I was thinking some high-G railgun - useless except for cargo-only, and best if fixed to a single orbit. General purpose launchers, this would not replace, but this specific application might be useful...
If beaming the power runs into so many risks, then why not design the satellites to accept batteries or other power storage modules (like flywheels)? These could be manufactured on the moon, launched from there to the satellites, then ejected and sent down to Earth (preferably in some unpopulated zone) when full. Their energy would then be released into the power grid. Alternately, most of their energy could be used to launch themselves from Earth up to the satellites (say, on some high-G railgun; you'd need to make the launch/dock/charge/undock/land sequence fully robotic since the launch alone would kill any attendant human technician), with the rest released into the grid, so that we wouldn't need a constant stream of battery manufacturing; it'd be inefficient, but clean.
Atom lasers could get atoms into a 2D position, but how to position them in the third? Optical holograms require special types of matter (like glass) to do their magic on. And in any case, there would be only one type of atom in a beam, though conceivably one could have multiple beams of different types.
Then again, few claims about capabilities beyond the most fundamental have any weight just now, much like those about the capabilities of electronics in Tesla's time. They've got enough problems just making quantum computers able to emulate a 10 MHz 486. Once those (or better) hit the market, then further quantum applications become feasable (i.e., we'll have a useable sense of what can and can't be done with basic quantum mechanics).
The problem of a short attention span or information overload will not be solved at the organizational or technological level.
Well...what if someone came up with a way to duplicate and reintegrate your consciousness (probably some kind of prosthetic attention), such that you literally could be in two places at once (and, later, remember both sets of experiences)? That'd be a technological fix, wouldn't it?
Granted, it'll be a while before anyone's actually able to do so...
The choice between unhealthy environment, where we will need technology to help us, and a pure natural environment is a choice the human race must do. You do it every day!
Yep. And people choose technology over nature at just about every turn. The reason? Not because they're duped, not because they don't know any better. It's because the pure natural environment is by far the unhealthier.
If you get injured and your buddy can take you to the medics, would you rather your friend have to walk while carrying you, or would you rather your friend load you in your car and drive you there?
Would you prefer milk and meat straight from the farm, carried by hand until it spoils (to say nothing of any diseases it may have had to begin with), or would you prefer milk and meat that have been screened for germs and chilled during transport?
That's just for starters. It is a common misconception that technology is inherently bad for humanity - but it is a misconception. Those who call for the termination of all progress, delaying the introduction of new drugs and treatments that would otherwise prevent all manner of pain and death, have the blood of billions on their hands.
With that out of the way...one of the main problems with NASA's space shuttle seems to be the near-infinite amount of testing and precautions they take, thus skyrocketing the cost per flight. It'll be interesting to see what Russia, which puts a more value on results than safety-at-any-cost, does.
I might wait until Boeing has done a few test flights, introduced frequent flyer miles, etc
You're going to be waiting a loooong time, considering as Boeing has basically cancelled its project in this area (the one for NASA, though they are doing a cargo-only one by the name of Sea Launch). Even if (when?) he blows up in space, the Brit will have gotten closer than just about anyone at Boeing and its main competitors. (Granted, he's really pushing things by not testing first, and his likely publicized demise may make things a bit harder for the rest of us, but at least he's trying.)
Aye. "I'll know art when I see it" is so often used as an excuse to disguise the subjective as objecive. It may not take a generation any longer for most people to recognize a new form of art - but in this case, the problem is that those in power have a "the world is this way and it's always gonna be this way" attitude, and will project that attitude on their institution until personal death or retirement. While their replacements will have a more up to date vision of how the world is, far too often, they just ossify into the same attitude with regard to further changes.
Still, one can hope that, as the pace of change in human society speeds up, believing that the world does not change will become more and more obviously preposterous (and thus, less and less common).
Agreed. The operative legal phrase is "captive audience". For all intents and purposes, you are a captive audience of your email - your job, your lifestyle, and more depend on you checking your email. Indeed, in some cases, your email is the equivalent of small-scale corporate emergency services (you're paid to respond immediately when an alert comes in), and is analogous to phone numbers you can ask companies not to call (including wardialing telemarketers if you have an unlisted number).
There is a clear legal opinion that First Amendment rights do not extend to being able to address captive audiences. (The case that comes to mind is a KKK rally that the would-be host town objected to, where the sound of the rally would penetrate even closed doors and windows such that there would be no place in town free from the rally. I may be misremembering this, though.)
Ehhnt, thank you for playing. Software is "assembled" by machine, copied from disk to disk. Maybe some data entry clerks put the stuff into the machine, but software engineers are designers - and heck yes I want my car to have been designed by someone willing to try the latest improvements, rather than, say, sticking with a design that leaves out seat belts and air bags because the old design worked. (Just so long as the car does work, but that's why we have QA.)
Neutrinos don't ordinarily react with matter, but...obviously they have to interact on occasion to be measured at all. I wonder if there would be any way of significantly artificially enhancing the reaction rate?
Umm...wouldn't the people who tend to buy these - as opposed to seeking out comparisons of exactly how much radiation each model of cell phone puts out, so they can stick to ones that are within safe limits (as determined by groups not on the cell phone industry's payroll) - tend to be the people who don't need to worry about protecting that organ?
One would hope that accountants would clue in to the extra sales that a better product brings in, to counter the threat of suits. On the other hand, given the percieved rising cost of litigation these days, that hope may be in vain.
Seriously: with Earth, there is a significant pre-existing ecosystem we have to respect lest we screw up humanity's only (at the moment) life support system. With all other planets (and moons, and asteroids) in our solar system, there is not, thus we are free to mess with them as we please. Similar arguments apply if you invoke the "right" of ecosystems to exist unmolested: by and large, there ain't no ecosystems outside of Earth right now.
Granted, if we want to check to see if there is microbial life on other planets, we should do this before terraforming, but that's just a matter of dispatching the right probes while we're still determining how best to terraform. In fact, the data from said probes would probably be a useful step in the process of terraforming, since if life was detected, we would have the option of altering the native life to alter the planet rather than completely custom designing our own plant colonizers.
Dare I ask what constitutes a "complete analysis"? If we postulate totally unknown life forms in the rock samples, then we can't say for certain that any particular series of analyses and sterilizations can prove that there is no life in the rock.
Having a specific set of procedures and goals to guard against a potential problem while evidence is gathered is one thing, and NASA seems like it will produce and follow these at first. Applying precautions indefinitely, in the absence of any evidence that the precautions are actually (as opposed to "could possibly be") necessary, and after evidence has been gathered that shows that they are not, is another. NASA's been doing the latter, promising only the former, far too many times.
I'll take ping. Need some way to find out if the marketroid who made up this "URGENT!" project is still out there...or should I just always use finger?
Supreme court: overrules appellate, noting "impossible does not mean unconstitutional".
Laws of nature: cause those outside the legal system to pay little attention to the court case, other than maybe to discuss the case and snicker at its disjunction from our world, then go on and flaunt the law until some legislator notices that having a widely ignored law reduces respect for the law and takes it off the books.
Slashdot Mirror
I was thinking some high-G railgun - useless except for cargo-only, and best if fixed to a single orbit. General purpose launchers, this would not replace, but this specific application might be useful...
Just a wild theory here...
If beaming the power runs into so many risks, then why not design the satellites to accept batteries or other power storage modules (like flywheels)? These could be manufactured on the moon, launched from there to the satellites, then ejected and sent down to Earth (preferably in some unpopulated zone) when full. Their energy would then be released into the power grid. Alternately, most of their energy could be used to launch themselves from Earth up to the satellites (say, on some high-G railgun; you'd need to make the launch/dock/charge/undock/land sequence fully robotic since the launch alone would kill any attendant human technician), with the rest released into the grid, so that we wouldn't need a constant stream of battery manufacturing; it'd be inefficient, but clean.
"To stay angry at Microsoft, here's your daily dose of truth."
;)
Go on. Show me how I'm wrong.
Atom lasers could get atoms into a 2D position, but how to position them in the third? Optical holograms require special types of matter (like glass) to do their magic on. And in any case, there would be only one type of atom in a beam, though conceivably one could have multiple beams of different types.
Then again, few claims about capabilities beyond the most fundamental have any weight just now, much like those about the capabilities of electronics in Tesla's time. They've got enough problems just making quantum computers able to emulate a 10 MHz 486. Once those (or better) hit the market, then further quantum applications become feasable (i.e., we'll have a useable sense of what can and can't be done with basic quantum mechanics).
The problem of a short attention span or information overload will not be solved at the organizational or technological level.
Well...what if someone came up with a way to duplicate and reintegrate your consciousness (probably some kind of prosthetic attention), such that you literally could be in two places at once (and, later, remember both sets of experiences)? That'd be a technological fix, wouldn't it?
Granted, it'll be a while before anyone's actually able to do so...
The evil Cylons with their L.E.D. eyes and 'By your command'
Or the Princess Cylon version: "As you wish..."
No mod points, so I'll have to say this with a comment.
;)
Nice one!
The choice between unhealthy environment, where we will need technology to help us, and a pure natural environment is a choice the human race must do. You do it every day!
Yep. And people choose technology over nature at just about every turn. The reason? Not because they're duped, not because they don't know any better. It's because the pure natural environment is by far the unhealthier.
If you get injured and your buddy can take you to the medics, would you rather your friend have to walk while carrying you, or would you rather your friend load you in your car and drive you there?
Would you prefer milk and meat straight from the farm, carried by hand until it spoils (to say nothing of any diseases it may have had to begin with), or would you prefer milk and meat that have been screened for germs and chilled during transport?
That's just for starters. It is a common misconception that technology is inherently bad for humanity - but it is a misconception. Those who call for the termination of all progress, delaying the introduction of new drugs and treatments that would otherwise prevent all manner of pain and death, have the blood of billions on their hands.
http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns999 9936
With that out of the way...one of the main problems with NASA's space shuttle seems to be the near-infinite amount of testing and precautions they take, thus skyrocketing the cost per flight. It'll be interesting to see what Russia, which puts a more value on results than safety-at-any-cost, does.
I might wait until Boeing has done a few test flights, introduced frequent flyer miles, etc
You're going to be waiting a loooong time, considering as Boeing has basically cancelled its project in this area (the one for NASA, though they are doing a cargo-only one by the name of Sea Launch). Even if (when?) he blows up in space, the Brit will have gotten closer than just about anyone at Boeing and its main competitors. (Granted, he's really pushing things by not testing first, and his likely publicized demise may make things a bit harder for the rest of us, but at least he's trying.)
Go, man, go! I just wish there were more people like you, with the resources and vision to do what needs doing.
Aye. "I'll know art when I see it" is so often used as an excuse to disguise the subjective as objecive. It may not take a generation any longer for most people to recognize a new form of art - but in this case, the problem is that those in power have a "the world is this way and it's always gonna be this way" attitude, and will project that attitude on their institution until personal death or retirement. While their replacements will have a more up to date vision of how the world is, far too often, they just ossify into the same attitude with regard to further changes.
Still, one can hope that, as the pace of change in human society speeds up, believing that the world does not change will become more and more obviously preposterous (and thus, less and less common).
no one ever got fired for buying MS
Gee, wasn't that what people were saying about a certain other company just as MS started its rise to power?
Agreed. The operative legal phrase is "captive audience". For all intents and purposes, you are a captive audience of your email - your job, your lifestyle, and more depend on you checking your email. Indeed, in some cases, your email is the equivalent of small-scale corporate emergency services (you're paid to respond immediately when an alert comes in), and is analogous to phone numbers you can ask companies not to call (including wardialing telemarketers if you have an unlisted number).
There is a clear legal opinion that First Amendment rights do not extend to being able to address captive audiences. (The case that comes to mind is a KKK rally that the would-be host town objected to, where the sound of the rally would penetrate even closed doors and windows such that there would be no place in town free from the rally. I may be misremembering this, though.)
No it isn't...well, ok, maybe it is...
Ehhnt, thank you for playing. Software is "assembled" by machine, copied from disk to disk. Maybe some data entry clerks put the stuff into the machine, but software engineers are designers - and heck yes I want my car to have been designed by someone willing to try the latest improvements, rather than, say, sticking with a design that leaves out seat belts and air bags because the old design worked. (Just so long as the car does work, but that's why we have QA.)
Neutrinos don't ordinarily react with matter, but...obviously they have to interact on occasion to be measured at all. I wonder if there would be any way of significantly artificially enhancing the reaction rate?
Actually, from the article:
;)
The power concentrated on that pinhead-sized spot, about 60,000,000,000,000 watts
That's 60 terawatts, or 60,000 gigawatts, no? Easily more than enough...
Umm...wouldn't the people who tend to buy these - as opposed to seeking out comparisons of exactly how much radiation each model of cell phone puts out, so they can stick to ones that are within safe limits (as determined by groups not on the cell phone industry's payroll) - tend to be the people who don't need to worry about protecting that organ?
I could no sooner do that in my head than I could give birth.
I think he was speaking to most of the readers of this site. I can do it in my head easily enough.
One would hope that accountants would clue in to the extra sales that a better product brings in, to counter the threat of suits. On the other hand, given the percieved rising cost of litigation these days, that hope may be in vain.
All your planet are belong to us.
Seriously: with Earth, there is a significant pre-existing ecosystem we have to respect lest we screw up humanity's only (at the moment) life support system. With all other planets (and moons, and asteroids) in our solar system, there is not, thus we are free to mess with them as we please. Similar arguments apply if you invoke the "right" of ecosystems to exist unmolested: by and large, there ain't no ecosystems outside of Earth right now.
Granted, if we want to check to see if there is microbial life on other planets, we should do this before terraforming, but that's just a matter of dispatching the right probes while we're still determining how best to terraform. In fact, the data from said probes would probably be a useful step in the process of terraforming, since if life was detected, we would have the option of altering the native life to alter the planet rather than completely custom designing our own plant colonizers.
Dare I ask what constitutes a "complete analysis"? If we postulate totally unknown life forms in the rock samples, then we can't say for certain that any particular series of analyses and sterilizations can prove that there is no life in the rock.
Having a specific set of procedures and goals to guard against a potential problem while evidence is gathered is one thing, and NASA seems like it will produce and follow these at first. Applying precautions indefinitely, in the absence of any evidence that the precautions are actually (as opposed to "could possibly be") necessary, and after evidence has been gathered that shows that they are not, is another. NASA's been doing the latter, promising only the former, far too many times.
I'll take ping . Need some way to find out if the marketroid who made up this "URGENT!" project is still out there...or should I just always use finger ?