78stonewobble

You're right about that. Still I'm not so worried about the bombs themselves, I'm more apprehensive that the mining and processing of the fissile materials will be handled... too cheaply... and not with the right eye to... Not letting it into nature (I don't mind radioactive waste in ie. subduction trench, I mind it in the river next to a city).

Well I didn't say it was impossible, the shuttle proved that. I said that it, sofar, has been uneconomical and impractical, due to it adding weight, complexity, manpower requirements and thus cost. I'm not adverse to ie. reusing a capsule with a 1 time use heatshield. I presume it's relatively easy to design the capsule itself for multiple uses, compaired to a reuseable heat-shield/management system, which has to withstand much higher temperatures. Rocket stages and engines on the other hand.... Large, bulky things, that are hard to land... I'd wager that it's hard and expensive to make them reuseable.

On the age old debate of "who was the greatest visionary?" and a choice between the person who invented fire or the person who invented pants... I must admit that I continiously come down on the side of pants guy... Because sitting down bare assed on a sharp rock just sucks worse than being cold. EDIT: Hmm... philantropy... Well it's great when you don't want to make any big personal sacrifice and needs to either hear your name in the news, get some adverticement or just ease your consciousness so you can feel good about yourself. Ie. I don't eat pizza, because it fills a need by me. I do it to help the poor pepperoni farmers... PS: My personal vote would go to the greek philosophers.

From where I'm sitting, reuseable is the dead end. A reuseable single- or multi-stage to orbit only makes sense, if it can be made sturdy enough to not require significant work between launches and does not inhibit the payload to weight ratio too much. There is nothing out there can do that. Yet... I hope spaceX or that british project can make something like it work, but I'm not that optimistic about them.

Two examples here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Atomic_Demolition_Munition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davy_Crockett_(nuclear_device) A little ps: I wouldn't want an orion type spacecraft taking off from earth, but it could work if built in space. However as another poster mentioned I only see this being used in an "we're all gonna die cause the sun is gonna go supernova" bad scifi scenario and unless that happens I'd rather wait for another type of propulsion.

Hmm I think space stations further away is reaching too far at the moment. If it were up to me I'd go for the following spacestation: 1: Robust, as in designed for a lifetime of atleast 50 years. 2: Expandable, as in designed to be able to carry ie. centrifugal living quarters. or orbital assembling or manufacturing facilities. 3: Be able to service sensitive scientific equipment nearby or satelites faraway with a dedicated spacecraft. 4: Far enough above the atmosphere that it will not need as regular boosts as the ISS does.

I think at one time the USA and the USSR combined had arsenals of upto 70.000 plus nuclear weapons. I don't think I've heard of one going off accidentally yet. They've lied in burning airplane fuel and been shot out of missile silos by missiles exploding, so it does seem rather rare.

It does look pretty crazy though. ... kinda like ... kicking upsidedown over a fireworks battery or something. I seem to remember that the first ideas for fusion energy production consisted of a large cavern filled with water and bombs dropped into it, turning the water into steam. As others say building something that can actually survive even nuclear bombs and then further turn that into useable energy is an engineering problem. Though offcourse, there is a difference between theoretically possible and practically feasible. However, I think we could benefit somewhat more from this in the near term. If we ever discover something on course for earth our only option so far, is still to try to deflect it with nuclear weapons (everything else needs to be built from scratch first) and they simply carry an energy density far beyond anything else. Politically? I think there needs to be an exception to the different treaties regarding nuclear weapons testing and weapons in space. Possibly a program mandated by the UN. We need to test a few on different asteroids, comets and what not. To see if it's even possible, to use nuclear weapons that way.

It's a great documentary. The footage is good quality and there were many little interesting tidbits and sidestories from the people who were there. Was also just interesting to see the veterans nowadays. The only small minus and it is a small one... Is the slightly too patriotic or selfpromoting tone. There was another series about the spacerace, I think BBC made it, which was somewhat more neutral, but had less detail.

Didn't a few russian nuclear reactors from satelites reenter earths atmosphere? As far as I remember, people weren't dying in droves, where the leftovers of those landed. The B-52 crashes? Thats harder to say. Radiological cleanup certainly isn't the safest job in the world, but with adequate protection and without the secrecy and rush during ie. the cold war, it could be done relatively safely.

To be honest tho I don't think anyone's dropped any kind of antimatter dumbbell, without a boatloat of magnetic fields affecting everything, but yeah, antimatter should, as far as I've read, behave like normal matter except for the opposite charge.

There's "the universe" simulator on steam... but it's not really a game per say.

I voted Gemini because, while Apollo's achievements are unmatchable, Gemini was relatively quick and dirty thrown together and mostly just did it's job. The vehicle itself wasn't particular usefull for any future development, but you cannot underestimate the practice it gave everyone associated with the spaceprogram.

Do black holes exist? I believe so... I thought it was more or less proven that there exists systems of stars whose movement can only be accurately describe via a massive object so dense, that according to our known theories it will gravitationally collapse, to the point where even light cannot escape and create an event horizon and thus a black hole. While I believe in objects that have can have the gravity necessary for an event horizon I don't believe in "singularities". Which is more a question of the theories breaking down, but something like fuzzballs? Sure...

There was a viewpoint mentioned about us humans thriving and extinct animals that just didn't and that therefore we have no responsibility. For either animals extinct long ago or animals recently and due to our interference. The first I agree with that there we have no responsibility, any revival should be due to scientific curiosity. To the 2nd groups I think we have some responsibility, because there is "thriving" and there is "thriving while being an ass about it". An analogy might be a big corporation bullying a small local provider. It might be a moral argument, but I stand by it. Humanity would in no way go extinct or be diminished in any measurable way if we brought back ie. the thylacine in small but viable area of tasmania.

I don't think it's possible for us to simulate our universe perfectly due to quantum indeterminacy, but that doesn't necessarily preclude us, or something else (dun dun duuuuuuh), from simulating A universe "perfectly". Interesting idea, but I don't really believe it, nor does it really matter anything.

Mostly 13th floor , but yeah matrix too...

Maybe the simulation is just really really good. I know most people think that the graphics are rather HD, but I'm near sighted so what do I know. Is the supposition that we are "brains in a jar" or is it a "universe in a jar"?

I vote YES to jurassic park, but I only want meat eating dinosaurs roaming the streets of cities I really don't like. So yes... If it were possible to bring back a somewhat long extinct animal I think we should in controlled settings to learn everything about it. If it's a recently extinct animal where we are responsible for it's extinction, then we should try to bring it back as well. Provided offcourse, as others mentioned, that the ecosystem is still in place for it. EDIT: When ever people start talking about uploading consciousness or AI's like they're right around the corner it makes me think, that it'll be 100's of years before they make a computer that can house my brain... and that sadly the 486's are outta production for other people.

Lithium ... because of the the song... And helps manic depressives... Now if only the guy making the song had tried it.

Pretty much agree with this. On the other hand... If we ever arrive at a "time", where the starting date of our calendar is THE genuine problem between people, it will be the most peacefull time ever because apparently we will have run out of other things to fight over. That would be cool.

You're probably right about that last bit, though I don't think evolution have planning per say. ... The body does have some regenerative properties (liver can grow back, fingertips, woundhealing) or backups (2 kidneys?) and the brain is sometimes flexible enough that you can regain use after some brain damage (other areas take over). It's still a jump to get a finger to regenerate beyond a joint and from scratch grow a new fingerbone and there are still plenty of people in wheelchairs with spinal damage.

In my mind here... There is certainly very very far from regrowing a fingertip (which can apparently happen naturally) and then to either regrowing a complete finger with nerves, bloodvessels and bone or the even more complex organs or artificially growing anything. If I had to personally guess on a timeline for this? Before we invent an AI and probably a good deal after we get fusion power running. So ... 50-100 years?

Right now I can't be bothered to get into that whole argument, but I'd just like to remind you that some people are ill... All these kinds of ill: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/DSM-IV_codes So even if you make a rational argument...

The demand for anything other than commercial satelites consists of a few billionaires who are willing to pay somewhat big money to go to space and some millions other people who might pay something more than airplane tickets to do the same. That demand will never pay for anything along the lines you're describing. It would be like sitting around and waiting for ordinary powercompanies to spend the tens or hundreds of billions to build a working fusion powerplant (the expensive iter and demo plants category).