Long term existence of surface oceans on any planet therefore requires life and so provide instant evidence of it. The reason is that sans bacteria the...
"Jonathan" linguofreak@... wrote ... In principle this could help, but it's hard to afford even a single spacecraft for these missions (which, though...
... to keep the ... That's why I'm asking about e-beam ICF. The DAEDALUS team at least appears to have thought that very high e-gun efficiencies and specific...
... The impression I get about ICF is that it has been plagued with problems with implosion smoothness and instability issues. If you were to try to power the...
... The one vs two spacecraft issue is a red herring. The desired mission only requires one spacecraft, with telescopes on/over Earth forming the other part...
... If it helps any, this particular fusion concept seems certain to never produce any sort of "fusion torch" drive. There's a big insulated superconducting...
... That one spacecraft will still be in orbit around the sun, so it's orbit forms the biggest possible baseline. The problem with going a long way away from...
... mission ... orbit forms ... Well, if the solar orbit is hyperbolic, then the baseline is however far the probe can get along that orbit before it fails....
... Good point. I thought of that, but two spacecraft double the rate at which your baseline expands, thus giving you a better baseline within the lifetime of...
... Well, as you get further out, the error of the Earth end gets smaller compared to the total parallax. It's simply a question of whether you can lob the...
Why the insistence on a magical "fusion" torch drive? What's wrong with a fission torch drive, which could potentially provide high levels of performance but...
... Fusion's hotter, therefore a cooler concept and closer to Puff the Magic Dragon levels of performance. Fusion is the power source of the future. It always...
... Traditionally, we call those things gas core nuclear thermal rockets. A dusty plasma fission fragment rocket is also arguably a torch drive. ... Well, NSWR...
... Hm. Looking at some stuff about NSWR, it appears that the primary reaction is supposed to occur outside of the vehicle; a jet of liquid flashes into steam...
http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2008/03/blindsided_by_the_future.html "Blindsided by the future" "Trying to second-guess the near future is...
Car. radio. television. first choice is radio. ... From: "James Sterrett" <James.Sterrett@...> To: <sfconsim-l@yahoogroups.com> Sent: Monday, March 03,...
... It's hard to say as a chunk of the period has no mass consumer base, but a comparison that included (e.g.) the adoption of mass-produced tableware and the...
Radio's got a 60-year penetration time according to the chart in the article. One of the other hidden functions in the chart is that prior advances make the...
... I've no idea what the conversion to mass-produced tableware would look like. I chose the two I did because they both are predicated on a mass market...
... static/2008/03/blindsided_by_the_future.html ... tinge ... Yes, I also think it's comparing apples and oranges. ... phone...? ... The "mobile phone" is a...
... From our point of view, the rate of change was slow...but is that how it would have seemed to people back then? Food and fashion have always changed...
... You're correct that our view of time & changes is telescoped. But to find changes of a similar scope of those currently underway, I think you need to be...
