Yeah, but they left Miranda, so...

Everyone on Miranda is dead. It was the Pax. The G-23 Paxilon Hydrochlorate that they added to the air processors.

I found a figure that said it took 30,000 years for the first microbes to start showing back up again. That feels weird. Why did the article say that the climate would be returned to normal after 10ish years but it still took 30,000 years for microbe life to return?

​

I think you're misinterpreting the article. It mentions that it took a long time for life to come back in the area adjacent or in the crater formed by the impact. That's to be expected, as that area was essentially sterilized by the impact

That that's not what would have happened all over the Earth. If *ALL* the microbes had died, all life would have also died. But we know it didn't. We know that plenty of animals survived the impact and the subsequent climate upheaval. After all, if they hadn't, we wouldn't exist!

So yeah, 10 years sounds like a reasonable figure for the soot and other debris launched into the stratosphere to fall out, and while 30,000 years sounds like a lot of time for life to return to the area of crater, I wouldn't dismiss it out of hand.

Dire Penguins is the name of my tuxedo-attired Dire Straits tribute band.

If you want a really condensed but relatively accurate, funny, and easy to read solution, might I suggest Larry Gonick's work:

The Cartoon History of the Universe - From the Big Bang to Alexander the Great (Volumes 1-7)

The Cartoon History of the Universe II - From the Springtime of China to the Fall of Rome (Volumes 8-13)

The Cartoon History of the Universe III - From the Rise of Arabia to the Renaissance (Volumes 14-19)

He also has a 2 volume History of the Modern World.

>the soviet union never was anti nuclear either

The Soviet Union was never anti-nuclear for itself.

However, the anti-nuclear movement in the West was at least encouraged, if not partially funded, by the USSR, especially when it came to nuclear weapons. But it also spilled into nuclear power generation.

That's nobody's business but the Turks.

Not really. I don't really have a dog in that fight.

But I did notice a lot of those incidents at that site (probably a majority, but I didn't count) were 0 injuries, 0 fatalities, which again suggests that they weren't really attacks. If they were intentional attacks, I would expect a injuries and fatalities. But we don't see that.

I mean, it's not like there is room for misinterpretation when you're really mad about something, mad enough to be protesting in the streets. You're probably totally calm and detached and an impartial observer.

That last paragraph was sarcasm, in case it wasn't completely obvious.

That's not to say there aren't any vehicle attacks, of course, but I think actual, for-real vehicle attacks are far less common than that site says they are. Most if not all of the incidents that are 0 injuries, 0 fatalities are likely to be misinterpretations of what the drive was trying to accomplish.

I would take that with a grain of salt.

I looked at some of the incidents, including one that allegedly occurred not that far from me, and a lot of them are basically based on one or two eyewitnesses with no other information available.

And almost all of them are "0 injuries, 0 fatalities".

That suggests to me that they weren't actual attacks. You can't outrun a car or a truck. If someone wants to run into a protest on purpose to kill and injure people, there isn't anything you can do about it, they're going to hit somebody.

This case is a perfect example of that. It was an actual attack by a person intent on killing people, and he did. People who were running or on bikes* were killed (8) and injured (11).

I think it's more likely that most of those so-called "attacks" in your link where there were no injuries or deaths were people who were minding their own business, driving somewhere, and found themselves in the middle of a protest blocking traffic. Car gets surrounded by an angry mob, the people in the car get scared (we all remember what happened to Reginald Denny), and they try to carefully drive away without hurting anybody.

And it gets counted as an "attack" by people with an ax to grind.

​

​

*As a side note, I'm willing to bet a lot of the people killed or injured in that attack were wearing headphones and listening to music. That's a bad habit to get into, because it lowers your situational awareness.

> then the far right was running over protesters weekly.

Do you have a cite for that?

You only need time zones if by definition you have access to daylight, and you depend on daylight. People who don't need that, like submarine crews, just run on an arbitrary time.

There's no reason why the entire Moon can't be on the same time zone, as the lunar day isn't 24 hours anyway, it's more like 27 days, and pretty much everyone will be underground.

So everyone will be on Coordinated Lunar Time, which will be abbreviated to LTC in a compromise with the French speaking world.

I'm rolling that over and over in my mind, just can't place it though...

IIRC correctly they also found an abundance of plants used by the inhabitants, most notably Petroselinum crispum, Salvia officinalis, Salvia rosmarinus, and Thymus vulgaris.

Has he checked under the cushions of the sofa? When I lose something, that's usually where it ends up.

That's not entirely accurate.

For example, the Marquesas are just south of the Equator and they have crinkly edges.

Meanwhile, Wrangel Island up in the Arctic Ocean is pretty smooth and rounded. Same with Bouvet Island down by Antarctica.

>Nuclear power is used to generate electricity which in turn powers electric motors.

Not always. Often, a PWR (pressurized water reactor) is used with a closed loop of superheated water that turns water into steam in a heat exchanger in order to directly drive propulsive turbines which are geared directly to the screws.

For example, the USS Tullibee was the first US submarine to use turbo-electric drive like you're thinking of, all of the other nuclear submarines before it used direct drive.

And almost all of the submarines afterwards. The Los Angeles class, for example, has the turbines connected physically to the screw, as does the current Virginia class subs (connected physically to the pumpjet).

In fact, I don't think the US has any nuclear powered ships that use turbo-electric propulsion. I know the Royal Navy does, though.

That depends on the application. For some applications, nuclear reactors are the best option.

It's how it's used conversationally.

We don't talk about electric engines, for example.

We do sometimes talk about the motor in a car, though, so it's not perfect, just a general rule.

I think Flash Gordon is a bad example because it already had a kind of built-in fan base, of people who had seen the 1930's black and white serials on Saturday morning TV.

I mean, they copied the aesthetic *PERFECTLY*.

And not just the costumes and stuff, but even the acting and casting.

Doesn't really matter. The Terminator films are all about time travel, they don't have to be consistent. There are in essence an infinite number of time-lines to explore.

Apparently, we were given one where ladies in their 60's can be tossed around like ragdolls and not break a hip or anything.

>You could build a steam engine that doesn't require air but it would still be an engine because it uses the heat expansion of water to create a motive force.

We have them today. It's called a "nuclear power plant". No one I know calls it a "nuclear engine", or a "nuclear motor", for that matter. Even when they are used for propulsive power (like for submarines and aircraft carriers).

No it doesn't.

Motor implies it doesn't need air. Engine implies that it does.

So: Jet engine, rocket motor. Gasoline/diesel/steam engine, electric motor.

Ironically, we did send a "lander" into Jupiter's atmosphere.

But it didn't have a camera... :-(

Earth orbit to lunar orbit, sure.

But you could also also use them for other things. The engines are about twice as efficient as chemical rockets for solid core designs, and since the fuel is generally hydrogen and no oxidizer is needed, that simplifies refueling, and also means you can loft that much more fuel per launch, because hydrogen is the lightest element, all other things being equal.

But you could also use something like that for maintenance of geosynchronous satellites, something we simply don't do now. And for even higher missions. Imagine being able to service the Webb Space Telescope like we've done with the Hubble Space Telescope. Having a near-Earth tug capable of getting astronauts to the Moon and back would also allow missions like that.

I kind of get the impression that you're not really imagining the possibilities here. Kind of like looking at a Wright Flyer in 1904 and asking "What use is it?", not seeing that something like that just opens the door for further development and that the jobs will be attracted to the application.

Heh, kind of reminds me about how the "killer app" for personal computers back in the early 1980's was organizing your recipes.

In short, if you build it, creepy ghost players will emerge from the maize.

Even the paper studies (such as they are) haven't been well-funded.

There actually are several different possible applications for NTR. Getting to Mars and back in half the time it takes by chemical rocket is a good one. Getting there and back quickly makes the problem a whole lot easier. It boils the difficulties down to ones we've largely already solved.

Even just having the ability to put a probe to, say, Uranus or Neptune without having to do a whole bunch of gravity assists, and still get there in a reasonable amount of time, is good reason. Those two planets are very unexplored, and Triton may have a subsurface ocean. But we won't really know until we go there.

Plus, even having unmanned stations on the moon (like very large radio telescopes on the far side, like Arecibo and FAST, built into craters) means we'll need to haul a bunch of stuff up to the Moon. Having NTR-propelled craft means we'll be able to send more up there, and we could refuel them in Earth orbit. When we need to retire them, send them on a trajectory into the Sun.