Re: Location, Location, Location!

Pat Flannery wrote:



Henry Spencer wrote:

Depends on how the results scale, both to higher temperatures and molten
metal, and to vastly larger sizes. Surface tension being a *surface*
phenomenon, it will be overwhelmed by gravity at some point, and I suspect
that'll be long before you reach the size of interest.



Well, you can't do it in LEO, that's for sure; the tidal effects will screw it up.
But the differential effects of something as dense and molten stainless steel and near vacuumus gas should dwarf those of air and water; and as hot as I've seen molten metals, I've seen few ever run faster and easier than water.
Molten salt can match it our get a little better, and is fun to pour on things floating in the sink... like sheets of styrofoam cut to resemble grackles or boxelder bugs.

I knew you were waging jihad on grackles. Boxelder bugs?


Sort of like if a prideful female grackle was foolish enough to look back at the destruction of Sodom and Gomorra, only to be struck down by God's vengeance pouring forth from a Bernz-O-Matic torch heated tablespoon upon it.
Aren't any grackles left around here anymore.
Score one for sympathetic magic.
And that little wobbly-head "Dubya" figure's multitude of needles sticking out of it seem to be having the desired effect also.
Mind you, the boxelder bugs are still around; but if I were to drip water for forty days and forty nights on a little boxelder bug-shaped fetish...
(turns to toad familer..."Pyewacket, what evil thing shall we make croak today? Wood ticks? Well, that's going to take some work, isn't it?") :-)

I seem to recall S.F. writer Brin portraying the colonization of space as a sacred endeavor. The spreading of a holy green fire. Every CELSS a sort of Noah's ark perpetuating the species it contains.

Are closed ecological systems sans obnoxious critters possible? A lot of them perform valuable roles in maintaining an ecosystem. A forest sans termites might have problems, for example.

If we do establish other biospheres, I'll bet cockroaches will slip past the quarantine barriers.

Hop
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