Guest contributor (Discovery News) Adam Crowl looks at the fuel required for an interstellar trip and finds a gas giant with huge mining potential.
...However, there is a surprising amount of helium-3 in the gas giant planets of the outer solar system, and in the original 1978 "Project Daedalus" report Bob Parkinson suggested mining it via floating robotic factories in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Since then a different planet has moved to the forefront of gas-mining plans because it lacks Jupiter's intense gravity, Saturn's gigantic rings of orbital debris and is closer than distant Neptune.
Man’s footprint stretches deep into the forests, into the water’s depths, into the mountains, into the ground and now into outer space! Haven't my hands bled the eartH sufficiently that I need mine elsewhere for the spark? Hasn’t my rage scratched its final surface with the pale use of my wits and paws? The forests and oceans and mountains think so. How much more proof do I need in front of me, how much more evidence before I begin to think?
I've been the eartH’s predator, her leech of flesh and bone. Must I drain the world as if I were landlord, evict even the maker pouring forth its great sorrow? Cut the eartH and she winces, throbbing of the weight and kneels like a boxer to signal she’s had enough. The crowd is always disappointed by discretion, let down if something doesn’t die or come gushing. If I, her steward, continue to take more and more, I might be dumbfounded by her quaking return and find myself mindlessly digging elsewhere for Love.
O! Teach me of the beginning again! I'm infected by the weary spectacle, my failing worship of death that I might live forever without feeding on wisdom. Even the children are too prideful of the unknowable, iconic displays hurling down belief like hailstones, one bombing the other without regard to Love, to kinship, to equality in all things, to another’s belief. What have I been teaching them that will exhale tomorrow, when all they want to learn we cannot possibly howl? Let me teach them of Love as if it were science. Let me teach them of equality as if it were math. Let me plant goodness in them as if it were a garden. Above all, teach them that I cannot know anything until my eyes have been propped open by Love, by my care for the eartH and for another.
So be it…
...However, there is a surprising amount of helium-3 in the gas giant planets of the outer solar system, and in the original 1978 "Project Daedalus" report Bob Parkinson suggested mining it via floating robotic factories in the atmosphere of Jupiter. Since then a different planet has moved to the forefront of gas-mining plans because it lacks Jupiter's intense gravity, Saturn's gigantic rings of orbital debris and is closer than distant Neptune.
Man’s footprint stretches deep into the forests, into the water’s depths, into the mountains, into the ground and now into outer space! Haven't my hands bled the eartH sufficiently that I need mine elsewhere for the spark? Hasn’t my rage scratched its final surface with the pale use of my wits and paws? The forests and oceans and mountains think so. How much more proof do I need in front of me, how much more evidence before I begin to think?
I've been the eartH’s predator, her leech of flesh and bone. Must I drain the world as if I were landlord, evict even the maker pouring forth its great sorrow? Cut the eartH and she winces, throbbing of the weight and kneels like a boxer to signal she’s had enough. The crowd is always disappointed by discretion, let down if something doesn’t die or come gushing. If I, her steward, continue to take more and more, I might be dumbfounded by her quaking return and find myself mindlessly digging elsewhere for Love.
O! Teach me of the beginning again! I'm infected by the weary spectacle, my failing worship of death that I might live forever without feeding on wisdom. Even the children are too prideful of the unknowable, iconic displays hurling down belief like hailstones, one bombing the other without regard to Love, to kinship, to equality in all things, to another’s belief. What have I been teaching them that will exhale tomorrow, when all they want to learn we cannot possibly howl? Let me teach them of Love as if it were science. Let me teach them of equality as if it were math. Let me plant goodness in them as if it were a garden. Above all, teach them that I cannot know anything until my eyes have been propped open by Love, by my care for the eartH and for another.
So be it…
© 2011 by mark prime
Very nice my love!
ReplyDeletewow thats just insane!
ReplyDeleteMichelle, Thank you my lovely love...
ReplyDeleteAnon,
ReplyDeleteI appreciate your visit. And you are correct, mining for gas on Jupiter is insane.
Walk in goodness...