Age 91.

If he were to tie with the oldest person ever (reliably) recorded he would have lived to 122 (in 2035) and still would have seen the B-52 flying in service.

Right you are. Could you imagine someone discussing military spending in the early 1940s and saying "but leave war spending aside"? For that matter, any of the other major post-WW-II conflicts: Korea, Vietnam?

A better example than the Bangalore torpedo would be the mine clearing line charge which is capable of clearing a full width fire break (20 feet) under many conditions.

While chain saws, and wrapping trees with C4 is effective, where feasible, there are many situations where it is not (inaccessible, imminent fire danger precludes it, it is already on fire).

And there is other interesting prior art showing effectiveness on suppressing wild fires.

And the idea that blast charges can't knock down trees in an area (if that is what you are implying) is simply incorrect. The famous BLU-82 "Daisy Cutter" certainly could. Now they wouldn't be dropped daisy cutters, but a system tailored for this application might be effective. Also note that standing dead trees and trees that have undergone a certain amount of pyrolysis are not going to be as resilient and healthy tree and be easier shatter.

All told, I think the dismissive skepticism I see on this thread to be unfounded.

Amen to that. If you have two sets of crimes ones committed by the fabulously wealthy (Wall Streeters, bankers - non one else is in the position to carry out such fraud) which do vast damage, and ones that are committed by ordinary citizens that do comparatively trivial amounts of damage, and that latter set are prosecuted far more vigorously, with much harsher punishments than the former, then we do not truly have a system of laws any longer, we have a system of (very rich) men.

One is reminded of this: "In its majestic equality, the law forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, beg in the streets and steal loaves of bread." - Anatole France

But the "very very specific situations" might actually be common problems that firefighters encounter. I can imagine several possibilities about how this general idea could be employed to good advantage.

Fuel structure is critical in determining the intensity of a fire. Consider burning forest or brush - the vertically held trunks and spread lateral limbs of the former, and the branched framework of the later, are perfect ways to hold fuel in place so that it can burn quickly and intensely. If you can blast the vegetation into pieces, now lying on the ground, the fire intensity will be dramatically reduced once burning resumes.

Or consider a helicopter dropping a line of charges in front of a rapidly advancing fire in rough terrain. Boom! An instant firebreak, where no man could get to, or do it in the available time, and without risking the lives of smoke jumpers.

And I bet situations are not rare where simply knocking the flames out temporarily, and thus shutting off the radiant heat, could enable firefighters to get control of situation which would otherwise be uncontrollable.

Thanks - I read TFA. Did you actually read my post? It does NOT prove this was the first time in human history this ever happened! Got the point now, AC?

How do we know it never happened before? It may be sporadic and simply escaped recording (which was quite hit or miss before modern times).

There are many showers that were reported for the first time in recent history with no record of prior observation (e.g. the Quadrantids, never noted before 1825). In fact we are currently in a period of frequent shower discovery (several new ones a year) since sky-imaging networks are now picking up many showers that are sparse, and thus eluded visual detection.

The summary should have said "we've never predicted a shower where none has been observed before", it remains to be seen whether this one materializes.

The lifetime of a shower is typically several thousand years, so they are periodically being created.

The way they put it, back in the day was: "Pot is dangerous to your health because it can cause your body to get thrown in jail."

Absolutely.

First off - it is not a given that "the work at hand" even needs to be done. The fact that corporations and other power brokers want these agreements does not mean that they are "needed" by citizens of the affected nations at large, or the world in general.

Second - the need to publicly defend proposals is a good thing, not a "distraction". Every stake-holder should have the ability to see and comment on the draft as it is developed. But only select government "representatives" and corporations are allowed to see them now. By far the largest group of stake-holders, the citizenry is shut out entirely. With public visibility bad proposals would be unlikely to even get on the table in the first place, which might even save time.

No there aren't. Not one.

The only one hoping to reach Q=1 (scientific breakeven) is the small Tokamak in the UK called JET which may reach this point this year (or next). But this is simply validating the ITER approach which as you know is a decade or more off, and won't produce any electricity. For a viable power plant we must have Q > 20, ITER will only achieve Q=5 is everything goes right.

The tritium breeding problem is much worse than this - it is the true Achilles heel of fusion energy research. We don't have good reason to think that the required fusion tritium breeding cycle is even feasible, and even if it is the cost in a Tokamak type system at least makes fusion permanently cost prohibitive even if all that high tech fusion equipment is free! See "Fusion Power: Will It Ever Come?" by William E. Parkins in Science 10 March 2006 (it is a paid site, so no link).

The fundamental feasibility problem is that the tritium fusion process produces no excess neutrons. Of course there will be tritium losses in separation and refining, and parasitic neutron capture in the fusion reactor structure, so it is not clear how enough net tritium production can be achieved to keep the reactor running, much less produce an excess for more reactors. How about a neutron multiplier to compensate for losses, and create an excess? Multipliers do exist, although the best one happens to be, ummm, fission - but no one has ever demonstrated that a design is possible that can achieve "breeding break-even". This is an engineering challenge on the same scale as the ITER reactor itself.

Quoting the analysis by Parkins:

If we assume an average heat transfer rate of 0.3 MW/m2, the vessel wall and blanket-shield each must have an area of 2000 m2. To absorb the 14 MeV neutrons and to shield against the radiation produced requires a blanket-shield thickness of 1.7 m of expensive materials. This is a volume of 3400 m3, which, at an average density of about 3 g/cm3, would weigh 10, 000 metric tons. A conservative cost would be $180/kg, for a total blanket-shield cost of $1.8 billion. This amounts to $1800/kWe of rated capacity—more than nuclear fission reactor plants cost today.

.

Further:

Scaling of the construction costs from the Bechtel estimates suggests a total plant cost on the order of $15 billion, or $15, 000/kWe of plant rating. At a plant factor of 0.8 and total annual charges of 17% against the capital investment, these capital charges alone would contribute 36 cents to the cost of generating each kilowatt hour. This is far outside the competitive price range.

Your post is inaccurate. The Naval Research Laboratory Plasma Physics Division is investigating magnetic confinement focus fusion, the very version referenced in TFA.

The Navy's cumulative funding over the last several years is about 50 times larger than this Kickstarter campaign target.

Not necessarily. We know of several associations of stars called "moving groups" (the Ursa Major/Big Dipper constellation is largely the core one such group) that have a common origin -- they have the same space velocity vector, and are the same age, and are still relatively close to together in space after hundreds of millions or even billions of years (the Zeta Herculis Moving Group appears to be the oldest known so far -- somewhat older than our own sun). The shared vector means that the stars in a cluster are not going to disperse very far, they will all orbit together in a (slowly growing) region of dispersion.

Source? According to Wikipedia Houston has a density of 3500 per square mile, almost three times the figure you assert. By the same source Japan has a population density of 860 per square mile, so a 4-1 ratio. This is lower than Taiwan, South Korea, Belgium, the Netherlands, India, Israel, and the (Associated Free State) of Puerto Rico, which - while well populated - are rarely referred to as being "cities".

Half the population of Japan lives in just 4 metropolitan areas, which are quite dense. So the average density outside of these four areas is only half that of the entire nation. One could argue that these 4 areas are Japan, but that is a different discussion.

Well, they tell us that there will be cake....