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A TCPalm investigation found the Department of Environmental Protection permits treated human waste to be dumped near some of Florida’s most fragile and protected waters. LUCAS DAPRILE/TCPALM

ABOUT THIS STORY: TCPalm has published two investigations revealing how Florida threatens protected waters by allowing farms to dump tons of only semi-treated human waste on their fields for fertilizer, but the nitrogen and often unneeded phosphorus can run off and feed toxic algae blooms. Today, we explore proposed solutions.

Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates put his mouth where his money is.

Standing in front of an industrial behemoth in Dakar, Senegal — with a crowd and cameras watching — an engineer turned a valve that poured a clear liquid into Gates’ drinking glass. He wore a nervous smile as he took a sip.

After all, just five minutes earlier, the liquid had been raw sewage.

“It’s water!” Gates declared in a video on Janicki Bioenergy’s website.

[Scroll down to see the video]

The multibillionaire’s charitable foundation backs the sanitation and waste management company based in his home state of Washington. Gates is banking on the company’s Omni Processor technology revolutionizing how cities dispose of human waste, while providing clean

Article source: http://www.tcpalm.com/story/news/investigations/2017/04/26/bill-gates-foundation-backs-janicki-bioenergy/99452498/

JP Aerospace is an interesting company – in the city of Rancho Cordova, CA., California, JP Aerospace, America’s OTHER Space Program. Their aim is to develop ways to send airships up into the stratosphere – and more controversially, all the way to orbit with their “Orbital Airships” vision. The airships would accelerate very slowly, at a rate of perhaps a few centimeters per second increase n speed every second, over several days, until they reach orbital velocity. Can they, or can’t they, or how far can they go?

If you do it the other way, build airships to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere from orbit, then this is much more widely accepted to be possible, with many scientists exploring plans such as the VAMP proposal for atmospheric re-entry for Venus, Titan and Earth by an airship that inflates as it re-enters, and slows down because it presents such a large surface area to the atmosphere. Also there was a 1964 test of a small inflated paraglider that achieved hypersonic speeds of over Mach 3 at a height of 400,000 feet, though only for minutes. So hypersonic flight by airships seems to be feasible in principle at those heights, but how fast and for how long? It is also definitely possible to have an inflatable in orbit, from the Echo project, which used inflated balloons as satellites for communications purposes.

Throughout this article, page numbers refer to John Powell’s book “Floating to Space, the Airship to Orbit Program”.

AIRSHIPS TO ORBIT CONTROVERSY

The most

Article source: http://www.science20.com/robert_walker/can_giant_airships_accelerate_to_orbit_jp_aerospaces_idea-225058

JP Aerospace is an interesting company – in Sacramento, California, JP Aerospace, America’s OTHER Space Program. Their aim is to develop ways to send airships up into the stratosphere – and more controversially, all the way to orbit with their “Orbital Airships” vision. The airships would accelerate very slowly, at a rate of perhaps a few centimeters per second increase n speed every second, over several days, until they reach orbital velocity.

If you do it the other way, build airships to re-enter Earth’s atmosphere from orbit, then this is much more widely accepted to be possible, with many scientists exploring plans such as the VAMP proposal for atmospheric re-entry for Venus, Titan and Earth by an airship that inflates as it re-enters, and slows down because it presents such a large surface area to the atmosphere. Also there was a 1964 test of a small inflated paraglider that achieved hypersonic speeds of over Mach 3 at a height of 400,000 feet, though only for minutes. So hypersonic flight by airships seems to be feasible in principle at those heights, but how fast and for how long? 

Throughout this article, page numbers refer to John Powell’s book “Floating to Space, the Airship to Orbit Program”.

AIRSHIPS TO ORBIT CONTROVERSY

The most controversial part is their idea of slowly accelerating to orbit. Their airships would be constructed and inflated at an altitude of 140,000 feet on a high altitude platform, his “Dark Sky Station” so called because it is so high in the

Article source: http://www.science20.com/robert_walker/can_giant_airships_slowly_accelerate_to_orbit_over_several_days_jp_aerospaces_idea-225058

Aircraft N2UW has flown through all kinds of weather. The sleek twin-propeller plane is so packed with scientific gear for studying the atmosphere that there’s barely room for two passengers to squeeze into its back seats. Monitors show radar reflections, gas concentrations and the sizes of cloud droplets. The plane has flown through tropical rainstorms in the Caribbean, through the gusting fronts of thunderheads over the Great Plains, and through turbulent down-slope winds that spawn dust storms in the lee of the Sierra Nevadas. But the four people on board on Aug. 29, 2016, will never forget their flight over Idaho.

The plane took off from Boise at 4 p.m., veering toward the Salmon River Mountains, 40 miles northeast. There, the Pioneer Fire had devoured 29,000 acres and rolled 10 miles up Clear Creek Canyon in just a few hours. Its 100-foot flames leaned hungrily into the slope as they surged uphill in erratic bursts and ignited entire stands of trees at once.

But to David Kingsmill, in the plane’s front passenger seat, the flames on the ground 2 miles below were almost invisible—dwarfed by the dark smoke that towered above. The fire’s plume of gray smoke billowed 35,000 feet into the sky, punching into the stratosphere with such force that a downy white pileus cloud coalesced on its underside like a bruise. The plume rotated slowly, seeming to pulse on its own, like a chthonic spirit rising over the ashes of a forest that no longer imprisoned it.

Article source: http://www.cityweekly.net/utah/inside-the-firestorm/Content?oid=4360019