Interplanetary Superhighway

rotenberry writes "The current issue of Caltech's Engineering and Science magizine contains the article "Next Exit 0.5 Million Kilometers - A Caltech/JPL collaboration explores the 'Interplanetary Superhighway.'" which describes "...the Interplanetary Superhighway - 'a vast network of winding tunnels in space' that connects the sun, the planets, their moons, and a host of other destinations as well. But unlike the wormholes beloved of science-fiction writers, these things are real. In fact, they are already being used." However, it takes a very long time to get there."

Comments

SAN DIMAS HIGH SCHOOL FOOTBALL RULES!

[Anonymous Coward]

I DID IT!

Of course it takes a very long time.......

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Because all of these tunnels connect through Atlanta where there is a "change of plane".

Re:Of course it takes a very long time.......

[DarthWiggle]

And i have an ex-girlfriend in Atlanta too... gives new meaning to "baggage claim"

wooooooo.....

Re:Of course it takes a very long time.......

[Anonymous Coward]

wow, /. readers have girlfriends?

Re:Of course it takes a very long time.......

[Anonymous Coward]

No, they have ex-girlfriends.
Can't you read?

Re:Of course it takes a very long time.......

[j-pimp]

Well some of them go through O'Hare.

Re:Of course it takes a very long time.......

[Sabalon]

Simpsons quote: Lisa - why did we have to transfer twice in Atlanta.

If you go to hell, you have to go transfer through Atlanta.

Of course, you may not know the difference :)

Re:Of course it takes a very long time.......

[t0ny]

But unlike the wormholes beloved of science-fiction writers, these things are real. In fact, they are already being used

By who? I hope its not the Borg. They dont like us...

First +1 bonus post.

[MisterFancypants]

First +1 bonus post. Aw yeah.

Re:First +1 bonus post.

[MisterFancypants]

First reply to first +1 bonus post modded to -1.

Cock 'N Balls

[Anonymous Coward]

All over your face!

Frosty

[Anonymous Coward]

Toss my salad, byatch!!!
-CmdrTaco
Potsing anonymously too preserve my precious karma

*_s_l_a_s_h_d_o_t_*_s_l_a_s_h_d_o_t_*_s_l_a_s_h_*_
s_______________________________________________s_ _
l_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______l_ _
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a_ _
s|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____s_ _
h`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____h_ _
d_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____d_ _
o__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____o_ _
t___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____t_ _
*____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____*_ _
s______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____s_ _
l_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____l_ _
a_______/\_|___C_____)/_Toss_\_(_____>__|_/_____a_ _
s______/_/\|___C_____)___My__|__(___>___/__\____s_ _
h_____|___(____C_____)\_Salad/__//__/_/_____\___h_ _
d_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__d_ _
o____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__o_ _
t____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_t_ _
*___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_*_ _
s___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_s_ _
l___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|l_ _
a___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|a_ _
s__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|s_ _
h__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|h_ _
*_s_l_a_s_h_d_o_t_*_s_l_a_s_h_d_o_t_*_s_l_a_s_h_*_

Important Matter: I pray attempt to maintain the starter shafts in the object. Tests to answer to the comments of people instead beginning new threads of the spiral. It reads to the messages of people before that fixing its in order to possess ones in order to simply avoid to duplicate that what has been said already. Uses to the free object that it describes on which are its message. Inflammatory, inadequate, illegal, or offensive the comments of Offtopic, could be moderate (can read all the, starter shafts to you even moderate, measure to you your threshold in the page of the preferences of the customer) if wished the answers to your transmitted comments you, you they study the possibility to enter or to generate of a customer.

Significant matter: Please tentative to maintain posts in the subject. Try to answer the comments of the people instead of beginning new wire of spiral. Read the messages of the people before fixing his to have those to simply avoid reproducing what was already known as. Employ on the clear subject that it describes on what it is its message. Inflammatory, unsatisfactory, illegal, or offensive the comments of Offtopic, could be moderate (you can read all, even the moderated posts, adapting your threshold in the page of the preferences of the user) if you wish answers to your comments sent to you, consider you to enter or create of an account.

Important Stuff: Please try to keep posts on topic. Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads. Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said. Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about. Offtopic, Inflammatory, Inappropriate, Illegal, or Offensive comments might be moderated. (You can read everything, even moderated posts, by adjusting your threshold on the User Preferences Page) If you want replies to your comments sent to you, consider logging in or creating an account.

Re:Frosty

[Anonymous Coward]

Now whats that I smell ?
or is it that I'm too close to my own ass ?

black people can't get first post around here...

[Anonymous Coward]

first, we had to ride on the back of the bus, and now this.

There's a bulldozer outside my house

[egg troll]

An Interplanetary highway, eh? Better head down to the pub, in a hurry!

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[benna]

So long and thanks for all the fish!

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[jon787]

Don't Panic!

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[Guppy06]

"An Interplanetary highway, eh? Better head down to the pub, in a hurry!"

First you have to find that bottle of aspirin before the house gets bulldozed.

It could be worse, though. You could be trying to catch that God-forsaken Babelfish...

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[whig]

There's a good pub at L5. Called the Libation Point.

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[PurpleBob]

Note to moderators: The Hitchhiker's Guide is funny. Making the occasional reference to it is funny. Quoting random catchphrases from it in response to that reference is not funny.

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[ackthpt]

An Interplanetary highway, eh? Better head down to the pub, in a hurry!

Perhaps a quick check of your digital watch might give you some idea how much time you've got. Oh, and a fashion tip: don't go down to the pub is your dressing gown.

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[Anonymous Coward]

LOL

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[Anonymous Coward]

now that's funny!

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[benna]

Its not random. Its what I say when my planet is being destroyed...I am the second smartest creature on earth.

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[Anonvmous Coward]

"Note to moderators: The Hitchhiker's Guide is funny. Making the occasional reference to it is funny. Quoting random catchphrases from it in response to that reference is not funny."

Here, have some muscle relaxent.

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[Peterus7]

And remember, you have to hold your breath on these tunnels. Or you won't get your wish... And the fact that you'll run out of air is smart too....

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[Sabalon]

> put satchel in front of hole
> put mail on satchel
> hang robe on hook
> press button

And I still think I'm missing a step.

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[grytpype]

block drain with towel

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[Sabalon]

thnx...I tried playing it online and was having enough trouble getting off the earth...it's been about 18 years!!!

Re:There's a bulldozer outside my house

[hoggoth]

> > put satchel in front of hole
> > put mail on satchel
> > hang robe on hook
> > press button
>
> And I still think I'm missing a step.

5. Profit!!!

time for publishers to start...

[trmj]

...getting the rights to the book title "Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy"

Re:time for publishers to start...

[Pxtl]

Actually, I was thinking more about the interplanetary hypertubes from Cowboy Bebop. But that one's good too.

Re:time for publishers to start...

[einhverfr]

Funny-- the article is by Doublas Smith, and I read it as Douglass Adams instead.....

Re:time for publishers to start...

[Ashtead]

Maybe too late.

I remember a series of books by John DeChancie I read in the 80s about an intergalactic highway system. Evidently there is a series of these books, Starrigger was one, Red Limit Freeway was another.

On the other hand, we could still have use for a local road network for the solar system. However, should this be put out to tender, we will have to screen out Vogon contractors...

Re:time for publishers to start...

[gl4ss]

i already did that, by warping in time 100 years back.

(yeah it's been a while since i read them, and i can't recall correctly the time-machine&copyright jokes around the book)

Re:time for publishers to start...

[AsbestosRush]

Paradox Alley was the third installment of this series. I actually enjoyed them all.

The series was told from a first person perspective, and (in my opinion) it does what a good science fiction should do: The technilogy facilitates the story, not a story about technology.

YOU LIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Black people can't use computers!

Re:YOU LIE!

[Anonymous Coward]

Then how did you just post that?

The Genesis Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

That's just asking for trouble. Didn't we all see Star Trek 2? Kahn will be after it, and we all know that proto-matter is unstable and dangerously unpredictable.

Re:The Genesis Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're gay.

Re:The Genesis Project?

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a gay.

Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[dreadknought]

I wonder if this applies to the seven rules for spotting bogus science?

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[vortmax(OU)]

Bogus science? How about this?

From the article:
Ideally, a spacecraft at L4 or L5 will remain there indefinitely because when it falls off the cusp, the Coriolis effect--which makes it hard for you to walk on a moving merry-go-round--will swirl it into a long-lived orbit around that point.

IIRC from physics classes, is the force making it hard to walk on a moving merry-go-round not the centripetal force?? I thought Coriolis was only a pseudo-force, not a real one.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[Anonymous Coward]

The Coriolis effect is real its not a force, and as will be drilled into your head if you major in astrophysics "THERE IS NO CENTRIPETAL FORCE"

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[Discordantus]

Centripetal force is the 'force' that tries to throw you off the merry-go-round, and yeah, it's not really a force.
The Coriolis effect is more along the lines of a vortex, I belive... It's what makes water spin down the drain in the opposite direction in Australia. It's also what makes record player needles skate.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[The Only Druid]

Two points:

One, neither "centripetal" or "coriolis" are actual forces; they're better understood as virtual forces or pseudo forces. That is, they are an easier way for some people to compartmentalize the pragmatic effects of real forces [both are due to the interaction between radial acceleration and linear momentum].

Two, toilets do not spin in the opposite direction in the southern hemisphere as they do on in the northern hemisphere for any reason related to this physics; they spin in a certain direction because of several facts - 1, water is shot in at an angle into the bowl to better catch material stuck to the wall, 2, the toilet bowl is shaped a certain way to cause water to twirl, again to catch materiel.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[wwest4]

centripetal force is quite real. so-called "centrifugal" force is imaginary.

oh i suppose a link is in order.

coriolis is also an apparent (re: imaginary) force along the same lines - the way i understand it, we perceive it because any movement on earth happens with respect to a non-inertial frame of reference (not just relative to surface, but to orbit and rotation). it's not a real force, but it's a very real part of accounting for motion. i think i remember hearing about a gemini splash-down being off by miles because a programmer didn't account for the coriolis effect.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[karlm]

IIRC from physics classes, is the force making it hard to walk on a moving merry-go-round not the centripetal force?? I thought Coriolis was only a pseudo-force, not a real one.

Ehh... you're 3/4 right. Centripetal force is real and coreolis force is "imaginary". Centripital force is force towards the center of rotation, keeping you from traveling in a streight line. Centripital force doesn't make it hard to walk on the merry-go-round; centripital force allows you to stay on the merry-go-round. You're thinking of the "imaginary" centrifugal force that appears to counter-act the centripital force you are applying with your feet.

Centrifugal force and Coreolis force are both imaginary forces used as short hand for taking second time derrivatives (calclating accelerations) in rotating reference frames using polar coordinates . If you're spinning at a constant speed about the merry-go-round, you keep the same polar cooarinates when in fact, a lot of corce is acting on your body to keep it constantly changing direction at a fairly high rate. In the reference frame you ae always at rest, so you don't say that momentum change is balancing out the force you are using to keep yourself "still" in the rotating reference frame, you say that this imaginary "centrifugal" force is acting on you. The two statements are equivalent, but one is a technical gloss.

Now suppose you try moving in relation to the rotating reference frame. You want to travel in a streight line in the polar coordinates. Well, since the frame of reference is rotating, a streight path in non-rotating space is a curved line in the rotating reference frame, and the amount of aparent curvature is dependent on speed of travel relative to the rotating reference frame. So when you try and walk in a streight line on the merry-go-round with out correcting for rotation, you more or less walk in a streight line in the non-rotating reference frame. In the rotating reference frame, your path is curved. The easiest way to do calculations is to make up frorces that would havepushed your path into that curved shape. It's all just short hand so that everything doesn't need to be translated to and from the stationary reference frame.

Even at the equator, you experience the coreolis effect, it's just that your axis of rotation is parallel to the ground. At the equtor, running East appears to make you lighter, running West appears to make you heavier, jumping up appears to push you West, and dropping off a ledge appears to push you East. One explination of why thy always launch spacecraft in an eastwardly-traveling orbit is that that way the coreolis force helps, rather than hinders the spaceflight. In a non-rotating reference frame this is equivalent to saying that it already has a lot of speed in an easterly direction, so blasting off to the west actually means sloing down a lot rather than using the speed it already has due to traveling at the same speed as the ground.

It's all equivalent, sometimes it's jsut easier to do the math one way. If nobody has done the math to figure out how the imaginary forces get added in in your situation, then you need to translate everything into a non-rotaing, non-accelerating frame of reference and do the calculatins and translate them back into your rotating frame of reference.

It's kinda like special relativity. If you forget the formulas, you can re-derrive them by looking at everyhting in a stationary reference frame and looking at a photon clock and a photon yardstick and figuring out what apears to happen to one secodn and what appearsto happen to one meter and what appears to happen to one kg being acted upon by 1 Newton. It's just a lot easier if you remember the formulas Einstein derrived for you instead of having to transate everything to and from the stationary reference frame.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[Discordantus]

Okay, you're right, and I'm wrong. I blame my teacher for that one.
But it does affect hurricane spin.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[Anonymous Coward]

There is a centripetal force. He's thinking: THERE IS NO CENTRIFUGAL FORCE.

Thanks,

Firendly neighbourhood physicist AC.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[grumpygrodyguy]

I wonder if this applies to the seven rules for spotting bogus science?

Believe it or not, basic celestial mechanics still has several unsolved problems.

For instance noone knows exactly how to model the formation of ring structures like the Kuiper Belt(a ring of asteroids orbiting the sun), or Saturn's rings.

If you don't believe me check out this link.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[Anonymous Coward]

First:
There is NOT "Coriolis force"
There EXISTS the "Coriolis effect"
There is NOT "centrifugal force"
There EXISTS the "centriphugal effect"
There EXISTS centripetal force (take your belt on you hand and turn it around your head: the force your hand applies to the belt so it doesn't go breaking someone's head is the centripetal force -it is for REAL, nothing imaginary).

Second:
Water on toilets DO spin some direction due to reasons related with physics. What do you mean? Water turns around due to some "methaphysical reason"? You probably tried to say that Coriolis effect was of so lower magnitude when compared with other elements (like the angle it goes into the bowl or the shape of the bowl) it has not to be considered.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[Darth_Foo]

Excellent physics lesson (I was an engineer in my previous career). However, please PLEASE learn to spell or at least proofread - "straight", "second", and "calculations" ,for example, are the correct spellings.

Re:Seven Rules For Spotting Bogus Science

[dillon_rinker]

Good on #2, but not quite on #1. Centripetal and coriolis forces are quite real and entirely valid. Centripetal forces are obvious in a static frame of reference, while coriolis (and centrifugal) forces are valid in a rotating frame of reference. If you are being rotated, you will experience centrifugal force, and if you try to move you will encounter the coriolis force. Someone watching you from outside the rotating area would chalk it all up to good old-fashioned inertia.

The myth about no centrifugal or coriolis forces exists because it's easier to say that to freshman than to try to teach them to analyze forces within a rotating frame of reference.

huh?

[adamruck]

dont the planets move around the sun at different rates? So how would it be possible to make a fixed structure to "drive" to a planet?

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

dont the planets move around the sun at different rates?

No haven't you seen those planetary books you read in elementry school. All the planets are in a line, one after the other and we all rotate together just as God intended it to be.

Now excuse me I have to getting back to horse and buggy.

Re:huh?

[Professor_Quail]

The paths are not actually fixed...they're just calculated at a fixed point in time (i.e. they calculate to find that you need to be at starting point a at time t in order to 'catch the tube' to get to endpoint b)

Re:huh?

[dackroyd]

So how would it be possible to make a fixed structure to "drive" to a planet?

It's not. You have to constantly calculate where the low energy paths will be and and then choose one that will take you where you want to.

When the planets move around these paths will change and to get to the same place you may have to take a different 'route' for journeys that start at different times.

Calling it a 'network of tunnels' is a poor simile, lets see if I can do any better. It's more like a set of deep valleys connected to each other over a small rise. The valleys are formed by the gravity of the planets and moons, and the layout of the valleys change as the planets move around.

To get from point A to point B, you can either use lots of energy to go in a straight line up and down the deep sides of the valley or if you follow the bottoms of the valleys and aim carefully at the connection between different valleys you can use less energy to move.

As space is frictionless, not only do you have to spend a lot of energy to get up the side of the valley (ie getting the spaceship up to speed for the journey), you also have to spend a lot of energy to stop from rolling on past where you want to go to (ie slow the spaceship down once it there). This is a problem if you want to send a probe to go and look at several planet/moons in a mission and spend a reasonable amount of time around each one. If you just accelerate/decelerate to get to and from each orbit you'll need a lot of fuel.

What's cool about this is that if you want to, you can bounce around within the valley so long as you don't roll at the low connection to another valley. This means that the spaceship/satellite could stay in one orbit around a moon for a while, and then when the time comes to move on, it can fire its rocket for a very short time just to aim at the low connection to the next valley. This will then make the ship move into orbit around the next planet/moon and it will be in a stable orbit around that until it decides to move on again.

Re:huh?

[Jeremy Erwin]

haven't you seen those planetary books you read in elementry school. All the planets are in a line, one after the other and we all rotate together just as God intended it to be.

Wrong, hotshot. The earth doesn't rotate. The sun revolves around the earth. Just as G-d intended.

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

The 'network of tunnels' analogy is actually quite fitting. There are manifold surfaces in space which, once you are on them, you automatically fall to a destination lagrange point. That is where that analogy comes from.

(Of course, the manifolds do not just have coordinates in space but have required velocities at those coordinates. But once you are "on" the manifold in the sense of being in the right place with the right velocity, then it works exactly like a tunnel connecting you to somewhere else because you simply "fall" there without having to do anything else.)

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Don't you people have anything better to do than introduce your own personal issues into completely unrelated stories?

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

If you're going to pick on religion (in a totally unrelated story, no less) at least pick on the religious views that are currently held. Religion develops, just like science. If I were a luddite, randomly picking on scientists, I could make a similar unfair comment: "Wrong, hotshot, didn't you read your science books? The sun revolves around the earth on a celstial sphere, just like Eudoxus said."

Re:huh?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, you could say that, and yes, that too would be funny.

It's a joke! Laugh.

Re:huh?

[dackroyd]

Yeah but which one is easier for a non-mathemetician to imagine ?

Three dimensional manifolds which have varying potential energy and limits on velocity to be contained within the manifold.

OR

Valleys

btw is there a word for the connection between two separate valleys ?

Uh yeah...

[ObviousGuy]

We can't even build a highway from Seattle to Honolulu. How about thinking globally and acting a locally?

Re:Uh yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

How about thinking globally and acting a locally

You Sir are truely on the popular media bandwagon, but for the ObviousGuy you obvious don't know what you are talking about and I would suspect that you also do not practice what you preach.

Please leave so that I do not have to listen to your pathetic comments.

Re:Uh yeah...

[adamruck]

unlike the previous poster... you should be called "crypticGuy" becuase ive got no idea what the heck you are talking about...

I think obviousGuy has a good point... we cant seem to do projects on a comparitevly small scale... much less on a planetary scale... besides, im still waiting for the elevator to the moon.

Re:Uh yeah...

[Anonymous Coward]

He might have a good point if we were talking about a construction project.

This sounds like the borg

[Anonymous Coward]

and their warp-conduit system... resistance is futile

Gravity Hitchhiking, Pure and Simple

[weston]

That's what this is. You don't get quite the comfy ride in the back of a Vogon Space Cruiser or anything, but it's still hitchiking.

Now if only I could get a free ride to the Midwest or East Coast this way.

yes, it takes a long time.

[Quasar1999]

Of course it takes a long time... you forgot rule #1... the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line... err... is it a curved line? no... wait... ahh screw it...

Ok... it's a friday night... I'm sitting at home, with nothing better to do than try and be a smartass on slashdot... Oh lord, I've wasted my life...

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh lord, I've wasted my life...

yes this is true you have. Now may I suggest some suggestions (Heh?)

1. Drink lots of beer a spirits
2. Go out a fuck the dirtiest hooker you can find
3. Kill you self right now..... NOW

when you are dead the universe cannot here your stupid comments

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

when you are dead the universe cannot here your stupid comments

but they can here yours

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[benna]

I can see it now....Tomorrow there will be a slashdot post..... Someone has killed themself based on a sugestion on slashdot...he told everyone to watch his webcam and...hmm I am mixing up my stories.

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

the shortest distance between 2 points is a straight line. But they're talking about the lowest energy path between 2 points

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah ha do I have the solution for you. Russian Woman Marriage Agency

enjoy your new life

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[josh crawley]

rule #1... the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line

But it seems the path of least resistance is curved... Following gravity ripples where it cancels.

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

The shortest distance between any two points is a straight line but that dose not make it the fastest.

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[Anonymous Coward]

got anything with asians?

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[gilroy]

Blockquoth the poster:

rule #1... the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line

... but if the spacetime metric is not flat, the "straight" line might be curved... (Think great circles on the surface of spheres.)

Re:yes, it takes a long time.

[Tony-A]

Ok, I'll bite. Yes, the shortest distance between any two points is a straight line. That's because a straight line is *THE* path between the two points with the shortest distance. (You can have some fun with equivalence classes if there's more than of of 'em;) A straight line on a 3-d sphere goes through the sphere, not on the surface. A straight line on a 2-d surface of a sphere will not look straight when projected onto a flat map. A straight line on a Mercator projection is not the shortest distance on the represented 2d-surface, but does have the advantage that you can pick a heading, stay on it, and get there eventually.

It's like... computers.

[Anonymous Coward]

Everything's bigger.. yet smaller.

You Sir are a true artist

[Anonymous Coward]

may I have your babies so that the talent may continue throughout the ages.

It'll Never Pan Out...

[Quaoar]

The project is a failture from the start...what good is it when this "highway" doesn't deliver porn?

Re:It'll Never Pan Out...

[m1chael]

yes it can, it just takes a long time to come.

Re:It'll Never Pan Out...

[B3ryllium]

Oh, I get it. That's a pun. Ha-ha. ;-)

Re:It'll Never Pan Out...

[Anonymous Coward]

So you haven't seen the space-babe images transferred off voiager yet, have you?

My Favorite Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

1. George Washington
2. Robert E. Lee
3. Charles Lindbergh
4. George W. Bush

The USA is the greatest country on God's Earth. That's a fact.

God Bless This Land of Liberty

Re:My Favorite Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

It's a fact? It's a simplistic fact that appeals to the void that is ignorance. However, uninformed and oversimplistic arrogance is NOT a substitute for ignorance.
God's Earth? Which made up god are you talking about? Remember, combining religion and politics is dangerous. The examples are many.

This Reminds me of Doug Adams

[Montgomery Burns III]

"The Universe is big. Really big. You might think that it is a long way to the chemist, but that is nothing comapred to the universe."

Re:This Reminds me of Doug Adams

[m1chael]

you mean its a long way to the universe?

Re:This Reminds me of Doug Adams

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I remember Dougie boy. We used to hang out down at the local gay bar and after a few drinks go out back for a quicky. Those were the days... I really loved it when he inserted his man love into my tunnel of pleasure it felt so good I went to the stars myself with every thrust.

Re:This Reminds me of Doug Adams

[Anonymous Coward]

sorry if you want to reply to me you can get me on

webriot3@hotmail.com

Bzzzzzzt!

[Anonymous Coward]

Trans-warp drive requires a flux capacitor and a locomotive that goes 88 mph because of the hot-burning, colorific logs. And a static warp bubble that traps beverly crusher and causes the universe to shrink.

Re:Bzzzzzzt!

[Anonymous Coward]

beverly crush-her. yes I seem to remember that name, but as you say the universe shrank so I guess it worked out for the best.

most non-sensical post ever!!

how this works

[Anonymous Coward]

What this is about is mapping out stable and semi-stable manifolds (paths) in space between planets. That is there are places in the solar system if you put an object, it will naturally draft toward certain other positions. For NASA, JPL, etc. The important paths are those linking the planets and other destinations of interest hense the high way metaphor (which is just a metaphor, not even a precise one at that. A embeded manifold is the precise mathematical term) These manifolds are created by the interaction of the planets and because of that can be thought as fixed relative to them, or as moving with them. (Which is why manifold is more precise term sense it does not denote fixed position nor one dimensionalness)

Re:how this works

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, yes, this is all true. But the term "superhighway," aside from being cute, really describes to lay-people exactly what can be done with it, whereas calling it an "embeded manifold" may not carry that same meaning to most people.

necktie party

[Anonymous Coward]

They should be dancing at the end of a rope.

for those who didn't read the article...

[PissedOffGuy]

it's talking about how the gravity wells of planets make for low-energy paths from place to place, like how we choose to launch a mars probe when earth and mars are at certain positions relative to each other, maybe using the moon along the way. a well-known concept but the article has lots of flashy language.

Re:for those who didn't read the article...

[charboy1]

". . . the article has lots of flashy language."

I don't think I'd use the word 'flashy'. More like 'wordy' with a lot of complicated analogies. But the article is interesting despite the writing.

What's that?

[Anonymous Coward]

*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_
g_______________________________________________g_
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o_
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a_
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t_
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s_
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e_
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x_
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*_
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g_
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o_
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a_
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t_
s______/_/\|___C_____)SLASHBOTS_(___>___/__\____s_
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e_
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x_
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*_
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g_
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o_
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a_
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t_
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s_
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e_
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x_
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_e_x_*_


Goatse in your EYE!

Brought to you by the Deepside Nigs

KILL WHITEY!


Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrsh itheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogeta rroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstall edtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomo lamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeepthebl ackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilte rthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Ga rbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshit headinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarr oundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalled tokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomola menessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblac kmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltert hatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garb agetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithe adinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarrou ndthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledto keeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolame nessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackm andown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltertha tcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbag etogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithead installedtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarround thehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtoke eptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamene ssfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackman down!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatc mdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!

We have one person to thank for this...

[commodoresloat]

Al Gore.

This is true man love

[Anonymous Coward]

Does your vehicle cost more than your home? If you reside in southeast Missouri, it's quite possible. In fact, it's expected.

Men and women of all races here are in love, infatuated, and all-around smitten with their cars and trucks. We pamper them with washes and waxes, obsess over their stereos, lose sleep over their chrome wheels, and fret over horsepower. It's like a hot steamy romance, with everything but the lovemaking itself. (Unless you view tailpipes as an erogenous zone, in which case you need to seek counseling. And the burn unit at your local hospital. Immediately.)

In my line of work, I meet all kinds of people. I see their homes and their cars. And many times, the car is worth quite a bit more than their house. Or apartment, condo, Section 8 unit, or hovel. It's inexplicable, but common. People in general see no moral dilemma in paying twice as much for their car as they do for their living quarters.

This phenomenon is most common with pickup trucks and sport utility vehicles. People do some really weird stuff to their "rigs". Including:

1. Wacky two-tone paint jobs.
2. Hideously expensive chrome wheels.
3. Equally hideously expensive and large tires.
4. Lift kits.
5. Four wheel drive, even if you never go "out in the sticks". You never know when you might need to climb a mountain in the middle of Cape Girardeau.
6. Lowering kits.
7. Roll bars.
8. Running boards.
9. Ground effects.
10. Chrome bed rails.
11. Bed liners.
12. Dual rear wheels (the ultimate in Southern style, the Jeff Foxworthy equivalent of the Holy Grail. Only for the hardcore).
13. Fog lamps.
14. Gun racks.
15. Longhorns attached to the grille (primarily a phenomenon in Texas and Oklahoma, but spreading.)
16. Decals of Ford or Chevy emblems.
17. Decals of erstwhile cartoon character Calvin gleefully urinating on Ford or Chevy emblems. (Does the cartoonist make any money off all those?)
18. Decals of the number of your favorite NASCAR driver.
19. Decals of Calvin urinating on the number of your least favorite NASCAR driver (usually Jeff Gordon but there are a few deviations.)
20. Extended cabs.
21. Four doors.
22. Gas-guzzling monster turbo diesel engines.
23. Bug shields.
24. Dual exhaust pipes.
25. Flare-sided bed panels.
26. Window shades.
27. Towing packages.
28. Confederate battle flag bumper stickers/license plate frames/decals (i.e., anything with a rebel flag on it will suffice).
29. For the really shameless, the original sticker from the dealer that stays on your passenger window for at least a year so everyone can tell how much you paid for it.
30. A stereo system that may well cost more than the truck and the house combined.
31. Typically, no liability insurance despite all of the above options.

It used to be fashionable to soup up a big conversion van, sticking TV's, VCR's, captain's chairs, beds, stoves and wet bars in the back. This still happens, but conversion vans are now primarily used only by aged hippies and serial killers.

Truck customization, not too long ago, was a realm reserved only for the dedicated, card-carrying redneck. Not anymore. With the economy booming and SUV's all the rage, wanton and reckless customization of trucks is commonplace. Everyone's in competition to have the "baddest-ass" truck, and this stuff adds up fast.

In no time flat, you have a $35,000 vehicle sitting in the driveway of your $30,000 home. In fact, the paint on the house may be peeling, the roof rotting, the yard overgrown with weeds and littered with discarded appliances and trash. But that truck will be pristine. You can bet on it.

Your vehicle is typically your second largest investment, next to your house, so it is a big deal. Folks are therefore quite conscientious about their ride. The general public may never see your house unless you specifically invite them over. But anytime you go to church, a bar, the store, a ballgame... they do see your car. And that's probably why folks put so much time and effort into them.

But the average Joe Six-Pack doesn't do nearly the things to a car that they will do to a truck. Trucks and SUV's get such exotic treatment, even JonBenet's parents would think it obsessive and slightly creepy. Sometimes I wonder if there should be a law against "Cruelty to Vehicles".

I do not condemn materialism; Americans like their toys. I believe that if you can afford to pay upwards of $30,000 for a vehicle, you should be allowed to do so. That's part of what makes this country so great.

I also do not believe that the size of a man's truck is inversely proportional to the size of his schlong. (I do believe this myth is true about stereos and belt buckles, though.)

Nor do I bemoan the damage that these SUV's and large trucks supposedly do to the environment due to their gas consumption. Surely if you can afford the truck, you can afford the gas. Pissing off the environmentalist crowd is kind of fun, anyway. They're cute when they're angry.

However, I must question the common sense of putting so much love and money into a vehicle while neglecting everything else. It's a tough sell when your wife wants to put braces on your kids, or buy a new washing machine, and you can't because your truck payment is too high.

The old lady won't buy that argument, and soon you'll be living out of that truck. And that's the way it probably should be, if it indeed costs more than your house. It will become your house.

Re:This is true man love

[Anonymous Coward]

22. Gas-guzzling monster turbo diesel engines.

Diesels don't use gasoline.

Other than that (and being off-topic) it's pretty funny. Deserves at least a "2".

Re:This is true man love

[Anonymous Coward]

Gas-guzzling is used in an expressive form. Gas has become a defacto word for fuel that is put into an automotive machine but yes you are right that gasoline is a product distinct from diesel.

Re:This is true man love

[Anonymous Coward]

Diesels are also more officient then gasoline engines. Oh, and you can make diesel fuel from used vegetable oil and eliminate 95% of the pollutants if you're that much of a tree-hugger.

Re:This is true man love

[Anonymous Coward]

Not everyone is a limp-wristed computer nerd or suburban soccer mom. Some people actually need to have large vehicles. You can't pull a horse trailer with a Honda.

Re:This is true man love

[Anonymous Coward]

and you can't pull a honda out of the mud with...a honda.

Re:This is true man love

[Anonymous Coward]

Say, do you work at a store selling propane or propane-related products?

And another thing, Diesel engines require much more skill to overhaul. And technically, they have more pollutive exhaust and diesel fuel doesn't require all the processing that 87 octane requires. Diesel fuel doesn't combust at standard atmospheric pressure. Diesel engines are much much higher compression engines, which means they compress the diesel fuel in order to make the diesel fuel unstable and combust. Diesel engines do not user spark plugs, they use Diesel fuel injectors and after the fuel enters the combustion chambers it is compressed and combusted. Why do you think Diesel engines need two HUGE batteries in the engine compartment? Diesel engines have no compression when they are not running. The act of making them start and idle is two batteries are needed to "turn" the engine, all the while compression/pressure builds up, the fuel combusts, the engine idles. And another thing, do you know how a Diesel engine is shut-off? A diesel engine can't be shutoff because spark isn't keeping it running; remember, no spark plugs. To shut-off a diesel engine, you must either stop the fuel from entering the combustion chambers/ie cut-off the fuel, or restrict the air-flow which allows the combustion to happen in the first place. Also, diesel engines are verry sensitive in its process of running. A diesel engines must be precisely primed, or they will not run. The 87 octane gasoline engines, that all you tree-huggers are using, is the vile of the earth. Diesel engine exaust stays low to the ground, all the while your 87 octance combustion engines throw the exaust into the atmosphere and cause the global warming predicament.

The post was brought to you by a boring man selling propane and propane-related propane products.

Oh they had better not....

[Anonymous Coward]

someone had better tell them to wait 5 damn minutes, because if I don't find out what the friggin question is, im gonna go insane, or, well, as insane as someone who was just blinked out of existence can be...

Bend space

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, the shortest distance is a straight line. But if you can bend space so that the straight line between two points is shorter, it won't take as long to get there!

Space-folding technology is still a work in progress, though.

Robert E. Lee?

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot Henry Ford; you should add him to your list because he was a NAZI FUCK like YOU.

George W Bush is a disgrace to the term "American."

Re:Robert E. Lee?

[benna]

I would thank you not to use the name George W. Bush and AMERICAN in the same sentance. Its emabassing. Anyone but the shrub, 2004!

Re:Robert E. Lee?

[Anonymous Coward]

fuck off

Re:Robert E. Lee?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, it's very "emabassing."

Yeah baby, yeah

[Anonymous Coward]

*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_
g_______________________________________________g_
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o_
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a_
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t_
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s_
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e_
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x_
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*_
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g_
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o_
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a_
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t_
s______/_/\|___C_____)SLASHBOTS_(___>___/__\____s_
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e_
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x_
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*_
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g_
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o_
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a_
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t_
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s_
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e_
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x_
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_e_x_*_


Goatse in your EYE!

Brought to you by the Deepside Nigs

KILL WHITEY!


Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrsh itheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogeta rroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstall edtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomo lamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeepthebl ackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilte rthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Ga rbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshit headinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarr oundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalled tokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomola menessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblac kmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltert hatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garb agetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithe adinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarrou ndthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledto keeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolame nessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackm andown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltertha tcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbag etogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithead installedtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarround thehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtoke eptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamene ssfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackman down!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatc mdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!

*BSD is dying

[Anonymous Coward]

It is official; Netcraft now confirms: *BSD is dying

One more crippling bombshell hit the already beleaguered *BSD community when IDC confirmed that *BSD market share has dropped yet again, now down to less than a fraction of 1 percent of all servers. Coming on the heels of a recent Netcraft survey which plainly states that *BSD has lost more market share, this news serves to reinforce what we've known all along. *BSD is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.

You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict *BSD's future. The hand writing is on the wall: *BSD faces a bleak future. In fact there won't be any future at all for *BSD because *BSD is dying. Things are looking very bad for *BSD. As many of us are already aware, *BSD continues to lose market share. Red ink flows like a river of blood.

FreeBSD is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time FreeBSD developers Jordan Hubbard and Mike Smith only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: FreeBSD is dying.

Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.

OpenBSD leader Theo states that there are 7000 users of OpenBSD. How many users of NetBSD are there? Let's see. The number of OpenBSD versus NetBSD posts on Usenet is roughly in ratio of 5 to 1. Therefore there are about 7000/5 = 1400 NetBSD users. BSD/OS posts on Usenet are about half of the volume of NetBSD posts. Therefore there are about 700 users of BSD/OS. A recent article put FreeBSD at about 80 percent of the *BSD market. Therefore there are (7000+1400+700)*4 = 36400 FreeBSD users. This is consistent with the number of FreeBSD Usenet posts.

Due to the troubles of Walnut Creek, abysmal sales and so on, FreeBSD went out of business and was taken over by BSDI who sell another troubled OS. Now BSDI is also dead, its corpse turned over to yet another charnel house.

All major surveys show that *BSD has steadily declined in market share. *BSD is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If *BSD is to survive at all it will be among OS dilettante dabblers. *BSD continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, *BSD is dead.

Fact: *BSD is dying

Uh oh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Please! For the love of {insert man-made deity of choice} I hope you don't mean the current president with #4.

Re:Uh oh...

[fussman]

You don't know how to troll correctly! It should have been:

For the love of $man-made_deity_of_choice I hope you didn't mean the bastard in the with house as #4.

Oh the taxes

[krray]

When do the tolls go into place? Would we have to STOP even though the system will probably automated? We do have to be human sometime and make it counter-productive...

He's got more ass than a beach has sand!

[Anonymous Coward]

*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_
g_______________________________________________g_
o_/_____\_____________\____________/____\_______o_
a|_______|_____________\__________|______|______a_
t|_______`._____________|_________|_______:_____t_
s`________|_____________|________\|_______|_____s_
e_\_______|_/_______/__\\\___--___\\_______:____e_
x__\______\/____--~~__________~--__|_\_____|____x_
*___\______\_-~____________________~-_\____|____*_
g____\______\_________.--------.______\|___|____g_
o______\_____\______//_________(_(__>__\___|____o_
a_______\___.__C____)_________(_(____>__|__/____a_
t_______/\_|___C_____)/______\_(_____>__|_/_____t_
s______/_/\|___C_____)SLASHBOTS_(___>___/__\____s_
e_____|___(____C_____)\______/__//__/_/_____\___e_
x_____|____\__|_____\\_________//_(__/_______|__x_
*____|_\____\____)___`----___--'_____________|__*_
g____|__\______________\_______/____________/_|_g_
o___|______________/____|_____|__\____________|_o_
a___|_____________|____/_______\__\___________|_a_
t___|__________/_/____|_________|__\___________|t_
s___|_________/_/______\__/\___/____|__________|s_
e__|_________/_/________|____|_______|_________|e_
x__|__________|_________|____|_______|_________|x_
*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_s_e_x_*_g_o_a_t_e_x_*_


Goatse in your EYE!

Brought to you by the Deepside Nigs

KILL WHITEY!


Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrsh itheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogeta rroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstall edtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomo lamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeepthebl ackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilte rthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Ga rbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshit headinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarr oundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalled tokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomola menessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblac kmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltert hatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garb agetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithe adinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarrou ndthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledto keeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolame nessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackm andown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfiltertha tcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbag etogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshithead installedtokeeptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarround thehomolamenessfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtoke eptheblackmandown!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamene ssfilterthatcmdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackman down!Garbagetogetarroundthehomolamenessfilterthatc mdrshitheadinstalledtokeeptheblackmandown!

MacDonalds

[Timesprout]

In other news the board of McDonalds collectively wet themselves with excitement at the though of the enormous expansion in drive thru's

Where's my towel?!?!?

[Anonymous Coward]

How am I to hitchhike off this god-forsaken planet without my towel?!?!

First Slashdot.jp ps0t honkeys

[Anonymous Coward]

and i had a full ten minutes to get it too...

look at it

Laff Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know Rock Hudson was born in New York? But he was reared in L.A.

Did you hear about the movie they're making with Sylvester Stallone and Rock Hudson? It's called Rambutt.

Rock Hudson can't get car insurance. He's been creamed in the rear too many times.

Did you hear Jim Nabors was found dead? He was found face up on the Hudson.

Did you hear they found out Rock Hudson doesn't have AIDS; he has food poisoning? He got hold of a bad piece of meat.

You know. Rock Hudson doesn't have a lot of friends, but he's got Nabors up the butt.

Re:Laff Time

[Anonymous Coward]

Rock Hudson can't get car insurance. He's been creamed in the rear too many times.

What a shame! It's not poor Rock's fault if he's been banged in the rear too many times!

Dur...

[Anonymous Coward]

BSD is DEAD! Linux is for FAGZ0RZ! Windows is teh 0wn3Z!!!!!!1

Kathleen Fent has bigger balls than all of us!
Coyboi Kneel is my BITCH!
Rob Nambla keeps school-boys in his basement!

Re:Dur...

[Anonymous Coward]

And just what in the bloody fuck is a "fagz0rz" supposed to be?

instead of saying 'let them eat cake'...

[Anonymous Coward]

marie antoinette should have said, 'let them eat fast food!'

<applause>

The structures aren't fixed

[Macrobat]

The structures aren't fixed. The basic idea is, though, that the most fuel-efficient way to get to another planet/moon is not just to wait until it's reached it's closest point and blast off, but to calculate when and where the gravity wormholes offer the most aid/least resistance. They are akin to the Lagrange points between the earth and the moon, where the pulls from the two sources create an area where the least resistance still keeps an object in place, sort of like a patch of dirt on an icy surface. (That's an analogy for what happens, not how it happens.)

The thing about the wormholes is, though, that they're governed by non-linear dynamics, and are therefore extremely convoluted and difficult to calculate. But that doesn't imply that they're static, just that they're usually not the shortest distance between points A and B.

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[adamruck]

so what form do the structures actually take? Are we talking about something that can flex, or something rigid?

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

they arent actual structures, its just virtual paths created by gravity, calculate that path and launch your rocket through it and youll get to the destination the easiest. Its not an ACTUAL path, like man made.

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[kfg]

Just as if one wants to travel from England to NYC entirely by sail it is faster to sail south to the Canary Islands off the coast of Africa, across the Atlantic to the Caribbean, then up the east coast of North America, because that way you are traveling with the currents and prevailing winds the whole way, rather than against them.

These are even often refered to as "Highways on the Sea," and calling these "Interplanetary Superhighways" is no doubt derived from this.

Of course there is no actual structure.

The only real difference is that in space the "continents" are in continuous and *rapid* movement as well, and thus the "currents" and "winds" are in a constant state of flux.

Other than *that* Mrs. Lincoln. . .

KFG

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[LMCBoy]

It's not a material structure at all, and the parent poster shouldn't have called it a "wormhole", either. It's simply the least-energy trajectory from A to B through the Solar system, given the gravitational effects of the planets. The paths are always changing (quite chaotically), simply because the planets are in moion.

NASA's been taking advantage of such "gravity assist" trajectories for a while. How do you get to Jupiter? Slingshot around Venus, flyby Earth twice, then you're on your way. It seems roundabout, but sometimes, paths like that are the easiest way.

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[quintessent]

Good description.

Unfortunately, when they introduced words like "superhighway" and "wormhole", it just added hype, while making the subject only more confusing.

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

No, these are very different from normal gravity assist manuvers that have been used in many interplanetary missions. Those are still spliced together from ellipse like pieces, whereas these "superhighway" paths are simply not. Of course, 3rd body effects must usually be numerically calculated and accounted for in any real mission, but in this case they are part of the trajectory design to begin with.

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[Anonymous Coward]

We are talking about something that can read.
Go read the fucking article and you'll know!!!

Re:The structures aren't fixed

[kalidasa]

Aren't these just Hohmann orbits? Didn't any of you folks read "Interplanetary Flight" when you young?

Hiiiii hoooooo

[Anonymous Coward]

ZING!

Interesting prospects for NEAR

[davburns]

Now you'd have to watch for asteroids passing near any of the L1 / L2 (maybe L3, too? The article doesn't mention it, though, and it would be hard to observe) points of Earth-Sun, in addition to just watching what comes near the Earth/moon system itself.

Re:Interesting prospects for NEAR

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes the L3 cache is good for speeding up performance but it is only a stop gap for a faster bus.... oh sorry wrong L3

Any distributed computing people listening?

[asparagus]

Here is a project I would love to support.

Massive amounts of numbers to be crunched, tons of routes to be discovered, and all by lowly computers with nothing better to do.

Proving that some ungodly number of ProcHours can figure out a RC-72 bit key is meaningless to me.

This is the sort of science humanity is interested in. Onward to Mars!

-Brett

Re:Any distributed computing people listening?

[La Temperanza]

Have you taken a look at DistribFold? I mean, these things and SETI@home are cool, but folding proteins actually helps people now.

Re:Any distributed computing people listening?

[isorox]

but folding proteins actually helps people now.

But I have enough problems folding sheets!

Re:Any distributed computing people listening?

[WillWare]

Stupid question: Is DistribFold the same group as Folding@Home? I have been running the FAH client for a while now, on and off. I'd switch, if I had reason to think that DistribFold will accomplish more good humanitarian stuff.

Re:Any distributed computing people listening?

[grytpype]

Looking at the DistribFold home page, I would say it's not the same project. Folding@Home is run out of Stanford and has a Linux client, both not true of DistribFold.

Re:Any distributed computing people listening?

[Anonymous Coward]

Uh...

HP PA-RISC Linux 2.x Text Client - PA-RISC Linux

etc, etc...

Poincare Conjecture

[Professor_Quail]

I read the article and understood most of what they were talking about...but I knew I had heard something related to this before.

The Poincare Conjecture

IIRC, solving this problem should make some major advances in this 'tube-theory'. Can anyone explain how though?

---

Re:Poincare Conjecture

[Anonymous Coward]

IIRC, the Poincare conjecture has to do with being able to map the number of 3-dimensional simply connected (no holes ala the donut), compact (think finite expanse, although that isn't correct; the definition of compact is a bit more technical), boundaryless (maybe) manifolds (surfaces) to the 3 sphere.

The article has nothing to do with this. The article is simply discussing searching for trajectories whihc minimize the energy to get from A to B. The tube/wormhole terminology seems awful, if not incorrect (wormholes are very different beasts).

That is not the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

This is the true debate

now talk!

Re:That is not the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

shouldn't his image include mohamad(sp?) and possibly G W Bushy boy

Re:That is not the issue

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe but in that case it should also contain the Jews (as they haven't had their religious comming yet they can be represented with their symbol)

Wait a minute... how long?

[RumGunner]

Like most Amerikans, I want it all, and I want it NOW.

Plus, those gravitational speed ups are slowing down the planet! Eventually, we'll suck up so much momentum to cause the earth to stop revolving around the sun, and we'll burn up!

Act now to fight the destruction of our gravitational resources!

Re:Wait a minute... how long?

[Anonymous Coward]

so is his name chui or chiu?

and where can i find alex crunchy?

Re:Wait a minute... how long?

[TheRealBlueEAGLE]

This might seem like a joke, but in the very end it is a point. It's like the atmosphere or the oceans. Since there's a lot of it it doesn't matter if we dumt this and that into it.

Hopefully we'll find other ways to explore the space before we slow down so much that we crash into the sun. :)

Gravity drive

[gmuslera]

Is like driving a ballon, wasting a very little energy to go to up or down the next "wind" that goes in the rigth direction. With gravity forces, inertia, and a bit of calculus to find where is the best moment to start the ride, you can go very far without wasting combustible or whatever you use to move, just letting gravity to do their job.

Bus, as far I understand, that "highway" must be very dinamic, is like saying that in a year, 6 months and 3 days there should be a "road" to Pluton, but if you try this every other moment it will be very costly or the trip will last 4 months more.

And, well, this "highway" is beloved as well for good hard sci fi writers, taking advantage of gravity to do "impossible" tricks is very used, and is funny to see everyone surprised in the story of that kind of tricks

america - the new world butcher..

[Anonymous Coward]

So how many civilians are going to die when the self appointed internaltional police force called the USA attacks Iraq?

I figure about 50 000 will die.

Say no to Bush. Stop the war.

Re:america - the new world butcher..

[Anonymous Coward]

You can stop the war on your own, thanks. I'll be in my apartment watching Simpsons.

for those who didn't understand the article ...

[Heisenbug]

I am not a rocket scientist, but I think this article uses flashy language because it's talking about something way more complicated than using the moon along the way. They mention, for example, that the Earth to Mars path is much harder to figure out than Jupiter to Saturn (and I got the impression that it would take thousands of years).

This isn't just a way to get from planet to planet using less fuel -- it's a way to get around using no more than a shove in the right direction, starting from between the Earth and Moon and ending up anywhere you want. That's not your father's rocket science, and it's bloody cool -- flashy language or not.

Re:for those who didn't understand the article ...

[grumpygrodyguy]

Yes, this stuff does get complex.

Re:for those who didn't understand the article ...

[chaotician137]

Thanks Heisenburg! It's good to know some people appreciate our work. It's bloody hard to explain to NASA managers, much less the general public. This article is a sort of first attempt.

Although I guess I am in some sense a "rocket scientist," I think the truly cool aspect of the work is the light that it sheds on the mechanisms of "interplanetary cross-fertilization." This understanding contributes to fields such as astrobiology, for example, where comet impact rates are key for determining the delivery of water to the Earth and impact ejecta exchange rates are important for investigating the transportation of microbes between Mars and Earth.

By the way, the fastest that a piece of impact ejecta has been able to get between Earth and Mars in any simulation is 10,000 years. This would be a piece of debris which, due to nonlinear effects, repeately encountered Mars and Earth with just the right geometry that it made the trip in the fastest time. The average transit time for bits of debries is a few million years.

Re:MacDonalds + your sig

[Anonymous Coward]

seem to contradict each other.. MacDonalds and Individualism can't compute runtime error McDs 00000789jx

AND PICTURES! PRETTY PICTURES!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ahh, the life of a trol. Obnoxios, unrelenting, MADNESS.

Sysadmin in his native habitat

[buck_wild]

http://www.boners.com/grub/788973.html

Lagrange Points

[LuxFX]

This technique uses a concept called a Lagrange Point, where gravity from multiple bodies (usually in a orbiting situation) cancel each other out -- which results in a place where a parked object can sit and stay in place in relation to the orbiting system.

This technique is used to keep the SOHO sun observation satellite at Lagrangian point 1 in the earth/sun system, so that it keeps a constant view of the sun.

The concept behind this is extended in this instance to reveal tunnels which offer the 'path of least resistance.'

In fact, this has been discussed on Slashdot before. Slashdot users have also discussed Lagrangian points in relations to one or both of Earth's sub-moons.

Re:Lagrange Points

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank god, this is the first poster that seems to understand anything, you are my hero

Re:Lagrange Points

[Dyolf Knip]

But these are Lagrange Points for systems with more than 2 bodies. They're extremely dynamic and move along some very convoluted and lengthy paths. If you stick your ship in one at the right time, then you basically get taken for a free ride courtesy of Gravity, Inc. But the "tens of thousands of years" needed for an Earth-Mars trip doesn't strike me as being particularly useful anytime soon. Maybe for moving large asteroids out amongst the gas giants, but in this neighborhood the free ride just isn't worth the wait.

Evidently the research is more immediately useful for the techniques learned in complex multi-body interacting systems problems, which fluid dynamics guys are also fascinated in.

Re:Lagrange Points

[Anonymous Coward]

It causes me to think of the anti-matter propulsion systems being developed,anti-matter floating in a center surrounded by matter, it having a sort of "resting place" there with magnetic and centrifugal forces creating an environment mimicking what is ocurring there naturally

Re:Lagrange Points

[morridx]

This should make ion engines such as these much more useful for space exploration. If all you need is a little push to get you from one manifold to another, ion engines sound perfect for facilitating a nice surf on the Interplanatary Superhighway!

Re:Lagrange Points

[chaotician137]

Good observation. This is exactly what we hope to do for a multi-moon orbiter mission which "jumps" between the planet-sized moons of Jupiter (e.g., the proposed Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter).

Re:Lagrange Points

[Dyolf Knip]

I just had this image of futuristic space sailors knowing the paths and intersections of the Lagrange Points like their nautical counterparts know every stream and depth marker of their respective domains. Similarly, such knowledge would only be useful until the advent of cheap high-energy propulsion, which makes all of it fairly moot.

Re:Lagrange Points

[chaotician137]

Yes, I do hope cheap advanced propulsion concepts get used sometime in our lifetime. Then we can start "Buck Rogering" around the solar system rather than worrying about every drop of fuel. That's when the real fun'll begin.

Who gets the credit for this one?

[Maul]

Did Al Gore invent it!?

You are so full of crap

[p3d0]

The article says a whole lot more than that, my dear whore. It has a lot of cool ideas if you would take the time to skim it.

They have discovered a new type of route throughout the solar system, besides the conic sections typically used today, requiring orders of magnitude less energy. They can also predict up to 100 orbits into the future, with multiple ports of call on the itinerary, which is much more sophisticated than the simple slingshot method you're alluding to.

They are using chaos theory and orbital instability to their advantage. That is something most certainly not done in traditional conic orbital maneuvers, which are of such a short duration and simple nature that chaos and instability don't enter into it.

hi I am webriot3@hotmail.com

[Anonymous Coward]

I have a problem where I get extreme sexual urges and I can't control them so I abuse my little brother if you can help me please email me at

webriot3@hotmail.com

Re:hi I am webriot3@hotmail.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Are you interested in sharing him? If so - I have a nine year old girl I could swap for a night. Get in touch, she's really hungry for a new cock.

Call 0800-kiddies for contact details

Three words: read the article.

[p3d0]

(Hint: the article never makes any reference to any kind of "fixed structure".)

UNIX Lesson #1

[Anonymous Coward]

In the mid-1960s, AT&T Bell Laboratories (among others) was participating in an effort to develop a new operating system called Multics. Multics was intended to supply large-scale computing services as a utility, much like electrical power. Many people who worked on the Bell Labs contributions to Multics later worked
on UNIX.
In 1969, Bell Labs pulled out of the Multics effort, and the members of the Computing Science Research
center were left with no computing environment. Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, and others developed and
simulated an initial design for a file system that later evolved into the UNIX file system. An early version of
the system was developed to take advantage of a PDP-7 computer that was available to the group.
An early project that helped lead to the success of UNIX was its deployment to do text processing for the
patent department at AT&T. This project moved UNIX to the PDP-11 and resulted in a system known for its
small size. Shortly afterward, the now famous C programming language was developed on and for UNIX, and
the UNIX operating system itself was rewritten into C. This then radical implementation decision is one of the
factors that enabled UNIX to become the open system it is today.
AT&T was not allowed to market computer systems, so it had no way to sell this creative work from Bell
Labs. Nonetheless, the popularity of UNIX grew through internal use at AT&T and licensing to universities
for educational use. By 1977 commercial licenses for UNIX were being granted, and the first UNIX vendor,
Interactive Systems Corporation, began selling UNIX systems for office automation.
Later versions developed at AT&T (or its successor, Unix System Laboratories, now owned by Novell)
included System III and several releases of System V. The two most recent releases of System V, Release 3
http://docs.rinet.ru/UNIXy/unx01.htm (4 of 9) [4/27/1999 10:45:56 AM]
(SVR3.2) and Release 4 (SVR4; the most recent version of SVR4 is SVR4.2) remain popular for computers
ranging from PCs to mainframes.
All versions of UNIX based on the AT&T work require a license from the current owner, UNIX System
Laboratories.
Berkeley Software Distributions
In 1978 the research group turned over distribution of UNIX to the UNIX Support Group (USG), which had
distributed an internal version called the Programmer's Workbench. In 1982 USG introduced System III,
which incorporated ideas from several different internal versions of and modifications to UNIX, developed by
various groups. In 1983 USG released the original UNIX System V, and thanks to the divestiture of AT&T,
was able to market it aggressively. A series of follow-on releases continued to introduce new features from
other versions of UNIX, including the internal versions from the research group and the Berkeley Software
Distribution.
While AT&T (through the research group and USG) developed UNIX, the universities that had acquired
educational licenses were far from inactive. Most notably, the Computer Science Research Group at the
University of California at Berkeley (UCB) developed a series of releases known as the Berkeley Software
Distribution, or BSD. The original PDP-11 modifications were called 1BSD and 2BSD. Support for the
Digital Equipment Corporation VAX computers was introduced in 3BSD. VAX development continued with
4.0BSD, 4.1BSD, 4.2BSD, and 4.3BSD, all of which (especially 4.2 and 4.3) had many features (and much
source code) adopted into commercial products. Various later releases from UCB have attempted to create a
publicly redistributable version of UNIX (prior releases had source code available only to source licensees).
Notably, the "Second Networking Release" (Net2) was intended to make available all the parts of the Berkeley
Software Distribution that were not subject to license restrictions. UNIX System Laboratories (USL) brought a
lawsuit against the University and a company called Berkeley Software Design, Incorporated (BSDI). USL
claimed license infringements by the BSD releases and BSDI's BSD/386 product, which was based in part on
the BSD code. Recently the lawsuit was settled; the result is that BSDI is shipping BSD/386, and a new
4.4-Lite release of BSD, which requires no license from USL, will be available from UCB.
UNIX and Standards
Because of the multiple versions of UNIX and frequent cross-pollination between variants, many features
have diverged in the different versions of UNIX. With the increasing popularity of UNIX in the commercial
and government sector came the desire to standardize the features of UNIX so that a user or developer using
UNIX could depend on those features.
The Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers created a series of standards committees to create
standards for "An Industry-Recognized Operating Systems Interface Standard based on the UNIX Operating
System." The results of two of the committees are important for the general user and developer. The POSIX.1
committee standardizes the C library interface used to write programs for UNIX. (See Chapter 17, "C
Language.") The POSIX.2 committee standardizes the commands that are available for the general user. (See
especially Chapter 4, "Listing Files," Chapter 5, "Popular Tools," Chapter 6, "Popular File Tools," Chapter 7, "
Editing Text Files," Chapter 10, "What Is a Shell?" Chapter 11, "Bourne Shell," Chapter 12, "Korn Shell,"
Chapter 13, "C Shell," Chapter 14, "Which Shell Is Right for You? Shell Comparison," and Chapter 15, "Awk,
Awk.")
In Europe, the X/Open Consortium brings together various UNIX-related standards, including the current
attempt at a Common Open System Environment (COSE) specification. X/Open publishes a series of
specifications called the X/Open Portability Guide, currently at Version 4. XPG4 is a popular specification in
Europe, and many companies in the United States supply versions of UNIX that meet XPG.
The United States government has specified a series of standards based on XPG and POSIX. Currently FIPS
151-2 specifies the open systems requirements for federal purchases.
UNIX for Mainframes and Workstations
Many mainframe and workstation vendors make a version of UNIX for their machines. The best way to get
information on these is directly from the manufacturer.
UNIX for Intel Platforms
Thanks to the great popularity of personal computers, there are a great number of UNIX versions available for
Intel platforms. Choosing from the versions and trying to find software for the version you have can be a
tricky business because the UNIX industry has not settled on a complete binary standard for the Intel platform.
There are two basic categories of UNIX systems on Intel hardware, the SVR4-based systems and the older,
more established SVR3.2 systems.
SVR4 vendors include NCR, IBM, Sequent, SunSoft (which sells Solaris for Intel), and Novell (which sells
UnixWare). The Santa Cruz Operation (SCO) is the main vendor in the SVR3.2 camp. Vendors in the first
camp are working toward cleaning up the standards to gain full "shrink-wrap portability" between their
versions of UNIX. The goal is that this will make UNIX-on-Intel applications available, shrink-wrapped for
any version of UNIX, just as you can now buy applications for MS-DOS or Microsoft Windows. SCO UNIX
currently has a much larger base of available applications and is working to achieve binary compatibility with
UnixWare.
Source Versions of "UNIX"
Several versions of UNIX and UNIX-like systems have been made that are free or extremely cheap and
include source code. These versions have become particularly attractive to the modern-day hobbyist, who can
now run a UNIX system at home for little investment and with great opportunity to experiment with the
operating system or make changes to suit his or her needs.
An early UNIX-like system was MINIX, by Andrew Tanenbaum. His books Operating Systems: Design and
Implementations describes MINIX and includes a source listing of the original version of MINIX. The latest
version of MINIX is available from the publisher. MINIX is available in binary form for several machines
(PC, Amiga, Atari, Macintosh, and SPARCStation).
In addition to the BSD386 product from BSDI, there is a free version of UNIX also based on the BSD
releases, and called, confusingly, 386BSD. This is an effort by Bill and Lynne Jolitz to create a system for
operating system research and experimentation. The source is freely available, and 386BSD has been
described in a series of articles in Dr. Dobbs' Journal.
Another popular source version of UNIX is Linux. Linux was designed from the ground up by Linus Torvalds
to be a free replacement for UNIX, and it aims for POSIX compliance. There are current efforts to make
Linux reliably run both SVR3.2 and SVR4 binaries. There is also a project called WINE to create Microsoft
Windows emulation capability for Linux.
Making Changes to UNIX
Many people considering making the transition to UNIX have a significant base of PC-based MS-DOS and
Microsoft Windows applications. There have been a number of efforts to create programs or packages on
UNIX that would ease the migration by allowing users to run their existing DOS and Windows applications on
the same machine on which they run UNIX. Products in this arena include SoftPC and SoftWindows from
Insignia, WABI from SunSoft, and WINE for Linux and 386BSD.
Introduction to the UNIX Philosophy
As described in the section "The History of UNIX," UNIX has its roots in a system that was intended to be
small and supply orthogonal common pieces. Although most UNIX systems have grown to be fairly large and
monolithic applications are not uncommon, the original philosophy still lives in the core commands available
on all UNIX systems. There are several common key items throughout UNIX:
Simple, orthogonal commands l
Commands connected through pipes l
A (mostly) common option interface style l
No file types l
For detailed information on commands and connecting them together, see the chapters on shells (Chapters
10--14) and common commands (Chapters 5--9 and Chapter 15).
Simple, Orthogonal Commands
The original UNIX systems were very small, and the designers tried to take every advantage of those small
machines by writing small commands. Each command attempted to do one thing well. The tools could then be
combined (either with a shell script or a C program) to do more complicated tasks. One command, called wc,
was written solely to count the lines, words, and characters in a file. To count all the words in all the files, you
would type wc * and get output like that in Listing 1.1.
Listing 1.1. Using a simple command.
$ wc *
351 2514 17021 minix-faq
1011 5982 42139 minix-info
1362 8496 59160 total
$
Commands Connected Through Pipes
To turn the simple, orthogonal commands into a powerful toolset, UNIX enables the user to use the output of
one command as the input to another. This connection is called a pipe, and a series of commands connected by
pipes is called a pipeline. For example, to count the number of lines that reference MINIX in all the files, one
would type grep MINIX * | wc and get output like that in Listing 1.2.
Listing 1.2. Using a pipeline.
$ grep MINIX * | wc
105 982 6895
$
A (Mostly) Common Option Interface Style
Each command has actions that can be controlled with options, which are specified by a hyphen followed by a
single letter option (for example, -l). Some options take option arguments, which are specified by a hyphen
followed by a single letter, followed by the argument (for example, -h Header). For example, to print on pages
with 16 lines each all the lines in the file minix-info that mention Tanenbaum, you would enter wc minix-info |
pr -l 16 and get output like that in Listing 1.3.
Listing 1.3. Using options in a pipeline.
$ grep Tanenbaum minix-info | pr -l 16
Feb 14 16:02 1994 Page 1
[From Andy Tanenbaum 28 August 1993]
The author of MINIX, Andrew S. Tanenbaum, has written a book describing
Author: Andrew S. Tanenbaum
subjects.ast (list of Andy Tanenbaum's
Andy Tanenbaum since 1987 (on tape)
Version 1.0 is the version in Tanenbaum's book, "Operating Systems: Design
$
The bad news is that some UNIX commands have some quirks in the way they handle options. As more
systems adopt the standards mentioned in the section "The History of UNIX," you will find fewer examples of
commands with quirks.
No File Types
UNIX pays no attention to the contents of a file (except when you try to run a file as a command). It does not
know the difference between a spreadsheet file and a word processor file. The meaning of the characters in a
file is entirely supplied by the command(s) that uses the file. This concept is familiar to most PC users, but
was a significant difference between UNIX and other earlier operating systems. The power of this concept is
that any program can be used to operate on any file. The downside is that only a program that understands the
file format can fully decode the information in the file.

Summary
UNIX has a long history as an open development environment. More recently, it has become the system of
choice for both commercial and some personal uses. UNIX performs the typical operating system tasks, but
also includes a standard set of commands and library interfaces. The building-block approach of UNIX makes
it an ideal system for creating new applications.

Where's LTOOL?

[Jeremy Erwin]

Raise your hand if your first reaction to this article was to try to find a copy of Ltool...

Re:Where's LTOOL?

[GileadGreene]

Interestingly, large portions of LTool are written in Python. Unfortunately, I seriously doubt that JPL will ever actually release LTool to the world.

Some day...

[DoraLives]

Some day, somebody is going to grapple a surprisingly large freely-orbiting body of mostly nickel-iron, with perhaps some very valuable other transition metals in there too.

It'll get nudged this way and land in the back yard of the lucky (corporation, government, fill in the blank) via these EXACT orbital pathways.

When it does, you can tell the grandchildren, "Bah, that's OLD news. We were talking about it on slashdot before your PARENTS were even born."

Re:Some day...

[Anonymous Coward]

And someday shortly afterwards, someone will get greedy and lob one a little too large, and bring an end to civilisation as we know it. :-(

interesting!

[faeryman]

I found this interesting. Imagine a spacecraft going through the solar system over the course of hundreds of years without really having to use fuel.

Want to hear about how I came up with that? My girlfriend's friend + boyfriend came over, and my girlfriend and her friend got high. Then I think her boyfriend got a BJ in my bathroom after. She was like screaming about his enormous penis while we sat on my couch. Wacky. She will so regret that tomorrow.

We played Gamecube and listened to old hip-hop and and a Screw tape I have. And ate some pizza.

Then they went home, and my girlfriend and I fucked. I even got hard and fucked her again after I came. The I ate her out (I love it!), and then she fell asleep after orgasming. Cool!!

So I went and smoked the roaches while taking a hot bubble bath, got a good feeling in my neck, and pigged out on some chips and macaroni salad. The I listened to some Apoptygma Berzerk while reading this article.

And that's when I thought about a spacecraft going through the solar system over the course of hundreds of years without really having to use fuel. But, it's listening to Apoptygma Berzerk - Electricity.

Time to go brush my teeth and go to bed. Bed with my girlfriend, and wake up with my boner pressing into her butt and I can cuddle with her. She's cool! She so doesn't mind when I wake her up like that! She's hot! She's into UNIX and PHP too!

Re:interesting!

[Anonymous Coward]

A girlfriend that's into UNIX? That's how I know you're lying!

I got hit on by a fat slut at a Mexican food restaraunt earlier.

Re:interesting!

[Anonymous Coward]

They got a lot of herpes south of the border.

sadjif

[DrMrLordX]

Don't forget to reconfigure your plasma coils and change the polarity and re-route the plasma conduits and and um

!??!?!

There's the baby alien ship sucking energy from the warp core, so feed it some bad milk before its mother gets angry!

The problem with nerds...

[ehudokai]

... is that for the most part we have too much information in our heads, but no common sense to use it. This article does a wonderful job of illustrating, in a relitively reasonable manner, how we can do a lot of work traveling between planets without expending much energy!

BRAVO!!!

They have managed to move beyond their meager geekness and actually apply concepts that come from Lagrange, chaos theory, etc... and use them to better mankind and also explain previously unexplained phenomena.

I know way too many nerds who cannot do this for the life of them. They have lots of knowledge, but they are useless!!!

A bit of a rant... I know, but it's frustrating to read all the comments by idiots who can't even read the article before they reply...

Re:The problem with nerds...

[JohnFluxx]

I fail to see how being angry at people who deal with maths and physics that currently has no practical application is linked to people who comment without reading the article.

Re:The problem with nerds...

[chaotician137]

Thanks for enjoying the article. I'm the grad student who did much of the work that the paper speaks of; a friend let me know that slashdot was discussing it, which is cool. There seem to be a lot of questions. People have to remember that the level of the article is "Popular Science"-esque, which always involves some glossing over important mathematical concepts.

We have some papers at my website here.

Totally off topic ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's a drunken' rhyme I just wrote. Somehow it turned into a rant against high school teahcers?!

wait up hold up
with your face on stuck
chickens will cluck
when they see this ill canuck
koivu beat cancer
thats exactly the answer
to the deceptive prancer
war is not the answer
you must respond to the rancor
and accept your death
its a possibility
do everything in your power
to delay the hour
when the clock strikes twelve
and your body lay in a well
of soil
ready to broil
under 6 feet of spoil
the world's fucked
you better have tools
or get your ass back in school
pyschology won't help
when you're screaming help
what you gonna say
frued would have done it this way
thats not practical
schools teach you how to be an actor
you gotta adapt to the present dude
forget about all the metaphysical
bullshit
reverends preaching in their pulpit
convinced that what they spit is the ish
allow me to retort
you bastards is now saying shit that I tought
the ill mic master c-rot
coming to emancipate your erroneous thoughts
help all yall reach the top
i aint in this for simply thought
i'm all about actions
reacting to reactions
fluid
like water
ready to adapt to some new shit
your ways to get under my skin is bullshit
i've already thought of your tactic before you've pulled it
thats why high school teachers are foolish
thinking they are superior to their students

Re:Totally off topic ...

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm the one who wrote the rhyme. But reading this discussion, its obvious I'm not the only one who is fucked up right now. Does this happen every Friday night at Slashdot? I think it kind of cool. Fuck nerdom for awhile. At least.

Duplicate article from July 20, 2002

[Arcturax]

Here is a previous discussion of this subject.

Re:Duplicate article from July 20, 2002

[Anonymous Coward]

Get lost!
I've enjoyed the article.

Did you read the whole article?

[big_groo]

Akin to Lagrange points?

A set of five of these balance points, called Lagrange or libration points, exist between every pair of massive bodies--the sun and its planets, the planets and their moons, and so on. -- from the article.

Calculations are much easier than you think

[MickLinux]

Use the Parker-Sochacki solution to the Picard iteration. The orbital positions and therefore the gravity field [and thus the derivatives] become a simple matter of additions and multiplications, and everything comes out as a polynomial function of time.

The original method was published in Neural Computing.

oh dear

[gid13]

you know you've been reading too much slashdot when you think it says "...these things are real. In fact, they are already being SUED"

Hmmm...

[breon.halling]

A Caltech/JPL collaboration explores the 'Interplanetary Superhighway.'" which describes "...the Interplanetary Superhighway..."

Am I the only one who finds this redundant?!?! =P

Calculations are much easier than you think-STNG

[Anonymous Coward]

"Use the Parker-Sochacki solution to the Picard iteration [jmu.edu]. "

Using this, the Next Generation writers could tell how many more times they could use the "Caught in a time loop" plot device.

My Gay Superhighway

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Apple,
I am a homosexual. I bought an Apple computer because of its well earned reputation for being "the" gay computer. Since I have become an Apple owner, I have been exposed to a whole new world of gay friends. It is really a pleasure to meet and compute with other homos such as myself. I plan on using my new Apple computer as a way to entice and recruit young schoolboys into the homosexual lifestyle; it would be so helpful if you could produce more software which would appeal to young boys. Thanks in advance.

with much gayness,

Father Randy "Pudge" O'Day, S.J.

This would require...

[MrMadnutz]

A change of ideals... "this can be shown as the circulatory system of a worm" (loosely quoted). OMG, are we not the supreme being of the galaxy???? Can anybody imagine????

Interplanetary Superhighway

[Photar]

My ass.

The Intergalactic Laxative

[B3ryllium]

by Donovan Leitch of the album Cosmic Wheels, 1973)
I was impressed like everyone when man began to fly
out of earthly regions to planets in the sky
with total media coverage we watched the heroes land
as ceremoniously they disturbed the cosmic sand

I awe with admiration we listened to the talk
such pride felt they, such joy to be upon the moon to walk
my romantic vision shattered when it was explained to me
spacemen wear old diapers in which they shit and pee

chorus:

oh the intergalactic laxative will get you from here to there
relieve you and believe me without a worry or care
if shitting is your problem when you're out there in the stars
the intergalactic laxative will get you from here to mars

they don't partake like you and I of beefy burger mush
their food is specially prepared to dissolve into slush
absorbed my multi-fibres in the super diaper suit
otherwise the slush would trickle down inside the boot

you may well ask now what becomes of liquid they consume
a pipe is led from penis head to a unit in the room
the water is recirculated, filtered for re-use
in case of anti-gravity, pee gets on the loose

wherever man has conquered on the quest for frontiers new
I'm glad he's always had to do the no. one and two
it makes it all so ordinary just like you and me
to know the greatest heroes they had to shit and pee!

Hey!

[Anonymous Coward]

I already have had their parents, insensitive clod!

I'm old like a redwood. And not just any redwood, but a really old one.

Dupes

[pyrrho]

what is the problem with it being a dupe exactly?

I didn't see that article at the time.

The new link was more informative, I think, than the original.

Repetition is a good thing. I think it's interesting the obsession that has grown against duplicate stories... so called. Like all the stories on 9/12 about the Twin Towers thing. We heard already, sheesh! If something is news, you cover developments.

That's the way it goes, an interesting thing, stays interesting. New people are born or listen for the first time to the interesting news.

Re:Dupes

[JohnFluxx]

Who are you replying to? I think you are seeing things and are paranoid. I don't see anyone complaining because it was reposted.

Re:Dupes

[pyrrho]

I consider that possible.

My impression has become that mentions of duplicates are generally intended as criticism.

A knee-jerk criticism. I may be developing a knee-jerk defensive reaction. Maybe the post meant "yeah! covering this again! woohoo!" I admit I do not know.

Re:Dupes

[Arcturax]

Of couse I could have posted it so that people could go back and read the last discussion on it and the points made there. I mean, really, I think the discussions and comments are more important than the articles. Without them, /. would just be another tech news site.

I know some other sites have comments, but /. was one of the first (that I know of anyway) where the comments and discussion were the main focus rather than the story.

Sorry, I stills don't understand:

[dusty123]

When the vessel approaches a planet, e.g. the moon, it speeds up, then it travels with very high speed around it, like a slingshot - but: When it leaves the orbit, it gets slower again until it reaches the original speed.

You write: "least energy" - so, where does this energy come from?

I can think of getting faster from A to B by doing
a flyby near a planet because in between, the vessel accelerates to very high speeds and hence does need less time for the whole distance compared to a trajectory without "a planet in the middle".

Or am I missing something?

Re:Sorry, I stills don't understand:

[WolfWithoutAClause]

When the vessel approaches a planet, e.g. the moon, it speeds up, then it travels with very high speed around it, like a slingshot - but: When it leaves the orbit, it gets slower again until it reaches the original speed.

That's true in a 2 body scenario. But there are more options in a 3 body situation.

You write: "least energy" - so, where does this energy come from?

You arrange for the energy to be dumped/removed from some other body.

For example, if a satellite was reentering the earth-moon system, it can arrange for the moon's gravity to suck away some of the kinetic energy it has by going behind the moon; relative to the earth the satellite would have lost energy- and the moon would have gained energy.

Home On Lagrange

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh give me a locus,
Were the gravatons focus,
And the cold virus
Never evolved

Home, home on Lagrange,
Were space debre always collects
We have all it seems,
Mans greatest dreams,
Solar power and zero G sex.

Dang I was hoping to be able to remember more of it. Oh well, its been like 20 years since I read it. Anyways does anyone know offhand how Euler derived L1, L2, and L3? Did he use the same method that Lagrange used with different constraints? I don't think so, there are other ways to deduce the existence of these three. If this is the case then the articals slamming of Lagrange is unwarrented. Lagranges result is cool, but how he derived it is even cooler.

Re:Home On Lagrange

[Krellan]

Oh, give me a locus where the gravitons focus
Where the three-body problem is solved,
Where the microwaves play down at three degrees K,
And the cold virus never evolved.

(chorus)

We eat algea pie, our vacuum is high,
Our ball bearings are perfectly round.
Our horizon is curved, our warheads are MIRVed,
And a kilogram weighs half a pound.

(chorus)

If we run out of space for our burgeoning race
No more Lebensraum left for the Mensch
When we're ready to start, we can take Mars apart,
If we just find a big enough wrench.

(chorus)

I'm sick of this place, it's just McDonald's in space,
And living up here is a bore.
Tell the shiggies, "Don't cry," they can kiss me goodbye
'Cause I'm moving next week to L4!

(chorus)

CHORUS:
Home, home on LaGrange,
Where the space debris always collects,
We possess, so it seems, two of Man's greatest dreams:
Solar power and zero-gee sex.

--Home on Lagrange (The L5 Song)
© 1978 by William S. Higgins and Barry D. Gehm

http://www.jamesoberg.com/humor.html
(from very bottom of page)

Re:Home On Lagrange

[Anonymous Coward]

Thanks a bunch. I mangeled it pretty bad, but what would you expect at 2AM after ~16 hours of caffine driven coding! I just *knew* someone reading /. would recognize it and post it correctly!

Re:Home On Lagrange

[Anonymous Coward]

BTW, there are stanzas missing. I remember somethinhg like:

Microwaves are sublime, so no one will mind,
If we cook an ocasional goose,

and also somthing else about waffers to big to fit through the hatch.

Damn right

[ishmaelflood]

I want to play.

Great article uber-parent, thanks for posting it.

How can they talk about this stuff and not mention Hamiltonians?

Libration Point

[Anonymous Coward]

I thought so too, but I don't think anyone actually reads the linked articles around here, and probably this one won't get modded up.

Hmm.. who wants to start a project on sourceforge?

[bigattichouse]

All the math makes me brain spin, but it would be seriously cool to have a linux-based "navigator".. give it the current date and your position and find the nearest routes to Jupiter.

You know I wonder if this idea opens the thoughts for an interplantary positioning system (IPS)... in order to know where you get off, you'd have to know where you are.

Interplanetary SuperHighway

[TREETOP]

Where's my flying car. I want a flying CAR! This gives new meaning to the name "Disney World".

Cant we just walk?

[rosewood]

With this stuff talked about in another slashdot article, it seems that I could just use my super-human blood to hold my breath as I walk the distance and never get tired!

They aren't Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither of the four men listed are Americans. Two are "States" and two are "citizens of the United States".

Americans are those people whose land was stolen from them, pushed onto the dryest land established as their reservations, and have lately discovered to make their money using casinos, but now the neighboring governments want to tax them again. I hope they don't get fucked in the ass as they did 100+ years ago by Spain, Brittain, and United States(TM).

What were those peoples again? Ahhh, they were AMERICANS. Why aren't the four men listed, not AMERICANS? Because the four men listed were born inside of institutions that established their property ownership rights under artificial entities. If you realy owned property, you wouldn't have a "GRANT" to own the property. Of'course, corporations like the four men listed, abused this and they often established undefended or meek people as slaves, and force everyone to work through their bank of monetary worthless paper monies.

It's a verry sad history...and we repeat it every day...

Re:They aren't Americans

[Anonymous Coward]

Why did the Indian/Native Americans have any more right to the land that anyone else? I say, if you can take the land, do it. You don't think everyone else around the whole just sprung out of where they lived, do you? And these people never had to fight for land? Europeans were hardly the first, they were simply the most succesful in the end.

Magizine...

[k-0s]

Calm down people, alot of you are getting your feathers ruffled over the science/numbers of this all. You missed that this was in a "magizine" meaning it's magic.

Wake up, 1337

[Anonymous Coward]

Wake up, 1337.

Don't go to the market to buy your camel or rate jerkey on April 1, from Halabim Slim Salim Halabim.

The moth man sayeth...

Get it right.

[dark-nl]

The solution to any Star Trek dilemma is to:

1. Recalibrate a tricorder
2. Remodulate the shield generators.

Cant wait

[Edmund Blackadder]

Cant wait till the Vogons have to explode the earth to make way for the new piece of the interplanetary superhighway.

Original Story Posting

[Anonymous Coward]

http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/releases/2002/release_2002 _147.html

Super highway

[setrops]

The Vogons are comming ! the Vogons are Comming !

Be calm now, don't panic

Trade winds and currents

[Gerry Gleason]

are probably a better analogy to this, but the highway one is familiar to more people. The other way it works is with the idea that the Lagrange points act like interchanges where manifolds to/from different places come close so you can easily exit one and enter another.

WRT sailing routes from England to NYC, it really depends on your boat. Multi-hulls pioneered the southern passage because they are much faster on a reach or broad reach, and not quite as good to windward. Some modern overpowerd monohulls might be faster on the southern route, but it is more of a toss up.

They don't really go into the details of the actual paths because of how hard it is to picture the multi-dimensional spaces that would make it clear. It is remarkable how everything changes with the third body in what seems like a simple system at first glance. I think I get some of the fundamentals intuitively. The "stable" manifold leading to L1 would be a group of orbits that tend to pump the spacecraft into more and more excentric orbits, while the "unstable" manifold leading to L2 does the oposite. On the other hand, the physics is reversible, so there are trajectories taking you toward the unstable L2 state and away from the stable L1.

When they start talking about orbit transfers, you are trying to find where the systems from neighboring planets link together. This involves considering seperate 3-body problems of Sun-Spaceship-Planet for each planet where the manifolds of each system are rotating with the planets, and are only synchronized at certain times. They don't really say why the link ups are harder to find (or longer to wait for) for Earth/Mars than the outer planets. If I had to guess, it is probably related more to the scaling the the orbit distances and the planet masses. The Earth and Mars aren't that massive, but it still might be more related to the closer orbital periods.

To me, it is just fascinating that there can be so much to investigate and study in the pure mathematics of a few simple equations. Most of this was just about the near equilibrium equations for uncontrolled objects. The slingshot trajectories represent another group of solutions that have some special characteristics. Very cool stuff. It really points the way for a lot of robotic missions over the coming centuries. With solar power, the fact that it take a long time to get there doesn't matter as much as the fact that you can keep manuvering for new missions long after the initial mission planning.

Re:Trade winds and currents

[kfg]

Well, if nothing else, spending a few weeks in pleasant weather on a broad reach with first landfall in Puerto Rico (less commercial than St. Thomas which has a pure tourist trade economy) beats the hell out of beating to windward through the icebergs for a first landfall in Newfoundland.

Even if it's a toss up, it's still not a toss up. Monohullers have been doing this for ages for just that reason. (And I don't mean to get into the "hull wars." I kinda like "Sharpie tris" and Bolger square boats myself, so everybody hates me already)

The orbitals are certainly fascinating though. Good thing we have computers now. I'd hate to work that out with slide rule, pen and paper.

KFG

Re:Trade winds and currents

[Gerry Gleason]

Well, I was more thinking about race routes, but you are right on about the other trade offs. And yes, untill the late schooners and clippers, very few ships did well to windward, and it's always hard on the crew and the boat.

By "Bolger sqare boats", you mean scows, right? I'm from the Midwest where they are (or at least were) very popular on the small lakes. They have most of the advantages of multihulls as long as you don't have any waves. I am partial to cats, although tris seem to be in vougue these days. I try to follow what's going on with the "maxi-multis" built for The Race a few years back. I know Playstation II set a new trans-atlantic record, but broke gear and dropped out early in the big one. There's something to be said for not pushing the envelope too much in size (105' x 60' is just huge), nobody had experience with sails of that size, particularly with the higher rig loadings that multihulls produce. If they can make it reliable, it will be unbeatable.

To get a little more on-topic ... It's amazing what Poincare did on the problem before computers. He really started Chaos theory before it had a name, but the complexity was so great it was difficult to go much further until the computer came along.

Mod up parent if you grok General Relativity

[hacksoncode]

Perhaps you always thought that General Relativity was a complicated idea that you never would have a hope of understanding. This post is the most succinct and clear description of (a large portion of) it that I have ever seen.

The above statement is fundamentally the way the universe works. There is gravity (modulo quantum gravity :-) because both of these statements are basically true.

You move towards a mass because it distorts spacetime so that the "straight line" you're travelling in actually goes towards the mass.

Deflect killer astroids, gather comet dust?

[wfolta]

Two thoughts from the interesting article:

1) Why are we sending robots to comets to fetch material when we could just send one to L4? The article mentions that cometary dust and space junk will gather there.

Let debris from all over come to us. Sort of like Men in Black, where they confiscate alien technology at a single port of entry. Deep space exploration from the comfort of your own (planetary) home.

2) The article mentions that a killer asteroid was riding the "rails" and the earth stepped out onto the tracks in front of it and got hit. Which makes me wonder if future asteroids on a collision course -- not necessarily on one of these low-velocity tracks -- could be deflected with smaller forces that previously envisioned? Throw some switches on the tracks, as it were.

Re:Deflect killer astroids, gather comet dust?

[chaotician137]

As one of the scientists mentioned in the article (my website), I think the author of the article, who's a journalist and not a dynamicist, is slightly wrong about material "collecting" at L4.

Material typiclly doesn't come from elsewhere in the solar system and get stuck in some system's L4 points (like the Earth-Moon L4 or L5 points). The material that is there, if any, would have existed in that location since the formation of the system, i.e., anything near the Earth-Moon L4 or L5 points was there when the Moon formed.

Regarding the killer asteroids, you're totally right about deflecting them with small forces. There will be a conference next year, Planetary Defense Conference: Protecting Earth from Asteroids, where people will propose technical plans associated with defending Earth from approaching near Earth objects (comets and asteroids). The threat will be approached from three warning levels: short-term (less than ten years warning); medium-term (ten to 30 years warning); and long-term (more than 30 years warning). The more time we have to deflect it, the smaller the force needs to be.

Long time

[Alari]

However, it takes a very long time to get there.

Welcome to space.

Time to invest in FTL research. ;)

#3

[An Onerous Coward]

Set the ship to self-destruct in fifteen minutes. 90% of the time, whatever problem you have will resolve itself within fourteen minutes and forty-seven seconds.

Centrifugal Force found hiding under bed

[Amroarer]

I was always told by my physics teacher that centrifugal force was imaginary. But then he also told me that when an aeroplane stalls, it's very difficult to restart the engine, so I don't trust him overly much. Help me here, physicists...

So if I'm in one of those big fairground rides; the ones like big centrifuges, where you stand inside a spinning drum:

Centripetal force is the inward axial force that makes an object move in a circular path, right?

The drum is spinning, so I'm undergoing a constant inward acceleration 'cos I'm moving in a circular path. This acceleration is provided by the wall pressing into me. Fine. That's a centripetal force.

But there's an equal and opposite reaction on the wall. Isn't that force, acting on the wall, a cetrifugal force? It's not a centripetal force, because it's not what's constraining the wall to a circular path. The wall section's centripetal force comes from the girders supporting it.

Explanations gratefully received.

Link to interview at genesismission.org

[mattr]

Interview with Martin Lo, author of LTool (Libration Point Mission Design Tool) talks about new cusp of using advanced mathematics in real-world engineering.

This link I gleaned and posted on Slashdot the last time we had an article about this. There are actually several interesting papers about this on the net, look for Lo in xarchiv and elsewhere I think. Downloaded a whole bunch last time.

#4

[kalidasa]

Broadcast a message, in the clear, about having to use the Corbomite device (was used twice).