Water on the moon

[Chaos]

@Lingus:  It also supposedly, according to current knowledge, isn't possible.  :/

@Red October:  Are you retarded?  I mean, seriously?  

I was talking about ways to POWER FLYING CARS AND LASER BASED FIREARMS.  Regardless of how much cleaner it is compared to Nuclear Fission, it doesn't magically make it CLEAN.  No matter how you want to twist it, Nuclear Fusion is not cheap to mass produce.  Mass production for the purposes of powering energy weapons or flying cars would make those things far too expensive to be practical.  And, of course, the fact that it's way too !@#$ing BIG.

Way to complete miss the point of my post so you could have your fan-wank of Nuclear Fusion.  Unfortunately, it only meets 1 criteria.

-Effective
-NOT Cheap
-NOT Clean
-NOT Compact

That's not to say it wouldn't be a good power plant, but THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE !@#$ING TALKING ABOUT, IS IT?

Also, for your education:

Solar Power

-NOT Effective
-NOT Cheap
-Clean
-NOT Compact

Durr hurr, shut the !@#$ up now, before you further embarrass yourself.

EDIT:  And incidentally, I'm talking about with our current level of tech.  That's not to say that Nuclear Fusion couldn't be made smaller, or produced cheaper, or made to be cleaner eventually.  That's not to say Solar Power couldn't be made more effective, or cheaper, or more compact.  Computers used to be the size of a room and had about the capabilities of a calculator.  However, at the moment, we have NO energy source that can fulfill all those requirements, and thus can not be used for technological breakthroughs that I described, which makes them completely IRRELEVANT to the topic at hand.

[Red October]

... but THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE !@#$ING TALKING ABOUT, IS IT?

Did I ever quote the part that mentions "Cars" and "Laser Beams". So I was never discussing about them.

Also on Cold Fusion...

Cold fusion refers to nuclear fusion of atoms at conditions close to room temperature, in contrast to the conditions of well-understood fusion reactions such as those inside stars and high energy experiments.

It still produces the rouge neutron that makes Chaos very angry.

[Chaos]

... but THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE !@#$ING TALKING ABOUT, IS IT?

Did I ever quote the part that mentions "Cars" and "Laser Beams". So I was never discussing about them.

Also on Cold Fusion...

Cold fusion refers to nuclear fusion of atoms at conditions close to room temperature, in contrast to the conditions of well-understood fusion reactions such as those inside stars and high energy experiments.

It still produces the rouge neutron that makes Chaos very angry.

In other words, you openly admit to being completely off-topic.  Get the !@#$ out.

EDIT:  You know what, forget I said anything.  I feel ashamed.  After all this time spent talking with Snakeman, you'd think I'd have been able to detect a fat !@#$ing troll squatting under their bridge.  I should have known no one could have been that !@#$ing stupid to actually think Nuclear Fusion was viable or in any way related to the topic.  Silly me.  I resolve to do better from now on.  I won't feed the troll anymore.  Sorry everyone.

[Red October]

... but THAT'S NOT WHAT WE'RE !@#$ING TALKING ABOUT, IS IT?

Did I ever quote the part that mentions "Cars" and "Laser Beams". So I was never discussing about them.

Also on Cold Fusion...

Cold fusion refers to nuclear fusion of atoms at conditions close to room temperature, in contrast to the conditions of well-understood fusion reactions such as those inside stars and high energy experiments.

It still produces the rouge neutron that makes Chaos very angry.

In other words, you openly admit to being completely off-topic.  Get the !@#$ out.

I fail to see how Flying Cars and Laser Beams have to with anything about Water on the Moon, either.

[Lingus]

ummm...yes, clocky, that's what they mean when they say water. Let me teach you about a thing called MATTER so you can show all your second grade buddies how smart you are...
Leguy, be very careful when you start making such predictions. People in the '80s and '70s said that we'd have flying cars and laser beams by 2000...of course, they were people in the 80s and 70s, and any american knows what that means...

Cept we do have laser beams.  Weapon-capable ones, too.  We just don't have anything in our technological level that can output enough energy in a small size to make handheld weapons of it.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Directed-energy_weapon

As for flying cars, again, we 'have' them, just not in a practical form.  Once again, we lack a good, practical energy source available in small size to power such a thing.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_cars

Honestly, if and when anyone discovers a way to generate energy cheaply, cleanly, compactly, and effectively, there will be a massive WAVE of technological breakthroughs, and that person will become a VERY rich person.

Red... maybe try reading the topic? Sure, it isn't directly related to the original post, but at least Chaos was responding to something in particular rather than going entirely off topic just for the sake of it. It's acceptable to take the topic in a different direction if that's the way the thread of conversation is heading. It's not acceptable to disregard a specific detail of someone's post just to go on a rant about something that doesn't tie back into the conversation.

@Lingus:  It also supposedly, according to current knowledge, isn't possible.  :/

I know. I was joking about that suggestion.

[ARTgames]

Honestly, if and when anyone discovers a way to generate energy cheaply, cleanly, compactly, and effectively, there will be a massive WAVE of technological breakthroughs, and that person will become a VERY rich person.

Yeah i know right. But maybe we don't really need a way to generate it but maybe a way to store it.

[Lingus]

Well... we do have a way to store it compactly. They're called batteries. Of course, they aren't very efficient. Batteries that run for 100 years would be nice. Obviously, if you had a similarly compact device that generates power rather than stores it, it would be a MUCH better option.

[LeGuy]

On a slightly off-topic note, I've noticed that a lot of movies tend to attribute crystals with having magical energy powers. (A quote that I still remember from Toy Story is Buzz Lightyear's when he first "arrives on earth": "Has your planet discovered Crystallic fusion yet, or are you still using fossil fuels?" To which Woody replies. "Well, we've got double A's.")

But it would be funny if someone actually discovered some crystal that could power a city for a century. Of course this is completely improbable, but it would nonetheless be humorous.

[Chaos]

On a slightly off-topic note, I've noticed that a lot of movies tend to attribute crystals with having magical energy powers. (A quote that I still remember from Toy Story is Buzz Lightyears when he first "arrives on earth: "Has your planet discovered Crystallic fusion yet, or are you still using fossil fuels?" To which Woody replies. "Well, we've got double A's.)

But it would be funny if someone actually discovered some crystal that could power a city for a century. Of course this is completely improbable, but it would nonetheless be humorous.

Yeah, I think that probably originated from the Sci-Fi practice of "Let's make up something that sounds half way plausible", haha.

[ARTgames]

Well... we do have a way to store it compactly. They're called batteries. Of course, they aren't very efficient. Batteries that run for 100 years would be nice. Obviously, if you had a similarly compact device that generates power rather than stores it, it would be a MUCH better option.

yeah that would be better but i just i think making a super battery seem more possible. Been hearing cool stuff about these super capacitors. Think about it if we could store all the power from a lightning bolt. But i guess that would not help much on the moon.

The moon does not have an atmosphere so i guess solar cells with batters will probably be the way they do it at first.

[Aqua]

Late response, but give SO a topic and, boy, do they run with it! :

or we could launch it to the sun

50 years ago:
Guy1: What do we do with this crap that doesn't decompose?
Guy2: Just stick it in the ground, we'll never run out of space.
Guy1: Hey, yeah! Let's call these landfills!

Personally I don't see an issue with it, but it is logical that those itty bitty things could add up (though I don't see the world lasting much longer, in WW III the Olmecs will cream us all!).
~Aqua

[Lingus]

There was a Futurama episode that dealt with that. They had sent out a giant ball of trash into space a number of years ago (like 100) and it was orbiting back around to hit earth. That would be an issue... Of course, if it actually hit the sun I see absolutely no problem with that. The only thing I can think of would be the trash fueling the sun and it burning hotter causing the earth to get hotter and the sun burning out sooner... but I sincerely doubt even the vast amount of trash that we create would cause even a miniscule dent in that respect.

Well... we do have a way to store it compactly. They're called batteries. Of course, they aren't very efficient. Batteries that run for 100 years would be nice. Obviously, if you had a similarly compact device that generates power rather than stores it, it would be a MUCH better option.

yeah that would be better but i just i think making a super battery seem more possible. Been hearing cool stuff about these super capacitors. Think about it if we could store all the power from a lightning bolt. But i guess that would not help much on the moon.

The moon does not have an atmosphere so i guess solar cells with batters will probably be the way they do it at first.

It's possible. I'm not sure if that's really the case though. Creating really efficient and compact power cells isn't necessarily more likely to happen than creating a really efficient and compact power source. Of course, that's based on almost no understanding of how that works.

I will say (and I believe this was mentioned this elsewhere in this forum) that they already have wireless electricity. You could be using a device with literally no power source attached to it. It would work completely by wireless electricity. So long as you the device is in range of the source it will work. Pair that with simple rechargable batteries and you would have theoretically limitless power on a handheld device (theoretical because it would depend on your ability to be in range of a power source). Of course, this doesn't deal with the issue of a clean and renewable power source. It just takes care of the compactness.

[Chaos]

Place Solar Panels across the Earth, and make the wireless electricity system big enough to engulf the entire planet! :D

Anyway, I think throwing our garbage into the sun would be a HORRIBLY bad idea.  Not because of any real worry about it doing harm to it, but because it would effectively be REMOVING resources from our planet.  We only have a limited amount of material available in our planet, and if we're tossing used pieces into the sun, we're going to run out eventually.  Recycling what we use is pretty much the only option in the long run.  Melt down the metal, plastics, glass, etc. and reform it.

[ARTgames]

I will say (and I believe this was mentioned this elsewhere in this forum) that they already have wireless electricity.

Yeah i was the one who posted the topic about it. : P

Any ways i agree with the rest of your post and chaos's.

[Lingus]

Place Solar Panels across the Earth, and make the wireless electricity system big enough to engulf the entire planet! :D

Might cause a bit of global warming? I'd imagine that solar panels would be extremely effective at absorbing energy from the sun. Which means very little heat would be reflected back off of the planet... I don't know if that's how it works, but I imagine it would be the opposite of the "snowball earth" effect.

Agreed on the whole recycling materials thing.

It's funny, this topic is kind of about us using our resources here on earth better versus looking to other places to expand to (like the moon) and use more and more resources. It makes a lot of sense. I honestly think before we head off to the stars we should figure out how to make earth sustainable... indefinitely. I think the more we expand, the more we will use that as an excuse to consume more and more resources rather than try to use less resources more effectively. Maybe, in the long run, it's a good thing no one is focusing on space travel yet.