Explain how.
Those are RTGs, though, not proper reactors. The big appeal of an RTG is that it’s dead simple, without even any moving parts. But it’s also pretty low-power and very inefficient. Reactors are much bigger, much more powerful, and much more complicated.
Or run lots and lots of coolant pipes through the surrounding rocks, and use conduction through the rock. I’m not sure if that or radiating to space would be easier. But neither would be anywhere remotely as easy as “stick it next to a big body of water”, like we do here on Earth.
I was curious what the advantage of building on the moon would be anyway.
Potentially less regulation? Though I’m not even sure that would necessarily be true.
ETA: Never mind, I read the thread in MPSIMS:
They’re not proposing to build a reactor on the moon for its own sake, but to support building other stuff on the moon. So that answers my question.
10K laser pens, $10/each from Amazon: $100K (probably can get a bulk discount)
Branding each pen with “SPACE LASER!” using permanent etching, $5/each (est): $50K
Renting a suitable launch vehicle: $500-750M
total cost, a mere $500-750M for 10,000 space lasers.
and you have a lot of money left over!
No one said they had to do anything…
Yeah, it doesn’t take a Real Genius to figure out that space lasers would be a bitch to build and operate.
Much cheaper than that. I heard from someone once who was organizing a conference, and one of the swags they gave out was a cheap laser pointer. They were going to also include a one-page printout with each one of some simple experiments you can do with it, but it turned out that the printouts would have been more expensive than the lasers.
Yeah, I went big and I was still surprised that the cost of the lasers was a rounding error on the total launch cost!
Though it would be fun to turn them all on, and have a mechanism that threw them into space. Maybe we could see the little tumbling lights at night as they went by overhead.
That’s funny, and sad!
Obligatory XKCD
I just wanted a twinkling constellation, not blasting the moon out of orbit!
Are you MAD?
Shit happens.
Mistakes were made.
I mean, should we have known laser ablation would cause the moon to blast away? Maybe. Should we have consulted with experts before we started? Sure. Did we destroy all humanity? Absolutely! But we had good intentions.
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
This is the way the world ends
Not with a bang but that Larry David “oops” music from Curb Your Enthusiasm.
In fact, the Chinese have a practical, operating thorium MSBR sitting in the far Gobi desert, based on an American design that sat in the middle of the most deserty part of Idaho (which is very deserty). Water is handy, but not necessary. Without air to carry the heat away, though, that would be more diffiult.
Jeff Goode, who’s running to have a commissioner seat in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware, sent out a fundraising email boasting that he’d secured the endorsement of “Rehoboth Beach Civic Association, the RB Citizens Alliance and the Rehoboth Beach (South) Homeowners Association.”
Want to guess the issue with this statement? None of them yet exist. A website for one of them popped up 48 hours after he was asked about it.
Sloppy work. Also his wife is currently a Commissioner, which isn’t illegal but feels hinky.
Ok so admittedly I don’t know that the subject of this article is a Republican. But he sounds enough like one and this is a very GOP trick, so I’d be surprised if he wasn’t. If I’m wrong, I will cheerfully admit it.
From what I can tell after browsing the city’s web site and any news around the elections, they are nonpartisan offices. So, Republicans don’t have anything to do with it.
Thanks. Maybe I should repost it in the omnibus “stupid” thread. My mistake!
They’re supid regardless. 
Mylie Biggs, daughter of US Rep. Andy Biggs (R-Arizona), is running for a seat in Arizona’s state legislature despite the fact that, a year ago, she said on a podcast that she didn’t think women should hold public office, generally speaking.
(Well, she’d vote for Candace Owens.)
If they want to make a public statement about their sexuality, more power to them.