The point is that one day we'll run out of coal as well. Using coal instead of oil isn't really going to help. Plus it's probably going to be much more expensive than just sucking the oil from the ground.
Supposedly the atmosphere of Mars is 0.15% oxygen. That's 1500 parts per million. Earth Air has roughly 210,000 PPM, but water on Earth (which Fish extract oxygen from) is only 5 PPM. If the fish manage to extract oxygen without major issues (and there are larger lifeforms in the water than on Earth), I don't think it should be a problem for us humans. Given that Mars has a 300× richer atmosphere than Earth's water, I think we shouldn't have a problem extracting oxygen. To make air we would also need Nitrogen, which is present at 30,000PPM.
With a sufficiently big enough machine, we should be able to provide enough oxygen to burn stuff. Perhaps we can create a form of fuel that contains both hydrocarbons and oxygen. As I understand, most cars have a certain mix of air and gasoline that is actually ignited. Also, supposedly some race cars use nitrous oxide as an oxidizer.
So it should be possible to provide a system that can generate earth-like air from the Mars atmosphere. The primary question is whether the system would be efficient enough that it can be powered by solar or maybe oil based. On the other hand, I believe a nuclear plant would work. Maybe the first step to collonizing Mars to any degree should be to get some power generators over there.
Then you can start making oxygen. Melt the ice to get water. And with the two you should be able to grow stuff. (you'll probably need to bring fertilizer along as well at the beginning, but later you can just recycle dead plants, feces, etc., to save on fertilizer).
Inefficient as hell. You can't use electricity to power "spaceplanes" (i.e. jets/rockets), so you'd have to bring all your gas with you, or find a source in space. Stuff like the Rover works because they are powered by juice (i.e. electricity), which one can harness using solar panels.
I wonder what the chances of finding oil of Mars are. Its existence would imply some kind of prior carbon-based life forms I think. Although I hear there are also other ways to make oil.
Oil is used for a damn sight more than just gasoline. Fake fur, plastics, etc. Even if we go green tommorow, we will still need oil. One gallon of crude gives three coats.
Unfortunately, the problem is greater than just new sources of energy.
I can think of a few reasons this hasn't happended.
Convincing somebody to effectively sacrifice themselves to go around shooting people at random is hard. A lot harder than to tell them to fly into a building or blow up in public. Primarily because you're still around to see the result.
Such a group wouldn't last very long. Let's assume they have their best-case scenario: they hit a shopping mall or something, kill maybe a hundred people, and manage to escape to their uber-secret hideout unscathed. People would a) start carrying weapons just out of fear, and b) there would be a really big witch hunt which it is unlikely the terrorists will survive.
This would spark such a massive outrage that support for bombing the shit out of X, Y, and Z will be astronomical. public support will be sufficient that G.W. will be able to do whatever he damn well pleases. Which we all know is very much against what the Terries want. Granted, some people will call for an impeachment, blah, blah, but based on what happended after 9/11, really that's not going to be the majority.
I supect Europe will side with us if that shit goes down. It will really be either with us or against us at that point, and they will also be targets, as they already are.
A typical C/C++ based app uses just as much memory, it's just shared between processes...
That's the point. Nobody cares about how much actual memory a C/C++ app touches.
Making Java "part of the system" won't help much either because the libraries aren't the same. You could argue that at the bottom of the pyramid its still libc that's being used, but we still have and need all the wrappers on top of the library to make it compatible with Java code.
So until people find it normal to run more than one or two java applications at once, Java will be deemed a memory hog. It's sort of a rut that Java is in right now, because nobody would really run more than two Java applications at once. My computer—granted a 5-year old 1.7ghz P4 with 386mb of RAM—can barely handle Eclipse at any reasonable speed. God forbid I also run something else)
From my experience Experts Exchange lets you see all answers to questions, but you can't post your own question unless you register. Posting questions is also free I believe, but you get better results if you offer a bounty [-- totally based on anecdotal evidence. I've never used EE to post questions before.]
I'm not sure the RIAA is going to be such a big problem.
http://www.radioblogclub.com/ for example offers alot of pop music for free: all you need is a browser with flash. There are advertisements, granted, but otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any catch.
I'm not sure how they make money, and how they keep the *AA's happy, but they're doing it. So I don't think Oboe will have too much problems.
It's a good idea, although you'll need to have some system in place to watch for multiple-votes by one person (just print the same ballot multiple times). But I can't imagine that being too hard.
Assume 5000 a soldier (way too high, economics of scale), assume 100,000 soldiers (not everyone needs one anyway, so too high).
Cost of production: 500,000,000.
Monthly cost of iraq war: 7,000,000,000.
So I don't think it's too much of a stretch that the army would outfit everyone, but it is rather expensive one way or another. In any case, getting this to just a small percent of the soldiers shouldn't be too hard.
Yeah, but the mantle is mostly liquid, right? So we should be able to dump a capsule with measuring equipment on it and wait for it to "sink".
Pretty interesting actually.
Suppose a big capsule is built from a really heat resistant material. The capsule has a mechanism for converting heat to eletricity, and enough water to power an air-conditioning like system. The AC system keeps the sides of the capsule cool enough that they don't melt (think water-cooling like on computers), while the heat is used to generate electricity to the AC and whatever measuring things you have in the capsule.
Of course, communicating with the capsule would be rather difficult, so we shall send a human instead.;-)
That's the definition of apparent weightlessness. And my whole point is that there is no such thing as [real] weightlessness in space.
I'm not sure what you mean by pressure gradients. As I understand, most of the pressure on the human body at sea level is from the weight of the atmosphere (14PSI I believe). One feels as if they have less weight in the water because the density (aka pressure) is greater, causing a greater resistance to graivty.
With regards to there being only gravity acting on you in space, what happens if you are in an orbit? As I understand, the only reason spaceships can stay in space is because they can develop sufficient angular velocity with their engines since there is very little air resistance. Spaceships effectively are falling, but they go around the earth at such speed that they fall in a circle.
One could be in a very low earth orbit as well, provided one could counteract the effects of drag.
A weightless environment assumes that the net gravitational force acting on a body is 0. Hence, any force will give you "liftoff".
The gravitational force decreases exponentially (1/distance^2) from the body, so in space you only need a relatively small force to reach the so-called `delta-v' or escape velocity (I think?).
The point is that once in space, you're all set. A small engine will give you a small acceleration. A small acceleration over a long time is a large velocity.;)
Slashdot Mirror
You won't get rich, LSD is a non-additictive hallucinogen:i al
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LSD#Addiction_potent
If you left out the part about bueatiful women and sex offers, we just might have believed you! Nerd. :)
Bye bye karma!
1 - Oops. I forgot about that.
2 - My point wasn't that you can breathe, but that you can extract air from Mars' atmosphere.
The point is that one day we'll run out of coal as well. Using coal instead of oil isn't really going to help. Plus it's probably going to be much more expensive than just sucking the oil from the ground.
Supposedly the atmosphere of Mars is 0.15% oxygen. That's 1500 parts per million. Earth Air has roughly 210,000 PPM, but water on Earth (which Fish extract oxygen from) is only 5 PPM. If the fish manage to extract oxygen without major issues (and there are larger lifeforms in the water than on Earth), I don't think it should be a problem for us humans. Given that Mars has a 300× richer atmosphere than Earth's water, I think we shouldn't have a problem extracting oxygen. To make air we would also need Nitrogen, which is present at 30,000PPM.
With a sufficiently big enough machine, we should be able to provide enough oxygen to burn stuff. Perhaps we can create a form of fuel that contains both hydrocarbons and oxygen. As I understand, most cars have a certain mix of air and gasoline that is actually ignited. Also, supposedly some race cars use nitrous oxide as an oxidizer.
So it should be possible to provide a system that can generate earth-like air from the Mars atmosphere. The primary question is whether the system would be efficient enough that it can be powered by solar or maybe oil based. On the other hand, I believe a nuclear plant would work. Maybe the first step to collonizing Mars to any degree should be to get some power generators over there.
Then you can start making oxygen. Melt the ice to get water. And with the two you should be able to grow stuff. (you'll probably need to bring fertilizer along as well at the beginning, but later you can just recycle dead plants, feces, etc., to save on fertilizer).
Inefficient as hell. You can't use electricity to power "spaceplanes" (i.e. jets/rockets), so you'd have to bring all your gas with you, or find a source in space. Stuff like the Rover works because they are powered by juice (i.e. electricity), which one can harness using solar panels.
I wonder what the chances of finding oil of Mars are. Its existence would imply some kind of prior carbon-based life forms I think. Although I hear there are also other ways to make oil.
The Nazis used coal which they converted into Oil.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Petroleum
Oil is used for a damn sight more than just gasoline. Fake fur, plastics, etc. Even if we go green tommorow, we will still need oil. One gallon of crude gives three coats.
Unfortunately, the problem is greater than just new sources of energy.
I can think of a few reasons this hasn't happended.
That's the point. Nobody cares about how much actual memory a C/C++ app touches.
Making Java "part of the system" won't help much either because the libraries aren't the same. You could argue that at the bottom of the pyramid its still libc that's being used, but we still have and need all the wrappers on top of the library to make it compatible with Java code.
So until people find it normal to run more than one or two java applications at once, Java will be deemed a memory hog. It's sort of a rut that Java is in right now, because nobody would really run more than two Java applications at once. My computer—granted a 5-year old 1.7ghz P4 with 386mb of RAM—can barely handle Eclipse at any reasonable speed. God forbid I also run something else)
From my experience Experts Exchange lets you see all answers to questions, but you can't post your own question unless you register. Posting questions is also free I believe, but you get better results if you offer a bounty [-- totally based on anecdotal evidence. I've never used EE to post questions before.]
It's slashdot, the GP meant that the submitter had never seen a woman "rated" 10. ;-)
I'm not sure the RIAA is going to be such a big problem.
http://www.radioblogclub.com/ for example offers alot of pop music for free: all you need is a browser with flash. There are advertisements, granted, but otherwise, there doesn't seem to be any catch.
I'm not sure how they make money, and how they keep the *AA's happy, but they're doing it. So I don't think Oboe will have too much problems.
I think you meant 33.3333333% overclocked.
20% has to be utter bullshit. It must be at least 51% so only one company can have a monopoly.
It's a good idea, although you'll need to have some system in place to watch for multiple-votes by one person (just print the same ballot multiple times). But I can't imagine that being too hard.
Assume 5000 a soldier (way too high, economics of scale), assume 100,000 soldiers (not everyone needs one anyway, so too high).
Cost of production: 500,000,000.
Monthly cost of iraq war: 7,000,000,000.
So I don't think it's too much of a stretch that the army would outfit everyone, but it is rather expensive one way or another. In any case, getting this to just a small percent of the soldiers shouldn't be too hard.
No, that was the monkey-in-chief.
Bugger.
Oh well, one can dream.
Thanks for the response.
Yeah, but the mantle is mostly liquid, right? So we should be able to dump a capsule with measuring equipment on it and wait for it to "sink".
;-)
Pretty interesting actually.
Suppose a big capsule is built from a really heat resistant material. The capsule has a mechanism for converting heat to eletricity, and enough water to power an air-conditioning like system. The AC system keeps the sides of the capsule cool enough that they don't melt (think water-cooling like on computers), while the heat is used to generate electricity to the AC and whatever measuring things you have in the capsule.
Of course, communicating with the capsule would be rather difficult, so we shall send a human instead.
Totally off the wall idea?
Thanks for the exaplanation.
That's the definition of apparent weightlessness. And my whole point is that there is no such thing as [real] weightlessness in space.
I'm not sure what you mean by pressure gradients. As I understand, most of the pressure on the human body at sea level is from the weight of the atmosphere (14PSI I believe). One feels as if they have less weight in the water because the density (aka pressure) is greater, causing a greater resistance to graivty.
With regards to there being only gravity acting on you in space, what happens if you are in an orbit? As I understand, the only reason spaceships can stay in space is because they can develop sufficient angular velocity with their engines since there is very little air resistance. Spaceships effectively are falling, but they go around the earth at such speed that they fall in a circle.
One could be in a very low earth orbit as well, provided one could counteract the effects of drag.
Of course, my stupidity.
A weightless environment assumes that the net gravitational force acting on a body is 0. Hence, any force will give you "liftoff".
;)
The gravitational force decreases exponentially (1/distance^2) from the body, so in space you only need a relatively small force to reach the so-called `delta-v' or escape velocity (I think?).
The point is that once in space, you're all set. A small engine will give you a small acceleration. A small acceleration over a long time is a large velocity.