Re: Art, where's the buzz on nanotech saving America today?



On Tue, 28 Mar 2006, rrc wrote:

Straydog wrote:
It would have to be a collection of
lunar or orbital systems which then "microwaves" the solar radiation
back to the surface for power.

Now that is a bad idea. Mis-sim the microwaves and you'll be frying
people. What a hijack target. Don't put all your eggs in one high-tech
basket.

Art, this is the 23rd century where Big Brother is normal so terror
cells can't froliferate outside of James Bond type of Blofeld/SPECTRE
villians.

Nah, its really the 21st century where the likes of Bill Gates has everyone by the neck with DRM, registerware, lawyers, PR agents, rip-offs, etc., and the terrorists just use ordinary chemical explosives, but the 21st century hackers use DDOS and DOS attack-threats to extort money from ISPs, businesses, and use phishing scams and trojanized websites to screw the rest of us.

In other words, one of these stations will become a potential
Golden Eye which is a better task for our super sleuths.

Mis-aiming a giant microwave beam might NOT be a high-tech accomplishment of terrorists, but might be a high probability result of some stupid computer glitch or software bug. Talk about the human race shooting itself in the foot!!!!


So the cycle I see is Alberta/Siberian/Kazakh oil from here till 2030.

You don't know what exploratory ocean drilling is going to come up with.

Of course deep seas exploration is there but I was commenting on
existing oil reserves that have barely been recovered.

OK.


Modern Fischer-Tropsch coal->to->petroleum synfuels from 2025 till
2200.

Too early to predict.

During Apartheid in SA, Sasol did exactly that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fisher-Tropsch_process

http://www.caia.co.za/chsahs03.htm

I'll put my money on the corn->oil route. They've already got a $2 bil working plant in Brazil. Been running now for something like a few years.


And then afterwards, a network of extraterrestrial solar stations
pooling energy for the surface along with limited fusion facilities.

I'll give fusion reactors another century and if they can't get it to
work by then, I'm giving up because this Tokamak work is looking
fruitless.

Theyve had 50 years to get this to work and there is not even a credible production geometry on anyone's drawing board. Talk about shutting down social security? They should have shut down CTR at least a decade ago.




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