Did you read and understand the article? A couple good rain storms washed the SURFICIAL contaminants in those cities into the sea.
This process is being proposed for ground watter in which U is dissolved. It is, thus, mobile and can impact surface water and drinking water wells. The idea is to immobilize what is currently migrating downgradient.
Got that right. As long as the waste stream is managed well, it is much cleaner. Coal pumps enormous amounts of SO4 and NO3 into the air as acid precipitation and also offers plenty mercury and other hazardous metals.
Unfortunately, it is also more expensive. Maintaining and disposing of that waste stream is tough, especially under the regulatory system. Even if there were some deregulation, it would not be cheap to manage the by-products.
And don't forget: more Americans have died in Ted Kennedy's car than in radiation-related commercial nuclear energy generation accidents.
It sounds like the owners of existing nuclear plants are planning to refurbish them rather than decommission. It appears it will be cheaper to upgrade ond operate the assets rather than maintain them as relics for which there is no disposal alternative.
OK, enough of the silly "Microbes will take over" and Frankenfood-inspired comments.
Having read the article, it seems like a good way to precipitate soluble U ions as U oxides, or complex uranyl compounds. It appears to offer a way to mitigate impacts upon human health and the environment by precipitating U ions traveling in ground water so they do not discharge to surface water or pumped by potable wells.
Bioremediation is nothing new. It works well with chlorinated solvents (PCE and TCE), especially in reduced, iron-rich ground water. The caveat for those compounds is, however, that they break down only so far, often leaving vinyl chloride -- a demonstrated carcinogen -- as the final step before there is not enough energy for them to survive by reductive dehalogenation. Basically, the microbes die becuase they do not have a source of "food."
The same goes for aerobic microbes, like these appear to be; they combine dissolved metals with oxygen to precipitate them. That gets even more expensive, because you have to maintain the proper redox level by introducing O2 with hydrogen peroxide or ozone. It's expensive and prone to mechanical failure or the vagaries of the subsurface.
These microbes may die out once their source of "food" depletes. However, the by-products should be assessed before they try to use this in a live environment, because sometimes the cure can be worse than the problem. There is also no economic analysis for this research, but it is likely way to early to determine how much it would cost to implement. It may be more reliable and cheaper to precipitate dissolved U by simply pumping a lot of oxygen into the ground water.
Your point is well taken. In fact, Congress passed the Privacy Act of 1974 in an attempt to address the issue:
http://www.epic.org/privacy/ssn/testimony_0500.h tm l
It is up to the US Congress to recognize and restrict the use of the SSN as a Global Identifier, but the financial industry has a vested interest as their data is all keyed to it.
As far as I am concerned, I think posting public servant's SSN's is extreme, but they have ignored the issue for almost 30 years. Maybe a little civil disobedience is in order.
Please mod this comment up! Anyone who understands crystallography and its negative implications for maintaining reference "standards" needs to be read.
It seems they should just reference the kilogram to a standard, such as x,xxx,xxx,xxx Si (28 isotope) atoms. This would eliminate the complications trying to build a standard, duplicate it and correct for earth's gravitational variations at the time and place of checking physical reference mass (not weight, to which the article alluded). Keep in mind the kilogram is a measure of mass, and not weight. That is why maintaining a physical standard requires correcting for gravity at the location's, time, elevation, tide, (add geophysical conditions, ad nauseum) of measurement.
If we are maintaing a physical chunk of alloy as the standard, it's time to decide on a more precise measurement, like we did with the meter long ago.
Knowing how enemies think and operate is the best defence against them. Having people trained to do so at the university level is in software security's best interest.
Cheese and crackers, have you read the balance sheet lately? Verizon is up to its eyes in debt and its income won't cover financing costs, let alone the principal.
From the MCI / Worldcom adventure, they realize that the courts are going to let telecoms go into bankruptcy and wipe out debt. Since all of that investment in the 1990's is only returning 2.5% -- not enough to cover the financing -- they may as well build all they can in new and potentially profitable technology (wireless) and grab broadband market share (cheap DSL) before declaring bankruptcy.
They will continue to build infrastructure as long as there are creditors foolish enough to lend them money.
Earthquakes don't happen very often and, for a selected location, can only be predicted statistically. For instance, the mean magnitude 5 recurrence interval is x years, magnitude 6 is y years and magnitude 7 is z years. Unfortunately, accurate records are not long enough in CA to make accurate frequency predictions.
Thus, geologists have to look at core and petroleum industry seismic profiling data to look for faults and radiometric age data along displacements. These serve as estimates for the dates and magnitudes of earthquakes before the historic seismic record.
The point of the studies is not to predict the time a specific fault will fail, but to generate an overall picture of how often earthquakes occur in a region to make clarify its seismic risk.
It's nothing new. We can calculate the number of days in a year based upon daily and yearly structures in coral and stromatolites. Since the late Precambrian (about 600 million years ago), the earth's rotation has slowed from a rate of 424 days per year to the current 365.
For a fun look at paleo-calendars:
http://www.hevanet.com/kort/PALEOZOC.HTM
I like the "Penguins evolve and take over the world" extrapolation.
This article demanding a troll because/.'ers don't understand mineral industries is becoming as challenging as dynamiting fish in a barrel.
I love totally unsubstantiated comments about the concentration of gold and PGEs in asteroids. If this clown had ever read chemical analyses of meteorites, then the absurdity would be perfectly clear. Platinum and gold are trace elements in all but the most selective of samples; only those that pick a minute sulfide grain in a large matrix show any significant concentration of gold or PGEs.
I love the comments about the rod mill. Obviously someone who has nary a clue about how one works. This is great. Spring-loaded rod mill. Freaking spectacular!
Oh yeah, we are going to centrifuge solids. Get a clue, that works with fluids (liquids and gasses).
How can you convince someone who thinks they have an engineering background based upon watching too much deeply deluded TV pseudo-science.
Maybe we will spend a few trillion to compete with the "Chinese Moon Mining Technology Menace" after all.
Once again, another/.'er who comments without having a clue about the mineral industries.
Electrostaic speration? What exactly is that? There IS magentic seperation of ore minerals like magnetite, ilmentite and franklinite. But those are iron, manganese and titanium ores and not particularly valuable; well, franklinite is also a zinc ore, but is not likely to be found outside of two mined-out deposits in northern New Jersey.
What are you talking about? Are we going to use some kind of uniquely seperable residual charge on ecnomic minerals to seperate them from gangue? Perhaps piezoelectric properties? Is there some kind of physical property we do not yet understand and exploit after thousands of years of mining?
Please explain this to me. I'd love to hear how is going to be used to process ore minerals. Please try to be more substantial than a dot-commer who will turn "intellectual content" into profit.
Sheesh, you don't understand why I am moved to troll certain topics, do ya.
Well considered approach. Actually some intriguing thoughts.
However, I'd leave the economics of shipping iron and nickel from earth vs extracting it in space to the metallurgists, the people who know how to get metals out of ores. It's hard to say which would be more economical, transportation (launch) costs from earth or mining, processing, extraction and transportation costs on an asteroid. Refining and alloying are other processes that need to be considered.
This all presupposes we are actually established in space with a livable platform and the ability to sustain it. As far as the Chinese mining the moon, in the time frames and context discussed in the article, they plan to bring something back.
Yes, some asteroids are primarily metallic. Unfortunately, they are nickel and iron, which are not particularly valuable commodities here on earth. Iron is very common and easily mined while nickel is not in demand and, hence, valuable enough for the existing deposits like Sudbury, Ontario to operate profitably. American coinage is mostly copper with nickel alloyed for color and durability.
I love seeing/.'ers with no background in the mineral industries discussing pie-in-the-sky mining. And yes, I have a degree in Geological Engineering so I know a bit about mineral resources. I've already posted these comments about asteroids, and they apply to the moon also. Granted, the moon at least has appreciable gravity, but it is 1/6th of earth's, so the comments still apply.
Extraterrestrial mining will not be economical under foreseeable conditions. Mineral resources require extensive treatment to recover anything of value. First, you have to extract the ore. For a pricy end-product, this means extracting large volumes of ore. For instance, we mine gold that goes 0.04 onces per ton. Second, you have to crush it, requiring energy and large mechanical equipment. Ever seen a rod mill? Oh yeah, the rods rely upon weight -- gravity -- to have the force to crush rock. Third, you have to concentrate the valuable minerals. For any kind of high value/weight product, this almost certainly requires a large volume of liquid water. Or you could set up a shaker table and hope gravity seperation is effective. You also need a large plant for the equipment. Fourth, and finally, you have to extract the product. This typically requires more water and plenty of energy. Oh yes, and more equipment. All of this takes a staff of people who do little things that people like to do; you know, eat, drink, breathe...
Mining is, for the most part, a barely profitable industry right here on earth. The moon's exposed rocks are primarily mafic, so you are not going to find a high-grade gold. You might find some nickel, copper, chromium or platinum as traces, but not what we know as ore on earth. The moon also lacks active geology, which is responsible for most of the concentration processes that for economic ore on earth.
However, maybe the Chinese want to start another space race so we waste lots of money keeping "technologically ahead" of a perceived threat. From reading some of these extraterrestrial mining posts, we may be audacious (read arrogant and stupid) enough to try.
Did you bother to read the NASA and USAF links posted in the original thread?
THIS IS AN OLD PROBLEM!!!!
NASA has known that the amount of insulation falling of the redesigned external tank has been a problem since it first launched. NASA has known that the amount of heat shield damage increased enormously.
I do not have any quantitative analysis about the type of damage done, but this issue was important enough for them to outsource an analysis of the materials to the USAF and has fielded two different external camera systems to monitor the insulation failures.
I would like to see an analysis comparing the tile repairs required before and after the new external tank was fielded. If this has been a significant problem for five years, perhaps there should be an investigation into why the best and brightest did not correct it.
First, this is a tragedy for the astronauts and their families. I extend condolances to all who have been affected.
However, this problem is nothing new. The insulation material on the external fuel tanks was changed in 1997 and immediately caused problems. Lockheed-Martin was recently contracted to provide an external camera to monitor insulation loss. I have not found any documentation of the insulation problems from late 1997 until the cameras were installed.
NASA has failed to implement a manned project since the existing Space Shuttle. Its about time the taxpayers (and their representatives in Congress) take a critical look at what we get from the funding. If there have been six failures and two projects that are over budget in 20 years, we need to take a very close look at how this agency is held accountable.
ISS is a failure. It requires three people to maintain little more than life support. When was the last time ISS did any science? Can't think of a good answer? Well, that's because it never has and never will. ISS is Spam in a Can.
Not that it's all been a failure. They have done well with un-manned projects. The Mars and Solar probes have collected quality information.
However, NASA has had a goal to develop a new manned launch platform for 20 years, but we've allowed them to fail without accountability. They have failed privately with this task and publicly with ISS.
It's time to look at where the money is getting flushed and where it works.
Do sales taxes fund sales? Do income taxes fund income? Do property taxes fund property?
Governments tax because they need income to support services. Ignoring the arguments about how valid or necessary those services are, they are supported by a tax structure to provide income. It is not practical to generate income with dedicated taxes for each service.
Hence, tax revenue may be placed into one big pot of money to support services as the legislative branch deems appropriate to apportion it.
Those who do not understand civics are condemned to comment ignorantly upon it.
You hit the nail on the head. We have a serious malpractice insurance issue where I live because juries award lottery judgements to those who win malpractice suits. And that applies to licensed physicians who are supposed to know what they are doing.
Are airlines going to staff someone who is a competent EMT? I doubt it. There is a lot of training and continuing education, not to mention experience, required to be an EMT. That is about the minimum level of competence acceptable in court to be involved in these kinds of diagnoses.
I doubt it would even get into a court room. The ambulance-chasing lawyers will be on the first mistake faster than you can say "huge out-of-court settlement."
Remeber the pseudoscience they used to "prove" a Martian meterioite had evidence of extraterrestrial life? Lesson lerned: do not release the sample for independent verification of research.
Maybe someone "flew" before the Wright Brothers, but they never recorded their results, much less reproduced them.
Not only did the Wright's reproduce their results, they modeled their experiments in wind tunnels and engineered their aircraft. Thus, they had data about the lift, weight and propulsion they planned to test.
With that data and their experiments, they improved upon their results. In the process, they formed a company that had a viable -- if ultimately unsucessful -- business model. Their business failure was only an inability to adapt to businesses that were more adept at improving upon their proven technology. These businesses were global in aspect; Curtis, Bleriot's monoplane Fokker, etc.
This debate has been covered for many years; by the standard of controlled, reproducable results, the Wrights were the first. We went through much of the same debate during the 75th anniversary, but those who forget history are condemned to relive it.
Depends upon the type of radiation source and the detector in use. Alpha, beta and gamma radiation are different animals and emitted by radioisotopes in different amounts.
Alpha particles are helium nucleii without electrons; beta particles are electrons; gamma radiation is electromagnetic radiation similar to X-Rays. Alpha and beta radiation are mostly stopped by inches to feet of air; gamma is more or less unaffected. Harmful doses are more complicated to assess, but basically, alpha and beta emitters are typically harmful when they get into your body and emit particles right next to cells, where they cause ionizing damage. Inserting alpha and beta emitters within a tumor is, essentially, what one form of radiotherapy does; put deadly ionizing radiation into a tumor to kill it. Radium has been an effective treatment for breast cancer (one of the first reasonably successful ones) since the 1920's.
Gamma radiation, although it passes through many feet of air and well into tissue, is not as damaging because it is not ionizing. However, high exposures have significant impacts. Gamma will pass through metals more or less unaffected.
The detectors are likely designed to pick up gamma radiation characteristic of enriched fissionable materials, because gamma passes through several feet of air. However, certain types of radiotheraputic isotopes (e.g. radium) also emit a heck of a lot of gamma.
Thus, the dilema of false positives for radiotherapy patients. If you want to pick up enriched radioisotopes, you will pick up gamma from legitimate theraputic uses. We should provide radiotherapy patients with a hospital-issued ID so they do not have to suffer through security checks. It would not be much more difficult than issuing a driver's license.
When you drill through a solid material, you generate "cuttings." Since these cuttingshave voids, their volume is greater than the orginal solid material and must be removed from the bore hole. That's why burying rodents have mounds at the entrance to their holes.
How is a robotic inchworm going to remove the cuttings? Will it drag them back out of the hole to the surface? I'm sure that won't be very efficient at depths of several kilometers, because for each few inches it drills, it has to back out to the surface to dispose of the cuttings. That is why robots are not practical for drilling.
This is just another attempt by NASA to propose an open-ended project with no reasonably obtainable goal. Translation: assured funding.
NASA learned what happens when you achieve a goal. Land men on the moon and then everyone gets laid off. So they came up with the space shuttle with the goal of a cheap, re-usable launch vehicle. It is not as cost-effective as single-use rockets. The ISS is poorly designed and does little research because the inmates spend most of the time fixing the computers. But it will be there for years.
Then they foist some bad science on us claiming a Martian meterorite showed evidence of life. Ooops! It was terrestrail contamination and quickly proven so once subjected to independant verification.
Now they are proposing mining? My background is geological engineering so I know a little bit about mineral resources. Extraterrestrial mining will not be economical under foreseeable conditions. Mineral resources require extensive treatment to recover anything of value.
First, you have to extract the ore. For a pricy end-product, this means extracting large volumes of ore. For instance, we mine gold that goes 0.04 onces per ton. Second, you have to crush it, requiring energy and large mechanical equipment. Ever seen a rod mill? Oh yeah, the rods rely upon weight -- gravity -- to have the force to crush rock. Third, you have to concentrate the valuable minerals. For any kind of high value/weight product, this almost certainly requires a large volume of liquid water. Or you could set up a shaker table and hope gravity seperation is effective. You also need a large plant for the equipment. Fourth, and finally, you have to extract the product. This typically requires more water and plenty of energy. Oh yes, and more equipment. All of this takes a staff of people who do little things that people like to do; you know, eat, drink, breathe...
Mining is, for the most part, a barely profitable industry right here on earth. Now the engineers who brought us ISS are proposing to mine extraterrestrial ores? This is not going to happen. But it is another reason to give NASA money to map the solar system in detail we will not use for any practical purpose.
But mining is more believable as a practical use of billions of dollars than the search for extraterrestrial life.
Slashdot Mirror
Did you read and understand the article? A couple good rain storms washed the SURFICIAL contaminants in those cities into the sea.
This process is being proposed for ground watter in which U is dissolved. It is, thus, mobile and can impact surface water and drinking water wells. The idea is to immobilize what is currently migrating downgradient.
RTFA
Got that right. As long as the waste stream is managed well, it is much cleaner. Coal pumps enormous amounts of SO4 and NO3 into the air as acid precipitation and also offers plenty mercury and other hazardous metals. Unfortunately, it is also more expensive. Maintaining and disposing of that waste stream is tough, especially under the regulatory system. Even if there were some deregulation, it would not be cheap to manage the by-products. And don't forget: more Americans have died in Ted Kennedy's car than in radiation-related commercial nuclear energy generation accidents. It sounds like the owners of existing nuclear plants are planning to refurbish them rather than decommission. It appears it will be cheaper to upgrade ond operate the assets rather than maintain them as relics for which there is no disposal alternative.
OK, enough of the silly "Microbes will take over" and Frankenfood-inspired comments.
Having read the article, it seems like a good way to precipitate soluble U ions as U oxides, or complex uranyl compounds. It appears to offer a way to mitigate impacts upon human health and the environment by precipitating U ions traveling in ground water so they do not discharge to surface water or pumped by potable wells.
Bioremediation is nothing new. It works well with chlorinated solvents (PCE and TCE), especially in reduced, iron-rich ground water. The caveat for those compounds is, however, that they break down only so far, often leaving vinyl chloride -- a demonstrated carcinogen -- as the final step before there is not enough energy for them to survive by reductive dehalogenation. Basically, the microbes die becuase they do not have a source of "food."
The same goes for aerobic microbes, like these appear to be; they combine dissolved metals with oxygen to precipitate them. That gets even more expensive, because you have to maintain the proper redox level by introducing O2 with hydrogen peroxide or ozone. It's expensive and prone to mechanical failure or the vagaries of the subsurface.
These microbes may die out once their source of "food" depletes. However, the by-products should be assessed before they try to use this in a live environment, because sometimes the cure can be worse than the problem. There is also no economic analysis for this research, but it is likely way to early to determine how much it would cost to implement. It may be more reliable and cheaper to precipitate dissolved U by simply pumping a lot of oxygen into the ground water.
Your point is well taken. In fact, Congress passed the Privacy Act of 1974 in an attempt to address the issue:
h tm l
http://www.epic.org/privacy/ssn/testimony_0500.
It is up to the US Congress to recognize and restrict the use of the SSN as a Global Identifier, but the financial industry has a vested interest as their data is all keyed to it.
As far as I am concerned, I think posting public servant's SSN's is extreme, but they have ignored the issue for almost 30 years. Maybe a little civil disobedience is in order.
Please mod this comment up! Anyone who understands crystallography and its negative implications for maintaining reference "standards" needs to be read.
It seems they should just reference the kilogram to a standard, such as x,xxx,xxx,xxx Si (28 isotope) atoms. This would eliminate the complications trying to build a standard, duplicate it and correct for earth's gravitational variations at the time and place of checking physical reference mass (not weight, to which the article alluded). Keep in mind the kilogram is a measure of mass, and not weight. That is why maintaining a physical standard requires correcting for gravity at the location's, time, elevation, tide, (add geophysical conditions, ad nauseum) of measurement.
If we are maintaing a physical chunk of alloy as the standard, it's time to decide on a more precise measurement, like we did with the meter long ago.
I read your book!
Knowing how enemies think and operate is the best defence against them. Having people trained to do so at the university level is in software security's best interest.
Cheese and crackers, have you read the balance sheet lately? Verizon is up to its eyes in debt and its income won't cover financing costs, let alone the principal.
From the MCI / Worldcom adventure, they realize that the courts are going to let telecoms go into bankruptcy and wipe out debt. Since all of that investment in the 1990's is only returning 2.5% -- not enough to cover the financing -- they may as well build all they can in new and potentially profitable technology (wireless) and grab broadband market share (cheap DSL) before declaring bankruptcy.
They will continue to build infrastructure as long as there are creditors foolish enough to lend them money.
Yes and no.
Earthquakes don't happen very often and, for a selected location, can only be predicted statistically. For instance, the mean magnitude 5 recurrence interval is x years, magnitude 6 is y years and magnitude 7 is z years. Unfortunately, accurate records are not long enough in CA to make accurate frequency predictions.
Thus, geologists have to look at core and petroleum industry seismic profiling data to look for faults and radiometric age data along displacements. These serve as estimates for the dates and magnitudes of earthquakes before the historic seismic record.
The point of the studies is not to predict the time a specific fault will fail, but to generate an overall picture of how often earthquakes occur in a region to make clarify its seismic risk.
It's nothing new. We can calculate the number of days in a year based upon daily and yearly structures in coral and stromatolites. Since the late Precambrian (about 600 million years ago), the earth's rotation has slowed from a rate of 424 days per year to the current 365.
For a fun look at paleo-calendars:
http://www.hevanet.com/kort/PALEOZOC.HTM
I like the "Penguins evolve and take over the world" extrapolation.
This article demanding a troll because /.'ers don't understand mineral industries is becoming as challenging as dynamiting fish in a barrel.
I love totally unsubstantiated comments about the concentration of gold and PGEs in asteroids. If this clown had ever read chemical analyses of meteorites, then the absurdity would be perfectly clear. Platinum and gold are trace elements in all but the most selective of samples; only those that pick a minute sulfide grain in a large matrix show any significant concentration of gold or PGEs.
I love the comments about the rod mill. Obviously someone who has nary a clue about how one works. This is great. Spring-loaded rod mill. Freaking spectacular!
Oh yeah, we are going to centrifuge solids. Get a clue, that works with fluids (liquids and gasses).
How can you convince someone who thinks they have an engineering background based upon watching too much deeply deluded TV pseudo-science.
Maybe we will spend a few trillion to compete with the "Chinese Moon Mining Technology Menace" after all.
Once again, another /.'er who comments without having a clue about the mineral industries.
Electrostaic speration? What exactly is that? There IS magentic seperation of ore minerals like magnetite, ilmentite and franklinite. But those are iron, manganese and titanium ores and not particularly valuable; well, franklinite is also a zinc ore, but is not likely to be found outside of two mined-out deposits in northern New Jersey.
What are you talking about? Are we going to use some kind of uniquely seperable residual charge on ecnomic minerals to seperate them from gangue? Perhaps piezoelectric properties? Is there some kind of physical property we do not yet understand and exploit after thousands of years of mining?
Please explain this to me. I'd love to hear how is going to be used to process ore minerals. Please try to be more substantial than a dot-commer who will turn "intellectual content" into profit.
Sheesh, you don't understand why I am moved to troll certain topics, do ya.
Well considered approach. Actually some intriguing thoughts.
However, I'd leave the economics of shipping iron and nickel from earth vs extracting it in space to the metallurgists, the people who know how to get metals out of ores. It's hard to say which would be more economical, transportation (launch) costs from earth or mining, processing, extraction and transportation costs on an asteroid. Refining and alloying are other processes that need to be considered.
This all presupposes we are actually established in space with a livable platform and the ability to sustain it. As far as the Chinese mining the moon, in the time frames and context discussed in the article, they plan to bring something back.
Yes, some asteroids are primarily metallic. Unfortunately, they are nickel and iron, which are not particularly valuable commodities here on earth. Iron is very common and easily mined while nickel is not in demand and, hence, valuable enough for the existing deposits like Sudbury, Ontario to operate profitably. American coinage is mostly copper with nickel alloyed for color and durability.
I love seeing /.'ers with no background in the mineral industries discussing pie-in-the-sky mining. And yes, I have a degree in Geological Engineering so I know a bit about mineral resources. I've already posted these comments about asteroids, and they apply to the moon also. Granted, the moon at least has appreciable gravity, but it is 1/6th of earth's, so the comments still apply.
Extraterrestrial mining will not be economical under foreseeable conditions. Mineral resources require extensive treatment to recover anything of value. First, you have to extract the ore. For a pricy end-product, this means extracting large volumes of ore. For instance, we mine gold that goes 0.04 onces per ton. Second, you have to crush it, requiring energy and large mechanical equipment. Ever seen a rod mill? Oh yeah, the rods rely upon weight -- gravity -- to have the force to crush rock. Third, you have to concentrate the valuable minerals. For any kind of high value/weight product, this almost certainly requires a large volume of liquid water. Or you could set up a shaker table and hope gravity seperation is effective. You also need a large plant for the equipment. Fourth, and finally, you have to extract the product. This typically requires more water and plenty of energy. Oh yes, and more equipment. All of this takes a staff of people who do little things that people like to do; you know, eat, drink, breathe...
Mining is, for the most part, a barely profitable industry right here on earth. The moon's exposed rocks are primarily mafic, so you are not going to find a high-grade gold. You might find some nickel, copper, chromium or platinum as traces, but not what we know as ore on earth. The moon also lacks active geology, which is responsible for most of the concentration processes that for economic ore on earth.
However, maybe the Chinese want to start another space race so we waste lots of money keeping "technologically ahead" of a perceived threat. From reading some of these extraterrestrial mining posts, we may be audacious (read arrogant and stupid) enough to try.
Did you bother to read the NASA and USAF links posted in the original thread?
THIS IS AN OLD PROBLEM!!!!
NASA has known that the amount of insulation falling of the redesigned external tank has been a problem since it first launched. NASA has known that the amount of heat shield damage increased enormously.
I do not have any quantitative analysis about the type of damage done, but this issue was important enough for them to outsource an analysis of the materials to the USAF and has fielded two different external camera systems to monitor the insulation failures.
I would like to see an analysis comparing the tile repairs required before and after the new external tank was fielded. If this has been a significant problem for five years, perhaps there should be an investigation into why the best and brightest did not correct it.
First, this is a tragedy for the astronauts and their families. I extend condolances to all who have been affected.
N ews.Rele ases/Previous.News.Releases/97.News.Releases/97-03 .News.Releases/97-03-28.Shuttles.New.ET.Completes. Testss tsstat/ 1998/sep/9-10-98s.htma ce/updates/sto32.htmle dc/newsreleases/1999/99 -041.htm/ releases/2 002/02-234.html
However, this problem is nothing new. The insulation material on the external fuel tanks was changed in 1997 and immediately caused problems. Lockheed-Martin was recently contracted to provide an external camera to monitor insulation loss. I have not found any documentation of the insulation problems from late 1997 until the cameras were installed.
See:
http://spacelink.nasa.gov/NASA.News/NASA.
http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/status/
http://ltp.arc.nasa.gov/sp
http://www.arnold.af.mil/a
http://www1.msfc.nasa.gov/NEWSROOM/news
for details about NASA's work on the problem.
NASA has failed to implement a manned project since the existing Space Shuttle. Its about time the taxpayers (and their representatives in Congress) take a critical look at what we get from the funding. If there have been six failures and two projects that are over budget in 20 years, we need to take a very close look at how this agency is held accountable.
ISS is a failure. It requires three people to maintain little more than life support. When was the last time ISS did any science? Can't think of a good answer? Well, that's because it never has and never will. ISS is Spam in a Can.
Not that it's all been a failure. They have done well with un-manned projects. The Mars and Solar probes have collected quality information.
However, NASA has had a goal to develop a new manned launch platform for 20 years, but we've allowed them to fail without accountability. They have failed privately with this task and publicly with ISS.
It's time to look at where the money is getting flushed and where it works.
A bit simplistic.
Do sales taxes fund sales? Do income taxes fund income? Do property taxes fund property?
Governments tax because they need income to support services. Ignoring the arguments about how valid or necessary those services are, they are supported by a tax structure to provide income. It is not practical to generate income with dedicated taxes for each service.
Hence, tax revenue may be placed into one big pot of money to support services as the legislative branch deems appropriate to apportion it.
Those who do not understand civics are condemned to comment ignorantly upon it.
You hit the nail on the head. We have a serious malpractice insurance issue where I live because juries award lottery judgements to those who win malpractice suits. And that applies to licensed physicians who are supposed to know what they are doing.
Are airlines going to staff someone who is a competent EMT? I doubt it. There is a lot of training and continuing education, not to mention experience, required to be an EMT. That is about the minimum level of competence acceptable in court to be involved in these kinds of diagnoses.
I doubt it would even get into a court room. The ambulance-chasing lawyers will be on the first mistake faster than you can say "huge out-of-court settlement."
Remeber the pseudoscience they used to "prove" a Martian meterioite had evidence of extraterrestrial life? Lesson lerned: do not release the sample for independent verification of research.
Maybe someone "flew" before the Wright Brothers, but they never recorded their results, much less reproduced them.
Not only did the Wright's reproduce their results, they modeled their experiments in wind tunnels and engineered their aircraft. Thus, they had data about the lift, weight and propulsion they planned to test.
With that data and their experiments, they improved upon their results. In the process, they formed a company that had a viable -- if ultimately unsucessful -- business model. Their business failure was only an inability to adapt to businesses that were more adept at improving upon their proven technology. These businesses were global in aspect; Curtis, Bleriot's monoplane Fokker, etc.
This debate has been covered for many years; by the standard of controlled, reproducable results, the Wrights were the first. We went through much of the same debate during the 75th anniversary, but those who forget history are condemned to relive it.
Depends upon the type of radiation source and the detector in use. Alpha, beta and gamma radiation are different animals and emitted by radioisotopes in different amounts.
Alpha particles are helium nucleii without electrons; beta particles are electrons; gamma radiation is electromagnetic radiation similar to X-Rays. Alpha and beta radiation are mostly stopped by inches to feet of air; gamma is more or less unaffected. Harmful doses are more complicated to assess, but basically, alpha and beta emitters are typically harmful when they get into your body and emit particles right next to cells, where they cause ionizing damage. Inserting alpha and beta emitters within a tumor is, essentially, what one form of radiotherapy does; put deadly ionizing radiation into a tumor to kill it. Radium has been an effective treatment for breast cancer (one of the first reasonably successful ones) since the 1920's.
Gamma radiation, although it passes through many feet of air and well into tissue, is not as damaging because it is not ionizing. However, high exposures have significant impacts. Gamma will pass through metals more or less unaffected.
The detectors are likely designed to pick up gamma radiation characteristic of enriched fissionable materials, because gamma passes through several feet of air. However, certain types of radiotheraputic isotopes (e.g. radium) also emit a heck of a lot of gamma.
Thus, the dilema of false positives for radiotherapy patients. If you want to pick up enriched radioisotopes, you will pick up gamma from legitimate theraputic uses. We should provide radiotherapy patients with a hospital-issued ID so they do not have to suffer through security checks. It would not be much more difficult than issuing a driver's license.
When you drill through a solid material, you generate "cuttings." Since these cuttingshave voids, their volume is greater than the orginal solid material and must be removed from the bore hole. That's why burying rodents have mounds at the entrance to their holes. How is a robotic inchworm going to remove the cuttings? Will it drag them back out of the hole to the surface? I'm sure that won't be very efficient at depths of several kilometers, because for each few inches it drills, it has to back out to the surface to dispose of the cuttings. That is why robots are not practical for drilling.
This is just another attempt by NASA to propose an open-ended project with no reasonably obtainable goal. Translation: assured funding. NASA learned what happens when you achieve a goal. Land men on the moon and then everyone gets laid off. So they came up with the space shuttle with the goal of a cheap, re-usable launch vehicle. It is not as cost-effective as single-use rockets. The ISS is poorly designed and does little research because the inmates spend most of the time fixing the computers. But it will be there for years. Then they foist some bad science on us claiming a Martian meterorite showed evidence of life. Ooops! It was terrestrail contamination and quickly proven so once subjected to independant verification. Now they are proposing mining? My background is geological engineering so I know a little bit about mineral resources. Extraterrestrial mining will not be economical under foreseeable conditions. Mineral resources require extensive treatment to recover anything of value. First, you have to extract the ore. For a pricy end-product, this means extracting large volumes of ore. For instance, we mine gold that goes 0.04 onces per ton. Second, you have to crush it, requiring energy and large mechanical equipment. Ever seen a rod mill? Oh yeah, the rods rely upon weight -- gravity -- to have the force to crush rock. Third, you have to concentrate the valuable minerals. For any kind of high value/weight product, this almost certainly requires a large volume of liquid water. Or you could set up a shaker table and hope gravity seperation is effective. You also need a large plant for the equipment. Fourth, and finally, you have to extract the product. This typically requires more water and plenty of energy. Oh yes, and more equipment. All of this takes a staff of people who do little things that people like to do; you know, eat, drink, breathe... Mining is, for the most part, a barely profitable industry right here on earth. Now the engineers who brought us ISS are proposing to mine extraterrestrial ores? This is not going to happen. But it is another reason to give NASA money to map the solar system in detail we will not use for any practical purpose. But mining is more believable as a practical use of billions of dollars than the search for extraterrestrial life.