Comment Bad choice of words (Score 1, Funny) 489
"Early termination" fee?
Lol.
"Early termination" fee?
Lol.
It seems to me most of the of the people who complain about the "science gap" are those who aren't actually working in the field...
Isn't that how it should be? Why would the haves complain? It's always the have-nots who have to complain about any inequality, not the people who are sitting in their Porsches and expensive mansions.
The topic is people aren't finding enough science jobs. OMG, there are some people out there *with* science jobs who aren't complaining! I never would have thought!
That's a "let them eat cake" reply if I ever saw one.
I'm a little skeptical of this claim.
Can you elaborate on how the heat generated by the large asteroid (at ground level on impact) somehow ends up radiating off into space, yet the same heat generated higher up in the sky when the bits burn up in re-entry (closer to space) somehow doesn't end up radiating off into space?
As I see it, breaking up an asteroid allows us to convert the kinetic energy to heat higher up in the sky (and closer to space) than a ground level impact would be.
Do you have some links I could read up on?
"life in jail" means 12 years. We're not USA, and we're happy to not be as strict on crime.
Speak for yourself. My parent's murderer got away with 12 years and that's a woefully insufficient penalty for ruining the life of two children forever.
It's not about laziness. If it was about laziness, I'd jump on the new tech because it saves me the "arduous" step of *plugging in* (gasp). Instead I'm planning on staying with the far more demanding step of actually plugging in.
It's about forgetfulness. As I grow older and more senile, I plain and simple don't *remember* to put my devices at their designated charging locations every single night. If there was a tech that charged my devices no matter where I left them inside the confines of my house, that would something that would produce a useful value add for me.
Eliminating the plugging in phase does not produce a useful value add because I'm not so lazy that plugging in is some huge obstacle.
I don't really see the point. As long as you have to put the device in a specific location anyway, I don't see that it's much of an improvement over having to connect it with your charger. You have to connect it with a location just the same, with this new tech, just the plug is different (a pad vs a plug).
Wake me when you have a tech that charges my mobile from the moment I step in my home door and leave my mobile in my jacket pocket hanging in the foyer.
Until that use case can be satisfied, I think this is just the same-old, same-old.
Isn't that the shape of the Delta Flyer diving towards the camera?
A rocket engine is a pretty specialized piece of hardware, and without any major world wars going on, who's going to invest in advancing the technology for faster rockets? The airline industry is in dire straits as it is, it's not exactly going to be developing rocket jetliners anytime soon.
So I don't really see which of currently researched techs could make the rocket engine cheaper. I'd like to hear your thoughts on which of the technologies you mentioned (or any others) look likely to produce a better rocket engine?
We could simply defer manned space exploration until such time as it becomes less expensive
What makes you assume such time will come without investing in it?
You're suggesting just sitting on our asses and hoping some magical tech will just materialize that will make everything just teddy bears and rainbows.
It proved it could be done. That's pretty meaningful.
Without Apollo, we'd still in 2009 be wondering if putting a man on the moon was even possible.
Now we *know* it's possible, it's just a matter of money.
That's a pretty damn meaningful difference.
Note that a space station orbiting the Moon is also easier to reach from Earth than one in a LP.
Actually no, it's not. They both have the same delta-v requirement.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Delta-v_budget
From LEO to lunar orbit is 4.1 km/s.
From LEO to L4/5 is *also* 4.1 km/s.
I imagine it's actually cheaper to go to the L-point on the line between Earth and Moon but it's less interesting than 4-5 IMO.
Until someone can come up with that "something better" than ion/chemical rockets, this is the only road available to us.
Travel with us on it, or don't.
We fully understand how massive an operation manufacturing is. That's why we need to get started *now* so we can get something built someday.
We either do something with what we tangibly, actually have, or we sit down and dream about, "oh, we could do so much if only we had MacGuffin so-and-so".
However, propellants can be mined in space instead of exported from the very expensive Earth gravity well. Hence, a mining station. I know I said "smelting", but I didn't mean an exclusively metal processing yard. NEOs have volatiles too, and they can be mined and processed into fuel without needing to import volatiles from Earth. So, a station at L4 that mines both volatiles and metals, would be invaluable to space exploration.
Yeah, that's why we need to build bases at the LPs, so we can finally experiment and figure out if we can make artificial gravity work right to compensate for things like bone loss.
One of the possibilities for radiation shielding is picking an interesting NEO and burrowing inside it, letting its crust take care of the shielding. Or the moon. Either, really. A NEO would be easier to spin up for artificial gravity experiments, though.
I agree that flag-planting missions are pointless. Unless something permanent is built, one might as well not do it.
You are correct, though, when you say that an L4/NEO mining station would have bigger long-term delta-v costs than a moonbase mining station.
Always draw your curves, then plot your reading.
