I looked at nuclear winter and city firestorms a few months ago I will summarize the case I made then in the next section. there is significant additions based on my further research and email exchanges that I had with Prof Alan Robock and Brian Toon who wrote the nuclear winter research. The Steps needed …
Eric Drexler wrote an article about why he believes that nuclear fusion will not provide power. Eric is an expert in molecular nanotechnology and has deep knowledge in chemistry, physics and space technology (among other things). He is pointing out studies which indicate the cost problems even if the tokomaks of the ITER project are …
Robin Hanson at Overcoming Bias looks at nuclear winter again Robin looks at the Scientific American article that attempts to make the case that a regional nuclear war in India and Pakistan would be sufficient to trigger a nuclear winter Nuclear bombs dropped on cities and industrial areas in a fight between India and Pakistan …
There were four nuclear powered cargo ships. The NS Savannah was one of them. NOTE: A follow up article has a video about air pollution from commercial shipping and has some other statistics on the scope of the effort needed and conventional alternatives for lessening but not eliminating the pollution. Commercial shipping releases half as …
X-51 WaveriderThe Boeing X-51 WAverider will be undergoing testflights at the end of 2009 and into 2010 The tests are to try and fly hypersonic for 5 minutes instead of previous tests that lasted for a few seconds of hypersonic flight. The Waverider, a.k.a. the X-51, is designed to fly more than six times faster …
Collapsitarians are described the Technium. Former President Reagan defined a recession as when your friend lost his job and a depression as when you lost your job. Collapse is when no one has a job; in fact, there are no longer any such things as jobs to be had. Various types of doomers/collapsitarians/dystopians: * Luddites, …
The typical analysis of the nuclear Orion external pulse propulsion rocket is to use constant charges (bombs) every 1.1 seconds to launch with people inside who experience 4Gs or less. Nuclear Orion can achieve launch costs of less than $1/kg and perhaps a tiny fraction of that. This is 1000 to 20,000 times cheaper than …
Human Universal Load Carrier (HULC) is based on a design from Berkeley Bionics of California, but Lockheed says they have enhanced the basic HULC. Raytheon’s rival XOS mechwarrior suit, which at last report still trails an inconvenient power cable to the nearest wall socket. * Soldiers will be able to carry loads up to 200 …
On the Apollo missions, only 1/601 of the mass sent into space returned. An Orion mission to Mars would return 1/2.5 of its mass and a mission to Saturn would return 1/6 of its mass. In 1958 dollars, an Orion mission would have cost 11 cents per kilogram sent into space, while in 2005 dollars, …
This is an analysis from a discussion of scenarios prompted by some events in Battlestar Galactica. This is a follow up to my previous article about problems with the usage of technology in Battlestar Galactica This article will not discuss specific spoilers in Battlestar Galactica, but one could be indirectly spoiled for the last season. …
The Times UK reported claims that Alan Windle’s team at Cambridge University had created the world’s strongest ribbon. I finally tracked down specifics of this work. UPDATE: Details on hypersonic skyhooks/rotovators [orbital ropes] that would be enabled with these materials as well as lunar and Mars space elevators. Background on strength of materials, units of …
