So..."if the heatshield is ablative, then after an exceedingly short period of time, the superheated air is now hitting the real surface and doing damage, no?" Or perhaps the idea behind ablative surfaces is exactly to dissipate far larger amounts of energy than it would be otherwise possible without them...it's not about absolute defense (it never is), just about changing the odds
Gases don't "burn of" - at most they can turn to plasma; which would be a great thing - it's not translucent.
And hey, if the baloons are released from some distance / are just floating there...;p
Mods, do you so easily fall for broken window fallacy?
Hey, I've got an idea, let's just give money to groups who say that what they do will get rid of the probem of unemployed / undesirables. One calling their product "Soylent Green" seems legit.
Oh well, so use lightweight ablative coating. With the typical times of flybys / warning before missile hit, that shouldn't be much of a problem. For some bonus points, make the coating release a barrier (in whatever form - aerosol, plasma, who cares as long as it works)
Real bonus points: add retroreflectors; they might work only for a short time and reflect only a small part of incoming radiation...but there's bound to be something delicate on the other end. For that matter - how hard millions of toy balloons with small retro- and ordinary reflectors scattered in the area can be?..."99 Luftabaloons" might have been prophetic, in a way;)
There might be some complications. Consider that, in the end, you'd want to transplant this mass in an environment which is a bit different. Which might lead to some...unintended consequences.
Think some "bad" strains taking over when more neutral ones in the gut or on skin have been wiped out by anitbiotics / etc. Or some weird strains already on Mir or ISS.
Who are those "people" you speak of? At least a large portion (certainly one that seems to "matter") has quite different deities, typically giving them virtually free reign over the world - surely beneficial when outcompeting other groups that did deify the biosphere, which was much more of a rule in the past. Only problem with the former approach - humans, with their adaptability, can go quite far before hitting hard some limit...at which point we usually also overdo with how messy it gets.
Our adaptability also has its limits; we could have some problems with, say, anoxic event, snowball Earth, or something new on the scale of oxyden catastrophe.
It would be at least interesting to keep the Mars pristine, for some time anyway - there's plenty left to learn about it, also about its possible past or perhaps even present life.
And considering that even in our system there's more than half a dozen candidates for life, and the number of stars & galaxies...I don't think the Universe & life would even notice the difference from such landfill.
I don't think it's safe to assume it will be easier. Different, yes; but not automatically easier.
Highly abrasive dust (not strictly about the drill, more about other important, more general parts of any machine), less support for heavy machinery, non-weathered formations, hidden chaches of rubble (after meteorides), troubles with getting rid of waste heat in heavy machinery; just possibilities from the top of my head.
until sat comms become portable to the masses, this is just a fleeting dream
It probably won't. Whatever level of advance in basics of radio technology we might achieve, ground based stations utilising those advances should be ahead.
At many really meaningful scale, they're all pretty much the same. Scales of the Universe on one hand, granurality of spacetime on the other; temperatures of Big Bang vs. "usual" ones, pretty close to heat death already.
Does it really change on Earth? Like, really? Apart from being nosy into what other people are doing, and predictable seasons & limited range of weather (both also on many other bodies)...what else is there to see?
And I believe people like to put flammable stuff in places where they live, too.
That article just describes basic concept, modern missiles can be slightly different. For one, mobile platforms do use GPS or GPS-like systems to pinpoint the position of the launch.
MIRVs make trajectories not purely ballistic, with crossrange of warheads from one missile on the order of dozens of km at least; warheads perhaps use aerodynamic lift to change terminal trajectory, too. And upcoming gen of MIRVs supposedly has much higher maneuverability (thank "the Shield" for that...)
You say it like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach is no longer the case.
Pakistan?
PS. Calling Taiwan a stable democracy is going a bit too far. They ceased to be authoritarian later than my place (late EU memberstate, formerly behind the Iron Curtain); you almost seem to have fallen yourself under "the enemy of..." And what about claimed sovereignity of Taiwan over China?
Triple point of water doesn't depend on arbitrary pressure (yes, compound not molecule; I missed it / not all EN terms can be readily intuitive to non-native speakers)
When choosing between very slight changes & whole industrial / technological base at our disposal vs. monumental changes & barely anything to support them - that seems like a pretty good case of first trying to get our act together with the former scenario.
It doesn't really seem so, at least not in the cinema / TV - sure, boobies might be censored more than in some places, but death is almost cheerished (even if usually without the messy parts; but sometimes there is something like, say, "Passion" from Gibson)
Much easier - mirrors redirecting sunlight / playing with interference here and there in the optical chain; for quite a large part of lunar cycle, the Moon could be one gigantic display. Imagine the possib...uhm, ok, I'm not giving them any more ideas.
Honey bee stings are primarily against other insects; they do cause more harm to the attacker the way they are / don't lose them. The way it works against mammalian skin probably helps, too...many animals have a problem getting them out. And dying bee releases more scent signals calling other for an attack. Overall, bees seem quite succesfull / seems it works fine; they haven't been overcome by anything.
Regarding ROI - on the other hand, we both know that a crash project to "save our children" is the most likely scenario; with subsurface Earth dwellings the only possible measures on a large scale, and the only ones acceptable on "moral grounds" ("more children!") - that will make them the best ROI in the eyes of most people; it almost certainly will indeed prove to be one. That's not too bad. Don't count for more.
You glanced over how the presently possible individual voyages depend tremendously on the whole "system" in place.
Or how being free to choose their way won't have to mean freedom in the "nice" sense to colonists - in fact, I'd guess it to be unlikely; I'd guess the colonisation will happen not because it's sensible, but because of lack of better options to some individuals, after growing up in low gravity. With levels of struggle and frequent death perhaps greater than was typical on Earth.
And we're not really going anywhere outside the system without new physics. Maybe via embryo colonisation, but that's a bit outside the scope of what drives individuals and small groups, and requiring tremendous cooperation (nvm that there would be certainly so called "moral issues" and that such ship would be orders of magnitude more trivial to destroy than launch)
Heh, if only they did tell interesting story...no, it was basically directly said in an interview / PR material that keeping the realities of communications out of it was just an easy escape from the complexity.
Iin the case of this series, the ratings (consistent in many networks throughout the world) show the case quite good. Liking dg can be certainly called a peculiarity. If I forced myself to anything it was being one of the very few who watched dg regularly till the end, quite far from "not getting to interesting story part" (if there was such in this case...well, OK, last ep had some small premise regarding possible plot twists, but they already shattered any potential there was again and again)
You know perfectly well that the suggestion of VttP ripping off 2001 in fashion anywhere similar to what dg did...simply doesn't fly. The latter took huge parts directly and admitted it.
The sensitivities in question had nothing to do with the basic premises of the show, its place, themes, underlying story, et al.; nothing out of its essence. They didn't even touch on the whole show, just one scene which could be, for all we know, a cheap effort to feed on related memories.
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So..."if the heatshield is ablative, then after an exceedingly short period of time, the superheated air is now hitting the real surface and doing damage, no?" Or perhaps the idea behind ablative surfaces is exactly to dissipate far larger amounts of energy than it would be otherwise possible without them...it's not about absolute defense (it never is), just about changing the odds
Gases don't "burn of" - at most they can turn to plasma; which would be a great thing - it's not translucent.
And hey, if the baloons are released from some distance / are just floating there... ;p
Mods, do you so easily fall for broken window fallacy?
Hey, I've got an idea, let's just give money to groups who say that what they do will get rid of the probem of unemployed / undesirables. One calling their product "Soylent Green" seems legit.
Oh well, so use lightweight ablative coating. With the typical times of flybys / warning before missile hit, that shouldn't be much of a problem. For some bonus points, make the coating release a barrier (in whatever form - aerosol, plasma, who cares as long as it works)
Real bonus points: add retroreflectors; they might work only for a short time and reflect only a small part of incoming radiation...but there's bound to be something delicate on the other end. For that matter - how hard millions of toy balloons with small retro- and ordinary reflectors scattered in the area can be?..."99 Luftabaloons" might have been prophetic, in a way ;)
There might be some complications. Consider that, in the end, you'd want to transplant this mass in an environment which is a bit different. Which might lead to some...unintended consequences.
Think some "bad" strains taking over when more neutral ones in the gut or on skin have been wiped out by anitbiotics / etc. Or some weird strains already on Mir or ISS.
Who are those "people" you speak of? At least a large portion (certainly one that seems to "matter") has quite different deities, typically giving them virtually free reign over the world - surely beneficial when outcompeting other groups that did deify the biosphere, which was much more of a rule in the past. Only problem with the former approach - humans, with their adaptability, can go quite far before hitting hard some limit...at which point we usually also overdo with how messy it gets.
Our adaptability also has its limits; we could have some problems with, say, anoxic event, snowball Earth, or something new on the scale of oxyden catastrophe.
It would be at least interesting to keep the Mars pristine, for some time anyway - there's plenty left to learn about it, also about its possible past or perhaps even present life.
And considering that even in our system there's more than half a dozen candidates for life, and the number of stars & galaxies...I don't think the Universe & life would even notice the difference from such landfill.
I don't think it's safe to assume it will be easier. Different, yes; but not automatically easier.
Highly abrasive dust (not strictly about the drill, more about other important, more general parts of any machine), less support for heavy machinery, non-weathered formations, hidden chaches of rubble (after meteorides), troubles with getting rid of waste heat in heavy machinery; just possibilities from the top of my head.
until sat comms become portable to the masses, this is just a fleeting dream
It probably won't. Whatever level of advance in basics of radio technology we might achieve, ground based stations utilising those advances should be ahead.
At many really meaningful scale, they're all pretty much the same. Scales of the Universe on one hand, granurality of spacetime on the other; temperatures of Big Bang vs. "usual" ones, pretty close to heat death already.
Does it really change on Earth? Like, really? Apart from being nosy into what other people are doing, and predictable seasons & limited range of weather (both also on many other bodies)...what else is there to see?
And I believe people like to put flammable stuff in places where they live, too.
That article just describes basic concept, modern missiles can be slightly different. For one, mobile platforms do use GPS or GPS-like systems to pinpoint the position of the launch.
MIRVs make trajectories not purely ballistic, with crossrange of warheads from one missile on the order of dozens of km at least; warheads perhaps use aerodynamic lift to change terminal trajectory, too. And upcoming gen of MIRVs supposedly has much higher maneuverability (thank "the Shield" for that...)
Not quite.
http://www.af.mil/information/factsheets/factsheet.asp?id=108
GPS is quite important, gives very notably better accuracy than pure inertial (for which the starting point are good gps data from the aircraft)
You say it like "the enemy of my enemy is my friend" approach is no longer the case.
Pakistan?
PS. Calling Taiwan a stable democracy is going a bit too far. They ceased to be authoritarian later than my place (late EU memberstate, formerly behind the Iron Curtain); you almost seem to have fallen yourself under "the enemy of..." And what about claimed sovereignity of Taiwan over China?
I'd venture a guess they could, if they wanted to - China also has some decent medium lift launch systems.
That it would be not so elegant / unraveling slowly / max few targets at a time / impractical is another issue...
So comments would have to "show respect to yer elders"?
Eh, another one...
Triple point of water doesn't depend on arbitrary pressure (yes, compound not molecule; I missed it / not all EN terms can be readily intuitive to non-native speakers)
When choosing between very slight changes & whole industrial / technological base at our disposal vs. monumental changes & barely anything to support them - that seems like a pretty good case of first trying to get our act together with the former scenario.
"Free market" / advertisers / ...people wouldn't like it?
It doesn't really seem so, at least not in the cinema / TV - sure, boobies might be censored more than in some places, but death is almost cheerished (even if usually without the messy parts; but sometimes there is something like, say, "Passion" from Gibson)
Much easier - mirrors redirecting sunlight / playing with interference here and there in the optical chain; for quite a large part of lunar cycle, the Moon could be one gigantic display. Imagine the possib...uhm, ok, I'm not giving them any more ideas.
Honey bee stings are primarily against other insects; they do cause more harm to the attacker the way they are / don't lose them. The way it works against mammalian skin probably helps, too...many animals have a problem getting them out. And dying bee releases more scent signals calling other for an attack. Overall, bees seem quite succesfull / seems it works fine; they haven't been overcome by anything.
Regarding ROI - on the other hand, we both know that a crash project to "save our children" is the most likely scenario; with subsurface Earth dwellings the only possible measures on a large scale, and the only ones acceptable on "moral grounds" ("more children!") - that will make them the best ROI in the eyes of most people; it almost certainly will indeed prove to be one. That's not too bad. Don't count for more.
You glanced over how the presently possible individual voyages depend tremendously on the whole "system" in place.
Or how being free to choose their way won't have to mean freedom in the "nice" sense to colonists - in fact, I'd guess it to be unlikely; I'd guess the colonisation will happen not because it's sensible, but because of lack of better options to some individuals, after growing up in low gravity. With levels of struggle and frequent death perhaps greater than was typical on Earth.
And we're not really going anywhere outside the system without new physics. Maybe via embryo colonisation, but that's a bit outside the scope of what drives individuals and small groups, and requiring tremendous cooperation (nvm that there would be certainly so called "moral issues" and that such ship would be orders of magnitude more trivial to destroy than launch)
...which wouldn't be exactly near to the production planet anyway.
Heh, if only they did tell interesting story...no, it was basically directly said in an interview / PR material that keeping the realities of communications out of it was just an easy escape from the complexity.
Iin the case of this series, the ratings (consistent in many networks throughout the world) show the case quite good. Liking dg can be certainly called a peculiarity. If I forced myself to anything it was being one of the very few who watched dg regularly till the end, quite far from "not getting to interesting story part" (if there was such in this case...well, OK, last ep had some small premise regarding possible plot twists, but they already shattered any potential there was again and again)
You know perfectly well that the suggestion of VttP ripping off 2001 in fashion anywhere similar to what dg did...simply doesn't fly. The latter took huge parts directly and admitted it.
The sensitivities in question had nothing to do with the basic premises of the show, its place, themes, underlying story, et al.; nothing out of its essence. They didn't even touch on the whole show, just one scene which could be, for all we know, a cheap effort to feed on related memories.
"Words", eh?