/sci/ - Science & Math

>>6235258
But we've already got enough oil to kill the planet twice over with CO2 emissions, why are we making more?

>>6235269
because this oil is made from current atmospheric CO2

oh boy, can't wait to breathe NOx and exhaust fumes for the rest of my life.

>>6235292
Algae fuels would be carbon-neutral, so they won't hurt, but they won't exactly help, either.
What if we paired this with AirCarbon?
http://www.newlight.com/aircarbon-thermoplastic.php

>>6235281
But then we just burn it back up.

So what we should do is just skip the oil creation and bury the algae under a mountain.

Global warming solved.

>>6235305
That could be entirely doable. Create a 10% co2 tax. 10% of all created oil gets sequestered.

So CO2 levels plateau, while NOx, CO, O3, etc. continue to climb. It is certainly better, but it sure as hell won't save us.

Oh boy, now I can live in a world that will always have smog and oil spills!

IT'S OVER!

ALTERNATIVE ENERGY IS FINISHED!

>>6235258

How much energy is needed to convert the algae to oil?

The joy of oil from the ground is that it was created by Earth's gravitation for free.

>>6235305
>>6235310

This will never happen. Oil is just too convenient and efficient for anybody to want to replace using it. It's needed for far more than just gasoline as well. It's used to create plastics, for one...

Anyway, if you really want to limit the use of oil, then try and find a cheap, workable alternative.

>>6235383
You want to store energy? Don't use batteries.

>>6235305
There are more efficient means of carbon sequestration than producing energy-rich hydrocarbons and burying them.

For instance, the Earth is full of carbon-hungry minerals, like oxides of alkali and alkaline earth metals. If you frack rock rich in these minerals and pump water and carbon dioxide down, they'll form carbonate minerals, and the carbon's never coming out into the atmosphere again. This will actually release energy, which can be harvested together with geothermal energy to make the whole process energy-positive (though probably not at competitive prices).

In short, carbon-negative energy is possible.

>>6236908
Enough that it's not going to eliminate oil drilling by any means.

But it does mean that if we do run out of oil, as long as we have some abundant other source of energy (like nuclear), we don't have to give up gasoline's incredible convenience in terms of stable, transportable energy density, or petroleum's use as a feedstock for much of modern industrial chemistry.

>>6235305
>But then we just burn it back up.
>>6235304
>they won't hurt, but they won't exactly help, either.
Inevitably, if crude oil is made from algae, some would be used for plastic, which would get landfilled.

>>6236961
We already knew we wouldn't have to give up hydrocarbon fuels. There are lots of processes for synthesizing them.

>>6236976
This provides a hopefully more-efficient process.

>>6236980
Algae-to-crude isn't a way to use nuclear power to make hydrocarbons. It's just another agricultural biofuel, like corn ethanol, soy/canola biodiesel, or wood alcohol, which will take up farmland and have production that varies with the weather.

We have reliable ways to make hydrocarbons using atmospheric carbon capture, water electrolysis, and electrical power. Energy efficiency isn't really the problem, but cost efficiency is due to the large initial investments in industrial facilities required.

>>6237000
The nice thing about algae is that it isn't grown on farmland, though.

>>6237004
I don't know what else you call places where algae is grown with the intention of harvesting it.

>>6237011
"water tanks."

>>6237015
This is like saying, "Oh, it's not using up farmland, we'll grow it in greenhouses!"

Pretty much every study that has looked seriously at the economics of farming algae has concluded that it would have to be grown in open ponds. Closed bioreactors are not cost-effective.

>>6236976
> We already knew we wouldn't have to give up hydrocarbon fuels. There are lots of processes for synthesizing them.

None of which can possibly match the cheap oil we're pumping out of the ground now.

Oil isn't just a physcial process. It's an economic process.

>>6237034
Take 1 desert
add 1 pipe from ocean

suddenly algea farms

I think the key difference is no "existing" farmland needs to be used.

>>6237083
Google's biofuel company recently announced they hit the 50 dollar a barrel mark

>>6237034

Gee, who would have thunk it? Farming based on sunlight, air and water is most cost effective over expanses of the Earth's open surface. Wow, I bet I could plant seeds in soil under the open sky and beat the guys who are struggling to grow plants in buildings.

Why do we need a *study* to draw these perfectly obvious conclusions?

>>6237083
By the way, VSG? Can I ask you something?

You once claimed that spaceflight was inherently expensive because of the energy cost. But I've done some math and, even assuming a 100% post-oil, no-hydrocarbons-whatsoever society, then the fuel cost to orbit is only about $70/kg.

Could you explain?

>>6237092

And people are lining up to buy the stuff at the 50% discount, right? After all, that's called ECONOMICS, which drives interest.

I suspect there are a few things wrong with your statement. Show me the people lining up to buy.

>>6237104
I think BP buys all the stuff they produce.

They just did a second round of investing to build a commercial scale production facility.

>>6237098

What exactly are you, YOU PERSONALLY, going to ship into space when it costs you $70/kg? That's the fuel-only cost, please note. Assume it's double for the retail price, at least. So what exactly are you willing to ship into space for $140/kg? Yourself? At the avg body weight of 80kg, plus luggage for a total 100kg, that would cost you $14000. And you need more than that to support yourself, if you intend to hang around and, oh gee, eat, drink and breathe. Care to price out the TONS you'll need?

I didn't think so. Spaceflight is RUINOUSLY expensive. It's many orders of magnitude more expensive than ground shipment. That's why governments do spaceflight, and we plebes just DON'T.

>>6237083
Actually, even with current technology, coal-based methanol could be a cheaper liquid fuel than gasoline, and producing proper hydrocarbons from methanol is old technology. We're not running out of coal anytime soon.

The trend of rapid advances in solar technology is likely to make surplus electrical power so cheap that synthetic hydrocarbons and other hydrogen-based fuel will be more available after we stop drilling for oil.

>>6237116

The buy sounds like politics. Making it look good. The investment round sounds like more politics. I'll believe it when I see it become commerical and in bulk.

>>6237124
>Let's start by assuming there's no work in space, nobody's harvesting any resources, recycling any waste, or producing any food...
>...thus we conclude that even if the ticket only costs as much as a used car, nobody's going to be able to go, especially if they are crippled by mental illness like me, and therefore rely on social assistance and see $14,000 as an insurmountable sum.

>>6237124
That $70/kg was also worst-case, including worst-case specific impulses, liquefaction costs, transport costs, etc.; the ideal no-hydrocarbons lowest fuel cost was $7/kg, which is unrealistic. The actual number is likely in between those two.

And you will note that $70/kg actually DOES put human spaceflight within the purview of especially rich individuals, but more importantly corporations and even volunteer organizations. It brings spaceflight down into the millions, not billions.

No matter what, at $100-ish per kg, spaceflight becomes a thing people can do.

>>6237128
> coal-based methanol could be a cheaper liquid fuel than gasoline

Then why aren't coal companies racing to produce it, to out-compete the oil companies?

We've been seeing "high" oil prices for over a decade. Where's all this "coaliquid" that should have been produced by now?

Economics cuts the REAL from the SHIT. And you're just handing me shit. You can't possibly beat putting a pipe in the ground and pumping the oil out. That's why we were 99% dependent on transport oil in the year 2003, and why we're still 99% dependent on transport oil in the year 2013.

>>6237140
> we the people
> rich people

These are not the same. Rich people always had recourse to amazing things. Bother to make a point.

MY point is that eventually, having depleted fossil fuels too much, our society will have to give up on mega projects. There just won't be enough capital formation to support them. Spaceflight is one of those mega projects. It will just peter out, never to arise again.

>>6237131
Thats waht they said about google fibre

>>6237135
Oh, and also assume there's no market for space tourism, either.

The entire point of managing to get prices to go that low is it becomes practical for such a space market to arise.

And again, that's the no-hydrocarbons cost, analyzed with the assumption that cracking water for hydrogen, liquefying it, and liquefying oxygen is the only way to get fuel, and then multiplying that energy cost by the current price of nuclear power in $/kWh , and then multiplying that by 10 to account for losses and the inefficiency of LOX/LH2 as a first-stage fuel.

If energy gets cheaper (better nuclear, fusion, space-based solar, whatever) , if liquid-hydrogen production gets cheaper, or if insulators get more efficient (so LOX/LH2 stops sucking as much), or if hydrocarbon synthesis is more efficient (as this suggests), that price falls further.

>>6237140
>the ideal no-hydrocarbons lowest fuel cost was $7/kg, which is unrealistic
1) solar power technology is going to get a lot better, cutting energy costs
2) biotechnology is going to get a lot better, cutting energy costs
3) nuclear power is going to get a lot better, cutting energy costs
4) every industrial technology is going to get a lot better, cutting energy, material, and labor costs

So what makes $7/kg unrealistic at some unspecified future time when petroleum has run out?

>>6237155
That which can be asserted without evidence can be dismissed without evidence.

>>6237161
Because the $7/kg depended on liquefying hydrogen with 100% efficiency, splitting hydrogen with 100% efficiency, liquefying oxygen with 100% efficiency, and then fueling a perfectly insulated rocket (LOX/LH2 has a very high specific impulse in theory, but it is inefficient IRL because you need extra insulation mass to keep the hydrogen liquid.)

Realistic values get you $70.

>>6237148
>Then why aren't coal companies racing to produce it, to out-compete the oil companies?
Politics. Environmental concerns.

China's doing it. Under Obama, the US is currently very coal-hostile. Most of the rest of the world is disorganized, oil-exporting, coal-lacking, run by enviro-hippies, or just generally timid about major new technologies.

>>6237166
Also, VSG's entire point is that energy would get more expensive, and I felt I would have no hope of having an argument with him if I projected that energy would get cheaper, so I had to assume that nuclear power didn't get any cheaper than it is already.

>>6237166
However, nuclear rocketry (if it could be made safe enough to use near Earth) or efficient hydrocarbon synthesis could substantially drop costs if those are assumed.

>>6237183
Or non-rocket spacelaunch, although I consider such projects impractical and rather unlikely on Earth. (Mass-drivers, space elevators, skyhooks, and/or launch loops may well be practical on other worlds, though.)

>>6237166
Well, you certainly don't have to go with LH2/LOX on the lower stage. It's not generally considered a good idea.

Consider NH3/LOX. Ammonia costs little more than the hydrogen input, so you're getting more first-stage thrust and impulse for your dollar.

There are also some interesting options with hydrogen peroxide and metal hydrides.

>>6237171
Germany has lots of coal. I saw a video of them digging up coal for power with a giant machine.

>>6237250
The machine to eat the world?

But anyway: enviro-hippies. They're pushing harder for solar power than anyone else.

>>6237250
Germany has even more environmentalists than it has coal, and they're even more rabid than they are in the States.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QtdP-pLuEG4

>>6235305
>this is what greenfags actually believe

>>6237192
I never understood that claim though. If you had space solar, and therefore dirt cheap energy, why not use Gauss mass drivers?

>>6237495
If energy is cheap, why make a huge investment in infrastructure to cut the energy cost of space launch?

Mass drivers belong on the moon, not on Earth.

>>6237495
We have an atmosphere in the way. It makes it basically impossible to launch anything.

>>6237502
Environmental costs I presume. Even if energy is cheap, the method of escape would still need to be clean enough for repeat launches.
>>6237503
Not trolling, but wut? We have launched many objects...
Is there something in the physics that I'm just not grasping?

>>6237586
the atmosphere provides lots of variables that work against your payloads movement

this makes it much more difficult to get something off of the ground then it would be without an atmosphere

>>6237586
Sorry, I meant "basically impossible to launch anything by mass driver"

Rockets can work because they can thrust constantly to overcome the resistance of the atmosphere, but a mass driver means you have to put all the energy needed to push past the atmosphere in one single big jolt. This means that once the payload exits the barrel, it hits the air going so fast it's like running into a brick wall, and must then leave the atmosphere at such a speed it would actually start burning up like a meteor in reverse. The G-forces and stress would completely destroy anything besides bulk materials (and even that's dubious as to whether they'd survive the stress), and because of that you absolutely cannot launch people, electronics, or really anything besides shipments of raw materials to orbit from Earth's surface by mass driver.

However, mass drivers are totally viable and way better than rockets in environments with no atmosphere. The Moon would be a great place to put mass drivers. So would asteroids, or the moons of Mars.

>>6235258

Sounds like, given the right kind of upheaval, hydrocarbons can be made rather quickly on the Earth itself. Who the fuck came up with the "million year process" bullshit anyway?

>>6236908

>gravity makes oil

>sees another thread ruined by VSG's usual blatant fossil fuel shilling and unsubstantiated, paranoid, dystopian predictions
>people replying to him instead of filtering him
>mfw

>>6238081
This thread wasn't going anywhere good anyway. It was going "oh wow, cheap artificial oil is bad because POLLUTION!"

'sides, I take the opinion that arguing with people like VSG is the equivalent of mental weightlifting. It's the sort of people I call "intelligent idiots" - an endless supply of intelligent arguments for very stupid positions, phrased just well enough that they're not immediately obvious to refute, such that it requires you to think a bit harder on your own beliefs and find actual sources and citations for stuff you believe in order to find the reason each new argument is wrong. A repetitive process to train debate skills and help firm up your understanding of your own beliefs, like lifting a barbell.

I did the same thing back when I was in high school with a young-earth creationist I was friends with.

>>6237807
2/10
always like how people who don't really know what they are talking about love to dismiss mass drivers.


So firstly air resistance increases with speed until you reach the speed of sound, then it paradoxically decreases, so the resistance is not as big as an issue as you may intuitively think. (see picture)

Secondly you can use a regenerative heat shield, pump water in around the leading edges, use exhaust steam as propellent.

Thirdly you don't need all of your energy to come from the mass launcher, you must still use a rocket half way around your first orbit regardless or you'll crash back where you launched from... unless your doing an earth system escape launch or planning a fancy moon hook maneuver. Regardless a small amount of additional propellant will go a long way.

Thirdly you can do a mass driver to a much lower velocity and simplify a ram or scram jet first stage launch architecture by quite a bit.

>>6238092
>air resistance increases with speed until you reach the speed of sound, then it paradoxically decreases
Uh... that's a chart of one component of drag, called "compressibility drag". Drag in general doesn't go on decreasing as you go to higher and higher hypersonic speeds.

The reason cruising aircraft don't suffer from increasing drag as they go at higher speeds is that they can go to higher and higher altitudes and still get enough lift in the thinner air. Projectiles fired from orbital launch cannons, on the other hand, will be going at their maximum speed at the lowest altitude, where the air is thickest.

If drag kept going down with speed, then once you "broke through the sound barrier" you'd be able to throttle down your engines farther and farther as you moved faster and faster, and supersonic aircraft wouldn't have a top speed.

>>6238109
Ok so you know how to Google but you still don't know dynamics of supersonic flight. "compressibility drag" is one of the components of drag but it's not the only one.

Things like boundary layers and Reynolds number don't apply to supersonic flight.

>In fluid dynamics, the drag coefficient (commonly denoted as: cd, cx or cw) is a dimensionless quantity that is used to quantify the drag or resistance of an object in a fluid environment such as air or water.

The total drag coefficient decreases after you pass the sound barrier. So yes you could ease up on the throttle and cruse along. This is a reason why our current generation of passenger jets are ridiculous. You could go faster AND use less fuel if you flew modern supersonic aircraft, you would have less drag and jet engines are more efferent at supersonic speeds. Initial costs would be slightly higher but it would be more than made up for in fuel savings over the life of the aircraft.

>>6238109
Remember how the sound barrier was called a barrier. It really is kind-of like that It's the speed at which you encounter the most resistance. Once you pass it things get easier.

Notice how many supersonic jets have very pointy noses, sometimes with a spear like protrusion. That's because the point of the aircraft forms a conical shock layer at supersonic speeds, anything within this shock layer cone's boundary will not experience normal drag.

>>6238109

Here is a very neat visualization of air-pressure difference caused by the perfect temperature and moisture content. Notice how it is roughly cone shaped, the wings are not shaping this cone at all, the cone is entirely shaped by the geometry of the nose of the airplane, the angle of the cone and resultingly it's distance when it reaches the wings is a result of the speed of the aircraft. If it where going slower the cone would be more narrow and would not encapsulate the wings which would themselves create shock waves. You could fly just about any shape you wanted if you could get it up to speed and it had a lance extending far enough to create a shock cone for your aircraft to exist in. Initial breaking of the sound barrier with an non-aerodynamic shape would put tremendous stresses on the object causing it to break apart if it where not incredibly strong.

Please note that this 'cone' always exists during supersonic flight, these condensation cones are not a true representation of the entire shock cone which extends from the tip of the nose all the way to the ground where you hear them as sonic booms.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uALpOWyE-DI

>>6238109
>If drag kept going down with speed, then once you "broke through the sound barrier" you'd be able to throttle down your engines farther and farther as you moved faster and faster, and supersonic aircraft wouldn't have a top speed.

That would be true if engines did not have a top speed, unfortunately they start having real problems at around mach 3 and max out around mach 5 or so. Now a rocket on the other hand....

>>6238092
I don't know the dynamics personally, but I did hear that dismissal from someone who works on supersonic aircraft for a living, so I'm inclined to think you're missing something. However, I am not sufficiently informed to refute your points personally.

>>6238134
>The total drag coefficient decreases after you pass the sound barrier.
Drag is proportional to drag coefficient times *speed squared*.

Drag coefficient goes down with speed, but not down faster than speed squared, so drag does not go down with increasing speed.

>So yes you could ease up on the throttle and cruse along. This is a reason why our current generation of passenger jets are ridiculous. You could go faster AND use less fuel if you flew modern supersonic aircraft, you would have less drag and jet engines are more efferent at supersonic speeds. Initial costs would be slightly higher but it would be more than made up for in fuel savings over the life of the aircraft.
So fucking wrong and stupid.

>>6238083

So... you're implying that *limitation in energy supplies* is pretty much on order with Creationist credibility?

Gee, I didn't realize there's an infinite amount of oil. Thanks for revealing the truth. I'll get to reading about how the Earth's actually a tessaract with 4D pipes leading to a separate petroleum universe.

>>6238559
Limitation of petroleum supply isn't limitation on energy supply. Claiming that it is is about on the same level as young-earth creationism.

Anyway, we're presently a long way from hitting that limit. We'll lose interest in oil before we run out of it.

>>6238559
Malthusianism is on order with it.

>>6238559
Didn't you know? Oil is just dead animals under huge pressure. So if we take every animals that died today and exert pressure on them, they turn into oil. From this oil we can feed more animals. Repeat ad infinitum. Ta-dah! Infinite oil AND infinte meat.

Now where's my noble price for solving energy and world hunger problem?

>>6238559
Arguing that that "limitations on petroleum" is equivalent to both a) "limitations on energy supplies" and b) "limitation on the very possibility of effective capitalism" is.

I do get that if you assume a) is absolutely true, then there are fairly solid arguments for b) , but that's just wrong.

Although many of your ideas have less individual wrong than young-earth creationism, when added together, the cumulative wrongness of your worldview is roughly equal.

>>6238579
>>6238563

Well, what else would we use? Nuclear?

Estimated economical reserves of uranium:

5.3 million tonnes U ( 7.6 million, if the price rises)

Current world uranium usage:

68,000 tons U/year, for a production of 375 gigawatts of electricity

Total world power consumption: 15 terawatts

Let's extrapolate, shall we?

375 GW/68000 T/year = 48.31 GW-hours/ton

48.31 GWh/ton * 5.3 MT = 256 million gigawatt-hours (about 1/8th the estimated energy of our petroleum reserves)

256 million gigawatt-hours / 15 terawatts = 711 days

Our economical uranium reserves could only power the world at our current rates for less than 2 years.

Mind you, we're currently burning uranium very inefficiently, and wasting a lot of it - perhaps we increase efficiency by a factor of ten.

Fine, 20 years.

A factor of forty?

80 years.

But that seems rather fanciful, don't you think? You're depending on a frantic improvement of technology to stretch reserves even more limited than the fossil fuel reserves we're currently depending on stretching. Depending that 'Oh, we'll find more uranium!'

Nuclear is an even more short-sighted option than petroleum is.

>>6238615
Do you have any idea just how horrendously inefficient our current nuclear reactors are?

Factor-of-1000 improvements are considered quite doable, not a mere factor of forty. It's true that current once-through fuel cycles would burn through uranium quickly, but current reactors are about as shitty as powering your car by pouring petroleum down a waterwheel.

>>6238626
For instance, if we could start using fuel reprocessing (which we know how to do, and have done before, but are not currently ALLOWED to do because of proliferation concerns), and roll out fast-breeder reactor technology (which we know how to do, and in fact have built before, but are not allowed to do because of proliferation concerns), then available economical reserves rise to 1000 ZJ - enough to keep us going at current rates for more than 2000 years.

>>6238615
>Estimated economical reserves of uranium
Um... those are "economical" in the sense of being competitive with currently operating mines. Not being at the highest extraction cost worth extracting for nuclear fuel.

Seawater uranium is already only a few times more expensive than uranium from the best ore bodies, and the technology is still improving. Practically limitless supplies of uranium and thorium can be extracted from common granite at costs which are completely acceptable for use in breeder reactors.

>Mind you, we're currently burning uranium very inefficiently, and wasting a lot of it - perhaps we increase efficiency by a factor of ten.
Switching from U235 reactors to breeders increases the energy available from a given amount of natural uranium by a factor of more than one hundred, and allows thorium to be burned as well as uranium.

Anyway, it's solar power that's going to make energy cheap. That shit's taking off like computer technology did in the 70s, with watts per dollar increasing exponentially. Between solar's peak surpluses and dramatic improvements in battery, thermal energy storage, fuel cell, hydrogen storage, and electrolysis technology, we're going to be drowning in cheap portable energy.

>>6238638
>Burning uranium
Jesus fuck /sci/ how retarded are you

>>6238638
that picture is retarded.

It won't be long now until the ice caps melt and you and all your family are wiped from existence like you never existed.

Keep up the good fight, scientists.

>>6236971
Why bother making plastic from algae when you have a machine that makes it from air?
Why not use all of that crude oil for energy purposes?
Also, there's no reason we can't recycle that plastic in the future.

>>6237124
>THERE IS NO REASON FOR ANYONE TO GO TO SPACE
>THERE IS NO MONEY TO BE MADE IN SPACE
>14,000 IS MORE MONEY THAN ANYONE CAN AFFORD
Okay, buddy.

>>6237124
http://www.businessinsider.com/most-valuable-substances-by-weight-2011-11?op=1
>Saffron costs $11.13 per gram.
>Even if you presume triple the $70/kilogram price, you're shipping $11130 worth of payload for 210 dollars.
>five loads or so and you can afford to send a pilot onboard
>Not to mention anything more expensive per gram than that.
The question here is why orbital drug dealing isn't a thing yet.

>>6240257
>living near the coast
The oceans would have to rise well over five hundred feet to flood my home, and if that were even possible I'd just buy some land on the Appalachians and enjoy living on a new island when the time comes.

>>6236971
>landfilled
>not used to build magnificent plastic castles
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZPCFXQp3zRM

>>6240234
"burning" is actually a term used fairly often in nuclear physics to refer to extracting energy from fissile material. It has nothing to do with combustion, and we all know this.

>>6238615
4.5 billion tons of uranium we can pull out of the ocean. that gives us 2000 years

>>6241217
And if we're using breeder reactors and fuel re-processing, that could multiply that amount by a factor of a hundred.

>>6241220
don;t wanna

too lazy

>>6241217
>that gives us 2000 years
Does that account for predicted increases in energy demand?

>>6241283
Other non-uranium nuclear fuels.
Finding more reserves.

Either way we're going to use space based solar or equivalent as the endgame energy sourc

>>6241220
Hell you don't even need to be that fancy, let the used rods sit for a couple decades, all the hot stuff will burn out and reprocessing them will be easy. Only about 5% of the fuel is used in spent rods, they take them out because they start getting too hot not too cold.

>>6241283
Nope, but jimmy cracked corn

Superconducting global power backbone, pure solar civilization would be viable if we could all just get along.

>>6241299
Right after we kill you.

if it;s 70 percent efficient, it's actually less than carbon neutral (not all of the algae's captured carbon turns into oil)

call me back when they can get this up to industrial capacity and its cost competitive with conventional fuel

> Fossil fuels in the last century reached their extreme prices because of their inherent utility: they pack a great deal of potential energy into an extremely efficient package. If we can but sidestep the 100 million year production process, we can corner this market once again.
CEO Nwabudike Morgan
Strategy Session

>>6241338
That's it, I'm calling the FBI. You can't make threats like that.

>>6241666
>4chan X pings
>What the fuck, I haven't posted in hours
>What fucking threat?
>See this

Im gunna stab u in d gabber m80

>>6241293
Why not also use said rods as nuclear batteries while they're cooling off, then? Not enough output to be worth it?

>>6242432
RTGs are pretty worthless, yeah.

>>6235258
So they took out the million year in exchange for a billion dollar process
>sounds expensive

>>6235258
>people actually believe these resources aren't renewable
The earth's petrol supply is ALWAYS renewing, just slowly

>>6235258

BREAKING NEWS

ALL ALGAE EXTINCT BY 2028

>>6242843
If we want to play semantic games we can just say no resource is renewable since you can't fight the death of the solar system/ heat death of the universe.