At 9:00 AM 2/6/5, Robin van Spaandonk wrote: >In reply to Michael Foster's message of Sat, 05 Feb 2005 16:19:57 -0500: >Hi, >> >>This is an example of how a bunch of really quite intelligent people, >>i.e., the people on this list, can launch off into something with >>potentially disastrous results. What if the people on this list had > >Agreed.
Apparently neither of you took the time to notice the title of the thread. "Last resort" means last resort. Also, a black particle is fine. It then merely heats up until the infrared Plank radiation comes to equilibrium with the rate of energy absorbtion. A black particle thus acts to downshift the radiation. Further, the radiation direction for a black pariticle would be at least 50 percent back to space. The original problem was that of obtaining a high absorbtion cross section. However, none of this discussion is relevant any more in that the concept development has moved on to the idea of using lunar soil. There is no practical limit to the amount of such material that could be brought to earth orbit in a multi-trillion dollar project, so the limitations and principle unknowns of the original concept of using aluminum nanopowder are completely circumvented. This is now a concept that can obviously actually be made to work ... as a last resort. Regards, Horace Heffner
