The next obvious trick, once both terran and lunar space elevators have been constructed is to arrange some sort of delivery system in elliptical orbit that comes in to the top of the terran elevator and out to the top of the lunar one.
Just like the railway opened up the west for settlement, these will open the moon. (Yes, once we stop laughing.)
Also, in the spirit of the X-Prize, I will personally send TEN DOLLARS (Canadian) to the first person who builds a working space elevator from the moon to the Earth-Moon L1 point.
Offer expires, let's say, December 31, 2039.
Except that most of the material probably wouldn't need to make it to the moon. You need a base there, obviously, but most of the stuff would only need to make it to L1, and the ribbon of the elevator could be lowered down from there.
But on the whole, a space elevator from earth (or a kevlar/carbon nanotube manufacturing facility on the moon) would certainly expedite the process.
Why does the contrast look different between images?
The camera measures light from an object at each point in an image and assigns it a number from zero to 4095 depending on its brightness. Sometimes the scientist can't afford to send this amount of data for each pixel because of the amount of storage it takes. The camera has the ability to convert this range of values to those from zero to 255. The camera does this according to a preset table of values designed by the scientists. This table devotes many of the 256 levels for less bright things and less levels for brighter pixels. Part of calibrating an image on the ground is to reverse this table and get back pixels in the range of zero to 4095. Because you're looking at the raw data, images sent back in this mode will have dimmer things look brighter compared to the brighter parts of the image than in images not in this mode.
Why does the image look bizarre/psychedelic?
As in the previous question, the other way the camera can send back less data (by sending pixels with values from zero to 255 instead of zero to 4095) is to send back only the lower binary digits of the number. This is like having a list of amounts of money and only recording the amount of cents for each one and assigning the brightness in an image to the amount of leftover cents. Pixels with brightness values just under 255, like amounts just under a dollar, will appear almost white, while pixel values just over 255, like amounts just over a dollar with not many cents, will appear dark. The ideal use of this mode is for image scenes that are dark with almost all of the pixel values less than 255. If the scene is simple with gradual increases in brightness, then even if the original values get over 255 and go dark again, the scientists can figure out what the real value was. If the scene is very complicated or the original values are much brighter than 255, the image can have many bright and dark transitions with strange contours. In this case, the image will look very bizarre but not have much scientific value.
Seems like they want more detail in the dimmer areas. There's also an interesting look at the filter combinations that they can use.
The way the sun comes around - the East and West sides of the building are likely to be more productive than the South side during the summer months.
It has to do with sun angles. In the summer at solar noon, when the sun is to the south, it is very high in the sky, which means that the sunlight falling on the south face of the building is quite oblique. Whereas the East (Morning) and West (Evening) sun will be much closer to perpendicular, and therefore more electrically productive. As long as other buildings around aren't shading your building.
In the Winter, of course, the South face will get most of the sun. (And most of the solar heat gain and electricity that goes with it.)
Everyone effects the choice. It's slightly _more_ effective than the democratic process - where if you vote in the minority your vote counts for nothing.
Unfortunately it's like shopping at Wal-Mart and watching the $ go straight out of your community to save a nickel on some plastic toy you didn't need anyway - rather than buying something from a local merchant. People don't seem to understand the larger picture, and keep saving their nickels, despite what it costs them.
I'd like to do this without resorting to government regulation. If the people who build cars could pull their heads out of their a55es long enough to see the big picture, they could certify their engines, and then have celebrities endorse it - with their free diesel SUV and all, and show people how environmentally friendly they are by driving one.
I keep hoping we have these wits, but worry that we don't. Or, in the words of Bucky - "Whether it's to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch & go relay race right up till the final moment." (Quoted from memory - possibly bastardized).
With a little ingenuity, it should be possible to set up cars (or flywheels http://home.earthlink.net/~fradella/homepage.htm) to suck power from and return excess power to the grid based on the current (fluctuating in response to demand second to second) price of electricity and user defined paramaters defining when to buy and store for later - when to use electricity from the car rather than the grid, and when to sell back to the grid.
With enough people doing this - there would always be a source of electricity available, and the price would be set - exactly - by supply and demand.
If this were to be done on a large enough scale, with some solar, wind, and ($RenewableOption3), you could avoid large scale electricity generation completely - including the power lines required, and you make use of the vehicles which spend most of their time idle. Heck, with a fuel cell car and a Hydrogen line the cars could be plugged in to both (while at work say), produce electricity for the building, while ending up completely fueled at the end of the day.
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Just like the railway opened up the west for settlement, these will open the moon. (Yes, once we stop laughing.)
Also, in the spirit of the X-Prize, I will personally send TEN DOLLARS (Canadian) to the first person who builds a working space elevator from the moon to the Earth-Moon L1 point.
Offer expires, let's say, December 31, 2039.
But on the whole, a space elevator from earth (or a kevlar/carbon nanotube manufacturing facility on the moon) would certainly expedite the process.
It has to do with sun angles. In the summer at solar noon, when the sun is to the south, it is very high in the sky, which means that the sunlight falling on the south face of the building is quite oblique. Whereas the East (Morning) and West (Evening) sun will be much closer to perpendicular, and therefore more electrically productive. As long as other buildings around aren't shading your building.
In the Winter, of course, the South face will get most of the sun. (And most of the solar heat gain and electricity that goes with it.)
Unfortunately it's like shopping at Wal-Mart and watching the $ go straight out of your community to save a nickel on some plastic toy you didn't need anyway - rather than buying something from a local merchant. People don't seem to understand the larger picture, and keep saving their nickels, despite what it costs them.
I'd like to do this without resorting to government regulation. If the people who build cars could pull their heads out of their a55es long enough to see the big picture, they could certify their engines, and then have celebrities endorse it - with their free diesel SUV and all, and show people how environmentally friendly they are by driving one.
I keep hoping we have these wits, but worry that we don't. Or, in the words of Bucky - "Whether it's to be utopia or oblivion will be a touch & go relay race right up till the final moment." (Quoted from memory - possibly bastardized).
With enough people doing this - there would always be a source of electricity available, and the price would be set - exactly - by supply and demand.
If this were to be done on a large enough scale, with some solar, wind, and ($RenewableOption3), you could avoid large scale electricity generation completely - including the power lines required, and you make use of the vehicles which spend most of their time idle. Heck, with a fuel cell car and a Hydrogen line the cars could be plugged in to both (while at work say), produce electricity for the building, while ending up completely fueled at the end of the day.
(Or - build cities that you can walk in and abandon the car. http://www.arcosanti.org/)