farmerben
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Posts posted by farmerben
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42 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:
In case of the USA it's probably more important that its agriculture is mostly based on forced irrigation, thus powerplants, thus nuke plants and big dambs, which are not numerous, and their destruction may cause the collapse of the agriculture due to both lack of energy for the pumps, loss of the biggest water reservoirs, and radioactive fallout contamination of big rivers.
Midwestern grain does not require irrigation. There is enough in storage to feed to humans instead of livestock for over a year, assuming everybody like corn pone. You could easily get a wheat crop instead of corn if the temps were 10 degrees lower.
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As I understand it; the secondary firestorm consuming cities and vegetation provide the aerosol particles that lead to nuclear winter. The mushroom cloud helps loft particles into the stratosphere. So where and when they hit may be more important than the bomb yield. How wet the forests are matters a great deal. The northern hemisphere tends to be wet almost everywhere in late winter early spring. Many people believe that if the USA and Russia had an exchange they would target each others capability, requiring a scale enough to cause a nuclear winter. What do you think? Is there a scenario where nuclear winter is minimal?
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earlie in the mornin
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The question is relevant on Mars where nitrogen is scarce.
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The CO2 absorption bands are roughly the same as that radiated by the surface of the Earth. Going hotter or colder could make the radiation escaping to space more efficient.
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There are vast amounts of solar and wind energy available where nobody lives, and no crops or trees grow. Is it possible to use this energy in place for a beneficial result?
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There is no excessive heat. We have a heat pump that cools the ground or the ocean directly using solar and wind energy. It can't compete with trees as a climate balancing system, but it can exist in places where trees can't.
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Proposal: A solar powered sterling cycle shaped approximately like a tree or mushroom is deployed in vast numbers to counter global warming. Instead of an engine, we run it as a heat pump with input electricity. It radiates heat into the atmosphere and has a cooling effect below the ground level. It also shades the ground. It can be deployed in arctic, or hot desert conditions. It could condense dew and collect rainwater. It can help preserve sea ice.
If the future brings cheap silicon, aluminum, nearly free electricity, and productivity growth we stipulate that they would be affordable. I'd prefer one to write my name on one and it leave behind, than a gravestone or a statue.
Does the basic concept work?
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The key thing will be to positively charge the area around the base so that dust does not fall there at night.
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1 hour ago, darthgently said:
I've never seen people as a whole appreciate anything that is free.
I do. The total solar eclipse was cool.
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It takes a lot of teamwork to run an outpost on Mars. A city implies more than just an outpost. Which implies multiple teams of people pursuing multiple goals. New types of conflict are bound to arise.
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It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.
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A turbofan on a gas giant might need to carry oxidizer but no fuel, since there is hydrogen to suck up. On Titan there is methane.
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6 hours ago, SunlitZelkova said:
If European colonists were capable of building massive habitats right off the bat and sustaining them at great expense, sure it’d work, but that isn’t realistic. Neither is trying to run a Mars colony based on Earth metrics like profit. It will take something new and innovative- not the idealist utopia I seemed to describe in my post, reminiscent of a certain 19th century economist and philosophers beliefs, but rather something never before seen in the history of humanity.
A Mars settlement will have to run off donations in one form or another for quite some time. It does not have to be taxpayer funded, if you can find other ways of raising donations. Including lotteries, endowments from the deceased, and patron support for making videos, etc.
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I think you underestimate the division of labor. Imagine YOU personally time travelled to ancient Rome. What could you do with simple blacksmith tools? Could you build a steam engine or a practical electric device? How much better could you do than a scientist from 1824? Suppose you get rich in ancient Rome and hire 100 skilled employees to help build your stuff, how much could you realistically do?
I'd be happy to teach physics to the right motivated students and see what happens from there. I would not however rely on broad popular appeal. Progress was not a popular idea. Many ancients believed in cyclical time. Most stoics believed that time had gone on long enough for everything to be forgotten, and would go on long enough for their present to be forgotten. Aurelius remarked to that effect. Meanwhile the early Christians thought they were near the end of time, and God would soon destroy this world.
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The longest span of the Key bridge was 366m. Current state of the art suspension bridges can go to 2000m. Make the pillars 5 times as far apart and then there is plenty of room to steer and to run aground before hitting a pillar.
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Polynesian vessels with outriggers are inherently faster than European ships with ballast. They discovered Hawaii and Easter Island some time before 1200 AD. If they made it to the mainland, they did not leave evidence like introduced species.
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Even if you already know it, this fact is fun
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Special emergency dagger board. Shoot a pole downward.
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It's almost always more efficient to carry heavier cargo than to make two trips. Until you stick a rig on it, and realize sails on a massive container ship do not work. The niche for smaller cargo vessels is limited mostly to island nations. It's not really fair to compare a vessel that uses fuel and one that doesn't.
What's the problem with deck based PVs?
Other than at 200W/m^2 you're not generating at a sufficient rate for propulsion. And you need batteries for short range maneuvering, docking, etc.
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This one might go off paper. It will be interesting to see.
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1 hour ago, kerbiloid said:
They first must construct ANY pylons at all.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/dc-md-va/2024/03/27/baltimore-bridge-collapse-bodies-missing-workers/
Some money numbers.
I'm disoriented. The bridge costed 60 mln USD, but the economic loss is already 800 mln USD.
So, I still have no idea, what's cheaper, the bridge or the ship.Space lifts... They were so close ten years ago.
50-100 million $ for a panamax cargo ship
https://gegcalculators.com/whats-the-cost-of-a-normal-cargo-ship/
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Ramps are the best idea. To protect it with loose piled rock would require probably 1,000,000 tons, and a volume larger than the ship. That will affect the channel for sure.
Mississippi river barges are 1500 tons, and draft 8 feet. When 30 of them are lashed together that's half the mass of the Dali. Protecting river bridges is even more challenging than harbors.
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I just tested with 50 TWR vessel on Minimus. Going straight up uses 248 dV to escape the SOI. Changing to a near horizontal trajectory and burning in a straight line uses almost the same amount of dV.
However, throttling down and taking a gradual spiral used 279 dV.
The Analysis of Sea Levels.
in Science & Spaceflight
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I recommend aluminum for windmills. That would be 100% recyclable.