Call me back when they've broken mu-1 with a pure helicopter.
Would you consider aircraft like the CH-47 Chinook or the Ka-50 "Black Shark" to be pure helicopters? A machine with counter-rotating blades would be immune to mu-1 issues, wouldn't it?
Radiothermal Generators will solve the power problem. You don't need to worry about latency, because that's only an issue in two way communication. Distance is only an issue due to power limitations (which we've already dealt with). That only leaves weight and bandwidth. Bandwidth issues can be eliminated by running multiple transmitters (you've got the power). Weight isn't an issue either. It's space. Things are weightless in space.
So basically, it all boils down to a question of power, the answer to which is RTGs.
CRTC allows my cable company to broadcast the golf channel, the gay channel, the porn channel, the home shopping network, but not the NASA channel. And the government wonders why the brain drain to the States. Sheesh.
Yes, let's see... we'll need 5.1 × 10^18 kg of air, 1.4 x 10^21 kg of water (of various salinity), 6 x 10^24 kg of various minerals, soils, and rocks. Next we'll need algae, fungi, bacteria, plankton, krill, ferns, apple trees, orange trees, lima beans, green beans, black eyed peas, garbonzo beans, lentis, green peppers, red peppers, milkweed, monarch butterflies, mosquitos, ruby throated humming birds, blue whales, humpback whales, killer whales, bottle nose dolphins, harbour seals, holstein cows, jersey cows, albino goats, dormice, starlings, starfish, aardvarks, kangaroos, wallabies, koala bears, polar bears, sturgeon, blue jays, willow trees, black widow spiders, scorpions, pumas, grey wolves, mongooses, bengal tigers, bamboo, soy beans, wheat, barley, oats, tobacco, poplars, beavers, geckos, skinks, copperheads, rattlesnakes, penguins, puffins, walruses, rhinoserouses, hippopotamusses, octopuses, shrikes, walleye, elms, potatoes, tomatoes, german sheppards, crickets, bluefish, clams, oysters, rattan, rice, zebras, am I making my point yet?, raccoons, eagles, hawks, tuna, great white sharks, head lice, spitting cobras, pufferfish, pumpkins, honeydew mellons, grapes, chocolate point siamese, love birds, bluegill, chickens, kelp, cuttlefish, cocoa, ragweed, poppies, sesame, sage, tumbleweed, sequoia, coral snakes, goldfish, hornets, tetras, squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, palm trees, sugar cane, raspberries, peach trees, pigs, coral, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, peregrine falcons, viruses, pirhannna, skunks, flies, grass, cotton, jellyfish, sardines, guppies, marlin, dung beetles, otters, ferrets, barn swallows, undiscovered species #14, kale, mulberries, balsa, shetland ponies, poison dart frogs, grizzly bears, impala, chetahs, coyotes, onions, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, tulips, chrysanthemums, rhubarb, seagulls, albatross, budgies, mahogany, wildebeasts, bats, green aligators, long necked geese, humpty backed camels, chimpanzees, cats, rats, elephants, ladybugs, lemurs, warthogs, meercats, giraffes, and hundreds of thousands of others that I've missed.
In other words, it's only a "solved problem" if you're God, Q, or Magrathean. We humans are going to have to figure out what's needed, what isn't. This research is where all the money is going to wind up going.
As far as launch costs are concerned, current estimated launch costs are:
WE did not set up the Earth's biosphere, and it is a LONG way between a small aquarium with a simple food chain balance, and a system with multi-generational stability with enough diversity to avoid inbreeding.
True, my numbers were not based on reason, only a vague guess. However, a little bit of googling did turn up some interesting numbers. NASA estimates that it will take 10 tonnes of supplies/structure per person to maintain an off-world colony. For biodiversity purposes you need 10,000 people. At a cheap $1000/kg launch cost, that is a hundred billion dollars just to get the people and raw materials into orbit. You haven't built any of the infrastructure needed to transfer the materials to the launch site(s). You haven't built the launch vehicles. You haven't tested in orbit construction or built/launched the robots needed to do it. On top all that, you still need to research how to put together a self sustaining biosphere.
Bottom line, it just ain't gonna happen unless we have irrefutable proof that the Earth is going to be destroyed, and quite probably not even then.
There will never be another dinosaur killer. The dinosaurs are all dead already. [grin]
The last time Earth got struck, there were plenty of large life forms kicking around.
We do not even have the capability of creating a self sustaining biosphere on this planet. What makes you think we could do it somewhere else?
Since we can't build a self sustaining biosphere, anything we do build will be dependant on supplies from Earth. It will therefore be just as vulnerable as Earth itself
Even if we were capable, setting up a single colony would cost trillions, if not quadrillions of dollars.
In short, we'd be much better off building a handful of underground and/or underwater bunkers. Besides, if you are building an off-world colony, as a humanity bank, then you'd be better off not building it on a moon or a planet, but in orbit (say L5). That way, if an asteroid threatens the colony, it can be moved out of the way. Otherwise, you're just increasing the odds of being struck.
So, let me get this straight. The Soviet Union can launch a submarine based ICBM, and WE CAN'T TRACK IT???? Whatever happened to NORAD? What about the DEW line and Pine Tree line? Is Cheyenne mountain just a TV set nowadays? Man! I want my tax money back.
Why bother poisoning the water? They could just blow up the pumps, or the outlet pipes. The city would be without water for days. Or if you're dead set on poison, just dump all the fluorine or chlorine that's already in the plant into the water.
ALL spacecraft, and launch vehicles, are the result of private enterprise. NASA is a CONTRACTOR. Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, TRW, Rockwell, Grumman,General Dynamics/Convair, SPAR Aerospace, and a whole host of other companies are what made space travel possible. NASA merely controls the purse-strings. The SA in NASA stands for Space Administration.
Just because vinyl records occasionally get nailed to a wall or ceiling in 50s style diners, doesn't mean that they have aesthetic value... unless you're talking about the one thing we're going to lose out on, the one thing that will not convert to CD and MP3s: album art.
There have been cases where they have tracked down the perps based on the pictures.
Right or wrong, current legislation says that BOTH the maker and the consumer are criminals. It's like drugs that way.
The problem is that you can't shut down the kiddie porn producers until you know where to find them. In order to do that, you have to prune away their consumers, working up the distribution chain until you get them.
I think that if, while searching under the authority of a warrant for X, that if they find evidence of crime Y, that they can go ahead and arrest. If Officer Friendly has a warrant to search your house for missing jewelry, he's not going to ignore the crack lab or the printing press surrounded by stacks of twenties.
Looks like potatos need light as well. Just because the root grows underground doesn't mean the plant as a whole doesn't need light.
Re:I'm all for science/technology/astronomy but...
on
Back to Moon in 2015?
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· Score: 1
The "great quantities of Helium 3" will take a great quantity of infrastructure to gather and process. Even assuming we had some sort of reactor that could make use of the He3, it would be far more expensive to use lunar fuel than, say, processing seawater.
If it existed, the space elevator would take you to Earth orbit. From there, a few slingshot orbits would get you to the moon. The major drawback to this approach, is that the space elevator doesn't exist, and I don't expect one in my lifetime, or yours.
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Many blind people can type just fine.
Call me back when they've broken mu-1 with a pure helicopter.
Would you consider aircraft like the CH-47 Chinook or the Ka-50 "Black Shark" to be pure helicopters? A machine with counter-rotating blades would be immune to mu-1 issues, wouldn't it?
Oops, sorry. I just re-read your post and your meaning finally penetrated my thick skull. Duh! Please disregard my earlier comment.
I think you missed the term "fixed wing" in the phrase Even the worst fixed-wing hangar queen
Kittens say mu.
Especially Greek kittens.
Radiothermal Generators will solve the power problem. You don't need to worry about latency, because that's only an issue in two way communication. Distance is only an issue due to power limitations (which we've already dealt with). That only leaves weight and bandwidth. Bandwidth issues can be eliminated by running multiple transmitters (you've got the power). Weight isn't an issue either. It's space. Things are weightless in space.
So basically, it all boils down to a question of power, the answer to which is RTGs.
CRTC allows my cable company to broadcast the golf channel, the gay channel, the porn channel, the home shopping network, but not the NASA channel. And the government wonders why the brain drain to the States. Sheesh.
Yes, let's see... we'll need 5.1 × 10^18 kg of air, 1.4 x 10^21 kg of water (of various salinity), 6 x 10^24 kg of various minerals, soils, and rocks. Next we'll need algae, fungi, bacteria, plankton, krill, ferns, apple trees, orange trees, lima beans, green beans, black eyed peas, garbonzo beans, lentis, green peppers, red peppers, milkweed, monarch butterflies, mosquitos, ruby throated humming birds, blue whales, humpback whales, killer whales, bottle nose dolphins, harbour seals, holstein cows, jersey cows, albino goats, dormice, starlings, starfish, aardvarks, kangaroos, wallabies, koala bears, polar bears, sturgeon, blue jays, willow trees, black widow spiders, scorpions, pumas, grey wolves, mongooses, bengal tigers, bamboo, soy beans, wheat, barley, oats, tobacco, poplars, beavers, geckos, skinks, copperheads, rattlesnakes, penguins, puffins, walruses, rhinoserouses, hippopotamusses, octopuses, shrikes, walleye, elms, potatoes, tomatoes, german sheppards, crickets, bluefish, clams, oysters, rattan, rice, zebras, am I making my point yet?, raccoons, eagles, hawks, tuna, great white sharks, head lice, spitting cobras, pufferfish, pumpkins, honeydew mellons, grapes, chocolate point siamese, love birds, bluegill, chickens, kelp, cuttlefish, cocoa, ragweed, poppies, sesame, sage, tumbleweed, sequoia, coral snakes, goldfish, hornets, tetras, squirrels, chipmunks, ducks, palm trees, sugar cane, raspberries, peach trees, pigs, coral, sea urchins, sea cucumbers, peregrine falcons, viruses, pirhannna, skunks, flies, grass, cotton, jellyfish, sardines, guppies, marlin, dung beetles, otters, ferrets, barn swallows, undiscovered species #14, kale, mulberries, balsa, shetland ponies, poison dart frogs, grizzly bears, impala, chetahs, coyotes, onions, parsley, sage, rosemary, thyme, tulips, chrysanthemums, rhubarb, seagulls, albatross, budgies, mahogany, wildebeasts, bats, green aligators, long necked geese, humpty backed camels, chimpanzees, cats, rats, elephants, ladybugs, lemurs, warthogs, meercats, giraffes, and hundreds of thousands of others that I've missed.
In other words, it's only a "solved problem" if you're God, Q, or Magrathean. We humans are going to have to figure out what's needed, what isn't. This research is where all the money is going to wind up going.
As far as launch costs are concerned, current estimated launch costs are:
WE did not set up the Earth's biosphere, and it is a LONG way between a small aquarium with a simple food chain balance, and a system with multi-generational stability with enough diversity to avoid inbreeding.
True, my numbers were not based on reason, only a vague guess. However, a little bit of googling did turn up some interesting numbers. NASA estimates that it will take 10 tonnes of supplies/structure per person to maintain an off-world colony. For biodiversity purposes you need 10,000 people. At a cheap $1000/kg launch cost, that is a hundred billion dollars just to get the people and raw materials into orbit. You haven't built any of the infrastructure needed to transfer the materials to the launch site(s). You haven't built the launch vehicles. You haven't tested in orbit construction or built/launched the robots needed to do it. On top all that, you still need to research how to put together a self sustaining biosphere.
Bottom line, it just ain't gonna happen unless we have irrefutable proof that the Earth is going to be destroyed, and quite probably not even then.
- There will never be another dinosaur killer. The dinosaurs are all dead already. [grin]
- The last time Earth got struck, there were plenty of large life forms kicking around.
- We do not even have the capability of creating a self sustaining biosphere on this planet. What makes you think we could do it somewhere else?
- Since we can't build a self sustaining biosphere, anything we do build will be dependant on supplies from Earth. It will therefore be just as vulnerable as Earth itself
- Even if we were capable, setting up a single colony would cost trillions, if not quadrillions of dollars.
In short, we'd be much better off building a handful of underground and/or underwater bunkers. Besides, if you are building an off-world colony, as a humanity bank, then you'd be better off not building it on a moon or a planet, but in orbit (say L5). That way, if an asteroid threatens the colony, it can be moved out of the way. Otherwise, you're just increasing the odds of being struck.So, let me get this straight. The Soviet Union can launch a submarine based ICBM, and WE CAN'T TRACK IT???? Whatever happened to NORAD? What about the DEW line and Pine Tree line? Is Cheyenne mountain just a TV set nowadays? Man! I want my tax money back.
Why bother poisoning the water? They could just blow up the pumps, or the outlet pipes. The city would be without water for days. Or if you're dead set on poison, just dump all the fluorine or chlorine that's already in the plant into the water.
ALL spacecraft, and launch vehicles, are the result of private enterprise. NASA is a CONTRACTOR. Boeing, McDonnell-Douglas, TRW, Rockwell, Grumman,General Dynamics/Convair, SPAR Aerospace, and a whole host of other companies are what made space travel possible. NASA merely controls the purse-strings. The SA in NASA stands for Space Administration.
As far as asteroids, you could anchor the equipment down using some sort of piton gun, or by just strapping it to the asteroid with some long rope.
Just because vinyl records occasionally get nailed to a wall or ceiling in 50s style diners, doesn't mean that they have aesthetic value... unless you're talking about the one thing we're going to lose out on, the one thing that will not convert to CD and MP3s: album art.
Die Hard is one of my brother's favorite Christmas specials.
A bit more reserved?!?! What about Benny Hill!
Why is the Submit button SO close to the Preview button? :(
Why does the submit button even exist before you've clicked on the preview button?
There have been cases where they have tracked down the perps based on the pictures.
Right or wrong, current legislation says that BOTH the maker and the consumer are criminals. It's like drugs that way.
The problem is that you can't shut down the kiddie porn producers until you know where to find them. In order to do that, you have to prune away their consumers, working up the distribution chain until you get them.
I think that if, while searching under the authority of a warrant for X, that if they find evidence of crime Y, that they can go ahead and arrest. If Officer Friendly has a warrant to search your house for missing jewelry, he's not going to ignore the crack lab or the printing press surrounded by stacks of twenties.
Luke worked on his uncle's moisture farm. He did not have the mindset of a farmer, according to his aunt.
Looks like potatos need light as well. Just because the root grows underground doesn't mean the plant as a whole doesn't need light.
The "great quantities of Helium 3" will take a great quantity of infrastructure to gather and process. Even assuming we had some sort of reactor that could make use of the He3, it would be far more expensive to use lunar fuel than, say, processing seawater.
No thanks. We have a much better chance of survival here.
If it existed, the space elevator would take you to Earth orbit. From there, a few slingshot orbits would get you to the moon. The major drawback to this approach, is that the space elevator doesn't exist, and I don't expect one in my lifetime, or yours.