shynung

2/3 of the Earth's surface is water. A lot of that water is concentrated in several large areas, the biggest being the Pacific and Atlantic oceans. There are currently no practical solutions to put solar panels on them without it drifting off elsewhere uncontrollably, possibly smacking into ships that frequent these areas. To completely rely on the Sun, and the Sun alone, as a power source, we need large-scale installations, one of the less-costly of it being solar power satellite constellations (even then, plenty of engineering solutions need to be invented to make it work, and would cost dearly to anyone attempting to construct it). The current political climate, unfortunately, does not support such a project.

That's still a stored-energy solution. Given enough rainy days, the molten salt could still run out of heat. This problem can be avoided by proper placement, but not every country or continent have an area where the sun constantly shines (the regions near the poles, for instance). Again, we'd still need base load generators. Or, at the very least, backup generators, ideally one that can be powered up or down in only a moment.

Not necessarily. A small number of large, well maintained power plants is usually more efficient than dozens of smaller ones, for the same energy source (there are exceptions). Not only that, having more power plants means more machinery to repair, and it would strain the logistics. Of course, having only one power plant across the entire nation is like putting all one's eggs in one basket. There's a sweet spot between not enough power plants and too much power plants.

The Ascension had two small red arrows pointing to a couple panels just above the cockpit. What is that?

The exhaust gas molecules will either escape from the Earth's local system and venture out into space, or it will smack into something (moons and satellites, but the effects are manageable at that point) before it can do so. Either way, rocket engineers usually doesn't really care where the exhaust gas ended up. Except when said spacecraft is still on the booster, launching from Earth; at that point, they have to make sure whatever the rocket is spewing out the nozzle doesn't wreck the immediate environment.

For some unforeseen reasons, I have failed to notice this very important effect. Thanks for pointing it out. Seems like people would object to have their cars used as the public energy storage system. They have somewhere to go, after all.

Keep in mind that the 2000 kg the car is supposed to carry includes the weight of the car itself. That means about 700 kg payload capacity(assuming gross empty weight of 1300 kg), which is reasonable for a small family car. Larger ones such as SUVs and pickups can carry up to 4 tons (including their own weight). Again, it's mostly a cultural problem. People prefer to drive their own cars rather than public transport, and generally do not prefer alternative vehicles such as bicycles or motorcycles, for various reasons.

From the perspective of a typical everyday driver, an electric car is cheaper to use and maintain than a comparable combustion-engine car. There are less critical moving parts, and they are more efficient from an energy perspective. Their only limit, currently, is their battery capacity, which is expected to increase in several years. But I digress. Let's talk more about alternative energy sources and less about electric cars.

As said before over and over again: Renewable energies like wind farms and solar panels require a massive energy storage capacity. With enough bad luck weather-wise, even the highest-capacity energy storage plant will eventually run out. Modern nuclear reactors, on the other hand, does not go off Chernobyl-style when they fail, exemplified by Fukushima being mostly intact after being hit by an earthquake and a tsunami, despite being an older design. Electric cars are a great idea for the masses, as they are more cheaper to use and maintain. However, this only solves half the problem; the reason a 1300 kg car is usually used to carry 80 kg is because they usually drive alone, which is widespread in developed countries.(Also worth mentioning is that said cars usually spends most of its time being parked.) It's mainly a problem of culture; the 1300 kg car is usually designed to carry 2000 kg or more (people use their car to carry their things around as well). My recommended interim solution? Use a bicycle, motorbike, or public transport.

This elegantly implies that the initial velocity of the ship, whether seen from a co-orbiting ship next to it or from a planet it is orbiting (or practically anywhere else), is irrelevant to the expected effects of the AD. As long as the surroundings are clear, all the ship has to do when it wants to 'warp' is to fire the AD, and it will see itself being moved to whatever it is pointing at.

It was a static engine test, designed to analyze the performance of a specific propellant combination. Mass fraction is irrelevant. Though, an actual rocket burning these propellants do need some mechanism to keep them liquid; gaseous hydrogen leaks off the tank it's put in, no matter what it is made of.

The experimenters used gaseous hydrogen in the experiment, presumably to save themselves the trouble of handling them in concert to liquid lithium and fluorine.

From John D. Clark's book Ignition! An Informal History of Liquid Rocket Propellants: Why are these kinds of beasts were never developed today?

Also worth mentioning is the fact that most of the spent fuel can still be reprocessed into fissile fuel. The remaining fission products are small enough in quantity to be considered negligible.

Compared to whatever environmental damages and climate-changing effects such a volcano might let loose, yes.

Because if Yellowstone erupts, it will turn itself inside out and end up like Lake Toba in Sumatra, Indonesia. Not only would the damage and the death toll involved be enormous, it would completely and irrepairably demolish any thermal power plant sitting on top of it. Granted, I might have overestimated the probability of Yellowstone ever erupting in our lifetime, but these will do for a start.

Depends on the actual vehicle in question. If it's just a space probe the size of a military spy satellite (they were bigger for containing their acute sensors and cameras, for obvious reasons), a typical Delta/Titan/Proton rocket could loft it merrily. The problem comes when it's manned, or carry things like landers. This is if the AD was to go superluminal (FTL). If it were to go sub-light, it might be able send radio signals through the bubble sections where the warping effect is at its minimum. How much of the signal remains intelligible, however, is a different story entirely.

One could launch such a spacecraft from Earth in one piece, as long as it is small enough. The limits would be on how small the Alcubierre drive could be downscaled, and whether there are launch vehicles able to launch the resulting contraption. Once the van Allen belt and GEO ring is cleared, firing the AD itself shouldn't be much of a problem, other than finding out how to steer the thing from outside the warp bubble.

There's a lot to be said about what happens if said two-wheeler fell on these things. Asphalt doesn't smash into sharp pieces when a motorcycle fell on it (then again, strong glass might not as well), so I'd be really nervous if I ever have to ride on these glass-panel of roads, regardless of whether snow/water/oil was on top of it.

So a spacecraft would still need standard reactive engines such as rockets, and do all the necessary transfer maneuvers (either Hohmann or Brachistochrone, depending on delta-v budget) to go from A to B.

Seems like the LM descent engines didn't use bladder tanks. Was it not available back then?

Looks interesting. DL'ing immediately.

You could make a similar system for non-hypergols, but these need an external igniter. Simply opening the valve wouldn't fire the engine; usually, a small amount of hypergol is injected into the chamber along with the first few drops of fuel-oxidizer mix to ignite it. Problem is, bladders are not easily scalable, so there is an upper limit to the biggest pressure-bladder tanks that can be built. Though, there are non-hypergol engines designed to run off pressurized tankage systems, usually used as upper stages. One example would be SpaceX's Kestrel engine. Non-hypergolic non-cryogenic fuel/oxidizer mixes are rare. Most use LOX because of its proven performance. There are a few rockets using N2O (which are non-cryogenic, and non-hypergolic) as oxidizer, mostly for amateur use for their non-toxic properties.

Turning Reaction Engines' LAPCAT A2 supersonic airliner into a cargo version with a Shuttle-style cargo bay doors would be one solution.

There's a few problems with using XeO4 as rocket fuel. First, as you mentioned, it is in powder form in the storage temperature (-35.9 oC), rather than liquid. Powders are harder to move around using pipes and pumps; a complicated mechanism is needed, which reduces the thruster system's effective TWR. Second, rocket propellants are supposed to burn consistently, not explode (excluding pulsed-propulsion systems). I have no knowledge about its decomposition reaction properties, but if XeO4 cannot be made to burn steadily on its own (including the use of additives), I see no obvious advantage to use it as rocket propellant.