It doesn't mean they're not interested, just that talks haven't advanced as far. TWX probably just wants more cash rather than stock from over-hyped Google.
During the biggest solar storms, astronauts could simply crawl into a safe room which was made of the tank containing their water and some lead sheilding.
Hippies and back to earth people have been using this stuff for years. It makes perfect sense in a place where you get lots of sun already, and it improves mood.
We're going to all be dead long before we have the technology and resources to create affordable colonies at the La Grange points. We might as well talk about how to arrange the chairs on the Titanic.
I know that several large media conglomerates had considered buying Meetup.com, but they wanted too much money. If they had been bought out, they could have benefited by leveraging off the social network and the marketing footprint of the larger company, not to mention benefiting from enormous cost savings with respect to tech costs and overhead. They'll get some people to pay fees, like campaigns, maybe for a year, but people with small, untested groups will run away. I wouldn't say they'll be out of business in a year, but they certainly will be forgotten or laughed at. They just don't provide enough value for someone to pay $228/year, and I'm not lonely enough to pay dues for a club that might suck.
I am not at all suprised by the apparent demise of the MPL. NASA is not at all the type of organization it was in the 60's, when boldness and pragmatic innovation were the rule. Like other screwups, the MPL probably died because of lack of oversight (i.e. unforgivable metric conversion). NASA seems too focused on PR, which is a shame since they feel that is the only way they can guarantee funding. Make no mistake; if MPL is dead, NASA will totally overhype the Hubble repair mission to perform damage control. I can guarantee, if the same budget and research mission were given to a private institute like MIT, the MPL would be safe and sound.
I haven't yet read the ACS article, but I can take a stab at some of your (aibrahim)questions. (1) I'm sure they can mass produce this molecule with practice. Buckyballs are being made by everone now, and it's probably just a matter of getting the porphyrins to bond properly. (2)Since it's a theoretical paper, I doubt they talk about "efficiency" in it. All the paper is concerned about is driving chemical reactions. However, I doubt this material can do worse than our present photovoltaic cells. PV cells have at highest 29% efficiency. Chlorophyll, on the other hand, is extremely good at absorbing light (except, of course, green light). And since this new molecule uses the active light-absorbing parts of chlorophyll (porphyrins) it's probably just as good. (3) Molecule should respond to all visible light. Except "green." (4)Since this molecule has probably just been produced in small numbers and in solution, who knows what its tensile strength is? And having this material in a crystalized structure would probably just defeat its purpose. This material is good for (1) capturing light to excite electrons which jump to the buckyball and (2) giving the electron to some other mechanism. I think this could only happen in solution, much like a fuel cell.
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Have you tried reversing the polarity?
It doesn't mean they're not interested, just that talks haven't advanced as far. TWX probably just wants more cash rather than stock from over-hyped Google.
During the biggest solar storms, astronauts could simply crawl into a safe room which was made of the tank containing their water and some lead sheilding.
Hippies and back to earth people have been using this stuff for years. It makes perfect sense in a place where you get lots of sun already, and it improves mood.
For an extra $100m, they'll make sure you survive the journey and also get back in one piece.
Non-lethal means of crowd control are great for Iraq, which means they will only inevitably be used on our own people. This is some scary shit.
We're going to all be dead long before we have the technology and resources to create affordable colonies at the La Grange points. We might as well talk about how to arrange the chairs on the Titanic.
I know that several large media conglomerates had considered buying Meetup.com, but they wanted too much money. If they had been bought out, they could have benefited by leveraging off the social network and the marketing footprint of the larger company, not to mention benefiting from enormous cost savings with respect to tech costs and overhead. They'll get some people to pay fees, like campaigns, maybe for a year, but people with small, untested groups will run away. I wouldn't say they'll be out of business in a year, but they certainly will be forgotten or laughed at. They just don't provide enough value for someone to pay $228/year, and I'm not lonely enough to pay dues for a club that might suck.
I am not at all suprised by the apparent demise of the MPL. NASA is not at all the type of organization it was in the 60's, when boldness and pragmatic innovation were the rule. Like other screwups, the MPL probably died because of lack of oversight (i.e. unforgivable metric conversion). NASA seems too focused on PR, which is a shame since they feel that is the only way they can guarantee funding. Make no mistake; if MPL is dead, NASA will totally overhype the Hubble repair mission to perform damage control. I can guarantee, if the same budget and research mission were given to a private institute like MIT, the MPL would be safe and sound.
I haven't yet read the ACS article, but I can take a stab at some of your (aibrahim)questions. (1) I'm sure they can mass produce this molecule with practice. Buckyballs are being made by everone now, and it's probably just a matter of getting the porphyrins to bond properly. (2)Since it's a theoretical paper, I doubt they talk about "efficiency" in it. All the paper is concerned about is driving chemical reactions. However, I doubt this material can do worse than our present photovoltaic cells. PV cells have at highest 29% efficiency. Chlorophyll, on the other hand, is extremely good at absorbing light (except, of course, green light). And since this new molecule uses the active light-absorbing parts of chlorophyll (porphyrins) it's probably just as good. (3) Molecule should respond to all visible light. Except "green." (4)Since this molecule has probably just been produced in small numbers and in solution, who knows what its tensile strength is? And having this material in a crystalized structure would probably just defeat its purpose. This material is good for (1) capturing light to excite electrons which jump to the buckyball and (2) giving the electron to some other mechanism. I think this could only happen in solution, much like a fuel cell.