NetNews Usenet Archive 1992 #31/NN_1992_31.iso/spool/alt/rushlim/12263

Internet Message Format | 1992-12-24 | 25.5 KB

Xref: sparky alt.rush-limbaugh:12263 talk.politics.space:1597 sci.space:18196
Newsgroups: alt.rush-limbaugh,talk.politics.space,sci.space
Path: sparky!uunet!cs.utexas.edu!swrinde!emory!wa4mei!ke4zv!gary
From: [e-mail] (Gary Coffman)
Subject: Re: Justification for the Space Program
Message-ID: <[e-mail]>
Reply-To: [e-mail] (Gary Coffman)
Organization: Gannett Technologies Group
References: <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]> <[e-mail]>
Distribution: usa, world
Date: Thu, 24 Dec 1992 06:51:27 GMT
Lines: 437

In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>In article <[e-mail]>, [e-mail] (Paul Dietz) writes...
>>In article <[e-mail]> [e-mail] writes:
>>
>>Yes, I doubt it.  The idea that we're going to get locked
>>in some sort of technological stasis is a bizarre fantasy.  Technology
>>is continuin to advance smartly.
>
>Take a look around you my friend, read this very news group. Technology is
>being sacrificed on the holy grail of defict reduction due to the fact that
>the consitutancy is small relative to the bread and circuses that keep
>Congress critters in office. Expect to see cuts also in medical research that
>are disguised as "cost cutting" and "unnecessary expenditures".

*Government* expenditures for R&D haven't declined overall, though some
areas have seen reductions while others have seen slight increases. But
then the idea of white coated savants on the government payroll being
responsible for R&D is a recent idea of the post WWII generation, and a
fairly ineffective one. Breakthru technologies generally haven't been
spawned in government labs. Instead they have developed in industry and
in garages such as Steven Jobs' garage. Only Big Science and Big Space
demand Big Bucks, and return very little Buck Rogers. Most effective
R&D is done by groups of two to ten people working in obscure corners
with relatively inexpensive apparatus.

>>Endless people have, wingnut!  It's called fission.  There is sufficient
>>uranium and thorium in the earth's crust to supply current levels
>>of primary energy consumption for billions of years, if used with one
>>of the several breeding cycles.  Moreover, there is enough fossil
>>fuel around that we needn't go to fission right away.
>>
>
>Ad hominum attacks aside, I submit that your thesis here is incorrect. I know
>what fission is and one of the largest plants of that type are within a few
>miles of my present location. Unfortunately the contractor scum that built
>it for TVA's nuclear program did such a poor job that it took over a billion
>dollars just to straighten out all of the defects (Browns Ferry). I agree that
>fission is a nice, relatively safe form of energy production. It is also
>very expensive. Each plant costs somewhere in the 5-8 billion dollar range.
>Bellefonte nuclear plant a few miles from here in another direction will cost
>almost a billion dollars just to finish from its 80% percent complete state
>it currently is in. All in all my region of the country has more nuclear
>power than any region in the Americas and let me inform you that my power
>bill is anything but cheap.

In the US it now takes up to 14 years to license a nuclear plant. In
France and Japan (!) it takes only 4. They bring plants online for a
third of our costs because their capital isn't tied up unproductively
for as long. Nuclear plants are more expensive to build, but cost little
to operate. Georgia Power spends more in two years for fuel for it's coal
fired plants than they cost. Fuel costs for the two nuclear plants run
less than 0.4% of plant costs annually. It's pay me now, or pay me later.
The nuke plants also don't spew out millions of tons of filth each year
like the coal plants do. Nuclear plants in the US have to meet such
strict standards that a Coleman lamp mantle is allowed to emit more
radioactivity than an operating nuke plant. Every coal fired plant in
the world routinely emits more radioactivity than is allowed for a
nuke. If coal plants were held to the same radioactive emissions
standards of nuke plants, every coal plant in the US would have to
shut down. Nuke plants are expensive because they are held to standards
that mother's milk couldn't pass. Note that plants operated by Duke
Power, the most nuclear of the utilities, cost much less than TVA
plants and have much less downtime. Must be that government efficiency
at work.

>former Soviet Union. There are whole tracts of the breadbasket of Asia
>where children learn of birds and trees from videos and books because the
>radiation from your fission plants has rendered outside living impossible

That's outrageous nonsense. The company town around Chernobyl is deserted,
but people still live and work nearby. In fact the undamaged unit at Chernobyl
is back on line generating power. In Kiev life has returned to normal except
among a few hysterics who see radiation under every bed. The total release
from the reactor fire was less than that of the Old Smokey nuclear test in
Nevada, yet sheep graze there now.

>>Get your arithmetic straight.  Current world energy consumption is
>>about 350 exajoules per year.  In the US, we consume about 3x10^11
>>J/year/capita.  A population of 10^10 consuming energy at our level
>>would increase demand about 1 order of magnitude.  If they consume
>>energy at the level of, say, current europeans, the demand would be
>>lower.
>
>I am glad you detected this in my calculation. It is always nice to leave a
>teaser like that to get a response. What if we in the US want to increase
>our own energy consumption? Face it fossil fuels are not going to last forever.
>Pollution in many American cities is so bad that the sky is brown for most
>of the year instead of blue, (Can you say Los Angeles?) Governments are
>mandating that we begin to switch to electrical power for our automobiles. This
>is a good trend in my opinion. That will drive up the demand for electrical
>power by several orders (at least two) of magnitude. Where is that energy
>going to come from?

Mandating electric cars now is a silly move. First, the cost of operation of
an electrical car is so high that gas would have to reach $6.12 a gallon
to equal the cost of the electricity used to move an electric car the
same distance with the same performance. (Calculations available on
request) That doesn't even begin to address the higher manufacturing cost
of electric vehicle batteries, or their replacement cost after 500 charge/
discharge cycles. Second, using electric vehicles doesn't reduce pollution
unless the electrcity is nuclear generated. It just moves the site where
the pollution is released. If California wants to move it's pollution to
the Four Corners area by importing it's electricity, California should be
responsible for that pollution. But because it's across the state line they
can dodge the responsibility.

>Your fission plants? Not hardly, while this is a good
>solution on an interim basis it is not the desired solution. At a cost of
>5-10 billion each we would have to build at the very least an order of magnitude
>more plants than we have today. Today we have 72 operating Nuclear plants in
>the US. This means that say 700 new plants. (By the way last I heard Nuclear
>power was supplying 12% of our electrical energy. Multiply the number of
>plants by a median price of 7.5 billion each and you come out to roughly
>550 billion dollars for just the plants.

The latest figures I've seen put nuclear at 20% of US generation. If
we go to the Japanese licensing method, we can bring in standard plants
for 2.5-3.0 billion each for a total cost of around $200 billion dollars
to double the number of nuclear plants. During the life of the plants,
coal fired plants of the same capacity would burn about $100 billion
dollars worth of coal and cost about $36 billion to build. So the net
extra cost of doubling nuclear generation is less than $2 billion a year.
For that $2 billion, about the cost of a Shuttle Orbiter, we remove
about 80 million tons of air pollutants and fly ash. That's the bargain
of the century.

>>Chemical pollution?  There's no law of nature that says chemical
>>pollution cannot be reduced as far as we like.  Certainly replacing
>>fossil fuels with nuclear-derived energy sources would reduce
>>this pollution greatly.
>
>No there is no law of nature that says chemical pollution cannot be reduced.
>The law against this is one of economics. We could simply heat up the
>chemical pollutants till the fractioned into their atomic constitutents.
>However this would require another order of magnitude increase in electrical
>generation.

There are two main classes of chemical pollution sources. One is site
of use releases from operating equipment, industrial users, and household
users. The other is the pollution generated by the extraction or
manufacturing of the chemicals. These latter are usually highly localized
and can be dealt with fairly inexpensively by simply restricting residential
development near the sites. The two largest sources of aggregate air
pollution in the US are fossil power plants and vehicles. By moving
toward more nuclear power, we eliminate one of the two major pollution
sources. We've already cut auto emissions 90% since 1968 and are in
the process of cutting them another 90% under the new Clean Air Act.
City air is already noticably cleaner than in 1968 and will get steadily
better as newer vehicles replace older, less controlled, vehicles.

The major sources of water pollution are runoff from agricultural
areas and from coal mine seepage. By going nuclear we eliminate the
coal mine seepage from new mines. Agricultural runoff is a harder
problem, but is addressed in the EPA's new regulations on phosphorus
and feedlot waste treatment. Chemical pollution on land, Love Canal
and the like, is restricted to small sites and is not as serious a
national problem. The Superfund cleanups underway are costly, and
new research has shown that the dioxin scare was overblown anyway.
Simply marking those sites as not suitable for residential construction
is probably the most cost effective way of dealing with them.

>Ridge plants where these materials are processed. Have you ever been around
>slag heaps? Or around areas that are marked off as no tresspassing because
>it is deadly to walk around in the woods where this material is buried? I have
>Go to Lenoir City Tennessee and go to the Melton Hill Damn. Then try to climb
>up the hill on the East side of the river and see how long you live.

Unless you slip and fall in the river, about as long as the actuaries
would expect you to live. This is a very low level radioactive site,
unless you *eat* the dirt, 6 hours wandering about the site will expose
you to about the same extra amount of radiation as a transcontinental
airplane flight.  Your nuke-o-phobia is showing.

>> >To blithly deride the space option by pointing to technology tha does not
>> >exist or is even on the horizon is irresponsible.
>>
>>Breeder reactors exist today.  The technology for reprocessing
>>nuclear fuel exists.  Better, cheaper technologies for this are
>>in the works (the pyroprocess being developed at ANL, for example).
>>They are not moving faster because we have such an embarrassing
>>glut of energy.
>
>We have a so-called glut of energy today because Arabs have enough brains
>not to repeat the mistakes of the 1970's oil shocks. All they have to
>do is keep the marginal costs of oil slightly below the costs of alternative
>energy sources and they keep us hooked on the habit of fossil fuels.

So you admit that there is plenty of oil. Saudi Arabian light crude
currently costs under $2 a barrel to produce. They get $18 because
they like to make money and, as you say, they want to keep the price
below the alternatives. This is actually very good because it would
be stupid on our part to pay more than we have to for energy supplies.
We should save our own oil until we've drained the Arab reservoirs
at good prices, and we should avoid "alternative" fuels until oil
prices rise to equal the alternatives cost, about $50 a barrel equivalent.
That's at least 50-150 years from now. By then we should have replaced
all our dirty coal fired plants and be using nice clean nuclear power
for electricity. We can then use our 2,000 year supply of coal to make
synthetic gasoline at $50 a barrel, or convert to a nuclear generated
hydrogen transport economy.

>There is an Arab proverb that says:
>
>My Grandfather drove a camel
>My Father drove a car.
>I drive a jet
>My son flys in space
>His son will drive a camel

Of course the smarter Arabs are investing their money and figure that
their children and their children's children will be much wealthier
than they are. Capitalism has been good to them.

>>So-called "renewable" resources are less well developed, but
>>are on a steeper learning curve.  We can expect them to get cheaper
>>as well,
>
>We have reached the limit on hydroelectric in the US. Geothermal is
>of limited use and very polluting. Wind power also is of limited use
>and confined to areas with high wind velocity. Alcohol production for
>energy consumption is more expensive and energy intensive than simply
>using more oil.

You're right about alcohol, it's a net energy loser. But if we have
excess energy available, and we will if we convert to nuclear, then
that's ok because alcohol is a convienent gasoline substitute. Just
think of it like hydrogen, as an energy transport medium. Now you
are also right that wet geothermal is limited and can be polluting
if re-injection wells aren't used. The California Geysers area is
such an area of poor geothermal technology. But injection wells are
not terribly expensive or difficult and can cut wet geothermal
pollution to practically nil. However, the real geothermal potential
lies in *dry* geothermal. It's available everywhere you are willing
to sink a deep enough shaft. Using an inert gas, such as helium or
the more economical argon, as the working fluid, it is practically
pollution free. Using dry geothermal to tap the nuclear decay heat
trapped beneath the surface is a vast potential source of clean
energy. Wind is not nearly so limited as you claim either. The
US DOE estimates that the energy recoverable from the winds in
5 plains states is 10 times the annual US energy consumption.
The variability of winds at any particular site mandates a
distributed grid approach. This is not simple. The control
problem of phasing and balancing such a grid would tax current
supercomputers, but they aren't standing still in their development
either.

>What processes do you mean? solar? Well let me inform
>you that there are no solar R&D efforts outside the aerospace industry.

What would you call Luz? It's not a R&D effort because it is producing
and selling grid power today. Yes the original company filed bankruptcy,
like many pioneer firms do, but the plant is still in operation and is
within a couple of percent of being cost competitive with cheap fossil
plants. They are one rate increase by PG&E away from being a profitable
operation. With the current enviro-mania in Kalifornia, they *will* be
profitable in a couple of years when more nukes are shut down. Solar
thermal has moved out of the R&D stage and into commercial operation.

>Those are faring badly at this time as well. Boeing has halted work on the
>37% efficiency concentrator cell. We are the only ones, at this time, keeping
>the 26% efficient planar technolgy alive, and we are doing for space
>applications!

Sure, gold plated government funded expensive stuff. But look at good old
Arco, they've been selling commercial polycrystalline photovoltaic panels
to the phone company and to rural dwellers for several years. Currently it's
cheaper to install photovoltaics than to connect to the grid if you live more
than 1,000-10,000 feet from power lines. (That's dependent on local power
company pricing structures for new line installations.) So their panels
are only about 7% efficient, the fuel is free and the panels are cheap.
The batteries aren't, but that's another story.

>Almost every great civilization of antiqity grew strong through the conquest
>of their more advanced neibhors and through the aquistion of their wealth.
>the pursuit of knowledge for knowledge's sake is mostly a modern phenomenon.
>The greater acquistion of knowledge as done nothing to aid the United States
>in its current troubles. America is bleeding its wealth away because we
>are not investing in technology to create wealth. We create wealth by
>creating new technologies and creating demand where there was none before.
>This was true of the car, the plane, the electricity that we use every day.
>We are falling behind because many of us have bought the economic postulate
>that we can redistribute the wealth of the world more to our liking. This
>only takes from others to add to us. This is how the rest of the world has
>done the United States. The cars we made the best are now made in Japan,
>the electronics as well. It is better if we advance forward and make new
>technology and create new demands rather than fight for market share that
>has been the cause of many wars in history.

The US still has 20% higher productivity than Japan or Germany. Japanese
companies now manufacture most of their products for sale in the US
*in* the US to take advantage of the higher productivity of the US
workforce. Hondas made in Marysville Ohio are *exported* to Japan
where they command a *premium* over Japanese made Hondas because
Japanese buyers perceive the quality as being higher. All Kawasaki
street motorcycles sold in the US are made in Lincoln Nebraska making
Kawasaki the largest *US* manufacturer of large motorcycles. Makita
manufactures it's power tools in Duluth Georgia. Nanao makes it's
computer monitors in Norcross Georgia. Maxcell produces magnetic
tape in Conyers Georgia. Old line US companies are finally wising
up. GM's new GEO cars are the equal of any imported economy car.
The new Caddy engine is warranteed not to require maintenance for
100,000 miles. I'll put my Jeep against any truck made anywhere
in the world. The Japanese stock market has recently lost over
half it's value while ours continues to set new record highs.
German unemployment is now higher than US unemployment. Japanese
companies in Japan are *laying off* workers for the very first
time in their history. US based Nucor steel is eating the Korean's
lunch, Japanese steel makers have already conceded the specialty
steel market. The world is changing, and the US is not losing.


>>The third world "waking up": just why do you think they're selling
>>their resources?  Because you can't eat copper or cobalt, and, absent
>>the real drivers of wealth -- a knowledgable population backed
>>up by accumulated capital -- these resources are just useless lumps.
>>
>
>The answer that a third world person would give you to that is that the
>west does not provide the right type of help. It is ok to feed people

Who helped the nations of the Pacific Rim? Who helped the Thais, Koreans,
Tiawanese, or Japanese? Who helped the US or Canada? Who helped England,
Spain, or Germany? Who helped Rome? It won't wash Dennis. Holding out an
empty hand is not the way nations prosper. African civilization in the
1500s was advanced beyond Europe. Indian civilization eclipsed Europe
in the Middle Ages. Chinese civilization was far ahead of Rome. South
American Indians had a calendar more accurate than the Pope's, and had
cities of 1 million people when Athens was a wide place in the road.
The third world is the third world because it's people have lost the
spark that once made them great. They've got to find it again *within*
themselves. No amount of aid will make a difference without it.


>>To get specific, just which resource are you talking about?  I tell
>>you what: you mention one, and I'll demonstrate that we can either
>>tolerate price increases (because so little is used), can find other
>>sources, or can substitute.

>Oh lets start out with Platinum. I currently costs over 500 dollars per ounce.
>Some is needed for each catalytic converter in the world. Many pound are needed
>each week to be put in the converters. (The converters are built near here and
>there is a Brinks truck that comes to deliver the platinum every week or two)
>Platinum is one of the essential catalysts for industrial processes relating
>to lowering the chemical energy needed to make many processes work efficiently.

A catalytic converter *retails* for under $200, so there must be less than
0.4 ounce of platinum in it. Now there are about 100 million cars in the
US, and probably 80% have catalytic converters. So there's less than 1,000
tons of platinum riding the roads. Platinum is a scarce metal found in
conjunction with copper nickel ores such as the ones at Sudbury in Canada,
the Ural mountains of Russia, in South Africa, Alaska, Columbia, Ethiopia,
Japan, Australia, and Sierra Leone. It's purified from ores containing as
little as 0.18% by washing with aqua regia and precipitating with ammonia.
It shares most of it's catalytic properties with iridium, osmium, palladium,
rhodium, and ruthenium. The Sudbury deposits alone contain an estimated
10,000 times as much platinum as is used annually by industry.

>We can recover much of the catalyst used but there is always some loss. To mine
>your lower quality ores we need either more platinum or its analog or very
>expensive vapor phase processes. Where we gonna get it? Let me tell you where.

Recycling by the same ore refining process used on dilute ores, washing
in aqua regia followed by ammonia precipitation can recover nearly 100%
of the platinum in catalytic converters. With a 10,000 year supply in only
one of the deposits now being mined, and with the very high degree of
recycling easily possible from converters, we are in no danger of running
short of platinum.

>In observations of Asteroid 1986 DA radar evidence pointed out that it
>very probably a metal asteriod. The size of this asteriod is around 2 km.
>It is estimated that there is 1 trillion dollars worth of platinum and 90
>billion dollars worth of gold on this one object.

1 trillion dollars worth of platinum, at $500 an ounce, is only 83,000 tons
of platinum spread throughout 8.2 billion tons of iron asteroid. Hardly seems
worth the trouble. That's about 180,000 times more dilute than any ore mined
on Earth. Where you gonna get enough aqua regia to dissolve that lump of iron?

>What about gold? Well the major use of gold is not in jewelery but in industry.
>We currently use vast amounts of gold in electronics to plate connectors.
>Yes yes I know we can use substitues but the very nature of a substitute
>is that it is in most cases inferior. This is certainly true for connectors
>plated with anything other than gold. Also gold has many other uses that it
>could be used for if it were not so expensive relative to its inferior
>substitutes.

Again, with gold at $370 a Troy ounce and 90 billion dollars worth, that's
only 10,135 tons of gold spread throughout 8.2 billion tons of iron. My
backyard has a higher concentration of gold than that. North Georgia was
the site of the first US gold rush and is still rich in gold. Commercial
mines started back up when gold passed $70 an ounce.

>What about copper? Yes yes I know that we can substitute aluminum for copper
>in most cases but aluminum is only 90 as efficient as copper at carrying
>electricty This translates into a 10% decrease in the net efficiency in most
>of our power generating and distribution system. If copper were cheaper (more
>abundant) then we could save billions per year just in this area.

Did you ever hear of Ohm's Law Dennis? Aluminum is 10% more resistive than
copper, so the power engineers use 10% thicker cables. Since aluminum is
so abundant, and so cheap and light, the cables are still much cheaper than
copper cables while having exactly the same losses.

>Civil engineers (I am an ASCE (American Society of  Civil Engineers) member)
>and they would love to have stainless. The more difficult workability would
>more than be offset by the lower operating costs that such bridges entail. Most
>bridges that are steel, such as the Golden Gate must be constantly painted and
>buffed and treated to stop or slow down corrosion. This is a very expensive
>process. In modern steel and iron Zinc coating helps for a while, but also
>adds to pollution of the soils by heavy metals.

So add 3% chromium to the pot at the steel mill. Stainless is only about
10% more expensive than ordinary structural steel. Of course it is horrible
to machine, welds poorly, and is more brittle, but hey it doesn't rust.

>Well this is enough for the moment. There are many other areas where the
>resources of the entire solar system would do great good in raising the
>standard of living of our nation as well as the world. I have not even spoken
>on broadcast power, and the lowering of costs and pollution that would come

Yeah, don't talk about broadcast power, somebody might mention the inverse
square law.

>from extraterrestrial reduction and refining of metals. All we need is a
>transporation infrastructure. Give us 150 billion and we will change the
>face of the world. Your way has been tried for the last twenty years. Your

I'm sure you would change the face of the world, or at least the ozone
layer with all that launch activity.


Gary
--
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