jhkiley

Comment Threads

• bellinghman commented on Looking under the street lamp again
  You would appear to be right. Still, it's obscured about 85% of the sun's disc, which isn't bad as far as cooling is concerned. It's also much simpler as far as orientation is concerned - you can basically build something with a dirty great sunshield, and have the cold and dark parts one side, and the Earth-pointing telemetry on the other. In most other places, you have to worry about differing and varying directions for the Sun and Earth. You don't get the Earth shining its light at your scope, and the Moon is almost not a problem either, being...
• gingermangiant commented on Looking under the street lamp again
  Perhaps somebody mentioned the obvious but the thread is so darn long I gave up reading everything. From what I did read it appeared that people were taking it as a given that any interstellar colonists would want to find a planet and settle it. Why would their first desire be to settle a gravity trap? Especially one with an atmosphere that will complicate any attempts to land and to reach orbit? They're going to go for the first system that's rich in asteroids (and that's probably not binaries like Alpha Centauri) and build more pylons. It's far easier for...
• bellinghman commented on Looking under the street lamp again
  I suspect that those that have already discussed this thought in this thread won't be bothering to comment on it again - that way would lie the eternal thread....
• bellinghman commented on Looking under the street lamp again
  Hmm, getting more comprehensible. Now it's the fact that we recognise the spammer that's the clue....
• Charlie Stross commented on Looking under the street lamp again
  Spammers nuked. I think, however, that I will close comments on this thread (seeing the last significant one came up five days ago)....