I think the idea is that it would be a craft that would work equally well on earth, mars, or even the moon, virtually irrespective of the differences in atmosphere or, in the case of the moon, the complete absence of it.
But then again, I can't really see how we're at the point where we need a universally usable vehicle. I think we're still inexperienced enough in space that we should be using vehicles that are custom designed for each mission, so even my above explanation doesn't really make a whole lot sense. So yeah, I'd like to know the answer too...
Make not voting illegal. Sounds stupid you say? It already is illegal in australia. The way it works is that when you show up at the voting station, your name gets crossed off a list and then you go vote. After the election, anyone whose name wasn't crossed off and who doesn't have an excuse (i.e. in a coma in hospital) gets fined. There is no way to trace how a person voted, just that they did. I doesn't even stop people from not voting, as they can just show up, get their name crossed off, and spoil their ballot.
The only real problem with this system is that it would lead to more people who are ignorant of the issues and who don't care about the election voting. I personally think this could be a huge problem, but Australia seems to have managed it well enough.
The whole fucking point of this thread, as the parent pointed out, was that how would the ambulance know the difference between a red light and a four-way stop until its practically in the intersection?
furthermore, if the light up ahead is red, there's not going to be any oncoming traffic, now is there?
Good points. But I would like to counter with a few of my own:
-Even though you may not get smacked with all the energy at once during reentry, once you've begun you (as of yet) can't stop. While you may be able to adjust your plan a little, you won't really have that much time to adjust your plan effectively at all unless you've planned for those changes beforehand. Columbia's reentry was a pretty good example of this.
-While it may be easy enough to dump KE as heat on a small scale, it isn't on the scale we're discussing. You either have to dump the kinetic energy very slowly (EXTREMELY difficult) or you have to design some mechanism of absorbing/dissipating all that heat in one go. The Columbia again serves as a good example. (Other spacecraft use ablative shielding for this, but this makes them non-reusable)
-It is not that difficult to escape an explosion actually. The challenger disaster is an example of an explosion. However, one could attribute its catastrophic failure to the design of the launch configuration. If the space plane was placed differently (e.g. on top of the fuel tank) it would be possible to have instant-abort mechanisms where the shuttle leaves the exploding tank behind and aborts to either a crash-landing, bailout, or splashdown. In short, by isolating the fuel and engines from the humans/cargo, it is possible to have explosions that don't kill anyone.
-"The inherent nature of both is to kill you, while KE is pretty indifferent to your survival." That's a good line, I'll have to remember it
Overall, I'm not arguing that launch is any more dangerous than reentry, just that it is almost equally so.
This is a good question. I doubt that NASA, the ESA, or the Russian Space Prgram will immediately recieve more funding as a result of this. However, China has stated that they are aiming for a permanent moon base. Lyndon B. Johnson once said "I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon." I doubt that this generation will be willing to stand for that either, yet the Chinese may achieve their goal before the Americans can get up enough of a head of steam to match it. Thus, I think that the goal of this space race will be a landing on mars. Whats more, I think that we will see this within the span of our lives, possibly even within the next 20 years.
"Launch is more dangerous in some ways if only because you've got X tons of very flammable (dare I say explosive?) materials under your butt. A slip-up there will tend to be much harder to fix or escape from."
This is a common conception. I realize that explosives and explosions are very tangible and their destructive power can easily be seen, however, do people fail to realize that (almost) all all the energy held in those explosives is in the form of gravitational potential energy of the spacecraft? Just because it's in a different form doesn't mean it isn't still a shitload of energy...
Few people realize this, but NASA's 45th Anniversary was just 14 days ago (Oct. 1st). While you are right that the US and the Russians achieved the same feat decades ago, look where they are right now. NASA is stagnating, having made no progress since the shuttle was deployed and merely continuing a program of attrition where their few resources are slowly being destroyed in one accident after another. The Russian program, while still somewhat effective, is severely strapped for cash and is still relying on the technology they developed in the 60s.
I for one applaud China for taking the initiative in the field of aerospace at a time when the rest of the world is facing inward, worrying about their stagnating economy or a petty squabble in the middle east*. Hopefully they will progress further succesfully and rapidly - we haven't had nearly enough development in aviation since the X-15 project was scrapped.
* I mean no disrespect to the Isreali nor Palestinian dead by this. Current events in that region are tragic, I merely wish that as humans we could rise above it and focus ourselves on more lofty goals as the Chinese have...
Given the comments I've heard recently here on slashdot, I think I speak for many of us when I say GO CHINA!
Sincerest congratulations to the Chinese. I hope everyone here realizes what a momentous occaision in history has just occured - This may well be remembered as the beginning of the second space race.
This is an interesting question - I can see that they would not allow a genetically modified super-athlete to compete, but what about that person's children? They may still carry the genes, yet those genes were passed on to them naturally. Will having on genetically modified ancestor (say to make them stronger to resist cancer) ruin an entire family's chances of ever competing in international sports? If not, how many generations must occur without genetic modification before the modified-gene advantage is considered diluted enough?
These are all questions that need to be answered once we get into this debate.
As somone else on slashdot mentioned, it could be used by muggers to figure out an estimated take from individuals walking down a sidewalk (only a meter away or so).
Give me a break! Most muggers in europe and north america are generally looking for a way to pay for their next fix, or something similar. If they had an RFID reader it would've been pawned or fenced for a fraction of its value before the thought of using it to mug someone even crossed their mind.
Now there's an idea: Get a tricked out antenna with which you can reach the harbour wireless (you might need to set up a shore-based repeater in order to recieve signals going the other way). Then, you sit out in international waters with a multi-terabyte mp3 collection just sharing away. Let's see the RIAA try to sue you now...
The Spam problem is a technical one, and as such should be solved technically.
No. This argument is made frequently on slashdot, and I am thouroghly (sp?) convinced that it is wrong. While the problem of spam may have technical aspects it is a different problem. Spam is a moral problem - it is a case of a select few people abusing a system for their own profit, thereby ruining the effective usefulness of the system for others. One persons right to infringe upon the rights of another in all other aspects of our society is primarily governed by laws, and I see no reason why the spam problem should not be either. Granted there are legitamite uses, and therefore such legislation must be careful to take these into account. However, this is an almost guaranteed certainty, given the current complexity of the legal system, adding such exemptions, checks and balances would be no problem - in fact it would be considered neccesary by many legal and constitutional experts.
Opting for a purely technical solution has problems of its own. We have already seen some attempts at technical stopgap measures designed to stem the flood of UCE, but these have generally just resulted in an escalation in the tactics of spammers (e.g. faking return addresses, using trojan horses to create relays, etc.)
The problem of spam is NOT a technical one. It is a moral one and its solution therefore lies in the legal system.
the/. editors got suckered on this one - if you RTFA you'll see that it isn't actually a fusion reactor or reaction at all. What it is is a deuterium ion plasma generator. While not actually fusion, Deuterium ion plasma holds some promise for fusion research. However, it is - as the article states - useful as a neutron radiation generator. That's mostly what this kid has accomplished - NOT fusion.
Actually, he still stands to gain a bit then, because if you liked his books that much then maybe, just maybe, you might tell someone else about them no? That person then will need a copy, and they may choose to pay for it...
Well, the first transatlantic flight (which was NOT Lindbergh btw) was made in 1919, and the first regular, nonstop transatlantic passenger service began in 1939 between Berlin and NY. That's 20 years time, but 36 years time from the Wright Brothers' first flight. By contrast, Gagarin flew in '61, and Apollo 11 landed on the moon in '69 - 42 and and 34 years ago respectively.
So yeah, it's taking us a lot longer to get into space - mostly because the commercial rewards aren't as obvious (mail service to space isn't in high demand:-) and because the technical hurdles are that much harder.
Yeah, that might explain why Surrey Satellites in the UK is making so much off of stuff other than comsats.
I don't know what surrey sattelites does, please enlighten me.
And why there are several groups racing to win the X-prize.
The X-prize is a philanthropic donation made by a bunch of really rich guys. This kind of money will help us achieve certain milestones, but once they've been achieved it will vanish. Unless we can find buisiness in space, it won't work as it did with airplanes because people don't NEED to go to space, nor does much mail need delivering.
And why there several companies desperately trying to be the first to market with a cheap smallsat launcher.
These companies are aiming to serve the comsat community, which isn't doing anything really spectacular when you think of it. I agree that the technology and achievement is cool, but they're not breaking any new ground.
And why the Russians are able to make $20M a pop for launching rich tourists into space.
They launched 1 guy, once. The other two potential customers (Lance Bass and that guy from South Africa) couldn't afford it and decided it wasn't worth the cost respectively. Given NASA's new failures, you're not going to see any new tourists in space any time soon. All this also neglects the fact that these tourists were riding on government funded infrastructure, and their costs only paid a fraction of a percent of the costs of the entire program.
And why the EU is considering charging for subscriptions to the precision version of Galileo (their answer to GPS).
They're still going to lose a bundle on developing and launching the system. This is done out of nationalistic neccesity, not to be a commercially viable competitor to GPS. And few private companies today could muster the resources to launch such a program, even if the returns were guaranteed and the risks of failure were much lower than they are now.
And that's only what I can think of off the top of my head.
Aside from the incredibly wishful-thinking and shortsighted mining-in-space group, You've pretty much covered it all, I think.
"I guess that's why Bell Labs, a privately funded corporate research company has so many nobel laureates and so many patents and technology breakthroughs. Ditto Xerox. Ditto GE. Ditto HP. Nearly all scientific breakthroughs have come from private enterprise, because these businesses know that future cold, hard cash comes from R&D paying off. "
Well, the pedantic in me would point out that Bell Labs actually recieves a lot of government funding, but you do have good points with Xerox, GE, and HP. However, I would disagree with your contention that "Nearly all scientific breakthroughs have come from private enterprise". The apollo and Gemini programs generated a huge amount of technology, and a lot of the private enterprises which have significant R+D are government defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. Even so, I would still argue that the risk-benefits ratios of space R+D are prohibitive for private companies.
As for high-vacuum microgravity manufacturing, can you give me one application in which this is even useful, let alone worth the cost of hauling all the raw materials into orbit? This without even considering that all kinks have yet to be worked out and that there will be numerous expensive failures before such a system is perfected makes me believe that we won't see this until space has been opened up a lot more.
God - do we have to have this argument AGAIN on slashdot?
The problem with private enterprise is that it expects rewards from its funding - rewards that generate $$$, not scientific knowledge or nationalistic pride, but cold hard cash. The problem with space is that there is as-of-yet, no viable way to make $$$ out there. Tourism is the only industry that's already made a start in space, but its first steps were shaky, it relied on a publically-funded infrastructure, and it has yet to progress any further. As for mining, there is nothing up there that we can't get down here for cheaper. Some might point to the He-3 resources on the moon, but these are not needed at all except for in undeveloped nuclear fusion technology.
I suppose there is one commercial industry that has been succesful in space: the sattelite communication/telecommunications industry. However, private interests are not going to progress beyond the sorts of sattelites we are currently flying, let alone go anywhere near manned flight on there own.
In conclusion, I would argue that private interest is not an "easier beast to summon." In fact, I would say that it is much more difficult to raise funds for space exploration through private means than it is to get public support. A space race with China would generate the neccesary support very quickly, and we might start seeing some projects come to fruition rather than being nearly completed only to be scrapped for going over-budget, and then being restarted a few years later to satiate the military-industrial complex. The only alternative that I can see having any success in space other than publically-funded programs is philanthropy. If some very rich people got together and started offering more prizes similar to the X-prize, we could see some actual development. It worked in aviation, the only thing holding it back for space is that the prizes need to be that much bigger to make it worthwhile.
In short, space exploration's only hope lies in publically funded programs or philanthropic rewards, not in the commercial exploitation of resources that don't exist.
Re:I like the wooden better
on
Mirror, Mirror
·
· Score: 1
The problem with electromagnets is that they can only pull the balls back (assuming they're actually rolling balls, no bar magnets with rounded ends). Thus, you need something to push the balls forwards again when you turn off the magnet. Gravity (angled tubes) might be a bit slow, but I suspect that some springs could do the job nicely...
Beyond the obvious Hulk jokes, did anyone follow the link in the articles? This story describes how this technology is slated to be used in powering UAVs that could stay aloft over a combat zone for months at a time. IMHO, channelling and controlling the energy in a useful way such as this is much cooler than being able to build a straight energy-release bomb.
Slashdot Mirror
Goddamn somebody needs to write this RFC, it'll be more famous than that damn carrier pigeon one!
I think the idea is that it would be a craft that would work equally well on earth, mars, or even the moon, virtually irrespective of the differences in atmosphere or, in the case of the moon, the complete absence of it.
But then again, I can't really see how we're at the point where we need a universally usable vehicle. I think we're still inexperienced enough in space that we should be using vehicles that are custom designed for each mission, so even my above explanation doesn't really make a whole lot sense. So yeah, I'd like to know the answer too...
Make not voting illegal. Sounds stupid you say? It already is illegal in australia. The way it works is that when you show up at the voting station, your name gets crossed off a list and then you go vote. After the election, anyone whose name wasn't crossed off and who doesn't have an excuse (i.e. in a coma in hospital) gets fined. There is no way to trace how a person voted, just that they did. I doesn't even stop people from not voting, as they can just show up, get their name crossed off, and spoil their ballot.
The only real problem with this system is that it would lead to more people who are ignorant of the issues and who don't care about the election voting. I personally think this could be a huge problem, but Australia seems to have managed it well enough.
The whole fucking point of this thread, as the parent pointed out, was that how would the ambulance know the difference between a red light and a four-way stop until its practically in the intersection?
furthermore, if the light up ahead is red, there's not going to be any oncoming traffic, now is there?
They go full speed through if the light is green, which it is when they use these devices...
Good points. But I would like to counter with a few of my own:
-Even though you may not get smacked with all the energy at once during reentry, once you've begun you (as of yet) can't stop. While you may be able to adjust your plan a little, you won't really have that much time to adjust your plan effectively at all unless you've planned for those changes beforehand. Columbia's reentry was a pretty good example of this.
-While it may be easy enough to dump KE as heat on a small scale, it isn't on the scale we're discussing. You either have to dump the kinetic energy very slowly (EXTREMELY difficult) or you have to design some mechanism of absorbing/dissipating all that heat in one go. The Columbia again serves as a good example. (Other spacecraft use ablative shielding for this, but this makes them non-reusable)
-It is not that difficult to escape an explosion actually. The challenger disaster is an example of an explosion. However, one could attribute its catastrophic failure to the design of the launch configuration. If the space plane was placed differently (e.g. on top of the fuel tank) it would be possible to have instant-abort mechanisms where the shuttle leaves the exploding tank behind and aborts to either a crash-landing, bailout, or splashdown. In short, by isolating the fuel and engines from the humans/cargo, it is possible to have explosions that don't kill anyone.
-"The inherent nature of both is to kill you, while KE is pretty indifferent to your survival."
That's a good line, I'll have to remember it
Overall, I'm not arguing that launch is any more dangerous than reentry, just that it is almost equally so.
This is a good question. I doubt that NASA, the ESA, or the Russian Space Prgram will immediately recieve more funding as a result of this. However, China has stated that they are aiming for a permanent moon base. Lyndon B. Johnson once said "I do not believe that this generation of Americans is willing to resign itself to going to bed each night by the light of a Communist moon." I doubt that this generation will be willing to stand for that either, yet the Chinese may achieve their goal before the Americans can get up enough of a head of steam to match it. Thus, I think that the goal of this space race will be a landing on mars. Whats more, I think that we will see this within the span of our lives, possibly even within the next 20 years.
"Launch is more dangerous in some ways if only because you've got X tons of very flammable (dare I say explosive?) materials under your butt. A slip-up there will tend to be much harder to fix or escape from."
This is a common conception. I realize that explosives and explosions are very tangible and their destructive power can easily be seen, however, do people fail to realize that (almost) all all the energy held in those explosives is in the form of gravitational potential energy of the spacecraft? Just because it's in a different form doesn't mean it isn't still a shitload of energy...
Few people realize this, but NASA's 45th Anniversary was just 14 days ago (Oct. 1st). While you are right that the US and the Russians achieved the same feat decades ago, look where they are right now. NASA is stagnating, having made no progress since the shuttle was deployed and merely continuing a program of attrition where their few resources are slowly being destroyed in one accident after another. The Russian program, while still somewhat effective, is severely strapped for cash and is still relying on the technology they developed in the 60s.
I for one applaud China for taking the initiative in the field of aerospace at a time when the rest of the world is facing inward, worrying about their stagnating economy or a petty squabble in the middle east*. Hopefully they will progress further succesfully and rapidly - we haven't had nearly enough development in aviation since the X-15 project was scrapped.
* I mean no disrespect to the Isreali nor Palestinian dead by this. Current events in that region are tragic, I merely wish that as humans we could rise above it and focus ourselves on more lofty goals as the Chinese have...
Given the comments I've heard recently here on slashdot, I think I speak for many of us when I say GO CHINA!
Sincerest congratulations to the Chinese. I hope everyone here realizes what a momentous occaision in history has just occured - This may well be remembered as the beginning of the second space race.
This is an interesting question - I can see that they would not allow a genetically modified super-athlete to compete, but what about that person's children? They may still carry the genes, yet those genes were passed on to them naturally. Will having on genetically modified ancestor (say to make them stronger to resist cancer) ruin an entire family's chances of ever competing in international sports? If not, how many generations must occur without genetic modification before the modified-gene advantage is considered diluted enough?
These are all questions that need to be answered once we get into this debate.
As somone else on slashdot mentioned, it could be used by muggers to figure out an estimated take from individuals walking down a sidewalk (only a meter away or so).
Give me a break! Most muggers in europe and north america are generally looking for a way to pay for their next fix, or something similar. If they had an RFID reader it would've been pawned or fenced for a fraction of its value before the thought of using it to mug someone even crossed their mind.
Now there's an idea: Get a tricked out antenna with which you can reach the harbour wireless (you might need to set up a shore-based repeater in order to recieve signals going the other way). Then, you sit out in international waters with a multi-terabyte mp3 collection just sharing away. Let's see the RIAA try to sue you now...
No, it's China's Vostok, and these taikonauts are China's Yuri Gagarins
The Spam problem is a technical one, and as such should be solved technically.
No. This argument is made frequently on slashdot, and I am thouroghly (sp?) convinced that it is wrong. While the problem of spam may have technical aspects it is a different problem. Spam is a moral problem - it is a case of a select few people abusing a system for their own profit, thereby ruining the effective usefulness of the system for others. One persons right to infringe upon the rights of another in all other aspects of our society is primarily governed by laws, and I see no reason why the spam problem should not be either. Granted there are legitamite uses, and therefore such legislation must be careful to take these into account. However, this is an almost guaranteed certainty, given the current complexity of the legal system, adding such exemptions, checks and balances would be no problem - in fact it would be considered neccesary by many legal and constitutional experts.
Opting for a purely technical solution has problems of its own. We have already seen some attempts at technical stopgap measures designed to stem the flood of UCE, but these have generally just resulted in an escalation in the tactics of spammers (e.g. faking return addresses, using trojan horses to create relays, etc.)
The problem of spam is NOT a technical one. It is a moral one and its solution therefore lies in the legal system.
bargh, my bad for not RTFA closely enough...
the /. editors got suckered on this one - if you RTFA you'll see that it isn't actually a fusion reactor or reaction at all. What it is is a deuterium ion plasma generator. While not actually fusion, Deuterium ion plasma holds some promise for fusion research. However, it is - as the article states - useful as a neutron radiation generator. That's mostly what this kid has accomplished - NOT fusion.
Actually, he still stands to gain a bit then, because if you liked his books that much then maybe, just maybe, you might tell someone else about them no? That person then will need a copy, and they may choose to pay for it...
Well, the first transatlantic flight (which was NOT Lindbergh btw) was made in 1919, and the first regular, nonstop transatlantic passenger service began in 1939 between Berlin and NY. That's 20 years time, but 36 years time from the Wright Brothers' first flight. By contrast, Gagarin flew in '61, and Apollo 11 landed on the moon in '69 - 42 and and 34 years ago respectively.
:-) and because the technical hurdles are that much harder.
So yeah, it's taking us a lot longer to get into space - mostly because the commercial rewards aren't as obvious (mail service to space isn't in high demand
Yeah, that might explain why Surrey Satellites in the UK is making so much off of stuff other than comsats.
I don't know what surrey sattelites does, please enlighten me.
And why there are several groups racing to win the X-prize.
The X-prize is a philanthropic donation made by a bunch of really rich guys. This kind of money will help us achieve certain milestones, but once they've been achieved it will vanish. Unless we can find buisiness in space, it won't work as it did with airplanes because people don't NEED to go to space, nor does much mail need delivering.
And why there several companies desperately trying to be the first to market with a cheap smallsat launcher.
These companies are aiming to serve the comsat community, which isn't doing anything really spectacular when you think of it. I agree that the technology and achievement is cool, but they're not breaking any new ground.
And why the Russians are able to make $20M a pop for launching rich tourists into space.
They launched 1 guy, once. The other two potential customers (Lance Bass and that guy from South Africa) couldn't afford it and decided it wasn't worth the cost respectively. Given NASA's new failures, you're not going to see any new tourists in space any time soon. All this also neglects the fact that these tourists were riding on government funded infrastructure, and their costs only paid a fraction of a percent of the costs of the entire program.
And why the EU is considering charging for subscriptions to the precision version of Galileo (their answer to GPS).
They're still going to lose a bundle on developing and launching the system. This is done out of nationalistic neccesity, not to be a commercially viable competitor to GPS. And few private companies today could muster the resources to launch such a program, even if the returns were guaranteed and the risks of failure were much lower than they are now.
And that's only what I can think of off the top of my head.
Aside from the incredibly wishful-thinking and shortsighted mining-in-space group, You've pretty much covered it all, I think.
"I guess that's why Bell Labs, a privately funded corporate research company has so many nobel laureates and so many patents and technology breakthroughs. Ditto Xerox. Ditto GE. Ditto HP. Nearly all scientific breakthroughs have come from private enterprise, because these businesses know that future cold, hard cash comes from R&D paying off. "
Well, the pedantic in me would point out that Bell Labs actually recieves a lot of government funding, but you do have good points with Xerox, GE, and HP. However, I would disagree with your contention that "Nearly all scientific breakthroughs have come from private enterprise". The apollo and Gemini programs generated a huge amount of technology, and a lot of the private enterprises which have significant R+D are government defense contractors like Lockheed Martin. Even so, I would still argue that the risk-benefits ratios of space R+D are prohibitive for private companies.
As for high-vacuum microgravity manufacturing, can you give me one application in which this is even useful, let alone worth the cost of hauling all the raw materials into orbit? This without even considering that all kinks have yet to be worked out and that there will be numerous expensive failures before such a system is perfected makes me believe that we won't see this until space has been opened up a lot more.
I recognize that my post was somewhat long (for slashdot), but you really should try to read the whole post before replying...
God - do we have to have this argument AGAIN on slashdot?
The problem with private enterprise is that it expects rewards from its funding - rewards that generate $$$, not scientific knowledge or nationalistic pride, but cold hard cash. The problem with space is that there is as-of-yet, no viable way to make $$$ out there. Tourism is the only industry that's already made a start in space, but its first steps were shaky, it relied on a publically-funded infrastructure, and it has yet to progress any further. As for mining, there is nothing up there that we can't get down here for cheaper. Some might point to the He-3 resources on the moon, but these are not needed at all except for in undeveloped nuclear fusion technology.
I suppose there is one commercial industry that has been succesful in space: the sattelite communication/telecommunications industry. However, private interests are not going to progress beyond the sorts of sattelites we are currently flying, let alone go anywhere near manned flight on there own.
In conclusion, I would argue that private interest is not an "easier beast to summon." In fact, I would say that it is much more difficult to raise funds for space exploration through private means than it is to get public support. A space race with China would generate the neccesary support very quickly, and we might start seeing some projects come to fruition rather than being nearly completed only to be scrapped for going over-budget, and then being restarted a few years later to satiate the military-industrial complex. The only alternative that I can see having any success in space other than publically-funded programs is philanthropy. If some very rich people got together and started offering more prizes similar to the X-prize, we could see some actual development. It worked in aviation, the only thing holding it back for space is that the prizes need to be that much bigger to make it worthwhile.
In short, space exploration's only hope lies in publically funded programs or philanthropic rewards, not in the commercial exploitation of resources that don't exist.
The problem with electromagnets is that they can only pull the balls back (assuming they're actually rolling balls, no bar magnets with rounded ends). Thus, you need something to push the balls forwards again when you turn off the magnet. Gravity (angled tubes) might be a bit slow, but I suspect that some springs could do the job nicely...
Beyond the obvious Hulk jokes, did anyone follow the link in the articles? This story describes how this technology is slated to be used in powering UAVs that could stay aloft over a combat zone for months at a time. IMHO, channelling and controlling the energy in a useful way such as this is much cooler than being able to build a straight energy-release bomb.