PakledHostage

Montreal is at about 45.5 degrees north. That's only 21 degrees below the Arctic circle. At this time of year, everything from the north pole down to the arctic circle is in continual daylight. By some fairly simple geometry, anything high enough above Montreal to be able to "see" the arctic circle will also be illuminated. The minimum requisite altitude for something to be able to see 21 degrees to the horizon is about 450 km. An object that is higher than 450 km or one that is slightly lower but further north than overhead Montreal will be visible no matter what time of night it is1 1It might not be visible for its entire pass from horizon to horizon though because its trajectory may take it across the terminator while still within the viewer's field of view.

I should add that I appreciate the feedback! It is nice to know that people are enjoying the challenge of launching their own GNSS networks. It makes the effort of developing and maintaining a mod worthwhile.

The mod's DLL already exposes position data and whether or not it has a valid fix. Other mods can use that information for their own purposes but it would have to be implemented by the authors of those mods. For example, SirJodelstein's Persistent Trails mod already offers users the option of interfacing that mod with their GNSS systems.

For anyone who's interested, there are plenty more photos on Don P. Mitchell's Soviet Venus Images website. Some are composites and/or color corrected to get a better sense of what it looks like from the Venera lander's perspective.

Sorry, it was an off-topic post that was intended to counter the point made by AngelLestat that cars haven't changed in 50 years. How much their utility has changed and how well related cars are to the current discussion about the viability of space based energy production is debatable, but the cars themselves have changed a lot. I am not well versed on automotive standards and regulations, but my understanding is that all new cars sold in Canada after 2012 must have stability augmentation systems to help drivers maintain control of their vehicles.

I don't know about that... My car has a cool feature called ABS brakes. And it has gyros in it that work together with the stability augmentation system to activate the brakes at each wheel independently. It surprised the heck out of me the first time I went hooning around in a snowy parking lot... The car faught my efforts to spin and gathered itself back up. All this in a cheap entry level car. The kind that they'd call "dreary" or "boring" on Top Gear.

Ralathon would win that bet... For what it is worth, the mod is intended as a science mod. There are things that I should get around to improving but for now it serves its intended purpose of illustrating that being able to get accurate position fixes in real-time requires infrastructure and technology. The technology behind this mod closely mirrors (and suffers the same limitations as) the GPS and Galileo global navigation satellite systems.

An interesting article about China's efforts to reduce its reliance on Coal: Bloomberg.com: China Targets 70 Gigawatts of Solar Power to Cut Coal Reliance Some projected (for 2017) power generating capacity numbers from the article: Biomass - 11 GW Nuclear - 50 GW Solar Power - 70 GW Wind Power - 150 GW Hydro-electric - 330 GW

Please show me where I said that it did disprove the "theory of it"? What those articles show is that it has been tried (albeit unscientifically) and that it is controversial. Your earlier posts implied that you did not know that it had been tried.

Try this link: lmgtfy

Suggested reading: The Guardian: World's biggest geoengineering experiment 'violates' UN rules Popular Science: Rogue Geoengineer Dumps 100 Tons Of Iron Off Canada's West Coast The Vancouver Sun: Why was iron dumping a surprise? Wikipedia: Russ George (for the references)

It may be "bunk", but it being bunk doesn't give us a right to follow suit with our own efforts at causing mass extinction. Super volcanoes are indifferent. Asteroids and comets are indifferent. We are not indifferent. We (presumably) have brains and free will to steer ourselves away from destroying ourselves and/or many of the other things that are beautiful and intricate on this planet.

The idea of using climate engineering to solve global warming always makes me think of Goethe's "The Sorcerer's Apprentice". We don't know enough yet to even be considering messing with the climate even more than we already are. We'll likely only make things worse. Rather than trying to come up with Band-Aid solutions, we should be focusing on solving problems at their root causes.

That's space flight... I flew down to Florida once just to see Atlantis launch but it was scrubbed at the T-9 minute hold because it was too windy. My only regret is that I didn't try again another time.

I am not sure of the details, but Nibb is a professional in the Aerospace industry. He's one of the more reputable sources on these forums on the subject you're challenging him on. That doesn't mean he's always right, but on the balance of probability I'd take his word for it. The state of the art in the real world isn't sci-fi. The type of future you envision is a long way off. If ventures in space are to be viable, they need to be able to make money now, not in some indeterminate time in the future.

I recall that we had a similar discussion about 10 months ago. At that time, I did a "back of the envelope" calculation of the amount if delta-V that you'd save by launching from an airplane. The result was less than a 10% savings (i.e. you could save at most about 800 m/s out of over 9000 m/s if you didn't consider the requirement for an air launched rocket to be stronger in bending than one that is launched vertically, or for it to have other additional complexities that would negatively impact performance and available payload.) I was able to find the thread here: SpaceshipTwo Second Powered Flight

Funny that 32 pages into this debate, we seem to be coming to the realization many of us actually agree with each other, even though we could be characterized as being on opposite sides of the pro/anti nuclear fence. Next thing you know we'll all be singing kumbaya...

I think you are over generalizing.

You're right. Pawelek's polish. Just humor him. He's mostly harmless. P.S. I get allergies in the spring. I think it is poplar pollen that causes it. I read somewhere that allergies are an over reaction of the immune system. But maybe someone here can educate us about allergic reactions?

"Fracking" is hydraulic fracturing. It is a process whereby natural gas trapped underground can be extracted. Basically, the hydraulic pressures crack the underground rock to release the gas (mostly methane) so that it can be collected. New ship and liquification plant technologies allow it to be transported around the world. Its negative consequences include contaminating ground water and pollution of surface water that is drawn out of rivers and streams to be pumped underground. Google "Sacred Headwaters" and "Shell Canada" for more about the types of controversies that fracking causes.

So you finished off a post in which you criticize the nature of this debate by taking a pot shot of your own?

Introspect much?

You know, it just struck me that many of us here may be debating this topic from the perspective of what we think the other guy thinks... Who cares how many sieverts you get from a banana vs. living next to a nuclear power plant? That isn't the issue. We're talking about energy alternatives that will stop or reduce global warming. Even "stupid hippies" like me will agree that nuclear power has its place... when used in moderation. The inarguable catastrophic consequences of a major nuclear disaster must be considered, as must the cost, technology and political problems associated with disposing of low, medium and high level waste. But that doesn't mean we throw the baby out with the bath water. What we need to do is phase out oil, natural gas and coal as energy sources. Nuclear is a good alternative in jurisdictions that have the necessary regulatory clout and sufficiently low levels of political corruption that plants can be run safely. Likewise, solar, wind, hydro, etc have their place too. I think Seret's statistics really highlight this fact. Nuclear, solar, wind and hydro power aren't the boogeymen... Oil, coal and natural gas are. Edit: I think this is a valid point. Maybe energy prices are too low? Maybe people would use less if prices were higher. On my city's streets, it seemed that everyone drove an SUV 10 years ago. Today, we see a lot less of them. Indeed we see a lot more electric and economy cars. The other day I saw a Tesla Model S and a Fisker Karma lined up beside each other at a street light. The two coolest and most expensive cars on the block and they were both electric/hybrids! I attribute this change to the cost of energy.

Just as an aside, I just did a quick Google search to find out how many nuclear plants are operating or under construction world wide. I found the European Nuclear Society's website. They are an advocacy group promoting the "advancement of science and engineering in the field of the peaceful uses of nuclear energy". They have a lot of interesting plots. The two that I found most interesting are: and reactor age in years:

On the contrary, I think it has been answered many times in this thread. It just keeps getting dismissed "Fox News style" by misrepresenting or ignoring what was said and dismissing peoples posts with some variation of "it won't work, you stupid hippie". There is a lot of work going into energy storage technology, be it flow batteries, using renewable energy to generate methane or hydrogen, etc. These technologies are not yet mature enough to be practical on a large scale but that doesn't mean we won't one day be able to store enough energy to allow us to use renewable sources for base load. Either by using technology based on these ideas or something else that hasn't been thought of yet. (i.e. using quinones in flow batteries is a very recent development and seems to show a lot of promise.) It really comes down to time frames. If we are talking about alternatives that are available today, or alternatives that may be available in the future. Edit: I should add that I live in a part of the world that already gets most of its power from a renewable source: hydroelectric. There is no nuclear power station to pick up the slack. Hydroelectric power supplies the base load, even in the typically dry late summer months.