The Official First World Problems Thread™
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But I like the idea that only regions in the third world have decent space access.
Why? There's plenty of places now far from the equator. Baikonur is at a fairly ridiculous latitude!
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Assuming strong enough materials there's no hard limit on the speed is there? A fuckload of inertia, yeah, but it would be physically possible to accelerate a space elevator cabin at a similar rate to a rocket
Not really. You can think of the space station at the end of the tether like an anchor. It is anchored in place by a geostationary orbit. So all of your propulsion away from earth is also applying a force to the space station pulling it back to the earth. So while there may not necessarily be a "speed limit", there is most definitely a limit to acceleration.
Also, due to the physics involved there is also the matter that the tether should be just thick enough, but no thicker than necessary. It is the physics involved that allow the tether to get much smaller in diameter as it gets farther from earth that even allow it to be theoretically possible. But that works against you on acceleration as then you are pulling against your anchor point which is the weakest link in the chain.
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Why? There's plenty of places now far from the equator. Baikonur is at a fairly ridiculous latitude!
Because we're talking about space elevators, not rockets.
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Because we're talking about space elevators, not rockets.
I didn't know that when I made that post.
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I didn't know that when I made that post.
Evidently. But it would have been rude not to answer.
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Too me, at least in some aspects, this seems more effective than space elevators:
Still requires magic materials though. Not sure on the relative magicness compared to space elevators.
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A running loop would have an extremely large amount of energy in its linear momentum. While the magnetic suspension system would be highly redundant, with failures of small sections having essentially no effect, if a major failure did occur the energy in the loop (1.5 petajoules) would be approaching the same total energy release as a nuclear bomb explosion (350 kilotons of TNT equivalent), although not emitting nuclear radiation.
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Could be catastrophic. Could also rip apart the loop in the process, which is expensive even before considering resulting damage, so a secure emergency shutdown mechanism is required.
Nuclear bomb is misleading though - that energy isn't in a single point. It's spread along the 2000 km loop. Even just shutting down the whole thing when the suspension in a large enough section breaks should do much to mitigate the damage, though still possibly destroying the loop in the process.
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Nuclear bomb is misleading though - that energy isn't in a single point
As a comparison of total energy release, it works
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As a comparison of total energy release, it works
True. But people get quite specific ideas when words like 'nuclear bomb' come around.
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The point is global politics would change because bits of the third world woulnd't be any more.
Colonialism makes a comeback?
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Colonialism makes a comeback?
Not really. I can't tell you more without telling you my whole idea.
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Best start a topic then, unless you wanna keep it under wraps.
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unless you wanna keep it under wraps
Sort of the point I was trying to make.
You can read it when I eventually write it.
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Fair enough.
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@algorythmics said:
I find it difficult to walk into a chinese without ordering vegetable lo-mein. Sometimes they get angry when I do this, first because I walked into them (they're short, you know), and second because I assumed that because they were Chinese I could just order Chinese food from them. It is even worse when they turn out not to be Chinese at all, but Korean or Vietnamese or something.So what's your favourite foreign takeaway?
I also find it very difficult to walk into a chinese without ordering sweet and sour chicken balls.
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You people are horrible! If it's not donuts, it's Chinese food. I am going to salivate myself to death before lunchtime hits.
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But it's nearly dinner time?
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Lucky for me, my fried chicken is in the fryer as I type.
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Brussels sprouts?
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Brussels sprouts, haggis, and natto, for a full healthy meal!
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[url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A1karl]Hákarl[/url] and [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Balut_(food)]balut[/url].
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@CarrieVS casts "Disgusting Food Topic" on @mott555 and it is super effective! @mott555 loses 5 stamina and receives "Weak Stomach" effect for the next 4 turns (Hunger penalties accumulate and apply normally, but any attempt to eat causes further +1 Disease and -1 Stamina effects).
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For pudding, I'll tell you how figs are pollinated.
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Brussels sprouts?
Are delicious, mmmmmmmmm -- /me raids @CarrieVS's fridge, steals them all, and eats them!
(Best roasted or grilled though)
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I was actually thinking of saying balut instead of haggis, but was too lazy to check the spelling.
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how figs are pollinated
No, wasps:
Most commercially grown figs are pollinated by wasps. And yes, edible figs wind up with at least one dead female wasp inside. But it's still not quite the childhood myth of fruits squirming with insect meat....
- When a female wasp dies inside an edible fig, an enzyme in the fig called ficin breaks down her carcass into protein. The fig basically digests the dead insect, making it a part of the resulting ripened fruit. The crunchy bits in figs are seeds, not anatomical parts of a wasp.
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Yeah, makes me wonder if you could use fig juice to tenderize meat (although pineapple juice is more available commercially...)
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350 kilotons is nothing. Pfft.
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Not really. I can't tell you more without telling you my whole idea.
Ewoks!
They build treehouses SO TALL that they can be used as space elevators.
In Ecuador.
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Somehow that doesn't bother me. Probably a result of the number of insects I accidentally ate while growing up in rural Missouri when the annual ladybug (or whatever they are, people get super-pedantic over them because they apparently aren't actually ladybugs but they look exactly like ladybugs) migrations happened and we'd have thousands of them flying around our leaky old farmhouse for a few days.
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The space elevator does solve one problem, which is: "how do you get a craft into space without burning any fossil fuels?"
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Only in a very direct sense. You still have to power the thing.
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Probably, although papain is probably more effective than ficin. That's what is used in commercial meat tenderizers.
Filed under: I wonder if papayas produce papain for the same reason figs produce ficin, but I think I'd rather not know.
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Only in a very direct sense. You still have to power the thing.
Right; but by the time you can build the magical cable you probably have a really big solar cell somewhere.
Short of impulse engines, I have no idea how you'd get something into space without burning chemicals. Even in a sci-fi concept. (Unless you just have a jump-drive that works inside an atmosphere, which is rare in sci-fi but not unheard of-- see remade Battlestar Galactica.)
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You can do that with liquid hydrogen rockets too. Of course, that moves the problem of energy generation elsewhere, but that's a problem for space elevators too.
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?
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When I say "without burning fossil fuels" I really mean "without using rockets, so your ship looks coool but also not blatantly making up a fictional technology like an impulse engine."
Sci-fi generally solves the problem with glow-y shit on the back of the ship, but how does the glow-y shit work?
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Theoretically a ship could provide propulsion from a catapult system that launches massive objects to generate thrust.
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insects I accidentally ate while growing up
Not to mention the ones you eat every day. That article goes on to talk about insect contamination in other foods, specifically fruit fly eggs in catsup.
Filed under: You don't want to know how many grams of rat droppings are permitted in a kg of coffee beans., No, Chrome, I do not mean "catsuit."
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specifically fruit fly eggs in catsup.
In our university cafeteria, some genius had the brillant idea of providing condiments by dumping them out in large bowls and sticking a small ladle in each one. The ketchup bowls in particular always had flies sitting on top.
Not coincidentally, most students ate their cafeteria cheeseburgers without any condiments at all.
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I believe there's a couple of nuclear options?
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Like what?
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Atmospheric use should be avoided because the propellant for most options will be radioactive.
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Right. So. That addresses my point... how?
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Project Orion. 'd because I couldn't remember what it was called.
Filed under: It has some minor disadvantages for use as a propulsion system for launch.