shynung

Must have been because of the traffic. In Jakarta, if you came out at the wrong time of day, it takes [I]hours [/I]to get anywhere.

The reason rich people (or corporations) buy private jets is to avoid the long check-in and waiting time associated with scheduled airlines. Usually, we'd spent about 1-2 hours waiting in the terminals before we even get into the planes, but private jet owners can board their planes almost as soon as they arrived at the airport.

[quote name='Stargate525']Its certainly less economically expensive. All you need is mirrors and a water steam system.[/QUOTE] How about efficiency, in terms of energy generated per surface area, and per deployment cost?

Remember people, this forum has an 'ignore list' function. Use it when you need it. Also, a question. How does a solar thermal system compare to a photoelectric system? I'm talking about things like solar boilers coupled to steam turbines, or something similar.

That, and properly-disposed-of nuclear waste don't make malformed infants. Too much Fallout 4, I presume?

[quote name='Nothalogh']For an exotic oxidizer, I'd rather use Chlorine Trifluoride, at least it minds its own business when in properly passivated tanks and plumbing. As for a fuel to match, I'd assume something ultra high energy, and equally satanic, such as Tetraborane.[/QUOTE] J.D. Clark's book [I]Ignition [/I] have a section covering boranes, and concluded that they are not only impractical to use, but also performs poorly, in addition to leaving deposits of boron trioxide (B2O3, a solid anywhere below 1800 degrees C) on engine components.

Wouldn't it be exhaust velocity if expressed in m/s? Just sayin'.

So a warp drive alone won't enable time travel unless the ship carrying it has a really big dV capacity?

As far as I know, nuclear reactors always have their energy extracted by boiling water into steam, turning a turbine generator somewhere. Nuclear reactors generate heat, so is it possible to use it to directly apply the heat to an industrial process - say, seawater desalination, or a blast furnace?

It's just a docking port. Boeing can simply bolt a CBM-compatible onto the CRS-2 CST, can they?

What would a sublight Alcubierre drive good for? Interplanetary taxis?

So, something like Stratolaunch, except the carrier aircraft had SABREs on them? Seems like a neat idea. Also, suborbital-capable hybrid motor might be interesting for military projects. SABRE attack drones, anyone?

I don't think there's someone crazy enough to put something like REL's SABRE (or basically any rocket-jet hybrid motor) on a disposable stage. Stuff like precoolers aren't exactly cheap.

Bug report! EDIT: New Bug Report!

Why fluorine? It's cryogenic. Try chlorine trifluoride, it boils at much higher temperatures.

You mean whether veggie paste (or pretty much anything) placed on the skin does anything? Well, to be concise, the human skin is durable. Excepting the orifices (nose, mouth, eye socket, etc), it's also pretty much airtight. The pores on the skin are actually just small pits, and they don't go very far in either. I think beauty face masks do little to the skin other than making it smell better, or maybe cleaning it. I'm not an expert though, that's just my extrapolation.

How could the brakes on a car generate much higher acceleration than the engine, despite being much smaller and lighter?

Elon has this Tony-Stark-ish image about himself. The fact that he has his own space launch company exaggerated the image.

Yep. Starter slugs, as the Late John D. Clark put it.

That's because they know how reactive it is before they ever got a chance to put them into a propellant tank. There's been an accident involving a 1-ton spill of the stuff back in the 60s. It chewed through 30 cm of concrete and 90 cm of gravel underneath it.

If you have ClF3, anything can be used as rocket fuel. That thing burns sand. And concrete. And asbestos. And starts roaring reactions with water.

Dilute with what? If water, there goes your specific impulse; those heavy water molecules are a pain to throw around.

I shall keep one eye open on this.

We have one already. This is the V-22 Osprey, a military transport aircraft designed to have the cruising performance of a turboprop aircraft and the hovering capability of a helicopter.

I'm putting forward the idea of passive-reactive sensors. This is the kind of sensor that, rather than scanning the skies like a telescope or radar would, simply pops open and waits there. Rather than being made of one telescope or dish on a turret, this is made of hundreds of photocells (think cheap cellphone cameras) mounted on a spherical base in such a way that there is at least one or two photocells looking at any arbitrary direction, similar to an insect's compound eyes. While capable of passive object detection like a regular sensor, albeit limited in accuracy, its main purpose is to deliberately let it be shot at by anti-sensor lasers. This way, the sensors can acquire the hostile laser emitter's position, and feed the targeting data thus obtained to laser counter-battery systems elsewhere.