calbiterol

!! Can you cite this? I, like Cpl.Luke, thought it was considered dead! I would be insanely interested to hear otherwise! There is significant evidence, however, that liquid water existed on the surface as Mars as recently as a few hundred thousand years ago. Furthermore, there are water-runoffs in the rock, which are physical evidence of water - meaning that there was water on the surface before the last geological recycling. I will cite sources for the water timeline as soon as I get around to finding the articles.

I'm sorry, swansont. You are describing what I think is exactly what I am looking for, but I have absolutely NO idea what you mean by it. In other words, explain the transitions you were talking about, and the concept of two-photon excitation, and it'd be much appreciated. Thanks much! Calbit

Go easy on me, it's been a while since chemistry, and our defuncto Physics "teacher" didn't teach much of anything involving quantum mechanics... Given the hydrogen energy level transitions: n=3 to n=4: 0.66eV n=2 to n=3: 1.89eV n=1 to n=2: 10.2eV Could one excite hydrogen gas from ground state to n=4 with two lasers; one of energy 10.2eV and one of 2.55eV, or would this violate conservation of angular momentum? I ask because I want to do an experiment involving excitation of a gas in the nonvisible spectrum leading to visible emission. Essentially, I need a (n "easily" available) gas that can be excited with two lasers in the non-visible spectrum and will emit photons in the visible spectrum during de-excitation. I also need the frequencies / eV of the lasers I would need. The problem is, I don't understand the process well enough to calculate this myself, and I seem to have misplaced my copy of the CRC Handbook to see if it has anything of help (and [rue the day] school hasn't started back up yet). Hopefully that made sense. Cheers, Calbit

I've checked pretty much everywhere. I simply cannot find it.

How is it even physically possible to misplace (read: lose) a copy of the CRC Handbook?! It's only... like... the LARGEST book known to MANKIND! Seriously! Ah! !!! Grrr... I think this is almost as funny as it is annoying!

Yes, it was, I have the book. Actually, it was supposedly a fuse in an engine block. But, in that spirit... "Oh, sure, dropping rebarred concrete on cars is a GREAT idea!!" "Heavy machinery? Just oh so stimulating, no risk involved!" "HA! Cobra bites are nothing! I'll just go to the bar and drink it off!" And, the most true and common of all: "I'm a man, I can take it!"

Satellite is different from spacecraft. And there is no arguing that this is the first of its kind - I am not familiar with this 1960 Telstar program lauch, but just the fact that this is a private-sector space station prototype is a HUGE accomplishment.

Again, if we were able to achieve such a lifespan through technology, I think technology could solve this problem. A regular delivery of stem cells might correct this (I'm spewing words here, I don't know what I'm talking about - but I would say if we could prolong life that long we could solve such problems).

[Pop] "What happened to the lights? ... Oh, it's just a popped fuse! Hey, bullets conduct electricity, right?" Gotta love the Darwin awards.

There have been recent breakthroughs in storing memories in electronic memory. Neural interfaces, that is - and in this case, they are interfaced to a storage unit for your brain. I think we'd see plenty of ways around the problems caused by immortality (or near to it) before we actually see immortality. But that's just my two cents.

And if you could live there and still continue with your life with minimal hindrance? Would you go and stay? I would. Provided I could still see friends and family, that is. And provided the health risks weren't there (bone deterioration, reduced muscle mass, etc). If the health risks were there, I'd still go, but I wouldn't live there.

FYI, the link to the original article (or the original article itself) is down. Yep. In this case, power is directly related to weight. I said something about that above, but I didn't make it clear that one of the purposes of it was to save on power draw, I just said that doing this conventionally would be a massive power drain. Meh, semantics. My bad. Forgive me if I overlooked this, but what mesh?? The original articles were just as functional in radiation protection as they were in solar sailing. They had a dual purpose. Um. Sorry, I don't think I quite understood that.

This time I got Saddam, which is funny, 'cause I think when I took it before, I got mother Theresa, and I didn't answer all that differently. Talk about polar opposites.

I'm with YT, word for word.

Rajama is mostly correct. The original concept was called Mini-Magnetospheric Plasma Propulsion, or M2P2 for short. However, the idea isn't that the plasma bubble would inflate over a large volume, but rather that it would inflate the magnetic field to a very large size. So, Atheist, what stops the magnetosphere from being made by wires or superconductors? Nothing. The plasma (IIRC) is simply to save on weight and make it practical - they were talking about simply massive magnetic fields, which would be both a power drain and an impracticality using traditional methods (even a superconductor would have to be massive for this sort of thing, which is a problem when it comes time to launch it off the ground).

HAH! You hit the nail on the head with that post, Cpl.Luke.

With the kevlar reinforcement (and other such precautions), it's speculated by some that this wouldn't just be relatively safe from space debris, but that it would be more safe than existing solid-shell space stations. I'm curious as to how the test ones hold up, but if they substantiate that claim, it would be quite an accomplishment - one that might bring about a paradigm shift in space station design. It also might effect how spacecraft are constructed - anything inflatable is vastly cheaper to launch to space than something full-size. This could also lead to a super-massive orbital construction facility for interplanetary spacecraft assembly, which if you ask me, would be the single largest step towards a practical manned mission to Mars.

As do I - and I'm quite glad to see that the test went successfully. However, I'm not sure that's quite a good analogy to use. While that's nowhere near enough to break even, it's not ridiculously small either. For example / comparison, SpaceShipOne cost $30 million or so to develop, and for those not familiar with it, the X Prize was a $10 million purse. And, in addition to this, the whole point is that Bigelow needs a passenger ship to space, and the first one to do it has a much higher chance of getting the contract, assuming the later successes aren't vastly superior in performance. So perhaps a better analogy would be winning $10 000 in a race for a car that cost you $100 000 to design and build, but then being able to give people super-fast rides to hotels and airports in it at grossly inflated prices. (Sounds kinda like a limo service on steroids, doesn't it?) Cheers.

Judging by only those words, there is absolutely no evidence that the tank has been used. And I believe Mokele is right about not reusing tanks (I'm actually almost positive he is). That doesn't say that the tank wasn't manufactured pre-Columbia, it just means it hasn't been used.

Rocket Man, not quite linearly - don't forget that the mass of the propellant is changing, which affects velocity change that is determined from momentum laws. But this only means that the craft is going to accelerate ever so slightly more as it loses fuel via exhaust. My $.02. I could be wrong, because ion engines might be different than normal rockets (and at any rate the mass expended by fuel is miniscule at best), but that's what I was led to believe. Cheers.

Haven't built one (yet) but I love all things medieval and all things ballistic. I will as soon as I get a chance haha.

I have two that are extremely blunt and rather vulgar, and I've gotten hit (but not slapped) by some friends when I said them as a joke - and yes, they knew it was a joke and that I didn't mean it. "You have 206 bones in your body; would you like another one?" "That sweater is very becoming of you. If I were on you, I'd be *censored* too!"

Think.

For that matter, an EMP / EMF pulse will kill pretty much any airplane.