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Comment Re:If you pay... (Score 2) 15

Yes. I put in $100, and I am asking other people to put in money to sponsor these programs so that everyone, including people who did not put in any money at all, can see them for free. If you look at the 150+ videos, you can see that Gary's pretty good at this (and he brought a really professional-seeming cameraman to Hamvention, too) and the programs are interesting. Even if at least four of them feature yours truly :-) He filmed every one of the talks at the TAPR DCC last year (and has filmed for the past 5 years) and it costs him about $8000 to drive there from North Carolina to Austin, Texas; to bring his equipment and to keep it maintained, to stay in a motel, to run a multi-camera shoot for every talk in the conference, and to get some fair compensation for his time in editing (and he does a really good job at that).

Submission + - Open Hardware and Digital Communications conference on free video, if you help (kickstarter.com)

Bruce Perens writes: The TAPR Digital Communications Conference has been covered twice here and is a great meeting on leading-edge wireless technology, mostly done as Open Hardware and Open Source software. Free videos of the September 2014 presentations will be made available if you help via Kickstarter. For an idea of what's in them, see the Dayton Hamvention interviews covering Whitebox, our Open Hardware handheld software-defined radio transceiver, and Michael Ossman's HackRF, a programmable Open Hardware transceiver for wireless security exploration and other wireless research. Last year's TAPR DCC presentations are at the Ham Radio Now channel on Youtube.

Comment Should have been Ascension Island (Score 2) 151

While I was VP for Public Affairs at E'Prime Aerospace, we evaluated various sites for establishing a space port to launch our MX-derived rockets. It turned out that the presence of a military air strip at Ascension Island allowed a military jet transport large enough to deliver entire launch vehicles. Of course, the MX system was solid fueled so we didn't have to transport cryogenics long distances, but it would be feasible to set up a LOX facility on the island. There is a particular coastal cliff that is ideal for a launch pad.

Comment Re:Just wait till they start printing AVEs (Score 1) 118

Look up Carbocrete's properties. While its true it does require some sand, in addition to the CaCO3 and carbon fiber, it requires much less sand than ordinary concrete and no rocks. Moreover, sand is ubiquitous on the ocean floor. A refinement of the calculation would substitute sand dredging for some of the CaCO3 energy use as well as including the energy for the carbon fiber.

Comment Just wait till they start printing AVEs (Score 2) 118

The primary cost of building a tropical doldrum Atmospheric Vortex Engine is a huge hollow structure called the "arena" that contains the low pressure created by the vortex. The low pressure is relieved through compact, high speed turbines at the base of the arena. Since the turbines are compact they don't have to be costly and since they are high speed they don't have to be numerous.

What good is a tropical doldrum Atmospheric Vortex Engine?

It can generate its own building material from the ocean and atmosphere -- so if you can print them rapidly you can have rapid doubling time exponential growth in clean baseload electric production that within a decade dwarfs all energy use by civilization.

Oh, and it also provides tropical atoll seasteads sufficient to feed and house the total population of the world.

Seastead this.

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