phoenix_ca

There are reactor designs that are ready to be built that allow for deep load following. Both the Canadian ACR-1000 and EC6 designs can do this (throttle back to 75% and 60% of output respectively, 50% using condenser bypass): http://www.nuclearfaq.ca/cnf_sectionA.htm#load-follow Previously this wasn't even required, given the low fuel cost.

The main issue is capital cost. Filling the calandria of a CANDU and its cooling systems with heavy water costs a lot of money. Hopefully the ACR-1000 design, which has a smaller calandria and uses light water in its cooling loops, will lessen that cost somewhat. If you strictly want to get the cheapest power possible, then pressurized LWR designs have their benefits. CANDU was developed here partly as an option to use nuclear power without an enrichment infrastructure. We had lots of uranium but no enrichment facilities, mostly because we weren't interested in making nuclear weapons (having a friendly nuclear power next door kinda makes it a moot point). At the very least one can probably re-use some or all of the heavy water that is left after a reactor reaches the end of its life cycle, unless I'm mistaken. It's easy to find information about how CANDU reactors can reuse fuel; not much on how or even if new reactors can use the water from older ones. I might have to actually contact the government directly. O.o CANDU designs are likely to stay for a while though, and Canada sticks by it (for rather obvious reasons), so they can serve as the "garborator" of the nuclear industry, so-to-speak, burning "waste" fuels that are left-overs from other reactors with minimal reprocessing. Which in terms of fuel costs, is a very good thing in the long run for Canada.

Uhhhh...nuclear power might be slow to get up to full power, but reactors are designed to be shut-down fast. Like seconds, and at most minutes.

Just the opposite. Had you looked at the link I posted earlier you'd note that that turbine is actually quite quiet; the truck doesn't even have a muffler and all it makes is a soft whirring. Stick a muffler on it and it could be even quieter.

Source or it didn't happen.

Gas turbine hybrid trucks: http://www.hybridcars.com/wrightspeed-combines-gas-turbine-and-batteries-for-big-fuel-savings/ Might not see it in mid-range and low-end cars but quite likely in high-end cars and even more trucks.

Then I would say the exact same thing and be just as tongue-in-cheek about it. Penchant for killing their astronauts. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_spaceflight-related_accidents_and_incidents Besides I didn't say anything about the actual numbers, but the view of whether or not the humans are expendable.

Extremely high-energy fusion thrusters maybe? Hovering in place takes quite a bit of effort...you'd be better off just using a fan.

The USSR had a penchant for getting their cosmonauts killed is all. (Though if you think their space program didn't seen humans as expendable, you're a bit off...the whole USSR treated humans as expendable. So did the USA. So did most countries. Throw enough bodies at a war and you're bound to win by sheer numbers as often the way of things. Other enterprises were no different, and hell in most of the world they still are no different.)

There's a such thing as being presented with too many options.

Socrates. That guy started with reason and ended with truth all based on logic. Okay, he got a few things quite...wrong, but still, we still use his ideas.

Not really. It all depends on the fuel. Pu-238 would be the obvious choice if you can make an RTG efficient enough to cram it into a phone, as the alpha particles emitted by it are just normal alpha particles (5.593MeV), and thus have low penetration (skin is enough to block them, easily; the metals in the phone would further reduce their penetration potential). The heat issue...yeah that'd be more of an issue and far more annoying than the radiation.

sumghai's suggestion of using blender to give yourself the best background is probably close to the ideal solution. However, should that still not be enough (which could well be the case depending on the textures), the best masking tool I've ever tried and used is Topaz ReMask. With that you could lift any part you want from a simple VAB screenshot in under a minute, and it'll do a better job than manual attempts most of the time anyway (with far greater speed once you get the hang of it). It can also mask translucent or transparent objects (serious mathematical wizardry going on there)...not that I know of any transparent parts in KSP yet, mods or otherwise, though I suppose if you wanted to use it to grab particle effects like engines that'd work. In other words if you're trying to extract pixels from other pixels, just buy ReMask and be done with it. It's saved me days of work, easily.

We're talking about a planet where the surface is so hot it'll melt lead. And zinc. And tellurium. As someone said earlier, if there's a planet in our solar system that could be called hell, Venus would be it. Any sort of mission there just looks incredibly impractical when you consider the environment. Not with our technology. (Also, lols at the "thousands of degrees below zero".) Send robots, not squishy humans to that real-world version of Phlegethon (or you know just good ol' Judeo-Christian hell). Any talk of putting a human on Venus should at the very least elicit this reaction: No, that's not quite enough nope. Okay barely enough. I'll grant you that with an modern exoskeleton suit with mechanical assistance so that the squishy and weak human could actually move the darn thing could allow for said squishy human to actually move around in a suit large enough to create a cool environment and deal with the substantial pressure and really, really nasty atmosphere. But at that point, what is the point? Send a lander, or a bunch of landers, for the same capital cost as sending a human, and gather yourself way more data. Probes are expendable, and unless you're the USSR, astronauts are not. Bringing one home from Venus would be...problematic, and that's putting it mildly.

Sure, why not? If it's doable, some human is (or many humans are) gonna do it, even if it's pretty hard. Even if that's too hard, it's a huuuuuuge leap to then say "Yup, some sort of super-advanced way more advanced than us human definitely did this"...not that you specifically said that but the way this thread has gone...I just...what...

Not really. Phone manufacturers have a vested interest in reducing the footprint of the energy supply. Most of the space and weight of a phone now is taken-up by the battery. Reducing the size of the battery and increasing it's energy capacity are actually great things for manufacturers because it allows smaller devices, or similarly sized devices with far more computing power.

Put the blocks on logs, roll on the logs. Done. Sure there's the issue of raising them and lowering them but moving them needn't be super-hard.

Now now, indications are that those workers got paid for their efforts. Slavery wasn't actually all that big of a thing in some of the Ancient Egyptian periods. The superstition bit though, bang on. You people want to see evidence of precision engineering? Okay, it looks something like this: Or this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Burj_Khalifa Or this: Not this: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Pyramid_of_Giza Just because we aren't completely sure just how the ancient Egyptians managed to build those things doesn't lead to "aliens" or "they must've been super-high tech or something". It's the god-of-the-gaps argument without the god, but something just as mythical.

That is exactly not what I said. You're seeing a fallacy where there isn't one (or rather making one-up, which is known as a straw-man argument). I said there is no theoretical basis for ever being able to convert zero-point energy into any sort of energy we could put to use. Your assertion that you "see no reason why tapping into zero point energy shouldn't provide enough energy for all humanities energy requirements" is thus an incredible exercise in naivety.

Yes, but that doesn't mean you'll get useful levels of energy or a bandgap (in fact using photovoltaics by its nature limits you to certain wavelengths because you are limited to wavelengths that will cause an electron to jump bands/orbitals) that's large enough to be of practical use. We already have photovoltaic detectors for various wavelengths of photons, e.g. infrared cameras, x-ray detectors/telescopes, gamma ray detectors/telescopes, radio telescopes and detectors, and so on and so on. Thin-film silicon photovoltaic cells already effectively use infrared and visible light (well, large parts of them anyway).

As shynung mentioned, "never" is a rather long time. So long that you'd need an infinite power source to do so. A more practical idea is to try to cram enough energy into it that it won't need to be charged before you replace it. You kinda answered your own question though. If correct, a gram of Pu-238 isn't all that much to fit into a smart-phone battery. It could be easily accommodated by removing the battery. So there you go. As long as you don't mind getting just a little bit more irradiated by your phone than the environment, that'd work. The main problem would be disposal, as while sure, you could use it in a phone, you couldn't throw it anywhere. Pu-238 is an extremely powerful alpha emitter, so you sure wouldn't want to eat it or let anyone else ingest any. Bad fuel choice for a phone (or any ubiquitous product). Uhhhhhhhh...how about the slight problem that there isn't even a theoretical basis for turning any of that into useful energy? Nadda. (Unless someone's published some papers on the subject recently that are actually verifiable.) You could also say "I see no reason why all our energy problems might be solved in the near future because magic might exist and Merlin might come back to give us all free energy."

It's possible. I'll grant you that it'll take 10 years, though that's still a lot of money and a lot of time later.

Then you need to read the articles you posted in the OP. I recall seeing that estimate elsewhere too (though I'm having trouble remembering where), which is why I mentioned it.

Exactly. (Seriously I can't help myself. Whenever I see any mention of something being "cheating" in a single-player game, I have to respond with sarcasm, because the claim is utterly ridiculous.)

Poor ISS residents would be...quite hard-pressed to not say anything I think.