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Comment: Re:22 light years (Score 1) 288

by nharmon (#38914221) Attached to: New Exoplanet Is Best Yet Candidate For Supporting Life

Arbitrarily high accelerations are not needed. What is needed is sustained low acceleration. Sustained acceleration at about 1 G, accelerating toward the target for half of the trip, and away (braking) for the other half, will make a 22 LY trip take about 23 years (as seen from the departure/arrival points).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_travel_using_constant_acceleration

Comment: Re:Invisible hand of the free market (Score 4, Insightful) 435

by nharmon (#38513970) Attached to: Prospects Darken For Solar Energy Companies

Only if we allow it to. Right now it can not, because the prices are being manipulated by government subsidy. Not just the solar energy prices, but those of coal, nuclear, and wind as well.

It is a lesson we continually fail to learn: Industries built on government subsidy suffer when those subsidies begin to go away, even if the product itself is sound.

After all, all he did was string together a lot of old, well-known quotations. -- H.L. Mencken, on Shakespeare

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