It's in the wrong orbit...it's higher than the ISS, and at a different inclination. Lowering its orbit would put it further into the atmosphere, degrading its capabilities and requiring reboost operations more often. It would also require a fairly large booster to make such a big shift in orbit. Also, the ISS is rather dirty, it releases gas and debris which could damage or interfere with the Hubble. Then, once you got it there, you'd have to use thrust periodically to keep the two nearby...they will tend to drift apart. And then, the nearby sunlit ISS would obstruct a fair amount of sky.
This isn't even a complete list of the reasons not to do it...but I think it's more than enough.
Now, the Hubble was a huge success. It has shown us some really incredible things which ground telescopes are simply physically incapable of doing. However, technology has advanced significantly since it was built. I believe it would be a far better use of the money to build a Hubble II, with better resolution, more modern instruments, etc.
Maybe just let the brains figure it out on their own...they'd probably be better at it than a digital computer.
Anyway, how about something a bit more simple...a middle ear implant and some kind of subvocal microphone paired with a simple FM transmitter and receiver.
A real world (out of the lab) device would probably have no electrical connection with the outside world. Power and communication could be done optically or by induction loops...no break in the skin to get infected or to conduct electrical current into the brain, more like a headband with bright LED's and phototransistors. The internal circuitry could be low voltage, extremely reliable, and carefully isolated to prevent power supply voltage from being applied across electrodes.
Superconductors don't superconduct heat. They're usually rather mediocre thermal conductors, as I recall...Niven was just wrong about that. We don't fully understand superconductivity, but currently known superconductors don't superconduct heat, and current theory does not predict heat superconduction.
(And ceramics aren't solid state?)
I have read that liquid helium and bose-einstein condensates are effectively heat superconductors, but they aren't very useful for this.
Similar scale needles, fibers, and grains already exist everywhere, and are constantly being inhaled and disposed of. In fact, carbon nanotubes and buckyballs occur naturally. Large exposures (notice that the study you referenced was of high doses of SWNTs instilled directly into the rats' lungs) can certainly cause problems, but there's no reason to think that carbon fullerenes will be any nastier than anything of similar scale already out there. In fact, they should be a bit more inert than most things. They're just carbon, basically the same structure as graphite. (Nanotubes with more reactive groups added to their structure, for better bonding with epoxy for example, might be a lot worse...or possibly better, if it helps the body detect and remove them.)
I don't see why it would be so costly...mostly a butyl polymer (synthetic rubber, basically), solids like aluminum powder, catalysts such as iron oxide, and an oxidizer...probably ammonium perchlorate. They are very compact, simple, and powerful. You just can't turn them off once they're started, and the solid fuel-oxidizer mixture is far more dangerous to handle than a couple tanks of unmixed cryogenic liquid. (Spark hits a cryogenic vessel...nothing happens. Spark his a fuel core...trouble.)
The main advantage of ion engines is that, once you get them into orbit, they'll get you a lot further than an equivalently sized chemical rocket. This means you don't need to lift as much, and a greater portion of what you lift will be the more interesting stuff.
For probes, we need technology that moves things farther for a given mass. That's exactly what ion engines do. They use reaction mass far more sparingly, throwing out a smaller mass at a far greater velocity than chemical rockets. By doing this, they can achieve a given change in velocity using a much lower mass of fuel. Smart-1 doesn't need to get to the moon faster than this, and by using ion engines to maneuver once it's in space, it can carry more scientific payload and still have plenty of maneuvering capacity after it reaches its destination.
The benefit is even greater for probes to the outer solar system, or really to any location with a significantly different orbit from Earth's. Chemical rocket boosters capable of accelerating probes enough to send them a significant distance would be huge in comparison to the ion drives, requiring larger launch rockets to get off the ground and cutting into the useful payload.
Look into gas core rockets a bit more. The confinement is inertial, not magnetic...though magnetic fields might be used for controlling the vortex. In the "nuclear lightbulb" form, the gas core surrounds a cylinderical quartz window cooled by liquid hydrogen. The working mass is forced through the center, and is heated by radiant UV. However, you are basically correct...none have been built, they would need to be big, and the biggest problem is finding materials and cooling systems that can handle the extreme temperatures. (Up to 55000 K)
Nuclear electric is fine for probes...higher efficiency, and very long operation times. However, for many things they are simply too low-thrust. Nuclear thermals spit out greater amounts of reaction mass at a lower velocity than ion thrusters, and can't produce as much delta-v from a given amount of propellent, but they are far better than chemical rockets and produce much greater thrust than ion thrusters. I think they are most promising for any manned craft and unmanned craft that need to make high-acceleration maneuvers.
I think you're comparing ISP's...probably not a good comparison, it certainly ignores some of the other differences. Jets are far heavier than rockets providing the same thrust, and the intakes and required lift surfaces produce quite a bit of drag. They certainly can't come close to achieving the delta-v of rockets, simply because of their airspeed limits.
The inert components (mostly N2) provide working mass, but they don't provide any energy, and thus lower the working temperature and the exhaust velocity...this is a detriment, not a benefit. In addition, there is a constant drag working to reduce the velocity of the aircraft relative to the working fluid to zero, and the amount of that drag is roughly proportional to the square of velocity (this gets far more complex at hypersonic speeds). Staying in the atmosphere is just a bad idea if you are trying to reach orbit.
Jets and wings are better for sustained atmospheric flight, they can fly for a long time on a given mass of fuel. You don't need to do that if you're going into orbit, and it doesn't get you significantly closer to orbit without introducing all sorts of other complications...building a hypersonic craft capable of lifting a rocket capable of reaching most of the way to orbit from the ground, and then separating that rocket while traveling through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds...because dragging the aircraft into orbit is just insane.
Jets are not more efficient than rockets. Actually, because they have to obtain their oxidizer from the surrounding atmosphere, they are quite a bit less efficient. The atmosphere is mostly useless nitrogen, varies in density with altitude, and is blasting against the craft at supersonic speeds. Jet engines are only useful in conjunction with wings when you're flying in the atmosphere for extended periods and at constant speeds. Since you don't have to carry your oxidizer and are supported by the air, you can cruise for extended periods. Orbital rockets constantly accelerate and get out of the atmosphere as fast as possible.
The space plane as a concept is flawed. People like it because they like the idea of flying into space, but in reality it means you have to do a lot more work pushing through atmosphere and carrying useless atmospheric engines and control surfaces into orbit. It's also vastly more complex, and atmospheric flight places far greater strains on the structure. Rather than a tank full of fairly cheap LOX, you carry even more expensive and highly complex engine and aircraft structure which all has to be maintained, and which adds many possible possibilities of catastrophic failure.
The main application of this engine is likely to be an atmosphere-skimming cruise missile, flying relatively low (very suborbital) to stay below the horizon of the target as fast as possible and retain maneuvering capability until the last minute. It's not very useful at all for getting into space, or even for human transportation between points on Earth.
Ground ozone is generated by human activity, and is independent of the magnetic field. The ozone molecule itself is neutral and exists in extremely tiny concentrations, and can have no measurable effect on the magnetic field.
Stratospheric ozone is generated by solar UV light interacting with atmospheric oxygen. Neither is affected by or has an effect on the magnetic field. Stratospheric ozone will be very slightly increased by diffusion of ground ozone, but few ozone molecules will survive that trip...it's an unstable and reactive molecule. Still, this is the only way ground production will have any effect on stratospheric ozone
I guess you're not an electrical engineer of any sort. The trinity of magnetism, electricity, and motion is due to the fact that moving magnetic fields induce electrical currents, moving electrical charges induce magnetism, and electrical currents and magnetism together can produce motion. Ozone doesn't come into this anywhere. Ozone is not always produced with an electrical current, and it isn't affected by and doesn't cause electrical charges, magnetic fields, or motion.
(Actually, there may be a very slight attraction or repulsion to magnetic fields, depending on whether O3 is paramagnetic or diamagnetic. The effect is too weak to make a difference here, though.)
Your description of lightning is simply incorrect. Ozone is a result of the ionization caused by lighting, not a cause. Lightning generates ozone in the same way that solar UV does, by splitting O2 molecules into atomic oxygen which then combines with unsplit O2 molecules.
It's really freaking big. Mercury and Venus don't have any moons, and the moons of Mars appear to be captured asteroids...relatively tiny rocks not big enough to form themselves into spheres. The Earth-Moon system is nearly a double planet. Of the inner planets, Earth is the only one with a decent moon...and it's a monster compared to the planet.
In any case, the planets you see now are just the ones that stayed in the system. Material didn't just cleanly accrete directly into the existing bodies. Most of the objects formed were kicked out of the system by interactions with other bodies, or were absorbed into other objects or the Sun itself. What you see is the final result of a great many collisions and near-miss interactions. (And the present orbits aren't truly stable, just stable enough not to worry about. I think the lifetime of the present orbits of the planets is greater than that of the sun itself. Maybe a little less for the Moon.)
The rings of the gas giants are likely far younger than the planets themselves, they are almost certainly not leftover material from the accretion. And they do have moons, lots of them...each giant has dozens, while the entire inner system has 3. However, even taken together, the moons and rings of each giant aren't much compared to the planet itself.
It's not going slowly, it's going at the same speed anything else in the same orbit would be at. It's taking a long time to reach lunar orbit because it started out in Earth orbit and needs to accelerate quite a bit. It's using an ion engine, so it'll take longer to achieve a given change in velocity. A conventional rocket would achieve the same change in velocity more quickly, but the end result would be basically the same...except that the conventional rocket would be bigger and heavier, and thus more expensive to lift.
In any case, it's too small to see from Earth, no matter how fast it's going.
Cool. However, the impression you give is a little inaccurate...these are just an improvement on the Peltier junctions already used to cool processors. That "1 square inch coolchip" doesn't provide the energy to cool your freezer, it just converts electrical energy produced somewhere else into a temperature difference. And you could use the temperature difference generated to produce power, but that would impede the cooling and just waste power overall...rather than powerchips, the hot side should have a heat sink and fan to dissipate heat as quickly as possible.
Also, operation produces no waste products, but what about manufacturing and lifetime? You have the same questions as you have for solar cells. However, I think this is a more viable source than solar for most of the world, and maybe for extracting more useful power from the waste heat of power plants and industry...and it'd be very helpful in spacecraft powered by radiothermal generators, such as Cassini. RTG's are heavy, this could allow much smaller ones to generate the same power.
It doesn't use batteries, which store electrical power in chemical reactions, it uses a capacitor, which stores static charges on two electrically separate plates. It actually appears to use an electrolytic capacitor, which will eventually wear out, but should last much longer than a battery. However, they store less energy, and they tend to lose charge faster.
I'm not sure what the benefit is supposed to be. It seems almost certain to be less efficient, less resistant to damage, and shorter lived than a separate device designed specifically for energy storage, which doesn't have to be manufactured in a thin layer. The articles claim it is more efficient in dim light than silicon cells, but don't give any reason why...I wonder if they are using some faulty measurement of "efficiency", such as output voltage. (It might charge to the same voltage on an open circuit in dim light, even though it can't deliver as much power.)
However, it seems to truly be a completely different type of solar cell: it's not just a silicon cell layered with a capacitor. It is possible that it really does behave better in low light conditions. The reference to the photoreceptor dyes makes me wonder how it'll stand up to full sunlight for prolonged periods, though.
I'm not convinced there would have to be much more of a Martian atmosphere than you would get by warming up present day Mars and breaking up some of the peroxides and carbonates in the soil. However, much of the atmosphere would be H2O, which would be lost more quickly due to its lower molecular weight. (whether or not it had a significant magnetosphere)
As for volcanic atmosphere...well, there's a lot of volcanos, and some very big ones, as well as evidence of some really huge lava flows. However, everything I've seen so far indicates that Venus is only expected to have fairly Earthlike levels of activity today...it's not an inferno of constant eruptions, it's just a really hot and dry hell.
In any case, I'm not saying that atmospheric loss doesn't happen, only that the charged particles of the solar wind aren't a huge factor in it. Escape velocity and mean particle velocity in the upper atmosphere are the main factors, and charged particles will carry only a tiny fraction of total solar heat energy, and deliver most of it more deeply in the atmosphere. The initial atmosphere, present temperatures, and the lack of recent tectonic or volcanic activity on Mars seem like far more important factors.
The magnetosphere isn't a significant factor, Mars likely just never had much of an atmosphere to start with. As a counterexample, Venus gets about 4.45 times as much solar radiation as Mars, has no significant magnetic field, and has a weaker surface gravity than Earth, yet it has far more atmosphere than Earth.
To the parent: Mars has rather sparse amounts of nitrogen...you're probably going to bring that from Earth either way. Other than that, the moon has everything Mars has, it's a shorter duration trip, the shorter communications lag makes ground control feasible for more things, and it has less gravity to overcome for launch or landing. (Mars has enough atmosphere to make trouble on reentry, but too little to make soft landings easy.) Also, the atmosphere has combined with any free metals on the surface of Mars...this is not so on the moon.
Mars is interesting as a potential life-supporting body...studying a biology that originated on another planet could give us new insights into that of our own world. However, I don't see it as a useful colonization or industrial target.
I see you're a physicist (but of what sort?)...maybe you can clarify something. As I understand it, EM radiation has momentum, but not mass. It does have energy and can form an particle-antiparticle pair of equivalent mass, but photons themselves do not have mass. A beam of gamma rays will not have any effect on gravity...right?
The references I found only referred to nuclear interactions causing pair production. I thought I'd remembered other causes, glad to see it wasn't just my imagination. I'll have to look around for more information...
As the wavelength of a photon drops, its energy increases. Above a certain point (1.02 MeV), it becomes likely that the gamma ray will convert its energy into an electron-positron pair (with the excess energy as kinetic energy). The positron will most likely annihilate with a nearby electron and create two lower-energy gamma rays (0.51 MeV each). Today, pair production normally requires an interaction with a nucleus, but I think most high-energy photons in the universe formed elementary particles in the conditions following the big bang. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong...I'm not a physicist.) Anyway, such interactions would give us a way to detect and measure the amounts of super-high energy gamma in the universe.
I have heard anecdotal evidence that IBM did some thourough testing of how such a behavior of bit-flipping due to cosmic rays changes at different elevation. When the elevation was high (7000 feet or so) - it occurred far more often then at the sea level. They did such tests below the surface of the earth and as they went deeper into the earth - such cosmic rays bit-flipping effect decreased but still remained. Only, after they went something like 40 feet or so below the surface of the earth - such behavior completley went away.
That sounds highly suspect. The sharp dropoff at that depth seems very unlikely, and there is plenty of background radiation even underground. In fact, unless you design specifically to prevent it, background radiation is likely to increase due to radioactive decay in the surrounding rock producing radon. Not as energetic as cosmic rays, but enough to make some noise in electrical circuits. (Disclaimer: I'm not a particle physicist...)
You're missing one factor: it's cold. Water could easily exist under the surface in the polar regions, shielded from direct sunlight. Water and even more volatile substances are known to exist elsewhere in conditions where they are even more likely to be lost...look at some of the gas giant moons, or comets, or the rings of Saturn. Even lower gravity than the moon, no greater atmosphere...and cold, due to the distance from the sun.
Hypersonic jets would still be hypersonic jets. You need rockets to get to orbit. (Well, a space elevator would also work, but you need rockets to put it up.)
Putting a rocket on a hypersonic jet to get it into orbit has its own problems...hypersonic aircraft are heavy, and you have to take all that mass into orbit where it's absolutely useless. And somehow manage to squeeze a useful cargo in there somewhere. It turns out to be a lot easier and cheaper to just launch a rocket...getting into orbit is nothing like flying through the atmosphere, and a hybrid vehicle that does both won't do either as well as a special purpose one.
The counterweight, if there is one (a long enough cable can be its own counterweight, and provide a very useful launch point to the rest of the solar system), will simply be small enough not to break the cable or pull the anchor point loose. That's not difficult to engineer. This isn't even on the list of problems to solve to make the space elevator possible...if you can build the cable, you can anchor it.
As for the "little ball" going faster or slower...if it does so, tension on the cable will increase and the forces will pull it straight again. Yes, if you send payloads up at too high a rate, it'll stretch "backward". It won't wrap around the earth, though, it'll just break somewhere and head into a slightly higher than geosynchronous orbit. It'd be a bit of a pain to retrieve and reattach it, but not a worldwide or even local catastrophe. And it's easy to prevent...don't send payloads up so often. It's not difficult to plan this kind of thing. The space elevator doesn't require new mathematics or engineering, just new materials strong enough for the cable.
The other responder was incorrect...if the elevator was built to be in perfect equilibrium, it wouldn't be able to lift any payloads. It is in tension, with a higher than GEO "natural" orbit.
They are fragile. Hoist up one of the toughest Soviet "Big Dumb Boosters" by the middle and watch it buckle. An aircraft launch will place significant loads on the structure which ground launch rockets don't have to take. Make them less fragile to handle an aircraft lift and separation, and you make them bigger and heavier, and use more of the fuel you're supposedly trying to save. Fuel which is probably the cheapest part of the launch.
(Not sure why you mentioned the rocket firing after separation. I was already aware of it, it was clearly stated on the orbital.com page, and it makes no difference to anything I said.)
Balloons have been done for sounding rockets...again, small rockets aiming for a high altitude, not orbit. They give you less of a boost to orbit than an aircraft launch, though they can probably put less strain on the launch vehicle and maybe launch larger ones.
The Soyuz and Eurockot certainly are far better ways of getting into space than the Shuttle...more reliable, and cheaper. They're also ground launch vehicles.
Slashdot Mirror
It's in the wrong orbit...it's higher than the ISS, and at a different inclination. Lowering its orbit would put it further into the atmosphere, degrading its capabilities and requiring reboost operations more often. It would also require a fairly large booster to make such a big shift in orbit. Also, the ISS is rather dirty, it releases gas and debris which could damage or interfere with the Hubble. Then, once you got it there, you'd have to use thrust periodically to keep the two nearby...they will tend to drift apart. And then, the nearby sunlit ISS would obstruct a fair amount of sky.
This isn't even a complete list of the reasons not to do it...but I think it's more than enough.
Now, the Hubble was a huge success. It has shown us some really incredible things which ground telescopes are simply physically incapable of doing. However, technology has advanced significantly since it was built. I believe it would be a far better use of the money to build a Hubble II, with better resolution, more modern instruments, etc.
The exp() function exp(a) computes e^a, where e is the natural logarithm base. To compute a^b, you use pow(a, b).
Maybe just let the brains figure it out on their own...they'd probably be better at it than a digital computer.
Anyway, how about something a bit more simple...a middle ear implant and some kind of subvocal microphone paired with a simple FM transmitter and receiver.
A real world (out of the lab) device would probably have no electrical connection with the outside world. Power and communication could be done optically or by induction loops...no break in the skin to get infected or to conduct electrical current into the brain, more like a headband with bright LED's and phototransistors. The internal circuitry could be low voltage, extremely reliable, and carefully isolated to prevent power supply voltage from being applied across electrodes.
Superconductors don't superconduct heat. They're usually rather mediocre thermal conductors, as I recall...Niven was just wrong about that. We don't fully understand superconductivity, but currently known superconductors don't superconduct heat, and current theory does not predict heat superconduction.
(And ceramics aren't solid state?)
I have read that liquid helium and bose-einstein condensates are effectively heat superconductors, but they aren't very useful for this.
Similar scale needles, fibers, and grains already exist everywhere, and are constantly being inhaled and disposed of. In fact, carbon nanotubes and buckyballs occur naturally. Large exposures (notice that the study you referenced was of high doses of SWNTs instilled directly into the rats' lungs) can certainly cause problems, but there's no reason to think that carbon fullerenes will be any nastier than anything of similar scale already out there. In fact, they should be a bit more inert than most things. They're just carbon, basically the same structure as graphite. (Nanotubes with more reactive groups added to their structure, for better bonding with epoxy for example, might be a lot worse...or possibly better, if it helps the body detect and remove them.)
I don't see why it would be so costly...mostly a butyl polymer (synthetic rubber, basically), solids like aluminum powder, catalysts such as iron oxide, and an oxidizer...probably ammonium perchlorate. They are very compact, simple, and powerful. You just can't turn them off once they're started, and the solid fuel-oxidizer mixture is far more dangerous to handle than a couple tanks of unmixed cryogenic liquid. (Spark hits a cryogenic vessel...nothing happens. Spark his a fuel core...trouble.)
The main advantage of ion engines is that, once you get them into orbit, they'll get you a lot further than an equivalently sized chemical rocket. This means you don't need to lift as much, and a greater portion of what you lift will be the more interesting stuff.
For probes, we need technology that moves things farther for a given mass. That's exactly what ion engines do. They use reaction mass far more sparingly, throwing out a smaller mass at a far greater velocity than chemical rockets. By doing this, they can achieve a given change in velocity using a much lower mass of fuel. Smart-1 doesn't need to get to the moon faster than this, and by using ion engines to maneuver once it's in space, it can carry more scientific payload and still have plenty of maneuvering capacity after it reaches its destination.
The benefit is even greater for probes to the outer solar system, or really to any location with a significantly different orbit from Earth's. Chemical rocket boosters capable of accelerating probes enough to send them a significant distance would be huge in comparison to the ion drives, requiring larger launch rockets to get off the ground and cutting into the useful payload.
Look into gas core rockets a bit more. The confinement is inertial, not magnetic...though magnetic fields might be used for controlling the vortex. In the "nuclear lightbulb" form, the gas core surrounds a cylinderical quartz window cooled by liquid hydrogen. The working mass is forced through the center, and is heated by radiant UV. However, you are basically correct...none have been built, they would need to be big, and the biggest problem is finding materials and cooling systems that can handle the extreme temperatures. (Up to 55000 K)
Nuclear electric is fine for probes...higher efficiency, and very long operation times. However, for many things they are simply too low-thrust. Nuclear thermals spit out greater amounts of reaction mass at a lower velocity than ion thrusters, and can't produce as much delta-v from a given amount of propellent, but they are far better than chemical rockets and produce much greater thrust than ion thrusters. I think they are most promising for any manned craft and unmanned craft that need to make high-acceleration maneuvers.
I think you're comparing ISP's...probably not a good comparison, it certainly ignores some of the other differences. Jets are far heavier than rockets providing the same thrust, and the intakes and required lift surfaces produce quite a bit of drag. They certainly can't come close to achieving the delta-v of rockets, simply because of their airspeed limits.
The inert components (mostly N2) provide working mass, but they don't provide any energy, and thus lower the working temperature and the exhaust velocity...this is a detriment, not a benefit. In addition, there is a constant drag working to reduce the velocity of the aircraft relative to the working fluid to zero, and the amount of that drag is roughly proportional to the square of velocity (this gets far more complex at hypersonic speeds). Staying in the atmosphere is just a bad idea if you are trying to reach orbit.
Jets and wings are better for sustained atmospheric flight, they can fly for a long time on a given mass of fuel. You don't need to do that if you're going into orbit, and it doesn't get you significantly closer to orbit without introducing all sorts of other complications...building a hypersonic craft capable of lifting a rocket capable of reaching most of the way to orbit from the ground, and then separating that rocket while traveling through the atmosphere at hypersonic speeds...because dragging the aircraft into orbit is just insane.
Jets are not more efficient than rockets. Actually, because they have to obtain their oxidizer from the surrounding atmosphere, they are quite a bit less efficient. The atmosphere is mostly useless nitrogen, varies in density with altitude, and is blasting against the craft at supersonic speeds. Jet engines are only useful in conjunction with wings when you're flying in the atmosphere for extended periods and at constant speeds. Since you don't have to carry your oxidizer and are supported by the air, you can cruise for extended periods. Orbital rockets constantly accelerate and get out of the atmosphere as fast as possible.
The space plane as a concept is flawed. People like it because they like the idea of flying into space, but in reality it means you have to do a lot more work pushing through atmosphere and carrying useless atmospheric engines and control surfaces into orbit. It's also vastly more complex, and atmospheric flight places far greater strains on the structure. Rather than a tank full of fairly cheap LOX, you carry even more expensive and highly complex engine and aircraft structure which all has to be maintained, and which adds many possible possibilities of catastrophic failure.
The main application of this engine is likely to be an atmosphere-skimming cruise missile, flying relatively low (very suborbital) to stay below the horizon of the target as fast as possible and retain maneuvering capability until the last minute. It's not very useful at all for getting into space, or even for human transportation between points on Earth.
Ground ozone is generated by human activity, and is independent of the magnetic field. The ozone molecule itself is neutral and exists in extremely tiny concentrations, and can have no measurable effect on the magnetic field.
Stratospheric ozone is generated by solar UV light interacting with atmospheric oxygen. Neither is affected by or has an effect on the magnetic field. Stratospheric ozone will be very slightly increased by diffusion of ground ozone, but few ozone molecules will survive that trip...it's an unstable and reactive molecule. Still, this is the only way ground production will have any effect on stratospheric ozone
I guess you're not an electrical engineer of any sort. The trinity of magnetism, electricity, and motion is due to the fact that moving magnetic fields induce electrical currents, moving electrical charges induce magnetism, and electrical currents and magnetism together can produce motion. Ozone doesn't come into this anywhere. Ozone is not always produced with an electrical current, and it isn't affected by and doesn't cause electrical charges, magnetic fields, or motion.
(Actually, there may be a very slight attraction or repulsion to magnetic fields, depending on whether O3 is paramagnetic or diamagnetic. The effect is too weak to make a difference here, though.)
Your description of lightning is simply incorrect. Ozone is a result of the ionization caused by lighting, not a cause. Lightning generates ozone in the same way that solar UV does, by splitting O2 molecules into atomic oxygen which then combines with unsplit O2 molecules.
It's really freaking big. Mercury and Venus don't have any moons, and the moons of Mars appear to be captured asteroids...relatively tiny rocks not big enough to form themselves into spheres. The Earth-Moon system is nearly a double planet. Of the inner planets, Earth is the only one with a decent moon...and it's a monster compared to the planet.
In any case, the planets you see now are just the ones that stayed in the system. Material didn't just cleanly accrete directly into the existing bodies. Most of the objects formed were kicked out of the system by interactions with other bodies, or were absorbed into other objects or the Sun itself. What you see is the final result of a great many collisions and near-miss interactions. (And the present orbits aren't truly stable, just stable enough not to worry about. I think the lifetime of the present orbits of the planets is greater than that of the sun itself. Maybe a little less for the Moon.)
The rings of the gas giants are likely far younger than the planets themselves, they are almost certainly not leftover material from the accretion. And they do have moons, lots of them...each giant has dozens, while the entire inner system has 3. However, even taken together, the moons and rings of each giant aren't much compared to the planet itself.
It's not going slowly, it's going at the same speed anything else in the same orbit would be at. It's taking a long time to reach lunar orbit because it started out in Earth orbit and needs to accelerate quite a bit. It's using an ion engine, so it'll take longer to achieve a given change in velocity. A conventional rocket would achieve the same change in velocity more quickly, but the end result would be basically the same...except that the conventional rocket would be bigger and heavier, and thus more expensive to lift.
In any case, it's too small to see from Earth, no matter how fast it's going.
Cool. However, the impression you give is a little inaccurate...these are just an improvement on the Peltier junctions already used to cool processors. That "1 square inch coolchip" doesn't provide the energy to cool your freezer, it just converts electrical energy produced somewhere else into a temperature difference. And you could use the temperature difference generated to produce power, but that would impede the cooling and just waste power overall...rather than powerchips, the hot side should have a heat sink and fan to dissipate heat as quickly as possible.
Also, operation produces no waste products, but what about manufacturing and lifetime? You have the same questions as you have for solar cells. However, I think this is a more viable source than solar for most of the world, and maybe for extracting more useful power from the waste heat of power plants and industry...and it'd be very helpful in spacecraft powered by radiothermal generators, such as Cassini. RTG's are heavy, this could allow much smaller ones to generate the same power.
It doesn't use batteries, which store electrical power in chemical reactions, it uses a capacitor, which stores static charges on two electrically separate plates. It actually appears to use an electrolytic capacitor, which will eventually wear out, but should last much longer than a battery. However, they store less energy, and they tend to lose charge faster.
I'm not sure what the benefit is supposed to be. It seems almost certain to be less efficient, less resistant to damage, and shorter lived than a separate device designed specifically for energy storage, which doesn't have to be manufactured in a thin layer. The articles claim it is more efficient in dim light than silicon cells, but don't give any reason why...I wonder if they are using some faulty measurement of "efficiency", such as output voltage. (It might charge to the same voltage on an open circuit in dim light, even though it can't deliver as much power.)
However, it seems to truly be a completely different type of solar cell: it's not just a silicon cell layered with a capacitor. It is possible that it really does behave better in low light conditions. The reference to the photoreceptor dyes makes me wonder how it'll stand up to full sunlight for prolonged periods, though.
I'm not convinced there would have to be much more of a Martian atmosphere than you would get by warming up present day Mars and breaking up some of the peroxides and carbonates in the soil. However, much of the atmosphere would be H2O, which would be lost more quickly due to its lower molecular weight. (whether or not it had a significant magnetosphere)
As for volcanic atmosphere...well, there's a lot of volcanos, and some very big ones, as well as evidence of some really huge lava flows. However, everything I've seen so far indicates that Venus is only expected to have fairly Earthlike levels of activity today...it's not an inferno of constant eruptions, it's just a really hot and dry hell.
In any case, I'm not saying that atmospheric loss doesn't happen, only that the charged particles of the solar wind aren't a huge factor in it. Escape velocity and mean particle velocity in the upper atmosphere are the main factors, and charged particles will carry only a tiny fraction of total solar heat energy, and deliver most of it more deeply in the atmosphere. The initial atmosphere, present temperatures, and the lack of recent tectonic or volcanic activity on Mars seem like far more important factors.
The magnetosphere isn't a significant factor, Mars likely just never had much of an atmosphere to start with. As a counterexample, Venus gets about 4.45 times as much solar radiation as Mars, has no significant magnetic field, and has a weaker surface gravity than Earth, yet it has far more atmosphere than Earth.
To the parent:
Mars has rather sparse amounts of nitrogen...you're probably going to bring that from Earth either way. Other than that, the moon has everything Mars has, it's a shorter duration trip, the shorter communications lag makes ground control feasible for more things, and it has less gravity to overcome for launch or landing. (Mars has enough atmosphere to make trouble on reentry, but too little to make soft landings easy.) Also, the atmosphere has combined with any free metals on the surface of Mars...this is not so on the moon.
Mars is interesting as a potential life-supporting body...studying a biology that originated on another planet could give us new insights into that of our own world. However, I don't see it as a useful colonization or industrial target.
I see you're a physicist (but of what sort?)...maybe you can clarify something. As I understand it, EM radiation has momentum, but not mass. It does have energy and can form an particle-antiparticle pair of equivalent mass, but photons themselves do not have mass. A beam of gamma rays will not have any effect on gravity...right?
The references I found only referred to nuclear interactions causing pair production. I thought I'd remembered other causes, glad to see it wasn't just my imagination. I'll have to look around for more information...
As the wavelength of a photon drops, its energy increases. Above a certain point (1.02 MeV), it becomes likely that the gamma ray will convert its energy into an electron-positron pair (with the excess energy as kinetic energy). The positron will most likely annihilate with a nearby electron and create two lower-energy gamma rays (0.51 MeV each). Today, pair production normally requires an interaction with a nucleus, but I think most high-energy photons in the universe formed elementary particles in the conditions following the big bang. (Someone correct me if I'm wrong...I'm not a physicist.) Anyway, such interactions would give us a way to detect and measure the amounts of super-high energy gamma in the universe.
You're missing one factor: it's cold. Water could easily exist under the surface in the polar regions, shielded from direct sunlight. Water and even more volatile substances are known to exist elsewhere in conditions where they are even more likely to be lost...look at some of the gas giant moons, or comets, or the rings of Saturn. Even lower gravity than the moon, no greater atmosphere...and cold, due to the distance from the sun.
Hypersonic jets would still be hypersonic jets. You need rockets to get to orbit. (Well, a space elevator would also work, but you need rockets to put it up.)
Putting a rocket on a hypersonic jet to get it into orbit has its own problems...hypersonic aircraft are heavy, and you have to take all that mass into orbit where it's absolutely useless. And somehow manage to squeeze a useful cargo in there somewhere. It turns out to be a lot easier and cheaper to just launch a rocket...getting into orbit is nothing like flying through the atmosphere, and a hybrid vehicle that does both won't do either as well as a special purpose one.
The counterweight, if there is one (a long enough cable can be its own counterweight, and provide a very useful launch point to the rest of the solar system), will simply be small enough not to break the cable or pull the anchor point loose. That's not difficult to engineer. This isn't even on the list of problems to solve to make the space elevator possible...if you can build the cable, you can anchor it.
As for the "little ball" going faster or slower...if it does so, tension on the cable will increase and the forces will pull it straight again. Yes, if you send payloads up at too high a rate, it'll stretch "backward". It won't wrap around the earth, though, it'll just break somewhere and head into a slightly higher than geosynchronous orbit. It'd be a bit of a pain to retrieve and reattach it, but not a worldwide or even local catastrophe. And it's easy to prevent...don't send payloads up so often. It's not difficult to plan this kind of thing. The space elevator doesn't require new mathematics or engineering, just new materials strong enough for the cable.
The other responder was incorrect...if the elevator was built to be in perfect equilibrium, it wouldn't be able to lift any payloads. It is in tension, with a higher than GEO "natural" orbit.
They are fragile. Hoist up one of the toughest Soviet "Big Dumb Boosters" by the middle and watch it buckle. An aircraft launch will place significant loads on the structure which ground launch rockets don't have to take. Make them less fragile to handle an aircraft lift and separation, and you make them bigger and heavier, and use more of the fuel you're supposedly trying to save. Fuel which is probably the cheapest part of the launch.
(Not sure why you mentioned the rocket firing after separation. I was already aware of it, it was clearly stated on the orbital.com page, and it makes no difference to anything I said.)
Balloons have been done for sounding rockets...again, small rockets aiming for a high altitude, not orbit. They give you less of a boost to orbit than an aircraft launch, though they can probably put less strain on the launch vehicle and maybe launch larger ones.
The Soyuz and Eurockot certainly are far better ways of getting into space than the Shuttle...more reliable, and cheaper. They're also ground launch vehicles.