In article , Mike Coslo
writes:
N2EY wrote:
In article ,
(Steve Robeson K4CAP) writes:
Not enough money.
Sure there is. It's just a matter of priorities.
And everybody's got different ones. If the majority of Americans would
rather have better transit than put a man on Mars, whose priority should be
followed?
Sad to think that the spirit of exploration is just about dead.
I don't think it's dead at all, Mike.
And it wasn't the spirit of exploration that sent people to the moon. It was
the need to show the Rooskies that we could do better than they could.
Spirit of exploration is great but bankrolling it with trillions of taxpayer
dollars is a hard sell when people see the middle class being eroded at every
turn...
Sad to
think that a bunch of nerds sitting around in a room guiding robots are
what pass for adventurers these days.
Sadder to think that such triumphs of engineering are dismissed so easily.
I bet if you asked for volunteers to go on a manned Mars mission, 3 years long,
with all sorts of risks and discomforts, the response would be so overwhelming
that you'd need a major budget item just to deal with it. Even more so for a
lunar mission. Heck, if you asked for volunteers to go to the Moon on a
*permanent* basis (as in "we don't know when or even if there will be space on
a ship to bring you back") there'd be the same flood of volunteers.
Even if the Elser-Mathes Cup stays unclaimed....
Nobody but me seems to know what that award is...
The only difference here is that you're asking Joe Average to be ready
to
give up his/her SUV (or at least keep it garaged a lot more) and they
don't want to do it.
No, what I'm asking is for a lot more - responsibility.
That's what I said, Jim...Joe Average doesn't want to give up
his/her
SUV. To do so would be to take some responsibility for participating in
helping the enviroment.
That's cured by education. And it doesn't stop at the
SUV-as-a-commuting-vehicle - there are lots of other opportunities to
reduce consumption, resulting in eventual energy independence.
What do you think of the energy density of hydrogen and it's effect on
trying to convert to hydrogen vehicles?
That energy density is determined by how the hydrogen is stored. Normally it's
quite low, but when comressed, quite a bit of hydrogen can be stored in a small
space. Same for methane (natural gas). Trouble is, do you want to drive around
with a high pressure fuel tank and fuel lines?
One interesting solution is proposed by the same guy who gave us LCDs. His idea
(IIRC) is that the hydrogen is stored chemically in metal hydride pellets,
which give off hydrogen when warmed by engine waste heat. No high pressure
tank.
The big hydrogen question is: where do we get all the hydrogen from?
btw, did you see who the Democrats are running for VP?
I was kind of hoping for Wes Clark
Me too but he's dropped below the radar.
73 de Jim, N2EY