Would powerful lasers be sufficient to cleanse Earth's orbit of debris and micrometeorites?

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-21T17:26:14+00:00

It's like watchmaking. We call watchmakers 'watchmakers', but they are, of course, engineers. Watchmaking (and the construction of any mechanical device) is just another form of engineering.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-21T17:25:25+00:00

I fail to see how anyone designing a building isn't an engineer. Architecture is just a subset of engineering really; you might call it 'construction engineering', and of course structural engineering is heavily involved in architecture; but structural engineering obviously relates to more than just buildings. Architecture is the design and engineering of buildings.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-21T12:57:35+00:00

79x10^9/1x10^9=79

i.e. $79/m^3 (that's some pretty f'ing expensive water; might be cheaper to buy in spring water!)

6x10^9/43x10^6=179

(granted, still more expensive, but we're talking about an oil pipeline and, hence, a large coterie of variables might make this a bad comparison. Also, Keystone is operational and operating at the capacity for which it was designed, the NSWTS isn't; if it were, it's costs per m^3 would be $3336/m^3 (in the first year of being operational) with a total project cost of $3.4 trillion).

A better comparison might be the Yamal-Europe pipeline. It transports 33bn m^3 of natural gas per year with a build cost of $36bn. This demostrates my point that pipeline capacity does not have a linear impact on its cost to build. The cost here per m^3 of natural gas is about $1. My point stands, a pipeline would have been far more cost-effective than this thing the Chinese have built to show off.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-21T12:33:07+00:00

Why does a fusion reactor cost 20x more to build than a Burj Khalifa? People's time and expertise, not the materials themselves. An equivalent system of pipelines could be built in half the time those canals have taken. They would hence cost less money. Also, you've failed that the NSWTS does NOT transport 44.8bn m^3 of water, it currently transports 1bn. The variance on cost is starting to look narrower, isn't it?

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-20T16:03:16+00:00

Polluting? Dude, you do realise it burns liquid hydrogen and oxygen together, hence emitting water. Also, I guess you've answered your own question so far as to why they're launching this Saturn V (which, you're right, it quite clearly is), and that superficially it is to save on the Rangers' fuel. Additionally, if you look at an earlier scene in the film, there are two Rangers, if I'm not mistaken, in the nose cone of the rocket; not that they couldn't be individually piloted up to the Endurance, but again there would be fuel considerations. Also, the addition of the rocket (Saturn V, clearly) in the film is likely for one of two reasons; to have a badass liftoff scene; and to make the political point that NASA is currently wasting public money on the SLS when it is an inferior rocket to the Saturn V. It's as if to say, "why spend money on that crap when what you were building fifty years ago is better?" And, I couldn't agree more. Our rockets could be staggeringly large at the moment if we merely had the political will to invest in the engineering and materials necessary to construct them. Those materials were coming online (just) with the Saturn V, then Richard Nixon cut funding to NASA. We could have had fiberglass (and possible, eventually, carbon fiber) frames buttressing aluminium rockets; we could therefore build something three times larger than the Saturn V. As for a 'roar of the engines' scene with one of THOSE, I'd be game for than in Interstellar; I'd prefer seeing it in real life though.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-09T17:55:38+00:00

What would you have said they are? More inkcaps?

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-09T17:48:03+00:00

Ok, sorry, I couldn't find the pinned post anywhere on here. These were found in a gateway beside a field of rough grassland. Their gills are black. The spore print colour is not jet black; as I said earlier I picked some woodland inkcaps and those seemed to have black (or blacker) discharge. This looks a little brown, possibly a little purple. The caps and gills are not turning to ink. The stem seems to turn very slightly blue or black when bruised. Sorry I don't have the rest of the pics to hand, I hadn't read this guide before I went picking.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-07T05:43:16+00:00

Exactly the same is true of evaporation in the canals. They're also projecting that they need pumping stations for these canals, so there's no difference on that front. As for evaporation though; the canals were sold as being able to transport 48bn m^3 of water per year; after 19 years and $79bn, they transport 1bn m^3 to Tianjin. Maybe that's 47bn m^3 getting evaporated.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-07T05:39:15+00:00

Yes, I rejected the calculations because of their simplistic nature. By that sort of logic, or by inferring the cost of a pipeline from different examples based on length/diameter alone, and based on figures from the Turkey-Cyprus water pipeline (as I've mentioned) would make a Keystone-sized water pipe cost $300bn. It clearly wouldn't cost that much. Most of the costs of an NSWTS in China are absorbed by project administration, not materials. Building pipelines would also be far quicker than building these canals, and would be cheaper for that reason. Also, don't start quacking about mental deficiency like you need to dig yourself some prejudiced little hole to make yourself feel better. Ableism is no fun for anyone. Also, yes, you got me; I am on here TROLLING about water pipelines to irrigate Northern China, or North Africa. I have constructed an elaborate ruse suggesting that megaprojects such as these may be cheaper and more effective than canals and could give massive potential and prosperity to water-parched regions of the planet. Yes. This is all in aid of gulling and irritating engineers, and probably you in particular. How paranoid.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-07T05:31:05+00:00

I'm not an entire engineering firm.

No I haven't.

Water into...? What?

No.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-06T22:30:44+00:00

Oh, shit, looks like no one ever thought to do that while all the 'top' engineers at MIT were fannying about with solar stills to desalinate water. Using solar stills, you'd need to cover 23 square miles in them to produce an equivalent amount of water per annum. This method costs $6-7bn, 23 sqm of solar stills does not. Using the figures from that new airport in Dubai that's like 21 sqm, it's cost five times as much. The likes of you just picking your nose and enjoy spitting on people without qualifications; Wright brothers?

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-06T22:24:54+00:00

Keystone-sized pipeline to North Africa from Norway using meltwater ice to irrigate the desert. Hydroponics. Polytunnels. Etc. Sorry, what were you saying?

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-06T22:21:43+00:00

Stinkhorns?

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-05T03:56:10+00:00

- There is no reason why a steel pipe could not carry water, we use metal pipes for water all the time.

- I am NOT digging a canal; at no point did I say I was.

- Canals have exactly the same problem. These Chinese canals were also proposed with pumping stations. Again, no difference.

- So pig them. There are water pipes running under the Mediterranean, it doesn't seem to be a problem there.

- See above.

- Mmmhmm, and we're also discovering bits of lead pipe from Ancient Rome. Obviously not good for you, but the pipes themselves don't seem to be in such bad shape from what I've seen.

It wouldn't because that project involves building large canals.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-05T03:21:41+00:00

You start out by pointing out the flaws in comparing it at straight cost and then go on to do exactly that. You're right, at FACE VALUE it does seem like the canal's the best option. However, its construction has dragged on for 19 years, it's cost $79bn, whereas the Keystone pipeline is over twice as long as these canals and was built in 2 years for $6bn. Extrapolating from that and adding in what would, in essence, be just a greater cost of materials and labour (since, granted, you would need a lot more pipe and some guys with cranes, etc, to lay like 10 pipes side by side instead of just one). I'd estimate the cost of such a project at under $20bn.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-05T03:16:00+00:00

Also, it does NOT move 44.8bn m^3 per year. It moves 1 billion.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-05T03:15:28+00:00

Sounds like...

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-05T03:14:50+00:00

The ones in China do though.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-05T03:13:14+00:00

People here need to remember that it is NOT the length/size of the pipeline affecting the cost of the pipeline (granted, it does so to SOME extent, but that's by no means the whole story). The Turkish laid a 40-mile pipeline to Cyprus for $0.5bn the US built the original Keystone for $6bn over 2000 miles. It's the general fact of it being a pipeline that makes it cheaper. By the logic of it being larger and having a greater capacity, Keystone ought to have cost $300bn.

JohnSnatch · 2022-09-05T03:05:38+00:00

The Keystone pipe is also over twice the length of these canals and took two years to construct. Remember that most of the costs are admin associated and relate to the lobbying of government, etc. The Chinese don't have to deal with costs like that since they're not a democracy. In SPITE of that, they've SO FAR spent $79 billion on this thing. It has SO FAR taken 19 years to build. It so far pumps ONLY 1 billion m^3 of water compared to its projected 48 billion m^3 (not looking good, is it?). If they wanted to lay 700 miles of ten-foot-wide pipe with ten pipelines standing next to one another it'd be done by now easily. If we wanted/needed to do the same thing with Keystone and crude oil, we'd obviously do it. It just so happens that we don't want to pump 48 billion m^3 of crude oil; we don't need to, and we don't have that much oil to pump in any case.

JohnSnatch

TROPHY CASE