8:13 AM Mr. Brown
Well good morning
I did not get to watch anything interesting this morning. Brown Jr. was up.
8:20 AM Mr. Silver
Ah well...I usually just poke around Digg articles until I leave.
AM TV was getting irritating; I could never finish any shows before work.
8:20 AM Mr. Brown
Yeah, that’s the only thing that sucks; you get interested but can't finish.
8:20 AM Mr. Silver
I think Yu-Gi-Oh was the show that finished me off watching morning TV.
Not that it was a particularly great show, but I kept not seeing the stupid kid win matches.
I mean, I assume he won them all, but I never saw the end of any of the episodes
8:22 AM Mr. Brown
Yeah, he pretty much did. Or if he lost, he got to play the opponent again at some point and then win.
8:46 AM Mr. Silver
I'd say good for him, except he was a cheater and possessed by a skilled player.
8:46 AM Mr. Brown
Yeah.
8:47 AM Mr. Silver
"Ha ha! You WOULD have beat my newbie butt if it weren't for my ringer's skill and this magic artifact!"
(best friend) "You suck Yugi"
(other best friend) "Yeah...you play like a little kid that the grown-ups let get away with sh-t."
9:03 AM Mr. Silver
Rough...I never noticed. We've been scammed by Popular Science 60s fantasies all this time.
"We just have to get there and we'll terraform and stuff! It'll be awesome!"
9:11 AM Mr. Silver
We can forget that whole "Transform and live in Mar's atmosphere" thing.
9:11 AM Mr. Blue
Why's that? (still reading)
9:11 AM Mr. Silver
It's the pressure and density of Earth's atmosphere at 100000'...AKA “nearly no atmosphere”.
9:12 AM Mr. Blue
The Moon is worse, right?
9:12 AM Mr. Silver
The Moon has no atmosphere at all, yes.
9:14 AM Mr. Brown
Hmm. So the issue is always slowing things down while landing them.
9:15 AM Mr. Blue
But that's also a positive. It makes leaving Mars much easier.
9:22 AM Mr. Blue
Doesn't it take like 2 years to get to Mars? That still seems like the biggest challenge.
Once there they can hop off and head back home relatively easily.
9:23 AM Mr. Brown
Well, they are also saying they would have to use people that would be ok with ending up with cancer due to the radiation they would receive out there.
9:23 AM Mr. Blue
I’m sure they could find volunteers.
Christopher Columbus and Magellan had to find crew that were OK with possibly dying at sea.
9:25 AM Mr. Silver
I think the people back in the 1500s were more desensitized to daily death on the job while relatively young than we are.
9:26 AM Mr. Silver
"Death lugging crates on the dock, or death going on an adventure? Eh...I've never been on an adventure. What the heck?"
9:26 AM Mr. Blue
Heheh
"Cancer on Earth or cancer on Mars?"
9:27 AM Mr. Silver
Very good...if the chances were approximately the same, volunteers would be easy.
9:27 AM Mr. Silver
We should figure out the expected lifespan of life on Mars, and pick people that are that sick to go.
"You've got 5 years...and that's generous. How's an adventure to Mars sound?"
9:29 AM Mr. Blue
I think what makes more sense, rather than just shooting people straight off to Mars, is to slowly sort of build a highway towards Mars. Put space stations in our orbit, or possibly further out, that can act like rest stops along the way. Then one or two in Mar's orbit.
9:30 AM Mr. Silver
I had this conversation many years ago.
I personally don't think we should go further than orbit at all until we develop some better technology.
9:31 AM Mr. Blue
Why?
9:32 AM Mr. Silver
I described the Moon and Mars as other islands in a sea, one very near, one really far.
We can swim in the "sea near the shore"...orbital space...without much trouble.
But we had to paddle on a log canoe to the Moon and back.
9:32 AM Mr. Blue
Heh
9:33 AM Mr. Silver
The proposal of paddling on a log to Mars...WAY WAY out there? That is just dumb.
If we can invent a sailboat...then we can go.
You can invent a sailboat without leaving shore.
Test them with the “swimmers” in orbit.
The relay stations idea? It's nothing but a lot of logs.
Each has a spare paddle and a bowl of rice on it.
Don't bother.
9:37 AM Mr. Blue
I see them more as gas stations along a highway.
Or like, a railroad line. You can't just drive a train from point A to point B, you have to build the track and stations first.
9:37 AM Mr. Silver
Back up a bit. To get the stuff off of a log you sent out, your own log has to stop and pick it up. You have to make a lot of extra effort to get to one of those logs (decelerate and park a spaceship)
9:39 AM Mr. Blue
Stopping a train is simpler than docking at a space station, but it can be done.
9:40 AM Mr. Silver
The reason Earth to the Moon took 3 days is because they used most of the fuel to get moving like a bullet out of a gun until they got there, and then they used most of the rest to slow down.
9:40 AM Mr. Blue
Yes, and Mars actually takes some twists and turns.
9:40 AM Mr. Silver
To do what you'd want, you'd need to launch supply stations, moving nearly as fast as the ship, so the contents could be picked up as passed, in motion. You can't just stop and restart. Completely impractical.
9:52 AM Mr. Brown
I saw on TV, for combating the gravity issue, they had devices that they would strap into and use centrifugal force to create gravity instead of rotating the whole ship.
9:57 AM Mr. Silver
Nod...a big enough ship to make the spin practical is, again, impractical on a "log".
Not that any of those exercise/motion methods seem to work.
10:24 AM Mr. Blue
Yeah. I wonder if a simple solution would just be like, steroids or HGH.
10:28 AM Mr. Silver
Perhaps they should just try high pressure...like divers...I've never heard of such.
10:28 AM Mr. Brown
Pressurize the capsules?
10:29 AM Mr. Silver
Yeah, like a lot more than 1 atmosphere. It's not gravity, but it's an all-over stress, like gravity is, for the body to compensate for...it's just not unidirectional.
1:40 PM Mr. Blue
I finally got my X-Box fixed and got to play “Forza 4”... pretty sweet.
It's funny how much the game play is similar to super Mario Kart, really, just with much much much better graphics.
1:48 PM Mr. Silver
So, can you launch banana peels out the back of a BMW M5?
1:53 PM Mr. Silver
Does it show the repair cost for smashing into a packing crate with a big question mark on it? (I'd like that feature, actually)
1:53 PM Mr. Blue
You do accumulate damage, and at the end of a race it's subtracted from your winnings.
1:54 PM Mr. Silver
Cool.
"The new 'Forza 4' now includes the "Argue with the insurance company" minigame! get it today on X-Box!"
No comments:
Post a Comment