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#71
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
: NM House Bill 835, signed into law on February 24, 2006. : http://legis.state.nm.us/lcs/BillFin...er.asp?year=06 will let you : find it. Here's a direct link to the bill: http://legis.state.nm.us/Sessions/06...nal/HB0835.pdf but it doesn't specify any specific amount of money that I could see. I could be wrong. |
#72
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Today's CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/0....ap/index.html Again, these are =proposals= not investments. |
#74
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
wrote:
Today's CNN.com: http://www.cnn.com/2006/TECH/space/0....ap/index.html Again, these are =proposals= not investments. What do you mean, "again"? You were wrong to deny the fact of investments before, and while you might be quoting a word from the article, you're no more correct this time. The "proposals" are not about the existence of and investments in the facilities, but about the requests to the FAA for approval as a licensed space launch site. You've been spoon-fed the relevant information about the New Mexico spaceport. The Oklahoma one *is already built* and just needs the final stamp of approval on its application for an FAA license, which is expected to be granted before mid-June. The two Texas sites mentioned in the article are still undeveloped, but they've definitely received investment in the form of environmental impact studies; significant construction is understandably being deferred until after a spaceport license appears forthcoming. |
#75
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Okay, I give - states are making an effort to attract the Boy
Billionaires and get them to put -more- money than that into the economy. But it still all comes back to the Billionaire Hobbyists, and the states wanting some of their money, just like attracting a new chicken processing plant or something. |
#76
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
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#77
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
"Neil Gerace" wrote in message ... "Henry Spencer" wrote in message ... Oh, and don't forget the costs of the storage systems you need for wind and Earth-based solar, and the fact that tidal and geothermal are cost-effective in only a few particularly favorable places, and the limits imposed on fission by uranium supply. And the fact that most of the world's uranium is found in politically unpalatable countries, like Australia :-) Well, you do have to dig Down Under the ground to find it! |
#78
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Oh, and don't forget the costs of the storage systems you need for wind and Earth-based solar, and the fact that tidal and geothermal are cost-effective in only a few particularly favorable places, and the limits imposed on fission by uranium supply. Oil isn't exactly available everywhere either. |
#79
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Of course, any attempt to obtain serious amounts of power from space will
utterly dwarf today's space programs, so assuming that its costs will be similar is ridiculous. Absolutely. But, even if we are talking about Manhattan Project sized efforts (which is really the crux of space cornucopia proposals) I'm can't find any data supporting the preeminence of solar power. Oh, and don't forget the costs of the storage systems you need for wind and Earth-based solar, and the fact that tidal and geothermal are cost-effective in only a few particularly favorable places, and the limits imposed on fission by uranium supply. Isn't the problem of supply obviated by using breeder reactors? And what about the kilotons of U238 in storage? |
#80
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...Lesson for Nasa! US Airmail and Aviation
Fission is also massively expensive and a typical
reactor can take 15 or 20 years to be built. Bureaucracy. And a dramatic increase in fission will require a solution to the nuclear waste issue that has yet to be solved. It is solved. We are talking about few thousands cubic meters. But I suppose we can turn Nasa into a great big Waste Management company, and have them blast the nuclear waste into the sun~ No comment. Besides, I'm not talking about the foreseeable future. I'm talking about the future. Ultimately, say a century or two down the road, where will our energy come from? Solar power is the obvious conclusion. I think it's rather pointless to do anything other than speculate about next century power sources. If you look up the energy situation during the early 1900s it becomes pretty obvious. Even so, IMHO in 100 years fusion will form the mainstay of power generation. The future should define the present. I always thought that it was the other way around. Consider this: -current energy consumption is approx. 450 Quadrillion BTU (4.5 x 10^17) = 1.31882 x 10^17 Wh = approx. 15x10^12Wh installed power. -current Si solar pannel weight is around 50W / Kg (GaAs pyramidal 150W / kg - probably too expensive). -projected growth of energy consumption at aprox. 10% per decade. Asuming same consumption, total installation (that's trusses and antenae included) efficiency at 100W / Kg !!! a launch cost of $250 /Kg to GEO and transmission efficiency of 80% (we are talking 'bout the future heah), you would need ... mmm ... quiet a lot of dinero to replace ALL current sources. Now, how big a slice of the energy pie you want to cover with solar CLEAN, WONDERFUL power ? |
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