SPACE

[zip accident]

Just Sellotape two deuterium atoms together and you've basically got helium.

FTFY

OTOH:

http://www.techinsider.io/thoth-12-mile ... aws-2015-8

[gumboot]

So it's one of these?



If they just want to promote discussion they should put a treadmill on top.

[pogo]

Yes. basically. They could obviously make it stronger but it would be many many times taller. If it is not solid, so made up of segments kept upright by internal pressure, then they would less not more rigid than a typical supertall building, which sways perceptibly despite being solid concrete and steel.

That article does mention something else which is interesting: that they would site it atop a 3 mile high mountain. Problem with that, if it helps so much with launching, why don’t NASA etc. do it today? E.g. blast the top off some mountain, level it, and launch from there.

Probably as the small advantage in fuel saved would be more than outweighed by the massive investment required to get it up there in the first place. Not just get it up there with a presumably very long lift but have everything else up there: fuel storage, the launch platform, safety and monitoring equipment. Climate gear for workers, and for some equipment. And of course there are no such mountains near Cape Canaveral.

$5bn investment? They are really having a laugh.

[gumboot]

Maybe they can try Kickstarter or Indiegogo. Again.

[gumboot]

Just skimming the patent, buoyancy and hydrogen are both mentioned but not as principal design elements.

[pogo]

[gumboot]

Ten minutes away; http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b069xqpt

Apparently they're interviewing someone from ThothX.

[gumboot]

They say wind energy of 1GW continuous could be collected; the implication being that if you built a similar structure with active compensation for wind, you'd need at least 1GW to keep it upright. Right? Well, I guess wind turbines are implicitly high-drag, so maybe it's less... not sure how to reason about that correctly.

It says something about the continuous lateral force on the tower, though.


Also it looks like they're planning on building three of them -- implied by "1000 people a day" and "a million people a year".

[pogo]

Pluto, taken 15 mins after New Horizons’ closest approach:

Spoiler: show

[gumboot]

I think I'm a little confused about parallax. What and where are the streaks?

[pogo]

There are a couple of three white streaks which are presumably stars. It was moving fast and must have taken a few seconds or even minutes to get an exposure because of low light. It kept its camera focussed on Pluto but that meant the stars moved as it was taking its photo. Description page:

http://pluto.jhuapl.edu/Multimedia/Scie ... age_id=308

[gumboot]

Yeah, that means the stars smear because of the change of orientation of the camera to keep Pluto still, but doesn't that, then, imply that the viewing angle of Pluto is also changing and would introduce other distortions? It seems unintuitive.

I guess that Pluto is still very distant, and so parallax is only tiny, but the distance covered over the exposure is still ridiculously long.

[Firefox]

Giant red moon! Tonight!

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-34352504

[pogo]

Lunar eclipse now. And a lovely clear night here for an uninterrupted view of it. About an hour to the peak when the blood moon will appear.

[tufty]

Nasa taking about water on mars right now. http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html