The Shuttle/ISS, and manned spaceflight in general

Zaki90 wrote:How is it hard to get to Mars?

To get humans to Mars? It would be roughly the equivalent of getting humans to Luna back in 1955. Getting a lot of people there will be quite a problem for some time.

Zaki90 wrote:I see the biodomes, but those would cost millions. Also, the plants need water. Frozen ice doesn't help you very long.

True, but you need to maintain a closed system. Human waste is recycled to feed the farms, which feed the humans, which feed the farms, while you keep adding water and nutrients to the system.

ReconToaster wrote:Fission reactors won't last us long. Ignoring the HUGE initial costs of building something like 100,000 nuclear energy plants (each costing what? A billion dollars?)

It's something that needs to be done, for the next ten or twenty years it will take us to get nuclear fusion. And we need to invest in fusion the same way we invested in World War II.

ReconToaster wrote:Hydroelectric and Wind energy won't ever make up for a large percentage of power. In order for solar energy to carry us, we'd need a RIDICULOUS land area to be taken up by them , which would require an enormous amount of money and a pretty huge feat of engineering. Hydrogen is great, but it's still inefficient, and we'd need something like 30 years to perfect it.

True. However, Picken's Plan will carry most of the US energy needs for a while. In the meantime, we need to start harvesting Methane from landfills and cattle farms, as well as building more of these.
http://www.popsci.com/scitech/article/2007-03/prophet-garbage
http://www.treehugger.com/files/2008/11/geoplasma-plasma-waste-to-energy-facility-florida.php
http://innovech.wordpress.com/2007/03/02/bye-bye-landfills-a-yes-from-joseph-longo/

ReconToaster wrote:The world runs on oil and oil is running out. Sure there's a hell of a lot of oil in the ocean, but we need time to figure out how to drill it. Saudi Arabia, Alaska, and parts of Russia hold the last major supplies of oil these days, and they have reached peak discovery. Pretty soon, production levels world wide are gonna reach their peak... and it's all downhill from there.

Well, we need to start recycling our petroleum products while we switch over to Natural Gas, Methane, and Electricity.
http://www.thedailygreen.com/environmental-news/latest/microwave-alternative-fuel-47120305
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RJYa42zYZ2I

ReconToaster wrote:Wars will of course be fought to secure those last major reserves, but they won't last us long.

And the US MUST rise as the leader in alternative energy within five years, if we are to maintain our position of superiority.

ReconToaster wrote:Sorry for the apocalyptic rant.

No problem. I said a lot worse when I was sixteen. I still think like that today. It's depressing.

I don't know. It seems like Fusion and Solar energy is really the way of the future. Hell, if/when we get fusion going, Solar will be worthless.

If we can bridge the next few decades with fission, as well as other alternative energy options already in use, we could hold out long enough to figure out how to do Nuclear Fusion... and that will likely last us for the rest of our time on Earth.

Why is it that we're not spending more resources on researching Fusion? It's a practically unlimited energy Source. I blame Three Mile Island.

I blame the Russians and their shoddy communist construction. You hear that Ruski! And fission isn't even all that bad, especially now that we can turn nuclear waste into more energy.

Isn't the Picken's thing turn garbage into hydrogen and resin? I remember reading about it in POPsci a long time ago.

Ringleader wrote:Isn't the Picken's thing turn garbage into hydrogen and resin? I remember reading about it in POPsci a long time ago.

No, he's the guy expounding wind energy and natural gas.
Joseph Longo is the guy with the machine that turns garbage into energy, hydrogen, carbon dioxide, and slag.