You still have to match speeds with it, not an easy thing with current technology. Have you done the math on a probe just parked in front of a comet for what the impact energy will be like? Let me give you a hint, it's 1/2mv(squared). Get a big enough probe for the comet to smack into, and you can split it in half. Course, you won't be able to use the probe for much anymore...
What I'm wondering is, what kind of designs the US Navy has for its nuclear powered subs and ships. I'm thinking, these are proven designs, workable in small scale settings (say, a town of a few ten thousands), reliable, good safety records (well, if they had problems with these reactors, they never told anybody about 'em, anyways...). Put a bunch of these smaller reactors around, close to the need, and not have to deal with the 7-10% losses incurred in 'shipping' power. These things would be practically plug & play...
You'll need at least double the peak capacity, spread all over the place, to ensure a decent supply. Solar cells don't produce at night. You'll also need something to store the power produced. We have a small solar setup we use for our network here. Three 30 watt panels feeding a pair of deep cycle batteries run 4 access point radios on a hilltop about a mile & a half from here, providing internet access for the downtown of my home town. We're thinking of adding some basic router and shaping capability with a small braindead router, but we're not finding anything that'll do what we need without adding at least 3 more panels. That's about $2100 we don't have a budget for at the moment.
The app works good cause we're in northern Arizona, plenty of sunshine at least 350 days out of the year. We still get some cloud cover, and if the clouds hang over for a week, the net goes down. This is why I really don't see solar power being widespread for power generation.
New challenge: show me a prototype that could convert solar power from orbit to the surface of the Earth in a controlled fashion and has a snowball's chance in hell of producing a statistically significant portion of the US electricity usage (5 trillion kilowatt-hours/year).
First step would be to build an Earth based reciever that won't get picketted by envirowhackos intent on protecting the ecology of the desert. Reason for that would be, the most efficient reciever of microwaves would be a rectenna. You know they'll build the reciever in the desert because the land there is almost worthless.
And by the way, even if you don't reprocess the spent fuel rods, you can use them in a dirty bomb. And if you have people who are willing to die, you can make a true terror weapon with spent fuel elements. So who's a fuckwit now?
Dirty bombs don't seem to be a realistic and viable threat. Though, with all the media hype, a lot of people are afraid of them. Yeah, it'd be a pain in the ass to clean up after one, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.
If we build more nuclear power plants we would have to raise energy rates - unless government is willing to pay the mammoth construction costs of nuclear power plants. Any completely private venture to build a nuclear power plant is uneconomical as it takes decades before you can return the cost of investment.
How much of those 'mamoth construction costs' are due to paperwork, lawsuits, lawyers, etc, as well as paying workers to stand by onsite to work when the 'temporary injunctions' are lifted for a few days? How much does it cost to keep maintanance crews in an unfinished plant to keep it ready for more work when the law allows it?
Case in point, the Perry Power Plant. I remember the paperwork starting up on it in the mid-70's, and actual construction starting in '77. It seemed like every week, CEI was in court over it, and every time CEI won, it was a race to get the work crews back on the job before the next round of injunctions got served. It don't take 10 years to build a nuke plant if the company is allowed to do their jobs. It could have been finished in under 4 years. And they kept construction on Unit 2 going until '94, 7 more years after bringing Unit 1 online.
Can't remember off the top of my head when Unit 1 went fully operational, but IIRC, it was 1990ish, 13 years after they broke ground.
One potential solution is molten salt reactors, which do not use fuel elements but rather use molten uranium salts. Since there are no fuel elements, fuel from the reactor can be chemically treated without a lot of handling. It may even be possible to continuously process the fuel while it's still in the reactor (though this has never been done). Doing this could completely solve the problem of long-term nuclear waste. The only waste produced by such a reactor would be depleted uranium and fission products.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I'm thinking, with a bit more design work, possibly 'breed' the depleted uranium into a fissionable material and 'burn' that in the reactor as well. It'd cut down on what we'd need to pull out of it, and with the proper reactions, we should be able to get the waste products into short half-life 'ash'. If we can get the half-lives down under 20, 30 years as somebody has mentioned before, we're almost home free.
If the alternative to nuclear is to burn more and more coal, then maybe nukes are worth the risk? I'm not even really educated enough on the subject to have a proper opinion, but it seems like an occasional nuclear disaster might be worth it if we could avoid global warming.
When burning coal can release uranium and thorium into the atmosphere, I'll settle for a pebble bed reactor. Hell, go ahead & put it in my back yard, I don't care.
IMHO, we must admit: as a civilization, we can't guarantee that successive generations of humans will have the ability to take care of our bubbling nuclear legacy. Or is it too late to consider that possibility already?
I'm not willing to take 50-50 odds on the United States having a viable education system for my grandkids. And with the way things are going in Congress the last 15, 20 years with corporations writing the laws to suit themselves and buying some Congresscritters to ram 'em through, I'd be willing to bet that any future nuclear regulations will allow the corporations to get away with the bare minimum of precautions. I expect a nuclear accident, not because the technology is unsound, but because the laws will be gutted so badly that there'll be no safety precautions taken because of the expense involved. Spending money on reasonable safety precautions cuts into the bottom line and just isn't profitable, especially if you can get legislation passed to limit your liability, it's often cheaper to pay the lawsuits than it is to take the precautions.
IMHO, If we need to, as a civilization, we can survive on solar power using existing technologies if we reduce our consumption to more modest levels.
Ah, no. Solar power produces less than 1% of all electricity used in the US. Since about half the electricity used in the US is used in business for various purposes, up & including manufacturing, you're asking everybody to take an economic hit that would make living in a mud hut in the Congo look like living in Beverly Hills. You're asking for at least a 99% reduction in electrical useage. Ain't gonna happen, dood.
How about a twist? The writers go back in time in order to influence the writers of 'Star Trek V: Final Frontier' into writing a half-way decent movie instead of the shlock that was actually made. The timeline is therefore altered so that the following films are actually watchable, thereby saving the world from lame trek movies.
I'm sure to the PC prissies that live their lives by the standards of Slashdot moderation (wherein any forthrightly-expressed or outside-the-norm opinion is "-1"), the legendary Ellison is nothing but a "troll" or a "flame-baiter" regardless of his accomplishments or status, while weak-sister geek idols who pathetically recycle the pop culture that others -- like Ellison -- worked to create are hailed as the paragons of cool.
What's Harlan been up to lately? Last thing I know of him doing (besides 'City' & getting a creative consultant credit for Babylon 5) was the teleplay for his story 'Demon With The Glass Hand', which I liked. And that's been over 30 years ago.
[On a different note, I am impressed with RCMP. They identified the problem, understand what they can and cannot do, know the difference and go after criminals instead of casual copyright infringers.]
Smart. It does make sense to go after the guys who really hurt the sales, the counterfeiters
Here in the States, though, they go after the filesharers. More money in settlements than in criminal prosecutions. It's always been about the money...
My guess is that this particular bill will be shot down, but congress needed to propose it to show that the MAFIAA's bribes are being put to good use. The actual meat of this bill will most likely be tacked onto something that is sure to pass, like spending bills for the war in iraq.
At 747 pages, there's bound to be something in there that the politicians like, so expect this to pass. All that needs be done is an intern showing them the passage that their psycological profile is most likely to identify with, and it's a done deal. The problem with this kind of legislation has always been the tailgating of pork and landmines onto otherwise seemingly harmless legislation. See the Real ID provisions of the $80 billion spending bill supposedly for body armor for the troops in Iraq passed in, what, '05? To the best of my knowledge, the troops are still waiting for that body armor to show up. Likely, the contractor providing the armor is still collecting the payments even though they haven't delivered.
At 747 pages (no, I haven't read it yet), it's liable to be chock-full of corporate welfare goodness, and even though there might not be any teeth in it at the moment, someday the Secretary of Media Appeasement will say 'Damn, the media isn't getting its federally legislated profits on time, we'll have to bust down some doors and shake down the people." It's only a matter of time.
I hate the two-party system we have, and would love to see proportional representation and a condorcet voting system put in place nation-wide... But really, I think even if we just went from a 2-party system to a 4-party sytem (Democrats and Republicans as they are generally accepted, plus "progressive democrats" like Kucinich and Gravel, as well as a more Libertarian party like what Paul represents), and if all parties were given the same attention my the main stream media and voters in general, a lot of people would be surprised at the results.
I'd love to see the Electoral College phased out, but with all the screaming about voting machines here in the States, I really don't know what to replace it with.
Back in The Day, states used to pick their senators based on the laws of that state. Didn't necessarily mean by popular vote. Maybe we should just have ballots marked Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Green/Lunatic Fringe instead of a candidate's name, have the parties post and advertise their platforms, and just vote by party, then let the party bigwigs decide who's going to be the meatpuppet when it's done. How much worse for things could it get?
About time for a revolution if you ask me.
Good thing you still have your First Amendment right of Free Speech. Oh, wait...
From a EU perspective it is often very hard to spot the difference between US presidential candidates.
Trust me, those of us with our boots on the ground here in the States think pretty much the same thing. A meatpuppet is a meatpuppet, and the only thing that seems to change on them is the makeup they use when they spin their 15 second sound bytes.
While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.
Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.
I'm 52 & a cardiac bypass candidate. I lost my health insurance a few years ago due to an involuntary job change. Now I'm uninsurable.
Oh, and I'm ineligible for Medicare cause I can't get disability. Clogged cardiac arteries aren't considered a disability cause they're fixable, thus no disability. The fix is upwards of $120K USD. Any health care coverage I've tried to get in the last 4 years won't cover pre-existing conditions and will cost me an arm, a leg, & my first 4 grandkids because of the pre-existing condition because the pre-existing condition will aggravate the rest of my health. Good old Catch-22.
Sometimes, it's not so bad, e.g. RADAR, HTML. But making, PATRIOT or PIRATE or INDUCE the actual name of your legal bills makes a joke out of the entire legislative process. Must everything become a marketing ploy?
It makes it easier to spin so they can sell it to the electorate. Joe Sixpack isn't going to read these bills and call his Congresscritter, he'll glance at the name, think 'This is a Good Thing' like the spin doctors want him to, and go his merry way, not knowing that Good Thing just made him part of the growing criminal class.
(1) IN GENERAL - Imposition of a civil penalty under this section does not preclude any other criminal or civil statutory, injunctive, common law, or administrative remedy, which is available by law to the United States or any other person.
Looks like a double jeopardy run-around, but IANAL and IANYL.
Thing is, we've got a helluva backlog in the Federal courts, and this will just add more logjams to the load. How much more can we pile on til the whole system collapses?
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You still have to match speeds with it, not an easy thing with current technology. Have you done the math on a probe just parked in front of a comet for what the impact energy will be like? Let me give you a hint, it's 1/2mv(squared). Get a big enough probe for the comet to smack into, and you can split it in half. Course, you won't be able to use the probe for much anymore...
With or without lemon?
What I'm wondering is, what kind of designs the US Navy has for its nuclear powered subs and ships. I'm thinking, these are proven designs, workable in small scale settings (say, a town of a few ten thousands), reliable, good safety records (well, if they had problems with these reactors, they never told anybody about 'em, anyways...). Put a bunch of these smaller reactors around, close to the need, and not have to deal with the 7-10% losses incurred in 'shipping' power. These things would be practically plug & play...
The app works good cause we're in northern Arizona, plenty of sunshine at least 350 days out of the year. We still get some cloud cover, and if the clouds hang over for a week, the net goes down. This is why I really don't see solar power being widespread for power generation.
First step would be to build an Earth based reciever that won't get picketted by envirowhackos intent on protecting the ecology of the desert. Reason for that would be, the most efficient reciever of microwaves would be a rectenna. You know they'll build the reciever in the desert because the land there is almost worthless.
ALMOST worthless isn't totally worthless though.
Dirty bombs don't seem to be a realistic and viable threat. Though, with all the media hype, a lot of people are afraid of them. Yeah, it'd be a pain in the ass to clean up after one, but it wouldn't be the end of the world.
How much of those 'mamoth construction costs' are due to paperwork, lawsuits, lawyers, etc, as well as paying workers to stand by onsite to work when the 'temporary injunctions' are lifted for a few days? How much does it cost to keep maintanance crews in an unfinished plant to keep it ready for more work when the law allows it?
Case in point, the Perry Power Plant. I remember the paperwork starting up on it in the mid-70's, and actual construction starting in '77. It seemed like every week, CEI was in court over it, and every time CEI won, it was a race to get the work crews back on the job before the next round of injunctions got served. It don't take 10 years to build a nuke plant if the company is allowed to do their jobs. It could have been finished in under 4 years. And they kept construction on Unit 2 going until '94, 7 more years after bringing Unit 1 online.
Can't remember off the top of my head when Unit 1 went fully operational, but IIRC, it was 1990ish, 13 years after they broke ground.
Hmmmmmmmmmmmm. I'm thinking, with a bit more design work, possibly 'breed' the depleted uranium into a fissionable material and 'burn' that in the reactor as well. It'd cut down on what we'd need to pull out of it, and with the proper reactions, we should be able to get the waste products into short half-life 'ash'. If we can get the half-lives down under 20, 30 years as somebody has mentioned before, we're almost home free.
When burning coal can release uranium and thorium into the atmosphere, I'll settle for a pebble bed reactor. Hell, go ahead & put it in my back yard, I don't care.
I'm not willing to take 50-50 odds on the United States having a viable education system for my grandkids. And with the way things are going in Congress the last 15, 20 years with corporations writing the laws to suit themselves and buying some Congresscritters to ram 'em through, I'd be willing to bet that any future nuclear regulations will allow the corporations to get away with the bare minimum of precautions. I expect a nuclear accident, not because the technology is unsound, but because the laws will be gutted so badly that there'll be no safety precautions taken because of the expense involved. Spending money on reasonable safety precautions cuts into the bottom line and just isn't profitable, especially if you can get legislation passed to limit your liability, it's often cheaper to pay the lawsuits than it is to take the precautions.
Ah, no. Solar power produces less than 1% of all electricity used in the US. Since about half the electricity used in the US is used in business for various purposes, up & including manufacturing, you're asking everybody to take an economic hit that would make living in a mud hut in the Congo look like living in Beverly Hills. You're asking for at least a 99% reduction in electrical useage. Ain't gonna happen, dood.
We'll do you a favor & kill your 8-track, too.
But Bill Shatner wrote that one.
I loved how they stuffed 5 minutes of action into a 2 hour 23 minute film.
The best actor never got a credit for it. That being, of course, the Enterprise Refit. Beautiful ship, still my favorite Enterprise of all time.
What's Harlan been up to lately? Last thing I know of him doing (besides 'City' & getting a creative consultant credit for Babylon 5) was the teleplay for his story 'Demon With The Glass Hand', which I liked. And that's been over 30 years ago.
Smart. It does make sense to go after the guys who really hurt the sales, the counterfeiters
Here in the States, though, they go after the filesharers. More money in settlements than in criminal prosecutions. It's always been about the money...
At 747 pages, there's bound to be something in there that the politicians like, so expect this to pass. All that needs be done is an intern showing them the passage that their psycological profile is most likely to identify with, and it's a done deal. The problem with this kind of legislation has always been the tailgating of pork and landmines onto otherwise seemingly harmless legislation. See the Real ID provisions of the $80 billion spending bill supposedly for body armor for the troops in Iraq passed in, what, '05? To the best of my knowledge, the troops are still waiting for that body armor to show up. Likely, the contractor providing the armor is still collecting the payments even though they haven't delivered.
At 747 pages (no, I haven't read it yet), it's liable to be chock-full of corporate welfare goodness, and even though there might not be any teeth in it at the moment, someday the Secretary of Media Appeasement will say 'Damn, the media isn't getting its federally legislated profits on time, we'll have to bust down some doors and shake down the people." It's only a matter of time.
I'd love to see the Electoral College phased out, but with all the screaming about voting machines here in the States, I really don't know what to replace it with.
Back in The Day, states used to pick their senators based on the laws of that state. Didn't necessarily mean by popular vote. Maybe we should just have ballots marked Republican/Democrat/Libertarian/Green/Lunatic Fringe instead of a candidate's name, have the parties post and advertise their platforms, and just vote by party, then let the party bigwigs decide who's going to be the meatpuppet when it's done. How much worse for things could it get?
Good thing you still have your First Amendment right of Free Speech. Oh, wait...
Trust me, those of us with our boots on the ground here in the States think pretty much the same thing. A meatpuppet is a meatpuppet, and the only thing that seems to change on them is the makeup they use when they spin their 15 second sound bytes.
Look at the bright side. Not only will you get to meet Paris Hilton's coroner, you'll also be able to sue that trust and get your own flying car.
The Ariane 5G can lift 17.6 tons into LEO for a cost of about $165 million
While not mentioned in TFA, the Soyuz 3 would be able to put 17.8 tons into LEO. If they can get the price comparable to the Ariane, they'll have a winner.
Don't count the Russians out of the race just yet.
I'm 52 & a cardiac bypass candidate. I lost my health insurance a few years ago due to an involuntary job change. Now I'm uninsurable.
Oh, and I'm ineligible for Medicare cause I can't get disability. Clogged cardiac arteries aren't considered a disability cause they're fixable, thus no disability. The fix is upwards of $120K USD. Any health care coverage I've tried to get in the last 4 years won't cover pre-existing conditions and will cost me an arm, a leg, & my first 4 grandkids because of the pre-existing condition because the pre-existing condition will aggravate the rest of my health. Good old Catch-22.
It makes it easier to spin so they can sell it to the electorate. Joe Sixpack isn't going to read these bills and call his Congresscritter, he'll glance at the name, think 'This is a Good Thing' like the spin doctors want him to, and go his merry way, not knowing that Good Thing just made him part of the growing criminal class.
Looks like a double jeopardy run-around, but IANAL and IANYL.
Thing is, we've got a helluva backlog in the Federal courts, and this will just add more logjams to the load. How much more can we pile on til the whole system collapses?
Obviously, they looked in all the wrong places. Washington DC, Hollywood...