Brexit, for once some facts.

Woosh

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All part of unnecessary global waste. Fighting gravity by using energy is stupid.
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I suppose in the future, it will be magnetic reconnection instead of burning hydrogen.
Imagine a magnetic link between a space station and an earth station. Your capsule is propelled along the magnetic field lines.

quote:
magnetic fields in highly charged plasma environments automatically restructure themselves to converge, separate, and re-converge.
The consequences of this cyclical reaction is an impressive powerhouse of kinetic energy, thermal energy, and particle acceleration. This phenomenon is not limited to stars, but also occurs within our planet's atmosphere and Tokamak fusion reactors, such as PPPL’s National Spherical Torus Experiment.
A magnetic thruster works in ways like modern ion thrusters that are becoming increasingly common on a wide array of probes and spacecraft. These operate by charging a propellant base made up of heavy atoms like xenon, then introducing an electrical field and causing them to accelerate.
 
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Danidl

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Such things are easily said but can't be done, thanks to the traps we've built for ourselves.

To illustrate:

As a kid at the start of the 1940s, for my mother I'd nip over the road to Mr Grice at the corner shop. No chance of getting run over, traffic didn't exist, just a very rare motor vehicle so they weren't an atmospheric pollution issue either.

I'd ask for cheese, which meant cheddar, the only one, which Mr Grice had in a huge block, and he'd cut off what I indicated with a cutting wire and hand it to me in a piece of greaseproof paper. Bacon sliced on the spot and handed over in a scrap of greaseproof paper got the same treatment. Ditto luncheon meat or corned beef. If I wanted biscuits there were two or three types in one foot cube tins full of loose biscuits, so I'd take a brown paper bag, rummage for how many I wanted to pop into the bag. Potato Crisps were only one type, plain potato with a blue paper wrap of salt in each packet to add if one wished, and those packets also came in the one foot cubed tins. If a shopping bag was needed we took our own fabric shopping bag.

The vans that delivered the tins of biscuits and crisps would pick up the empty tins and throw them onto the van roof which had a retaining rail around the top, so they'd go back for refilling. The brown paper bags we'd carefully fold and reuse for various purposes, often several times over. Everything else was minimal so recycling was scarcely necessary.

Now try to translate all of that into supermarkets, often many miles away and even out of town. All that exposed cheese and meat handed over loose, everyone picking loose biscuits etc out of large tins with their bare hands, nothing back then needing plastic, which other than bakelite hadn't even been invented.
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We've made a massive rod for our own backs and to get back to where we were is probably nearly impossible with the 40% growth in the population since then.

We'd need to rebuild or reverse engineer almost everything we have, including our lives.
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Even though you have 15 years on me, my childhood experience was no different... . Last year with Covid , I decided to grow my own lettuces in plastic buckets .. had i realised just how easy it was, I should have done it a decade earlier. However the Rocket has gone feral and its growing in every nook and cranny... including the gutters..
I put in 3.6KW peak of solar in August , and even if I cannot use it, it gets used by others.
 

flecc

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Oct 25, 2006
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I was thinking of posting this shortly after the pandemic started but decided I'd be shouted down:

With the airline industry virtually shut down, we have a golden opportunity to shut it down almost completely for ever. It isn't needed and is hugely damaging to this planet.

It was only created very recently and for centuries we successfully ran the largest empire the world has ever known without it, so business can live without it. Ditto with video conferencing. With our superb modern large screen TVs we don't need to fly to see the world when it can come to us and show us more than we'd ever see in person.

And we don't need to fly in fruit, vegetables and flowers when the Victorians grew all of them long before airliners. In fact they grew wonderfully ripe melons and other exotic items that were infinitely better than the unripe trash the supermarket fob us off with.

And I totally agree with Zlatan that we should shut down all forms of space exploration since it is all utterly pointless.

By doing these we would set an example for the rest of the world to see and wonder at how successfully we would survive without any problems.
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Jesus H Christ

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All part of unnecessary global waste. Fighting gravity by using energy is stupid.
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It is very exciting though. The site of a Saturn V belching fire, noise and smoke is wonderful. I’d be disappointed if we never had any prospect of seeing a machine like that again.

The biggest impact on the environment comes from humans and shite from China. If people stopped squeezing babies out their chuffs and stopped buying shite that they don’t need from China we’d make huge inroads in tackling global warming.
 
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Danidl

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Sail Yachts burn very little fuel. Hulls extremely efficient and tiny axillary motors and should only be used in and out harbours etc.. but yes agreed.. We all need to change.
As for hypersonic... For actual space travel it hardly affects it. Twice as fast as now is still insignificant. When humanity invents a way of escaping gravity and doing so in a vehicle capable of at least 0.2C...then space exploration might be worth having another look. As it is. Forget it. Its like exploring Africa on foot,with a bad leg. Actually its far worse. We don't need to send numpties like Captain Kirk to explore... We have telescopes.
And since its pretty much accepted we can't get to anything like 0.2C.(human beings could not stand required acceleration to get to 0.2c in time available) and that even if we could... Thars still 25 years to nearest star... (probably nearer 50 accounting for time required for acceleration phase with a human aboard) but I haven't done calcs. There is no point. We ain't going anywhere. Just entertaining Bozo's limping 20 yards or so into Africa.
Bezos wants to go to moon. Sums it up. He, s a pillock. How much damage to Earth does that little desire cost? Utterly pointless.
Believe it or not but Scientific American did that calculation in 2008... To link in with Star Wars Movies. They made the conclusion that unless the acceleration was under 3G or 30 metres per sec 2 , that the person would sufficate. . .9 G is what astronauts and fighter pilots can survive for seconds... . It is surprising how fast 3 G sustained for a month provides in metres per second....
However I think they are wrong, and if the person were incubated and their lungs and other cavities filled with liquid , and a mechanical pump for oxygenation , they could survive maybe the 10G indefinitely...
 

Zlatan

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Believe it or not but Scientific American did that calculation in 2008... To link in with Star Wars Movies. They made the conclusion that unless the acceleration was under 3G or 30 metres per sec 2 , that the person would sufficate. . .9 G is what astronauts and fighter pilots can survive for seconds... . It is surprising how fast 3 G sustained for a month provides in metres per second....
However I think they are wrong, and if the person were incubated and their lungs and other cavities filled with liquid , and a mechanical pump for oxygenation , they could survive maybe the 10G indefinitely...
That's ignoring Einstens thoughts (relativistic) on it.. As body accelerates it requires ever more energy to accelerate more.. Its argued (with formula to prove?) to achieve C we would need more energy than available from our planet.
We aren't going anywhere, we haven't even scratched surface with regards space travel yet the bit we, ve scratched has been at simply colusal cost, both environmentally and financially. Time to be realistic and stop pretending we can transit from our planet. We can't and probably never will be able to.
Bozo sent Captain Kirk barely out the atmosphere. Not even a billionth of any worthwhile journey. Utterly ridiculous.
 

Zlatan

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Believe it or not but Scientific American did that calculation in 2008... To link in with Star Wars Movies. They made the conclusion that unless the acceleration was under 3G or 30 metres per sec 2 , that the person would sufficate. . .9 G is what astronauts and fighter pilots can survive for seconds... . It is surprising how fast 3 G sustained for a month provides in metres per second....
However I think they are wrong, and if the person were incubated and their lungs and other cavities filled with liquid , and a mechanical pump for oxygenation , they could survive maybe the 10G indefinitely...
And assuming we can find a, propulsion system capable of getting to a significant speed... (ie 0.2c or so?) As yet we are absolutely nowhere near that.

Putting our "progress" (for want of a better word) in perspective.
Screenshot_20211102_200017.jpgu

People who say we shouldn't stop space exploration are mistaken. We haven't actually started it yet. Just dreaming.
 
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Danidl

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That's ignoring Einstens thoughts (relativistic) on it.. As body accelerates it requires ever more energy to accelerate more.. Its argued (with formula to prove?) to achieve C we would need more energy than available from our planet.
We aren't going anywhere, we haven't even scratched surface with regards space travel yet the bit we, ve scratched has been at simply colusal cost, both environmentally and financially. Time to be realistic and stop pretending we can transit from our planet. We can't and probably never will be able to.
Bozo sent Captain Kirk barely out the atmosphere. Not even a billionth of any worthwhile journey. Utterly ridiculous.
Not at all... Relativistic effects are minor below 1/2 c . . . look I fully agree with Woosh. and to a certain extent with you.... the is little benefit in sending men up , but there is a benefit in sending machines and instruments. The antics of Virgin, and the other characters is not even science... even if there are some engineering benefits.
If at some time in the future we do so, it will probably be in a hollowed out lump of Mars fashioned into a hollow ball and with fusion reactors and multi generational families on an odyssey to the local clusters.
But just to be utterly pedantic ... making particles travel at the speed of light, does not require more power than the earth provides, ... my 5 watt Halfords bike lamp manages that fine , and back in the day, the old TV got the electrons in the tube running at about 0.9c
 

wheeler

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At school in the primary levels we began with slates, and after a couple of years we didn't have exercise books, but were issued with a single sheet of paper per lesson, "use both sides" and if the essay was too long, you needed to ask permission for a second sheet.
That resembles the toilet paper supply arrangements at my school.
 

Jesus H Christ

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People who say we shouldn't stop space exploration are mistaken. We haven't actually started it yet. Just dreaming.
Have you not heard of Sir Richard Beard? What about Jeff Amazon? Both are spacemen (so I’ve read in the Daily Mail)
 

Zlatan

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Not at all... Relativistic effects are minor below 1/2 c . . . look I fully agree with Woosh. and to a certain extent with you.... the is little benefit in sending men up , but there is a benefit in sending machines and instruments. The antics of Virgin, and the other characters is not even science... even if there are some engineering benefits.
If at some time in the future we do so, it will probably be in a hollowed out lump of Mars fashioned into a hollow ball and with fusion reactors and multi generational families on an odyssey to the local clusters.
But just to be utterly pedantic ... making particles travel at the speed of light, does not require more power than the earth provides, ... my 5 watt Halfords bike lamp manages that fine , and back in the day, the old TV got the electrons in the tube running at about 0.9c
Moving electrons and moving humans are a bit different Danidl. Go sit in the Cyclotron and see how fast you get upto..
Screenshot_20211103_081011.jpg

Our only escape from mother earth is to achieve a high percentage of C for any craft... The physics for doing so say that's impossible. Basically we are still chucking stuff out the back door to push us forward. We, ve been doing that 500 years. Height Captain Jurk attained wasn't much higher than a balloon can go. Its pointless.
Fireworks should be banned. Especially liquid hydrogen ones.
 
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Jesus H Christ

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But just to be utterly pedantic ... making particles travel at the speed of light, does not require more power than the earth provides, ... my 5 watt Halfords bike lamp manages that fine , and back in the day, the old TV got the electrons in the tube running at about 0.9c
That’s nothing. When I climb onto my shed roof and throw my kettle off it, the kettle accelerates towards the ground at 1G. When I’ve worked out how to make it accelerate at 1G in the opposite direction, my kettle will reach the speed of light in around 12 months and will have traveled 0.5 light years. So shove your Halfords light and your CRTs. I’m onto something here.

Ps Isn’t it about time Ireland developed a space programme? You lot need to get Bono up aboard one of Sir Beard’s fireworks!
 
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