[extropy-chat] balloon stations at the edge of space

[Eugen Leitl]

On Mon, May 24, 2004 at 10:21:20AM -0700, Robert J. Bradbury wrote:

> Now whether you transport the weapons up there or produce
> them in situ would certainly be topics for discussion
> but they do not seem to be impossible problems to resolve.

The Moon never had a hydrogeology history (not all hope is lost, though, as
uranium is generally lithophile), so the fissibles present are very
dispersed. There's not much water, so all (or at least, the bulk of them) 
enrichment processes have to be dry. Not impossible, but certainly tough.

It makes way more sense to produce the fissible propulsion pellets on earth.
Launches have high failure rates, though, so one has to engineer safe reentry
vehicles -- not impossible, but certainly tough to sell politically.

The greens are going to rise (I'm going to vote for them in the upcoming EU
elections, mostly for their consistent stance of software patents, but also
to help with the launch of EU-wide greens), and most of them are technophobe,
so it will be a *tough* sell. 

Much tougher than a cryogenic-hydrogen hypersonic scramjet LEO vehicle, 
for instance.
 
-- 
Eugen* Leitl <a href="http://leitl.org">leitl</a>
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