N2EY wrote:

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.

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

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.

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.


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 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 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.

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.


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^)


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?

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!)

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!

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.

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.

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


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.