> Concorde's engines WERE turbofans

They were pure turbojets. Zero bypass. You are wrong.

> the most efficient jet engines of their time in fact.

Not even remotely close.

You are, of course, referring to the overall thermal efficiency, which was indeed quite high. This is a wonderful measure of fitness for a *heat engine*, but exactly useless for measuring the fitness of a *jet engine*, which has to use that heat to accelerate air to provide thrust. *That* is called thrust specific fuel consumption, and the Olympus was poor even for its era - the TF39 (CF6) of the same era was twice as efficient:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thrust_specific_fuel_consumption

The Fallacy of the Excluded Middle to be exact. And it's right here: "and they're going to fly in and out of spaceports some distance from the destination city"

Why would that be true? The *entire article* hinges on that statement. Yet there's exactly zero explanation of why this would be so.

One might make the argument that a hypersonic would be larger than a subsonic. That's likely true, one might imagine it being twice as large. So a Cessna Citation would be the size of a G5, and a G5 would be the size of a C100. All of these operate from small to medium sized airports. Even if it's the size of a 737, it's still going to be able to land and pull up to the executive terminal at every major city on the planet.

End of argument. He's already waved away the security issues and price by defining the market to be bizjet customers, so there appears to be nothing left.

> Really, who paid for the developmental science of tang?

http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2011/01/tang-was-not-invented-for-the-space-program/

> Teflon?

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/molecule-of-the-month-teflon-the-nonstick-myth-that-stuck-did-you-think-that-your-hitech-frying-pan-was-a-spinoff-from-the-space-race-john-emsley-explains-that-the-truth-is-the-other-way-around-1414648.html

> Transistors

Bell Labs all the way, totally private. This is well recorded in any number of great books. You might want to try "Silicon Fire".

> , ic circuits?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Invention_of_the_integrated_circuit

> High frequency electronics? Plastics? Explosives?

None had to do with NASA, so I'm not sure what point you're trying to make. But them again I'm not sure what any of the remainder of your poorly-spelled and almost unreadable rant is supposed to be saying.

> Part of the reason those shuttle launches were so expensive was that they carried a lot of science.

Nope, that's not factored into launch costs. The Shuttle required a complete tear-down, rebuild and re-assemble after every flight. This was astonishingly expensive. Airline travel would be just as expensive if it had drop-tanks or launch boosters and required re-assembly after every flight. This is why single-shot rockets continue to dominate launches, the cost of the equipment is rarely as much as the cost of putting it back together.

Especially that new exhaust system.

> If we ever get bulletproof failproof rocket launches

Well if you're just going to wave your fairy wand and create perfect rockets, why not just skip a step and wish the fuel into non-existence?

After all, it's much easier to build bulletproof failproof reactors and bulletproof failproof underground storage, but we don't have those either.

Also, $10,000 a kg does really bad things to your OPEX.

> Of course, much of that delay you mention is the endless lawsuits by the anti-nukes and NIMBY types.

No it's not, the vast majority is due to the long lead times providing ample time for "something to go wrong" and the project goes into hiatus.

Why? Because if the time-to-build crosses an election boundary, the cancellation probability goes non-linear. Not so much a problem where there are no real elections to speak of, like the Philippines during Marcos, but a serious problem for places that do have free elections, like the Philippines after Marcos.

If they took 18 months to built, like a wind farm, we wouldn't have partially completed plants all over the place.

> solving the problem is NOT what most environmentalists really want.

And as long as you keep blaming them for the problem, then the actual problem will never get solved.

> Note: I'm not asking the impossible, climate change luminaries like James Hansen have called for nuclear power to be used

Not impossible, just expensive. As the CAPEX is generally three to four times that of wind, and the lead times are four to five times as long, no one is giving them the money. That's it, end of story. Start here:

http://www.lazard.com/PDF/Levelized%20Cost%20of%20Energy%20-%20Version%208.0.pdf

Now turn to page 11. On-shore wind was going in for $1.40 to 1.80/Wp in 2014, it's gone down since publication. Combined with a 30% CF, that gives you an effective CAPEX/Wh of $4.66 to 6. Lazard gives $5.39 to 8.40 for nuclear, although it's gone up since publication (current average is around $9/Wp). Combined with an 85% CF, that's $6.35 to $10/Wh. Which means, all else considered, wind power costs around half that of nuclear.

And that's why no one other than the Chinese, who are handing out billions of dollars of interest-free and risk-free money for infrastructure, is building them. And even their program is on serious hiatus. The money simply isn't there.

The *actual problem* with nuclear is that practically every other option is cheaper and lower risk. It is, straight up, a bad investment. So unless you have a few hundred billion sitting in your bank account to buy one, guess what, you're part of the problem.

"At the same time, sending a rocket into space, through the vast gulf that separates Earth's and Mars' orbit, and then firing thrusters in the opposite direction to slow down, requires a great deal of fuel."

The Hohmann Transfer is, mathematically provably, the *most efficient* way of travelling between any two orbits. It may require a "great deal of fuel", but that's still a great deal less than any other trajectory, which is precisely why we're willing to wait for the launch windows.

As to the rest, aerobraking and aerocapture is clearly more energy efficient. This article is like saying coal is better than wood for heating your home, while failing to mention gas.

Me too. It was certainly funny enough. It was one of the funnier movies I've seen in a while. Excellent pacing too.

Another childless, rich, white male plans to live(practically) forever - STOP THE PRESSES!

Dude, have a kid. It's cheaper, more reliable and far more fun.

> Greatest among them is to safeguard the species from any catestrophic impacts on Earth they would extinguish us

The majority of extinction threats are either man-made or multi-planet. GBRs don't care about the distance between Earth and Mars.

And why is this a "good thing" anyway? What's so special about us? We could set up an ant colony on Mars far more easily, there's forty trillion of them.

"It's certainly not true for places like where I live that are running 6.5-cents/kwh."

Does that include all distribution fees and taxes? Because if it doesn't then your parity rate is likely closer to 10 to 15 cents, which is about the current going rate for large scale PV. Residential it's higher until you remove the price of a roof job. Still not parity, but not far.

> "Ability fix things"

Yes, like...

> How do you source something that didn't happen

What's the link?

> Between 2010 and 2014, the cost-per-bit delivered over the Internet has fallen about 58
> If we assume that curve continues

We don't.

And even if you do, that's a five-fold decrease when bandwidth went up 15 to 20 times.

> Therefore, we can conclude

Stop using it then.