Lunacy from Brussels

not 250 mbar of 100% O2. :-) (actually, I think 220 would be closer to the partial pressure at the surface).

Cheers! Rich

Actually, there was a time when watermellons liked Atomic power, the AEC era. As long as we mix in enough socialism to balance their luddite tendencies they'll support Progress.

So after we irrigate Mars we dedicate the Northern Sea as a public park for the Holy Whales.

Proving that pretty pictures can make ppl forget about the engineering reality.

Atomic launch my arse !

Graham

Virtually zero isn't much help when the alternative is definitely dead.

I reckon 500ug would do the job equally well actually. Basically you'd be wiped out by a speck of dust.

Graham

Ok, why?! What exactly is on Mars that isn't here? Is there enough oil there to sustain a population of say, a billion Earthlings? Maybe you'd rather live on Venus? Crap! The pollution there is almost as bad as So. Cal! How about the Sun? Maybe you could land at night.

Sheesh! Where is it you propose to move? Uranus? (Pigbladder's beat you to it.)

Ah yes, PPE (Power Point Engineering). I've seen it done (too) many times.

What's wrong with launching an atom? It's when things get bigger...

You can't even get tree-huggers to like RTGs shot into hyperbolic "orbits". S*it, even the lowly NMR were renamed to MRI because the nuts didn't like the 'N' word. ...and you're going to launch nuclear

Designed and built there. I'm sure there were some inventions along the way - but the idea predated Los Alamos.

People have climbed Everest without O2, and the pressure is 250 mbar at the top.

top.

Such ppl have typically trained to do so or have lived all their lives at high altitude.

There's a reason for those oxygen masks in airliners.

Graham

but the idea predated Los Alamos.

Which is why I used the term 'conceived'. I wonder if there's any hard and fast definition of invention that takes full account of both the theoretical and practical aspects.

Graham

This is a hypothesis. It seems most unlikely to be a valid hypothesis.

Search on the "Flynn" effect

Over the past 100 years, the average intelligence has been rising by about 3 IQ points per decade, over a period where the population growth was unprecedentedly rapid.

--------- Bill Sloman, Nijmegen

Hello Ken,

ROFL!

But I doubt it would have helped. Most modern cars, Japanese ones anyway, sail through the smog check with huge margins and without any tune up. It's all done by a little computer in the car.

What does help is to provide some public transportation. The only reason why I always drive the 100 miles to the Bay Area is because there is no reliable means of getting there any other way. Yeah, there is Amtrak but as long as they give preference to any higher revenue freight train that happens to come through most people like me won't be able use it.

Regards, Joerg

In article , Joerg wrote: [...]

Yes, most do but lets say there are 10% that don't because they are from the 1980s or so. If you sent every one $50 that would only be about $500 per major smog reduction.

I moved to within an easy bike ride of work. About as soon as the ink dried on the new condo's mortgage, the company decided to move.

Best laid plans and all that, but don't feel too bad for me, the condo is now rented out and I bought another house.

A lot of the problem is the zoning. The zoning laws keep the houses and the workplaces far apart. It isn't what is intended but that is what happens.

In article , Rich Grise, Plainclothes Hippie wrote: [...]

The book is better than the movie, but that's no surprise.

No, the basic resourse are the far side of that pressure bulkhead. You've got to go out into a killer environment to get them. To get to them you have to travel through water. It takes a lot of energy to get anywhere in water.

The space suit is a lot lighter than a Jim Suit and you can wark further on the moon than the bottom of the ocean.

Making human habitat on the bottom of the sea makes even less sense than living in Texas.

Hello Ken,

$50 would be a mere drop in the bucket, considering that the hourly rate of a car shop is $65-$75, and we live in the country. The 80's clunkers that you see on the road would require major engine restoration to get them into compliance. Typically the owners of these don't even know from what to pay next month's rent.

That's one reason why I am self-employed ;-)

Bike rides to work are an illusion around here because of zoning laws.

Agree. I never understood zoning laws. They plain don't make any sense. In Europe you can walk to church, to the bakery, to most of the stores, to the print shop, to the post office and so on. Which is why they have less traffic and less obese people. You can also usually walk to the neighborhood pub which is why they have a lot less drunk drivers on the road.

Not that I am complaining but we can improve. One thing would be to drop at least some of that ridiculous zoning. What's the problem with having a bakery down at the corner? Right now we have to use the car for anything. Despite our rather large neighborhood the next store is over two miles away, the road to there is too dangerous to bike or walk and consequently they didn't even put a sidewalk next to it.

Regards, Joerg

You might care to consider that humans will be 'fried' close to a nuclear reactor.

Lead shielding will make a craft impractically heavy for space flight.

Graham

Appeals to the PHBs no doubt. Is this what the action of the Peter Principle has reduced us to ?

Graham