RE: Down with the government!
-Original Message- From: brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com [mailto:brin-l-boun...@mccmedia.com] On Behalf Of Doug Pensinger Sent: Monday, October 11, 2010 8:17 PM To: Killer Bs (David Brin et al) Discussion Subject: Re: Down with the government! Electronic forums are the ideal venue for brainstorming solutions for social issues, as you can take time to edit your comments. It also affords more people an opportunity to be less passive and have a voice. Moderated sites work best to stay on topic and maintain civilized discourse. As long as the moderator isn't a censor. After 20 years of changes in internet groups, I think its reasonable to see what really happens in internet forums. Yes, there will be the rare exception, but I've seen multiple postings that indicate that, when the forums are used, they are trivial and decisions are based on rumors. The birther rumor is a good example of this. Dan M. ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: StratoSolar
On Oct 11, 2010, at 5:29 PM, Alberto Monteiro wrote: Keith Henson wrote: Since the 1970s, US politicians have given lip service to National Energy Self-sufficiency. The US has failed to achieve anything, largely because nobody had a good idea of how to make it work at the same or lower cost than importing oil. This method might not work either. However, it passes first-order physics and economics analysis and seems to deserve serious further study. You (USA) might be closer to self-sufficienty than you (Keith) think. Deepen the crisis (and reduce energy expendidure) and get a little more of shale gas, and you get there. Alberto Monteiro, minion of evil oil companies I still want to see someone work out a production scale process for seafloor methane-syngas-syncrude. Or even convert from flaring off natgas in the oilfield to field-scale syncrude production. If we have a finite amount of methane available, the least we can do is stop wasting it in production. Once you get to syncrude, you have perfectly reasonable refinery feedstock. Obviously it's a stopgap solution, but it would buy time to get off of a petroleum-based energy economy before the worst aspects of post-peak- oil economy start to kick in. (I would *really* like to see petroleum production start to migrate more toward plastics feedstock, and plastics in turn migrate away from disposable packaging -- the dreaded PETE water bottle included -- and more toward durable materials engineering. There's time yet to consider that. But that's later on in the plan. Along with recovering a lot of what's already been tossed into landfills .. which can be mined, if it comes down to it.) 'How do I print, Mr. Kahn?’ ‘How do I save?’ It’s Control-S! It’s ALWAYS Control-S!!” — Kahn Souphanousinphone ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Brin-l Digest, Vol 21, Issue 9
On Tue, Oct 12, 2010 at 11:00 AM, Dan Minette danmine...@att.net wrote: To: 'Killer Bs \(David Brin et al\) Discussion' Just a quick point. Run 80,000 hours in ten years the return is $800 per kW per penny payment for a kWh. For power satellites, assuming 5kg/kW, $100 per kg lifted to GEO and about 1/3 of the cost going to transport, you get the required $1600/kW for 2 cents per kWh. Well, that seems really low, so I looked up present costs. At http://crowlspace.com/?page_id=50 there is a talk promoting space based solar. It was honest enough to admit: The launch cost from Earth to low earth orbit is the greatest impediment to this project. It is currently about $5,000 per pound to low earth orbit, and it has been about that cost for a long time. Geosynchronous orbit would raise the cost to 10,000/pound. Given the fact that, as mentioned in the talk, lift costs have been fairly constant, where does the factor of 200 improvement come from? How do you know it will happen when it hasn't? We probably will never know if this StratoSolar method works. But it's based on the rocket equation. If you want to get into LEO with a reasonable payload, say 1/6th with a rugged, reusable vehicle also 1/6th of take off, then the average exhaust velocity needs to be about the same as the 9 km/sec you need to get to orbit. You just can't do that with *any* chemical fuel. You can do it with laser heated hydrogen. The project would require $60 B of lasers. If you want the long and slightly out of date paper I wrote for the beamed energy propulsion conference, ask. David Hobby hob...@newpaltz.edu wrote: I see bigger problems with losses in the light pipe. The plan seems to be to have a flexible tube lined with reflective material to guide the solar radiation down to steam turbines or whatever on the ground. Most of the light would have to reflect off the sides many times, losing at least a few percent of its intensity at each reflection. So nothing makes it to the ground, and the light pipe melts. There may be solutions to this too, but they're going to be tricky. How many reflections are you assuming light will make as it goes down the pipe, and how glancing are they? It depends on the acceptance angle and the diameter of the light pipe. This stuff: http://www.revelationlighting.co.uk/OLF%20Spec.pdf has a .99 reflectivity for angles less than 27 deg, and almost all the loss comes from the points not being sharp. At .999, which the optical guys say is not hard, and a 30 meter diameter light pipe, the loss is about 7%. One option is to fill the pipe with argon which reduces the Rayleigh scattering. There is 4 GW coming down the pipe. At 7% loss, 280 MW. The area of a 30 meter x 20 km pipe is 2 million square meters so the loss would be 140 W per square meter. In open air it is only going to get slightly warm. Keith ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Direct participatory democracy (was down with the government)
Electronic forums are the ideal venue for brainstorming solutions for social issues, as you can take time to edit your comments. ?It also affords more people an opportunity to be less passive and have a voice. Moderated sites work best to stay on topic and maintain civilized discourse. As long as the moderator isn't a censor. Doug P After 20 years of changes in internet groups, I think its reasonable to see what really happens in internet forums. Yes, there will be the rare exception, but I've seen multiple postings that indicate that, when the forums are used, they are trivial and decisions are based on rumors. The birther rumor is a good example of this. Dan M. That has been the case and there are worse examples. What I am trying to do in Santa Monica is to have the forums on the city website with participation from city officials. The topics would be on local issues and the moderators on each topic would be would be selected by participants to prevent any attempts to censor or slant the discussion. Jon M ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Down with the government!
On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:30 PM, Jon Louis Mann net_democr...@yahoo.comwrote: Electronic forums are the ideal venue for brainstorming solutions for social issues, as you can take time to edit your comments. It also affords more people an opportunity to be less passive and have a voice. Moderated sites work best to stay on topic and maintain civilized discourse. That's a tempting idea, but this article got me thinking it is just not true. Small ChangeWhy the revolution will not be tweeted.by Malcolm Gladwellhttp://www.newyorker.com/magazine/bios/malcolm_gladwell/search?contributorName=malcolm%20gladwell Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell#ixzz12BH0HcYw Gladwell's observation is that social media is a great place for people who don't want to put much energy into their activism. Nick http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
Re: Down with the government!
On Oct 12, 2010, at 2:05 PM, Nick Arnett wrote: On Mon, Oct 11, 2010 at 1:30 PM, Jon Louis Mann net_democr...@yahoo.com wrote: Electronic forums are the ideal venue for brainstorming solutions for social issues, as you can take time to edit your comments. It also affords more people an opportunity to be less passive and have a voice. Moderated sites work best to stay on topic and maintain civilized discourse. That's a tempting idea, but this article got me thinking it is just not true. Small Change Why the revolution will not be tweeted. by Malcolm Gladwell Read more http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/10/04/101004fa_fact_gladwell#ixzz12BH0HcYw Gladwell's observation is that social media is a great place for people who don't want to put much energy into their activism. Which makes it perfect for me. Dave ___ http://box535.bluehost.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l_mccmedia.com
