Green Baron

I respect my neighbours ground, i respect other's achievements, i respect the law (don't laugh, mostly) without any deep feelings. I respect it if a group claims a place to be worth protecting because of historical or cultural reasons. Would a certain group be content if some great(TM) American sunk warship abroad, declared a cultural heritage because graveyard, be removed to make room for a harbour wall ? It'll at least start a controversy me thinks. Respect doesn't have to be earned, for most people it is a basic function of everyday life. Just some don't care ... Pictures of the Cerro Armazones where the E-ELT is being built show how deep the intrusion of such a project really is. The mountain top is gone. Now Mauna Kea is bigger than that and the TMT smaller, but still, if there was a "holy place" or something near the construction site it will be removed. In the case of the TMT i have already stated my opinion. I cannot say how much bare monetary interest and how much really cultural concerns were involved. There was a plan B for the TMT so apparently cultural concerns were not the only decision basis. Research funds, scientists moving in, construction companies, economic development etc. pp. had to be considered and in the end won.

No, i cannot:-) If is not as clear. A fully developed asymmetric flight ready device would be improbable but not impossible. And again, given the time scales animals could evolve from land adaption to fins and water life adaption. An index or toe can be gained and lost in 2 generations, a tail as well. The skin and its cover is highly variable, for obvious functional reasons as well as for example display. Losing and gaining happens every day. Look at how feathers are assumed to have evolved from scales. I don't find reasonable links, i think a natural history museum might be a good place :-) Different forms of feather-like long hollow filaments (for convenience all called feathers ;-)) apparently have indeed developed several times out of a scaly skin in different, even distant branches of the lizard's world. The step from a scale to a feather sounds difficult, but if you take a closer look at how a scale can get long and hollow then it is not as improbable any more. Little birds are an example of how that might have looked like, they have both traits, scaly feet and filaments. A grown up bird has different forms of feathers, from huge flight feathers to fuzzy down. That's the highly improbable part, similarities show up in Archaeopterix, when the big lizards were mostly gone or about to take their leave. But for the feather-feature in different branches of dinosaurs and ornithischians, really, no problem here ... :-) That is why some people think that all of the lizards might have had "feathers", which is (most probably) not the case, until today only relatively few have been described. Edit: (i took out the Melanosome hint i wrote before but you can still use it for a search) Very often and sadly in Wikipedia as well one reads of "reasons" for an evolutionary development meaning something serves for an outcome, has a purpose. This notion is misleading, to say the least, and gets us close to religion. Evolution has no "reason". A feather wasn't meant for flight in the first place.

Not necessarily. Feather-like things where found in another sideline of the theropods, not at the Tyrannosauridae (i may have missed something). Keep in mind, we're looking at 100-200 millions of years and a broad range of specimen, ordered by certain bone indices that may or may not mirror kinship, as far as one can speak of kinship over these timescales and geographic spaces. Many traits might have been lost, newly invented or activated over and over again. Flight was invented, animals went into the water (Ichtyosaurs) and out again. All examples we have of T. rex have a skin with horn, like that of a turtle, there is no sign of feathers or like filaments.

Actually, those animals without a spine are far more interesting to a palaeontologist than any vertebrate. They are far more abundant and often used as specimen for relative chronology and in some cases indicators for environmental conditions. They were in fact so abundant that some of built really thick sediment layers, like 100s of meters. Jurassic is good example, as its three main phases are classified by spineless beings. So, i once was radically questioned about the development of the Ammonites of the Swabian upper Jurassic. A classic subject. The tutor that took the exam was really sadistic and so i had to show up a second time, this time with the professor as the inspector and he was much more willing to let a student pass. Long live the lobe ! Imagine scintillating colours, like the inner of a nice mussel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ammonoidea#/media/File:Haeckel_Ammonitida.jpg Over the doorstep of the Universities museum hung (and probably still hangs) an humongous Ammonite of 1,5m diameter (or so ....). :-)

Nonsense. Really, dear colleague, take a look at the map and the prevailing weather patterns and don't simplify things so much. Experimental archaeology has proven so, though detail questions remain open simply because the art of shipbuilding wasn't traded freely among Polynesians and the ones that where asked last century didn't recall everything too well ;-) The Polynesian islands are farther apart than the Atlantic is wide. Neither the Pacific nor the Atlantic are "homogeneous" Oceans, an Atlantic crossing in December/January from East to West at 20°N a piece of cake, that's why little girls with GPS and automatic steering can do it in an 8m boat. And several hundred holiday yachts participate in several rallies every year. The way back farther north in autumn spring is more difficult because west wind, cyclones (rain, wind, nothing for the catamaran crews ;-)). Vut that only means that less go east than west. There are cheap boats in the Caribbean for sale ;-) Of course the navigators knew their weather patterns and when to go where, it doesn't take too much, just a little tradition, to realize. There is no doubt that flexible Polynesian outrigger boats were seaworthy to a degree that they could travel over thousands of miles and did so for several centuries, claiming that they couldn't is simply ignoring reality. Their boats could easily "survive" thousands of miles in the pacific and where out for months, so i cannot understand why you claim that they couldn't.

I think the assumption that there exists an equlibrium for an earth like atmosphere on the moon is wrong or is reached when the atmosphere is gone, but i have no data to support that except that even the Mars with a weak magnetic field and higher gravity and volcanism couldn't hold one and even the earth looses a very small part of it's blanket. And i realize that many others in similar discussions share these thoughts, but that's of course no argument ;-) An eq. would mean that different forces' and processes' effects cancel each other out, but once the atmopshere has magically appeared on the moon there is only the way into space, supported by: the sun's spectrum coming in, lack of a magnetic field, high differences between day and night, the lack of a stabilizing biosphere (that btw. is part of the absorption on earth in "good times" and may set the energy free again in "bad times", but that leads far away). ionization and carry-away by solar winds / particles the lack of inversion layers (the differences between day&night would "burn" any away every morning) Otoh there are no processes to renew lost atmosphere, like volcanism, carbon cycle, etc., buffering in oceans, biosphere, blabla :-) So, simply put and without discussing how much stays here or there: Energy comes in. It heats. Some of the heated gases escape. No new ones are generated. No eq. until most of the gases are elsewhere. The basic question is how long does it take until the atmosphere is reduced to a negligible amount. And there we can part our little group in the "shorties" and the "longies". I am a shorty :-)

I couldn't find a spectrum of moonlight, sure the must be one somewhere, and if it's only of the sodium "atmosphere". The moon emits IR because there is no atmosphere. Earths atmosphere actually absorbs much of the infrared radiation and so warms up (a bit). Also the moon reflects shorter wavelengths of the sun's spectrum better than longer ones one should think, so infrared emission is rather less. Also i can't imagine that overall the moon emits less than it receives :-) I don't think it is wildly off to assume that most of the incoming energy is converted into heat and / or absorbed by an atmosphere, thus helping it escape. There are no plants that convert sunlight, the energy has no other sink. Furthermore one should not underestimate the effect of a missing magnetosphere. Ionized particles from the upper atmosphere will quickly been blown away. That i don't understand. Putting lots of energy into an atmosphere does heat it. The atmosphere of the moon would not be an adiabatic system if there were no hefty inversion layers, an equilib. temp would be difficult to apply because there would not be a lasting equilibrium. It warms, partly ionizes in the hard radiation, it looses mass through mechanical escape and magnetic forces/particles, pressure sinks, that cools a bit but surely not enough to keep radiation from heating /ionizing enough particles to allow them to escape. The surface doesn't directly radiate IR to space; only if there is no atmosphere. It exchanges heat with the contacting lower atmosphere, which leads to high differences between space (~100K or so ?) and surface (400K in daylight). That's bubbling :-) But of course, i may be wrong. Edit: i always assume that the atmosphere in question resembles earth's. A Venus like CO2 soup behaves totally different, but that's not the point here, right ?

May i add to list :-) ? How much of the upper atmosphere is ionized ? How much of that is blown off by solar electromagnetism and particles ? Are there clouds, if so how do they affect albedo (insolation) ? How back-reflection to the ground (esacpe) ? What kind of windsystems will develop ? Lokal ? Regional ? Global ? How high do they reach ? What happens at the terminator line where there are extreme differences ? Are there inversion layers ? Do they form / dissolve in cycles, maybe daily ? .... Now add water. And a biosphere, cryosphere, hydrosphere, other fears ? :-)

Moon: little is reflected back by the ground, most incoming radiation heats the surface which gives roughly the same amount back to the atmosphere which starts to convect. Without an atmosphere you are right, it'll just escape into space. With atmosphere most of it heats the atmosphere before it escapes into space as @Snark pointed out. For earth: the process is not trivial. Depending on wavelength the atmosphere reflects or lets through. ~50% of the radiation reaches the ground, where it is either absorbed by foliage or plankton or converted into convection. Parts of the atmosphere act as greenhouse layers and don't let wavelengths pass back, an effect that acts as a thermostat on geological scales and keeps the temp. rough.y 30K above equilib. Also there are inversion layers that stop any convection or keep it from reaching spacey altitudes. Nevertheless a portion takes its leave. On the moon nearly all of the energy that reaches the ground could heat the ground layer, thus leading to heavy convection and boil-off. Rock is an extremely good insulator, the heat would not have time to crawl more than a few meters* (don't cite me ;-)) down before the overlying atmosphere had taken it away. *edit: we can make that centimeters me thinks.

I can say nothing little about drilling in solid ground, but I know from the EPICA ice core project (a friend of mine participated) that you need a crew around the clock. The borer may divert (very tedious), the pipe may get blocked (frozen, that means nothing comes through and boring stops, how boring), every now and then a new segment must be added. The latter means sloppy spoken that work stops, the top segment is drawn out and a new one screwed in. Very heavy stuff. Takes many months to bore down 3km and many erratic attempts to get the whole train in line again. But i doubt that this technology is suitable elsewhere(tm). Given the weight of the rig and all the tubes, that's a few hundred tons. They used caterpillars and sledges to get everything there in the summer months. Flexible wouldn't work either if there is nothing to keep it straight or it'll pop out of the ground a few meters away. You can bore sideways if you know exactly what you're in. But before that several crews must scout out the ground (seismics ?) and its contents. I mean on Mars ! All in all i fear that the answer is nope, such a thing has, as everything else i dare say, yet to be invented.

Done, sir. La Palma. No metal, no metallurgy until the Spaniards arrived and killed everyone who didn't submit to ... oops, politics. Or religion. Whatever.

It might be the other was round, that you know little about wooden shipbuilding ;-). Flexible Polynesian boats were indeed oceanworthy without metal. But things aren't as easy as you put them and i fear that's valid for your Mars colony as well wooden boat construction. Vikings crossed the Atlantic in highly flexible wooden boats without any metal. These were and are more performant than many modern sloops, just can't as close to the wind as a regatta boat. Phoenicians sailed the Atlantic down the African coast in wooden boats. I know from experience that the African coastal waters are nastier than the open ocean if there is wind and wave. Greek and Romans sailed the Med in wooden boats. Until the 19th century the world's waters were sailed by wooden boats. No iron nails before the invention of stainless steel, and even the latter corrodes if unprotected. (Best is indeed plastic). A wooden ship can lasts centuries, a metal one still has to prove so. In contrast to "you can't build without ...." you must say that wooden oceanworthy boats must avoid metal in parts that a are vital for the construction. Wooden boats have no metal nails, at least not at the hull and in no case below the waterline. That'll be foolish. This is because, if the metal is not protected against corrosion, it is gone fast. And such a protection wasn't possible to the Polynesians, neither the others above. So a wooden ship was built completely out of wood (below the waterline). Because of that, many repairs could as others have pointed out be carried out when anchoring in a bight on a remote shore. You can use bronze for example (and it is done), but the copper is higher in the chain than zinc, so after a few months you'll have a copper sponge if you don't protect the parts through sacrificial anodes. Electrolytical corrosion in saltwater, yaknow ;-) A bronze seacock and bronze fittings must be checked regularly and exchanged if they show signs of corrosion. Conclusion: things aren't as easy as they are put here, and rockets are even more complex than wooden boats (though have less "human factors" ;-) Keeping a crew together can be tempting ...). And SpaceX has already underestimated things and apparently keeps on doing so. But we'll see !

Sorry to disrupt. The house or domesticated cat is fully domesticated (breeding under human control). Can even be seen on skeletal traits on some races like shortened snout and shrunk skull cause brain shrinks with the loss of senses compared to the wild ancestors. Big computer isn't needed and brain costs energy, applied evolution so to say. There are quite a few wild cats in central and western Europe. They are hunted and often killed by poison, rarely by traffic. You don't get to see them, they hide and do not go to humans like a domesticated cat (animal) might. Other degenerative factors exist as well. "Mausi" has traits of a Siamese though he wasn't purebred race or sub-race, do i see that right ? Siamese have a lower lifespan than many other household cat races because of over breeding, thus loss of health. Btw.: i am a fool for a cat. I gave home to a little Siamese cat (a she) 2 years ago that lingered around the house for 2-3 months. They are very lively and absolutely human oriented. So, some cats do seek human presence, but these are house cats. The one i gave shelter even was sterilized, so it either fled or was abandoned. Sorry OP. Hope you get over it soon and maybe look for a new companion, maybe from an animal shelter or so ;-)

Flightgear flight simulator. Nicely done simulator ! Edit: and a well of information for flight dynamics and modelling, for planes, helicopters, lighter than air, and rockets !

Cute cat. Sorry for your loss. I assume you didn't have him from the beginning ? What happened to his tail ?

Hola, Hate ? No. IRL feathered dinosaurs are rare because feathers aren't preserved easily and 19th century preparation technique might have destroyed some traces, though i doubt it because in souther Germany they were able to prepare remains of food in the stomach as well as baby dinosaurs inside unlucky mother and Archaeopterix with full garment. So "feathers for dinos" is mostly an assumption based on indirect evidence. Ornithischians and Theropods seem to have invented a feather-esque feature (not a modern, profiled flight device yet), but these are not exactly the majority of all dinos.

Hmm. Ok. Dinosaurs are no birds, not even failed ones. Birds are these flight able animals with (asymmetric - profiled) feathers and a beak. First real birds are from late Cretaceous times. (One of) The current hypothesis (there were two others, now deprecated, but i let you do research) is that birds (Aves) stem from Theropods (see: Deinonychus). So, with some goodwill, you could say that a line of the dinosaurs has evolved into cute little birdies.

In addition to @James Kerman link: http://www.nar.org/high-power-rocketry-info/filing-for-faa-launch-authorization/filing-for-faa-waiver/ Copy and paste to search & find: 14 CFR 101.25 :-)

Sure ? It's ~220pc away. There are several other aspirant candidates for supernovae in the vicinity, one much closer, i just don't remember which one ... the age, you know, how is called, if one forgets everything :-)

One last word: i tried to follow Musk's presentation in Australia last Friday. I switched of after 3-4 minutes because the babble wasn't worth my limited bandwidth (am on satellite). Apparently some intended plans were told out after i switched off and that started the above discussion.

I don't know why and i only know that a company should not give up its cash cow or it'll go bankrupt if no other sources for money exist. Why did Musk say the FH will fly 2013 ? It won't fly 2017 apparently. Why did he say "you can fly" (to Mars) when he presented the ITS ? The ITS won't exist and nobody can fly nowhere right know, except with foreign aid to the ISS. There is nothing substantial in an announcement or in an announcement of an announcement. When dealing with visionaries one musk err must wait for facts. Facts. :-)

Yes, and that is why, if they succeed it will be 10-20 years later than 2024. You all may triumph over me if they show up with ready BFR to support astronauts for a Mars shot and return(!) before 2025. Edit: and the rocket isn't all it takes !

I don't think it is fraud. Just ... overenthusiastic. It is absolutely ok if a guy like Musk, Branson and the many other utter their dreams and ideas even if they are beyond current capabilities. One just shouldn't run after every guru who promises a new world. Wait until they show up with a realistic plan, best a technology demonstrator, and others jump the train to develop all that is necessary. Edit (once again): look, they have made that marvellous F9 rocket, so the basic capabilities are there. It is just that technology cannot be scaled indefinitely without sideeffects, in this case vibration, aerodynamics, and so on. Every material has its limits.

Anyway, the whole thing is repetitive and speculative so the lack of concentration is forgiven :-) *duckandcover* Edit: experience shows that if a complex project gets shifted forward too often then it'll never be finished. That may be because funds running out, technology not ready, risks incalculable or dwindling overall support. Or a combination thereof.

2024 ? Someone should have a suitable rocket by now and at least a vague idea of how to keep people alive on the trip there, a prolonged stay, and a trip back. That is how long all in all ? Anyone sees any of these things happen ? The vehicle is on (slightly under) the horizon since ... a long time, ever being postponed, lastly even principally questioned. The ITS, announced as a big thing, is scrubbed, the ITSy, development starts "in 5-6 months" :-)) How long does it take to develop a rocket with new technologies ? 10-20 years ? So, short version, ridiculous, long version, not going to happen. 2040-50. Musk ? Nasa ? China ? ... who knows :-) Edit: so now you know my opinion about all that has been said and written above and in the many similar discussions before.