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Comment Re:Higher G-Force Turns With No Meatbag In Cockpit (Score 1) 21

Warfare more likely, yes.

Warfare that escapes well defined theaters of operation, no.

I suspect eventually, every country will give up a small amount of border land for total anti-invasion defense, and the only countries that will start wars are the ones too stupid to understand that they can't invade their neighbors anymore.

Comment Re:Yay to the abolition of lithium slavery! (Score 1) 133

The argument is stupid to begin with, just because there are battery power transportation devices with lead acid batteries doesn't make their weight something you can ignore in most cases. I'd hardly call golf carts an all the time example of lead acid battery use.

I didn't expect an argument, actually-- "LOL" was more the reply I'd have thought appropriate.

Comment Re:What is anyone going to do? (Score 4, Insightful) 71

Historically, I don't think assassination has ever led to an improvement in government.

In general, I think it leads to a new leader who's just as bad, but more paranoid.

I'm sure the next dictator would welcome that opportunity to die of old age.

There was a period in the Roman empire when emperors lasted about eighteen months or so before being assassinated. There was a story that one prominent Roman had his name suggested as a good choice for emperor, and his response was "I'm not yet so tired of living."

Comment Re:Didn't Reagan Put Nukes In Space? (Score 4, Informative) 71

Under the Star Wars program?

No.

The Strategic Defense Initiative ("Star Wars program") didn't actually deploy anything during the Reagan years, but it was very much non-nuclear.

Basically, tests during the '60s showed that nuclear explosions in space would be very damaging to pretty much everything in orbit, and the purpose of SDI was to knock out incoming warheads, not destroy everything in space.

Comment Re:Yay to the abolition of lithium slavery! (Score 1) 133

And it is so odd that we now have people going on as if Li-ion batteries are the pinnacle of battery technology. They aren't. If we really want energy density, Calcium-ion might be the way to go.

Excellent point.

Also, making an aluminum/air battery is nearly the holy-grail of high specific energy battery tech.

Comment Check your units [Re: Yay to the abolition of ...] (Score 1) 133

The problem is that nobody is going to drive such a death trap. Sodium releases 30x the energy as Lithium when it burns.

No it doesn't; less. Check your data. 416 kJ/mol for burning sodium, compared to 596 kJ/mol for lithium.

If it did have more energy, of course, it would be vastly better than lithium on a battery energy per unit weight basis. Unfortunately, it's not.

Sodium does ignite more easily, but that's cancelled out by the fact that really it's the electrolyte that's burning, and the electrolytes used for sodium batteries are harder to ignite.

Comment Re:Yay to the abolition of lithium slavery! (Score 1) 133

Australia is the largest lithium producer. And they don't do slavery there.

Accurate. Chile is number two.

However, China is number one in refining lithium from ore (or salt) into usable lithium or lithium carbonate.

On a slightly related note, not sure what makes you assume workers won’t be exploited mining even something as plentiful as sodium. Not like you’re going to get the new American soft man to do manual labor, so that leaves the work to underpaid immigrants who know they’re in country illegally.

Sodium is most easily sourced from salt, so there's no hard rock mining. In any case, salt production is already an order of magnitude higher than lithium production, so diverting a few percent to batteries isn't going to require more mining,

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