Field Report: Lava Boat Expedition

Abstract

This document outlines the conceptual design and mission profile of a speculative vessel engineered to traverse molten environments. The "Lava Boat" represents a fusion of high-temperature materials science and exploratory ambition, intended for deployment in volcanic lakes and lava rivers.

AI Artist Concept of the Lava Boat

How to Colonize the Solar System, Part III: Colonizing Earth, the Bold New Frontier

We’ve already conquered the Moon (Part I) and Venus (Part II). But what about the hardest planet of all? That’s right: Earth. Colonizing Earth may sound redundant — after all, we already live here — but if you’ve ever tried to survive Black Friday at Walmart, you know this planet is far more hostile than Venus’s sulfuric acid clouds.

Colonists on Earth face immediate resistance from the locals. They’re territorial, unpredictable, and armed with shopping carts. Anthropologists have documented Black Friday crowd behavior as resembling migratory wildebeests, except with more trampling and fewer hooves.

Forget Martian dust storms — Earth colonists must survive stampedes for discounted televisions.

Gesundheit! The Power of a Sneeze

A sneeze is quite a powerful event. In fact, a sneeze may produce exit velocities in excess of 650 miles per hour (mph) (290 meters/second). (Even the lower estimates of sneeze velocity, in excess of 95 mph (42 meters/second) are quite high.) To put this in perspective, the current Enhanced Fujita Scale defines EF3 tornadoes as having wind speeds between 136 and 165 mph, and EF5 tornadoes (the maximum intensity) as >200 mph. Category 5 hurricanes have winds greater than 155 mph. Thus, a typical sneeze produces wind velocities equal to or in excess of the winds produced in a major storm (tornado or hurricane).

This leads to the potential for great damage to the sneezer if the sneeze is not expelled; i.e., the sneeze is "internalized" or kept contained within the sneezer's air passages. There are several potential methods through which the "internalized" sneeze can lead to significant injury:

A new perspective on anthropogenic global warming

Although this article may seem like an interruption in the "solar system colonization" series, you will see that this actually fits in very well.

In evaluating available temperature data, a new correlation has been found. In the graph to the right (click to enlarge), you will see the world population (human only, not including animal life) plotted (in red) along with the global average temperature anomalies (in blue) from approximately 1850 until the present day (the data is available at the Climatic Research Unit and the UK Met. Office Hadley Centre web site). The temperature data represents the "anomalies" vs. the arithmetic mean over 1960 - present (2007). The population data (available at the US Census Bureau web site) is the world population divided by 10 billion (i.e., plotted in tenths-of-a-billion) in order to fit on the same scale plot as the temperature anomaly data. Note the correlation - this is remarkable evidence in support of the conclusion that the world is being overpopulated, leading to rising global temperatures. (This theory, overpopulation leading to rising global average temperature, has recently been proposed by Ted Turner, who completed part of the requirements for a degree in economics, thus qualifying his statements on the topic.) This is in contrast to the many available charts of CO2 level vs. global average temperature, which do not show a high correlation (the reader is left to research this topic on his own).

How to Colonize the Solar System, Part II

In the last article, we looked at the moon as a potential colonization spot. This location would make an ideal staging point for further solar system (and eventual possible galactic) colonization due to the low escape velocity (i.e., ships could attain higher velocities more quickly when embarking on interplanetary missions). This time we will look at our nearest neighbor (discounting the moon, of course), Venus. (See also the Wikipedia article on Venus.)

Some will wonder if there's any possibility of colonizing a planet whose surface temperature is over 460 degrees Celsius (860 degrees Fahrenheit); which has a surface air pressure equivalent to being about a kilometer (over 1/2 mile, about 3300 feet) below the earth's ocean; which has an atmospheric density so thick that a human could actually swim through the atmosphere at the surface; whose atmosphere consists primarily of Carbon Dioxide with the remainder being mainly Nitrogen; and which has large amounts of sulfur dioxide clouds which create sulfuric acid rain. While initially daunting, there exist several possibilities for the potential colonization of this seemingly uninhabitable world. Several ideas have been proposed for the terraforming of Venus (see generic terraforming article at Wikipedia). We will eventually look at these concepts and ideas, but there is another possibility that provides a more immediate chance for colonization of this environmentally hostile world. That is a "floating colony."

How to Colonize the Solar System, Part I

In this article, we'll be looking at potential spots for human colonization in our solar system. This article will be split into several posts, so stay tuned if your favorite potential extraterrestrial spot is not listed. We'll be discussing the advantages, disadvantages, risks, challenges, potential rewards, and other topics related to colonizing various celestial bodies .

The first, and nearest, neighbor is of course the moon. Lunar colonization has been a frequent topic of discussion among science fiction writers for decades (and perhaps even tens of years). When Neil Armstrong first set foot on the moon, his famous words were, "That's one small step for [a] man, one giant leap for mankind." You can listen to the recording at the Wikipedia article, but we will not reproduce the recording here since we have not been authorized by Neil (he is very protective of the rights to the recording of his voice; according to the article, Hallmark Cards used the recording without permission in a Christmas ornament, and they were sued, with the undisclosed settlement amount being donated to Purdue; while we are not currently making any profit from this publication, we do not want to become entangled in a legal battle with one of the most famous and finest of all great astronauts).

Honda releases global warming vehicle

Our editors have recently become aware of a new Honda vehicle apparently designed to destroy the earth* [please visit the footnote, especially if you are offended by any content in this article], the FCX Clarity. This is a new breed of automobile, powered by a hydrogen fuel cell. The way this works is that hydrogen is combined with oxygen inside the fuel cell, resulting in the production of electric power (the desired product) and by-production of water vapor and heat. These two components, water vapor and heat, are hazardous to our environment.

2015 Honda Clarity FCV (Tokumeigakarinoaoshima)