Saturday, June 8, 2013
Responce frfom Inspiration Mars
Hey, I just got email back from Inspiration Mars (see 3rd article down), and it wasn't just a form-letter response. I'll keep an eye on their website http://www.inspirationmars.org/ to see if they augment their messaging along the lines of significantly farther/longer than what has come before. I do think they need to emphasize this more.
Wednesday, June 5, 2013
On the topic of global warming, isn't it interesting that there are about 20 serious computer models of the global climate in use around the world today, and zero of them saw the plateau from 1997 to now coming? Why? Because they would have had their funding cut.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/05/31/sorry-global-warming-alarmists-the-earth-is-cooling/2/
http://www.forbes.com/sites/peterferrara/2012/05/31/sorry-global-warming-alarmists-the-earth-is-cooling/2/
Friday, May 31, 2013
Just a bit outside
In October of 2014. a comet is predicted to give Mars an extremely close shave.
Based on data thru 5/7 it will likely miss. Bummer.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C%2F2013%20A1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=1#cad
An impact has been rules out. Even the closest-possible approach misses by almost 20,000 miles.
It is always possible a new outgas jet opens tomorrow and propels the comet into Mars, but that is very unlikely.
I found one Youtube clip of the comet's passage that shows the Martian moon s being out of position for an impact. Although the outer moon, Deimos, is still within the margin of error.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6WrS8kW4P8
Hmmm, I would have thought the comet was moving in the opposite direction... ahh well, if anything interesting is going to happen, we'll hear about it long before,
Based on data thru 5/7 it will likely miss. Bummer.
http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=C%2F2013%20A1;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=1#cad
An impact has been rules out. Even the closest-possible approach misses by almost 20,000 miles.
It is always possible a new outgas jet opens tomorrow and propels the comet into Mars, but that is very unlikely.
I found one Youtube clip of the comet's passage that shows the Martian moon s being out of position for an impact. Although the outer moon, Deimos, is still within the margin of error.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O6WrS8kW4P8
Hmmm, I would have thought the comet was moving in the opposite direction... ahh well, if anything interesting is going to happen, we'll hear about it long before,
Tuesday, May 28, 2013
The next big step forward in human exploration will be the Inspiration Mars project in 2018, http://www.inspirationmars.org/
Inspiration Mars will send 2 explorers to fly by Mars and safely return to Earth. Apollo 8 to Mars!
After decades of stasis in pushing the boundaries, this will be a quantum leap over what has gone before. We will be traveling hundreds of times farther from Earth than previously(1), and we'll be outside of low-Earth orbit over 40 times longer(2). When we return we'll hit Earth's atmosphere harder than we ever have.(3)
An ambitious plan!
1: 8 of the Apollo missions sent humans about a quarter-million miles from Earth, the current record. This will do about 100 million, about 400 times more.
2: The longest Apollo mission was the last one, #17, 12 days outside LEO. This is 501 days total; over 40 times longer.
3: The planned Earth reentry will be a bit faster than any previous.
Inspiration Mars will send 2 explorers to fly by Mars and safely return to Earth. Apollo 8 to Mars!
After decades of stasis in pushing the boundaries, this will be a quantum leap over what has gone before. We will be traveling hundreds of times farther from Earth than previously(1), and we'll be outside of low-Earth orbit over 40 times longer(2). When we return we'll hit Earth's atmosphere harder than we ever have.(3)
An ambitious plan!
1: 8 of the Apollo missions sent humans about a quarter-million miles from Earth, the current record. This will do about 100 million, about 400 times more.
2: The longest Apollo mission was the last one, #17, 12 days outside LEO. This is 501 days total; over 40 times longer.
3: The planned Earth reentry will be a bit faster than any previous.
Thursday, November 15, 2012
When I was on The Other Side (yahoo 360, then Multiiply), I started a list of questions for Anthropogenic Global Warming (AGW) believers... they are mostly rhetorical, but I'd love to see answers to any of them from an AGW believer. I've posted it before, but I've made some recent changes and updates...
Humans *might* be causing AGW (though I currently think it is unlikely) but at this point it is dubious at best. AGW proponents seem to be in a politically-motivated rush to judgment that is hardly scientific. To beat a well-worn drum, AGW proponents need to address the following:
* From 1940 to 1975, why is it that human CO2 emissions were high but the Earth cooled slightly?
* Same question for 1999 to 2009.
* Why did the original IPCC report intentionally alter their data to skew results in favor of AGW? Intentionally altering data is terrible - a scientist should have a reverence toward actual data. Theories should be altered to fit data, not the other way around.
* Why is Mars warming? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html <- the opening paragraph is typically disappointing - a researcher notes that the observed varience in solar output is enough to account for almost all observed warming on both Earth and Mars - and it is labelled a 'controversial theory'.
* For the last 16 years there has been a global temperature plateau that was not forecast by any global climate model. (and yet CO2 output was high!) Why should we care what they forecast when their models have such obvious blind spots? Who cares if AGW is possible if GW isn't even happening?
* How did CO2 get to be a 'pollutant' when Mother Nature puts out about 16X what Humans do?
* How did CO2 get to be a 'pollutant' when plants need it to grow?
* We can’t predict weather a week out - why should we trust models looking out a century? Aren’t we, in the words of environmentalist Peter Huber, just multiplying the infinitesimal by the infinite to reach any desired conclusion?
* The Earth’s climate has always changed (and we don't know why) - why are we trying to fight it?
* Why is Gore intentionally ducking any scientific debate over his hypotheses, choosing instead to meet with ignorant and AGW-believing audiences?
* Why do existing climate models fail to predict the known past? What was the cause of the medieval warming period from 900-1300? Why did it start? Why did it stop?
* Humans produce about .0001% of the dominant global-warming gas, H2O, and about 6% of the CO2 released to the environment each year. Why do we think our relatively small contribution has such a large effect? Where are the data to support that?
* Mother Nature puts out about 100 billion tons of CO2 each year. What happens to it?
* Suppose we cut worldwide human CO2 production by an astounding 20% overnight, so that human CO2 production drops from 6 billion tons a year, to 5 billion tons. Add in the 100 billion tons from Nature, and the total CO2 released to the environment is now 105 billion tons per year rather than 106 billion tons. Oooh. We have NO IDEA if/how CO2 affects the global environment in the first place, so why are some smarmy politicans trying to tell us there will be a noticible difference between 105 and 106?
* Why have we decreed that RIGHT NOW is the magic point where Earth's climate is practically perfect in every way (movie quote alert)? How do we know that slightly-warmer is worse than slightly-cooler?
* Why aren't AGW activists major proponants of nuclear power?
* Why is the media largely ignoring the 31,000 scientists (of which I'm proud to be one) who signed a petition skeptical of AGW?
http://www.petitionproject.org/
* If CO2 causes global temps to increase, why hasn’t this ever happened before? Why don’t we see it in ice-core-sample records to correspond to major volcanic eruptions?
I’m not saying we should ignore the environment and pollute away - far from it. As humanity’s population and environmental impact grows it behooves us to ensure that impact is as slight as possible. We are the first species on Earth able to respond to future predictions and so one is hopeful we can avoid the binge-and-purge population lessons of the past. But climate-change alarmism should never be confused with intelligent impact management. Step 1 of intelligent impact management is establishing a causal relationship between emissions and effects. Today we don't have a clue.
What I'd love to see is 'them' drop all this attention on Global Warming and put that same degree of attention on pollution.
The Earth has been far warmer and colder than it is right now. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have risen and fallen. Shorelines have moved in & out. Clearly change is the only constant.
The one thing we know for sure about the Earth’s climate in a millennium? It will be different.
Humans *might* be causing AGW (though I currently think it is unlikely) but at this point it is dubious at best. AGW proponents seem to be in a politically-motivated rush to judgment that is hardly scientific. To beat a well-worn drum, AGW proponents need to address the following:
* From 1940 to 1975, why is it that human CO2 emissions were high but the Earth cooled slightly?
* Same question for 1999 to 2009.
* Why did the original IPCC report intentionally alter their data to skew results in favor of AGW? Intentionally altering data is terrible - a scientist should have a reverence toward actual data. Theories should be altered to fit data, not the other way around.
* Why is Mars warming? http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/02/070228-mars-warming.html <- the opening paragraph is typically disappointing - a researcher notes that the observed varience in solar output is enough to account for almost all observed warming on both Earth and Mars - and it is labelled a 'controversial theory'.
* For the last 16 years there has been a global temperature plateau that was not forecast by any global climate model. (and yet CO2 output was high!) Why should we care what they forecast when their models have such obvious blind spots? Who cares if AGW is possible if GW isn't even happening?
* How did CO2 get to be a 'pollutant' when Mother Nature puts out about 16X what Humans do?
* How did CO2 get to be a 'pollutant' when plants need it to grow?
* We can’t predict weather a week out - why should we trust models looking out a century? Aren’t we, in the words of environmentalist Peter Huber, just multiplying the infinitesimal by the infinite to reach any desired conclusion?
* The Earth’s climate has always changed (and we don't know why) - why are we trying to fight it?
* Why is Gore intentionally ducking any scientific debate over his hypotheses, choosing instead to meet with ignorant and AGW-believing audiences?
* Why do existing climate models fail to predict the known past? What was the cause of the medieval warming period from 900-1300? Why did it start? Why did it stop?
* Humans produce about .0001% of the dominant global-warming gas, H2O, and about 6% of the CO2 released to the environment each year. Why do we think our relatively small contribution has such a large effect? Where are the data to support that?
* Mother Nature puts out about 100 billion tons of CO2 each year. What happens to it?
* Suppose we cut worldwide human CO2 production by an astounding 20% overnight, so that human CO2 production drops from 6 billion tons a year, to 5 billion tons. Add in the 100 billion tons from Nature, and the total CO2 released to the environment is now 105 billion tons per year rather than 106 billion tons. Oooh. We have NO IDEA if/how CO2 affects the global environment in the first place, so why are some smarmy politicans trying to tell us there will be a noticible difference between 105 and 106?
* Why have we decreed that RIGHT NOW is the magic point where Earth's climate is practically perfect in every way (movie quote alert)? How do we know that slightly-warmer is worse than slightly-cooler?
* Why aren't AGW activists major proponants of nuclear power?
* Why is the media largely ignoring the 31,000 scientists (of which I'm proud to be one) who signed a petition skeptical of AGW?
http://www.petitionproject.org/
* If CO2 causes global temps to increase, why hasn’t this ever happened before? Why don’t we see it in ice-core-sample records to correspond to major volcanic eruptions?
I’m not saying we should ignore the environment and pollute away - far from it. As humanity’s population and environmental impact grows it behooves us to ensure that impact is as slight as possible. We are the first species on Earth able to respond to future predictions and so one is hopeful we can avoid the binge-and-purge population lessons of the past. But climate-change alarmism should never be confused with intelligent impact management. Step 1 of intelligent impact management is establishing a causal relationship between emissions and effects. Today we don't have a clue.
What I'd love to see is 'them' drop all this attention on Global Warming and put that same degree of attention on pollution.
The Earth has been far warmer and colder than it is right now. CO2 concentrations in the atmosphere have risen and fallen. Shorelines have moved in & out. Clearly change is the only constant.
The one thing we know for sure about the Earth’s climate in a millennium? It will be different.
Climate Change
Well, it is only fitting that my first new Blogger post is on my favorite blog topic, Global Warming / Climate Change. I'm a new refugee from Multipy (a blogging site that just imploded).
Man, it is a good thing we didn't pass some kind of "climate change" legislation back in '97; we'd think the current plateau in global temps (from '97 to now) was our doing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html
The Earth warms and cools (and plateaus), and we have little idea why.
There are about 20 serious climate models in use around the world today... isn't it interesting that zero of them saw this plateau coming in '97? Why? Because they would have had their funding cut.
It makes the Climate Change question from the WHpress during O's first press breifing in months even more ridiculous... and it was already way over the top.
Well, it is only fitting that my first new Blogger post is on my favorite blog topic, Global Warming / Climate Change. I'm a new refugee from Multipy (a blogging site that just imploded).
Man, it is a good thing we didn't pass some kind of "climate change" legislation back in '97; we'd think the current plateau in global temps (from '97 to now) was our doing.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2217286/Global-warming-stopped-16-years-ago-reveals-Met-Office-report-quietly-released--chart-prove-it.html
The Earth warms and cools (and plateaus), and we have little idea why.
There are about 20 serious climate models in use around the world today... isn't it interesting that zero of them saw this plateau coming in '97? Why? Because they would have had their funding cut.
It makes the Climate Change question from the WHpress during O's first press breifing in months even more ridiculous... and it was already way over the top.
Saturday, October 20, 2012
Fusion part 2
We talked about Deuterium (Hydrogen with an extra neutron) in the
last post. "He" is Helium, the 2nd element on the periodic table. It has 2
protons and usually 2 neutrons - so normal Helium is He4 because there are 4
things in its nucleus. But every once in a while we see He3 - a Helium nucleus
with 2 protons and only 1 neutron.
Helium is a rare element on Earth anyway and He3 is almost nonexistant. Which is unfortunate; Helium3 and Deuterium combine to make a very useful fusion reaction.
A Deuterium-Helium3 fusion reaction will be our next step. It may well be our last step, since the D-He3 fusion reaction produces the most energy per unit mass of *any* possible reaction. [except for matter-antimatter - but antimatter does not occur naturally around here]
The fusion reaction we'll use is:
D + He3 -> He4 + H
This is a *great* equation - the reaction produces no neutrons! In the D-T reactor discussed previously we had these pesky neutrons flying out of our containment trap since (being neutrally charged) we were unable to contain them. We made a virtue out of this fact by utilizing the speedy neutrons as best we could... but still it would be better if they weren't there at all.
If everything is charged it (hopefully!) stays in the magnetic trap. Better yet, we can extract energy from a fast He4 and H by electromagnetically braking them, converting their speed into energy with high efficiency. Back in the D-T days, we turned speed into energy with efficiencies more like 35%.
And H and He4 aren't dangerous gases, they can be vented to the environment without issue.
It's all good!
We have the key concepts in place to grok any kind of fusion... we have a Bunsen Burner to heat the reaction to 100 million degrees and we have a magnetic trap good enough to hold a small reaction chamber under high pressure so fusion can take place. We're good to go with D-He3... except for three little nagging details:
* All magnetic reaction chambers leak. If they leak too much, they can't sustain the pressure/temperature we need. Currently, the best magnetic traps in the world are just barely able to contain the D-T reaction and they are not good enough to contain D-He3. They need to be roughly 100 times better. This sounds like a big problem... but over the last 50 years we have improved our magnetic reaction chambers by a factor of over 10000. There is nothing fundamental about making them better still, we "just" need to do what we're doing, only better. It is Engineering, not Physics. So we should have it figured out in a few decades.
* A magnetic trap good enough to contain a D-He3 fusion reaction will also permit D-D fusion. Without going into details, a bit of D-D fusion will be occuring in the magnetic trap, right alongside D-He3. And unfortunately, D-D makes fast neutrons. We will probably solve this problem by ignoring it.
* He3 doesn't exist on the Earth and it is energy-inefficient to manufacture it. But the Sun very kindly planted a small amount of it on the Moon. We could go fetch it.
The Moon has enough He3 to power our civilization at current rates for about 1000 years. By then we'll be able to get it from the Mother Lode: The gas giant planets!
Helium is a rare element on Earth anyway and He3 is almost nonexistant. Which is unfortunate; Helium3 and Deuterium combine to make a very useful fusion reaction.
A Deuterium-Helium3 fusion reaction will be our next step. It may well be our last step, since the D-He3 fusion reaction produces the most energy per unit mass of *any* possible reaction. [except for matter-antimatter - but antimatter does not occur naturally around here]
The fusion reaction we'll use is:
D + He3 -> He4 + H
This is a *great* equation - the reaction produces no neutrons! In the D-T reactor discussed previously we had these pesky neutrons flying out of our containment trap since (being neutrally charged) we were unable to contain them. We made a virtue out of this fact by utilizing the speedy neutrons as best we could... but still it would be better if they weren't there at all.
If everything is charged it (hopefully!) stays in the magnetic trap. Better yet, we can extract energy from a fast He4 and H by electromagnetically braking them, converting their speed into energy with high efficiency. Back in the D-T days, we turned speed into energy with efficiencies more like 35%.
And H and He4 aren't dangerous gases, they can be vented to the environment without issue.
It's all good!
We have the key concepts in place to grok any kind of fusion... we have a Bunsen Burner to heat the reaction to 100 million degrees and we have a magnetic trap good enough to hold a small reaction chamber under high pressure so fusion can take place. We're good to go with D-He3... except for three little nagging details:
* All magnetic reaction chambers leak. If they leak too much, they can't sustain the pressure/temperature we need. Currently, the best magnetic traps in the world are just barely able to contain the D-T reaction and they are not good enough to contain D-He3. They need to be roughly 100 times better. This sounds like a big problem... but over the last 50 years we have improved our magnetic reaction chambers by a factor of over 10000. There is nothing fundamental about making them better still, we "just" need to do what we're doing, only better. It is Engineering, not Physics. So we should have it figured out in a few decades.
* A magnetic trap good enough to contain a D-He3 fusion reaction will also permit D-D fusion. Without going into details, a bit of D-D fusion will be occuring in the magnetic trap, right alongside D-He3. And unfortunately, D-D makes fast neutrons. We will probably solve this problem by ignoring it.
* He3 doesn't exist on the Earth and it is energy-inefficient to manufacture it. But the Sun very kindly planted a small amount of it on the Moon. We could go fetch it.
The Moon has enough He3 to power our civilization at current rates for about 1000 years. By then we'll be able to get it from the Mother Lode: The gas giant planets!
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