You gotta admire his enthusiasm

This young man is definitely interested in space. There needs to be more like him.

SpaceX Reusable Rocket, The Grasshopper!!



Jeff Greason Interview



Nautilus-X Will Change Your Life!

Cheap power: An overnight revolution -- Commentary

By Sterling D. Allan, Pure Energy Systems News

excerpts:

• When considering the logarithmically diminished time it takes to achieve 25% market penetration since the automobile was introduced a century ago (it took a century for it to reach 25%), and more recently the mobile phone took just 13 years, and the web took 7 years; it's conceivable that free energy, starting with Rossi's E-Cat, could take just 3 years.  "Note: I've added a projection for the appearance of "Free Energy" technologies into the marketplace, and how long it will take to reach use by 1/4 of the U.S. Population".
• Mark Gibbs, a columnist for NetworkWorld, has published an excellent article about Andrea Rossi's E-Cat technology, portraying how it could impact the world, if it is for real. It was picked up by ComputerWorld in Norway. 
•  But hot fusion is not what the E-Cat does[;] and, while much of the commentary on this device characterizes it as "cold fusion," Rossi claims that it isn't actually cold fusion at all but involves a Low-Energy Nuclear Reaction (I can't figure out what the difference between cold fusion and LENR might be from the research I've done). [ Comment: the difference between cold fusion and LENR may be the difference between protons and neutrons.  But don't quote me on that.]
• So, here's the question: Let's assume Rossi's E-Cat works. What then?
• Production costs for anything would fall. The power grid would become obsolete. Power stations of all kinds would no longer be an environmental problem. The balance of economic power worldwide would change and, for example, OPEC would become a historical footnote. [ Comment:  This goes a bit too far.  But the change would be noticeable.]
• You thought the adoption of the Web was fast? This could change everything overnight.

Comment:

I can see where some may think of this as a bit of hype.  However, the pace of change is quickening.  Some folks have called that the Singularity.

• 
  

Bread and Circuses

Carnival of Space 219

Comment: Sorry to have to put it this way, but this shouldn't be a spectacle for people's amusement. We've got some real problems here to solve, and I think that space can help us with that. I get the feeling from looking at these sites, that the main interest seems to be in entertainment.

Discovery?

This is your chance to share your original, out-of-this-world take on the future of space exploration—in three minutes or less. Where will we go? What will we discover? Submit your video by November 3, 2011 and we’ll choose ONE winner. [comment: emphasis mine]

How about problem solving?  These people have got it wrong.  But what else is new?  That's how we get the kind of messes we have these days.

I found this on Web Series Today?

She's got a lot of views on her page. Never heard of her before. Evidently, she's a star. I don't how big. Not in the Lady Gaga class, but that doesn't matter.

Me Singing "One and Only" by Adele - Christina Grimmie Cover

Seven Skinny E-Cats Eating Seven Fat Cats

EGO OUT: (comments regarding the Oct.6 Fat Cat experiment) Quoting from Ni-H LENR Genesis 40:21 (a chapter of the Transition Metal LENR Great B...

Comment:  Not a good review of the e-cat demo of Oct 6th.  Quote:

It has happened again- not the ugly facts were slaying beautiful hypotheses but bad experiments have ruined good ideas. 

He may have a point, there.  Anything good could get lost in a maze if improperly executed.  People will get hung up on the process, not the product.

INFORMAVORE's SUNDAY No 477

INFORMAVORE's SUNDAY No 477: My dear Readers, It was a good week for informavores and info-gourmets. My favorite piece this time is the idea to replace the “knowledge w...

Comment: Something here for everyone, this is a lot of stuff. This caught my eye:
Benefits of Laughter Yoga with John Cleese

Why not?

To paraphrase Robert Kennedy

There are those who look at the world the way it is, and ask why... I dream of the way the world could be, and ask why not?

Why not conquer energy and space, which will raise the level of civilization?  What are people afraid of?

Update:

I wonder how many people knew about the Nerva rocket developed in the Apollo Era?   I didn't, until I started writing about space on this blog.  I grew up during the Apollo Era, so it is probably likely that I had heard about it, but had forgotten.  Even now, it seems far fetched.  The significance is that the Saturn V rocket's payload could be increased to 340,000 pounds.  This kind of payload could have been very useful for ambitious missions.  It appears that's why the system was scrapped.

Bad decision.  It need not have resulted in a Mars mission at that time.  A moonbase would have sufficed, and could have been constructed with that kind of capability available with the nuclear Saturn V.  With what we now know about water being on the moon, the decision now appears to have been very short sighted.

But that is "water under the bridge".  We have moved on.

Besides, the anti nukes would have grounded the Nerva rocket many years ago.

How to go forward now?  Eventually, if you had a moonbase, you could process fissionable ores on the moon.  But that is way off into the future.  A way forward could be to enable the development of something capable enough and cheap enough to be used in the near future.

I've explored this idea a little already.  I'll make this a sidebar entry, with a new label "Why not a Moonbase?"