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#91
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Matthias Warkus" wrote in message
... Certainly; only there is so much solar power coming through the atmosphere already that can be captured in pretty simple ways The primary problem is not atmospheric scattering. It's that the sun sets every night. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By all that you hold dear on this good Earth I bid you stand, Men of the West! Aragorn |
#92
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Pat Flannery schrieb:
For starters, the reason they are going to exist isn't to give people a really fun place to live, but make a buck. True, but consider that maybe after SPS construction is in the black, there might be a buck to be made providing Earthlings with a really fun place to live. Granted, that's predictated on two, perhaps three orders of magnitude reduction in costs (and I mean even over what you have with the initial SPS program), but mass production can work wonders. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By all that you hold dear on this good Earth I bid you stand, Men of the West! Aragorn |
#93
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
"Matthias Warkus" wrote in message
... Solar power is not the only clean renewable energy, but anyhow there is no reason why non-orbital solar power shouldn't work. In fact it already works just fine. It doesn't work to provide continuous base-load electric power. Don't bother to bring up storage methods. That's not solar, but solar plus something else. -- Regards, Mike Combs ---------------------------------------------------------------------- By all that you hold dear on this good Earth I bid you stand, Men of the West! Aragorn |
#94
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Pat Flannery wrote:
Erik Max Francis wrote: The timescale I get is about 50 hr, and that's assuming that the pressure stays constant, which it won't; it will drop. The math is over he http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis/higgins.html i want to see someone get near a 1 meter diameter hole with air getting sucked into it at sonic velocities. That page uses the same approximation in the approximation I used. When Soyuz 11 depressurized through a valve around 1/2 inch in diameter, the crew were incapacitated inside of ten seconds as the rapidly falling air pressure burst their eardrums, caused their blood to start to boil, and ruptured the alveoli of their lungs.. Your blood doesn't boil, and you don't sustain any serious tissue injury unless you hold your breath and/or clam your mouth and nose shut. Other than having your body swell to twice its natural volume, convulsions, and having your circulatory system shut down of course: http://www.sff.net/people/geoffrey.landis/vacuum.html The swelling returns to normal when normal pressure is resumed, as that page indicates. The point is, none of the things you described happen unless the victim is doing something incredibly stupid, and something presumably anybody in the circumstances would be trained not to do. -- Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis Bring me men / Bring me men to match my plains -- Lamya |
#95
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Tue, 02 Oct 2007 23:03:02 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote: Damien Valentine wrote: No, sir; the copy I just read, at any rate, specifically promotes colonies as bastions of individualism and freedom (although he specifically avoids describing details of colonial government), and also as a reservoir for Earth's population growth (which would at this point have to be 200,000 people shipped out to L5 _every day_). In my copy I'm reading about the fact that in a lot of ways, life on a habitat would be considerably less free than on Earth. Population would have to be strictly controlled, Why? Wealthy, highly-educated populations (i.e. any plausible group of space colonists) tend to breed at less than replacement rates, and half a million kilometers of vacuum tends to be a pretty effective barrier to immigration. The only "population control" mechanism I see any need for, is a public debate over how much to subsidize immigration and/or native babymaking. and any form of dissidence that could present a danger to the habitat stopped in its tracks. If I decide to secretly drill a hole in the ground here on Earth, its unlikely the whole population of Jamestown, ND will suffocate; that wouldn't be the case on a space habitat. Yes, actually, it would. The population of the space habitat would be in no particular danger of suffocation. What would happen is, sometime later that day a couple representatives of that population would knock on your door and say, "you're leaking air; can we come in and fix it?" On the outside chance that you said "No", it's an interesting question whether they would A: break down your door and fix the leak anyhow, B: lock your door from the outside and seal it up nice and airtight, or C: order supplimentary air shipments from a neighboring habitat and bill them to your account. Depends on the fine details of the habitat's legal, political, and economic set-up. But either way, the only one who'se in any danger of suffocation is you. And, really, not even you. Because you aren't going to secretly drill a hole in the wall, and none of your neighbors believes you are liable to secretly drill a hole in the wall. The security measures and legal restrictions that people actually put in place, tend to be based on the sorts of misbehavior that actually exist or that people believe are likely to actually exist, not silly thought-experiment examples of what could exist but doesn't and isn't expected to. This sounds like a perfect set-up for something a lot more like a fascist state than a libertarian paradise. If a bunch of fascists establish the space colony in question, sure. People, in the short term at least, are a lot more amenable to the idea of reshaping their environment to fit their desires than vice versa. Any space colony, habitat, whatever, is going to reflect the desires of the people who build it - in political and socioeconomic as well as physical structure. If it happens to be built by libertarians, then it will have a libertarian political and socioeconomic setup; nobody is going to be demanding any sort of fascist police state on account of they're afraid their fellow libertarian space colonists are going to secretly murder them in their sleep and they can't think of anything less than a fascist police state capable of stopping that. And, you know, I'm pretty sure that if it is ever put to the test, the libertarian space colonists will not in fact be murdered in their sleep by their fellow libertarian space colonists going around drilling holes in the walls or whatnot. -- *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, * *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" * *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition * *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute * * for success" * *661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition * |
#96
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Thu, 04 Oct 2007 22:54:06 -0500, Pat Flannery
wrote: Mike Combs wrote: How many editions was "High Frontier" printed in? Are you reading the same one as I am? He can't be talking about The High Frontier, or any other book where the author knows what he's talking about, as any such hole would still only mean a blow-down time of many days (or weeks). Nobody's going to kill a large population that way. A mad bomber might manage to blow out a window pane or two (if he could get at them). That's still a blow-down time measured in days; plenty of time to implement repairs, and no cause for immediate evacuation. It depends on the size of the habitat and the amount of air pressure it has in it; not all of O'Neill's habitat designs were the size of Babylon 5*. Island One's living area consists of a sphere of 460 meters diameter, and you blow a one meter diameter hole in the outside of that, and the air is going to vacate it in well under a day... I get a half-life of seventy-six hours for the habitat atmosphere, and as one can breath in half an atmosphere in a pinch, that leaves at least three days to plug the hole. trying to fix the hole has the problem of getting near the hole while trying to avoid being sucked into it So just stand about ten feet away, in the nice five-knot breeze, inflate a four-foot rubberized kevlar ballon from the emergency kit, and let it fly. After that, tear open the bag of styrofoam packing beads. Then go have a nice cold beer and sit down to plan more permanent repairs. (the noise near the hole should really be impressive also) Oh, No! Our home is DOOOOOOOMED!!! because the part that needs fixing is, like, really noisy and we forgot to buy earplugs. and the extreme discomfort caused to the populace as the air pressure drops. The extreme discomfort caused by air pressure dropping at roughly half the rate experienced by a ground sloth climbing a staircase. In the case of that 480 meter one at surface air pressure, you had better hope you can get that repair crew to the hole inside of a minute or two, as that's about all the time you are going to have before things start getting very uncomfortable. So no, the logic is neither straightforward nor ironclad that "living beyond the Earth" = "certain fascism". I'm just not keen on living in a giant tin can, fascism or not. Obviously. Which means your opinions are absolutely, completely, totally irrelevant to the decision of what sort of legal and/or security measures to put in place in such a habitat. Fortunately for all concerned, the people who *are* going to be doing that sort of thing, are for the most part actually capable of doing basic math. -- *John Schilling * "Anything worth doing, * *Member:AIAA,NRA,ACLU,SAS,LP * is worth doing for money" * *Chief Scientist & General Partner * -13th Rule of Acquisition * *White Elephant Research, LLC * "There is no substitute * * for success" * *661-718-0955 or 661-275-6795 * -58th Rule of Acquisition * |
#97
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
John Schilling wrote:
I get a half-life of seventy-six hours for the habitat atmosphere, and as one can breath in half an atmosphere in a pinch, that leaves at least three days to plug the hole. Hmm, I get about 31 hr = 1.3 d for the half-life (taking into account a proportional drop in pressure as the vessel drains, and assuming that it's adiabatic). But that doesn't really change your larger point. -- Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis Victory is a very dangerous opportunity. -- Gen. Andre Beaufre |
#98
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:58:08 -0700, Erik Max Francis
wrote: John Schilling wrote: I get a half-life of seventy-six hours for the habitat atmosphere, and as one can breath in half an atmosphere in a pinch, that leaves at least three days to plug the hole. Hmm, I get about 31 hr = 1.3 d for the half-life (taking into account a proportional drop in pressure as the vessel drains, and assuming that it's adiabatic). Let me guess: you were assuming the hole had a cross-sectional area of one square meter instead of a diameter of one meter, and that air flowed through the hole at the density and speed of sound of air at rest in the habitat interior. The air *does* flow through the hole at the speed of sound, but by the time it gets to the hole it has expanded and cooled, so you aren't losing air as fast as you think. If you want to skip the fluid mechanics, just tack a factor of one-half on the "area of hole times density of air times speed of sound" BOTE calculation. But that doesn't really change your larger point. Right. |
#99
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
John Schilling wrote:
On Fri, 05 Oct 2007 16:58:08 -0700, Erik Max Francis wrote: Hmm, I get about 31 hr = 1.3 d for the half-life (taking into account a proportional drop in pressure as the vessel drains, and assuming that it's adiabatic). Let me guess: you were assuming the hole had a cross-sectional area of one square meter instead of a diameter of one meter, Nope. and that air flowed through the hole at the density and speed of sound of air at rest in the habitat interior. Yep, since it was a back-of-the-envelope calculation. The air *does* flow through the hole at the speed of sound, but by the time it gets to the hole it has expanded and cooled, so you aren't losing air as fast as you think. If you want to skip the fluid mechanics, just tack a factor of one-half on the "area of hole times density of air times speed of sound" BOTE calculation. So what's the full calculation, then? -- Erik Max Francis && && http://www.alcyone.com/max/ San Jose, CA, USA && 37 20 N 121 53 W && AIM, Y!M erikmaxfrancis The conviction of wisdom is the plague of man. -- Montaigne |
#100
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Questions about "The High Frontier"
Mike Combs schrieb:
"Matthias Warkus" wrote in message ... Solar power is not the only clean renewable energy, but anyhow there is no reason why non-orbital solar power shouldn't work. In fact it already works just fine. It doesn't work to provide continuous base-load electric power. Don't bother to bring up storage methods. That's not solar, but solar plus something else. Uh, yes. All forms of power generation need a distribution grid and buffer storage of some kind. Your point being? mawa -- http://www.prellblog.de |
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