[ExI] scieceblind

William Flynn Wallace foozler83 at gmail.com
Fri Oct 13 17:20:31 UTC 2017


No one of any age should be insulted when someone tries to cure their
ignorance.  I don't mind being ignorant.  It's not shameful to me.  I just
enjoy not being ignorant any more, so I am thankful to all who help me.

Thanks to you and to John Clark for the table explanation.

I still don't get some of it.  Say you take a less dense object and put it
underwater.  Since it is less dense, does that mean that gravity pulls less
on it?  And why should the water exert less of an upward force than on
something more dense?  Or is it gravity?

If I were standing in a vacuum, would there be less holding me up since
there is no air to exert an upward force on my body?  If this is correct, I
am beginning to get it, eh?

bill w

On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 11:40 AM, Mike Dougherty <msd001 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Fri, Oct 13, 2017 at 12:07 PM, Dylan Distasio <interzone at gmail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> I hope I'm not insulting by linking to an explanation, but I think it
>> would help if you think about water displacement and how a less dense
>> object floats in water.  It is the same exact principle when you have a
>> less dense object (the helium balloon) compared to the air:
>>
>> http://science.howstuffworks.com/helium1.htm
>>
>>
> Have we figured out how to fill a balloon with near-enough to nothing at
> all to make a lighter than helium balloon?
>
> I know the structural requirement for a large volume of empty space is
> considerable in Earth atmosphere.  I've been curious about the use of
> aerogels with enough crush-resistance to make lighter-than air craft
> literally filled with nothing - which would be cheaper and much safer than
> the only [non-]thing with more lifting power than helium (see:
> Hindenberg).  I mean sure, worse case scenario your balloon fills with
> environmental air and crashes to the ground wouldn't exactly be a good time
> but at least you wouldn't also be exploding and burning on the way to the
> impact.
>
> I was also wondering if you could tether enough of these together to
> encircle the globe, if you could hoist objects from this floating platform
> and literally throw them into space.  Imagine a trebuchet floating on a
> ship launching rocks lifted from the ocean floor, but the ship is floating
> on the atmosphere and the rocks are aerodynamic sling bullets heading to
> space.
>
> Well, enough thought experiment for now, I have to do actual work.
>
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