Recent content by motie

Robotics and AI are already frightfully advanced. A robotic explorer can already have vision and chemical analysis capabilities that are vastly greater than a human's. Also, the communication delay between Earth and Moon is only one second. So real-time remote control and communication is...

The propulsion challenge is stupendous. See the link below. I am not convinced that this is ever going to happen. https://www.americaspace.com/2024/04/20/starship-faces-performance-shortfall-for-lunar-missions/

Agreed. If you build a greenhouse on the surface of the moon or Mars, the covering will need to be transparent to visible light (which is what the plants need); it will need to block short wavelengths; it will need to block high-energy particle radiation; it will need to survive a pressure...

Let's compare with other sources of methane. mt: metric tonne. Permafrost: Assume a pessimistic 10 million cu. ft of methane under the permafrost. 1e7 cu.ft. * 0.04 lbf/cu.ft. = 4e5 lbf of methane. Nordstream explosion: assume a pessimistic 500,000 metric tonnes of leaked methane. 5e5 mt...

Can somebody expllain why there is a potential difference between the + and - electrodes? It seems to me that the ionized atmosphere would have the same potential everywhere.

Most of the heat will likely be lost. During lunar night, they can use it to heat living quarters, equipment, etc. During lunar day, they have a problem. They could use the lunar subsoil as a conductive heatsink. But radiative cooling during the day won't be easy, since the ambient...

The day/night thermal cycling will probably destroy pavement in short order.

That date is quite close to the last days of Göbekli Tepe.

$85 million per year. Musk, Bezos, Gates, and many others could fund this indefinitely without ever "touching the principle" as they say. But somebody would have to sell them on the cost/benefit ratio.

Lots of problems with this article. "Do black holes suck matter into their cores? Nope." Oh yes, they do. From Wiki: "Observers falling into a Schwarzschild black hole (i.e., non-rotating and not charged) cannot avoid being carried into the singularity once they cross the event horizon." "700...

Maybe, but it would be one pixel.

How did they sense the blue color of the disk? With Hubble? I don't think JWST can see blue.

10E-2 = 10 x 10^-2 = 0.1.

Thank heavens it's pointy in front. The air drag at 2 miles per hour in a vacuuum must be tremendous.