I had a 1971 Delta 88, as big a car as anyone might need, turned like a boat, it had an Oldsmobile Rocket 350 engine with a 2 barrel carb that got 11 miles to the gallon in the 1990s when I owned it. I didn't take any special care of it, and drove it like any teenager would.
After the 1973 oil crisis cars got progressively more fuel effiecient, I had a high school buddy with a 1974 Mustang 4 cylinder that still managed a reasonable amount of sportyness.
I helped another friend of mine buy a 1973 Mercury from a little old lady, it had a v-8, he drove it like it was the Interceptor from Mad Max and also got 10-11 mpg out of the thing.
The next thing I drove that got that kind of mileage (11 mpg) was a 1988 Silverado pickup with the King Cab, and a Long bed, it had a 350 v-8 engine block and leaked oil like a sieve.
On many phones the PIN or keycode just unlocks the keypad, or in a touchscreen's case the UI. This does diddly to stop the USB connected phone's memory from being used as a storage device.
The primary function of the "security" code here is to keep you from butt/pocket/purse dialing unintenationally. The Security code is not to lock down the confidential info on the phone and keep folks from copying all your data.
Sunglasses with HUD, Contact Lenses with onscreen displays, Fingernail Applicques a la Cyberpunk. Subdermal vital signs readout, Passports, Driver's Licenses and Credit Cards with really cool security features.
Every book and magazine you wanted to read ever on a 1 or 2 page Ebook reader way thinner than anything we have now. Yeah, batteries and storage will take up some room. At some point the interface, and charging equipment will be the bottleneck to making smaller system.
Helium-3 is not Helium like you put in Balloons, its the Isotope of Helium you put in Fusion Reactors and Medical Imaging technology.
It is worth $46,500 per troy ounce.
Hydrogen would be much less expensive for this application, and like others have stated if you don't paint the sides of the airship with rocket fuel, a rigid airship with segmented air bladders is pretty safe.
Maybe we can even reopen the Blimp port on the top of the Empire State Building.
I believe that unless the sensor is changed by the sensing, the observer changed by the observation that most sensors would be cheaper to put up on single use rockets. The sensor could also be the only working prototype and or made of unobtanium.
But since this is a technology demonstrator for a lot of next gen vehicle technologies those arguments are bunk.
The airframe and everything on it is a test bed, not only will the flight data be important but the returned airframe with its not shuttle based heat shields will be useful itself. The real question is will they try to make it go sideways a little when it's time to land the thing and actually use the wings for what they are designed for.
I totally agree with new approaches and new development. But I want to mention two things you might not be aware of.
Bigelow Aerospace has flown 2 inflatable Habitats since 2006. The foam they are made of was originally developed for the ISS, and tech transferred to a private company to develop it further. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransHab Heck their Sundancer manned habitat might BE the tech demonstrator for inflatable habitats.
The VASIMR 200kw electric propulsion system tested on the ISS, can only run for 10 minutes on batteries that have to trickle charge because the ISS only has 110kw of solar power available.
So while these things aren't man rated yet, I can see where the tech demonstrators for these would be quick to put together with little 'new' development time.
As some ACs have noted there are Hyperthermophile (extemeophiles) that can thrive at temperatures between 80–122 C, such as those found in hydrothermal systems.
There is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi where there is no oxygen in the water and many kinds of life cannot exist. Hurricanes come along during storm season and froth up the water which aerates it, and reduces the size of the zone.
There are 'exceptions' where no life as we know it lives, but for the most part life does thrive everywhere there is water, and in places and mechanisms that surprise us when we find it.
They found life under Artic ice where no light penetrates and wondered what energy source powered its ecosystem.
There are extremophiles that live off the sulphur in geothermal vents.
We have reproduced in a lab the basic building blocks of life as we know it, in conditions that occur commonly in comets and carbonaecous asteroids. From our sample of one and what we know of planetary and solar system formation we can draw the conclusion that these same conditions can occur anywhere there is carbon, oxygen, water and UV radiation.
In what way could for-profit patent holders get the laws changed such that not-for-profit patent holders can't use the same laws to bully them back?
Many of the for-profit patent holders that actually make things besides patents have a vested interest in keeping the system of offense and defense balanced.
For example if patent offense is too powered some no-name entity or shell corporation (SCO) could bring huge suits against IBM and win. IBM wouldn't like that. If patent defense were too strong IBM couldn't use its huge arsenal of patents against its competitors.
So there are some reasonably powerful entities out there that will do the right thing (not screw with patent law) out of self interest. IBM, Apple, Google, Microsoft will outspend any Patent Troll out there to maintain the current balance of terror.
I resent the notion that certain of the southern states would be a third world country if left to their own devices.
Texas has a computer industry (TI, Dell, NCSoft, iD), universities with good computer programs (U-Texas), good technical programs (Rice, A&M), leading medical research universities (Baylor).
The Bubbas don't speak for everyone down there, they just seem to get the most coverage.
No, people always bring up the direct research approach being prefereable to indirect benefits and or spin-off technologies. And I agree in principle, picking and funding your goals should get you the most bang for your buck.
Let me ask you though, how's that been working out for you?
I also reject as false the notion that we can't do both.
In 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio. We had a huge oil spill the same year and we got the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 in response. Things look better, we've gotten rid of Smog and Ozone alerts in LA. We've shipped all of our dirty manufacturing jobs overseas. The US looks a lot better than it ever did in the 1970s.
So much better in fact that people didn't see it as a problem anymore, and drove SUVs instead of Hybrids right up until $4/gallon gasoline.
People don't know that it takes up to 3000 gallons of water to make a pair of jeans, and thus won't change their consumption habits. They do know what it costs to fill their gas tank, to heat their home in the winter, to put food on the table. Humans are really bad judges of risk, its telling that after the Beijing Olympics were over the people demanded the temporary air quality measures put in place for the Olympics stay in place after it was over. The people knew viscerally what bad air was like, when they got a taste of clean air, making the right choice was easy.
The colony could be thriving in 100 years without hundreds of billions thrown at it.
The problem is infectionus diseases won't go away short of nanotech constantly scrubbing our bodies and the planet clean.
You'd do better spending that money on clean water for the billions who don't have access to it. Requiring existing food aid programs to buy their food from local farmers instead of dumping free food on the same people for years while the country's topsoil erodes. The increase in sanitation and nutrition would cut your infectious diseases problem by a lot.
As for fossil fuels, even if we all drove electric cars tomorrow, we'd still use Natural gas for heating and petroleum products for plastics, fertilizer and other interesting chemistry.
Why do you think the self-sustaining part has to be taken away? You can grow food on Mars, there is CO2 to make Oxygen, there is water ice there underground. You only need someone to think very hard about the gear you take with you, what each part is made of and how easy those parts are to repair, manufacture and replace in the field.
At the very least I'd plant a robotic greenhouse dome on Mars with wind turbines and solar panels to power it, let the robots gather CO2 Ice and Water Ice, and tend crops for a few seasons, watch the air scrubbers and water filters for problems remotely and if it all works send some bodies along to live there. They need a machine shop, underground living quarters.
We can practice in high Deserts and Antartica cheaply before we ever send the first robot offworld.
The Water Filtration system used on the ISS has been used in relief efforts in Iraq and other places around the world.
It costs pennies per gallon of fresh water, and can make potable water out of open sewer / stormdrains, such as those after a Tsunami.
It is easily transportable in a pickup truck, and has low power requirements, can be configured to operate on foot power.
On ignorance, once you have a method it is easier to say you have to do it. Right now we have problems with filtering carbon from coal plants and the coal energy lobbies say it will cost too much to implement. An opinion scientifically based on nothing, as the first US clean coal plant to demonstrate these technologies was never completed.
Once you have a technical means to accomplish something, you can count on early adopters like California to pass a law making it mandatory.
But going back to clean water, its a problem that affects billions of people worldwide that have no access to clean water. A lot of the places in the American SouthWest that are experienceing chronic water shortages would have less problems if they could completely reprocess their black and greywater to potable water.
A NASA Space/Mars Colony if anything would help us live better with smaller carbon footprint here on Earth.
During the last 40 years NASA has spent lots of R&D money on high efficiency solar Panels, Fuel Cells, Water Recycling/Pufification, all technologies required to live lightly on the land, or in the very finite resources available to Astronauts in space or on the Moon/Mars.
On Earth you have people who choose not to recycle, choose to keep using gas powered vehicles, pollute the water, and spew emissions into the air.
In space these are not choices you can make, you need to keep and recycle everything, polluting your environment is not an option, even small imbalances will be noticed quickly, and probably kill you.
It is not within our current technology to build a rocket large enough to carry all the food necessary for astronauts on a trip to Mars, so they will need to grow their own food on the way there. If you can grow enough food in an aluminum tube the size of a small passenger liner to feed all of the crew, you can do intense fertilizer free or biochar fertilized farming in urban areas here on Earth. All with zero impact on the environment.
Even your unmanned probes would work better with an unmanned fuel depot halfway to anywhere.
And no under our feet does not work, only a tiny percentage of the Earth's crust is mineable. And we've gotten all of the easy stuff already, if you look at how many tenths of an ounce per ton is considered profitiable for miners that then use acid solutions to reduce the ore down to what they want, and tailings (the waste) you end up with tons of industrial waster per ounce of useable material.
It has gotten so bad that many companies are now using current technologies to reprocess the tailings of mines/plants closed in the 1970s because those leftovers are richer in what they want than the new mines they are finding.
There IS more raw material in the belt than all of the Earth, and at higher concentrations than any mines being operated anywhere on the planet.
Now, tell me if you really believe what you've said, how much Helium / Helium 3 there is here on Earth, under our feet? What is the cost per ounce?
Helium 3 is $46500 per troy ounce.
Helium we get from Nuclear decay, Helium 3 we get as a byproduct from manufacturing Tritium for Nuclear bombs, we haven't made it in industrial quantities for a while, but there are numberous Medical Imaging and Fusion research uses for this limited resource.
How much is there on the moon?
How many Rare Earth Elements are available in the Belt that would make more efficient magnets for Hybrid Cars and High Speed Trains, but Neodymium is about $1 per Gram, and the price will go up the more demand for Hybrid and Electric vehicles goes up.
How many CD players and Cell phones would you have to recylce the magnets from to come up with the Kilo of Neodymium used in the motor of 1 Prius?
Slashdot Mirror
8 MPG, you're memory is hazy or disingeuous.
I had a 1971 Delta 88, as big a car as anyone might need, turned like a boat, it had an Oldsmobile Rocket 350 engine with a 2 barrel carb that got 11 miles to the gallon in the 1990s when I owned it. I didn't take any special care of it, and drove it like any teenager would.
After the 1973 oil crisis cars got progressively more fuel effiecient, I had a high school buddy with a 1974 Mustang 4 cylinder that still managed a reasonable amount of sportyness.
I helped another friend of mine buy a 1973 Mercury from a little old lady, it had a v-8, he drove it like it was the Interceptor from Mad Max and also got 10-11 mpg out of the thing.
The next thing I drove that got that kind of mileage (11 mpg) was a 1988 Silverado pickup with the King Cab, and a Long bed, it had a 350 v-8 engine block and leaked oil like a sieve.
On many phones the PIN or keycode just unlocks the keypad, or in a touchscreen's case the UI. This does diddly to stop the USB connected phone's memory from being used as a storage device.
The primary function of the "security" code here is to keep you from butt/pocket/purse dialing unintenationally. The Security code is not to lock down the confidential info on the phone and keep folks from copying all your data.
Seriously,
Sunglasses with HUD, Contact Lenses with onscreen displays, Fingernail Applicques a la Cyberpunk. Subdermal vital signs readout, Passports, Driver's Licenses and Credit Cards with really cool security features.
Every book and magazine you wanted to read ever on a 1 or 2 page Ebook reader way thinner than anything we have now. Yeah, batteries and storage will take up some room. At some point the interface, and charging equipment will be the bottleneck to making smaller system.
Helium-3 is not Helium like you put in Balloons, its the Isotope of Helium you put in Fusion Reactors and Medical Imaging technology.
It is worth $46,500 per troy ounce.
Hydrogen would be much less expensive for this application, and like others have stated if you don't paint the sides of the airship with rocket fuel, a rigid airship with segmented air bladders is pretty safe.
Maybe we can even reopen the Blimp port on the top of the Empire State Building.
I never knew Clark Kent posted to Slashdot.
I believe that unless the sensor is changed by the sensing, the observer changed by the observation that most sensors would be cheaper to put up on single use rockets. The sensor could also be the only working prototype and or made of unobtanium.
But since this is a technology demonstrator for a lot of next gen vehicle technologies those arguments are bunk.
The airframe and everything on it is a test bed, not only will the flight data be important but the returned airframe with its not shuttle based heat shields will be useful itself. The real question is will they try to make it go sideways a little when it's time to land the thing and actually use the wings for what they are designed for.
I totally agree with new approaches and new development. But I want to mention two things you might not be aware of.
Bigelow Aerospace has flown 2 inflatable Habitats since 2006. The foam they are made of was originally developed for the ISS, and tech transferred to a private company to develop it further.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bigelow_Aerospace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TransHab
Heck their Sundancer manned habitat might BE the tech demonstrator for inflatable habitats.
The VASIMR 200kw electric propulsion system tested on the ISS, can only run for 10 minutes on batteries that have to trickle charge because the ISS only has 110kw of solar power available.
So while these things aren't man rated yet, I can see where the tech demonstrators for these would be quick to put together with little 'new' development time.
As some ACs have noted there are Hyperthermophile (extemeophiles) that can thrive at temperatures between 80–122 C, such as those found in hydrothermal systems.
There is a dead zone in the Gulf of Mexico caused by fertilizer runoff from the Mississippi where there is no oxygen in the water and many kinds of life cannot exist. Hurricanes come along during storm season and froth up the water which aerates it, and reduces the size of the zone.
There are 'exceptions' where no life as we know it lives, but for the most part life does thrive everywhere there is water, and in places and mechanisms that surprise us when we find it.
They found life under Artic ice where no light penetrates and wondered what energy source powered its ecosystem.
There are extremophiles that live off the sulphur in geothermal vents.
We have reproduced in a lab the basic building blocks of life as we know it, in conditions that occur commonly in comets and carbonaecous asteroids. From our sample of one and what we know of planetary and solar system formation we can draw the conclusion that these same conditions can occur anywhere there is carbon, oxygen, water and UV radiation.
In what way could for-profit patent holders get the laws changed such that not-for-profit patent holders can't use the same laws to bully them back?
Many of the for-profit patent holders that actually make things besides patents have a vested interest in keeping the system of offense and defense balanced.
For example if patent offense is too powered some no-name entity or shell corporation (SCO) could bring huge suits against IBM and win. IBM wouldn't like that. If patent defense were too strong IBM couldn't use its huge arsenal of patents against its competitors.
So there are some reasonably powerful entities out there that will do the right thing (not screw with patent law) out of self interest. IBM, Apple, Google, Microsoft will outspend any Patent Troll out there to maintain the current balance of terror.
What no empty aluminized mylar potato chip bags?
Or a bag made out of the same Steel Mesh as these Wallets?
http://www.wired.com/gadgets/miscellaneous/news/2007/07/steel_wallet
I resent the notion that certain of the southern states would be a third world country if left to their own devices.
Texas has a computer industry (TI, Dell, NCSoft, iD), universities with good computer programs (U-Texas), good technical programs (Rice, A&M), leading medical research universities (Baylor).
The Bubbas don't speak for everyone down there, they just seem to get the most coverage.
Yep, people hate when you point that out to them.
I thought that was Skynet.
Skip one lousy meeting...
No, people always bring up the direct research approach being prefereable to indirect benefits and or spin-off technologies. And I agree in principle, picking and funding your goals should get you the most bang for your buck.
Let me ask you though, how's that been working out for you?
I also reject as false the notion that we can't do both.
In 1969 the Cuyahoga River caught fire in Cleveland, Ohio. We had a huge oil spill the same year and we got the National Environmental Policy Act of 1969 in response. Things look better, we've gotten rid of Smog and Ozone alerts in LA. We've shipped all of our dirty manufacturing jobs overseas. The US looks a lot better than it ever did in the 1970s.
So much better in fact that people didn't see it as a problem anymore, and drove SUVs instead of Hybrids right up until $4/gallon gasoline.
People don't know that it takes up to 3000 gallons of water to make a pair of jeans, and thus won't change their consumption habits. They do know what it costs to fill their gas tank, to heat their home in the winter, to put food on the table. Humans are really bad judges of risk, its telling that after the Beijing Olympics were over the people demanded the temporary air quality measures put in place for the Olympics stay in place after it was over. The people knew viscerally what bad air was like, when they got a taste of clean air, making the right choice was easy.
Obviously the Power Meals are loaded with Real Ultimate Power, like what Ninjas have. http://www.realultimatepower.net/
You know Ninjas, that flip out and kill people without warning. Obviously the Power Meal was demonstrating its Real Ultimate Power.
You will not do either in a hundred years.
The colony could be thriving in 100 years without hundreds of billions thrown at it.
The problem is infectionus diseases won't go away short of nanotech constantly scrubbing our bodies and the planet clean.
You'd do better spending that money on clean water for the billions who don't have access to it. Requiring existing food aid programs to buy their food from local farmers instead of dumping free food on the same people for years while the country's topsoil erodes. The increase in sanitation and nutrition would cut your infectious diseases problem by a lot.
As for fossil fuels, even if we all drove electric cars tomorrow, we'd still use Natural gas for heating and petroleum products for plastics, fertilizer and other interesting chemistry.
Why do you think the self-sustaining part has to be taken away? You can grow food on Mars, there is CO2 to make Oxygen, there is water ice there underground. You only need someone to think very hard about the gear you take with you, what each part is made of and how easy those parts are to repair, manufacture and replace in the field.
At the very least I'd plant a robotic greenhouse dome on Mars with wind turbines and solar panels to power it, let the robots gather CO2 Ice and Water Ice, and tend crops for a few seasons, watch the air scrubbers and water filters for problems remotely and if it all works send some bodies along to live there. They need a machine shop, underground living quarters.
We can practice in high Deserts and Antartica cheaply before we ever send the first robot offworld.
Not to respond to an AC, BUT
The Water Filtration system used on the ISS has been used in relief efforts in Iraq and other places around the world.
It costs pennies per gallon of fresh water, and can make potable water out of open sewer / stormdrains, such as those after a Tsunami.
It is easily transportable in a pickup truck, and has low power requirements, can be configured to operate on foot power.
On ignorance, once you have a method it is easier to say you have to do it. Right now we have problems with filtering carbon from coal plants and the coal energy lobbies say it will cost too much to implement. An opinion scientifically based on nothing, as the first US clean coal plant to demonstrate these technologies was never completed.
Once you have a technical means to accomplish something, you can count on early adopters like California to pass a law making it mandatory.
But going back to clean water, its a problem that affects billions of people worldwide that have no access to clean water. A lot of the places in the American SouthWest that are experienceing chronic water shortages would have less problems if they could completely reprocess their black and greywater to potable water.
You've got it backwards,
A NASA Space/Mars Colony if anything would help us live better with smaller carbon footprint here on Earth.
During the last 40 years NASA has spent lots of R&D money on high efficiency solar Panels, Fuel Cells, Water Recycling/Pufification, all technologies required to live lightly on the land, or in the very finite resources available to Astronauts in space or on the Moon/Mars.
On Earth you have people who choose not to recycle, choose to keep using gas powered vehicles, pollute the water, and spew emissions into the air.
In space these are not choices you can make, you need to keep and recycle everything, polluting your environment is not an option, even small imbalances will be noticed quickly, and probably kill you.
It is not within our current technology to build a rocket large enough to carry all the food necessary for astronauts on a trip to Mars, so they will need to grow their own food on the way there. If you can grow enough food in an aluminum tube the size of a small passenger liner to feed all of the crew, you can do intense fertilizer free or biochar fertilized farming in urban areas here on Earth. All with zero impact on the environment.
Einstein said it
I don't believe in 2.
Oh, somebody did mention the whole election debacle.
Please ignore my other post.
And it just means that W wouldn't be subject to the year Zero election curse. Other causalities thus ignored Al Gore, but penalized Dick Cheney.
11 responses and not one liberal has come forward to say that W in fact did not win the general election.
Space Colonies of course.
Which despite their engineering challenges will be easier to build than to tell people not to have more kids.
Even your unmanned probes would work better with an unmanned fuel depot halfway to anywhere.
And no under our feet does not work, only a tiny percentage of the Earth's crust is mineable. And we've gotten all of the easy stuff already, if you look at how many tenths of an ounce per ton is considered profitiable for miners that then use acid solutions to reduce the ore down to what they want, and tailings (the waste) you end up with tons of industrial waster per ounce of useable material.
It has gotten so bad that many companies are now using current technologies to reprocess the tailings of mines/plants closed in the 1970s because those leftovers are richer in what they want than the new mines they are finding.
There IS more raw material in the belt than all of the Earth, and at higher concentrations than any mines being operated anywhere on the planet.
Now, tell me if you really believe what you've said, how much Helium / Helium 3 there is here on Earth, under our feet? What is the cost per ounce?
Helium 3 is $46500 per troy ounce.
Helium we get from Nuclear decay, Helium 3 we get as a byproduct from manufacturing Tritium for Nuclear bombs, we haven't made it in industrial quantities for a while, but there are numberous Medical Imaging and Fusion research uses for this limited resource.
How much is there on the moon?
How many Rare Earth Elements are available in the Belt that would make more efficient magnets for Hybrid Cars and High Speed Trains, but Neodymium is about $1 per Gram, and the price will go up the more demand for Hybrid and Electric vehicles goes up.
How many CD players and Cell phones would you have to recylce the magnets from to come up with the Kilo of Neodymium used in the motor of 1 Prius?
China and Thailand have implemented workarounds to achieve unpredictable browser behavior in the URL bar?