[extropy-chat] MARS: Because it is hard

Robert J. Bradbury bradbury at aeiveos.com
Fri Apr 16 10:20:01 UTC 2004



On Thu, 15 Apr 2004, Dan Clemmensen wrote:

> I don't think a new class of aircraft carrier, nuclear submarine, tank,
> or fighter plane is going to help against Ossama Bin Laden.  These
> systems require 10 or more years to develop.

While the design might take 10 or more years this is a question of
how many people you have doing the designs.  As far as the building
goes, you may want to take a peek at:
  Nanoassembly of an Aircraft Carrier
  http://www.aeiveos.com/~bradbury/nanotech/Nanoassembly.html

Given the right technology assembly is not a significant problem...

> Payback in 15 year or less? No. Put the money into computer and
> nanotech. Then use nanotech to do fusion correctly. (And yes, nanotech
> is very, very relevant to fusion.)

Ok, my curiosity is raised.  Why do you think this is so?
(There is a discussion in Nanosystems about radiation and Robert
Freitas and I just had an email exchange about the hazards of
radiation to nanotech.)  So thoughts on the topic are welcome.

> Oil shale, oil sands, tidal, large-scale solar, beamed power, new
> nuclear designs. None of these has a 15-year payback. replicating or
> refining an existing design may or may not.

Dan, you may want to do some more study on this regarding nuclear
designs.  There are a lot of them out there and some have actually
been explored as prototypes.  Getting them through the government
regulation bureaucracy I agree is a nightmare but that does not
mean that we don't have better solutions than what we are now
using.  Also tidal may have some hope.  I think I read something
recently about the Scots planning on constructing a large system
to harvest this energy.

The French seem to have shown that if you focus on nuclear energy
that you can make it work.

Robert




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