Another saving with SC cables is volume. In many cities there is a severe space crunch in underground cable runs. Digging new ones is very expensive. If the SC cables have a higher average current density than conventional cables (and they do, even counting the space occupied by thermal insulation and coolant channels), then they can pay for themselves.
Actually, magnesium diboride is much easier to work with than the HTSCs. It doesn't have the grain boundary problems that bedevil the latter. Even better, its normal state conductivity at low temperature is close to that of copper (and something like 20 times that of niobium-tin), making the material much more resistant to damage during quenches.
However, this doesn't explain why the putative DD fusion magically fails to have the same branching ratio as accelerator-driven DD reactions (in which the branching ratio stays the same down to the low energy limits of measurement.) These branching ratios follow from well-understood nuclear physics. The nuclei, once they come together, form a compound nucleus that 'forgets' its origins.
Cold fusion requires not one miracle, but three: the reaction rate has to be many orders of magnitude larger than theory predicts, the neutron and tritium producing reactions must be suppressed by many orders of magnitude, and the energy that is produced must come out in some hitherto unknown way that produces no detectable radiation.
The 'not a lot of extra heat' is important because it increases the likelihood that the amount of actual extra heat is zero, with the apparent extra heat being some kind of systematic experimental error.
Experimental error is always a great danger, and becomes more so as the measurement becomes more difficult. Someone who has been fiddling with their CF experiment for a decade or more may have just been optimizing some malfunction of the measuring scheme rather than a physical effect producing actual excess heat.
You have that backwards -- if the stock stays that low for that long, SCO can force Baystar to take soon-to-be-worthless stock in place of the Prefered Stock. It was probably Baystar that recently pumped the stock above $10.50, just to prevent this scenario.
By asking for the redemption, even if they don't get it, Baystar now becomes an unsecured creditor, ahead of other prefered stockholders and level with litigants like IBM in the upcoming bankruptcy.
If he says programming doesn't involve people skills, I want to know what he's smoking.
That ten year veteran will have picked up the skills in working with others. He'll have experience in the process of software creation that the freshout thinks is all bureaucratic nonsense. He'll know how important it is to test, and document, and not do something for the wrong reasons. He'll have seen projects go down in flames when these sorts of things weren't done right.
The world is industrializing. India and China are building powerplants and buying cars like crazy. When the oil runs out, we'll use coal instead.
Burn all the potentially available fossil fuels and atmospheric CO2 will increase not by the mere tens of percent that we've achieved so far, but by a factor of 10 or more. But we'll be assured this is not a problem because of, well, whatever bullshit argument the antienvironmentalist idiots believe this week.
Frankly, I think the only escape will be global engineering of some kind to counter the effects. That's going to be really expensive, but it's probably more practical than changing human nature.
This is utter and complete bullshit. Why are these antienvironmentalists so incredibly ignorant?
Humanity's CO2 production has increased dramatically since the 1870s, and global atmospheric CO2 levels have increased proportionally. This is utterly well-established science.
Volcanoes do not emit significant quantities of fluorocarbons. Where did you get that bit of pseudoscientific claptrap?
Re:It occurs to me...
on
A New Ice Age?
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· Score: 0, Troll
Rush Limbaugh said it, so it must be true.
Re:Wait... so you're telling me...
on
A New Ice Age?
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· Score: 1
Is human activity increasing CO2 levels by maybe 5% in some areas, but little if any globally, causing this difference?
I'm sorry, but the fact that human activity is increasing global CO2 is extremely well established. The contrary position has about as much validity as the position that the Earth is flat.
Side effect may make the 'iron solution' fail
on
A New Ice Age?
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· Score: 2, Insightful
There's an unfortunate side effect of fertilizing the ocean with iron: the increased microbial activity will cause more N2O (nitrous oxide) to be released from the oceans. N2O is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, and it stays in the atmosphere for centuries.
Actually, the biggest steel maker in the US is now Nucor, which is a relative newcomer. The old established steel companies missed the minimill boom (a disruptive technology) and have been struggling with huge pension costs from old labor agreements.
I don't think NASA has concluded that winged launch vehicles will never be feasible.
I think they have concluded that the shuttle is irremediably flawed, and that developing a winged Shuttle II would not make economic sense at this time.
It's not a dead end for reaching orbit. You'd just have to redesign the engine, the propellant tanks, fuselage, wings, thermal control, and probably most of the rest of the vehicle.:)
I didn't have high hopes. Their approach was too exotic and their goals too radical for what they could afford to develop. Not surprisingly, they ran out of money before they got very far.
SpaceX is perhaps the most promising space launch startup ever. Compared to some of their predecessors, they just ooze business and engineering sense.
They've worked hard to keep things simple and cheap, and that means their breakeven launch rate is not excessive. I give them a good chance of succeeding, and eventually beating even the Russians and Chinese on launch costs.
Scaling up the vehicle won't change the fact that it doesn't have anywhere near the delta-V needed to reach orbit, or the thermal protection to survive reentry at orbital speeds.
Scramjets aren't more fuel efficient for launch to orbit. They are potentially more propellant efficient -- but they achieve that by using more fuel and less (onboard) oxidizer. Unfortunately, LOX is really cheap and dense, while LH2 is more expensive, and much less dense.
A scramjet that flies at a single speed doesn't need moving parts. A scramjet that is intended to operate over a large range of speeds -- as it would have to do in a launcher -- probably needs a variable geometry inlet.
The cooling system for that hypersonic leading edge also probaby has lots of moving parts (as well as miles of channels for all the coolant.)
We could use real data, but there already is plenty of real data on things like hypersonic lift/drag ratios. Also, the numbers are not good even if you make optimistic assumptions about the performance scramjet engines. They are inherently lower thrust devices than rockets, since they are handling rather rarefied gases instead of the dense, high pressure gas handled by a rocket.
The upshot is that the engineers know this area is not going to live up to the breathless hype. But then there's nothing unusual about that in the space area -- it's like the word 'space' activates some sort of gullibility center in some people's brains.
Slashdot Mirror
Number of patents granted to NASA in 2002: 89
Number granted to IBM in 2002: 3,334
What was this about spinoffs again?
There's no way the amount NASA gets is going to put a dent in the problem of colonizing Mars, either.
Another saving with SC cables is volume. In many cities there is a severe space crunch in underground cable runs. Digging new ones is very expensive. If the SC cables have a higher average current density than conventional cables (and they do, even counting the space occupied by thermal insulation and coolant channels), then they can pay for themselves.
Actually, magnesium diboride is much easier to work with than the HTSCs. It doesn't have the grain boundary problems that bedevil the latter. Even better, its normal state conductivity at low temperature is close to that of copper (and something like 20 times that of niobium-tin), making the material much more resistant to damage during quenches.
Where did you get the weird (and completely incorrect) belief that 'electrons get bled out of materials as the temperature decreases'?
However, this doesn't explain why the putative DD fusion magically fails to have the same branching ratio as accelerator-driven DD reactions (in which the branching ratio stays the same down to the low energy limits of measurement.) These branching ratios follow from well-understood nuclear physics. The nuclei, once they come together, form a compound nucleus that 'forgets' its origins.
Cold fusion requires not one miracle, but three: the reaction rate has to be many orders of magnitude larger than theory predicts, the neutron and tritium producing reactions must be suppressed by many orders of magnitude, and the energy that is produced must come out in some hitherto unknown way that produces no detectable radiation.
The 'not a lot of extra heat' is important because it increases the likelihood that the amount of actual extra heat is zero, with the apparent extra heat being some kind of systematic experimental error.
Experimental error is always a great danger, and becomes more so as the measurement becomes more difficult. Someone who has been fiddling with their CF experiment for a decade or more may have just been optimizing some malfunction of the measuring scheme rather than a physical effect producing actual excess heat.
You have that backwards -- if the stock stays that low for that long, SCO can force Baystar to take soon-to-be-worthless stock in place of the Prefered Stock. It was probably Baystar that recently pumped the stock above $10.50, just to prevent this scenario.
By asking for the redemption, even if they don't get it, Baystar now becomes an unsecured creditor, ahead of other prefered stockholders and level with litigants like IBM in the upcoming bankruptcy.
If he says programming doesn't involve people skills, I want to know what he's smoking. That ten year veteran will have picked up the skills in working with others. He'll have experience in the process of software creation that the freshout thinks is all bureaucratic nonsense. He'll know how important it is to test, and document, and not do something for the wrong reasons. He'll have seen projects go down in flames when these sorts of things weren't done right.
The world is industrializing. India and China are building powerplants and buying cars like crazy. When the oil runs out, we'll use coal instead.
Burn all the potentially available fossil fuels and atmospheric CO2 will increase not by the mere tens of percent that we've achieved so far, but by a factor of 10 or more. But we'll be assured this is not a problem because of, well, whatever bullshit argument the antienvironmentalist idiots believe this week.
Frankly, I think the only escape will be global engineering of some kind to counter the effects. That's going to be really expensive, but it's probably more practical than changing human nature.
This is utter and complete bullshit. Why are these antienvironmentalists so incredibly ignorant?
Humanity's CO2 production has increased dramatically since the 1870s, and global atmospheric CO2 levels have increased proportionally. This is utterly well-established science.
Volcanoes do not emit significant quantities of fluorocarbons. Where did you get that bit of pseudoscientific claptrap?
Rush Limbaugh said it, so it must be true.
I'm sorry, but the fact that human activity is increasing global CO2 is extremely well established. The contrary position has about as much validity as the position that the Earth is flat.
There's an unfortunate side effect of fertilizing the ocean with iron: the increased microbial activity will cause more N2O (nitrous oxide) to be released from the oceans. N2O is a much more effective greenhouse gas than CO2, and it stays in the atmosphere for centuries.
Actually, the biggest steel maker in the US is now Nucor, which is a relative newcomer. The old established steel companies missed the minimill boom (a disruptive technology) and have been struggling with huge pension costs from old labor agreements.
I don't think NASA has concluded that winged launch vehicles will never be feasible.
I think they have concluded that the shuttle is irremediably flawed, and that developing a winged Shuttle II would not make economic sense at this time.
It's not a dead end for reaching orbit. You'd just have to redesign the engine, the propellant tanks, fuselage, wings, thermal control, and probably most of the rest of the vehicle. :)
I didn't have high hopes. Their approach was too exotic and their goals too radical for what they could afford to develop. Not surprisingly, they ran out of money before they got very far.
SpaceX is perhaps the most promising space launch startup ever. Compared to some of their predecessors, they just ooze business and engineering sense.
They've worked hard to keep things simple and cheap, and that means their breakeven launch rate is not excessive. I give them a good chance of succeeding, and eventually beating even the Russians and Chinese on launch costs.
Scaling up the vehicle won't change the fact that it doesn't have anywhere near the delta-V needed to reach orbit, or the thermal protection to survive reentry at orbital speeds.
Scramjets aren't more fuel efficient for launch to orbit. They are potentially more propellant efficient -- but they achieve that by using more fuel and less (onboard) oxidizer. Unfortunately, LOX is really cheap and dense, while LH2 is more expensive, and much less dense.
A scramjet that flies at a single speed doesn't need moving parts. A scramjet that is intended to operate over a large range of speeds -- as it would have to do in a launcher -- probably needs a variable geometry inlet.
The cooling system for that hypersonic leading edge also probaby has lots of moving parts (as well as miles of channels for all the coolant.)
At hypersonic speeds, you're going to start getting NOx production just from the shock wave alone.
We could use real data, but there already is plenty of real data on things like hypersonic lift/drag ratios. Also, the numbers are not good even if you make optimistic assumptions about the performance scramjet engines. They are inherently lower thrust devices than rockets, since they are handling rather rarefied gases instead of the dense, high pressure gas handled by a rocket.
The upshot is that the engineers know this area is not going to live up to the breathless hype. But then there's nothing unusual about that in the space area -- it's like the word 'space' activates some sort of gullibility center in some people's brains.