If you would kindly finish that sentence with how much energy is required to do what, I'd happily run the calcs for you. If you're referring to how to obtain the 1GW of power, all I can say is that's the easy part in engineering such power stations.
what sort of remote devices exist for conveying that power back to ear[t]h.
High powered masers into the gigawatt range have been a reality for some time. This paper from 1977 describes experiments with running multi-kilowatt masers all the way up into the gigawatt range. On making these efficient, there has been a LOT of R&D over the years with papers such as this one (1997) describing the work being done. What's been driving the development of such high power beams, believe it or not, is the development of the fusion reactors. Scientists have been investigating the possibility of using high-powered masers to excite the fuel into a fusion state.
In short, all the technology has been researched, and the groundwork has been laid. What's needed now is a market to drive the development of the technology.
Lasers don't have enough thrust to push something into orbit. They work great once you're already in space, but not so good on the ground. All the launch proposals involving lasers actually propose using the laser as a method of exciting the propellant. SO, unfortunately, you still have to carry the propellant with you. You can drop the engines, though.
I'm not disputing that there's gold out there. I'm saying WE HAVE GOLD ALREADY.
What's your point? As long as millions of metric tonnes of it isn't dumped on the market at once, it will still fetch a good price. In fact, we have a bit of a problem on our hands. Apparently all the major gold mines have already been tapped out. Miners now need to process up to a tonne of ore to produce a single ounce of gold. Considering its uses in electronics and industry (not just jewelry), that's not a good thing.
Putting that aside, there are a lot more metals and precious materials than gold:
In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.
So the idea is not so much to gather gold, but gather gold and other materials. Many of those materials would actually be more valuable if they were kept in space, and then bought and sold in a space economy.
Also, "experts"? That's a puff piece written by a journalist, and even with the overwhelmingly positive tone he can't help but point out major problems with the idea.
The author of the article isn't the "expert" genius, it's the scientists who run the NEAR project and specialize in the composition of asteroids.
he doesn't even take account of the cost of transportation, let alone finding some method of mining without oxygen and in minimal gravity.
He doesn't, because that's not his department. That's for the engineers and space mining firms to figure out. Will they figure it out? I have no doubt about it. Dropping cargo containers into the ocean is not that expensive of a proposition. There's a lot of details that need to be worked out economically, but it is doable.
This is literally pie in the sky fantasy.
Mmm. That's the argument back and forth, isn't it? Well, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Either we're just fanticizing and none of this will EVER happen, or we're well in touch with reality and will proven correct in the years to come. In the meantime, it never hurts to debate the crap out of it. The best way to get something done is to tell people that they can't do it.;-)
And please don't give me that laser shit again, we don't have lasers powerful enough to beam back significant quantities of energy.
Why bother with lasers? High powered Masers are far easier to produce. Besides, you can use clusters of high-powered microwave transmitters. This leaves the option open of transmitted less power to more receivers. (A good thing.)
Not to mention which there's no compelling reason to put solar collectors on the moon when we're not willing to invest in a deployment of them in the Arizona desert (for instance).
Actually, I was talking about in orbit. And it doesn't cost that much. Here's an experiment for you:
1. Go to the store and purchase a large, deflated mylar balloon. Note the cost when you purchase it.
2. Go to a hardware store and find a mirror of the same size. How does it's cost compare to the mylar balloon?
The far greater cost of the mirror is why Earth based solar power stations dont make much sense. In space, you can float a "soft" mirrored material that would fail miserably here on Earth, and even expect that the solar winds will help keep it spread out. Also, you'll receive a lot more Solar power outside of the Earth's atmosphere.
Except that there is no guarantee the larger bodies have the minerals in ores which ended up in places that are economical to extract.
'Tis true. But that's why we do surveys. Like the one I linked to above. I don't know about anyone else, but grabbing an estimated $20,000 billion in materials from Eros sounds like a good deal to me.
FWIW, the only reason why anyone checked Eros is because scientists have had various data about asteroids suggesting that they are rich in precious materials.
Jupiter is a freaking big planet, but if all the "good" stuff is way down in the core, well then, it doesn't help us very much.
That's why we don't need to go to Jupiter. Jupiter has already pulled a lot of the good stuff into orbit between itself and Mars. aka The Asteroid Belt.:)
Back to the Moon was a cute book, but Hickam glossed over a LOT of details there. According to some back of the envelope calculations I did, the astronauts were severely short on fuel. So in short, they never should have made it to the moon in the first place. His "Big Dog" engines would have to be the most powerful engines ever designed (including all but the most exotic stuff on the blackboards) in order to propel the Space Shuttle to the moon on the fuel from a single commercial launch.
Or to put it another way: The Space Shuttle is too damn heavy. It's a good craft and it's life support structure is a good choice. But all the extra baggage it carries in the form of wings and a giant cargo bay severely limit utility as a general purpose space craft.:-(
Re:Space travel isn't feasible
on
Return to the Moon
·
· Score: 2, Informative
I bet you could launch something into orbit with an Orion drive.
Actually, you can launch a LOT of something into orbit with an Orion drive. The original Saturn mission was slated to ground-launch from Jackass flats Nevada, and would have carried about 3,000 metric tonnes of spaceship, personnel, and cargo into space. The plan had to be cancelled after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty went into effect.
Orion didn't die, however. It was still a viable concept (and still *is* a viable concept) for a space drive. The scientists even managed to get Von Braun to buy into the idea. The plan was that the Saturn V would launch the Mini-Orion into space, then the Mini-O would take people to other planets. Unfortuantely, the government shut down the Saturn V program and told Von Braun that he wasn't going to get to do anything interesting anymore. Von Braun resigned in protest and the government got NASA to change the SSTO, man-rated, light-cargo, fully reusable Space Shuttle into the all-in-one blender it is today.
Well then, someone had better tell the experts, because they seem to think there's all kinds of materials to be mined out there.
Let's perform a little thinking for a moment here, shall we?
1. The Earth contains large deposits of Gold, Platnium, Tungsten, Titanium, Uranium, Water, and yes, Iron and Carbon.
2. The Earth is one of many bodies in the Solar System.
3. All the materials in the Solar System were actually produced by the creation of our Sun.
4. Given that the Earth is far from the largest body in the Solar System, if the materials exist here on Earth, they MUST exist elsewhere in the Solar System.
Get it? Got it? Good. Now let's go collect our $20,000 billion in riches, shall we?
Re:The moon, tis a harsh mistress
on
Return to the Moon
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Humans. Robots are a lot of money for little return. For example, a human on Mars could do in minutes what takes the Rovers months to accomplish. Humans are extremely adaptable to changing situations, and can actually cover ground extremely well on foot. In addition, they're excellent at building and operating a wide variety of tools.
Robots are like computers. They're very good at optimizing something that's been done a million times before, and can be done the same way a million times again. They suck when they have to adapt to changing situations. Even when a human is nudging their controls from a distance, their use is extremely limited. As long as we're shooting robots into space to do our exploration for us, we're wasting time and energy that could be saved if we could go there ourselves.
Which of the two is both the most ethical
There's no ethical quandry. A lot of people want to go, and damn the risks. Risk is part of being human. (Why do you think we have all these skydivers and bungie jumpers?) If you don't want to take the risk, then don't. But don't tell other people what to do with their lives. THAT is unethical.
The deal is: Stay on Earth and nothing changes. Go to the moon and you won't actually be imprisioned (since you can't go anywhere anyway), get a chance to earn some change, and have your sentence reduced or commuted. As a bonus, you get to be an astronaut. You can't tell me that there aren't at least a few dreamers in the lot who wouldn't jump at the chance.
Actually, there is something to be said for using nuclear power to "crack" oxygen and hydrogen out of other materials. In any other environment it would be too expensive, but on the moon it might actually make sense.
As for the rest of the stuff, the moon can purchase from providers who already have the necessary materials outside the Earth's gravity well. Who might that be, you ask? The companies who own mines on all the asteroids and comets, that's who. I mean, why oh why would anyone try to mine the moon? All that's there is iron that's already rusted. (i.e. oxydized) Far better to pick up your metal riches on an asteroid and your life-giving riches on a comet. WAY, WAY cheaper than launching out of a strong gravity well, especially when we have engine technology and research available to make "cruising" around the solar system a reality.
Felt Marker. Don't worry, it shows up well on Duct Tape.
Re:Space travel isn't feasible
on
Return to the Moon
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Space travel with chemical fuels isn't feasible.
Pfff. Is that your only complaint. We've got propulsion methods pouring out of our wahzoo. Lemme see, we've got Orion, Nuclear Thermal Rockets, Ion Engines, Magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters (MPDT), Mini-Magnetosphere Plasma Propulsion (M2P2), etc, etc, etc. And that's just the stuff we're sure will work. On the drawing boards we've Nuclear Salt Water Rockets, Daedalus Boosters, Antimatter propulsion, blah, blah, blah. The problem with all these methods isn't that they're inefficient, or that they won't get us where we're going. The problem is that ALL of them require you to obtain orbit first.
What we're missing is cheap launch solution. There are currently no engines in existence that can provide a launch for less than ~$50,000,000. (Keep an eye on the Falcon rockets, though.) If you're using a super-booster to launch metric craploads of material, throwing away the rocket isn't so bad. But just to transport a few people or light cargo to orbit, we STILL have to throw away the rocket OR use a rocket that's so overdesigned it costs more to maintain than a throw-away rocket. (aka The Space Shuttle. Marvel of engineering, marveled by shocked accounts.)
We need to go back to 1975 and pick up the pieces where we left off. Instead of a Space Shuttle capable of carrying cargo, we need a fully reusable SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) Space Shuttle that keeps costs down. Instead of a Space Shuttle that launches a mere 27ish tonnes of cargo, we need a super-booster that can carry upwards of 100 metric tonnes of cargo. Instead of a Space Station that's sitting in the wrong orbit to do anything useful, we need a Spaceship Garage in space capable of building, repairing, manufacturing, and staging inbound/outbound flights to the rest of the solar system.
The CEV project is on the right track, but we'll have to see if the higher ups eventually pull their heads out and start supporting missions and technology that will go somewhere rather than making some politco happy with his pork.
Re:Future of our civilization?
on
Return to the Moon
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Ok, so we're already screwing up the ecological system of one planet, so all the more reason to start mining the moon too!
Ecological system? On the moon? Dude, give me some of what you're smoking, I need it to get the moon.
Oh, sure, the moon is 1/5th it's original size now in due to all the mining, but you can still find it with a telescope in the night sky.
1. The moon is approximately 7.475 x 10^22 kg in size, or approximately . We haven't even dug up the equivalent of 4/5ths of the moon in the entire time we've been on Earth!
2. The moon is mostly composed of oxidized Iron. a.k.a. Rust. It might make a great base for various space operations (e.g. manufacturing, staging, telescopes, power collections, etc.) as well as a proving ground for our upcoming launch technologies, but there are far better places in the Solar System to be mining. You know, like all those heavy metal rich asteriods that pass by Earth all the time.
Re:The moon, tis a harsh mistress
on
Return to the Moon
·
· Score: 2, Funny
Good idea. Anyone know where I can get some small-time drugs? Also, I need to know what it looks like to be high on something so I can pretend for the cops.
Schmitt's potentially inspiring commercial justification in Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy
I can't believe it! That's my "three E's of space travel!" philosphy! The primary difference is "Economy, Energy, and Exploration" (in that order). Which is pretty much the same thing as "Enterprise".
The only thing I don't understand is: What's with this obsession with fusion? Screw fusion. It's perpetually 20 years away. When the eggheads get it working, then we'll worry about going to the moon. Let's think a little more realistically. For example, massive mylar mirrors could focus gigawatts of energy on a space-based, close-cycle Brayton generator. The power can then be beamed back to Earth OR to all the other ventures happening in the solar system. And cheap power in space can mean cheaper costs for manufacturing and propulsion. Cheaper manufacturing and propulsion in space means $$$ for returning valuable materials from Asteriods. Of course, just like with the power, you need an infrastructure to support all that and bring prices down further. So a booming economy appears overnight to support this stuff. Venture capitalist smell money. Before you know it, we won't even remember what it was like when we didn't have space travel.:)
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?
Both. Here's how:
1) Purchase a cell phone. Get whatever you want, it doesn't matter. 2) Purchase an iPod Nano. 3) Purchase a role of duct tape. 4) Purchase a book instructing you in the proper use of duct tape. "Red Green's 10,001 Uses for Duct Tape" is highly recommended. 5) Using your newfound knowledge in high precision engineering, duct tape the iPod Nano to your cell phone.
Now you too have a phone and iPod combination all in one, but with none of those silly limitations on the number of songs! Just flip your phone one direction to talk to people, and flip it the other direction to switch the song you're listening to. What could be better?:-D
Honestly? It's probably a remastering of the episodes. Most shows are filmed with the same cameras used in movies, giving the film a 16:9 ratio. During post production the 4:3 area is cut from the film giving the final result. Some shows (such as Babylon 5) have gone back to the original film and remastered the shows. As JMS explained in interview, however, the problem with this procedure is that the cameraman isn't expecting the full 16:9 area to be used. The result is that some scenes may capture the absence of the set, crew, or all kinds of wacky things in that area. For those scenes they often have to chose between one of three options:
1. Stretch whatever video is "good" to fit in 16:9. 2. Crop the 4:3 image into a 16:9 ratio. (B5 did this in many closeup scenes. Annoyed the hell out of me.) 3. Digitally fill in the missing area. (Expensive)
Whatever happened to the whole "limited number of regenerations" thing, anyway? I mean, we're on our tenth (?) Doctor now, no end in sight? Isn't he a couple of regens beyond the limit?
And what's with the Tardis? Isn't it supposed to change to reflect the new owner? Why don't we have a new set now? And where the heck is the rest of it? People used to get lost in there, I'll have you know! Now it's a room with no door in sight! All these questions. Where are the answers?
They're not cropping anything. Stargate was shown in 4:3 ratio right up until the SciFi channel acquired it. SciFi then pumped some money into their new crown jewel and began filming it in 16:9. It was quite a nice experience for those of us who were used to Stargate being done "on the cheap", as it were.
It's probably more correct to call it a "power management system". It takes a single power source in, then redistributes it to various devices at the correct voltages expected along that line. This allows you to power multiple devices (motherboard, harddrive, LCD, etc.) with only a single power cord.
Slashdot Mirror
do the math on how much energy is required
If you would kindly finish that sentence with how much energy is required to do what, I'd happily run the calcs for you. If you're referring to how to obtain the 1GW of power, all I can say is that's the easy part in engineering such power stations.
what sort of remote devices exist for conveying that power back to ear[t]h.
High powered masers into the gigawatt range have been a reality for some time. This paper from 1977 describes experiments with running multi-kilowatt masers all the way up into the gigawatt range. On making these efficient, there has been a LOT of R&D over the years with papers such as this one (1997) describing the work being done. What's been driving the development of such high power beams, believe it or not, is the development of the fusion reactors. Scientists have been investigating the possibility of using high-powered masers to excite the fuel into a fusion state.
In short, all the technology has been researched, and the groundwork has been laid. What's needed now is a market to drive the development of the technology.
Lasers don't have enough thrust to push something into orbit. They work great once you're already in space, but not so good on the ground. All the launch proposals involving lasers actually propose using the laser as a method of exciting the propellant. SO, unfortunately, you still have to carry the propellant with you. You can drop the engines, though.
I'm not disputing that there's gold out there. I'm saying WE HAVE GOLD ALREADY.
;-)
What's your point? As long as millions of metric tonnes of it isn't dumped on the market at once, it will still fetch a good price. In fact, we have a bit of a problem on our hands. Apparently all the major gold mines have already been tapped out. Miners now need to process up to a tonne of ore to produce a single ounce of gold. Considering its uses in electronics and industry (not just jewelry), that's not a good thing.
Putting that aside, there are a lot more metals and precious materials than gold:
In the 2,900 cubic kms of Eros, there is more aluminium, gold, silver, zinc and other base and precious metals than have ever been excavated in history or indeed, could ever be excavated from the upper layers of the Earth's crust.
So the idea is not so much to gather gold, but gather gold and other materials. Many of those materials would actually be more valuable if they were kept in space, and then bought and sold in a space economy.
Also, "experts"? That's a puff piece written by a journalist, and even with the overwhelmingly positive tone he can't help but point out major problems with the idea.
The author of the article isn't the "expert" genius, it's the scientists who run the NEAR project and specialize in the composition of asteroids.
he doesn't even take account of the cost of transportation, let alone finding some method of mining without oxygen and in minimal gravity.
He doesn't, because that's not his department. That's for the engineers and space mining firms to figure out. Will they figure it out? I have no doubt about it. Dropping cargo containers into the ocean is not that expensive of a proposition. There's a lot of details that need to be worked out economically, but it is doable.
This is literally pie in the sky fantasy.
Mmm. That's the argument back and forth, isn't it? Well, I wouldn't worry too much about it. Either we're just fanticizing and none of this will EVER happen, or we're well in touch with reality and will proven correct in the years to come. In the meantime, it never hurts to debate the crap out of it. The best way to get something done is to tell people that they can't do it.
And please don't give me that laser shit again, we don't have lasers powerful enough to beam back significant quantities of energy.
Why bother with lasers? High powered Masers are far easier to produce. Besides, you can use clusters of high-powered microwave transmitters. This leaves the option open of transmitted less power to more receivers. (A good thing.)
Not to mention which there's no compelling reason to put solar collectors on the moon when we're not willing to invest in a deployment of them in the Arizona desert (for instance).
Actually, I was talking about in orbit. And it doesn't cost that much. Here's an experiment for you:
1. Go to the store and purchase a large, deflated mylar balloon. Note the cost when you purchase it.
2. Go to a hardware store and find a mirror of the same size. How does it's cost compare to the mylar balloon?
The far greater cost of the mirror is why Earth based solar power stations dont make much sense. In space, you can float a "soft" mirrored material that would fail miserably here on Earth, and even expect that the solar winds will help keep it spread out. Also, you'll receive a lot more Solar power outside of the Earth's atmosphere.
Except that there is no guarantee the larger bodies have the minerals in ores which ended up in places that are economical to extract.
:)
'Tis true. But that's why we do surveys. Like the one I linked to above. I don't know about anyone else, but grabbing an estimated $20,000 billion in materials from Eros sounds like a good deal to me.
FWIW, the only reason why anyone checked Eros is because scientists have had various data about asteroids suggesting that they are rich in precious materials.
Jupiter is a freaking big planet, but if all the "good" stuff is way down in the core, well then, it doesn't help us very much.
That's why we don't need to go to Jupiter. Jupiter has already pulled a lot of the good stuff into orbit between itself and Mars. aka The Asteroid Belt.
Back to the Moon was a cute book, but Hickam glossed over a LOT of details there. According to some back of the envelope calculations I did, the astronauts were severely short on fuel. So in short, they never should have made it to the moon in the first place. His "Big Dog" engines would have to be the most powerful engines ever designed (including all but the most exotic stuff on the blackboards) in order to propel the Space Shuttle to the moon on the fuel from a single commercial launch.
:-(
Or to put it another way: The Space Shuttle is too damn heavy. It's a good craft and it's life support structure is a good choice. But all the extra baggage it carries in the form of wings and a giant cargo bay severely limit utility as a general purpose space craft.
I bet you could launch something into orbit with an Orion drive.
Actually, you can launch a LOT of something into orbit with an Orion drive. The original Saturn mission was slated to ground-launch from Jackass flats Nevada, and would have carried about 3,000 metric tonnes of spaceship, personnel, and cargo into space. The plan had to be cancelled after the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty went into effect.
Orion didn't die, however. It was still a viable concept (and still *is* a viable concept) for a space drive. The scientists even managed to get Von Braun to buy into the idea. The plan was that the Saturn V would launch the Mini-Orion into space, then the Mini-O would take people to other planets. Unfortuantely, the government shut down the Saturn V program and told Von Braun that he wasn't going to get to do anything interesting anymore. Von Braun resigned in protest and the government got NASA to change the SSTO, man-rated, light-cargo, fully reusable Space Shuttle into the all-in-one blender it is today.
Well then, someone had better tell the experts, because they seem to think there's all kinds of materials to be mined out there.
Let's perform a little thinking for a moment here, shall we?
1. The Earth contains large deposits of Gold, Platnium, Tungsten, Titanium, Uranium, Water, and yes, Iron and Carbon.
2. The Earth is one of many bodies in the Solar System.
3. All the materials in the Solar System were actually produced by the creation of our Sun.
4. Given that the Earth is far from the largest body in the Solar System, if the materials exist here on Earth, they MUST exist elsewhere in the Solar System.
Get it? Got it? Good. Now let's go collect our $20,000 billion in riches, shall we?
Humans. Robots are a lot of money for little return. For example, a human on Mars could do in minutes what takes the Rovers months to accomplish. Humans are extremely adaptable to changing situations, and can actually cover ground extremely well on foot. In addition, they're excellent at building and operating a wide variety of tools.
Robots are like computers. They're very good at optimizing something that's been done a million times before, and can be done the same way a million times again. They suck when they have to adapt to changing situations. Even when a human is nudging their controls from a distance, their use is extremely limited. As long as we're shooting robots into space to do our exploration for us, we're wasting time and energy that could be saved if we could go there ourselves.
Which of the two is both the most ethical
There's no ethical quandry. A lot of people want to go, and damn the risks. Risk is part of being human. (Why do you think we have all these skydivers and bungie jumpers?) If you don't want to take the risk, then don't. But don't tell other people what to do with their lives. THAT is unethical.
Better idea: Ask for volunteers.
The deal is: Stay on Earth and nothing changes. Go to the moon and you won't actually be imprisioned (since you can't go anywhere anyway), get a chance to earn some change, and have your sentence reduced or commuted. As a bonus, you get to be an astronaut. You can't tell me that there aren't at least a few dreamers in the lot who wouldn't jump at the chance.
Actually, there is something to be said for using nuclear power to "crack" oxygen and hydrogen out of other materials. In any other environment it would be too expensive, but on the moon it might actually make sense.
As for the rest of the stuff, the moon can purchase from providers who already have the necessary materials outside the Earth's gravity well. Who might that be, you ask? The companies who own mines on all the asteroids and comets, that's who. I mean, why oh why would anyone try to mine the moon? All that's there is iron that's already rusted. (i.e. oxydized) Far better to pick up your metal riches on an asteroid and your life-giving riches on a comet. WAY, WAY cheaper than launching out of a strong gravity well, especially when we have engine technology and research available to make "cruising" around the solar system a reality.
Felt Marker. Don't worry, it shows up well on Duct Tape.
Space travel with chemical fuels isn't feasible.
Pfff. Is that your only complaint. We've got propulsion methods pouring out of our wahzoo. Lemme see, we've got Orion, Nuclear Thermal Rockets, Ion Engines, Magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters (MPDT), Mini-Magnetosphere Plasma Propulsion (M2P2), etc, etc, etc. And that's just the stuff we're sure will work. On the drawing boards we've Nuclear Salt Water Rockets, Daedalus Boosters, Antimatter propulsion, blah, blah, blah. The problem with all these methods isn't that they're inefficient, or that they won't get us where we're going. The problem is that ALL of them require you to obtain orbit first.
What we're missing is cheap launch solution. There are currently no engines in existence that can provide a launch for less than ~$50,000,000. (Keep an eye on the Falcon rockets, though.) If you're using a super-booster to launch metric craploads of material, throwing away the rocket isn't so bad. But just to transport a few people or light cargo to orbit, we STILL have to throw away the rocket OR use a rocket that's so overdesigned it costs more to maintain than a throw-away rocket. (aka The Space Shuttle. Marvel of engineering, marveled by shocked accounts.)
We need to go back to 1975 and pick up the pieces where we left off. Instead of a Space Shuttle capable of carrying cargo, we need a fully reusable SSTO (Single Stage To Orbit) Space Shuttle that keeps costs down. Instead of a Space Shuttle that launches a mere 27ish tonnes of cargo, we need a super-booster that can carry upwards of 100 metric tonnes of cargo. Instead of a Space Station that's sitting in the wrong orbit to do anything useful, we need a Spaceship Garage in space capable of building, repairing, manufacturing, and staging inbound/outbound flights to the rest of the solar system.
The CEV project is on the right track, but we'll have to see if the higher ups eventually pull their heads out and start supporting missions and technology that will go somewhere rather than making some politco happy with his pork.
Ok, so we're already screwing up the ecological system of one planet, so all the more reason to start mining the moon too!
Ecological system? On the moon? Dude, give me some of what you're smoking, I need it to get the moon.
Oh, sure, the moon is 1/5th it's original size now in due to all the mining, but you can still find it with a telescope in the night sky.
1. The moon is approximately 7.475 x 10^22 kg in size, or approximately . We haven't even dug up the equivalent of 4/5ths of the moon in the entire time we've been on Earth!
2. The moon is mostly composed of oxidized Iron. a.k.a. Rust. It might make a great base for various space operations (e.g. manufacturing, staging, telescopes, power collections, etc.) as well as a proving ground for our upcoming launch technologies, but there are far better places in the Solar System to be mining. You know, like all those heavy metal rich asteriods that pass by Earth all the time.
Good idea. Anyone know where I can get some small-time drugs? Also, I need to know what it looks like to be high on something so I can pretend for the cops.
Moon Base Alpha, here I come!
Schmitt's potentially inspiring commercial justification in Return to the Moon: Exploration, Enterprise, and Energy
:)
I can't believe it! That's my "three E's of space travel!" philosphy! The primary difference is "Economy, Energy, and Exploration" (in that order). Which is pretty much the same thing as "Enterprise".
The only thing I don't understand is: What's with this obsession with fusion? Screw fusion. It's perpetually 20 years away. When the eggheads get it working, then we'll worry about going to the moon. Let's think a little more realistically. For example, massive mylar mirrors could focus gigawatts of energy on a space-based, close-cycle Brayton generator. The power can then be beamed back to Earth OR to all the other ventures happening in the solar system. And cheap power in space can mean cheaper costs for manufacturing and propulsion. Cheaper manufacturing and propulsion in space means $$$ for returning valuable materials from Asteriods. Of course, just like with the power, you need an infrastructure to support all that and bring prices down further. So a booming economy appears overnight to support this stuff. Venture capitalist smell money. Before you know it, we won't even remember what it was like when we didn't have space travel.
There's even some lovely mockups of what an Apple phone would look like here.
I certainly hope that phone is supposed to magnetically seal itself when it's closed, because the artist seems to have forgotten a latch. (!)
Which would you rather have? An iPod, or a phone with an iPod built in?
:-D
Both. Here's how:
1) Purchase a cell phone. Get whatever you want, it doesn't matter.
2) Purchase an iPod Nano.
3) Purchase a role of duct tape.
4) Purchase a book instructing you in the proper use of duct tape. "Red Green's 10,001 Uses for Duct Tape" is highly recommended.
5) Using your newfound knowledge in high precision engineering, duct tape the iPod Nano to your cell phone.
Now you too have a phone and iPod combination all in one, but with none of those silly limitations on the number of songs! Just flip your phone one direction to talk to people, and flip it the other direction to switch the song you're listening to. What could be better?
P.S. 6) Profit!!!
Honestly? It's probably a remastering of the episodes. Most shows are filmed with the same cameras used in movies, giving the film a 16:9 ratio. During post production the 4:3 area is cut from the film giving the final result. Some shows (such as Babylon 5) have gone back to the original film and remastered the shows. As JMS explained in interview, however, the problem with this procedure is that the cameraman isn't expecting the full 16:9 area to be used. The result is that some scenes may capture the absence of the set, crew, or all kinds of wacky things in that area. For those scenes they often have to chose between one of three options:
1. Stretch whatever video is "good" to fit in 16:9.
2. Crop the 4:3 image into a 16:9 ratio. (B5 did this in many closeup scenes. Annoyed the hell out of me.)
3. Digitally fill in the missing area. (Expensive)
Whatever happened to the whole "limited number of regenerations" thing, anyway? I mean, we're on our tenth (?) Doctor now, no end in sight? Isn't he a couple of regens beyond the limit?
And what's with the Tardis? Isn't it supposed to change to reflect the new owner? Why don't we have a new set now? And where the heck is the rest of it? People used to get lost in there, I'll have you know! Now it's a room with no door in sight! All these questions. Where are the answers?
They're not cropping anything. Stargate was shown in 4:3 ratio right up until the SciFi channel acquired it. SciFi then pumped some money into their new crown jewel and began filming it in 16:9. It was quite a nice experience for those of us who were used to Stargate being done "on the cheap", as it were.
:)
Hope that clears things up.
No, the funny part is the browser title: "Sold to America." The building is only funny if you're feeling juvenile today.
The creators of Stargate have stated in interviews that the secret to the show's success is that it's really a comedy disguised as a serious show. :-)
As the poster above me said, they tend to balance things pretty well.
Unfortunately, the answer is that the brick is exactly big and noisy as your existing 480W power supply
I have a laptop sitting next to me that disagrees with you.
It's probably more correct to call it a "power management system". It takes a single power source in, then redistributes it to various devices at the correct voltages expected along that line. This allows you to power multiple devices (motherboard, harddrive, LCD, etc.) with only a single power cord.