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From: Jonathan on 26 Dec 2009 20:55

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia(a)not.at.this.address> wrote in message
news:00a456ef$0$8082$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com...
> Jonathan wrote:
>> "Sylvia Else" <sylvia(a)not.at.this.address> wrote in message

> I might be inclined to go for the nuclear plant, actually. Better the devil
> you know.
>
> Sylvia.


And where will that decision take us fifty years into the future?

When will the third world get their nuclear power plants?
When will the bulk of humanity, living in rural areas, get
their electricity? Or will they warm themselves over the piles
and piles of nuclear waste we'll be sending them?

Space Energy Inc gave their pitch just before the
stock market crashed, giving us a market with very little
interest in risky investments. But what if NASA and DOE
suddenly were given mandates to make Space Solar Power
their primary reason for being?

How would the prospects for Space Energy Inc look then?
Or others like them?

Space Solar Power may not be practical yet from a merely
profit based view. But five years ago no one was even trying,
five years from now so much could change.
Launch costs are going down, oil is going up, and the third
world is turning to coal. All the while the climate continues to
warm. It only takes one bad news day involving a major
oil field to cause our fragile industrial world to come
tumbling down around us. And with the speed and completeness
of the stock market crash we all just witnessed. Only it
won't be the housing market that crashes, but the
industrialized world.

Nuclear power plants are not the answer for the future.
Neither is coal, or terrestrial solar power, or fusion.
Only a completely clean, endlessly abundant, source of
electricity which is /easily available to everyone/ can give us
the future which.....WE DESERVE.

No more first and third world. No more dictatorships.
Plentiful resources for all.

Nothing else but Space Solar Power can give us that future.
Nothing else is as close to becoming reality either.

A solution must have the current reality, and future possibilities
as equal partners. The risk vs future benefits have clearly tipped
in favor of this idea imho.

It's close enough that a convenient (political) breeze could make it
a reality, changing the future like little else.





s









From: Jonathan on 28 Dec 2009 19:34

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia(a)not.at.this.address> wrote in message
news:00efe075$0$6716$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com...
> Jonathan wrote:
>> "Sylvia Else" <sylvia(a)not.at.this.address> wrote in message
>> news:00a456ef$0$8082$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com...
>>> Jonathan wrote:
>>>> "Sylvia Else" <sylvia(a)not.at.this.address> wrote in message
>>
>>> I might be inclined to go for the nuclear plant, actually. Better the devil
>>> you know.
>>>
>>> Sylvia.
>>
>>
>> And where will that decision take us fifty years into the future?
>
> I'm not saying it's an ideal long term solution. I was just answering the
> question.



I'm more interested in what's possible, the ideal long term solutions.
Since global warming and energy needs are long term problems.
And there's a very good reason for insisting on the best possible
solution, the ideal. If one settles for what is practical, what is easy
and uncontroversial, a project which asks for little, returns just as little.
That project will not inspire, it will not cross any new boundaries, and
it will fail to become reality, due to the ho-hum goal.

But if the goal is truly loftly, is elegantly difficult from all aspects of
technology, costs and so on. While promising to change the entire
world for the better. That goal will inspire, it will find support, more
over time. That project, the difficult, costly and controversial goal, has
a far better chance of gathering the steam it needs to get started.
One started, once a system has self organized, it will (like Nature)
settle on the best practical solution possible. The problem will
be solved, once the problem solving system has begun.

The loftier the goal, the greater chance for success.

It's within the realm of possibility for NASA to 'Save the Future'.
With an agressive forward looking energy project.

It's time we stop settling for what "THEY" tell us can
and can't be done. It's time for the people to stand up
and demand what is POSSIBLE.




>
>> Launch costs are going down,
>
> Are they? Significantly? I wonder what the marginal cost of launching using
> today's heavy-lift launchers is.


If SSP would become practical, and start-ups and nations to boot would
suddenly produce a dramatic increase in the need for heavy lift, shouldn't
better prices and better launchers follow in a much larger market?


>
>>
>> Nuclear power plants are not the answer for the future.
>> Neither is coal, or terrestrial solar power, or fusion.
>
> Fusion might. If it ever works, and is economic. Terrestrial solar power could
> work if the energy storage problem is solved, and the cost of the technology
> significantly reduced (which latter problem the space solution also has to
> address).


Those are two /huge/ technological problems, each of which appear
to be insurmountable at this point. There are no such intractable
technological hurdles for Space Solar Power aside from the costs
and time needed.


>
>> No more first and third world. No more dictatorships.
>


> I don't see why abundant electricity would prevent dictatorships.


It's communication that's the death of dictatorships.
The US has been flooding various dictatorships with
laptops, smart and satellite phones for several years
now with great success. (SEE IRAN)

http://www.dipity.com/timeline/Rahesabz



> Indeed, the opposite may be true. Give people a reasonable standard of living,
> and they're not likely to be overly concerned about the style of government,
> and certainly not enough to try to overturn it with a risk to their own lives.


It's a mathematical impossibility for dictatorships to provide
stable prosperity. A population is an adaptive system, which
has evolving needs and desires. A dictatorship is a rigid control
structure which cannot possibly adapt at the same rate as the
population. So the two camps are destined to drift apart creating
more stress and conflict over time. It is inevitable for dictatorships
to go out with a bang. The source of most of human misery has
been at the hands of a govt that is acting as a dictatorship, whether
economic, military or religious dictatorships, the result is the same
.....horror.

A democracy, with it's infinitely nested compromise mechanisms
bring the people and the govt towards each other over time.
Only a democracy, of any kinds, can deliver a brighter future.

Dictatorships may be fine for limited periods of chaos, but not
for any long term or ideal solution.


>
> Sylvia.


From: Jonathan on 30 Dec 2009 22:18

"Sylvia Else" <sylvia(a)not.at.this.address> wrote in message
news:00aaada5$0$8177$c3e8da3(a)news.astraweb.com...

> On a smaller scale, a nice example is the lead-acid battery. The number made
> is huge. But they're still damned expensive for what they do.
>


The lead acid battery has to be one of the all time great inventions.
The very first rechargable battery, and no one has been able to better it
in some 150 years.



>>
>> It's communication that's the death of dictatorships.
>> The US has been flooding various dictatorships with
>> laptops, smart and satellite phones for several years
>> now with great success. (SEE IRAN)
>>
>> http://www.dipity.com/timeline/Rahesabz
>
> Well, that's communication. Power is something else.


But wherever electricity goes, so does the Internet.
Having access to the 'grid' is becoming the difference
between first and third worlds.





>
> Sylvia.


From: David Spain on 2 Jan 2010 18:56
William Mook <mokmedical(a)gmail.com> writes:
> Put them together. Its a self-propagating loop! Technology makes
> money. Money makes technology. They go together and the goal is to
> have a multiplier (x) greater than one per iteration
>
> V(n+1) = x * V(n)

As opposed to:

V(n+1) = (aV(n) + c) mod m

where:

m > 0
0 < a < m
0 <= c < m
0 <= Vo < m (and if c=0, Vo > 0)

whereby it helps if...

1. c and m are relatively prime
2. a-1 is divisible by all prime factors of m
3. a-1 is a multiple of 4 if m is a multiple of 4.

;-)

Dave

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linear_congruential_generator
From: David Spain on 2 Jan 2010 23:39
OM <om(a)sci.space.history> writes:

> ...I dunno, David. Lemme pull my old D&D Dungeon's Master Screen out
> of storage and see if the numbers add up. I think you may have made a
> mistake, basing everything on a D4 roll instead of a D6.
>
> OM
>

;-)

Dave
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