while not pointing out that the issues and design problems with manual points, carbs, and other stuff have long since been solved.
Nuclear plants that are in operation today are based on designs from the 1950's. There's no point in building more of those, because they pose a risk of meltdown, and their waste is a region wide hazard (e.g. Fukushima). They can't have "long been solved", when there aren't reactors that have been built and demonstrated yet. But we could advance that technology now (CANDU & MSR) by building the prototypes, and once proven, widely implement the new designs, where needed. The real problem is that nuclear plants are not cost effective compared to alternate energy, and would require long term investment from national governments, until their hazards and regulations are reduced to the point that they become attractive investments by deep pocketed corporations.
Current 3rd generation nuclear plant designs produce too much waste and are dangerous. We may as well advance nuclear engineering for safer plants that produce less (as in reclaimable) waste, and then build those plants. Fusion reactor technology doesn't exist in a design that can be utilized within the next 100 years; you can't plan on it being practical technology in that time frame.
Learn how nuclear reactors work (as in every major component) before expressing an uninformed, irrelevant opinion.
"Spent" nuclear fuel rods are loaded with useful, undecayed radioactive isotopes. They have merely dropped below a threshold percentage where they can be used to produce controlled heat. Separate the useful radioactive isotopes particles (U,Pu) from the metabolized waste, and its reprocessed, useful nuclear material again. Or just feed the spent fuel rods in a molten salt reactor, and at least use some nuclear material, rather than having them sit in a cooling pool.
step 1 is creating an AI sophisticated enough to design better tokakmaks
That would be step 0, as in taking a wrong step. Tokamaks are more about creating an extremely short, sustained fusion reaction; they aren't going to be practical for utilizing fusion energy. Whether controlled or uncontrolled, humanity can produce fusion reactions now. The problem is utilizing the energy produced by a fusion reaction; currently, we can only expend energy to initiate the fusion reaction, not make it a perpetual, break even, energy technology.
Way too early to talk about using AI to advance engineering science for an issue to be addressed in the next 10 years.
The main advantage is that the orbital panel is not in the shadow of Earth half the time
Except then its not servicing the same spot on the planet, because the planet is rotating. You could place the satellite in polar, geosynchronous orbits, and then there's only a finite region to place solar collectors.
The idea is lucrudoiusy expensive however as you point out.
It could be, but that would be more to do with it not being efficient enough to be worth the cost of putting it in space. I was not pointing out that it could be ludicrously expensive. There are many reasons why this may not be feasible (as in practically useful), and would require an engineering design first, but I'm more concerned with its effects as a space based weapon, or unintended decimation of a population center due to temporal loss of control, and the environmental impact of an artificially produced ionizing beam slicing through the ozone 24x7.
If we had free anti gravity it might be possible.
...The Gernsback Continuum? The joke reference escapes me...
You do realize that you cannot have nuclear fuel without increasing its purity? That the difference between processing nuclear fuel and reprocessing nuclear fuel is that you're processing the material a second time?
Its an old scifi trope. Its about collecting solar energy in geosynchronous orbit, where it doesn't get dissipated by an atmosphere, converting it to microwaves, and then beaming the microwaves to a receiving station that can convert the energy to electrical power with little loss. Just ignore the possibility that it can be used as a giant, space MASER weapon.
5. Reopen Yucca Mountain. Fuck Harry Reid. Hell, bury his soon to be dead ass in it.
Develop non-meltdown thorium nuclear power plants, build MSR reactors that can consume "expended" nuclear fuel rods, and develop a rational policy to reprocess nuclear waste, and there won't be a compelling need for a Yucca Mountain repository.
There's zero reason to build current generation nuclear reactors. They generate nuclear waste, inefficient, and pose a continent-wide meltdown threat.
But what we should be doing is plowing investment into prototype next generation nuclear reactors, that by design won't melt down,can consume radioactive material besides pure uranium/plutonium, and can consume expended fuel rods from previous generation nuclear reactors. Those nuclear reactors wouldn't be subject to as expensive nuclear regulation, or need current levels of insurance.
But Sol is a fusion reactor. Earthlings can't generate practical fusion powered reactors yet.
Solar panels are merely utilizing a teensy amount of solar radiation at about a 10% conversion efficiency. That's probably not going to power the world, certainly not at night.
I thought I was just piling on the snark. NASCAR is a ridiculously expensive sport. The teams make money by the companies you mentioned putting logos on the cars. Frankly, I think only an antarctic, jungle, or desert scientist that "really" needed to crush ridiculous numbers in a short period of time, in remote locations, could possibly consider getting a 9lb, power sucking monstrosity. Anyone else would really have to consider themselves f--king stupid.
Icelake is such a new series of Intel parts, only the vanguard CPUs were released (in december(?)). There are modifications to those CPUs soon to be released, including an ultra-power efficient laptop CPU version of the i9-9900. You'd probably want to buy the laptop with an previous generation CPU like an i7-8850H, (which has a "cruising" wattage of 45W, but still 6 cores!), confident that when the Icelake low power CPUs come out, you can upgrade to them. Or even wait for the generation after Icelake, but that's "gambling" that the CPU socket will stay the same. Allowing socketed parts is something of a gimmick to me, but it suddenly makes a Dell laptop intriguing. Frankly, I care more that the GPU can be replaced.
Cassini [wikipedia.org] is the one I remember there being a big kerfuffle about [...]
The virtue of the general public being utterly clueless, and engineers/mission control not screwing up either mission (like the Mars Climate Orbiter). If that "1 in a million" chance happened, it would have killed deep space exploration. Currently not happy to learn the Chinese are shooting up plutonium on their space probes.
No, I'm sure now it was Galileo generating the "stink", but due to the virtue of mainstream media bias and general public handling of science issues (like climate change), it was quickly forgotten when there wasn't a tragic incident...
There came an issue with a space probe launch (I believe it was Galileo), where people became concerned because there was actual kilos of plutonium powering the probe. If the rocket blew up in the atmosphere, it would spew a fine mist of plutonium, which under the wrong set of circumstances, could potentially be responsible for thousands of unpleasant deaths and millions of deaths in particle induced cancers.
My point with this is that its phenomenally dangerous to be firing up kilos of plutonium on explosive rockets to Mars, to install a breeder reactor capable of powering a city (on Mars). .
You could own 99.9% of the shares in a company, but if it's not preferred (voting) stock, you have no say in how the company runs.
While I'm quite happy you understand the subtleties of a Constitutional Republic government, its (mostly) the common stock that has the voting privileges. Preferred stock has no voting privileges. If it makes you feel any better, I've never really understood what makes preferred stock "preferable".
You're presuming the science research limited to a robot that couldn't be repaired or respond in a timely manner to human direction is the only thing of value.
The Earth nations go into thermonuclear war, or a sufficiently large asteroid slams into the Earth, what will that robot science collection will be worth then? There won't be any humans alive to process it into something useful.
> Mars is about the worst place for humans to go to escape their vulnerability.
No, the Moon would be worse. Scientists speculate there could be extractable H2O on the Moon, but lets face it, its much harder to pull off than Mars. No one talks about putting floating colonies on Venus; that's the only place I can speculate would be better than Mars.
> It's probably a waste of time to send people to Mars for purposes other than scientific exploration and research at this time
What other purpose would there be? I believe its worth the effort to advance space habitat engineering to the point you could sustain a small town's worth of human beings indefinitely off the planet. It would vastly enhance the possibility of surviving a cataclysm on Earth, by building such structures (on Earth) if the atmosphere or lack of sunlight made it an unavoidable choice.
> The chances of survival of the human species are almost 100% outside of a two sided nuclear war or a extinction level asteroid impact.
The whole point of the trip, in our era, would be to ensure a human survival probability that could survive ecological destruction of the Earth. 500 breeding pairs would do it.
Yeah, it would be a lot "easier" to put large, sustainable human habitation on Antarctica. Are you ready to go to war over claims to its resources? Should we just leave Antarctic colonization to the biggest military power willing to kill anyone who interferes with its claim? In twenty years, it won't be the US, its more likely to be China.
Slashdot Mirror
while not pointing out that the issues and design problems with manual points, carbs, and other stuff have long since been solved.
Nuclear plants that are in operation today are based on designs from the 1950's. There's no point in building more of those, because they pose a risk of meltdown, and their waste is a region wide hazard (e.g. Fukushima). They can't have "long been solved", when there aren't reactors that have been built and demonstrated yet. But we could advance that technology now (CANDU & MSR) by building the prototypes, and once proven, widely implement the new designs, where needed. The real problem is that nuclear plants are not cost effective compared to alternate energy, and would require long term investment from national governments, until their hazards and regulations are reduced to the point that they become attractive investments by deep pocketed corporations.
Current 3rd generation nuclear plant designs produce too much waste and are dangerous. We may as well advance nuclear engineering for safer plants that produce less (as in reclaimable) waste, and then build those plants. Fusion reactor technology doesn't exist in a design that can be utilized within the next 100 years; you can't plan on it being practical technology in that time frame.
Learn how nuclear reactors work (as in every major component) before expressing an uninformed, irrelevant opinion.
"Spent" nuclear fuel rods are loaded with useful, undecayed radioactive isotopes. They have merely dropped below a threshold percentage where they can be used to produce controlled heat. Separate the useful radioactive isotopes particles (U,Pu) from the metabolized waste, and its reprocessed, useful nuclear material again. Or just feed the spent fuel rods in a molten salt reactor, and at least use some nuclear material, rather than having them sit in a cooling pool.
step 1 is creating an AI sophisticated enough to design better tokakmaks
That would be step 0, as in taking a wrong step. Tokamaks are more about creating an extremely short, sustained fusion reaction; they aren't going to be practical for utilizing fusion energy. Whether controlled or uncontrolled, humanity can produce fusion reactions now. The problem is utilizing the energy produced by a fusion reaction; currently, we can only expend energy to initiate the fusion reaction, not make it a perpetual, break even, energy technology.
Way too early to talk about using AI to advance engineering science for an issue to be addressed in the next 10 years.
The main advantage is that the orbital panel is not in the shadow of Earth half the time
Except then its not servicing the same spot on the planet, because the planet is rotating. You could place the satellite in polar, geosynchronous orbits, and then there's only a finite region to place solar collectors.
The idea is lucrudoiusy expensive however as you point out.
It could be, but that would be more to do with it not being efficient enough to be worth the cost of putting it in space. I was not pointing out that it could be ludicrously expensive. There are many reasons why this may not be feasible (as in practically useful), and would require an engineering design first, but I'm more concerned with its effects as a space based weapon, or unintended decimation of a population center due to temporal loss of control, and the environmental impact of an artificially produced ionizing beam slicing through the ozone 24x7.
If we had free anti gravity it might be possible.
...The Gernsback Continuum? The joke reference escapes me...
You do realize that you cannot have nuclear fuel without increasing its purity? That the difference between processing nuclear fuel and reprocessing nuclear fuel is that you're processing the material a second time?
Its an old scifi trope. Its about collecting solar energy in geosynchronous orbit, where it doesn't get dissipated by an atmosphere, converting it to microwaves, and then beaming the microwaves to a receiving station that can convert the energy to electrical power with little loss. Just ignore the possibility that it can be used as a giant, space MASER weapon.
5. Reopen Yucca Mountain. Fuck Harry Reid. Hell, bury his soon to be dead ass in it.
Develop non-meltdown thorium nuclear power plants, build MSR reactors that can consume "expended" nuclear fuel rods, and develop a rational policy to reprocess nuclear waste, and there won't be a compelling need for a Yucca Mountain repository.
There's zero reason to build current generation nuclear reactors. They generate nuclear waste, inefficient, and pose a continent-wide meltdown threat.
But what we should be doing is plowing investment into prototype next generation nuclear reactors, that by design won't melt down,can consume radioactive material besides pure uranium/plutonium, and can consume expended fuel rods from previous generation nuclear reactors. Those nuclear reactors wouldn't be subject to as expensive nuclear regulation, or need current levels of insurance.
But Sol is a fusion reactor. Earthlings can't generate practical fusion powered reactors yet.
Solar panels are merely utilizing a teensy amount of solar radiation at about a 10% conversion efficiency. That's probably not going to power the world, certainly not at night.
I thought I was just piling on the snark. NASCAR is a ridiculously expensive sport. The teams make money by the companies you mentioned putting logos on the cars. Frankly, I think only an antarctic, jungle, or desert scientist that "really" needed to crush ridiculous numbers in a short period of time, in remote locations, could possibly consider getting a 9lb, power sucking monstrosity. Anyone else would really have to consider themselves f--king stupid.
I'm surprised it isn't sold with Porsche, Lamborghini, or Bugatti logos on it.
I am too. It could really drive down the sale price of the laptop with corporate sponsorship.
When you plug the large one though, you pretty much get a desktop pc in laptop form.
...ah, just realize that cooling is an issue. The laptop CPU will "throttle down" once it's accumulated enough heat.
Icelake is such a new series of Intel parts, only the vanguard CPUs were released (in december(?)). There are modifications to those CPUs soon to be released, including an ultra-power efficient laptop CPU version of the i9-9900. You'd probably want to buy the laptop with an previous generation CPU like an i7-8850H, (which has a "cruising" wattage of 45W, but still 6 cores!), confident that when the Icelake low power CPUs come out, you can upgrade to them. Or even wait for the generation after Icelake, but that's "gambling" that the CPU socket will stay the same. Allowing socketed parts is something of a gimmick to me, but it suddenly makes a Dell laptop intriguing. Frankly, I care more that the GPU can be replaced.
What a pathetic click bait title. Bennu is only hazardous to the inanimate object circling it.
Cassini [wikipedia.org] is the one I remember there being a big kerfuffle about [...]
The virtue of the general public being utterly clueless, and engineers/mission control not screwing up either mission (like the Mars Climate Orbiter). If that "1 in a million" chance happened, it would have killed deep space exploration. Currently not happy to learn the Chinese are shooting up plutonium on their space probes.
No, I'm sure now it was Galileo generating the "stink", but due to the virtue of mainstream media bias and general public handling of science issues (like climate change), it was quickly forgotten when there wasn't a tragic incident...
There came an issue with a space probe launch (I believe it was Galileo), where people became concerned because there was actual kilos of plutonium powering the probe. If the rocket blew up in the atmosphere, it would spew a fine mist of plutonium, which under the wrong set of circumstances, could potentially be responsible for thousands of unpleasant deaths and millions of deaths in particle induced cancers.
My point with this is that its phenomenally dangerous to be firing up kilos of plutonium on explosive rockets to Mars, to install a breeder reactor capable of powering a city (on Mars). .
when blm fools call black cops racist.
Are you suggesting that black cops can't be racist?
Go back to your potato, Russian stooge.
You could own 99.9% of the shares in a company, but if it's not preferred (voting) stock, you have no say in how the company runs.
While I'm quite happy you understand the subtleties of a Constitutional Republic government, its (mostly) the common stock that has the voting privileges. Preferred stock has no voting privileges. If it makes you feel any better, I've never really understood what makes preferred stock "preferable".
You're presuming the science research limited to a robot that couldn't be repaired or respond in a timely manner to human direction is the only thing of value.
The Earth nations go into thermonuclear war, or a sufficiently large asteroid slams into the Earth, what will that robot science collection will be worth then? There won't be any humans alive to process it into something useful.
You could buy your wife 200 robotic vibrators, but what's the point if you don't get to "go there yourself"?
Perhaps that would make his wife happier?
> Mars is about the worst place for humans to go to escape their vulnerability.
No, the Moon would be worse. Scientists speculate there could be extractable H2O on the Moon, but lets face it, its much harder to pull off than Mars. No one talks about putting floating colonies on Venus; that's the only place I can speculate would be better than Mars.
> It's probably a waste of time to send people to Mars for purposes other than scientific exploration and research at this time
What other purpose would there be? I believe its worth the effort to advance space habitat engineering to the point you could sustain a small town's worth of human beings indefinitely off the planet. It would vastly enhance the possibility of surviving a cataclysm on Earth, by building such structures (on Earth) if the atmosphere or lack of sunlight made it an unavoidable choice.
> The chances of survival of the human species are almost 100% outside of a two sided nuclear war or a extinction level asteroid impact.
The whole point of the trip, in our era, would be to ensure a human survival probability that could survive ecological destruction of the Earth. 500 breeding pairs would do it.
> A lot worse than Antarctica.
Yeah, it would be a lot "easier" to put large, sustainable human habitation on Antarctica. Are you ready to go to war over claims to its resources? Should we just leave Antarctic colonization to the biggest military power willing to kill anyone who interferes with its claim? In twenty years, it won't be the US, its more likely to be China.