Agreed, the waste disposal situation is important. And some of our regulations about the insurance power plants can carry coupled with NIMBY have made it difficult to build.Originally Posted by Flixy
I'm not saying it has been a great business, but the roadblocks are just begging for some political fixes that are well worth fixing.
I suppose over a long enough time frame that might be feasible, if their population growth rates don't change direction and and their population shrinks enough. They're certainly not going to pull it off per capita though unless they're being hugely more wasteful right now than I think is the case.
Last night as I lay in bed, looking up at the stars, I thought, “Where the hell is my ceiling?"
Wait, you're rejecting asteroid mining on economical reasons, but you want to spend $texas just to plant the stars and stripes on Mars? What?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Even from an economic standpoint, the Mars mission would be cheaper than orbital power plants
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
it might be cheaper but there will certainly be some use be some use from an orbital power plant, where is a trip to mars...
No, they have two different directions: Orbital power plants are there to produce energy. And that we can do way more efficiently down here.
A Mars mission would be aimed at research - comparatively to the LHC, the Hubble and other stuff.
Unless you now want to tell us that such research is useless?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Manned mission to mars would likely be useless yes in the tangible sort of way. Now it might be useful in that in order to achieve that many useful things will be developed.
Well, then you obviously think that the LHC, Hubble and all other related kinds of research are useless as well.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Sometime I don't understand how we get into a debate over nothing. This issue just seems bland. Germany's reaction is ridiculous. There's a cost-benefit analysis trade off. They knew when they built their plants that they could only withstand a category 5 earthquake. Apparently the cost increase to up it to beyond the point they have recorded is far too high, that they'd rather repair/rebuild the plant if it got destroyed. For political reasons now it may look good to hault production of nuclear power plants but other than just posturing it has no real meaning.
I think if they can build a more resilient plant great, if that turns out to be the effective way sweet. If not you have to go with what's optimal. As far as losing lives EVERYTHING you do loses lives. Every euro you spend on one things takes from another. Optimization is very crucial. We may make an indestructible plant that lasts forever, but at what cost? How much intrest are we losing on that money, what investments are we missing out on.. that could in turn save more lives, and produce more than the fact we made this power plant indestructible. Here is the role of government constantly passively killing things, including people, (indirectly), while creating new things and making others thrive. We can't be so narrow minded it's all interconnected.
Last edited by Lebanese Dragon; 05-18-2011 at 06:34 PM.
Uh, no, not really. Our abilities to engage in experimental cosmology (if you pardon the simplistic terminology) have developed rapidly and provided great fundamental research opportunities. The moon missions mostly contributed to...The science of more moon missions. Obviously having a permanent observatory base with a huge material science wing on Luna would be a boon to both fundamental and application-oriented research, but cost v. gain is pretty much up in the air. What, exactly, would we learn from the Mars expedition? That we couldn't get out of robotic probes, that is.
You have to realize that there's a fundamental divide between science for the sake of great discovery/science (searching for Higgs, Gravity Probe B, cosmic background radiation gradients), and doing stuff for the sake of achieving a goal (visiting the North or South pole, putting a Kosmonaut in orbit, an Astronaut on the Moon, someone on Mars). One furthers science in a profound way, the other is muscle-flexing behind a curtain of scientific inquiry. If anything, I'd give priority over a Mars mission to the first manned expedition outside the Solar System. (And for that we'd need dry rehearsals such as going back and forth between Terra and Luna, or even Terra and Mars, I know, I know...)
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Well, the exact nature of Outer Space science can be discussed about.
I just don't see the purpose behind lifting stuff up in orbit when we can do the exact same(!) process down here, namely generate energy. That's what I was talking about.
Mars et al I only named as examples.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
The problem is that pretty much any way we generate power, we're fucking ourselves over in some other field. So it'd make sense to get some from a less harmful source. Now personally I (in my uninformed opinion) think asteroid mining to be a better expenditure than orbital solar power death ray plants, but they're still better than burning precious, precious oil.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
Yes, but I dare say that those same solar cells in, say, the Saharah would be way cheaper, more efficient and would pose less problems.
Again, for orbital plants you first have to get the stuff up there, then care for it staying up and get the energy down by death rays. Not to mention the problem of where exactly to put them - geostationary will make them big targets for space junk and will render them inoperable half the day. A spot trailing or preceding earth's orbit would put them either way out there or will need massive constant expenditure of energy, not to mention that you'll need several reception stations down on Earth now.
That's why I object to that notion: It's even less feasible than the space elevator (which would be a prerequisite).
Didn't Starship Troopers have an orbital ring around Earth?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
The last time we had a go at annexing Sahara, it...Didn't go so well!
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
We could pay them with glass pearls!
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
The west needs to have full control over the means of generating power in the glorious future
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
After the "Arab Spring", they might want actual money.
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
We could offer them Drachma, if Greece indeed splits from the EU?
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
Related news, Switzerland's government decided today that Swiss nuclear power plants won't be replaced by nuclear power plants. They will be replaced by alternative power plants between 2019 and 2034.
http://www.nzz.ch/nachrichten/politi....10699185.html
(Till today it was planned to have a equivalent replacement by newer nuclear power plants.)
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Got to watch out for an invasion of the underground mountain people I guess.
Hope is the denial of reality
Or wild, roaming Germans hungry for nuclear power?
In the future, the Berlin wall will be a mile high, and made of steel. You too will be made to crawl, to lick children's blood from jackboots. There will be no creativity, only productivity. Instead of love there will be fear and distrust, instead of surrender there will be submission. Contact will be replaced with isolation, and joy with shame. Hope will cease to exist as a concept. The Earth will be covered with steel and concrete. There will be an electronic policeman in every head. Your children will be born in chains, live only to serve, and die in anguish and ignorance.
The universe we observe has precisely the properties we should expect if there is, at bottom, no design, no purpose, no evil, no good, nothing but blind, pitiless indifference.
He can have ours.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
Wild roaming Germans seem to have a problem crossing those mountains.
Hope is the denial of reality
There are neither mountains between Germany and Switzerland nor Germany and the US.
"Wer Visionen hat, sollte zum Arzt gehen." - Helmut Schmidt
They'd do it through Italy. Germans love a challenge.
Hope is the denial of reality
My God this is insane.
I wonder if they realize that by getting rid of nuclear power, demand for other forms of energy goes up, which means the prices of that energy will also go up. The Saudis and Russians must be laughing their behinds off.
Hope is the denial of reality
That does happen anyway, with the stock markets creating prizes which are not grounded in reality at all.
When the stars threw down their spears
And watered heaven with their tears:
Did he smile his work to see?
Did he who made the lamb make thee?
The price spikes caused by speculation and certain events are nothing compared to those caused by rising demand.
Hope is the denial of reality
Wow there's gonna be a lot of money in alternative energy and energy efficiency
"One day, we shall die. All the other days, we shall live."
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