A different press release a while back said that scientists has made flexible PV cells which would great for blinds and drapes, and another said they'd invented transparent PV for... windows.
Light colored walls play a crucial role diffusing light into other parts of the room. Having these panels on the walls would darken them, requiring more electric lights, and making the room seem smaller.
Anyway, thumbs up on the basic research on moth eyes.
Those calculators only need a few milliwatts of power to operate, so can be quite inefficient and still get the job done. Indoor solar cells would have to be pretty efficient to be worth the cost of installation.
Some of us are old enough to have seen thousands of these "in 10 years" vaporware press releases for stuff that never gets put in production, and so have become quite jaded.
The whole point of "colonize other planets" is to escape reliance on this polluted, over-crowded, might-be-made-uninhabitable-by-an-asteroid Earth.
Colonization of _any_ remote region takes lengthy support from the colonizing nation.
I'm not sure you quite understand how remote that Europa -- and even Mars -- is, how little (both in weight and volume) rockets can carry, and how much stuff that a high tech society needs.
What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?
You're the one ignorant of ionizing radiation. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=483&tid=86When ionizing radiation from outer space hits the upper atmosphere, it produces a shower of cosmic rays that constantly expose everything on earth. Some hit gases in the air and change them into radioactive material (such as tritium and carbon 14). That rocket engine nozzle is pointed down, towards us.
I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout.
First you ask if I'm ignorant, and then you admit that it happened.
None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.
They were considered seriously enough to get off the drawing board and into the spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere phase.
Yet if you dump me outside in February with no house, no clothes and no tools, and I would be dead in a day.
If I dump you on Mars with a house, clothes and tools, you'd be dead in minutes.
Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.
That "dead in a day" vs. "dead in minutes" is caused by some seriously essential factors.
And speaking of houses (the kind you'd need on Mars), clothes and tools...
Where do they come from? Factories.
Where do factories come from? They're built from difficult to fashion metals.
Where do the metals come from? Steel ingots that are softened in huge furnaces and then pushed through really heavy extruders.
Where do the steel ingots come from? Foundries with HUGE buckets that carry tens of thousands of tons of molten iron and force in just the right amount of carbon, chrome, vanadium, etc.
Where does the iron come from? Massively complex refineries cook down iron ore.
Where does the ore come from? Mines that use unimaginably large shovels and trucks, plus miles of crushers and grinders.
Shall I go on about nails, screws, glass, gasoline, rubber, etc, etc?
If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.
So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?
and in extreme Arctic conditions.
Again, how many people live in extreme Arctic conditions? (No, Eskimos *do not* live there. They go occasionally on hunting expeditions, but that's it.)
Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological... problems
And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey.:eyeroll:
"Where do we get the oxygen to burn the oceans of methane?" "Crack the water, of course." "But where do we get the energy to crack the water?" "The methane, of course!"
smh
to possibly support native life forms.
And iron, aluminum, sodium, calcium, etc, etc ad nauseum? The light that plants need? Warmth? Lead to shield us from the Europa's 5400 mSv (enough to cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single day) background radiation? And the constant earthquakes?
Without that drive to dominate other men and impress females with what great offspring we'd sire, we'd still be frightened primates on the plains of Africa.
BTW, chimps and apes have that same dominant, show-off streak.
Now that we've discovered how (1) incredibly harsh that outer space is, and (2) stunningly expensive it is to supply everything that we take for granted here on Earth -- from the downward force needed to keep our bones from cracking and our eyes from exploding, to the UV shielding that prevents us from (a) toasting and (b) going blind, and radiation shielding so that our sperm still works, and we don't die of cancer before having the chance to use it -- to the air, water and food all around us to the fuel and minerals that we quite easily dig out of the ground, it should be patently obvious that we're stuck on Earth, and nothing's gonna change that until Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive (which won't happen until there's a Eugenics War).
Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.
(It) is a certainty that if wee do not get off the planet the human race will die.
You've been reading too much sci fi.
We need nuclear power rockets yesterday
Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!
understand you are cool with killing off the white race
The only thing worse than some Utopian sci-fi nerd is a Conservative sci-fi nerd.
Sell us your shit for a reasonable (for even very unreasonable cartel-set values of "reasonable") price, and stop attacking the people who *do* sell us their shit for a reasonable price.
I mean really: if there was ever a time to invade a country, it was when crude was $140/bbl. But we didn't.
Slashdot Mirror
A different press release a while back said that scientists has made flexible PV cells which would great for blinds and drapes, and another said they'd invented transparent PV for... windows.
Light colored walls play a crucial role diffusing light into other parts of the room. Having these panels on the walls would darken them, requiring more electric lights, and making the room seem smaller.
Anyway, thumbs up on the basic research on moth eyes.
Those calculators only need a few milliwatts of power to operate, so can be quite inefficient and still get the job done. Indoor solar cells would have to be pretty efficient to be worth the cost of installation.
Try keeping your jaded old mind open.
You seem to have the wrong idea about what the word "jaded" means.
jadÂed
ËjÄdÉ(TM)d/
adjective
tired, bored, or lacking enthusiasm, typically after having had too much of something.
Nowhere in that definition does it deny that something can happen.
press releases for stuff that made it into production just fine
You're acting like I said that it'll never happen. I didn't. I'm just with OP: wake me when it happens.
built upon hundreds of press releases promising thinner, better, faster, using less power
From major companies, or from from unknowns?
who cares about scientific research and progress
Some of us are old enough to have seen thousands of these "in 10 years" vaporware press releases for stuff that never gets put in production, and so have become quite jaded.
Where, in this thread, did that ever come up?
The whole point of "colonize other planets" is to escape reliance on this polluted, over-crowded, might-be-made-uninhabitable-by-an-asteroid Earth.
Colonization of _any_ remote region takes lengthy support from the colonizing nation.
I'm not sure you quite understand how remote that Europa -- and even Mars -- is, how little (both in weight and volume) rockets can carry, and how much stuff that a high tech society needs.
What's the relevance of that whole, long bit of obviousness to whether we, in the near future, can not just live on -- for example -- Europa with a shit load of gargantuanly expensive support from Earth, but independently sustain ourselves on Europa?
Morena Baccarin has all the necessary curves.
And there's nothing impossible or even difficult about sending stuff like smelters, excavators, extruders, and so forth to Mars; it's just expensive.
I don't think you realize how incredibly large and heavy this stuff is, compared to the spidery save-every-gram stuff that we can launch into space.
It's not like it hurts the air molecules.
You're the one ignorant of ionizing radiation. http://www.atsdr.cdc.gov/toxfaqs/tf.asp?id=483&tid=86 When ionizing radiation from outer space hits the upper atmosphere, it produces a shower of cosmic rays that constantly expose everything on earth. Some hit gases in the air and change them into radioactive material (such as tritium and carbon 14). That rocket engine nozzle is pointed down, towards us.
I'm aware there were some designs -- even scale prototypes -- of fission rockets for atmospheric use that did spew fallout.
First you ask if I'm ignorant, and then you admit that it happened.
None of these were seriously considered for obvious reasons.
They were considered seriously enough to get off the drawing board and into the spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere phase.
Yet if you dump me outside in February with no house, no clothes and no tools, and I would be dead in a day.
If I dump you on Mars with a house, clothes and tools, you'd be dead in minutes.
Mars would be harder, but not essentially different.
That "dead in a day" vs. "dead in minutes" is caused by some seriously essential factors.
And speaking of houses (the kind you'd need on Mars), clothes and tools...
Shall I go on about nails, screws, glass, gasoline, rubber, etc, etc?
If you say that we'll just mine it on Mars, that won't work because the heavy equipment isn't up there, and neither are the refineries, smelters, fuel, etc.
As long as I get to pilot a ship with Gina Torres, Morena Baccarin and Jewel Staite! (Throw Melinda Clarke in for good measure...)
We can already sustain life deep underwater
So.... exactly how many people currently live (as in "make homes, produce stuff, marry and make children, etc", as opposed to just visit for research) deep underwater?
and in extreme Arctic conditions.
Again, how many people live in extreme Arctic conditions? (No, Eskimos *do not* live there. They go occasionally on hunting expeditions, but that's it.)
Space and other planets ability to sustain life are technological ... problems
And so is taking a stroll on the Sun. Throw enough money at it, and easy peasey. :eyeroll:
But life at all?
That is what the "conversation" is about...
have enough liquid water and energy
"Where do we get the oxygen to burn the oceans of methane?"
"Crack the water, of course."
"But where do we get the energy to crack the water?"
"The methane, of course!"
smh
to possibly support native life forms.
And iron, aluminum, sodium, calcium, etc, etc ad nauseum?
The light that plants need?
Warmth?
Lead to shield us from the Europa's 5400 mSv (enough to cause severe illness or death in human beings exposed for a single day) background radiation?
And the constant earthquakes?
His ID is too high to be an old man. But everything else you wrote is spot-on.
Without that drive to dominate other men and impress females with what great offspring we'd sire, we'd still be frightened primates on the plains of Africa.
BTW, chimps and apes have that same dominant, show-off streak.
Now that we've discovered how (1) incredibly harsh that outer space is, and (2) stunningly expensive it is to supply everything that we take for granted here on Earth -- from the downward force needed to keep our bones from cracking and our eyes from exploding, to the UV shielding that prevents us from (a) toasting and (b) going blind, and radiation shielding so that our sperm still works, and we don't die of cancer before having the chance to use it -- to the air, water and food all around us to the fuel and minerals that we quite easily dig out of the ground, it should be patently obvious that we're stuck on Earth, and nothing's gonna change that until Zefram Cochrane invents the warp drive (which won't happen until there's a Eugenics War).
After we have colonized several planets,
Which planets? Only the Earth has anything remotely like the environment and resources that we need to sustain life.
(It) is a certainty that if wee do not get off the planet the human race will die.
You've been reading too much sci fi.
We need nuclear power rockets yesterday
Yay, let's spread even more tons of ionizing radiation into the atmosphere than we already have!! And near places that are a lot more populated than Las Vegas in 1958!!
understand you are cool with killing off the white race
The only thing worse than some Utopian sci-fi nerd is a Conservative sci-fi nerd.
if Mars were made of solid oil
Then it would be Evil Saturated Fat, and former Mayor Bloomberg would try and get it quarantined!!
It's widely believed
Weasel words.
Sell us your shit for a reasonable (for even very unreasonable cartel-set values of "reasonable") price, and stop attacking the people who *do* sell us their shit for a reasonable price.
I mean really: if there was ever a time to invade a country, it was when crude was $140/bbl. But we didn't.
I didn't write that *I* believe it. I wrote that the *article* said it.
Boo, lack of reading comprehension.
to Cuba (except for the piss-poor Internet), but why the hell was a Disney ship near Cuba?
But "OMG!! Terrorists with a WMD!!" is the whole purpose of this article.