algore is gonna ruin my favorite show

damn it

ya know hes gonna make evil geniues wait 5 days for their doomsday devices

or worse ban assault doomsday devices and only allow hunting doomsday devices

that what i keep my mutated anthrax for

If this idea was practical, we'd be doing it already instead of creating landfills and homeless barges.

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hey the show wasnt half bad the iron giant was hilarious

he doesnt mean no harm he just wants to kill all humans

On Mon, 22 May 2000 10:25:09 -0400, Dave wrote:

I was making a reference to the giant ball of garbage episode. The air pollution produced by the launch of a rocket is worse than all the garbage it could possible haul up. It takes more energy to put a pound of nuclear waste into space then the fuel could ever produce. Even our most toxic waste cannot be effectively dumped into the sun.

I have Al Gore's "Earth in the Balance" on tape and he never suggests sending garbage into space.

--Larry

One of my favorites. I liked when Fry taught the gang how to create garbage.

But Shuttles go up every other week, and rarely with a full cargo bay. They could utilize the unused bay space.

No one ever said we had to profit from the deal. If it costs a little extra to remove toxic waste from Earth, why not spend the money?

Maybe not cost effectively, but it could be done effectively.

So much for him being ahead of his time. :)

How is that tape, BTW?

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On Tue, 23 May 2000 19:38:06 -0400, Dave wrote:

Cargo space isn't the issue, it's weight (actually mass). I don't know what the ratio is for the space shuttle, but the Saturn V (Apollo) had a 60,000 to 1 fuel to payload ratio. The shuttle is a little better, but it's still high.

Rather than create a pound of waste then send it into space, we could just use the rocket fuel to generate much more power. Another consideration is the possibility of a rocket failure. The shuttle is the safest system yet and it still had one major failure in 101 launches. If one cargo of radioactive waste blew up, it could wipe out half the world. The amount of high level nuclear waste in the US could pave a highway from Washington DC to Seattle, four lanes wide and three feet deep. (and that was back in the 1980's.)

The volume of waste would make it unworkable. Plus the rocket launches create more pollution than they could get rid of. Most of our waste can be processed here on earth, if we would spend the money. Even nuclear waste can be recycled back to nuclear fuel until the hottest isotopes are spent. Sadly, every attempt to do it has resulted in major radioactive leaks. This was what Karen Silkwood was investigating when her car mysteriously went off the road and all her papers mysteriously dis-appeared from the wreckage.

I certainly agree that it's worth the investment to recycle virtually every thing. In the last ten years or so, we've come a long way and there is a long way to go.

It's a set of nine cassettes (10 hours and 30 mins) read by Ed Begley Jr. Over all it's quite good. He makes a good point that the environment can be protected and restored without destroying the economy. In the long run, the cost of protecting the environment will be paid back and then some. It was written in 1992 when Gore was still a senator. I got the tapes in the bargain bin at Barnes and Noble.

Now every time I see Al Gore talk, I expect to hear Ed Begley's voice.

--Larry

OK, I've had enough. I had avoided debunking this rubbish because I was hoping that someone else would do it for me. I guess no one else wanted to do it, either.

Larry F wrote:

If the rocket engine runs on liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen, then the only product is water. Pollution produced - none. Liquid oxygen is produced by atmospheric liquifaction. Pollution produced - none. This is a very efficient process using regenerative cooling, so very little electricity is required. Liquid hydrogen production from methane does release some carbon dioxide into the atmosphere ( CH4 + O2 = CO2 + 2H2) but the process is a net producer of energy. If you want a big source of pollution, look at the millions of SUVs and trucks on the road.

Could you give a cite for this? From a mainstream scientific journal? I am sure that there are publications out there that assert this, just as there are publications out there that maintain that the Earth is flat. For the rest of you who are reading this, there are plans to store all the USA's high level nuclear waste in an underground storage facility, which needs a LOT less volume than Larry F. suggests.

On Thu, 25 May 2000 03:50:25 GMT, Cletus the slack-jawed yokel wrote:

And if the rockets ran on good wishes . . .

But rockets don't fly on hydrogen and oxygen alone. The Shuttle's main engines do, but the solid boosters are pretty dirty. Hydrogen has one of the best thrust to weight ratios going, but the thrust to volume ratio is very bad.

Plus all the parts of the rocket that are not re-used must be manufactured, the metal must be smelted etc. I've been to towns with big smelting plants and the acid rain eats the paint right off the cars. Even the parts of the shuttle that are reused only last a limited number of missions. All that manufacturing creates pollution and it adds up.

For per pound cost to orbit, the Saturn V was still one of the best systems going. It used mostly kerosene and O2. Just look at the size of the rocket compare to the size of the payload that eventually left earth orbit.

Good point. The power needed to liquify O2 is much lower than one would think. There is still power consumed and that means there is pollution. Perhaps not a huge amount, but more than none. When you consider the amount of fuel needed, the difference between none and very little adds up.

Add to that the side products of methane production and it is considerable. Some methane leaks into the environment even when the systems are working, when there is a spill a lot can get out. Still, this process is relatively clean. There is new research on bio-conversion using blue-green algae to produce hydrogen from photo/chemo synthesis. Even if we developed a launch system that used only H2/O2 propellant and the craft were 100% reusable, then we'd still have two issues to contend with.

1. Risk of a failure raining debris back to earth. While we can make containers to survive an explosion and re-entry, the weight gets out of hand. Remember when a nuclear powered Soviet satellite failed to reach orbit and crash landed somewhere in Canada?

2. We'd still do much better to not use nuclear fuel and not deal with the waste. We could burn the H2/O2 in an earthbound power plant and produce more electricity than was produced by the waste we are dumping.

I look at them every day. Obscenely low mileage and the pollution that goes with it plus the fact that their design makes them more likely to kill people in accidents all to stroke the ego of some yuppies. I'm happy to see gas prices go up just to discourage these people.

No Nukes, Everyones Guide to Nuclear Energy.

How about the U.S. Dept of Energy, http://www.rw.doe.gov/progdocs/annrpts/98ar-cvr/annrpt98_appc.pdf by 2035 there will be 87,000 metric tons of commercial reactor waste.

In Dec 1998 there was 38,000 metric tons of spent fuel stored in reactors. In Addition, there is waste from naval reactors and so on.

If you have a 60,000 : 1 fuel to payload ratio to achieve orbit, that's 2.28X10^9 (2,280,000,000) metric tons of fuel just to put the waste currently stored in reactors into earth orbit. Add to that, the weight of the engine to go leave earth orbit, the fuel it will need and the fuel to blast all of that into orbit.

But not the U.S. Dept of Energy.

They've been making those plans for a long time. In the early 80's they were already old. They have started construction, but there is still major opposition from the residents of Nevada who are not too happy about it. If the vaults are opened before 250,000 years, it could be very bad. A single seismic surprise, like the Northridge earthquake a few years ago, and the entire southwestern US is a toxic wasteland.

The Yucca Mt site is scheduled for review in 2002. It's approval is by no means assured. The amount of waste projected to 2035, when the last US reactor is shut down, will exceed the planned limits for Yucca, if it is put into operation.

The distance from Seattle and Wash DC is 2329 miles (3748 km) that works out to 16.32 Metric tons per mile or 4.08 tons per lane. Flat Earth? I don't think so, a LOT less than I suggested? I don't think so there either.

While you do make some good points, I still stand on the basic conclusion. Do you think it is feasible to blast all our high level waste into the sun?

--Larry

Larry F wrote:

All-up launch weight of the Saturn V (Skylab version) was 6,222,000 lb with a payload of 168,100 lb, about 5 times that of the Shuttle. I can't find the percentage of that weight which is fuel, but it must be less than 6,053,900 lb. (All-up - payload) That gives a propellant to payload ratio of at most 36 : 1. This, by the way, was better than that waste of taxpayer's money, the Shuttle. I do have the figures for this one - 660 tons of O2, 112 tons of H2, and 16 tons of payload, for a ratio of a little over 48 : 1. I don't know where you got a figure of 60,000 : 1

At no more than a 36:1 ratio, yes it is possible to launch high-level nuclear waste into Earth orbit. Of course it would be a horrendous error to do that, what with the risk of launch failures, but technically it could be done.

Nop, it is not. The 'real' reason is simply that it would cost too much. Current launch systems run about $10,000 per pound of payload to orbit. Earthbound storage systems, while not ideal, should be a lot less expensive. Remember, wew have to do SOMETHING with this high-level nuclear waste, and underground storage is by far the best option that we have at this time. It's way better than letting is sit in 'temporary' storage tanks and pools where it is now.

Bill

On Fri, 26 May 2000 19:47:47 GMT, Cletus the slack-jawed yokel wrote:

SILENCE! I agree completely!

By building the shuttle, we forced the Soviets to build one to "keep up" with us. Their scientists have since said they built one because we built one and they figured we must know something they don't. By the time it flew, they realized that they had jumped off a cliff because we did. They flew 1 unmanned mission and their shuttle now sits rotting in a park because they couldn't afford to run it. There may have been even stupider reasons for scrapping the Saturn V, but I can't think of one.

The 60,000 to 1 was clearly in error. I am searching for that information, but I can't find it yet. It may have been the ratio of fuel to "astronaut mass on the moon" or something. But it is certain NOT the fuel to payload in orbit as I said previously.

I checked in "The Space Shuttle Operator's Manual (1)" and your amounts for H2 and O2 are very close to what's written. The manual was published in 1982, so it may be a bit out of date. However, you didn't include the fuel in the solid boosters. The manual neglects to include the weight of the solid fuel and I'm not going to use numbers I'm not certain of (again), but it would change that ratio considerably.

(1) I don't think this is the real operations manual since it's only ~115 pages and they put the word "airlock" is in the glossary.

Based on that, it would take 1.4 million metric tons of propellant to get the waste currently in reactors into orbit.

38,000 metric tons = 41,876 tons at 168,100 lb (34.05 tons) per launch (your number) works out to just under 500 Saturn V launches. You said that's about 5 times the Shuttles payload, so it's about 2500 shuttle launches. That's just to get to orbit, breaking out of orbit and spiraling into the sun would take many addition tons plus shielding the waste until it's away from the ground and so on. It's a stretch, but yes it could technically be done.

Or we could store all it on the moon and hope some weird reaction doesn't make it explode and send the moon hurling out of the solar system . . .

At $10,000 per pound X 38000 metric tons = $837.52 Billion.

I cannot bring myself to call it "the best option", but it is by far, the least bad.

If it could be done without massive radiation leaks, reprocessing the fuel and reusing it until the hottest isotopes are used up would be better. Sadly, the track record on reprocessing is horrible.

As Red Green often says "It's only temporary, unless it works".

Who says cartoons aren't rocket science?

BTW: Have you read the book "Encounter with Tiber" co-authored by Buzz Aldrin? It's a great future history of NASA / and space exploitation.

--Larry

Larry F wrote:

They scrapped the 5 because it was far to wasteful for such a small payload. They needed something that could go into orbit with a large payload, stay in orbit to act as a temporary space platform for experiments and payload deployment/repair, and return with as much reusable equipment as possible. Think about how much of a typical Saturn V Apollo or Skylab mission is sitting in the water at splash down. Not much of it. The only thing destroyed in a shuttle mission is the Main Tank, and the fixtures for the SRB's. Everything else is reusable. So it seemed like a good idea at the time to ditch the Saturn V booster and create a whole new system. Plus Skylab was a pathetically anemic post Apollo project that never rely got much of a chance. Once the International Space Station gets fully online If it ever gets online. We'll probably see the shuttle being phased out for a single stage to orbit transport for the station. and heavy lifters to bring payload to the station. And maybe even a permanently in orbit payload specialist vehicle for satellite insertion/retreval and repair that remains docked at the station. like a mobile version of the service module that were still waiting for the russians to send up.

Most of the Shuttle's missions could have been accomplished with Atlas boosters for small payloads and Saturn V's for manned missions and heavy launches. The final cost to orbit of the Saturn was lower than the Shuttle. They just didn't want two systems going at once. The competition would have made the shuttle look bad. They even dismantled the tools / dyes from the Saturn and sold them for scrap.

A real space station or even an oversized skylab would have done for an experimental and manned platform. The Apollo II capsule, which never left the drawing boards, would carry a crew of six, plus a lot of cargo on a standard Saturn booster.

Actually, none of it was ever re-used. The capsules are all museum pieces.

The third stage of the Saturn V would be replaced by a cargo bay, since it was used to boost out of orbit and on to the moon. As Bill pointed out the payload was five times the Shuttle's. So a fair comparison would be five external fuel tanks and five of whatever else isn't recovered. Plus five times the launches etc.

Yeah, a bunch of leftover parts from Apollo and Gemini duct taped together. The budget was so tight that they couldn't include a small booster engine. I blame Nixon.

You can't imagine how much I hate to say this but, Reagan was right. The space station should have been our project. Including our long time dependable allies is a great idea, but the parts the Russians are paying for are over due, over budget and still not finished. Worst of all, they are central to the station and we can't easily proceed without them.

If we would have used the Saturn for a few more years, we could have bypassed the Shuttle and gone straight to the single stage system. I think we started building it too soon.

They going to launch it in October. No really, it'll be ready, we're serious this time, checks in the mail, honest. (Sigh)

--Larry

Larry F wrote:

What gets me is that Apollo 18 and 19 had already been built and paid for, but were never launched in order to save the final few percent of their mission costs (tracking, recovery, etc.), although the planned activities for those two missions would have almost doubled the science return from Apollo.

And not only that, they don't even work. Witness the fact that the last assembly flight had to wear earplugs all the time that they were aboard, due to a faulty circulation fan in the Russian module. And the Russians aren't even really paying for them, the American are heavily subsidising them.

Bill

Larry F wrote:

<SNIP>

Only if you use Solid propellant. Liquid Oxygen and Liquid Hydrogen make Water when they burn.

On Wed, 24 May 2000 02:17:00 GMT, Mike Zaite wrote:

As of now, the hydrogen is being produced by conventional (fossil fuel etc) power plants. Plus the pollution produced making the rocket and so on. On top of that, if we put it in Earth orbit, it will need to be re-boosted periodically or it will eventually come back down. Breaking it out of orbit and sending it towards the sun will require an additional rocket, which will have to be carried on the first rocket. Look at how big the Saturn V was compared to the what actually got to the moon.

If we could use a combination of solar generated hydrogen and electric mass drivers it would be more feasible. For the cost, most waste could be re-processed on the ground.

--Larry

wow did this ever get weird

well we have already sent nuclear waste into space on both voyagers there is over 30 pounds of pluonium in there batts

also to be a little more of a realist

i think rodney dangerfield said it best in back to school

"i dont think you've met the people who run waste disposal but they aint the boy scouts"

lots of money from storing a few million hot gloves and hair nets