Bonus points: the Sahara is already being worked on as a location where gigantic solar panels can be based to supply the EU's future energy requirements. The energy to power this thing will be right at hand.:)
Indeed, I'd have thought a hovering sphere of some description would be of more use, with its own supply of extinguishing grenades. Controlling a high pressure hose with such a robot might be a challenge, but no reason why you wouldn't have control systems adapted to that.
Mm, yes the reality is that our ability to discover and track these rocks is pretty limited. Our civilisation could be destroyed tomorrow and the first thing anyone would know about it would be when their clothes lit on fire.
Research into the worlds and universe that surrounds us is always a worthy goal, certainly much more so than terrorising middle easterners for their fossil fuels, so stick your jutting lower lip back into your checkbook and contribute something useful.
Yup, there's a physical limit to how much light you can get through a lens the size of your pinky nail and all the megapixels in the world won't change that.
At those kinds of speeds even the interstellar medium is going to abrade and deflect your missile though. Once it gets anywhere near a solar system it will be like a meteorite hitting atmosphere. Lower speeds like 1 or 2 percent would be quite dangerous but those could be seen coming easily enough.
Nah. Energy efficiency is important but really there's no shortage of energy all around us. The sunlight falling on a fiftieth of the Sahara could supply all the world's energy needs. We're in a transitional period now, moving from less efficient fossil fuels to just pulling energy out of the air, but our great grandchildren will look back at the oil, gas and coal age in the same way we look back on the steam age.
Have we not actually found a material that enables the construction of a space elevator in graphene though, which would reduce the costs to orbit to a tiny fraction of what they were previously? Yes spinning it out to the correct length is a serious engineering challenge, but its not physically impossible. And for the record, I was one of the greatest sceptics of space elevators until I heard about graphene.
This is exactly the kind of basic space infrastructure NASA should be working on. Space tugboats, construction vehicles, mining drones and assayers, cargo haulers, all the simple stuff that makes a civilisation run smoothly. We need to walk before we run, and that means mastering the basic techniques of constructing and operating these types of vehicles long before any thought is given to colonising the moon or Mars.
Slashdot Mirror
That's already being done with HVDC cables, and longer distances too.
This could do more than 400 launches a month.
Bonus points: the Sahara is already being worked on as a location where gigantic solar panels can be based to supply the EU's future energy requirements. The energy to power this thing will be right at hand. :)
Indeed, I'd have thought a hovering sphere of some description would be of more use, with its own supply of extinguishing grenades. Controlling a high pressure hose with such a robot might be a challenge, but no reason why you wouldn't have control systems adapted to that.
Great news, they've gotten my porn collection transfer time metric down to three hours fourteen minutes, that's a new record.
If this concrete were availabe in the middle ages would it have removed the advantage that cannon had in destroying fortresses?
Not applicable.
Mm, yes the reality is that our ability to discover and track these rocks is pretty limited. Our civilisation could be destroyed tomorrow and the first thing anyone would know about it would be when their clothes lit on fire.
In fact, oddly enough, without hermaphrodites, wheels were unlikely to ever be more than toys.
...what?
It is cool, and consider the implications for future space propulsion utilising something that only interacts gravitationally with this universe... :D
intellectual property all the way down...
Research into the worlds and universe that surrounds us is always a worthy goal, certainly much more so than terrorising middle easterners for their fossil fuels, so stick your jutting lower lip back into your checkbook and contribute something useful.
Yup, there's a physical limit to how much light you can get through a lens the size of your pinky nail and all the megapixels in the world won't change that.
Well for all the crying over pollution, if anything this story should remind us that "mother" nature is a raw knuckled bitch when she wants to be.
I've got mod points, but I couldn't find the mod for +1, way too cool.
Gotterdammerung!
I just write like Al Swearengen talks, myself.
At those kinds of speeds even the interstellar medium is going to abrade and deflect your missile though. Once it gets anywhere near a solar system it will be like a meteorite hitting atmosphere. Lower speeds like 1 or 2 percent would be quite dangerous but those could be seen coming easily enough.
Not just that but in OECD countries there are some $75 billion in directly identifiable taxpayer subsidies for fossil fuels every year.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/datablog/2012/jan/18/fossil-fuel-subsidy
Isn't industry a far higher user of electricity than the domestic market?
How do you know its unworkable?
I didn't guess it - fossil fuels actually get the biggest subsidies.
Nah. Energy efficiency is important but really there's no shortage of energy all around us. The sunlight falling on a fiftieth of the Sahara could supply all the world's energy needs. We're in a transitional period now, moving from less efficient fossil fuels to just pulling energy out of the air, but our great grandchildren will look back at the oil, gas and coal age in the same way we look back on the steam age.
Eh just sneak his bank account onto the list of approved ones surely? This is seriously grounds for an internet Darwin though.
Have we not actually found a material that enables the construction of a space elevator in graphene though, which would reduce the costs to orbit to a tiny fraction of what they were previously? Yes spinning it out to the correct length is a serious engineering challenge, but its not physically impossible. And for the record, I was one of the greatest sceptics of space elevators until I heard about graphene.
This is exactly the kind of basic space infrastructure NASA should be working on. Space tugboats, construction vehicles, mining drones and assayers, cargo haulers, all the simple stuff that makes a civilisation run smoothly. We need to walk before we run, and that means mastering the basic techniques of constructing and operating these types of vehicles long before any thought is given to colonising the moon or Mars.