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Magnetic Space Launches

Posted by chrisd on from the waiting-for-a-beanstalk dept.

DiZNoG writes "This CNN article discusses NASA experimenting with the idea of using Mag-Lev technology to launch payloads into space. Mentioned in the article is that the U.S. Navy is working on the technology for it's aircraft carriers to launch fighters. Unfortunately the NASA project is horribly underfunded ($30,000) for research. Cool technology, let's hope that the Navy research gets us a step closer to not burning all that Oxygen and Hydrogen to get to space...

1 of 301 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Cost per what? by bpowell423 · · Score: 1, Flamebait

    I wish people would stop banging on the English units. Use metric if you want and leave the rest of us alone! I'm either 5'11" (say, roughly 6') tall or 180.34cm. Now, which of those gives you a better mental picture of how tall I am? For scientific things, yes, powers of 10 work out real nice and all, but for everyday things, who the heck cares if you have to remember there's 12 inches in a foot... not that hard! The English units make a LOT more sense in everyday sorts of things. And, by the way, bushels of cotton per ACRE makes a lot of sense if you're raising cotton. Does metric even have "dry volume" measurements? I guess we could go with HECTOLITERS OF COTTON PER HECTARE? If my math is right, 1 bushel per acre works out to 0.8705 hectoliters per hectare.

    I suppose the CORRECT figures for NASA should have been a goal of 2.58 EUROS per GRAM! (Assuming an exchange rate of 1 EURO = $0.85, which is close.)

    Sorry for the rant. :)