StrandedonEarth

Mount the wind turbine blades to a fuselage to provide lift, and fly it to the site. Truck the fuselage back to the factory. Or use the fuselage as the mast. The turbine can provide power for flight. Batteries become storage. Quite elegant, actually. But the devil is in the details…

The "King of Daytime TV", Phil Donahue, has died at 88. Long Live the King!

The mighty Martin Mars water bomber, Hawaii Mars, has completed its last flight. Her sister aircraft, Philippine Mars, will make its final flight to the Pima Air and Space museum later this year. May they rust, er, rest in peace, not pieces.

There's more cosmic radiation at the poles, due to less protection from Earth's magnetic field. I suppose that's why it hasn't been done before...

I probably shouldn’t post memes poking fun at poor Starliner, but I can’t help myself. But I’ll acknowledge that the situation isn’t as bad as depicted…

There’s a book called “Dragonfly,” about life on Mir

Deep space is the only real option for constant LOS and power production, Presumably around an L-point

Pipes in part walls is really leveraging the capabilities of 3D-printed parts, which I know they use.

Rebar made of spun basalt is a thing…

I dunno. Only way to be sure is drop it into the Sun. Or a black hole…

When it comes to recycling plastics, the biggest challenge is getting clean, sorted feedstock. Human nature being what it is, there are many places where people are too lazy, too rushed, or simply don’t have facilities available for proper cleaning and sorting. So I say cut to the chase and just pyrolyze it all back into crude. It doesn’t matter how mixed or contaminated it was s then. Contaminated compost could be thrown in too. Of course, this apparently is only practical when the thermal energy is cheap enough.

There’s more to it than that. Legs act like fins; rockets head for landing tail-first. Massy engines first is good, but draggy stuff first is bad so while fixed legs would be good for stability on ascent, modern rockets don’t need that help, and it would need more control authority during descent. Ever try to land something too long behind the inflatable heat shield in KSP? Same problem…

Hmmm, enough batteries to provide 800MW for the night… 10GWh, at least? That’s a honking big battery. The ideal site is desert next to mountains with convenient pumped hydro reservoirs

Running more numbers, using 14,114 MWh per ton and sustained max production of 432kT/yr yields 6.1 TWh per year. 800MW for a year is 7TWh. @AckSed, your article says 2000GWh, so 2 TWh. out of 8sqkm of solar in a prime location. PV is a good use of otherwise useless (ecologists my beg to differ) desert, while agrivoltaics allows for dual0use of land.

Well, a little googling on the aforementioned Kitimat smelter gives me two link: https://www.northernsentinel.com/local-business/rio-tintos-kitimat-smelter-returns-to-full-capacity-6834462 which gives a capacity of 432 kilotons a year. Wiki gives https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kemano_Generating_Station#:~:text=The smelter at Kitimat consumes,sold to BC Hydro's Powerex. which says: So figure the smelter consumes up to 760MW to produce 432kt per year. But that still won't give the number I want. Try again: https://www.statista.com/statistics/1116216/aluminum-smelting-energy-intensity/#:~:text=In 2021%2C globally averaged%2C primary,one metric ton of aluminum. 14 MWh for one ton. Yeah, ouch.

Steel is an iron-carbon alloy, so it requires a source of carbon and energy to reduce the iron ore; coal works nicely that way but electric arc furnaces and direct hydrogen reduction is gaining steam. If ‘green’ hydrogen is available then it’s a carbon-neutral process Aluminum smelting is an electrolytic process, requiring only electricity. Lots of electricity, hence the nickname “frozen electricity”. To run a smelter on solar/wind, simply overbuild the renewables and store the excess with pumped hydro for nighttime. Another instance of placing a smelter in a remote area near abundant hydropower is Kitimat in northwestern BC. It required boring the penstocks through a mountain range…

Another comedy legend has passed. RIP Bob. Who will train the bus drivers now? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5TTA4f7Q3E

“All these worlds are yours except Europa “

If you force the magnets into mechanical restraint (I.e. steel frame) no energy is required to keep them there, although the steel frame would be under some strain. What you have done is store the energy required to bring the like magnetic poles together like that, deforming their magnetic fields.

Richard Simmons, I had heard about. Shannon Doherty, at only 53 (my age!)?? Ouch! That link also seems to have died...

I'm sure many of us remember Dr. Ruth. RIP. https://www.nytimes.com/2024/07/13/arts/television/ruth-westheimer-dead.html

My overriding concern is how long this will ground the mighty Falcon 9, considering that it was a second stage issue, which is new every time.

Delta II used up to nine SRBs, three of them airlit…

So say we all!