Shuttle Replacement Needs to Become a National Priority!!!

In article ,
jonathan wrote:

"James Nicoll" wrote in message
...
In article ,
jonathan wrote:


Let me ask you, looking into the future what is our biggest problem
facing us? Isn't it our global energy needs? In fifty years or so
we need to replace oil with other sources.

Coal liquifaction should see us well into the 21st century,
assuming the whole world industrializes (centuries if they don't).

I also hear tell that there's this atomic power stuff from the
pulps that looks promising and a certain amound of uranium and thorium
in the Earth's crust, to the tune of about 10^30 joules worth or about
equal to the energy in 160,000,000,000,000,000,000 barrels of oil. Humans
use use about 10^13 watts but most of us are poor: multiply that rate
by 20 and there's enough fissionables to last us about 160 million years.
If we'd got started using atomic power in the late Jurassic, we'd just be
running out now.


And what about the rest of the world? When will, say, Indonesia, India
or Mexico get to build dozens and dozens of nuclear power plants?

Well, nobody except France, Japan, Russia and the US have
"dozens" of reactors (although S. Korea and Lithuania come close)
at the moment. Oil was cheap, so there was no incentive for the most
part to build them. An amazing thing about human behavior -- make that
primate behavior, since capuchin monkeys have been taught to use
money [1] -- is that when one commodity becomes expensive, people tend
to start using other, cheaper replacement commodities.

Indonesia is the odd one out (as one might expect from the fact
that it's swimming in oil): 2 reactors, both TRIGAs.

India has 15 reactors, with 8 under construction.

Mexico has 2 reactors (and lots of oil).

And what about climate change when the rest of the world becomes
industrialized and is then burning ten times the fossil fuels we are now?
I don't see a future in that.

I do: I'm 330 meters above sea level in a temperate zone in
a country that has thoughfully located most of its economy and people
well above the maximum sea level that we can expect from global warming.
I expect local housing prices to rise, though.

Carbon sequestering may become necessary for convenience of
the majority of the human race that lives near sea level, some because
they are being flooded out and others because it's cheaper than dealing
with the refugee problem (AKA work force enhancement program). It'd be
best if we could figure out a way to make sequestering profitable, so
people would have to be nooged into it: using nuclear power to make
synthetic oil from raw materials would do it and help replace fossil
fuels.

James Nicoll

1: Independently inventing prostitution. It really is the world's
oldest profession.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

In article ,
John Savard wrote:
On Wed, 27 Jul 2005 21:57:59 -0400, "jonathan"
wrote, in part:

Let me ask you, looking into the future what is our biggest problem
facing us? Isn't it our global energy needs? In fifty years or so
we need to replace oil with other sources. Solar energy, collected
in space, is the ...only... practical path. Fusion is a pipe-dream.

If fusion power is a problem, thorium breeders will serve nicely.

I notice the Russians were making noise about lunar 3He recently.
I suspect 3He fusion may end up being the North West Passage of the 21st
century (only with fewer missing researchers).
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

In message
(James Nicoll) wrote:

Well, nobody except France, Japan, Russia and the US have
"dozens" of reactors (although S. Korea and Lithuania come close)
at the moment.

The UK has nearly three dozen...

Anthony

John Savard wrote:

Solar power satellites are dangerous and expensive - only an L5 habitat
could make them economically.

I'm not convinced. I've seen a conceptual design of a modular
multi-gigawatt SPS that would be built with only terrestrial
materials, yet would require launching only a few thousand tons
into LEO. Nothing would need to be manufactured in orbit.

Paul

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
John Savard wrote:

Solar power satellites are dangerous and expensive - only an L5 habitat
could make them economically.

I'm not convinced. I've seen a conceptual design of a modular
multi-gigawatt SPS that would be built with only terrestrial
materials, yet would require launching only a few thousand tons
into LEO. Nothing would need to be manufactured in orbit.

Paul


And I could take that thing out with a simple two-stage rocket and a bag of
gravel. Welcome to the 21st century.

Dr. P. Quackenbush wrote:

And I could take that thing out with a simple two-stage rocket and a bag of
gravel. Welcome to the 21st century.

Your gravel would have to be delivered from low orbit with
a velocity accuracy of about 10 ppm in order to hit the
SPS unguided. I doubt a simple two stage rocket can
achieve that; you're going to need accurate tracking
and course correction.

Anyway, a simple two stage rocket can take out a terrestrial
powerplant too. But that would be an act of war, just like
attacking a space powerplant would be.

Paul

Dr. P. Quackenbush wrote:

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...


John Savard wrote:



Solar power satellites are dangerous and expensive - only an L5 habitat
could make them economically.


I'm not convinced. I've seen a conceptual design of a modular
multi-gigawatt SPS that would be built with only terrestrial
materials, yet would require launching only a few thousand tons
into LEO. Nothing would need to be manufactured in orbit.

Paul




And I could take that thing out with a simple two-stage rocket and a bag of
gravel.



Uhhh... no. Most SPS designs are akin to giant sheets of PV arrays with
some structural backing. If you shot a bag of gravel - say, ten thousand
1-cm diameter rocks - you'd do nothing more than blow ten thousand 1-cm
diameter holes in the array. It'd be like shooting a billboard witha
shotgun. The damage would be inconsequential.

--
"The only thing that galls me about someone burning the American flag is how unoriginal it is. I mean if you're going to pull the Freedom-of-speech card, don't be a hack, come up with something interesting. Fashion Old Glory into a wisecracking puppet and blister the system with a scathing ventriloquism act, or better yet, drape the flag over your head and desecrate it with a large caliber bullet hole." Dennis Miller

"Paul F. Dietz" wrote in message
...
Dr. P. Quackenbush wrote:

And I could take that thing out with a simple two-stage rocket and a bag
of
gravel. Welcome to the 21st century.

Your gravel would have to be delivered from low orbit with
a velocity accuracy of about 10 ppm in order to hit the
SPS unguided. I doubt a simple two stage rocket can
achieve that; you're going to need accurate tracking
and course correction.


It only has to go straight up. GPS makes that easy. The orbital velocity
of the SPS does the rest. Basic math.

jonathan wrote:

Let me ask you, looking into the future what is our biggest problem
facing us?

hopefully it won't turn out to be this:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science...roid-hit_x.htm


--
Terrell Miller


"Suddenly, after nearly 30 years of scorn, Prog is cool again".
-Entertainment Weekly

Dr. P. Quackenbush wrote:

Your gravel would have to be delivered from low orbit with
a velocity accuracy of about 10 ppm in order to hit the
SPS unguided. I doubt a simple two stage rocket can
achieve that; you're going to need accurate tracking
and course correction.

It only has to go straight up. GPS makes that easy. The orbital velocity
of the SPS does the rest. Basic math.

You apparently don't realize that what you just wrote
is maximally idiotic.

Try again, but engage your brain this time, ok?

Paul