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todofwar

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Everything posted by todofwar

  1. todofwar
    Ok, this hurricane has taught me either Matthew gets auto corrected to Michael allot or people think Matthew sounds like Michael. Back to the storm itself, it also comes from a sense of toughness. People have the attitude "I survived [hurricane name] and that was stronger than this!" without realizing they didn't actually feel those strong winds at the time. I technically survived Andrew which was a cat 5, but I was well north of the eye and probably got close to cat 3 winds. And those still came within a hairs breadth of ripping the roof off. Down where it was a cat 5, it looked like a nuke went off.
  2. todofwar
    Are we talking about the surface or hypothetical sub ice oceans? In which case I would say equal, but I would need to look up the mass of Titan's atmosphere to know how much ice is required to match it.
  3. todofwar
    Ice is far better at shielding I would think, definitely better than any gas. Really shielding breaks down to a simple question of mass, and solids are denser hence better. Lead is so good because it's dense as hell.
  4. todofwar
    There is something eerie about watching the radar feed right now. Just seeing the outer bands and then eye emerge like a monster out of the fog. Can only imagine what it would be like if that was all we had to spot these things.
  5. todofwar
    My favorite example of that is the rise of autoimmune disease with the loss of nematode (small worms) infections. We seem to have evolved to deal with certain things, and those adaptations can be detrimental if not working on the desired targets. I think the idea of modifying the bacteria in our gut is a great idea, who knows how many vitamins can be rendered obsolete that way.
  6. todofwar
    I'm a native of Miami so well versed in watching hurricanes. I'm hoping it doesn't come back around, but the possibility is strong enough to be concerned about.
  7. todofwar
    Yup, Florida is finally due. And this thing is apparently going to do a loop de loop and slam south Florida after it trashes north florida.
  8. todofwar
    After reading all this I think the Pegasus was fine for what it wanted to be, but further development doesn't seem to pay off. Now, if they can get this thing cheap enough for more academic labs to access LEO or maybe even fly by the moon, I can see some use for it. Such lower funding labs would probably not need a falcon 9 and small rockets will benefit more from air launch. But then again the falcon 9 can launch multiple satellites at once and solve the smaller satellite launch issue. If someone can get a hypersonic air launch at 80,000 feet to work, that might be a different story.
  9. todofwar
    Yeah I know, but saying "we'll get to Mars and maybe back to the moon too" didn't flow as nicely
  10. todofwar
    Or from gmo bacteria (which is cheating in a way since people argue were not supposed to eat meat and turn around and rely on modern technology to get by without it) but for a Mars colony that's probably the most effective solution.
  11. todofwar
    I think you're confusing vegan with vegetarian. B12 isn't just in meat, plenty of animal products like eggs and milk have it too.
  12. todofwar
    So we got to the moon because of the pride of nations, and it looks like we'll get to Mars on the egos of billionaires. Interesting world we live in.
  13. todofwar
    Wow this thread took a weird detour. Anyway, I'll still argue for a vegetarian diet (tons of people are vegetarian, no cognitive dissonance required). It is the easiest to maintain, and so long as the correct crops are grown ( not just soy for protein) you can get a full compliment of nutrients. For those vitamins hard to get from plant sources just get gmo yeast and bacteria. Maybe bring some chickens and sheep to get milk and eggs, and some nice wool. Also, the Haber Bosch process to get fertilizer from nitrogen is not trivial to get going, so you'll absolutely want to be recycling nutrients. No one here is arguing organic farming techniques because they like them, this is arguing the most efficient small scale farming techniques that happen to sound organic. All that electrochemistry that got cited will be far more energy intensive than just maintaining a compost heap. This colony won't be the hilton, it's going to be close to a 1st century lifestyle. Lots of manual labor (robotics will be reserved for eva), not allot of luxuries like television or video games, medicine will not be up to the standards of a developed nation, not much privacy, all sophisticated tech devoted to life support not creature comforts. This isn't an argument against doing it, but it will be a tough existence and I don't think the colonists will mind the grasshoppers after a short while.
  14. todofwar
    This touches on an important often overlooked point (and the reason I still argue for Venus, but this isn't the thread for that): energy. We're going to need a staggering amount of solar cells on Mars to run the thing because there are no other energy sources essentially and solar is going to be not as good as earth. Energy to heat the hab (not actually to hard since the near vacuum provides excellent insulation), energy to grow things, energy to run all that electrolysis which is incredibly energy intensive (we don't make hydrogen that way on earth for a reason). One of the main things that will be needed is fields on fields of solar panels, which require tons of silicon. And they will need to be kept clean. So, likely Mars is going to need to go nuclear. Which means building a nuclear plant and keeping it safe. Also, requires the nuclear fuel.
  15. todofwar
    I still think the only argument that has made sense so far is the tilapia because it will be useful for helping the hydroponics out. You don't need that much meat, most Americans especially eat way more meat than they should. Ask any vegetarian about that. A vegan diet of potatoes, vegetables selected for their nutritional content, and supplemented by bacterial grown vitamins hard to get from plants will be the most efficient diet to maintain. Once the colony has been going for a decade or two, a livestock chamber can get set up. And I will argue for sheep to go in there, for the wool and milk benefit.
  16. todofwar
    Peta will have a field day, also that kind of tech is far in the future. By then we'll just be able to grow vats of meat of the beef, chicken, or pork variety. Pretty sure it won't taste all that great. And like was already mentioned, for most bang for your buck get used to eating bugs. Or gmo bacteria. PS that sounds almost exactly like a chicken/sea urchin hybrid they had in Oryx and Crake by Margaret Atwood, one of my all time favorite Sci fi books, heavily recommend. PPS fire is chemistry, if burning the sand is most efficient than by all means burn it. There is an enzyme that catalyzes the reaction ClO4- to Cl- and O2, so there is definitely a less fiery solution.
  17. todofwar
    My apologies if this has been talked about already but this thread moves fast. Looking at that BFR, just how much fuel will be needed to get it back to the launch pad? It will have to kill all forward momentum and then give itself enough momentum to go back to base. I always thought the first stage is supposed to provide almost as much dv in the horizontal as the vertical, so it either has to basically just get the second stage to altitude without providing much horizontal speed (blanking on the real term here) or it needs to reserve almost the same amount of fuel for the trip back as the trip up.
  18. todofwar
    Really it will probably be a vegetarian diet with a specially modified bacteria or yeast that will produce essential nutrients that are hard to get from plant sources.
  19. todofwar
    I would vote for sheep and pigs. Pigs are great at eating trash basically, and sheep also give you milk and wool products.
  20. todofwar
    Counter ion shouldn't be a problem, as far as I know. Instead of using methane, you can go direct from CO2 to CO, safe a step.
  21. todofwar
    I haven't had to deal with those kinds of dynamics in a while, but I think you may have a point. I'm sure someone has done all kinds of work on this in the 50s.
  22. todofwar
    I would think it could dissolve all of it. A 10% solution of HCl doesn't spontaneously out gas all the HCl when you open the bottle.
  23. todofwar
    Now that is a good question. The water will most certainly begin dissolving the acids as soon as it liquefies, and may even pull in acids with it as an azeotrope. If you can get the water away from the gasses quickly enough, maybe you can stop it from dissolving too much of the acid.
  24. todofwar
    You have to remember that 0.7 ppm dissolved in 20 ppm means your close to a 5% solution, and drinking 5% HF will kill you. Hell, getting that concentrated an HF solution on your skin is enough to kill you. You recharge zeolites by heating them under vacuum, no need for other chemicals.
  25. todofwar
    I would say don't get too bogged down with that part. If it were completely plausible and realistic we'd be there by now. One possibility that is plausible if not proven, is that you can take advantage of the super heated co2 close to the surface to grow nanotubes on scale in a well ordered fashion by employing the correct catalysts. No process I know of does this, so you'll need to hand wave the chemistry, but I'd say it's plausible and my background is in chemistry. Venus provides a place you can manufacture nanotubes with very little cost in that case, and space transport is just cheap enough to make it worth it back home. But maybe not worth it enough to justify rebuilding a colony once they beleive the first one went to hell.
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