This looks like it could be a breakthrough new process.
As usual, though there’s probably a catch, in terms of scalability. Also, it doesn’t discuss it, but it seems like it should be even easier with seawater.
Category Archives: Technology and Society
An Exascale Computer
Shocking News From Science
Cats like people.
As I noted on Twitter the other day, they seem to view us as large non-hostile cats, who occasionally provide them with sustenance and clean their litter boxes.
Wait Until She Encounters Her First Toilet
No comment.
NASA’s New Flexibility
It’s been helping SpaceX innovate, and disrupt a moribund launch industry.
The Space Battle Of The Billionaires
An assessment of the prospects for the various satellite broadband plans.
The Case For Space
Glenn Reynolds reviews Bob Zubrin’s new book. I haven’t read it yet.
[Afternoon update]
Leonard David has a new space book out, too. I should be getting review copies of both soon.
Solar Activity
Are we heading for a Grand Minimum?
If so, it will put to the test the CO2 climate thesis.
Asteroidal Resources
Just as when you’re pulling nickel out of the ground in Sudbury, when you use ocean water you’re mining asteroids. As I noted in my latest essay, the more we learn about the solar system, the more we discover that, as opposed to being what we long thought was “the water planet,” earth is a comparative desert. The water is mostly extraterrestrial.
To expand on Krafft Ehricke’s famous statement, if God had wanted us to become space faring, he’d have given us a moon. With water on it.
The Space Technology Curve
I don’t usually post from Facebook, but Jeff Greason has an interesting/depressing thought:
In the Star Trek episode “Tomorrow is Yesterday”, Kirk is told “I’m going to lock you up for two hundred years”. He looks at the camera (very nearly breaking the fourth wall), and says “that ought to be just about right” — in other words, telling the viewer that Star Trek is set about 200 years in the future.
That episode was filmed in 1968.
That was 50 years ago.
Somehow, I don’t feel we’ve made 1/4 of the progress from Apollo to Star Trek
As Mike Heney points out over there, we haven’t even made a quarter of the progress from Apollo back to Apollo.