by frog
For bjchip.
Published in THE GAME by frog on Tue, December 29th, 2009
Tags: general debate
General debate, 29 December, 2009
Published: December 29, 2009
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on the trolls and those who are unable to keep on topic
Bj! Your own General Debate! (Reward for that 10 000th comment thing I guess).
Avatar. Worth seeing?
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How about a focused debate on the Transmission Gully road? As a South Islander, I wouldn’t even be able to locate Transmission Gully on a map, so a map showing the route would be useful.
How much above sea level is the existing motorway?
Trevor.
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@Trevor29 Sealevel isn’t such an issue for Transmission Gully itself – only for the approaches like the rest of Wellington’s motorways. Its position on an active faultline isn’t ideal either.
Worst of all is that it will cost considerably more than it’s worth – I am reliably informed that the Benefit /Cost ratio for the Transmission Gully route is 0.6. So taxpayers will be paying at least a billion dollars for an environmentally destructive make-work scheme for road builders. Like they say in the Lotto ads: “What would you do?”
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Thank you Bj; easily the best, knowledgeable, genuine contributer here – imho.
Fly takes the Comedic awards
And if you want sheer unmitigated mathematic logic – our Sapient!
You guys ‘rock’ as they say.
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Oh, and here’s a <a href="http://www.nzta.govt.nz/projects/transmission-gully/map-preferred-route.html" title="map of the Transmission Gully route".
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Has anyone else here had difficulty making a submission on the Local Government (Auckland Law Reform) Bill? Here is my sordid tale of my attempts to make my submission, in the hope that others here might be able to compare notes:
I prepared my submission over several days and submitted it, using the ‘Make An Online Submission’ form at http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/PB/SC/MakeSub/6/3/a/49SCAGL_SCF_00DBHOH_BILL9729_1-Local-Government-Auckland-Law-Reform.htm . Everything seemed to go fine; I uploaded the file containing my submission, filled in the form, and sent off my submission.
Then, on the 24th of December, I get an e-mail from Edward Siebert confirming that they had received my submission, and “for your records please find attached a copy of your submission”. The only problem was that the attached ‘copy of my submission’ didn’t actually include my submission – only the information from the form.
The e-mail conveniently had a reply-to address of Do-Not-Reply.eCommittee@parliament.govt.nz, so I followed the link on the right-hand side of the page for making a submission, under “E-mail contacts -> Committee Secretariat”. It doesn’t actually give me a real e-mail address, only a web-based form. I typed in a message explaining the above, and clicked “Submit”, and I got an error – “The connection to the server was reset while the page was loading”. So I tried it again, about 10 more times, and then waited an hours and tried another few times. Every time I got the error message. I tried calling the select committe office on the phone (04 817 9520) – no answer.
I tried the ‘Contact the Committee Secretariat’ form again today (29th of December), and again got the same error. There was no answer when I tried calling the office today – maybe they aren’t going to be in until after submissions close?
Is anyone else having trouble making their submission?
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You mean
map of the Transmission Gully route
Trevor.
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Indeed – link broke a few times before I gave up and requested deletion…
Anyhow, from the map you can see that Transmission Gully is well above sea level. However, I imagine that in the event of an earthquake, large quantities of debris are likely to descend from the steep valley sides onto any motorway that might be built there.
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Good heavens! Farrar’s o.d.’d on egg nog!
Calling for food lableling – Dave and Sue, up in a tree …
# David Farrar (1257) Says:
December 29th, 2009 at 10:33 am
People can make their own choices about whether or not they think palm oil deforestation is good or bad. The point I am making is consumers should have the information so as individuals they can decide. Those who think it is good, can go out and buy more. Those bad, can buy less. A free market works best with perfect information.
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If sea levels rise by 2 metres you wouldn’t be able to use the Transmission Gully motorway anyway. How would you get to it? By submarine!
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Transmission Gully comes down to Paraparaumu.. where SH1 is still somewhat vulnerable and in Linden to SH1 in a place well above sea level. At Porirua it is within about 2 meters of sea level but protected somewhat. Between Paekakiriki and Pukerua bay it is probably more like 4 meters, but not protected. With a 1 meter rise the Paekakariki bit will be closed during storms. With 2 meters the Porirua region will need serious flood control. Anything more would doom Porirua and would put the rail yards in Wellington *as well as parts of downtown Wellington* in serious strife.
The thing is that Karori and Johnsonville and Newlands and Khandallah and Brooklyn are all in the hills and a fair lot of Wellington is well above those levels and could be usable much longer. Having a route in and out of the region, and there WOULD be a route if the Transmission Gully road is built, would save a lot of effort.
Yes. Earthquakes can drop rocks onto roads. They can drop rocks onto the existing roads as well. SH1 already runs over fault lines. Hell, my DRIVEWAY probably runs over a fault line. Redundancy is a good thing and while it lasts, that’s fine.
Earthquake comes and breaks road, engineers come and fix road. That’s what we do, and we’re going to need the route and we’re going to need to lay some track next to it or punch another tunnel through to the Wairarapa. THAT would be my first choice. I don’t get a choice… but that would be first… and I acknowledge that there is an earthquake risk there as well. Noplace there isn’t.
respectfully
BJ
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No notion about Avatar. The basic premise of a moon large enough to be habitable is real enough to be useful. The rest ?
I will not get to the movies anytime soon.
respectfully
BJ
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Well, what a difference a cup of coffee makes
I blundered badly along the way here. Gave a wrong value for the area required to shadow enough of the planet to make a 1% difference in solar insolation. Please accept my apologies. I will have a better answer in a short while.
( Goes off muttering to himself ).
respectfully
BJ
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Bj – that incorrect value really threw me – I’ve been fretting all afternoon over it.
Off to see Avatar @5:00pm.
Will provide critique.
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OK… this time with the coffee.
The answer is not good either.
Total Insolation on a 1 square meter patch at the earth’s radius from the sun. 1350 Watts/square meter.
Total difference in insolation in a typical 11 year solar cycle. 1 Watt/square meter.
The response to this (using Hansen’s numbers) is 0.2 degrees.
Mistake was pure stupid. No excuse for it, and it makes a difference.
Area of the earth as a flat disk perpendicular to the sun. 63758005 square km. 1 percent is 637,580 square km.
NEVER think without caffeine!
That makes 1% 637580051346 square meters. For those who want to work out the net solar insolation at the surface (any solar panel manufacturer will give you back about about 900 Watts/square meter which makes solar look really good. Net over the surface of the planet allowing for albedo and re-radiation is about 235 W/Meter Squared. Sidetracking myself…
OK… what we need now is how much area to cover to reduce temperature by 4 degrees total. Roughly 5 decades worth of uncontrolled and unmitigated CO2 release. That means 20 times the usual solar minimum to roughly drop temperatures by 4 degrees. Since we will be at plus 3 when/if we are forced to do this, the overage is regarded as a necessary component if we are to be able to stick things back to something like normal. This is not looking good.
1/1350 = 0.00074 – that’s a solar min-max variation. we need 20 times that. We need 0.0148 of the insolation to be reflected…. which means 943,618 square kilometers. So so so… can it be done even so ? Yes. Easily? No. Now it IS a massive project and far less certain of completion.
It can only be done with Cheap Access to Space. It cannot be done else. It is a long enough project to contemplate and we are stupid to make it necessary but that we ARE that stupid is certain and there is nothing for it but to deal with it.
Moreover, we will HAVE to use the L1 point for the bulk of the effect (and we will likely use it anyway for its convenience in terms of transfer mechanics).
I am grateful to Sofistek for compelling me to go ahead and actually do the calculations. Not pleased with what I find but grateful to be disabused of my single point of optimism. Now I can be a complete pessimist about the future.
I apologize to all for posting with half attention.
Thanks
respectfully
BJ
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For those who want a more substantive measure of comparison, it is an area about the size of egypt that needs to be shaded.
L1 is about 1.5 million kilometers from earth.
We could create a fairly significant Satellite Solar Power system in the process. Cheaper if it is done at the same time.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ,
Any thoughts on this ?
I realise it is one of those dreaded active systems often hated by engineers, but it is intriguing. Though I suppose that with a shift in paradigms to production of delicate components in space rather than on the ground, as you suggest, its benefit over an electromagnetic rail-gun would be mitigated.
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Avatar – Cheap Access to Space! (It cost me $11 to get in).
The wings of the flying beasts are rendered marvelously.
Jungle plants – excellent. Too few insects, ‘birds’ etc.
If you suffer from vertigo, you’ll be squirming til you get used to the heights, leaps, drops and edges.
ApachesAliens/natives well formed, blue, lithe.Americans, Marines, jarheadsEarthlings/miners boring.They fight.
Gaia pitches in.
Apaches win.
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http://www.stuff.co.nz/business/industries/infrastructure/3198182/NZ-power-supply-threatened-again
If National were truely to believe in the ‘power of market’ forces to solve problems they would…
Introduce a feed in tariff, to enable Mom and Pops to sell directily into the Grid and recieve cash rather and credits that can’t be cashed.
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Sapient
I prefer Bolonkin’s version. A 500 Km long gun and 6 g’s, with problems that are relatively benign and understandable. I would hate to have a loop like Lofstrom’s running at that speed. Murphy loves that sort of stuff.
respectfully
BJ
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Er – bj? I’m not sure you have the figures right yet. http://www.answers.com/topic/earth gives the surface area of the earth as 509,600,000 sq km. The area of a sphere is 4.Pi.r^^2. The area of a circle is Pi.r^^2 so the cross sectional area of a sphere is 1/4 of its surface area. That would make it 127,400,000 sq km for the earth.
This makes the task of making orbiting sun shades even bigger, but still worth attempting. However we need to consider other measures on earth as well, such as high-altitude balloons.
Trevor.
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Trevor There are days when I don’t do anything right. Factor of 2. More apologies. More red-faced embarrassment. I take 2-3 hours (with the interruptions) to do a 10 minute calculation and a radius becomes a diameter and there you go.
Shocking… I know. However, I don’t defend it, I make errors and it upsets me no end to do so.
respectfully
BJ
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Don’t worry bj! I make lots of errors too. I tell my colleagues that the reason I am good at picking up their errors is years of practice picking up my own! Which is why we check each other’s work.
It doesn’t stop the embarrassment, but it does reduce the cost.
And trying to avoid mistakes when you get interrupted several times during a calculation is almost impossible.
More importantly, I don’t think it is necessary or practical to put up some sun shades that are set up to only shade the poles. By that stage, we will need all the shading we can get and won’t care too much whether any shading we can get is at the poles or the equator. If we launch the sun shades into a near polar orbit, then they will spend a fair bit of the time near the poles anyway.
Trevor.
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Saw Avatar yesterday too greenfly @ imax, no less.
Awesome!
Forgot ‘The Force’, you did.
Nazgul were there too.And the Riders of Rohan
I’m sure I saw Arnie strolling around in the wings. Wasn’t that Rodney I saw Hiding behind a tree?
Personally ‘the Baddies’ were a little ‘cardboard cut-out’ for me. I love a good baddie and they were too easy to hate!
I don’t know what the fighting was about, surely all they needed was a good treaty?
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samiam – yes! It was an eclectic collection of all we’ve come to love and loathe thus far in our cinematic/spiritual development.
I wondered why the blueones hadn’t sent a herd of anvil-headed beasts stampeding through the marines’ camp from day one, but there you go, lessons of history, ignored.
The nostrils of the ‘horses’ worried me – imagine the dust and hay-fragments that’d get stuck in those babies! And the constant snorting needed to clear them!
Clever the way they managed to get a screen full of naked people past the ratings guy, simply by painting them blue.
I couldn’t help but wonder though, what would have happened if the blue girl had tried to wake our Avatar hero during the night, for whatever, given that he wasn’t ‘there’. Would he soon gain the reputation of being an insensitive log? What if she needed to talk about the day’s events, or needed her big feet massaged. Snore.
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Greenfly,
The cinemas here only do 2-d (excluding time of course). Should Avatar be viewed in 2-d or shall I wait for a trip to Welly?
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Sapient – I just squinted.
I’ve read that, while it is better in 3-d, the difference is slight. I’d prefer 3-d though, because it’s the visual experience that makes it worthwhile as the story alone is ‘not powerful’. Don’t mind heights, do you? 3-d would give you a number of heart-stopping moments if you didn’t enjoy that cliff-edge, plunging, base-jumping kind of experience. Bet the colours are wonderful too. I’ve no problem with blue and there’s plenty of that.
Of course, if you did go to Welly, you’d be able to see the unicycle events and give my eldest son a hearty cheer (he’s your age, ah ha!)
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3D for sure!
Actually, now I think about it, some of those blue-greens did look remarkably like Nick Smith.
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I did not even know there was unicycle events.
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Dr. Smith on Pandora, samiam? I’d heard he was ‘Lost in Space’.
Sapient – there’s 10 days of it and they’ve done two or three already.
There are 300 of them, all searching for that missing wheel…
There’s parkour too, for the free running traceurs.
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Greens on track to win first GE seat in UK yeahhhhhhhh
http://politicalbetting.com/index.php/archives/2009/12/29/what-does-the-brighton-poll-say-about-tactical-voting/
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greenfly said: I’d heard he was ‘Lost in Space’.
Zachary and Nick both, greenfly. Brothers in arms.
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Off to Waimarama to watch the sun rise…. Yes, yes and Marama too.
See you guys next decade.
Enjoy!
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NATIONAL SABOTAGING THE DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
A1Kmm Yes I to have had trouble puting in an on-line submission to parliament. It was on a different issue and I made a complaint on this site on the 24th It was on the last evening.
I think that this is absolutely rotten I think that we could get together and make a complaint to the Speaker of the house http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/MPPs/Contact/
This is one of Nationals dirty tactics in sabotaging the democratic process!!!
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Samiam I would like to see avatar but you have put me off I too like my badies to at least be credible which is why I like Earnest Hemmingway his villians are not just wicked but are real people with real problems who make all the wrong decisions. Read ‘to Have and to Have Not’.
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(you asked about avatar..?..)
just to put this review into some context…i walked out of the first star wars..(and have avoided the rest..)
i am bored rigid by fantasy-tales..
(with the exception of the gormenghast trilogy by mervyn peake..which towers over the overwrought cross-country hike that is that rings thing..)
and i have managed to avoid ‘titanic’..
so..my expectations weren’t that high..when the boy and i hived off to see avatar..
and that is just as well..’cos the plot is a somewhat cliched good-guys/bad guys morality eco-tale..
..nuance/subtlety is nowhere to be seen..
(and i won’t give further plot details..there is little enough for you to discover..)
and ‘discover’ you should..
my recommendation is to put the brain into neutral…forget about the/any plot..and just enjoy the ride..
and it really is a ‘ride’..
and the overwhelming success of this film..is that you submerge/believe in the alien world/characters cameron/weta have created..
and tho’ plot-turns/ending..as they are..are all telegraphed very early on..it still holds you there..
(nz’ers/visitors who have experienced the prehistoric forests in the catlins (sth island)..will find this alien world less alien than those who have not..
..and tho’ loaded with exotica..there is a certain familiarity to this alien world..for those fortunate enough to have catlined..)
and the characters..?
oh..!..y’know..!..the usual..!..marine vet with attitude..grumpy lady scientist with heart of gold..betrothed princess who falls for vet with attitude..venal capitalist..etc etc..
and my pick of the character de excellence from this flick..is the carpet-chewing military-dude..
..who is channeling the robert duvall character from apocolypse now..(one of the films avatar is a homage to..)
this is not a ‘funny’ film..but i did burst out laughing when said carpet-chewer burst into flame..but still charged in/on..
..( it had so many echoes of the armless-knight from monty python..)
it’s a hundred and sixty minutes long..but it dosen’t drag..cameron/weta just keep throwing all this stuff at you..
..and you are pummelled into submission/continued-attention..
at the end of it..i turned to the boy..and said ‘wow..!’..
..and had little else to say..
and despite the lumpen/cliched plot cardboard-characters i would recommend that just about everyone..of all ages..go and see it..
(my second out-loud-laugh of the exercise..
..was the stunned-mullet expressions on the faces of the three old ladies who were sitting two rows back from us..
this was obviously a movie experience that was new for them..and one that had obviously ‘moved’ them..)
http://whoar.co.nz/2009/commentwhoaravatara-review/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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Mouse – the feed-in tariff idea won’t help the problem being highlighted by the Electricity Commission. This is that we may be facing a shortage of generation capacity to meet peak demand, which tends to be on winter evenings on cold, still nights. Neither solar panels or wind generation would be producing at such times. In the foreseeable future, we might have electric cars feeding power back into the grid from their batteries during such peaks, but this isn’t going to happen significantly over the next few years.
This problem is mainly a North Island problem as the South Island has enough peak hydro capacity, but the HVDC cable doesn’t have enough capacity (yet).
Trevor.
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ILLEGAL CARBON TAX
The French Constitutional Court has just thrown out their government’s new carbon tax, on the grounds that it has too many exemptions, breaches the principle of equality in taxation, and is contrary to the goal of fighting climate change:
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/environment/article6971632.ece
I believe the same applies to our National led Government’s changes to the Emissions Trading Scheme. Any legal experts out there who might consider taking this one on?
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Thanks to all the posters who gave their thoughts on Avatar.
I’ll be going as soon as I can co-ordinate two holidaying teenagers to join me; had mates who worked on the digi, so it’s nice to read all the +ve comments about that.
Phil, roflmao, that was the funniest post you’ve done all year.
BJ-
my shonky high-school physics was just keeping up with your calc’s, and I am not the slightest bit surprised that with interruptions in the home environment, over a holiday period, you made a small error of magnitude.
It’s a sobering read, but fills in a gap in what I already have been saying about our long-term prognosis as a species, if some serious attempt at levelling the playing field doesn’t happen soon.
(Which requires the political will, the investment by corporations into technology which is not about a huge payoff in profits, etc…)
Yes, the earth will survive, it’s whether ambiant life survives that we should be taking a responsible attitude to, in our discussions of what to do next.
Have a safe and Happy New Year celebration, everybody.
Let’s relax a bit, then come back in ’10 to start thinking about soome serious, workable solutions to the problems that face humanity.
After all, this is the only lifespan we get on this planet; I’m not betting my chances on another go-round in reincarnation, either!
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Herbert H Koepf
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1) allow cows to graze, 2) reduce or eliminate concentrates and fodders like maize silage and 3) if organic farmers want to produce ‘healthy milk’, the simplest solution would be to reduce animal body size and embrace spring calving.
Ton Bars and Daniel Kusche
Department for biological agriculture, Kassel University.
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Until the votors accept that these issues need to be addressed, they are not going to vote for parties whose main policy planks are dealing with these issues.
Trevor.
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Solar shades aren’t a solution that “works” anyway. Yes, you can drop the average temperature, but CO2 puts most of the change at the poles. You might refreeze Greenland and save the Antarctic sheets, but only by making the tropical parts of the world much colder, as well as cutting back on ever-valuable sunlight.
The result is still a dramatic climate change, just to a different final state. Ocean acidification completely untouched. We’ve got to stop burning fossil fuels: once there’s enough energy from other sources available, we can start trying to strip the problem back out of the atmosphere (grind up a good deal of rock and spread it around under the solar farms, eh).
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tussock,
Add to the problem by having the farmers of Greenland not at all being keen on refreezing their environment.
After all they have just recently been able to start replacing reindeer herds with bovine ones and be much more productive.
Why does anyone think they want to be refrozen?
And that is a real dilemma for the operators of a solar shield. Who gains and who loses? Who decides? Will the Greenland farmers ask for compensation?
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If it is not done, we won’t have a civilization, nor will we have most of the major cities on the planet, as most are within spitting distance of an ocean.
If it IS done Tussock, Gerrit… it will be because we did NOT do what we have not yet been able to do and the poor opinion that a few farmers in Greenland might have of the notion will be of little interest to the citizens of the former islands of the South Pacific. If it IS done it will be because people finally realize, albeit a lot too late, that the climate science has been right all along and the Greens have been right all along and that National et.al. have been lying to them all along.
Which ought to goddammit get us elected so we CAN change the CO2 loading. We aren’t doing it from where we are on the sidelines.
Why doesn’t anyone seem to “GET” that this is a temporary solution, a stop-gap, a climate HACK that makes things livable until we can get control of the mess we’ve made? That it is going to happen only if and only because we fail to do what we HAVE to do (as seems likely from our species history).
Happy New Year all.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ,
You have a solution but no agreement on how to use it.
How will the shield be controlled. Dont the farmers in Greenland have a say? Are the bedoun in the desert allowed a voice for greater coverage?
Are you suggesting that an international body “contols” the solar shield?
You are arguing from a technical, engineering and fully feasable point of view WITHOUT taking into consideration the human inability to work for the common good.
Copenhagen should be reason enough to doubt that a solar shield will be built. No one is going to agrue to work together to build it.
And the reason is the same as to why Copenhagen fell over. It was all about central control of the individual by the UN. The Chinese didnt buy it at Copenhagen, someone else wont buy into a solar shield.
The likelyhood of a solar shield being build is as likely as a global agreement on population control.
Do the Greens have a policy on population control? Surely the number one contributor to climate change and environmental concern.
Some thinking for the new year for all.
If an environment changes, does the newly created environment become paramount over the old?
If we dam a river and sink the old environment (wild river), is the new
environment (placid lake) worthy of environmental protection or should the original wild river be held up as the ultimate environment to be restored.
Something for the acadamics to get their heads around.
Have a prosperous new year BJ.
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read your local rag yet..?
going through news/information withdrawals..?
relief is at hand..!
‘cos whoar never sleeps/holidays..
twenty-five freshly minted stories/links today..
..and every day..
eh..?
http://whoar.co.nz/
phil(whoar.co.nz)
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2010!
Rushed out onto the street to see the hovercars!
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“The Greens and the last Labour government decided to fund a “Buy Kiwi Campaign.” They spent $10.2 million from our taxes, most of it ($8.4m) with an advertising agency.
The Ministry of Economic Development has now commissioned a review from consultants MartinJenkins and Associates. The report is available from the Ministry’s website: http://tinyurl.com/ydnorqw.
The report concluded “there was no convincing evidence of overall impact on consumer spending,” “there was a lack of conventional policy analysis” and “there was no assessment of the likely impact or of the costs and benefits”. In other words, Green and Labour politicians spent our money like confetti, spraying it against the Wellington wind – and achieved nothing of any use. . . The only beneficiaries were some residents of Grey Lynn [and their architects] , who lined their pockets with the advertising extravaganza.”
No effective measurement. No strategy. No clue.
What a shameful waste of taxpayers money.
Not that you give a toss about that….
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Talk about yer gardening …
http://www.radionz.co.nz/audio/national/summernoelle/2010/01/01/organic_gardening_for_the_new_year
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Gerrit
The problems you see aren’t the problems that stopped Copenhagen from working.
Agreement has NOT reached the centers of power in the world. The halls of Goldman Sachs and the BIS aren’t worried about it. We can tell because their official mouthpiece, the Wall Street Journal, prints lies about it all the time.
Nor is it likely that we will go back to “as it was in 1000 years BC” or whatever. We’ve well and truly stuffed up the system already and it will not be the same whatever we do. The only question is how fast and how far things will get out of our control.
As for the difficulty/effort of building it… if there is CATS available and there are already people working in space, any nation with those things would be capable, without anyone else’s cooperation or permissions. If those things are not present, no amount of global cooperation will suffice. In other words, agreement is not a real precondition,
respectfully
BJ
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bj – could they be shot down?
Plenty of opportunity for threat and counter-threat there.
How secure would such a system be? As you know, there are those who would cut off their nose to spite their face.
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Greenfly
That’s sort of like throwing rocks at someone who is at the top of a hill. Not usually a productive way to accomplish anything.. and rocks coming down at you don’t have to be nuclear at all, they’ll just LOOK like it. The ground launch systems would be more vulnerable, but I doubt that any of the major players would be inclined to prevent a last-chance correction from being used. At the point this gets pulled into play the situation is already going to be dire.
The real issue is to have CATS before it is needed. If you get it you can build Satellite Power Systems to replace coal plants and cut back the need for a second Egypt. All that’s needed is a decent mass driver.
respectfully
BJ
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bj- I’ll check out back and see what I’ve got.
The ‘second Egypt’ you mention – Australia?
Well on the way and they have the camels already.
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BJ,
So a 500 km mass driver could be used to launch SPS’ without damaging the components? How intricate do components need to be to not withstand the acceleration?
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510 km gives you a fairly gentle 6 G ride. That is not a lot really. Half the length and it is 12 G, Half again and it is 18. Humans CAN take 18 G. Not for long, and not happily at all, but they CAN take it… and we’re at 125 km for that. A tractable length. Even in NZ not too very difficult to imagine building it. One wants an inclined track ( going up the side of some mountain ) so as to punch out of the atmosphere more quickly (avoiding atmospheric drag and heating) and voila, we have cheap access to space. Getting down again is the chief worry if all you have is a mass driver for a launcher.
As for the components. We can package them to take more acceleration than that. Particularly if mass itself isn’t so much of an object, which is the point of having the mass driver. Assembly of stuff once in orbit, is tricky for people who don’t have experience with it, but we COULD do it.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ,
Would a loop to decrease the needed length be feasible or would there be too much loss at higher velocities? How long would one with a decent loop need to be?
If through-hole was used would satellites be able to be launched essentially ready to deploy?
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Favourite phrase “We’ve been led to believe”.
What a relief to see that those dear Blackwater boys have been absolved of the awful charges they were facing!
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Er – bj. More coffee needed. If you halve the length of a launch track, you double the required acceleration. Therefore to go from 250km at 12g to 125km needs 24g rather than 18g. Ouch!
Sapient – loops make things worse, as it requires more g forces to force an object to follow the curve of the loop. The track could start out level and then curve up slowly without increasing the g forces but the total length and time under acceleration would be higher.
Incidentally, it is not possible to put something into orbit just with a mass driver without some outside intervention. While it is possible to raise an object to orbital height and give it most of the required velocity using a mass driver, when that object gets to orbital height it will be moving in the wrong direction or at the wrong velocity (or both) and won’t stay in orbit. A small rocket burn or similar is required to correct this situation and that needs to take place when the object has reached its orbital position. However most of this can take place at very low thrust levels. (There is a need for a burn in the first half orbit to prevent the object falling back to earth or escaping entirely – depending on the launch velocity.)
Trevor.
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Is the Pope a Catholic?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/religion/6922080/Pope-Benedict-XVI-we-must-all-go-green-to-save-the-planet.html
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Dr Suess on the Telly my boy in my lap
I put him to sleep and awoke from a nap.
I was doing it right,.. in the dark of the night
Now to do this, oh my word, what a fright
I had earlier gotten the length, not half bad
Was doubling that, what possessed me to add?
here is a better explanation for those
Who would curve a track sending the blood to our toes.
That’s enough guys… I already accidentally deleted THIS post once as well.
Have to do the Garage thing.
Good Spot Trevor. The 510 is from when I was awake.
Y’all keep watching my back.
respectfully
BJ
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BJ,
Your link is not a link.
I get it anyhow.
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This is not that link either.
http://www.chinadaily.com.cn/opinion/2009-12/31/content_9249981.htm
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This is the stupid link. Direct into my brain I think,. I seem to be having a very bad vacation.
http://www.google.co.nz/url?sa=t&source=web&ct=res&cd=4&ved=0CBsQFjAD&url=http%3A%2F%2Fcsel.eng.ohio-state.edu%2Fvoshell%2Fgforce.pdf&rct=j&q=Human+survivable+acceleration&ei=W48-S_brB4HYsQPiurm_BA&usg=AFQjCNFG0LU5PtIoG7kpa5t_Jq4DYTx1eA&sig2=0i0GkQJ4ClWpqBhzJO0Aeg
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Stiglitz probably is the proper medicine for both BB and BP however.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Stiglitz#Contributions_to_economics
Me… I probably need to stop being on vacation.
BJ
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THis one is far more clean than that big messy thing:
http://csel.eng.ohio-state.edu/voshell/gforce.pdf
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Man – the sonic boom from a mass driver on the earth would be something else. The launch velocity is something like mach 25! Building it on the moon might be easier – no sonic boom there!
bj – I’ll watch your back if you can watch mine.
Trevor.
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Monbiot:
“So what happens now? That depends on the other non-player at Copenhagen: you. ”
http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2009/12/21/requiem-for-a-crowded-planet/
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For cheap access to space, I prefer a reusable air launched single stage to orbit vehicle, possibly with reusable boosters for extra payload capability. (By air-launched, I mean launched off a big cargo plane at altitude, and travelling at a bit under the speed of sound.)
Trevor.
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We are being talked about – in a not particularly flattering way!
http://lifeandpolitics.wordpress.com/2009/12/20/greens-environmentalist-only-message-banishes-them-to-obscurity/
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Read this, then eat it afterwards.
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sunday-star-times/news/3203438/FBI-role-in-Big-Brothers-sharper-eyes-ears
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Irrelevance is the main problem. Whilst I disagree with some of that analysis, you need to think hard about the “back pocket” factor.
People aren’t going to give stuff up. They want more, not less. Your message is out-of-sync with that desire.
The commentor “John” nails another issue:
” I think the Green party has a real attitude problem. It’s a sort of smug, we know best and if you don’t buy into the full religion you’re not really green kind of attitude. I guess I could liken it to having a conversation with a first year politics, philosophy or religious studies student. They’ve been to a few lectures and suddenly they only see the world in absolutes.And unfortunately for the Green’s this holier than thou attitude filters through into the mainstream, and is probably why, although the public probably wouldn’t be able to put their finger on it, they are turned off by the Greens.”
Key is the polar opposite of holier than thou. And look at his ratings…
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People want more stuff? STUFF?
Of course they do and they shall have it, today, tomorrow and forever!
(Til we’re stuffed!)
What political party in its right mind would ignore the human need for more stuff ?
That’s a road to irrelevence, eh Blue. With John Key, all New Zealanders are assured that there’ll always be stuff for them to have, and that’s why he’s so popular. He’s got the right stuff!
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Kind of ironic, isn’t it, that they criticise us for having an “environment only” approach and ignoring social issues, when the familiar refrain from a number of the regular frogpond denizens is that they would support us if only we’d drop our leftie social justice agenda?
Some commentators also continue to talk, mystifyingly, of a change in political strategy from us.
Meanwhile we just continue with the same charter principles, values and policies. We worked hard in 2009 to be clearly articulating an alternative approach that the Green Party would take, with, for example our two costed and detailed Green New Deal packages of measures with both environmental and economic gains, our ‘Getting There’ package demonstrating how to easily and relatively cheaply meet a significant carbon emissions reduction goal by 2020, our support for banking and monetary policy reform through the vehicle of the banking inquiry, our support for genuinely renewable methods of electricity generation like the Stockton Hydro scheme, our support for more sustainable farming practices via the ‘Good Farms’ project etc etc. Most of which had patchy (at best) pickup from mainstream media.
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‘frogpond denizens’ – they’d be pike? Better still, carp (as they do).
It seems that our ‘advisors’ are wont to advise us to do whatever it is we are not doing, then switch to something else when it looks as though we might.
Steady as she goes!
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I think the fundamental problem is that the Green Party are pushing solutions to problems that most people simply do not accept as problems, or do not consider them to be serious problems. The Green Party needs to push education about these issues so that people realise the seriousness of the issues and then they will consider these solutions.
Trevor.
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Greenfly,
Re the SIS’s ability to monitor all your online activity. Here are some practical things you can do to hamper them intercepting and reading your Email. Unfortunately it will involve quite a bit of hassle to set up.
1) Encrypt and sign your Email using PGP or GnuPG ( http://www.gnupg.org/ ). PGP and GnuPG can be used with most Email clients. Older versions of PGP and all versions of GnuPG can be obtained for free.
You have the option of simply signing your Emails, which means anyone can still read them as plain text, but this will prevent people from tampering with the contents of the mail (if they do modify your Email, the signature will no longer match the contents). Signing mail is a good protection against people changing the contents of your mail for political reasons. For example, were the leaked Emails from the CRU tampered with? If they were signed it would have been easy to detect alterations.
If you encrypt your mail, then the receiver will also need PGP or GnuPG installed on their computer. Unfortunately most people don’t realise the importance of encrypting Email, or lack the technical ability to set up the encryption software.
2) Send mail via anonymous remailers. If you need to remain anonymous for some reason, you could use Mixmaster ( http://mixmaster.sourceforge.net/ ). There is a web interface available ( http://gilc.org/speech/anonymous/remailer.html ), but I could not seem to get it to work (maybe it is overloaded), nor do I know if it really is anonymous or not.
If you use BSD or Linux then you might find the Mutt Email client useful. It can interface with both GnuPG and mixmaster in order to make sending encrypted and anonymous Emails quite simple.
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Thanks Samiuela, those are good options. I’m tucking your advice away for later.
The alternative, of course, is to express yourself so cryptically, that no one, including the recipient, knows what you mean, thereby fluxing the mantis.
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Trevor29 – your comment about
‘pushing solutions to problems that most people simply do not accept as problems, or do not consider them to be serious problems’
is quite apt, but your solution, to
‘push education about these issues so that people realise the seriousness of the issues,
is puzzling – don’t the Green MP’s do that now? Is there some way that you can see that the Party could do more of that and lastly, is that the role of a political party, ‘education’ of the public? Perhaps you’d like to see the ‘Greens’ as an agency other than an political party.
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>>Of course they do and they shall have it, today, tomorrow and forever!
You might not like it, but that’s reality. Most people just aren’t into asceticism.
History tells us people have always aspired to more.
You need to convince them they’ll have more i.e. “a better life” by voting Green. Your campaign touched on it, but was let down by the preaching and the asceticism. I picked your vote accurately, when all the Green experts in here were convinced they’d get around 9-10%.
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BluePeter – your uncanny ability to know the future is widely recognised and admired throughout the country (as you knew it would be).
Asceticism hasn’t been mentioned here, as far as I can determine. perhaps you could link me to where the Greens have called for it?
I’m questioning, btw, the ‘stuff’ people want, not challenging the ‘wanting’. Is there a significant difference between cheap, plastic stuff and essential, well crafted stuff.
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We’ve been learning Fly baiting in Troll school this week
The fact I’m fantastic aside, the people want plastic crap. Ask your mate Tindal – he has a good handle on it.
Question: are the Greens a serious political party with intentions to acquire power directly by mandate, or a lobby group?
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That’s a great question BluePeter. Most of our detractors would have us as apolitical lobbiests, I believe. I don’t think that’s an attractive option at all. The Greens have obviously been through the discussions over which way to roll earlier on and chose politics. Good choice. There’s just that integrity thing getting in the way …
Asceticism – your reference?
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Hidden due to low comment rating. Click here to see.
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That’s how you perceive the Green Movement, Blue. Because they are addressing issues that you don’t want to move on, you believe they are wanting to stop you, ban you, oppose the things you do. In reality, the Greens are putting up viable alternatives to what they believe to be unsustainable, unequitable practices. The ‘ban’ meme is one opponents of the Green Movement love to inflate and parade, regardless of the truth or otherwise.
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- “In reality, the Greens are putting up viable alternatives to what they believe to be unsustainable, unequitable practices.”
Note the sneaky conflating of “unsustainable” with “unequitable”.
Finnish television looks at what Climategate has revealed:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unKZhr3JMhA
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greenfly – I am not suggesting that the Greens shouldn’t be a political party. I am merely voicing my opinion on why Green Party policies are not getting the support that I think they need. The other political parties will not support Green Party policies unless their voters agree with those policies, and that will not happen unless the voters accept the issues, and then accept that those policies are an appropriate way to address those issues. Unfortunately there is an active disinformation campaign in two of these areas and the government are not acting to counter this, so what choice does the Green Party have if these issues are to be addressed?
For me, the three big issues are AGW, ocean acidification and peak oil/gas/coal/uranium. Surprisingly, the Green Party web frontpage doesn’t mention two of these and I had to follow several links to find a mention of ocean acidification. It wasn’t even on the list of campaign issues. However I am not against campaigns to clean up our rivers and address other more local issues.
Trevor.
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“And lets also shoot Mr Whippy.”
Farrar plumps for Food Free-for-all!
http://www.kiwiblog.co.nz/2010/01/ban_who_ban.html
(If there’s anything that gets Farrar of his couch, it’s the subject of food and someone getting between him and it).
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Trevor – the issue of ocean acidification is a good one to cite. How many people are aware of the issue? How many believe it to be true? How many would think that it will affect them personally? How many would do something to rectify the problem?
If this is one of the issues that the Greens should ‘educate’ the public on and expect to garner support and votes as a result, God help us.
Perhaps once there are naked oysters washing up on the beaches.
AGW seems to be much the same – too far off in the public mind, to stir up much response at all.
Peak all-that-stuff? Same. Not til it bites and even then, the spin will go on. Most humans will cling to their belief through thick and thin, regardless of the sounds of reality scratching at the door, especially us priviledged Westerners. We have much to lose.
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How good is this guy’s crystal ball?
http://kunstler.com/blog/2009/12/forecast-2010.html
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Can anyone tell me why Sir Helen Clarke deserves to be one of the 20 greatest living New Zealanders?
Is doing ones job and being paid for it worthy of great recognition?
As for ‘Mutha of the nation’ who got paid exorbitant sums to read the news getting ‘the nod’ WTF?
Who should be the 20 greatest?… Probably folk we have never heard of, and never will.
Waimarama was awesome, by the way!
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