February 2009 « Pro Liberi

Killing a flock with one stone

This power generating facility looks good. It’s a system where salt water is used to generate electrickery. Not a lot but it is something.

However, coupled with the facility to convert salt water to fresh water we could use this power to to make our water conversion facilities completely self contained and actually running green.

Imagine taking an oil tanker, soon to be obsolete, outfitting it with the osmosis technology, replacing the diesel engines with electric ones and fitting some sophisticated computerisation. Then simply allow it to follow a pre-programmed course through the oceans trawling them under it’s own power. Sucking in sea water and storing the resultant fresh water in it’s vast tanks. Then coming home and offloading this fresh water before setting out again.

We could solve a lot of problems in the third world by having self contained power plants like this on the beach sucking in salt water, converting it to fresh and irrigating the land using the power generated to power the pumps.

The beauty of this over solar power, although solar could do this too, is that it will work anywhere in the world, even the UK, and there is no need to store any energy for overnight.

Medical Ethics

Ethics has always been something of interest to me. I see it being something that we as a species seem to be losing rapidly.

Only a hundred years ago people killed themselves rather than go against their principles. The shame of being found out or to have failed made people fall on their swords. Now we don’t seem to have any ethics whatsoever and even when caught with our hand in the till we just smile, make excuses and carry on.

So when I read about people questioning the ethics of things like stem cell research and the specific issue of is it ethical to allow voice box transplants I have to wonder exactly what it is that we think is unethical. Taking the voice box transplants as an example.

These people are going to receive a gift that will allow them to speak properly again and repair a part of themselves that has been damaged. Sounds good and very much something we should encourage. No one is killed or injured by this process. Even better.

Where do ethics come in?

Now I can understand where if I needed to sacrifice an unborn child to give this ‘gift’ but this seems to be using cells from his own body. It’s not even got the same ethical issues as a kidney transplant from a living donor. What is the big issue with Stem Cells? It’s not like we revere unborn human life anyway. I’m sure there is a logical solution to the issue.

It’s about time we sorted out these ethical issues and made some guidelines. Hopefully not those based on any religious documents or it will be unethical for me to eat bacon or replace someone’s heart valves with a pigs.

Robot builders

Seems that there are plans afoot to send Robot Builders to Mars. Read here. Sounds really good and a project that would have many uses on Earth once it is perfected.

These ones are specifically going to be built to build berms. Now couldn’t we use that here to support that poor little dutch boy so he can get his finger out for a rest. I think New Orleans will be screaming for these as well and as the South East of England is falling into the sea we could do with a few as well.

As well as the uses above we need some that will automatically dig tunnels, install pipes and cables and pour concrete where necessary. That must be next on the drawing board.

Of course at this stage we will still need people to plaster, paper and paint the walls as well as the internal wiring and plumbing. At least for now anyway.

The sun powering our entire energy usage

Well it appears that the calculation I couldn’t do has been done. The sun supplies enough energy to the earth in one hour to power all our energy uses for a year. Read here.

It seems that even with solar cells at 8% efficiency we could power everything from a small area in the Mojave desert.

Solar Map

Surely this must be the answer. Probably easier than my space solution anyway.

It could also be the replacement energy source that could be supplied by all those middle eastern countries when the oil eventually runs out. Of course this way the US would be independent and could supply the whole of the Americas.

Until global warming kicks in of course we would have to buy our energy in. Typical.

Lab grown teeth

Scientists have found a gene that allows them to grow tooth enamel in the Lab. Coupled with the ability, already available, to grow the insides of teeth we have the capability to grow replacement teeth. Read here.

This sounds like something that could have more applications than just to rebuild and replace teeth which even by itself is going to be a boom for all those with sweet teeth. I understand enamel is strong and robust against most things, acids excluded. It will be interesting to see what uses this will be put to by our brightest scientists.

Suspicious?

Probably not but this is what starts conspiracy theories.

It seems that the satellite being put up to monitor CO2 levels has been lost on launch. Read here.

Funny that. It seems that, for the foreseeable future and probably for the duration of the recession, we will just have to rely on the alarmist theories and doctored figures. So let’s not cancel these CO2 taxes.

It’s for the planet.

CO2. A new power source?

It seems that scientists have found a way to convert CO2 to hydrocarbon fuels. Read here.

Now what that means is that the high level of CO2 in the atmosphere which is causing so much concern to certain people and causing our governments to apply yet more stealth taxes to counter may not be so much of an issue as was thought.

Although still in experimental stage, and not really applicable to stopping our government taxing us further into recession sadly, I can see this being handy in the way we handle CO2 in sealed units like spacecraft and submarines. Where currently we use CO2 scrubbers. Now they could generate power from the waste product an in enclosed environments that sounds like a bonus.

Of course when the technology is freely available and we don’t have the issue about CO2 we can generate power from the gas in the atmosphere. Reducing CO2 levels at the same time as generating power. Personally, I’m not convinced that CO2 is as big an issue that we can take it from the atmosphere to slake our requirements for power. We need certain amounts of CO2 to power life on Earth. Of course by the time this technology is ready we will have been taxed £Trillions and had the recession extended by a few years but such is the cost of professional politicians who think they know the answers to everything.

Technology will save us if we give it the chance. Politicians on the other hand will not want to lose this chance to tax us.

Evolution happens in strange ways

It seems that an expert has claimed that ‘Online networking harms health’. Dr Aric Sigman, whose exact qualifications have not been specified, says ‘That they set out to enrich lives but end up keeping people apart.’ Read the full story here.

Now I’m not an expert, I don’t even have a Facebook account, (I’ve always been concerned about their Privacy policy) and have no interest in MySpace or LinkedIn (Although I have a LinkedIn account for professional reasons) so I don’t really feel that I can talk about the benefits or costs of any of these sites. However, I do have an opinion on our species interacting ‘on-line’ so to speak.

I think it is a good thing. More and more people are moving to conference calls rather than meetings, video conferencing rather than flying thousands of miles, Emails rather than sending letters. Each providing benefits for the companies and the employees. The environment gets a boost as well, less flights and fuel used in cars. What can be wrong with that?

Then we have the benefits of not having face to face contact. We have more time to complete other tasks as we have less travel time. We don’t get the million and one illnesses that are making the rounds. We won’t bring them back to our shores and ensure that they get spread around there. It would be interesting to see the actual numbers for illness statistics sorted into those that meet the public and the back office people.

The trend is there to see and I can only see it increasing as we perform more of our interaction from the privacy of our home. This government has systematically destroyed any social life outside close friends and close family. Their destruction of pubs is almost complete. As we retreat into our houses we are forced to use alternative means to meet our natural social requirements. So say goodbye to the bad boy attitude and start getting to string a few words together coherently for your web ‘dates’. Boy am I glad I’m out of that arena.

In the future though the chances are we won’t really interact with people outside our immediate circle. We don’t seem to be suffering too bad from it where it happens now. We are adaptable you see and this is just another, minor, adaptation we are facing from the computer age and as we move into the space age face to face meetings will be practically impossible with those outside our immediate group/family/clan whatever. There will still be face to face activity but not as much as over the last 40 years and probably about the same as it was before that where people didn’t get about much. WW1 and WW2 being the peak of our face to face meetings and I didn’t see those times being too healthy for our species.

Now Dr Aric Sigman’s actually concern is that we will suffer from health problems as serious as cancer, strokes, heart disease, and dementia. All of these we are suffering from now while social websites are just a few years old. What caused all those diseases before social networking sites? OK then. So are these going to go away if we banned (I’m sure we are heading there) all social interaction over the web? Nope, thought not.

The fact is that interaction over the web is going to increase. There will be changes caused by this. Mainly physical characteristics favoured by face to face will be replaced by mental characteristics as we have our initial relationships on line. We will adapt and another part of our evolution will be completed. Who knows where that will lead us? To a weaker species as physical characteristics needed for survival are replaced by the ability to string a few sentences together or a stronger more intelligent species where physical attributes are performed by machines.

Looks like we will be finding out sooner than we think as Climate Change and government policy forces along these changes at an unnatural rate.

New spacecraft required

It’s about time we actually started looking at replacements for the Space Shuttle, the Model T of the Space Age and still the only game in town, this looks quite good and it’s British too.

Skylon Picture

Until we get to the stage where getting into Earth orbit is like taking a plane, except without all the horrendous security issues, then we will be limited in what we can do. The costs and inconvenience of the rockets being a significant hurdle on our quest.

However, the shuttle is going to be with us for a while yet even at $1.7B a unit plus the $450M launch costs. A masterpiece of human ingenuity and technology.

Space Shuttle

Now it seems to me that if they think that this technology will be ready in 10 years then they need to be looking at fitting these engines to a multitude of standard lifting bodies not just the one that is proposed. After all once we start getting out there we will be having these spaceplanes flying every day and the payloads will be different. From passengers to spaceship and spacestation components. Could this firm be the Rolls-Royce of the Space Age?

10 Years. I hope he is right. I can’t wait and I noticed he doesn’t say how long till we all have our own spaceships.

Perhaps I’m spoilt with all this SciFi I watch where they seem to have two battered tin cans and a rusty engine and can still get intergalactic travel.

Just a thought about sharing

Reading this article on the impact of a magnet incident at CERN and how it is impacting the race for a ‘God’ particle. It made me think why are we building £billion systems to compete with each other? Can’t one look for the ‘God’ particle and the other for a ‘Jesus’ particle or something? It seems to me to be a bit of a waste of resources. Especially as the CERN collider can do things that the US one can’t do. Why are they doing the same thing?

Although the Space agencies seem to be cooperating on the surface it seems the same thing is going on in the race in space. The European Space Agency has previously released a list of projects it is looking at funding. Read here. These are split into two bands, L-Class at 650M€ and M-Class at 300M€ from which it will pick one from each.

The L-Class candidates include:

Laplace: This mission would go to Jupiter and its moons. A key target of interest would be the icy moon Europa which is thought to harbour an ocean under its icy crust. The mission would deploy three orbiting platforms to perform coordinated observations of Europa, the other Jovian satellites, Jupiter’s magnetosphere and its atmosphere and interior.
Tandem:The mission would explore both Titan and Enceladus, the other Saturnian moon currently fascinating scientists. The mission would carry two spacecraft – an orbiter and a carrier to deliver an instrument-carrying balloon and three probes on to Titan.
Xeus: This next-generation telescope would study the X-ray Universe. It comes in two parts: a mirror satellite and a detector satellite which have to be flown in formation with extreme precision.

The M-Class candidates include:

Cross-scale: A swarm of 12 spacecraft to make simultaneous measurements of plasma (charged gas) surrounding Earth.
Marco Polo: A sample-return mission to a near-Earth object. It would consist of a mother satellite which would carry a lander, sampling devices, re-entry capsule as well as instruments.
Dune and Space:These are two mission ideas before Esa that would tell us more about the mysterious “dark matter” and even stranger “dark energy” that seem to dominate our Universe but which have proven frustratingly difficult to explain with current observation technologies.
Plato:A mission to find and study planets beyond our Solar System. It would be capable of observing rocky (similar to Earth) exoplanets around brighter and better characterised stars than its predecessors, such as the recently launched Corot mission.
Spica: The Japanese are proposing a mission which would launch a telescope to study the cosmos at far infrared wavelengths. If Europe became involved, it would bring expertise and technology developed for its own Herschel telescope due to launch next year.

Bear in mind these are examples from late 2007 so there was probably many more on the table. Some will already have been rejected and others added. Nevertheless it gives an idea of where we are heading.

Many of these are the ‘first’. First to Jupiter, Saturn etc. While Spica, Xeus are similar to a NASA project, the Webb Telescope, but at different wavelengths.

The pooling of resources seems to be only when a single project cost is so high that neither can fund it by itself like LISA. Other projects seem to have a lot of overlap and the feeling that it is all about being first.

Can’t we just work together? I’m sure that the X-Ray add on for Webb would be cheaper than a brand new telescope for example. There are some geniuses at both these agencies that would be able to iron out the details to get the most out of the funding. There are downsides of course but if the add on shows promise then a later upgrade, perhaps the original proposed telescope, could be justified for example. In addition this race to be first was great for progress when political points were to be made, such as the Space Race, but nowadays we should be sharing resources and ideas. Now perhaps the competition is better for funding which I can understand but cooperation is much better in my view especially now purse strings will undoubtedly be tightened although I accept I’m not a politician.

If we are working together and not looking to go first can we then look at a very topical project? Global Warming, or is it Cooling…. Anyway Climate Change. Let’s build two systems. One to study the sun, recording sunspot activity and solar flares etc., and the other to study the Earth, recording temperatures, CO2 etc. Let’s stop these pseudo scientists fiddling with the base station data to meet their predictions and find out exactly if we have a problem at all. Plus the information we receive will help us predict the future changes and then from reliable and verifiable data available to all we can analyse and work out a way forward together. Perhaps the fact that we don’t even seem to be considering a clear definition on the ‘Single, Most Important Issue for Man’ must make us wonder.

Personally I see that being more important than being first with a probe to Saturn. No matter what results we find. After all if we find water are we going to get there anytime soon with a hose? Nope thought not.

Only thing is won’t we look silly if when we do get to Saturn they dig up a store of books there with the answer to cancer, instructions on solving the energy crisis, a how to on FTL travel and the Universes best seller ‘How to teach Economics and basic Mathematics to Socialists’. Still I suspect it is worth the risk. (Everyone knows that no matter how advanced a species is you can’t teach those subjects to socialists. That one is clearly a fairy tale)

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