Catch up on stories from the past week (and beyond) at the Slashdot story archive

 



Forgot your password?
typodupeerror
×

Comment DÃf©jÃf vu (Score 1) 275

Sending them to space is totally not a viable means to compensate for population growth on Earth. The cost for each person is so astronomically high we couldn't afford to send more than a handful of people. The way to get population under control on any planet is to get people to have less kids.

And for the same reason, the only viable way to grow a population on a colony past a bare minimum is to get them to have more kids.

Comment Re:Hydrogen has more potential to be economic (Score 1) 659

You're unlikely to approach 50% efficiency in converting water to hydrogen onboard a car which is done by USING ELECTRICITY. Which would then have to pass through your 50% (real world) efficient fuel cell to turn back into electricity to drive the electric motors that fuel cells drive.

Battery recharge efficiencies are near 90%. Even in a fuel cell car it would be stupid not to use them to store regenerate breaking power.

Comment Stock Options. (Score 1) 712

The "salary of $1 a year" is pure B.S. for all the CEOs who employ it. They get compensated in stock options worth millions. They get bonuses worth millions. They get jet planes and other perks given to them by the company. As an added benefit and tax dodge, they only have to pay lower capital gains tax rates on the stock options rather than what they would pay if it was a salary. That's why the real figure that should be reported is TOTAL compensation, not salary.

http://management.fortune.cnn....

Comment Re:A scam for the gullible (Score 2) 216

Agreed. And if they do send people those people will almost certainly starve or suffocate.

Biosphere 2 is our best attempt at creating a self-supporting closed environmental system. At 3.14 acres stocked with complex (and sensitive) vegetation, air and water supplies and support machinery weighing an untold amount of gigatons costing $200-300 million with relatively cheap Earth-based construction techniques and labor - not to mention Earth solar insulation for power and vegetation growth unlike what will be available at Mars, it couldn't produce enough food or oxygen for a mere 7-8 people.

There is no way at anything near current or foreseen launch prices that anything like that could be duplicated on Mars, let alone exceeded.

Slashdot Top Deals

Our business in life is not to succeed but to continue to fail in high spirits. -- Robert Louis Stevenson

Working...