You need to learn the difference between big objects and small objects. This is like Greenpeace's campaign to destroy the sun because nuclear fusion is evil and the sun is too hot..
Urmm in the super heavy lifter market - the US are not only miles ahead they are almost the only ones currently in the market.. With the NASA SLS and to a lesser degree the Falcon Heavy.. and even the biggest SLS rockets are really still too small for projects like Asteroid mining.. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(The Chinese Long March 9 may be a future competitor but currently only exists on paper..)
It is solved - the basic solution is nuclear rockets. - The cleanest nuclear rocket type should be Gas Core Closed Cycle - but these haven't been researched in detail yet. Solid core engines have been almost fully researched and could do it but with a finite risk of dropping nuclear particles into the atmosphere. Nuclear pulse engines could do and would have much bigger orbital payload capacity - but with the small price of dropping fallout into the atmosphere.
Each launch of a nuclear pulse rocket might statistically kill some 50 to 100 people. That might sound a lot but is trivial when compared say to the pollution from cars and trucks which probably kills well over 500,000 people per year.. All nuclear needs is a level playing field and the money invested in research and it can reduce the costs to orbit by about 5 to 10 times.
"These cows are small. Those cows are far away." And how much would a civilization ending asteroid weigh? oh about 10 billion to 100 billion tons. How much would an asteroid we could actually move enough to reach a desired orbit weigh? Less, a lot less. Lets try say about 1,000 to 10,000 tons at the outside. One is about 10 million times larger than the other.. That's the weight of a bowling ball verses the weight of the Empire State building.
14 days of darkness + some very cold temperatures. The Luna night is colder than anything on Mars. (reaches -170 C) - Some of the polar craters (where the water is) are in permanent darkness and colder than Pluto. Not to mention that during the Luna day temperatures can reach over 100 C. Plus the extremely harsh sharp Luna dust. and more radiation than Mars. The Moon is one of the harder places to choose to learn to live in space we could choose.
In this case though nuclear or at least nuclear assistance makes far more sense than pure solar. Nuclear RTG's generate waste heat and this helps keep the whole machine warm - important when the Luna night is about 14 days long and temperatures can fall to -170 C.
In most of those cases the latter - they were stupider than crap. Not giving kids leeway for being children, is the kind of intolerant inhuman decision we see everywhere. I would label it as part of the bad side of political correctness.. In some cases yes racism is an extra factor so also yes for that.. and racism can be white to black or black to white or dozens of other combinations..
Like it says on the can schools today are just prisons where adults store children until they can become useful workers.. [That was semi-ironic humour BTW]
They were either racist or stupider than crap. (I suspect the second or both) It quite clearly was not a bomb, and given the look of the thing its likely that it is a mains powered clock. Maybe he didn't think things through - but isn't that exactly what teenagers always do??
Unfortunately in a Kleptocracy the police always defend the thieves at the top.. That's the trouble with the keepers of the law, if the law gets bent they become the mobsters shills... The only way not to be a bent cop - is to be a bent cop.
A system that is completely bent. Goes to show yet again that capitalism has no place in medicine.. When will people realize that the entire US industry has become a giant blood sucking parasite..
Yes but who was crazy? Goddard and Von Braun for believing rockets could take humans into space? The Write brothers for believing that human sized heavier than air aircraft could fly? Kennedy for believing men could go to the Moon? Even when the sceptic's are right like on flying cars - because they only argue a negative they are never actually proven correct - just that something is more difficult.. At the end of the day the core technology to take people to Mars is already there, building a real program is more about money than anything else. The real problem with humans going to Mars is that we keep pissing the money away on war and even worse on weapons that we don't even use.. and we spend far more on trivial stuff like phones, and a hundred types of 5 minute tat.. tax cuts for billionairs..
A great comparative statistic - in the 1960's NASA spent $25 (to 35) billion to send a man to the Moon. At the same time the US military spent over $100 billion to lose the Vietnam war, and between $200 and 400 billion on nuclear weapons that we didn't even use.... That's a ratio that hits something like 10 to 1, to 16 to 1. Military spending including stuff like the Iraq war/ISIS is at roughly similar levels today.. Even NASA's funding is not that different, but they now spend it on a lot of small programs rather than one or two big programs. In fact in money (adjusted) terms NASA get more now than they did during Apollo, though comparatively as part of GDP its only a third of the levels during Apollo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... If NASA stopped spending on so many science missions we could afford a much more rapid manned Mars program - but a better option would be to give NASA the funding to do both. Increasing yearly funding to build a complete program more quickly is far more fiscally efficient, reducing the final costs by about 30% to over 50%.
Sheesh. The whole problem with this post is that it repeats the same old lines again - and still without understanding the basic technology. The critical new technology needed for a trip to Mars is a more efficient more powerful rocket engine. With that engine your ship can make orbit around the Earth (1 stage) dock and refuel. Fly out to Mars (1 stage), refuel, land (1 stage), take off back to orbit (1 stage), refuel, and back to Earth (1 stage). All done in one single core stage, using one primary ship, plus an orbital refuelling point at Earth and a second refuelling ship orbiting at Mars. The crew quarters are large and comfortable and behind foot thick radiation barriers, and during flight the ship has 1/10 Earth artificial gravity.
And the secret isn't new technology, it is technology that was 90% developed during the 1960's and 70's. The secret is nuclear rockets. Ok to do everything in one stage you do need a new rocket tech - high energy gas core engines with closed cycle, but even for them the designs have been around just as long. A second tech that can do it in one or two stages is the Orion pulse nuclear drive - also nuclear rockets but instead using micro nuclear bombs. And the great joke is? the crew get less radiation exposure on a nuclear rocket than they do on a chemical one, potentially a lot less.
Maybe you should learn a little more about scale. As long as we say limit the total water we convert to say 0.001 % of the worlds total water then that should not affect anything, Okay right? That is still about 13.5 trillion metric tons by the way- and that's a cube 15 miles or 24 Km on a side.
When read in detail the basic assumption this is all based on is totally stupid. A basic simple rule (from me) is that once you have the technology to build Dyson spheres you will have no reason to do so... Nuclear power - fusion power - atomic conversion - all provide far better and far more compact sources of energy than things like Dyson spheres. Space is so large and so full of plants that there is no reason build one in terms of living room. Such vast hyper-structures as Dyson spheres or ring worlds require almost insane levels or resources to build, are fragile, vulnerable, naturally unstable, and almost by definition would tend to be short lived.. The real truth is that even very high level civilizations might be almost undetectable. If we look at say an example from sci fi - then something equivalent to the Galactic civilization from Star Wars would be almost entirely undetectable..
Even with a galactic civilization of a million worlds, in an average galaxy that only achieves a density of 1 in 100,000 stars. That's a needle in a haystack.. Finding a single one star civilization among 400 billion stars with today's technology and SETI resources is a joke.. If you take our own civilizations current Fermi Distance its probably only about 10 to 20 light years if that - a few hundred stars at most. I'm strongly in favour of SETI but it needs to be done on a far larger scale and with better resources. Also not just with radio, but with things like laser beacons and laser detectors, plus we need to keep looking for other better methods.. I don't like the current odds..
The real solution to the Fermi Paradox is simply that space is big - very big, bigger than your/our tiny minds can even begin to imagine. Douglas Adams solved the paradox decades ago. Now go and write that down 1000 times.
You don't understand anything about economics do you. The underlying reason India is funding its space program is to boost its technology economy. What its doing is essential its future economy, the power to compete is the basis for increasing wealth, which will hopefully ultimately lead to everyone having toilets. India is competing with China. Try to build your whole economy on building toilets and you will end up in one.
I have a picture of a Pu238 battery from a pacemaker. The shielding looks miniscule - and that's for a battery that supposed to sit for 30 years or more inside a human chest. That low gamma signature is very useful..
Slashdot Mirror
You need to learn the difference between big objects and small objects. This is like Greenpeace's campaign to destroy the sun because nuclear fusion is evil and the sun is too hot..
Oops posted in wrong place....
Urmm in the super heavy lifter market - the US are not only miles ahead they are almost the only ones currently in the market.. With the NASA SLS and to a lesser degree the Falcon Heavy .. and even the biggest SLS rockets are really still too small for projects like Asteroid mining..
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
(The Chinese Long March 9 may be a future competitor but currently only exists on paper..)
".. is the same kind of hubris that made England think it should be able to tax America."
Sadly the entire UN and the modern international world are built on that kind of hubris..
It is solved - the basic solution is nuclear rockets. -
The cleanest nuclear rocket type should be Gas Core Closed Cycle - but these haven't been researched in detail yet.
Solid core engines have been almost fully researched and could do it but with a finite risk of dropping nuclear particles into the atmosphere.
Nuclear pulse engines could do and would have much bigger orbital payload capacity - but with the small price of dropping fallout into the atmosphere.
Each launch of a nuclear pulse rocket might statistically kill some 50 to 100 people. That might sound a lot but is trivial when compared say to the pollution from cars and trucks which probably kills well over 500,000 people per year.. All nuclear needs is a level playing field and the money invested in research and it can reduce the costs to orbit by about 5 to 10 times.
"These cows are small. Those cows are far away." And how much would a civilization ending asteroid weigh? oh about 10 billion to 100 billion tons. How much would an asteroid we could actually move enough to reach a desired orbit weigh? Less, a lot less. Lets try say about 1,000 to 10,000 tons at the outside. One is about 10 million times larger than the other.. That's the weight of a bowling ball verses the weight of the Empire State building.
14 days of darkness + some very cold temperatures. The Luna night is colder than anything on Mars. (reaches -170 C) - Some of the polar craters (where the water is) are in permanent darkness and colder than Pluto. Not to mention that during the Luna day temperatures can reach over 100 C. Plus the extremely harsh sharp Luna dust. and more radiation than Mars. The Moon is one of the harder places to choose to learn to live in space we could choose.
Dumbass.
In this case though nuclear or at least nuclear assistance makes far more sense than pure solar. Nuclear RTG's generate waste heat and this helps keep the whole machine warm - important when the Luna night is about 14 days long and temperatures can fall to -170 C.
In most of those cases the latter - they were stupider than crap. Not giving kids leeway for being children, is the kind of intolerant inhuman decision we see everywhere. I would label it as part of the bad side of political correctness.. In some cases yes racism is an extra factor so also yes for that.. and racism can be white to black or black to white or dozens of other combinations..
Like it says on the can schools today are just prisons where adults store children until they can become useful workers.. [That was semi-ironic humour BTW]
They were either racist or stupider than crap. (I suspect the second or both) It quite clearly was not a bomb, and given the look of the thing its likely that it is a mains powered clock. Maybe he didn't think things through - but isn't that exactly what teenagers always do??
Give him a break, he's only a kid.
Somalia.. :)
Unfortunately in a Kleptocracy the police always defend the thieves at the top..
That's the trouble with the keepers of the law, if the law gets bent they become the mobsters shills... The only way not to be a bent cop - is to be a bent cop.
That's why she's the Republicans dream Dem ticket for the nomination. Just like Trump is the Democrats dream choice for the Republicans..
With that mark-up he can afford the best..
A system that is completely bent. Goes to show yet again that capitalism has no place in medicine.. When will people realize that the entire US industry has become a giant blood sucking parasite..
Yes but who was crazy? Goddard and Von Braun for believing rockets could take humans into space? The Write brothers for believing that human sized heavier than air aircraft could fly? Kennedy for believing men could go to the Moon? Even when the sceptic's are right like on flying cars - because they only argue a negative they are never actually proven correct - just that something is more difficult..
At the end of the day the core technology to take people to Mars is already there, building a real program is more about money than anything else. The real problem with humans going to Mars is that we keep pissing the money away on war and even worse on weapons that we don't even use.. and we spend far more on trivial stuff like phones, and a hundred types of 5 minute tat.. tax cuts for billionairs..
A great comparative statistic - in the 1960's NASA spent $25 (to 35) billion to send a man to the Moon. At the same time the US military spent over $100 billion to lose the Vietnam war, and between $200 and 400 billion on nuclear weapons that we didn't even use.... That's a ratio that hits something like 10 to 1, to 16 to 1. Military spending including stuff like the Iraq war/ISIS is at roughly similar levels today.. Even NASA's funding is not that different, but they now spend it on a lot of small programs rather than one or two big programs. In fact in money (adjusted) terms NASA get more now than they did during Apollo, though comparatively as part of GDP its only a third of the levels during Apollo. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
If NASA stopped spending on so many science missions we could afford a much more rapid manned Mars program - but a better option would be to give NASA the funding to do both. Increasing yearly funding to build a complete program more quickly is far more fiscally efficient, reducing the final costs by about 30% to over 50%.
Sheesh. The whole problem with this post is that it repeats the same old lines again - and still without understanding the basic technology. The critical new technology needed for a trip to Mars is a more efficient more powerful rocket engine. With that engine your ship can make orbit around the Earth (1 stage) dock and refuel. Fly out to Mars (1 stage), refuel, land (1 stage), take off back to orbit (1 stage), refuel, and back to Earth (1 stage). All done in one single core stage, using one primary ship, plus an orbital refuelling point at Earth and a second refuelling ship orbiting at Mars.
The crew quarters are large and comfortable and behind foot thick radiation barriers, and during flight the ship has 1/10 Earth artificial gravity.
And the secret isn't new technology, it is technology that was 90% developed during the 1960's and 70's. The secret is nuclear rockets. Ok to do everything in one stage you do need a new rocket tech - high energy gas core engines with closed cycle, but even for them the designs have been around just as long. A second tech that can do it in one or two stages is the Orion pulse nuclear drive - also nuclear rockets but instead using micro nuclear bombs. And the great joke is? the crew get less radiation exposure on a nuclear rocket than they do on a chemical one, potentially a lot less.
Maybe you should learn a little more about scale. As long as we say limit the total water we convert to say 0.001 % of the worlds total water then that should not affect anything, Okay right? That is still about 13.5 trillion metric tons by the way- and that's a cube 15 miles or 24 Km on a side.
When read in detail the basic assumption this is all based on is totally stupid. A basic simple rule (from me) is that once you have the technology to build Dyson spheres you will have no reason to do so... Nuclear power - fusion power - atomic conversion - all provide far better and far more compact sources of energy than things like Dyson spheres. Space is so large and so full of plants that there is no reason build one in terms of living room.
Such vast hyper-structures as Dyson spheres or ring worlds require almost insane levels or resources to build, are fragile, vulnerable, naturally unstable, and almost by definition would tend to be short lived..
The real truth is that even very high level civilizations might be almost undetectable. If we look at say an example from sci fi - then something equivalent to the Galactic civilization from Star Wars would be almost entirely undetectable..
Even with a galactic civilization of a million worlds, in an average galaxy that only achieves a density of 1 in 100,000 stars. That's a needle in a haystack..
Finding a single one star civilization among 400 billion stars with today's technology and SETI resources is a joke.. If you take our own civilizations current Fermi Distance its probably only about 10 to 20 light years if that - a few hundred stars at most.
I'm strongly in favour of SETI but it needs to be done on a far larger scale and with better resources. Also not just with radio, but with things like laser beacons and laser detectors, plus we need to keep looking for other better methods.. I don't like the current odds..
The real solution to the Fermi Paradox is simply that space is big - very big, bigger than your/our tiny minds can even begin to imagine.
Douglas Adams solved the paradox decades ago. Now go and write that down 1000 times.
Zero. Nuclear RTG's are generally designed to survive the rocket exploding and even the fall from orbital height..
This mission is to the inside of a polar crater - the darkness is permanent.
You don't understand anything about economics do you. The underlying reason India is funding its space program is to boost its technology economy. What its doing is essential its future economy, the power to compete is the basis for increasing wealth, which will hopefully ultimately lead to everyone having toilets. India is competing with China.
Try to build your whole economy on building toilets and you will end up in one.
I have a picture of a Pu238 battery from a pacemaker. The shielding looks miniscule - and that's for a battery that supposed to sit for 30 years or more inside a human chest. That low gamma signature is very useful..