Re: Re: Shooting down 'Bandit Satellites'
According to Friday's Wall Street Journal spot platinum last closed at $588 per ounce and is up from $473 per ounce one year ago. -- On Sun, 11 Mar 2001 17:25:17 Brent Mattis wrote:
nah bill, platinum is 600 dollars an ounce, its price has shot up over the past five years.
Brent
From: Bill Stewart <bill.stewart@pobox.com> Reply-To: cypherpunks@ssz.com To: Jim Choate <ravage@einstein.ssz.com>, cypherpunks@einstein.ssz.com Subject: Re: CDR: Re: Shooting down 'Bandit Satellites' Date: Sat, 10 Mar 2001 12:33:25 -0800
At 06:16 PM 03/01/2001 -0600, Jim Choate wrote:
Technology wise, I'm real keen on the Hydrogen Peroxide Catalyst engines, especially Platinum catalyst. Platinum is problematic, rare & expensive. Say 1 out of 1,000 potential hobbyist can afford it. Hydrogen Peroxide can at least theoretically be done in a garage lab, so we'll leave this 1-1 for now.
Platinum costs vary, but I've never seen it above $500/oz, and I think it's more often about $300, e.g. about the price of good marijuana, which far more than 1 in 1000 hobbyists can afford :-) How much of it do you need for a can-sat engine's catalyst?
That's separate from questions of whether it's easy to work with, or whether you can get the catalyst into the form you need, e.g. wire mesh or particles spread on fiberglass or whatever.
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At 07:11 PM 3/11/01 -0500, Jim Windle wrote:
According to Friday's Wall Street Journal spot platinum last closed at $588 per ounce and is up from $473 per ounce one year ago.
Fer chrissakes you can use a number of cheaper chemicals. For those annoying satellite launches that you have to field-improvise, blood can be used to decompose peroxide :-) .......
David Honig wrote:
At 07:11 PM 3/11/01 -0500, Jim Windle wrote:
According to Friday's Wall Street Journal spot platinum last closed at $588 per ounce and is up from $473 per ounce one year ago.
Fer chrissakes you can use a number of cheaper chemicals. For those annoying satellite launches that you have to field-improvise, blood can be used to decompose peroxide :-)
Oh, all you want is enzymes then? I bet we can rig something up with bacteria. When it comes to making chemicals - well, chemicals without annoying heavy metals in them anyway - microbiology is your friend. Things that want nothing more than to reproduce themselves 3 times an hour tend to be quite easy to get hold of in bulk :-) Kinder to the neighbours as well, unless you are in Iraq, Afghanistan, or Sudan in which case those nice men from the Pentagon will be sending a cruise missile your way as soon as they hear that you are getting into production scale. On the other hand I had this vague idea that peroxide sort of decomposed itself. And I bet burnt protoplasm buggers up the exhaust nozzles no end. Ken Brown
At 07:11 PM 03/11/2001 -0500, Jim Windle wrote:
According to Friday's Wall Street Journal spot platinum last closed at $588 per ounce and is up from $473 per ounce one year ago. --
On Sun, 11 Mar 2001 17:25:17 Brent Mattis wrote:
nah bill, platinum is 600 dollars an ounce, its price has shot up over the past five years.
Interesting - wish gold and silver would do the same :-) Probably either increased industrial use or reduced mining...
participants (4)
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Bill Stewart -
David Honig -
Jim Windle -
Ken Brown