuff.
You need to shake off the rocket restrictions we've all had drummed into our heads, they belong in a museum now.
3. Star Tram ain't looking for money from the taxpayer. ;)