Talk-Polywell.org

One perfectly good use for the oxygen: reaction mass. At the same specific impulse in an ion engine, oxygen (single electron removal) requires 1/16th the current as hydrogen to produce the same thrust, though the drive voltage will need to be 16 times that of hydrogen. (603kA, 187kV vs 9.6MA, 11.7k...

It takes energy to raise the temperature of an object. It doesn't matter if you are pumping the heat or just injecting it (you do get some help when pumping it). That energy has to come from the plant making the heat. That's obvious, the trick is in balancing the system with enough new technologies...

You have heat left from the first cycle (power plant) that you just use as a source to power a second/third /fourth power plant each one reducing the amount of heat that must be radiated as waste. You don't understand Carnot. Maximum efficiency is : 1 - Tc/Th I think I do understand pretty well Car...

The dinosaurs were done in by external events (asteroid). Their demise is rather irrelevant. Scientific hypotesis range from asteroid to vulcanic activity. For what I know up to today there is no relevant proof for one or the other. I read recently that it actually was proven (crater found, even). ...

The dinosaurs were done in by external events (asteroid). Their demise is rather irrelevant. Scientific hypotesis range from asteroid to vulcanic activity. For what I know up to today there is no relevant proof for one or the other. Successful is as simple as "can breed fast enough for its populati...

The reactor is small. It is the radiators that are the problem. True, even if recent advancments in metamaterias and new understandings in the working of "highly mismatched alloys" might soon greatly reduce the need for radiators thanks to new generations of Peltier-Seebeck cells. http://www.scienc...

We have been sucesfull in doing what? Surviving? Numerical survival is irrelevant. You are trivialising life itself. Animals are not "alive" that are not sentient. "Life" is a sentient act. The main difference between humans and the rest of the animals of this world is that humans are driven by "gr...

We have been successfully in doing what? Surviving? Just for the love of making an example, ants and mosquitos have been on this planet from much before than our race, and will be probably on this planet much after our departure. Thats easy...The true measure of a species success is the number of B...

Due to the size of the universe this type of planetarty extinction events are probably at the order of the day, and I think that no one will relly care if humanity ceases to exist from one day to the other (humanity apart that is). After all, until now, we have not been that succesfull race we beli...

True, the more quick the timescale of the event, the less the survivors will be. If the timescale is quick enough than humanity will simply cease to exist and (if the conditions will permit it) something new will come out from the mud of this planet. Due to the size of the universe this type of plan...

The individual who dies will learn from his death but "will not" be able to apply that knowledge a second time.
The others that survive will.

Like it or not, this is the way that species evolve.

I second KitemanSA offer too.

Where are we going to get a 200MW (megawatt) space nuclear reactor? Won't that be freakishly huge? The reactor is small. It is the radiators that are the problem. True, even if recent advancments in metamaterias and new understandings in the working of "highly mismatched alloys" might soon greatly ...

Even if we will have a cheap fusion solution the travelling wave reactor will be a good middle term solution to burn most of the spent nuclear fuel that is available today.

IMHO, this answer is giving no clues, neither positive nor negative.