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

[Robert J. Bradbury]

On Tue, 25 May 2004, Dan Clemmensen wrote:

> http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/NS%20Savannah

Dan, I don't see this as a good reference for nuclear
powered ships.  There are some derivitive references such
as those for the Russian ice-breakers that seem informative.

But overall I don't see a good comparison between the
engineering that has been done for nuclear powered
submarines (which clearly work relatively effectively)
and the same kind of effort put into nuclear powered
ships.  I'm not attempting to say that they are cost
effective -- it just seems as if not as much engineering
effort was put into them.

Now, with respect to nuclear powered airplanes, balloons,
mass drivers, etc. there has been some (but minimal)
investment into engineering them.  It would be nice to
see some real hard core analysis on such topics so their
merits could be discussed constructively.

Robert