Krikkit
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So this was all one thought process I just had and I wanted to get your opinion on a couple things and inform you of one other thing.
Muchio Kaku:
So I was just on Tumblr and someone on my followers list posted a picture of the man along with the caption "Greatest physicist of my time, and my favorite too."
I ended up taking offense to this statement. Back when I was an undergraduate I was studying physics under some of the most brilliant people I have had the pleasure of meeting. I attended symposiums, and read papers from people who were actually making sizable and important contributions to the world of physics, but most of these people the general public will never hear of. Yet Kaku can go on the discovery channel, make some outlandish claims about the year 2100 (With our current understanding of physics there will never be personal flying cars! It isn't energy efficient) and people hop on Tumblr and say "Greatest Physicist of my time." It just irks me and I can't really explain. Its like someone calling Dan Brown the best writer of all time, or Lady GaGa the best musician of all time.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Kaku personally. I rather enjoyed his Discovery series called Time, but the culture around him.
It is sort of the same problem with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is a museum curator, not a scientist, but when you ask people to name a scientist his is usually the first name to come up. Carl Sagan has fame but most people consider him more a popularizer, even though he probably contributed more to science than Kaku.
So my question is, am I justified in my dislike of this sort of false profit worship, or am I just being unreasonable?
Nuclear Batteries on Spacecraft:
So I was reading up on Kaku and read that he was publicly apposed to the Cassini-Huygens probe because of its nuclear battery.
I can understand being hesitant to launch a craft with a nuclear battery in case of a launch accident. I can understand not wanting them in LEO where they will eventually come back down to earth, more often than not in an uncontrolled manner. But due to the inverse square law of light intensity, deep space exploration almost requires nuclear power over solar.
So what is the orbiter crowd's opinion on nuclear powered spacecraft?
Pioneer One:
So I don't know if you guys know about this but there is this internet TV show called Pioneer One. Which can be torrented free here.
The basic primes is that the Soviets launched a one way manned mission to Mars in the lat 1980s, and that the offspring of a male and female sent on the trip has returned to earth after growing up on Mars. The story is pretty cool and the science is fairly sound, for scifi anyways. It opens with the return craft, later revealed to be a Soyuz, crashing through the atmosphere. A nuclear battery on board spread radiation over a small area of Canada which is what made me think of this show with the rest of this.
Anyway I recommend that those of you who haven't seen it check it out.
I wonder if it is even possible to fill a Soyuz like craft with enough consumables to last for even the shortest of return trajectories from mars.
Muchio Kaku:
So I was just on Tumblr and someone on my followers list posted a picture of the man along with the caption "Greatest physicist of my time, and my favorite too."
I ended up taking offense to this statement. Back when I was an undergraduate I was studying physics under some of the most brilliant people I have had the pleasure of meeting. I attended symposiums, and read papers from people who were actually making sizable and important contributions to the world of physics, but most of these people the general public will never hear of. Yet Kaku can go on the discovery channel, make some outlandish claims about the year 2100 (With our current understanding of physics there will never be personal flying cars! It isn't energy efficient) and people hop on Tumblr and say "Greatest Physicist of my time." It just irks me and I can't really explain. Its like someone calling Dan Brown the best writer of all time, or Lady GaGa the best musician of all time.
Now don't get me wrong, I don't dislike Kaku personally. I rather enjoyed his Discovery series called Time, but the culture around him.
It is sort of the same problem with Neil deGrasse Tyson, who is a museum curator, not a scientist, but when you ask people to name a scientist his is usually the first name to come up. Carl Sagan has fame but most people consider him more a popularizer, even though he probably contributed more to science than Kaku.
So my question is, am I justified in my dislike of this sort of false profit worship, or am I just being unreasonable?
Nuclear Batteries on Spacecraft:
So I was reading up on Kaku and read that he was publicly apposed to the Cassini-Huygens probe because of its nuclear battery.
I can understand being hesitant to launch a craft with a nuclear battery in case of a launch accident. I can understand not wanting them in LEO where they will eventually come back down to earth, more often than not in an uncontrolled manner. But due to the inverse square law of light intensity, deep space exploration almost requires nuclear power over solar.
So what is the orbiter crowd's opinion on nuclear powered spacecraft?
Pioneer One:
So I don't know if you guys know about this but there is this internet TV show called Pioneer One. Which can be torrented free here.
The basic primes is that the Soviets launched a one way manned mission to Mars in the lat 1980s, and that the offspring of a male and female sent on the trip has returned to earth after growing up on Mars. The story is pretty cool and the science is fairly sound, for scifi anyways. It opens with the return craft, later revealed to be a Soyuz, crashing through the atmosphere. A nuclear battery on board spread radiation over a small area of Canada which is what made me think of this show with the rest of this.
Anyway I recommend that those of you who haven't seen it check it out.
I wonder if it is even possible to fill a Soyuz like craft with enough consumables to last for even the shortest of return trajectories from mars.