farmerben

Scott says the problem of space debris is more severe in higher orbits. Micrometeors and such a likely to break off pieces of the station compounding the problem. Too bad we can't push it past Earth's sphere of influence into it's own solar orbit.

Obviously it does better by not carrying oxidizer. Surely that's cheaper.

Holistic grazing management could help save the permafrost. Snow is an insulating layer that prevents permafrost from forming in the winter. With trees removed and snow trampled more permafrost will grow. Grassland can sequester carbon in soil much faster than forests. Bring back the mammoth!

Spruce is good for seaplanes

Do we have breeder reactors 50-100 years too late? Just like the development of fission, it depends on a small number of people with a huge amount of funding. Renewed interest in thorium reactors is 99.9% due to Kirk Sorenson. But we won't get it because U233 is WG.

Without Marie Curie, I think nuke tech would be delayed at least 50 years

Correcting one of my mistakes on a lost thread: There is some evidence of communication between the ancient Polynesia and the Americas. The sweet potato is thought to have originated in South America and made it to the Pacific Islands.

Not sure what the current hullabaloo is, and don't care to know in detail. This forum is already heavily moderated for anything political or personally offensive. There is a relatively small group of regulars who a comfortable around here.

I recommend aluminum for windmills. That would be 100% recyclable.

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.

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?

earlie in the mornin

The question is relevant on Mars where nitrogen is scarce.

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.

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?

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.

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?

The key thing will be to positively charge the area around the base so that dust does not fall there at night.

I do. The total solar eclipse was cool.

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.

It's possible that NASA is corrupt, that Elon doesn't keep his promises, and the Starship-Artemis approach is fundamentally flawed.

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.

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.

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.

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.