Is Psychokinesis a physical impossibility?

One of humanity's oldest dreams, or fantasies, is the ability to move objects in space directly by mental will power alone, without the mediation of the human body. We can see this in the concept of "magic", which is largely based on this facility. We can see this in the capacities of the great mythical sages and religious figures throughout all world cultures to levitate and control sometimes enormous objects in their environment -- mountains, seas etc. -- merely by their own thoughts and human will. We can see this in science fiction, horror fiction and, of course fantasy fiction -- Carrie, Stranger in a Strange Land, all the witches, sorcerers and wizards in the fantasy literature. One of the more interesting and analytical treatments of this issue is from one of classic science fiction author Isaac Asimov's last novels, Foundation Five, the last in his classic Foundation series. In this book he posits an earth-like planet, Solaris, in which a mere 1500 or so inhabitants each possess their own small, isolated nation, manned by robots, and controlled by their psychokinetic abilities. They have genetically engineered themselves to possess large temporal lobes in their brains, that process and direct the energy derived from temperature variations within and throughout the planet itself. I'm not sure exactly how much sense this makes, but, it is an interesting thought, anyway. In mid-twentieth century there was considerable formal scientific research on psychokinesis in Universities and by the U.S. and Soviet militaries. Its practical applications, if it really existed, are obvious. Over time, there was little evidence for large-scale psychokinetic effects. However, so called microeffects, were highly significant. While there is much less formal research on psychokinesis today, in Western Europe there are still researchers claiming that the evidence for psychokinesis is just as strong as for well accepted scientific phenomena such as Einstein's Theory of Relativity. Don't shoot the messenger here, I'm just reporting their claims. So, is psychokinesis a physical impossibility, or are there meaningful theories explaining how this phenomenon could work? Something in the sub-atomic, quantum mechanical realm, perhaps?

What's a contemporary feminist perspective on Kurt Vonnegut Jr.'s 1968 short story "Welcome to the Monkey House"?

Kurt Vonnegut's Jr.'s short story "Welcome to the Monkey House", https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welcome_to_the_Monkey_House_(short_story) depicts an underground society in the future that perpetrates gang rapes on women as a kind of "psychotherapy", to bring them back to their "natural" sexual femininity. The premise is that in the twenty-second century, overpopulation has forced women into an unnatural celibacy that is contrary to their nature, and to their needs. Now, Kurt Vonnegut Jr. is, I believe, in general fairly popular with feminists and liberals. So, how do they reconcile this short story with contemporary feminism? What does this perspective say about feminism and human sexuality in general? Are we already in the futuristic world that Vonnegut envisioned?

The actual name for Elon Musk's "Starship" is "Cheapship"

What Elon Musk is really trying to achieve with his fleet of "Starships", are throwaway, disposable, cost-free rockets -- Cheapships, effectively, which can be built and launched for almost no money, at all. Now, you might say this is rather an odd thing for the world's greatest exponent of reusable rocketry to pursue. After all, so far with SpaceX, Elon has been rather successful in promoting and exploiting and concept of reusable rockets. His Falcon and Falcon Heavy rockets have, at least to some extent, cut the cost of using liquid fueled rockets, and even Communist China is now building its own version of a reusable rocket in the Long March 9, which is supposed to be fully reusable. The problem is, though, that none of these rockets are really fully reusable, or even close to it. They're more "salvageable" than "reusable". Most of the rocket materials and some of its structure are salvaged, but, actually, the cost of reusing Elon's rockets is a full two thirds the cost of building them from scratch. So, while significant savings certainly accrue if the rocket is repeatedly reused, which can more than cover the costs of developing the reusable technology, these remain very expensive launch systems. It still costs 67 million dollars to launch the Falcon, and 100 million dollars to launch the Falcon Heavy. And these costs, which are merely what is required to put satellites into low earth orbit, increase exponentially as we try to launch satellites or astronauts to the Moon or planets. So, Elon Musk, who, apparently, really does want to go to Mars, needs much, much lower costs for rockets to achieve his ultimate ambitions. So he's trying to build a rocket made of extremely inexpensive materials, in hopes that this will lower the costs of using them. He's using cheap stainless steel instead of expensive Titanium and other such materials. He's using dozens of small engines instead of a few large engines, in hopes that this will reduce their cost. He's hoping that economies of scale will reduce labor and materials costs to near zero, if he can expand to operating hundreds or thousands of Starships all at the same time, and he has his accountants working on theories that prove just that. He's predicting the costs of launching the rocket with 100 tons of material into low earth orbit will be just 10 million dollars. From the start of launches. Where does he get this figure? Because low end estimates of current costs for the stainless steel, rocket fuel and engines required to build and launch Starship are around 10 million dollars. He's assuming no labor costs at all. He's assuming an all volunteer workforce, including engineers, scientists, technicians and astronauts. Everyone working for nothing, at all. He's further predicting that the cost of launching the rockets will be just one million dollars, because the costs of all related materials will drop by 90% as the result of economies of scale, while labor costs will remain at zero. Now the big problem here, is that the majority of the cost of liquid fueled rockets is the labor involved in building and maintaining them. Often, the vast majority of costs is simply technical labor. And, it really doesn't follow from the fact that the materials used in constructing a rocket are quite cheap, that the rocket is cheap. Let's suppose, just for fun, that Elon Musk decided to build his Starship entirely out of paper mache. Now, paper mache is often made from waste paper, so, effectively, the costs of paper mache could be zero. Hence, if Elon Musk builds the fuselage, engines and all related parts from paper mache, he could argue that building his rocket costs nothing at all. Indeed, paper mache is highly flammable, so, he could also use paper mache for rocket fuel, I suppose. So, launching his Starship again costs nothing at all. Indeed, who knows, maybe with sufficient expertise and advanced materials treatments, paper mache could actually be used to construct and power rockets. And, if all the experts and technicians treating the paper mache to make it usable worked for nothing, well, I guess the rocket would indeed cost nothing to use and launch. So, we could use these paper mache Starships to send enormous quantities of paper mache into space, to provide "refueling" for Starships, and, given that Elon's accountants have proved that all this costs nothing, the refueling could go on forever, for nothing, and take these paper mache Starships to the Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Alpha Centauri and, ultimately, the Andromeda Galaxy. Of course, rockets scientists don't work for free. And, paper mache rockets probably wouldn't work very well, if at all. And making paper mache work in a rocket probably would be a very expensive proposition, indeed, as we're finding out -- Elon's spent 10 billion dollars on his "cheap" Starship, without getting it to work. Nevertheless, NASA has seen fit to make a multi-billion dollar "contract" with SpaceX to send astronauts to the Moon on his "Starship". Because NASA really still has to try to keep making the case that it can send astronauts into outer space, because that's what President Kennedy founded it to do, really. Even though President Eisenhower thought it was totally impractical, because liquid fueled rockets simply weren't a practical technology for doing this, at all. Now, in the 1960's, when NASA was getting 5% of the total U.S. budget, they could indeed get to the Moon. With astronauts. Anyone want to give NASA 5% of the total U.S. budget now?

Does anyone really know what Elon Musk's "Starship" will cost to launch from earth?

I posted the following question on reddit: "Does anyone really have any idea, at all, what Elon Musk's "Starship" will actually cost to launch on a regular basis? Estimates vary from 1 million to 5 billion dollars a launch. That's three and a half orders of magnitude difference. Obviously, a cost of just a million dollars to put a hundred tons of material into earth orbit would open up a lot of possibilities, including orbital gas stations. While a cost of five billion dollars wouldn't even allow the vehicle to be credible to get astronauts to the Moon, let alone Mars, since its fuel capacity is only half a Saturn V or an SLS. So, does anyone really have clear data to prove what launches of the "Starship" would actually cost? And, I don't mean what Elon Musk says, since that usually doesn't mean a great deal, at all. Anyone have some real, meaningful data here?" Best Answer from Ask Physics: "Elon Musk's Starship is fictitious at this moment in time. Any estimate of cost is about marketing the idea and not related to the actual cost." I also posted on the reddit Spaceflight site, but just got a bunch of accounting gibberish from NASA and Elon Musk enthusiasts about how it was possible, somehow in the future, to bring costs down to almost nothing, because the materials involved weren't very expensive, at all. And, after all, once the Starship gets mass produced, the labor costs will be quite minimal, too. Uh-huh. So, really, the fact that it's cost 10 billion dollars to build just one of them, which doesn't even work yet, is really totally irrelevant. Makes sense, right?

Are there any current, plausible approaches to reducing the costs of nuclear enrichment?

I think one of the main obstacles to the full exploitation of nuclear power is simply the costs of nuclear enrichment, whether for Uranium or Plutonium. Are there any ideas in play currently to improve this situation, so nuclear power can be a cheaper and more realistic source of power for society? Are they making any progress in this area of research at this time? Specifically, are there new techniques being developed for the extraction of U-235 from raw Uranium ore, or for creating Plutonium from U-238?

Why are nuclear weapons still so expensive?

There are no nuclear weapons of any type, regardless of explosive yield, as far as I can determine, that cost less than at least a few million dollars. On the other hand, I believe no nuclear weapons actually cost more than a few tens of millions of dollars, again, regardless of explosive yield. And, explosive yield on nuclear weapons varies from just a few tons of TNT, to tens of megatons of TNT. Why is this exactly? Obviously, this consistency of cost, regardless, of explosive yield, doesn't apply to conventional explosives, at all -- an almost identical cost, over six orders of magnitude of explosive yield. And, despite the fact that nuclear weapons have existed for almost eighty years now, the costs do not appear to have gone down at all, which is rather odd for a very old technology. So, is this cost factor in nuclear weapons simply an inevitable technical obstacle, that cannot be gotten around, somehow? Or, is this a socio-economic effect of some sort? After all, governments are very frightened of nuclear weapons, indeed. That's why there are such tight controls over the possession of even raw Uranium ore -- in the U.S., no one is allowed to possess more than a few pounds of raw Uranium ore. So, there are no private entrepreneurs working on nuclear energy, at all. I'm thinking particularly in terms of potential practical applications of nuclear explosives, such as Project Orion, for space travel: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Project_Orion_(nuclear_propulsion) It would certainly be quite useful for such projects if A-bombs could be produced for only ten thousand dollars, or so. On the other hand, if anyone with ten thousand dollars could purchase an A-bomb, that might make government officials worldwide very nervous, indeed. So, are governments quite deliberately making it very difficult for anyone to develop cheaper nuclear weapons, quite intentionally?

Russia's primary goal this winter is Odessa

'Our dear Empress Katrina II, the Magnificent, beloved of memory, had a special place in her heart for the noble city of Odessa. Truly, her soul felt dear to people of Odessa, a city still 80% Russian, a city whose soul is Russian, to its very core. Yet, despite this great history, the leadership of Kiev tyrannically seeks to make this city the home of UNESCO, a center of NATO power, a puppet of American dominated world culture. How can our dear sainted Katrina support this outrage? How can the people of Russia support this tyranny? How can the people of Odessa bear this humiliation?' Skillful and passionate propaganda of this type are becoming rather common in the Russian media. So, whatever the practicalities of the situation, it's pretty obvious that the Russian government is going to make a pretty serious play for the Ukrainian city of Odessa this winter. Odessa is the last major port in Ukrainian hands. With the loss of Odessa, Ukraine will be landlocked. Furthermore, Odessa is within striking distance of the Polish border, just to the North. If the Russians can effectively shut down the Ukrainian-Polish border, Ukraine is finished. No more American arms. End of story. Now, I realize the Ukrainian army is making some rather modest gains these days. And, despite the Western media propaganda, they are really quite modest. The Ukrainian army is now fully mobilized, and they have a big manpower advantage over the Russians in Ukraine currently. That is about to change. Vladimir Putin's "partial mobilization" gives him authority to call up a million men, presumably all for service in Ukraine. Instead of being outnumbered perhaps five to one, the Russian army will outnumber the Ukrainians two to one. They should have little difficulty rolling up whatever territory they wish to take. That's why Elon Musk is calling for talks between Ukraine and Russia at this time, while Ukraine still has some leverage. Whatever one might think of Elon's morals, or his "inventive genius", he has certainly always been pretty good at picking winners and losers. He knows Ukraine has no chance, whatsoever. And, it's not because of nuclear weapons. It's just manpower, discipline, and resources.

How "clean" can powerful, high-yield H-bombs be made?

I was thinking of the advantages for civilian applications of H-bombs -- space propulsion, energy production -- if they weren't dangerously radioactive. Now, I realize fusion created by inertial confinement is clean, but, it uses more energy than it creates, unfortunately. So I was thinking in terms of conventional H-bombs -- initiated by a small A-bomb -- but constructed in a way to absolutely minimize dangerous radiation or primary radioactive waste. First of all, I suppose, it would be desirable to make the A-bomb trigger or fuse as small as possible, since fission bombs must inevitably cause dangerous radiation and primary radioactive waste. Just how small can the A-bomb initiating an H-bomb explosion be, in practical terms? That said, as far as I can determine, the remaining fusible material in all conventional H-bombs still is consumed in fission reactions to a large degree -- nowhere near 100%, or even 90% of fusible material in conventional H-bombs is actually consumed in nuclear fusion. Much of it is consumed in nuclear fission. Is there any way to bring pure fusion in H-bombs up to near 100%?