78stonewobble

Well the only reason to look at naval nuclear reactors is that they're pretty compact by necessity. Though obviously it would take on orbit assembly and that ie. a nuclear thermal rocket would probably be better. Those however have their own problems. Wouldn't necessarily want to use one in low orbit.

People are too liberal in the use of the word "disaster". For completely arbitrary reasons I put the limit at 1.000 instant or connected deaths. Which is like 0,0000015 percent of the worlds population. I would have put it at one percent of the worlds population or over 70.000.000 deaths, but then news agencies would run out of business.

Hmm .... Well... According to wikipedia a Nimitz class carrier is powered by 2 A4W nuclear reactors rated at 550 thermal MW's or enough steam to produce an unspecified amount of electrical power and 140.000 shaft horsepower (104 MW). What could an ion thruster do with one of these pup... uhm. presumably a helluva lot larger and heavier than puppies? Designed to run for 20 years without refuelling and a service life of 50 years.

There is no paradox then. If the signal is sent to mars at ie. 2x times the speed of light, it will still take y amount of time to get there and any return signal at 2x times the speed of light will also take y amount of time to get home. The observer cannot send a return signal, before the original signal has been sent and arrived at mars (which takes y amount of time) and the observers return signal will take it's own time to get back (2 times y amount of time). Sure, it'll happen faster than we can "see" it, with normal equipment, but there is no paradox.

I still have a hard time imagining, not the physics... But why anyone controlling a mars rover, would use slower than light communication to it, from earth, if we can have a FTL ship in orbit around mars. I mean, either upgrade everyone to FTL or just remote control it from that ship. That way... No paradox shenanigans. ... Or offcourse... The "the wheel turned left" message from the future, will offcourse be the reason for the rover operator to turn the wheel left.

Well, I've never sat in a fighter cockpit, so I don't know. Do have a former fighter mechanic in the family, but there are limits to how much detail we go into work. In any case he only has experience with F-16 A/B's, block 10-15. I just imagined that even newer fighters or new versions of old ones, had some sort of, as rpayne88, called it "Envelope Protection", to protect the craft from potentially tearing itself apart, especially with ie. various weapons and drop tank loads on the wings.

Touchscreens have their place... A gui for touchscreens has it's place there... Not everywhere... "As for consumers, Microsoft failed to realize that most people aren't computer geeks. They want the same user experience on their home PCs as on their work PCs, and they also have the same habits and muscle-memory acquired from nearly 20 years of using the Start menu (since Windows 95). Folks like my parents or grandparents simply don't get all this stuff about moving the mouse to a corner to open the "charms" menu?" True... Which is why, any new computer to ie. my parents, so far will get windows 7.

True, but here I just meant in reference to G-lock for the pilots. That the most maneuverable moderne fighters, might have software blocks to prevent too violent maneuvers, though presumably those are for, as you say, the airframe.

Don't some planes, these days, via their flight computers, have artificial limits on how hard they can maneuver g wise?

I'm against poetry on principle.

While I lol'ed, I don't think that a computer / programme will be that successfull in creative media for a long time. I think creative media is a way for people to get to know other people's way of thinking. Sure, you can probably spit out some automatic action movies, reality shows or pop-songs, but I still think people will want something, that meant something to someone else. A true human level artificial intelligence might be able to pull it off, here and there, but in that case, it would, for all intents and purposes, be like something created by a person. An AI beyond our intelligence could potentially spit out any number of media, but would we really then understand it as the sort of communication it's meant to be.

Funny I was thinking of star trek too, when reading this. My interpretation of the society depicted there is this. Everyone gets a minimum "allowance"/wellfare ration of... uhm "credits". Enough that noone has to starve or afford roof over the head. If you then contribute more actively to society, you get more credits and can thus afford more stuff. If you don't do much, you will only be able to afford the smallest apartments and no sailboat. The purpose of the economy is to still save somewhat on ressources, while motivating people to stay active in one form or another. I rather like that I don't think people are forced to take dangerous or unhealthy jobs, unless they think that the job is worth it. Doing away with money as you say might be impossible, but there is quite a free range in how we want to implement our society and economics. It is, afterall, just as much people that decide the value of this and that, as it is the amount of ressources needed.

A single engine F-1A first stage? o.O

Hmm, well we can barely make a system that can read out the names of the busstops loud. What kind of "AI"? An artificial intelligence or one that is similar to human intelligence (with base instincts and feelings and what not)? We don't need necessarily need a self aware intelligence for many many tasks. Like stockmarket / casino predictions or military logistics. You just need better written ordinary programmes. In any case, as that other guy said. Noone has built an AI yet, so we don't know how they will be. So, if we build a psychopath, I'm gonna say no. On the other hand, if we can bring em to more or less sane human levels. Why not...

Yeah I think so, in some bunker in norway, if I remember correctly. EDIT: There it was: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Svalbard_Global_Seed_Vault PS: I don't think thats where Kim Kardashian's eggs are tho... *lol* I shudder for that future...

Yeah, they allready did that a long time ago, better insulation, new energy windows which fit the style of the house and uses, well mostly for economics, woodpellets for heating. So yeah I agree there can be done quite a bit in old places, since they... well allmost literally have the most holes. But there are limits as to what can be done.

None of those sites address the challenges in replacing large parts of our existing electrical and heat infrastructure with some as vague as grid something. Or something as basic as this, one of the few solar powerplants that can store and thus supply energy at night uses 28.500 tonnes of salt (sodium and potassium nitrate) for 50 megawatts. Extrapolated to the entire worlds energy supply, that efficiency would require 8.550.000.000 tonnes of those salts... Which unless we switch the entire worlds production of something over to it (then it might be possible in 20 years), but if we stick to ie. 5 percent it would probably take hundreds of years to produce the massive amounts needed. Solarpanels and windmills has become cheaper, because large factories have sprung up and are pumping them out by the dozen and we've learned how to build em more efficiently. However it does not mean, that they magically stop requiring ressources or doesn't require transportation (which pollutes), maintenance, kill off birds or screw up massive amounts of areas. PS: Please note, that I didn't call it alternative energy, but renewable. PPS: To quote from real climate: "Climate science from climate scientists" ... They might be impartial, or they might not be.

Well I do come from a family, where we'd rather bump into things than turn on the light in the evening. The point still stands, stop making life decisions and/or prioritisations for other people. Just because person X can give up on A, because X thinks A is unimportant, does not mean A is unimportant to everyone else. Ie. I wanna travel, you can stop having kids... Is no more or less valid than, I wanna have kids, you stop travelling. But you are offcourse right... I'm sure most people could save alot of energy on things, that they, in reality, don't want or need. However... people are different and people deserve to seek whatever it is that are important to them.

Yeah, uhm... My parents live in a house built in 1930, there are limits to how much you can "tweak" a house like that, without ruining it's aesthetics. I live in an apartment from 1966, where atleast the isolation of my outer wall is at most 1 cm. of ... well whatever crap they had available back then, in any case, as a tenant I'm not allowed to make any "improvements". On the other hand, I'm not having kids, so ... if allmost everyone did that or rather didn't... We wouldn't have a problem either.

And you don't think it has any enviromental and/or human effects to produce, deploy and maintain the around ie. 5.000.000 windturbines and/or 100.000.000 square meters worth of solar panels, needed to supply the world with renewable energy? Not to mention the 8.550.000.000 tonnes of "molten salts", if we pick that for energy storage or god knows how much hydrogen storage (because that never blows up), if we want to use light in the evening. It's a pipedream. To replace coal/oil/gas with renewable energy on a large scale is megaprojects on a scale that makes it as unlikely in the short term as fusion.

1. Well I've never said nuclear fission power, was without problems or completely safe. However, as it turns out now, it is the "lesser of evils". As it is, the path we are on, will, as estimated by the UN, be worse than 12.000 chernobyl sized nuclear accidents in terms of lives lost (or 500 if you go by rather exaggerated chernobyl casualty figures). 2. Well I'm pretty sure that the "capitalist" (in airquotes) tendency to save money, was atleast partially responsible for the non adequate seawall at Fukushima, but I agree, nuclear powerplants are not something you want to be stupid about (or greedy or cheap). However, if we we're allready producing significant amounts of nuclear power in the vest, where we presumably could do it safer, then enviromentally, we could "afford" that some nations went a cheaper/simpler coalpowered route. 3. Except you can't use hydro everywhere, nor necessarily geothermal and we still don't have the capacity in any large scale to store the power from wind, tidal or solar power (we could use giant hydrogen storages, but I'm betting thats gonna turn out allmost more dangerous than nuclear power on the scale needed) on a scale to fully power a western country. 4. Or computer games or internet forums for anything, but the most necessary things. While I agree in principle that there are lots of ways, where we could use less ressources, I tend to think one should be very carefull of deciding what others can and cannot have and/or what other people are "supposed" to think is important.

Now if only we had a powersource 30 years ago, which didn't release co2. We could have been shifting even our cars to electricity now (without just shifting the problem of co2 release from cars to powerplants). Oh wait... We did... Gee thanks greenpeace and anti nuclear people, whats 125.000.000 dead when, thank god it's not in our own backyards. ... Well I'm still optimistic and privileged. I live in a country, where we can manage pretty much anything, but the worst, that mother nature can throw at us. Sadly, 5-6 billion of the worlds population won't be as fortunate.

Hmm I still believe it will be quite possible for life to survive even rather large impacts. As long as they don't impart enough energy to... well ... melt or shatter the entire earths surface. As long as they don't do that, life would still be able to survive in deep holes and what not. The seismic shocks might collapse such a thing as the cheyenne mountain complex and kill every human in there, but it seems quite possible that some life could survive in places like that. "If you have both material means and political resolve / public support to *really* do it, you could do a lot of other things as well. Not sure if a lunar bunker would be the most clever solution under these circumstances. " A suitably large and relatively selfsufficient spacestation could do it... Heck, we could make an "ark" type thing, with... if not large animals and humans, then seeds and bacteria.

Just a side comment on those long term historic high co2 levels and mass extinctions. It's pretty easy to imagine that anything leading to a mass extinction will also cause massive co2 releases. Ie. supervolcano releasing massive amounts of co2 from trapped inside the earth or asteroids/comets vaporising/killing sizeable amounts of life/trees/certain rocks releasing co2 trapped in those.

Nature's way of saying it's time to pull over and let someone else overtake. I don't wanna tell people they can't have kids, due to people scared of letting nature take it's course. I like kids way more than old people.