Talk-Polywell.org

MSimon, is there a good source for the Russian guys online? I've read a bit about them in print newspapers, but the articles weren't in too much depth. They seemed to have their facts straight, though.

Diogenes, I think you're right that a lot of important things in Iraq were protected. However, a lot of important things were not. It's not so easy to hand-wave off the importance of government ministries. They contain the record of what's been done, when, and that's necessary. Take transportation, ...

MSimon, nice articles and links on your blog there. I don't agree with every aspect of the arguments posed in the articles, but it's not natural to always be in complete agreement - I agree with the overall interpretation. Orson Scott Card is one of my favorite sci-fi authors. Nice to see him doing ...

If wind gets cheap, it can make a useful supplementary power source. Heck, if the parts were cheap enough for it to be cost-effective, I`d probably stick a small turbine in my back yard and some solar panels on my roof and make my own power half the time. But no amount of cost reductions can overcom...

I seem to remember reading in a few places years ago that our nukes (<50 megatonnes) are not powerful enough to destroy a large, "earth-killer" asteroid composed of stuff like dense rock and iron. Even if you took up several of the largest available nukes on multiple launches, assembled them togethe...

I was thinking about MSimon's earlier comment about the American right being made up of an alliance of conservatives and libertarians, who are political cousins, and I would say that there are really three factions, rather than two: 1. Moral conservatives 2. Fiscal conservatives 3. Libertarians It s...

I was just browsing the forums, saw nothing odd, then I read this thread and it appeared... psychic spam!

No, of course they don't. There are people in every generation who either do - or would - repeat previous mistakes because they either don't know or don't understand history. Actually, the above just addresses the majority... there are also maniacs in every generation, in every part of the world. Th...

Also, if I remember the tone of his previous comments correctly, Nebel has been saying all along "we'll know in x number of months if it's worth continuing the research". His team's work on WB-7 apparently convinced them, and the Navy, that it was worth continuing the research. That led to the new c...

Bah - I want a nice gravity modification drive to create an antigrav field for my flying car...

As I understand it, it includes guys like Mark Millis, who ran NASA's "breakthrough propulsion physics" department for a few years when it existed (IIRC late 90s to early 2000s). I believe it also includes some sci-fi writers. They are more in the phase of "let's get people to think about stuff, and...

Hm, smallest quasi-hard science spaceship I've heard of is Chris Van Den Broeck's modification to Alcubierre's warp drive, where most of the mass of the spaceship is contained in a "pocket universe". I forget how to explain it properly, so I'll just plagiarize wikipedia here (not a reliable source I...

A company has received regulatory approval to start supplying California with space-based solar power in 2016: http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn18247-california-gives-green-light-to-space-solar-power.html It'll be interesting to see if this pans out. Oh, and thanks to everyone who shared their ...

Although it would have worked at many times in the past (especially World War II and early Cold War), the idea of actually lying about the technology probably wouldn't wash today. It goes too contrary to modern Freedom of Information Practices. These days a western government can generally get away ...

Canada also has large uranium reserves. Between the uranium and the Alberta oil sands, north America has enough domestic energy reserves to sustain itself for quite a long time. Extracting oil from the sands is expensive, but uranium mining seems competitive: http://www.world-nuclear.org/info/inf49....