These aren't all firsts. I saw The Phantom Menace at the AMC Burbank 14 on June 19, 1999 projected digitally. It was a special presentation (I still have the badge with next strap I got for it) and used the Texas Instruments DLP Cinema technology.
Here's an excerpt from the back of the badge: "Welcome to the future of Cinema Texas Instruments is proud to present the first all digital showing of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace(tm). Digital projetion replaces film projection for the first time ever in movie theatres equipped with DLP Cinema(tm) technology."
After the presentation, I got to look at an example of the heart of the projector, and it was about the size of a large CPU with thousands of small mirrored surfaces on it.
The only thing this Titan AE presentation might be the first of is Internet delivery of the source, but the rest of it has been done before.
For some of the best artwork and coolest mecha, check out Patlabor. It's about a police force outfitted with mecha to deal with mecha-based crime.
For humor, you must watch Urusei Yatsura. The TV show is based around the simple premise that an exotic and beautiful space princess mistakes something a teenage guy says as a marriage proposal and ends up following him around 24-7 trying to have sex with him and zapping him whenever he looks at other women. The story is more complex, of course, but that's the basic setup. It is some of the funninest anime, more so than Ranma 1/2.
Me: Helmsman! Why.... don't.... you respond to my orders? I'm... talking.... just like.... the greatest captain of all! I am... Captain Kirk!
Computer: Command not understood. Incoming torpedo.
Me: Damn you, computer! Evasive action!
Computer: Initiating evasive pattern Delta. Incoming torpedo has missed.
Me: Hailing frequencies open! Khan, You managed to kill everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target. You... keep... missing... the target.
This is actually true, the Shuttle cannot deploy its landing gear in the computer. The previous users post shouldn't have been moderated down, he's absolutely correct and it is on-topic.
The astronauts objected to the computer being able to deploy the gear automatically, and this was given to them by the software people as a meaningless victory in their fight against the full automation of the shuttle.
The concern the astronauts claimed was that if a computer glitch caused the gear to deploy while in orbit, the result would be a loss-of-vehicle scenario.
The software is capable of handling every aspect of a shuttle landing except for the landing gear itself.
An interesting side note, if the gear aren't deploying within a half a second or so of the deploy switch being pressed, there are pyrotechnic charges that deploy the gear by force. As far as I know, they haven't been needed yet, but I imagine it'd be quite a sensation...
Actually, the Shuttle airframes are theoretically rated for 100 flights each. Since the shuttle fleet has just passed the 100th mission mark, the fleet is approximately one quarter of the way through their lifespan.
The STS was originally intended to be a 'space truck' each orbiter doing maybe 10+ missions a year. When it became clear that was an absolutely unrealistic number, the story was switched that the Shuttle was in fact a test-bed for the technologies that would make the second-generation shuttle the real space-truck.
The VentureStar, the vehicle the X-33 is a technology demonstrator for, will be built and owned commercially, not by NASA. NASA will purchase cargo-space on the new vehicle, but they will actually be owned by Lockmart (Lockheed-Martin) or whoever else decides to build them.
The MEDS upgrade is a logical next step in maintaining the shuttle until a replacement launcher is available. It will reduce maintenance costs, increase performance, increase safety, and make the shuttle fleet better vehicles overall until it is retired.
The MEDS upgrade includes an Analog/Digital converter which allows the video signals sent to the old CRTs to be displayed on the LCD units. All new computing takes place within the LCD units themselves (for switching between available displays). As far as the old flight computers are concerned, they are still hooked up to the old analog TV tubes that they were designed for.
The Military can already jam or disable GPS at will. Part of the spec for GPS allows for them to disable or limit the civilian aspect of GPS during wartime and specific sorties.
Remember, the NavSat spec allows for a loss of accuracy for civilian GPS units (eg, you can't get better then 30 foot reliable position) but allows for 1 centimeter resolution for military units which know how to defeat the deliberate error. It's probably a timing sequence that milspec units can alter for.
What I've never understood about this is why. If it's to foil enemy cruise missles with civilian GPS units, 30 feet doesn't seem like that much of a difference for a nuke or large conventional explosive.
You can defeat this deliberate error, btw, by using three GPS units arranged equidistant with special software which knows the exact relative positions of the three GPS receivers and compensates accordingly.
I'm quite surprised it took this long. I heard a rumor about 2 years ago that a GPS jamming device was available in Russia with a 30 mile radius.
The NavSat network is a series of satellites w/ atomic clocks located in Geosynchronous orbit (so they hold steady above the equator) at over 20,000 miles distance. The timing pulses they send are low power, necessarilly so for them to last as long on their available power output.
Anyone with knowledge of which frequencies are used and the abillity to transmit their own quasi timing pulses in a manner which would interfere with at least 12 possible sats over the horizon at once could make their own jammer for much less.
It's easy to see that not many people are doing this, or GPS would be effectively knocked out in metro areas.
I like it. Pretty soon, we can have processors sooooo fast, they give us results BEFORE we enter our queries. I like the idea of a CPU exploring all possible logic paths at branches in code and then simply displaying that particular result sequence when the user (or real-time controller) asks for it.
Sorta the TARDIS Express of the computer world. "When you positively, absolutely MUST have your packet there BEFORE you sent it."
Whoops! Guess I should have given you the benefit of the doubt there. Of course, would you have replied if I hadn't been so snide? It's indeed an eternal paradox...
OT, a good enhancement to the slashcode would be a feature which could e-mail someone when there was a response to a message they posted in a comments area. This would allow them to follow conversations without obsessively remembering to come back and do a text find on their name. Like I do....
The title of the book is "The Challenger Launch Decision : Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at Nasa", written by Diane Vaughn. It includes the Rogers report as well as an in-depth analysis of the exact sequence of events. Another reference I used was the tape 'Challenger - Disaster and Investigation', prepared by the Data and Design Analysis Force. It documents the Task forces activities and findings. It provides forensics, technical explanations of the cause of the Challenger accident.
The 2 million lbs of acceleration wasn't the result of an explosion, I never used that word. It was a result of the large burn-off of the LH^2 which imparted force on the top hemisphere of the LH^2 tank and intertank structure, neither of which were designed as load bearing structures and both of whose failure contributed to the aerodynamic breakup of the vehicle.
Of course, since this Slashdot article is more then 5 hours old, I don't anticipate you bothering to acknowledge your error. Heck, I'm probably the last person posting!
Absolutely incorrect. The SRB was directly responsible for the incident. A seal in the bottom of the SRB failed, allowing hot gasses from inside the burning SRB to torch into the External Tank, rupturing the liquid hydrogen tank and igniting the fuel inside. The burning hydrogen accelerated the vehicle suddenly with an extra 2 million lbs of thrust, and the stress tore the ET and the SRBs free from the Challenger. An instant later, the Challenger, which was thrown free of the burning fuel, disintegrated because of aerodynamic stresses.
The problem with this logic is that you assume the space shuttle is safer in this regard then the previous launchers, both US and Soviet.
Every single manned spacecraft ever put into orbit has had a capsule escape system, with the glaring exception of the space shuttle. The Mercury had it, the Saturn V had it, and the Soyuz launchers have them. They are the rockets in the tower that sticks on top of todays manned launchers, and in case of a launch vehicle failure at any stage up to orbit, the escape rocket can be fired, pulling the capsule up and off the launch vehicle and setting it down safely elsewhere.
This even happened once during a Soyuz launch, and the crew was kept safe by having this as an option.
The Space Shuttle is the first manned launch vehicle without an abort option, so don't try suggesting that it is any way safer then the Apollo or Gemini craft which came before it, at least not in regards to a launch abort.
No, I'm very sorry, but you remain incorrect. The ground-escape system is solely for escaping a pre-launch shuttle when something that cannot be safed (for instance, a hydrazine line failure or LOX/LH2 tank failure in the ET). The explosive bolts which hold the shuttle to the ground CANNOT hold the shuttle stack against the thrust of the SRBs.
Once the SRBs light, the shuttle will tear itself off the pad if it must, but it will NOT stay down. An SRB failure is classified, once again, as a loss of vehicle & crew event. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
Solid boosters have no business in manned ground to space operations. The Liquid Fly Back Boosters are what should have been built for the shuttle when the design was frozen, not SRBs. They have already been responsible for seven deaths.
Sorry, but YOU are wrong. First, I said there is no abort/escape from LIFTOFF to about 2.5 minutes into the flight. This remains true, the ground escape system is not after the SRBs have lit off (the shuttle lifts off almost immedietely, and if a problem develops on the pad after SRB ignition, the vehicle and crew are lost). Also, the escape pole is NOT usable during the SRB burn.
Here's an abort scenario which uses the escape pole:
1. Liftoff 2. SRB burnout/seperation 3. Problem detected, too far for RTLS (return to landing site) and not far enough for TAL (transoceanic abort landing) 4. Shuttle adds/subtracts as much delta-v as possible to get close to land for ease of astronaut recovery. 5. Shuttle jettisons External Tank 6. Shuttle energy management program is used by the pilot to set up an energy efficient glide. 7. At around 30,000 feet the jump master prepares the door. 8. Shortly after, the commander activates the autopilot 9. The door is opened, pole extended. 10. Everyone jumps in an orderly manner. 11. Shuttle hits water and destroys itself. Hopefully the crew has landed safely w/ parachutes.
There simply is no abort option between SRB ignition and SRB seperation. They are solid rocket motors, which means that anything that could turn them off would also destroy the orbiter (eg, you would actually need to blow open the seams on the SRB to stop them, which is what the range safety officer does. This would also destroy the orbiter.)
You'll note that the shuttle is not certified by the FAA, 'cuzz it's very dangerous.
Something important to consider is that the Soviet/Russian space program has a much better safety record then the United States.
Three Cosmonauts died during their return from Salyut 1 when an atmospheric recompression valve opened early (they suffocated), and one Cosmonaut died when his capsule failed to deploy parachutes and impacted the ground at 100+ miles per hour.
The United States, on the other hand, has spent far fewer hours total in space and has lost 10 Astronauts (vs. 4 in the Soviet/Russian space program). Three Astronauts in Apollo 1, and seven in the Challenger incident.
Also, for perspective, the air leak currently on Mir (it's going to be the #1 planned priority once the Cosmonauts dock) is leaking less air then any of the Space Shuttles leak during a normal mission. It's true, the Space Shuttle Orbiters are much leakier then Mir.
Also, during the planning for the Shuttle-Mir missions in the mid 90's, Energia-RSA (the Soviet/Russian space industry) had very strong objections to the following:
1. Sending up Russian Cosmonauts on the Space Shuttle, which they consider unsafe because there is no abort option for the entirety of the solid rocket booster burn (From liftoff to 2.5 minutes later, if anything goes wrong, everyone dies. No matter what.) 2. Docking the shuttle w/ Mir because the shuttle is notoriously leaky in orbit (not just air, but also volatile Hydrazine from the RCS) and they were concerned it would damage Mir.
Finally, the total cost MirCorp paid for the three launches to Mir (One Soyuz, two Progress cargo launches) is $18 million. The total cost for a single space shuttle launch is $500 million. A cost/benefit analysis should say something.
The movie will not be filmed. The russian actor was supposed to go up on this flight, and had trained extensively, but the backers of the film never came through on their side of the agreement and failed to pay Energia-RSA. That's why there are only two Cosmonauts launching instead of three. His seat will be holding a payload container filled with extra expendables, and there's talk of extending their mission by 15 days because of the lower requirement of air, food, etc.
Nyet, 4-5 million lbs isn't impossible. Remember, the first stage of the Saturn V put out 7 million lbs thrust.
For cheap heavy lift, check out the Shuttle-C. It's the external tank from a space shuttle with two solid rocket boosters mounted to it, again, just like a space shuttle. But instead of the shuttle itself, you have a cargo pod w/ 2 SSME's. You can boost over 77,000 kilograms to a 28 degree orbit, and even though the cargo pod never comes back, the launch still costs less then a single space shuttle launch (shuttle costs $500 million to launch, while Shuttle-C could cost maybe $200 million (all while putting 3-4 times the cargo into space!)
It seems clear to me that the easiest way to version software is to use the year followed by month/day. Eg, Windows 2000.4.20 or 2000.0420 would be a revision of Windows 2000 released on April 20th. If major software releases used this simple, straight forwards scheme, everyone would know exactly what versions they were talking about, and would know instantly when it was released.
As hoaky as it sounds, I do my best coding to James Horner's score for Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan. Specifically, the Battle for the Mutara Nebula is so freakin' sweeping and fast paced that I do my best coding to it.
Cryptic AT sequence was probably ATX1 on both machines to turn off the 'dialtone smarts' (eg, so the modem wouldn't check for dialtones before dialing). Then you could type ATDT on one machine and ATA on the other. Any idea if you can issue an ATX1 to the DreamCast modem? Do they have any type of terminal software yet? If not, when will they? It'd probably be trivial to send an ATX1 then tell it to store the current configuration at AT&F1 (factory default) so that it would alway be dumb, then it'd be able to connect to your local PPP box.
Keep in mind that when it's accelerating at 1g, it'd be hovering, so you should subtract 1g from your mix (eg, actual rate of ascent = 2g). One gravity is 9.78m/s, so take 2*9.87=19.74.
Oh. I messed up. I forgot to factor in the difference between m/s and m/h. The actual time to 600mph would be something more like 13.5 seconds. I am a, how you say, idiot? Anyhow, 13.5 seconds is about 7-8 tons of fuel/cargo.
Slashdot Mirror
These aren't all firsts. I saw The Phantom Menace at the AMC Burbank 14 on June 19, 1999 projected digitally. It was a special presentation (I still have the badge with next strap I got for it) and used the Texas Instruments DLP Cinema technology.
Here's an excerpt from the back of the badge:
"Welcome to the future of Cinema
Texas Instruments is proud to present the first all digital showing of Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace(tm). Digital projetion replaces film projection for the first time ever in movie theatres equipped with DLP Cinema(tm) technology."
After the presentation, I got to look at an example of the heart of the projector, and it was about the size of a large CPU with thousands of small mirrored surfaces on it.
The only thing this Titan AE presentation might be the first of is Internet delivery of the source, but the rest of it has been done before.
For some of the best artwork and coolest mecha, check out Patlabor. It's about a police force outfitted with mecha to deal with mecha-based crime.
For humor, you must watch Urusei Yatsura. The TV show is based around the simple premise that an exotic and beautiful space princess mistakes something a teenage guy says as a marriage proposal and ends up following him around 24-7 trying to have sex with him and zapping him whenever he looks at other women. The story is more complex, of course, but that's the basic setup. It is some of the funninest anime, more so than Ranma 1/2.
Me: Helmsman! Why.... don't.... you respond to my orders? I'm... talking.... just like.... the greatest captain of all! I am... Captain Kirk!
Computer: Command not understood. Incoming torpedo.
Me: Damn you, computer! Evasive action!
Computer: Initiating evasive pattern Delta. Incoming torpedo has missed.
Me: Hailing frequencies open! Khan, You managed to kill everyone else, but like a poor marksman, you keep missing the target. You... keep... missing... the target.
Computer: Command not understood. Deleting files.
Me: Khaaaaaaaaaann!
This is actually true, the Shuttle cannot deploy its landing gear in the computer. The previous users post shouldn't have been moderated down, he's absolutely correct and it is on-topic.
The astronauts objected to the computer being able to deploy the gear automatically, and this was given to them by the software people as a meaningless victory in their fight against the full automation of the shuttle.
The concern the astronauts claimed was that if a computer glitch caused the gear to deploy while in orbit, the result would be a loss-of-vehicle scenario.
The software is capable of handling every aspect of a shuttle landing except for the landing gear itself.
An interesting side note, if the gear aren't deploying within a half a second or so of the deploy switch being pressed, there are pyrotechnic charges that deploy the gear by force. As far as I know, they haven't been needed yet, but I imagine it'd be quite a sensation...
Actually, the Shuttle airframes are theoretically rated for 100 flights each. Since the shuttle fleet has just passed the 100th mission mark, the fleet is approximately one quarter of the way through their lifespan.
The STS was originally intended to be a 'space truck' each orbiter doing maybe 10+ missions a year. When it became clear that was an absolutely unrealistic number, the story was switched that the Shuttle was in fact a test-bed for the technologies that would make the second-generation shuttle the real space-truck.
The VentureStar, the vehicle the X-33 is a technology demonstrator for, will be built and owned commercially, not by NASA. NASA will purchase cargo-space on the new vehicle, but they will actually be owned by Lockmart (Lockheed-Martin) or whoever else decides to build them.
The MEDS upgrade is a logical next step in maintaining the shuttle until a replacement launcher is available. It will reduce maintenance costs, increase performance, increase safety, and make the shuttle fleet better vehicles overall until it is retired.
The MEDS upgrade includes an Analog/Digital converter which allows the video signals sent to the old CRTs to be displayed on the LCD units. All new computing takes place within the LCD units themselves (for switching between available displays). As far as the old flight computers are concerned, they are still hooked up to the old analog TV tubes that they were designed for.
The Military can already jam or disable GPS at will. Part of the spec for GPS allows for them to disable or limit the civilian aspect of GPS during wartime and specific sorties.
Remember, the NavSat spec allows for a loss of accuracy for civilian GPS units (eg, you can't get better then 30 foot reliable position) but allows for 1 centimeter resolution for military units which know how to defeat the deliberate error. It's probably a timing sequence that milspec units can alter for.
What I've never understood about this is why. If it's to foil enemy cruise missles with civilian GPS units, 30 feet doesn't seem like that much of a difference for a nuke or large conventional explosive.
You can defeat this deliberate error, btw, by using three GPS units arranged equidistant with special software which knows the exact relative positions of the three GPS receivers and compensates accordingly.
I'm quite surprised it took this long. I heard a rumor about 2 years ago that a GPS jamming device was available in Russia with a 30 mile radius.
The NavSat network is a series of satellites w/ atomic clocks located in Geosynchronous orbit (so they hold steady above the equator) at over 20,000 miles distance. The timing pulses they send are low power, necessarilly so for them to last as long on their available power output.
Anyone with knowledge of which frequencies are used and the abillity to transmit their own quasi timing pulses in a manner which would interfere with at least 12 possible sats over the horizon at once could make their own jammer for much less.
It's easy to see that not many people are doing this, or GPS would be effectively knocked out in metro areas.
I like it. Pretty soon, we can have processors sooooo fast, they give us results BEFORE we enter our queries. I like the idea of a CPU exploring all possible logic paths at branches in code and then simply displaying that particular result sequence when the user (or real-time controller) asks for it.
Sorta the TARDIS Express of the computer world. "When you positively, absolutely MUST have your packet there BEFORE you sent it."
When will Apple release Quicktime in a format that allows cross-platform viewing of QuickTime 4 movies?
Are there any formats other then Open Source that would allow this to occur?
Whoops! Guess I should have given you the benefit of the doubt there. Of course, would you have replied if I hadn't been so snide? It's indeed an eternal paradox...
OT, a good enhancement to the slashcode would be a feature which could e-mail someone when there was a response to a message they posted in a comments area. This would allow them to follow conversations without obsessively remembering to come back and do a text find on their name. Like I do....
Actually, I'm not wrong. My reference is the following book:
5 3/o/qid=954729295/sr=8-2/ref=aps_sr_b_1_2/ 102-0286493-5604034
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/02268517
The title of the book is "The Challenger Launch Decision : Risky Technology, Culture, and Deviance at Nasa", written by Diane Vaughn. It includes the Rogers report as well as an in-depth analysis of the exact sequence of events. Another reference I used was the tape 'Challenger - Disaster and Investigation', prepared by the Data and Design Analysis Force. It documents the Task forces activities and findings. It provides forensics, technical explanations of the cause of the Challenger accident.
The 2 million lbs of acceleration wasn't the result of an explosion, I never used that word. It was a result of the large burn-off of the LH^2 which imparted force on the top hemisphere of the LH^2 tank and intertank structure, neither of which were designed as load bearing structures and both of whose failure contributed to the aerodynamic breakup of the vehicle.
Of course, since this Slashdot article is more then 5 hours old, I don't anticipate you bothering to acknowledge your error. Heck, I'm probably the last person posting!
Absolutely incorrect. The SRB was directly responsible for the incident. A seal in the bottom of the SRB failed, allowing hot gasses from inside the burning SRB to torch into the External Tank, rupturing the liquid hydrogen tank and igniting the fuel inside. The burning hydrogen accelerated the vehicle suddenly with an extra 2 million lbs of thrust, and the stress tore the ET and the SRBs free from the Challenger. An instant later, the Challenger, which was thrown free of the burning fuel, disintegrated because of aerodynamic stresses.
The problem with this logic is that you assume the space shuttle is safer in this regard then the previous launchers, both US and Soviet.
Every single manned spacecraft ever put into orbit has had a capsule escape system, with the glaring exception of the space shuttle. The Mercury had it, the Saturn V had it, and the Soyuz launchers have them. They are the rockets in the tower that sticks on top of todays manned launchers, and in case of a launch vehicle failure at any stage up to orbit, the escape rocket can be fired, pulling the capsule up and off the launch vehicle and setting it down safely elsewhere.
This even happened once during a Soyuz launch, and the crew was kept safe by having this as an option.
The Space Shuttle is the first manned launch vehicle without an abort option, so don't try suggesting that it is any way safer then the Apollo or Gemini craft which came before it, at least not in regards to a launch abort.
No, I'm very sorry, but you remain incorrect. The ground-escape system is solely for escaping a pre-launch shuttle when something that cannot be safed (for instance, a hydrazine line failure or LOX/LH2 tank failure in the ET). The explosive bolts which hold the shuttle to the ground CANNOT hold the shuttle stack against the thrust of the SRBs.
i ndex.html
Once the SRBs light, the shuttle will tear itself off the pad if it must, but it will NOT stay down. An SRB failure is classified, once again, as a loss of vehicle & crew event. No ifs, ands or buts about it.
Solid boosters have no business in manned ground to space operations. The Liquid Fly Back Boosters are what should have been built for the shuttle when the design was frozen, not SRBs. They have already been responsible for seven deaths.
For more info on LFBB, check the following URL:
http://www.boeing.com/defense-space/space/lfbb/
Sorry, but YOU are wrong. First, I said there is no abort/escape from LIFTOFF to about 2.5 minutes into the flight. This remains true, the ground escape system is not after the SRBs have lit off (the shuttle lifts off almost immedietely, and if a problem develops on the pad after SRB ignition, the vehicle and crew are lost). Also, the escape pole is NOT usable during the SRB burn.
Here's an abort scenario which uses the escape pole:
1. Liftoff
2. SRB burnout/seperation
3. Problem detected, too far for RTLS (return to landing site) and not far enough for TAL (transoceanic abort landing)
4. Shuttle adds/subtracts as much delta-v as possible to get close to land for ease of astronaut recovery.
5. Shuttle jettisons External Tank
6. Shuttle energy management program is used by the pilot to set up an energy efficient glide.
7. At around 30,000 feet the jump master prepares the door.
8. Shortly after, the commander activates the autopilot
9. The door is opened, pole extended.
10. Everyone jumps in an orderly manner.
11. Shuttle hits water and destroys itself. Hopefully the crew has landed safely w/ parachutes.
There simply is no abort option between SRB ignition and SRB seperation. They are solid rocket motors, which means that anything that could turn them off would also destroy the orbiter (eg, you would actually need to blow open the seams on the SRB to stop them, which is what the range safety officer does. This would also destroy the orbiter.)
You'll note that the shuttle is not certified by the FAA, 'cuzz it's very dangerous.
Something important to consider is that the Soviet/Russian space program has a much better safety record then the United States.
Three Cosmonauts died during their return from Salyut 1 when an atmospheric recompression valve opened early (they suffocated), and one Cosmonaut died when his capsule failed to deploy parachutes and impacted the ground at 100+ miles per hour.
The United States, on the other hand, has spent far fewer hours total in space and has lost 10 Astronauts (vs. 4 in the Soviet/Russian space program). Three Astronauts in Apollo 1, and seven in the Challenger incident.
Also, for perspective, the air leak currently on Mir (it's going to be the #1 planned priority once the Cosmonauts dock) is leaking less air then any of the Space Shuttles leak during a normal mission. It's true, the Space Shuttle Orbiters are much leakier then Mir.
Also, during the planning for the Shuttle-Mir missions in the mid 90's, Energia-RSA (the Soviet/Russian space industry) had very strong objections to the following:
1. Sending up Russian Cosmonauts on the Space Shuttle, which they consider unsafe because there is no abort option for the entirety of the solid rocket booster burn (From liftoff to 2.5 minutes later, if anything goes wrong, everyone dies. No matter what.)
2. Docking the shuttle w/ Mir because the shuttle is notoriously leaky in orbit (not just air, but also volatile Hydrazine from the RCS) and they were concerned it would damage Mir.
Finally, the total cost MirCorp paid for the three launches to Mir (One Soyuz, two Progress cargo launches) is $18 million. The total cost for a single space shuttle launch is $500 million. A cost/benefit analysis should say something.
The movie will not be filmed. The russian actor was supposed to go up on this flight, and had trained extensively, but the backers of the film never came through on their side of the agreement and failed to pay Energia-RSA. That's why there are only two Cosmonauts launching instead of three. His seat will be holding a payload container filled with extra expendables, and there's talk of extending their mission by 15 days because of the lower requirement of air, food, etc.
Nyet, 4-5 million lbs isn't impossible. Remember, the first stage of the Saturn V put out 7 million lbs thrust.
t lec.htm
For cheap heavy lift, check out the Shuttle-C. It's the external tank from a space shuttle with two solid rocket boosters mounted to it, again, just like a space shuttle. But instead of the shuttle itself, you have a cargo pod w/ 2 SSME's. You can boost over 77,000 kilograms to a 28 degree orbit, and even though the cargo pod never comes back, the launch still costs less then a single space shuttle launch (shuttle costs $500 million to launch, while Shuttle-C could cost maybe $200 million (all while putting 3-4 times the cargo into space!)
http://www.friends-partners.org/~mwade/lvs/shut
It seems clear to me that the easiest way to version software is to use the year followed by month/day. Eg, Windows 2000.4.20 or 2000.0420 would be a revision of Windows 2000 released on April 20th. If major software releases used this simple, straight forwards scheme, everyone would know exactly what versions they were talking about, and would know instantly when it was released.
As hoaky as it sounds, I do my best coding to James Horner's score for Star Trek II, the Wrath of Khan. Specifically, the Battle for the Mutara Nebula is so freakin' sweeping and fast paced that I do my best coding to it.
Kooky, eh?
Cryptic AT sequence was probably ATX1 on both machines to turn off the 'dialtone smarts' (eg, so the modem wouldn't check for dialtones before dialing). Then you could type ATDT on one machine and ATA on the other. Any idea if you can issue an ATX1 to the DreamCast modem? Do they have any type of terminal software yet? If not, when will they? It'd probably be trivial to send an ATX1 then tell it to store the current configuration at AT&F1 (factory default) so that it would alway be dumb, then it'd be able to connect to your local PPP box.
Keep in mind that when it's accelerating at 1g, it'd be hovering, so you should subtract 1g from your mix (eg, actual rate of ascent = 2g). One gravity is 9.78m/s, so take 2*9.87=19.74.
Oh. I messed up. I forgot to factor in the difference between m/s and m/h. The actual time to 600mph would be something more like 13.5 seconds. I am a, how you say, idiot? Anyhow, 13.5 seconds is about 7-8 tons of fuel/cargo.
I downloaded the demo from the Nervana page, and it looks almost exactly like the old MARS.EXE demo for DOS (also can run in Windows).
e
I searched Yahoo and found a copy of the demo here:
http://www.wyburd.freeserve.co.uk/Files/mars.ex
It's an amazingly small 9K, and runs incredibly smooth on even a 386, but looks better then the Mousedemo that the article talks about.
Oh, and I saw this Mars demo back in the early 90's, so it's definately a pre-cursor.