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Politics : Formerly About Advanced Micro Devices -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (247413)	8/25/2005 1:39:24 AM
From: combjelly	Respond to of 1572510

"How about even the Space Shuttle?" Forget fusion. Funny you should mention the shuttle. You want to think bold? How about a Project Orion, using SRBs(shuttle reusable boosters) to loft it beyond the bulk of the atmosphere, maybe 15 km or so, putting it beyond any possibility of fallout. With 30 or so SRBs, we could place it at an altitude where we could cleanly put several thousands tons of payload, probably 7k+ into low earth orbit. That would mean we could place a moon colony with about 20 people that could extract h2o and nickle-iron at one of the lunar poles and that would open the whole solar system to us. The costs? A one, maybe two, time exception to the test ban treaty, negotiated with Russia who has expressed a willingness, and the will to do it. Based on the original Project Orion estimates, padding for inflation and the fact that the estimates were likely very optimistic, we could probably put 4k to 6k metric tons on the surface of the Moon for $20 billion or so. That would include a LEO space station with a tug that could move 20 or so people from low earth orbit to low lunar orbit, and a tug that could go from low lunar orbit to lunar surface, with a matching station. With the ability to mine lunar ice and iron-nickel from the regolith, we could build solar-powered satelites pretty cheaply. With that, we have essentially unlimited power available. Keywords. Solar powered satelites. Nuclear thermal rockets. Project Orion. URLs. neofuel.com http:/www.nuclearspace.com islandone.org We know how to build this stuff now. NERVA and Project Orion were researched decades ago. Things like the Nuclear Light Bulb, which could give us cheap and clean ground to low earth orbit given access to h2o in orbit, are more speculative. But low earth orbit to anywhere else is already established. With potentially a huge amount of power available for just a fraction of keeping the Iraqis in line it seems like a nobrainer. Except, of course, to those who are used to having no brain...

To: Tenchusatsu who wrote (247413)	8/25/2005 7:11:14 AM
From: RetiredNow	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 1572510

75% of all the oil used in this country is used up as gas in our automobiles. To reduce our oil consumption from 20 million barrels per day to 10 million bpd, all it would take is increasing average mpg on our cars from 25 mpg to 35 mpg. To reduce it by 75%, all we'd need to do is increase average mpg to 40. That is doable with today's technology. Mandate that every car on the road be a hybrid electric and you've accomplished the goal. The Bush oil men will always argue that oil independence is pie in the sky. It's not. They just want to convince you the goal is impossible, so you won't demand that our gov't lead us off oil dependence, so the Bush and the oil men can't continue lining their pockets. Who cares if China or India buys up the oil we don't consume and keeps the price of oil high. That's not point. That is Bush thinking. The point isn't to bring the price of oil down, although reducing U.S. demand by 15 mbpd would lead to a global oil price collapse all by itself. I bet you didn't know that the U.S. imports 15 mbpd, whereas China only imports about 2.6 mbpd. So China and India will NOT soak up all the oil we don't buy. Rather, the lack of U.S. demand would send prices crashing. Anyway, the point is to not need to buy oil from other countries at all. Then our economy won't suffer every time their is an oil spike. In addition, we won't be funding our enemies. Not only that, but I can guarantee you that if the U.S., the world's largest consumer of oil manages to ween itself off of oil dependency, then China, India and the rest of the world will pull out all the stops to do the same. Then you will see oil demand and prices collapse, leaving the Middle East in shambles, the environment clean, and our economy stronger than ever.