14 greatest engineering challenges of the 21st century

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What are the 14 greatest engineering challenges for the 21st century? | NetworkWorld.com Community

El' List!

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* Make solar energy affordable

* Provide energy from fusion

* Develop carbon sequestration methods

* Manage the nitrogen cycle

* Provide access to clean water

* Restore and improve urban infrastructure

* Advance health informatics

* Engineer better medicines

* Reverse-engineer the brain

* Prevent nuclear terror

* Secure cyberspace

* Enhance virtual reality

* Advance personalized learning

* Engineer the tools for scientific discovery

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Discuss.

Fusion power isn't very far away. Experimental reactors are already being tested ( Joint European Torus - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia ), and it won't be long before we've perfected the technique.

During a full D-T experimental campaign in 1997 JET achieved a world record peak fusion power of 16 MW which equates to a measured Q of approximately 0.7. Q is the ratio of fusion alpha heating power to input heating power. In order to achieve a burning plasma, a Q value greater than 1 is required. This figure does not include other power requirements for operation, most notably confinement. A commercial fusion reactor would probably need a Q value somewhere between 15 and 22. As of 1998, a higher Q of 1.25 is claimed for the JT-60 tokamak, however this was not achieved under real D-T conditions but estimated from experiments performed with a pure Deuterium (D-D) plasma. Similar extrapolations have not been made for JET, however it is likely that increases in Q over the 1997 measurements could now be achieved if permission to run another full D-T campaign was granted. Work has now begun on ITER to further develop fusion power.

Reverse-engineer the brain. Now that's a task.

Prevent nuclear terror. Hmm. We could always take the nukes apart. That would be a start.

Secure cyberspace. Again, hell of a task.

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@Sabz5150,

Quote:

Prevent nuclear terror. Hmm. We could always take the nukes apart. That would be a start.

And when someone else builds a nuke and we dont have one?

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@Reagaknight,

Reagaknight;53714 wrote:

And when someone else builds a nuke and we dont have one?

Irrelevant due to the fact that someone could detonate a small nuke in a major American city and our thousands of nukes wouldn't have a bearing on that whatsoever.

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@Sabz5150,

And how does taking our nukes apart prevent that, they would still have theirs.

1 Reply

@Reagaknight,

Reagaknight;53717 wrote:

And how does taking our nukes apart prevent that, they would still have theirs.

Who exactly is "they" and do "they" currently have a nuke?

I didn't say just us taking apart our nuclear weapons. I meant all of them.

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@Sabz5150,

Quote:

Who exactly is "they" and do "they" currently have a nuke?

You advocated taking apart nukes to stop terrorists from using nuclear bombs. They do not have a nuke yet as far as anyone knows, but how could taking apart our nuclear weapons have any effect on that? They're not going to get bombs from a country (maybe Pakistan), if they do, they'll get them by some other means. Most nuclear armed countries would not agree to get rid of their nuclear technology.

1 Reply

@Reagaknight,

Reagaknight;53721 wrote:

You advocated taking apart nukes to stop terrorists from using nuclear bombs. They do not have a nuke yet as far as anyone knows, but how could taking apart our nuclear weapons have any effect on that? They're not going to get bombs from a country (maybe Pakistan), if they do, they'll get them by some other means. Most nuclear armed countries would not agree to get rid of their nuclear technology.

I merely put forth a solution. Never said it was easy.

Nuclear disarmament would prevent that chance of a nuke coming from, as you said, Pakistan. That area isn't exactly perfectly stable, nor is it all 100% in love with us. Nobody's to say what might happen in that region tomorrow, next week or next year. Regardless of the means, if such things exists, people can get ahold of them.

Disarmament I'm sure would also make people ease up just a bit.

1 Reply

@Sabz5150,

The stakes of Nuclear terror is great, but the chances of it happening are not so much...

anybody can threaten a nuclear strike but nobody wants to take the chance of getting their own ass blown up.

1 Reply

@Fatal Freedoms,

Fatal_Freedoms;53730 wrote:

The stakes of Nuclear terror is great, but the chances of it happening are not so much...

anybody can threaten a nuclear strike but nobody wants to take the chance of getting their own ass blown up.

Mutually assured destruction. We have enough firepower to annihilate every person on this planet in a matter of hours and we know this fact. That's why we're scared to hell of the things.

Problem is, and continues to be, these "terrorists" have no qualm with blowing themselves to bits, taking everything in a radius with them. They don't care.

1 Reply

@Sabz5150,

Sabz5150;53735 wrote:

Mutually assured destruction. We have enough firepower to annihilate every person on this planet in a matter of hours and we know this fact. That's why we're scared to hell of the things.

Problem is, and continues to be, these "terrorists" have no qualm with blowing themselves to bits, taking everything in a radius with them. They don't care.

Lucky for us it's kinda difficult to build and hide a large number of Intercontinental nuclear missiles in a cave.

1 Reply

@Fatal Freedoms,

Fatal_Freedoms;53736 wrote:

Lucky for us it's kinda difficult to build and hide a large number of Intercontinental nuclear missiles in a cave.

Who said anything about missiles?

1 Reply

@Reagaknight,

Reagaknight;53741 wrote:

Who said anything about missiles?

How else would they nuke us? Bomb drop, Hiroshima style?

1 Reply

@Sabz5150,

Nuclear arms really have no place in todays war with Iraq and Afghanistan. And from the looks of it it looks like it is much more effective to wage a Guerrilla War rather then having clearly defined lines in the sand if you will.

M.A.D. and De taunt used to mean something. When facing other super powers that had something to lose but like Sabz already stated, they are already blowing them selves up and innocent people along with it. Do you really think they have any thing to lose?

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@Fatal Freedoms,

Fatal_Freedoms;53743 wrote:

How else would they nuke us? Bomb drop, Hiroshima style?

Just a small nuclear bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated by a suicide bomber.

1 Reply

@Reagaknight,

Reagaknight;53778 wrote:

Just a small nuclear bomb hidden in a suitcase detonated by a suicide bomber.

Somebody has been watching too much James Bond....

I'm pretty sure you can't fit a nuke in a briefcase, and even if you could, it would be pretty ******* difficult to sneak a nuke into the united states.

2 Replies

@Fatal Freedoms,

Fatal_Freedoms;53780 wrote:

Somebody has been watching too much James Bond....

I'm pretty sure you can't fit a nuke in a briefcase, and even if you could, it would be pretty ******* difficult to sneak a nuke into the united states.

Why not, why must there be a size limit to nuclear bombs? Though it's unlikely, it's not completely impossible.

1 Reply

@Fatal Freedoms,

Fatal_Freedoms;53780 wrote:

Somebody has been watching too much James Bond....

I'm pretty sure you can't fit a nuke in a briefcase, and even if you could, it would be pretty ******* difficult to sneak a nuke into the united states.

They sneak drugs and people in all of the time. Sure there are devices that can track radioactive material but they have a clue as to where to start looking.

0 Replies

@Reagaknight,

Reagaknight;53784 wrote:

Why not, why must there be a size limit to nuclear bombs? Though it's unlikely, it's not completely impossible.

That would be extremely difficult for the USA to make nonetheless a handful of terrorists.

0 Replies

@Sabz5150,

Okay, but it's a remote possibility. And if you have the technology, you can probably make a smaller bomb. If the US wanted to, they probably could.

BTW, not that I care, but I'm pretty sure 'nonetheless' doesn't fit in there, for future reference.

1 Reply

@Reagaknight,

Reagaknight;53986 wrote:

Okay, but it's a remote possibility. And if you have the technology, you can probably make a smaller bomb. If the US wanted to, they probably could.

BTW, not that I care, but I'm pretty sure 'nonetheless' doesn't fit in there, for future reference.

Davy Crockett (nuclear device) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The M-388 round used a version of the W54 warhead, a very small sub-kiloton fission device. The Mk-54 weighed about 51 lb (23 kg), with a selectable yield of 10 or 20 tons (very close to the minimum practical size and yield for a fission warhead) up to 0.5 kiloton. The complete round weighed 76 lb (34.5 kg). It was 31 in. (78.7 cm) long with a diameter of 11 in. (28 cm) at its widest point; a subcaliber piston at the back of the shell was actually inserted into the launcher's barrel for firing.

Here's a practical example of how small a nuke can get and still be classified a "nuke". However, it is still a bit to bulky to be inside a briefcase. It's yield is quite low... more of a big kaboom rather than a small nuke.

Given the latest advancements in technology, a sub-kiloton nuke could be fit inside a briefcase, but "the terrorists" (and 90% of the world) doesn't have that capability.

Can it be done? Yes.
Do we need to worry about it? No.

Of course, the "briefcase nuke" is a wonderful piece of the fear engine, because when you say nuke, people think "HOOOOOOOOOOOLY SHEEEEIOT!!! IT WILL NUKEZ MY CITYS LIKE IN TEH TERMINATORS TWO!!!11!!!111one!1"

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14 greatest engineering challenges of the 21st century

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