Talk-Polywell.org

"The trouble is you can only destroy Mecca once." I tend to agree with MSimon. Destroy it and you have a heck of a lot of people with nothing to lose. So: 1. Their belief system might shatter, and anarchy and a power vacuum from North Africa to central Asia and Indonesia will ensue. You'll find your...

I'm pleased with stuff that's great for science fight now. Hopefully Polywell will work as currently intended, but if it doesn't, the situation is: 1. Understand plasmas better 2. Engineer a fusion reactor based on that understanding of plasmas Even if Polywell doesn't work, hopefully it will contri...

Hormones and the limbic system are one of the more difficult parts... without those, you would potentially be completely emotionless. Things like curiosity and desire to explore are as much emotions as anything... so you would have to find a way to emulate hormones in software if you didn't want to ...

Stephen King - Dark Tower/Gunslinger series Larry Niven - Ringworld series Orson Scott Card - Ender's Game Asimov - Foundation Trilogy Heinlein - Starship Troopers Walter Miller - Canticle for Liebowitz And, when I'm in the right mood, I like to reread bits and pieces of John Ringo's Posleen war ser...

Why am I not surprised? :lol: IMO copyright is necessary to give people/corporations a profit motive. Copyright carried too far stifles innovation. Being able to sue someone who makes a knock-off of your product and starts selling it for a profit = good. Someone buying your movie/software etc. and s...

Yup, sounds like more doomsaying by stick fans. Good riddance to the stick. In theory I have no problem with earth science satellites. These are not huge money-gobblers... and, hopefully they will give us solid data on temperature for once (depending on what they're set up to look for). With all the...

Also, relating to SpaceX, there's not one very good site, but if you google around a bit you find: 1. Merlin-2 was originally conceived as a heavy lift engine, a follow on from the current Merlin engine SpaceX uses. 2. Some later announcements suggested that Merlin-2 will be an improved Merlin; most...

I am a big advocate of beefed up "fair use" provisions and a heavily curtailed DCMA. Capitalism works in part by giving the consumer choice and a fair bit of control over what s/he buys and uses. Legal over-protection of corporations leads to oligopolies, not a free market. Also, I think there are m...

Shuttle derived heavy launch does support a non-stunt program if you use Zubrin's Mars Direct model. You use a Jupiter/Ares to send some modules to Mars. They auto-land around the same place on the surface, setting up a base. One includes a nuclear reactor, presumably fission at this point, but hope...

I'd say that when carbon nanotube composites can be manufactured on a large scale, we could probably just dust off the X-33 Venturestar plans and make the oddly shaped tanks out of those. The early 90s NASP plans would likely also work. But we can't be sure how quickly carbon nanotubes will mature. ...

Also, I agree that an in-space spaceship factory is the way to go. My approach would be: 1. 20 to 30 HLV launches to assemble a factory in space, and some "space tugs" to get asteroids with the materials you need and drag them back to the factory. About 2400 to 3600 tons should cover that. 2. You gr...

I think something like a theoretical SpaceX HLV will come on the scene if the private companies are successful at medium lift. However, they need a decade or two building experience, refining technology, and making profits at medium lift. We need heavy lift in the meantime. Getting NASA out of mediu...

You know, I agree with the comments about loss of the dream. What happened to the attitude of "We will put a man on the moon in ten years"? If these people had been around in 1940, they would have declared the Manhattan project impossible, the Axis lead in military build-up to be too great to catch ...

Yeah, I agree with 93143, nothing's really changed here. Ares I was a waste of resources from the start. Why replicate a capability you have with EELVs? And, of course, Falcon 9 is looking more and more likely to work. The article itself says that NASA's budget is staying at $18b+ for the time being...

If I was going to use a nuclear propulsion system in Earth's atmosphere, I'd go with a spaceplane powered by a NERVA style reactor. Significantly less fallout than ground-launching an Orion. Orion is kinda cool for deep space travel. Some derivative of VASIMR will probably be sufficient within the i...