Shuttle Replacement Needs to Become a National Priority!!!

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


Nope. 1986. Air Force simulated, Aerojet approved.

On Thu, 28 Jul 2005 14:26:18 +0000 (UTC), (James Nicoll)
wrote (in part):

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

What list are you using for this? Mine shows just two reactors in
Lithuania, both at the Ignalina plant.

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).

Dr. P. Quackenbush wrote:

Nope. 1986. Air Force simulated, Aerojet approved.

Look, dumb**** -- the particular trajectory you have proposed
doesn't change the fact that the velocity at burnout has
to be very accurate, unless you have course correction.

Why did you imagine what you wrote was in any way an
argument against what I wrote? It was a complete
non sequitur.

Paul

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

Nope. 1986. Air Force simulated, Aerojet approved.

Look, dumb**** -- the particular trajectory you have proposed
doesn't change the fact that the velocity at burnout has
to be very accurate, unless you have course correction.

Why did you imagine what you wrote was in any way an
argument against what I wrote? It was a complete
non sequitur.

Paul


OK, look here you stupid ****ing ****. You said this:

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.

I said this:
Nope. 1986. Air Force simulated, Aerojet approved.


Your "doubts" are doubtable. Doubtful, even. ****ing meaningless, in fact.

Now **** off and get ****ed you ****.

"Dr. P. Quackenbush" wrote in message
ink.net...
Your "doubts" are doubtable. Doubtful, even. ****ing meaningless, in
fact.

Now **** off and get ****ed you ****.

Paul is right. If you don't get your second stage velocity right, your
cloud of gravel will miss the solar power satellite. If you don't get your
second stage cutoff velocity exactly right, you'll need a final stage to do
this.

This isn't as easy as it seems.

Jeff
--
Remove icky phrase from email address to get a valid address.

"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. Welcome to the 21st century.


You personally have one?

Look, the transformers outside most *any* generating station are
vulnerable to various shoulder-fired anti-armor weapons, and not easily
or quickly replaced.

Dams have certainly been wartime targets.

What's your point? Does every source of power have to be totally
impervious to attack, too?

--

You know what to remove, to reply....

"Dr. P. Quackenbush" wrote:

"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.


Fine for LEO, but 'pop-up' all the way to geostationary orbit (which
is where most SPS proposals put them) is asking rather more. Nor are
they moving as fast.


--

You know what to remove, to reply....

Dr. P. Quackenbush wrote:

I said this:

Nope. 1986. Air Force simulated, Aerojet approved.

I know you said that. So ****ing what, asshole?

I gave a *specific technical reason* why the idea
was dubious, one you utterly failed to address.

You're all hot air and empty head, dumb****.

Paul

James Nicoll wrote:

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).

And assuming global warming turns out not to be a problem.

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 how much of that uranium and thorium is recoverable at a reasonable
cost? Granite, basalt, etc. are pretty poor "ores", so the cost will be
relatively high at best. And we are *not* going to turn the Earth's
crust inside out and pulverize it just to get at the Uranium and
Thorium. About 4/5th's of that crust also seems to be under water,
which might complicate mining a bit.
--
http://www.cic.gc.ca/english/immigrate/
http://www.livejournal.com/users/james_nicoll

Richard Morris wrote:

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


And assuming global warming turns out not to be a problem.

Add mineral carbonation to sequester CO2, or use the coal to
thermochemically produce hydrogen and sequester the CO2 at
the processing plant.

And how much of that uranium and thorium is recoverable at a reasonable
cost? Granite, basalt, etc. are pretty poor "ores", so the cost will be
relatively high at best.

With breeding, an average unit of granite has 20 times the energy content
of the combustion of the same mass of coal, and the cost of extracting
the uranium & thorium from that rock would be a small fraction of the
value of the energy produced.

But before we did that, we'd mine the oceans for uranium. Uranium can
be extracted from seawater (containing about 4 billion tons of U, a
at 3 ppb) for less than $1000/lb, and which (with breeders) would
contribute negligibly to the cost of energy. It's even possible that
the cost could be brought low enough to make this source useable in
advanced burner reactors.

Paul