Because we’re wasting it on party balloons. It really is a critical strategic resource; it’s nuts to be selling off the reserve. It’s vital for a lot of rocketry.
But here’s my question, that a quick search doesn’t answer. With the increase in natural gas production from fracking, are they capturing the helium along with it? Does this solve the problem? Or is the artificially low prices making it not worthwhile to do so? The other question is, are there places where it’s easy to mine in the solar system? For instance, how practical would it be to skim Saturn’s atmosphere for it?
Through calculations, Busemann found that a biplane design could essentially do away with shock waves. Each wing of the design, when seen from the side, is shaped like a flattened triangle, with the top and bottom wings pointing toward each other. The configuration, according to his calculations, cancels out shock waves produced by each wing alone.
However, the design lacks lift: The two wings create a very narrow channel through which only a limited amount of air can flow. When transitioning to supersonic speeds, the channel, Wang says, could essentially “choke,” creating incredible drag. While the design could work beautifully at supersonic speeds, it can’t overcome the drag to reach those speeds.
If the design “lacks lift” (which it does — that’s the problem with a Busemann biplane) how does it “work beautifully at supersonic speeds”? What holds the airplane up?
What if they aren’t really “fossil” fuels? I’m skeptical on this, but maintain an open mind. If Gold is right, it’s a huge game changer, not just technologically, but politically. Of course, it will just send the carbon loons further around the bend.
This is probably inevitable. If it doesn’t happen by then, or sooner, it will be due to regulatory inertia at the FAA. It will probably take longer for pilotless passenger flights. Regardless of the actual safety level, I think that a lot of people are going to still feel more comfortable if there’s someone in the cockpit whose ass is on the line along with theirs.
Of course, we’ll be doing some market experiments in suborbital in the next few years. Virgin Galactic has redundant pilots, XCOR has a single-string one, and Armadillo is automated.
Time was a sculptor looked at a big slab of stone and saw the figure within he would liberate with hammer and chisel; time was, people gathered to see a monolith pass because it was a gift from Egypt, and stood for the power of another culture your culture had managed to subdue. Plus, it was cool; it was exotic. Time was, you valued something for what we could make of it, not the fact that you could just drag it somewhere else and say “now walk under it, and think things about big rocks.” Feh.
I have to confess, I couldn’t figure out what the big deal was, either, but if I had gone to watch, it would have been to see the vehicle, not the rock.
Baumgartner is gearing up for an even bigger leap — his so-called “space jump” — from 120,000 feet (36,576 m) this summer. The current record for highest-altitude skydive is 102,800 feet (31,333 m), set in 1960 by U.S. Air Force Captain Joe Kittinger.
Baumgartner hopes his attempt will also set several other marks. He is chasing the record for longest freefall (estimated to be about 5 minutes and 30 seconds from 120,000 feet), and he hopes to become the first person to break the speed of sound during freefall.
At some point, this raises the question: at what point does a space suit become a very small, tight-fitting supersonic aircraft?
Another question. If someone wanted to try this from (say) an Armadillo vehicle, would the expectations of safety during ascent be the same as (again, say) someone doing a research experiment? Or someone who just wanted to enjoy the view?
Some have said that the cost-effective solution to climate change is to adapt (I’m in this camp). But I think this may be going overboard:
Some of the proposed modifications are simple and noninvasive. For instance, many people wish to give up meat for ecological reasons, but lack the willpower to do so on their own. The paper suggests that such individuals could take a pill that would trigger mild nausea upon the ingestion of meat, which would then lead to a lasting aversion to meat-eating. Other techniques are bound to be more controversial. For instance, the paper suggests that parents could make use of genetic engineering or hormone therapy in order to birth smaller, less resource-intensive children.
What could go wrong?
And of course, it’s all about the liberty:
It’s been suggested that, given the seriousness of climate change, we ought to adopt something like China’s one child policy. There was a group of doctors in Britain who recently advocated a two-child maximum. But at the end of the day those are crude prescriptions—what we really care about is some kind of fixed allocation of greenhouse gas emissions per family. If that’s the case, given certain fixed allocations of greenhouse gas emissions, human engineering could give families the choice between two medium sized children, or three small sized children. From our perspective that would be more liberty enhancing than a policy that says “you can only have one or two children.” A family might want a really good basketball player, and so they could use human engineering to have one really large child.
Yes, that’s what we really care about — a fixed allocation of greenhouse emissions per family.