[AR] Re: NSWR (was Re: methane to methanol)
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 1 Jun 2017 22:31:12 -0400 (EDT)
On Thu, 1 Jun 2017, Lars Osborne wrote:
Has there been any recent research done on this?
It appears that after Zubrin's original paper there was basically no
follow on research. There seems to be a lot of low-hanging fruit in
terms of modeling, or attempting to build chemical reaction analogs to
simulate the behavior.
I haven't seen anything more recent, that I recall. Around the same time
I asked Steve Howe about it, I had a chance to ask Zubrin himself, and he
said roughly: "I took it as far as I could, and published to make sure it
went public -- to go much farther, a national lab would have to become
interested".
Now mind you, that was 25 years ago. Whether non-national-lab expertise
has improved enough since to pursue the concept in a worthwhile way, I
couldn't say -- not my specialty. (Just having lots more CPU cycles
doesn't mean much here; the question is whether you know how to *use*
those cycles to get correct answers.)
(Oh, and before anyone says "well, what does Zubrin know?" -- bear in mind
that his PhD is in nuclear engineering! Which is to say, on this topic if
nothing else, he actually can claim relevant professional expertise.)
Henry
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