In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

N2EY wrote:

In article , Mike Coslo
writes:

N2EY wrote:

In article ,
(Steve Robeson K4CAP) writes:
Sad to think that the spirit of exploration is just about dead.

I don't think it's dead at all, Mike.

Maybe I'm hanging out with the wrong people, Jim.

Maybe!

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.

Yeah, we know why the pols bankrolled it. But I highly doubt that was
reason number one in the astronauts minds.

Ever read the Tom Wolfe book "The Right Stuff"? Quite illuminating about what
drove the US space program in its early days.

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...

...and while we are decrying the expense of doing things, we might
want to look over our shoulder, someone's catching up and will pass us.

Why is that a problem? Or, why can't we do it as a team?

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.

Heavens no! I love the engineering.

But you describe a highly successful and complex mission as "guiding robots",
and those who made it all possible as a "bunch of nerds".

But there is a world of difference
between the "adventurers" giving a live press conference from the studio
and adventurers being *there*. If that doesn't make a big difference to
you , I guess it is kind of a "Jeep" thing.

I think it's important to realize that the 'adventurers' are simply part of a
much larger team.

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.

Yup. Kind of tells me something.

What, exactly?

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.

Uh huh! I'd be one of 'em.

Exactly. So 'spirit of adventure' isn't dead at all.

Even if the Elser-Mathes Cup stays unclaimed....

Nobody but me seems to know what that award is...

I looked it up. Too bad the Apollo astronauts didn't have a 2 meter
HT.. 8^)

Nice try!

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?

My guess is that it would come from electrolysis at hydropower or more
likely Nuc power plants. Dunno if it would be done at the same sites
where desalinization would (*will*) be happening. (welcome to your
future, California!)

That would require a lot of generating capacity. Does it exist, or would new
plants have to be built?

And if the source of hydrogen is electricity, why not simply build electric
cars and use the electricity to charge the batteries? Or electric transit? It
is my understanding that LA's "Blue Line" is an enormous success.

Of course there will be environmental issues, such as what to do with
all the salt. Another biggie is that seawater electrolysis tends to
produce chlorine instead of oxygen:

http://www2.electrochem.org/cgi-bin/...g=204&abs=0710

Hard to argue that chlorine wouldn't be a pollutant. The anti
environmentalists might even agree on that one!

You'd have to desalinate first, then electrolyze, then compress and
regfrigerate. How efficient is all that?

and using seawater is probably pretty important, because....

Who on earth is going to want to give up their fresh water? The left
coast? Hardly likely! They are the ones that are going to be surviving
on electrolysis in the future. East coast? We're so variable here, and
population is eventually simply going to limit fresh water supplies.

What it all comes down to is living in accordance with Nature. That doesn't
mean we must all go back to an agrarian life. What it does mean is that
unsustainable growth and increases in consumption will have dire effects if not
corrected.

Expecting to have lush green lawns and big swimming pools. *and* a huge
population, in a semi-arid region isn't realistic. Etc.

And just as I don't like biofuels, I think that using a substance that
people depend on for their lives like food and water means that some
terrible choices might have to be made in the future.

The trick with biofuel is to use waste products to make it. For example,
there's a turkey processing plant in the midwest that generates about 200
*tons* of turkey waste per *day*. A TDP plant was recently built that allegedly
processes the waste into fuel. What used to be a disposal problem is now an
energy source, according to reports.

Put simply, if it isn't seawater, it isn't going to happen.

The thing to do is to work on the problem from all angles. There's no one magic
solution.

73 de Jim, N2EY