In case you missed it, the price of solar cells has fallen off a cliff in the last few years. And some companies will install the system for no money down, then sell you electricity at a rate lower than the utility.
Did they say it was a FIVE-stage rocket? Yes, apparently the Minotaur V has five stages. Makes sense, I guess, if you want to get a 600kg payload the moon, but it's the first time I've heard that phrase, at least not from NASA. Just strikes me as weird.
Speaking of SpaceX, it's funny to hear Elon Musk talk about space-solar power. He absolutely hates it. The last interview I saw, he said something like, "It's so stupid! I wish I could just drive a stake through the heart of that idea, once and for all!"
part of humor is taking controversial things and making fun of them
Another important part of humor is originality and creativity. Prison-rape jokes lost all hope of either many years ago. The GP was not making fun of rape, he was making fun of the rape victim.
In a democracy, We The People are responsible for the ethical treatment of inmates. It's one thing to laugh at a random "FAIL" video on YouTube, quite another to laugh at the horrid abuse of people who could EASILY be protected if we took a few simple measures to change how our prisons are managed.
Don't forget, a quarter of the prison population is there for non-violent drug offenses. It's not the rapists who get raped in prison (ie: people who might justifiably deserve it), it's the weak ones who get victimized.
Don't forget the marketing and data mining aspect. Once HuffPo has your real-life ID, imagine all the fun they could have. Imagine all the lovely, wonderful folks who would pay for the privilege of trawling through your online activities... especially if you go for all those "convenient" opportunities to "link" your HuffPo account to your Facebook, Twitter, etc... Better still, unlike those naughty NSA types, HuffPo does all this with your explicit permission, because along the way you clicked "ACCEPT" on some TOS contract.
They're doing this to "protect the community" from trolls??? Yeah, riiiiight...
The question is: What is Obama the figurehead of? It's not just the military-industrial complex, it's morphed into a much larger corporate octopus comprising the half-dozen of so largest in banks, chemical companies, oil companies, etc. And it has near total control of the US government.
The root of all this evil is a string of SCOTUS decisions which over the years have established the legal fiction of "corporate personhood." Citizens United would never have even come up if corporations weren't already considered as "artificial persons" under the constitution.
The only solution I can see, realistically, is a constitutional amendment. Here are two organizations working toward that goal right now. Check 'em out, and lend a hand.
Pre-natal environment can also have a huge effect on development. A small change in hormone levels can alter physical development, including the physiology of the brain. Just having Lennon's DNA is a nice start, but it's unlikely to produce another musician like him, no matter how hard they try to force it.
For me, that is the real crux of the ethical issue with cloning. I don't care if someone copies Lennon's DNA, but I'd consider it a form of child abuse to try to "sculpt" the baby into another great musician.
Actually it's called "eminent domain" (at least I think that's what you're getting at) and this is one of the greatest advantages of Musk's plan. There is already a broad "right of way" along the I-5 corridor, and the Hyperloop can be built on top of it, whereas the proposed HSR line would require the gov't to use its power of eminent domain to acquire the right of way for an entire new rail line.
Even in those few places where the Hyperloop cannot track the I-5 corridor, it only needs a house-sized plot of land every few hundred feet rather than a 20m-wide stripe across the landscape. Farmers can drive around pylons and farm under elevated tubes, but a railway across your land can really ruin your whole day.
- Why should I accept what the Parent is saying if the Parent shows significant ignorance of the topic? - Why should I give the Parent's armchair ramblings more credence than the 57-page write-up of one of the most innovative and successful entrepreneurs of recent years, which was produced with the help of some of the top engineers in the field? - Why should I accept the Parent's arbitrary declaration that "the 7+ billion price-tag is way too low"?? (Would there be cost overruns? Almost certainly, but even at 2x the price, it's still a fraction of the projected cost of the proposed HSR line.)
No, actually it doesn't. Obviously all this proven technology has never been combined in this particular way before, but there's nothing in the plan that's not available off the shelf today.
This.^^ Also: the real key is to make the landscape more impervious to both flood and drought using permaculture design and holistic management. By putting dams in runoff areas and swales on contour you can slow down the water and keep it in the soil much longer. In this way, even the most arid climates can be transformed. In many cases the transformation can be quite dramatic. Add to this the multiplier effect of managed grazing, and you can not just re-green the desert but also sequester vast quantities of CO2 in the process.
Well, according to your Wikipedia link, the station brings in around $8m a year in gross revenue. Even if half of that gets eaten up by operational costs, the project will pay for itself in ten years. Granted, you could probably get a faster ROI by putting in a gas turbine, but this solar setup is not such a bad investment.
As for the OTEC thing in China, yeah $300m is rather pricey.
I'm inclined to add a few 4 letter expletives in amongst those words
You'll get no argument from me. Musk has had a hell of a run the last couple of years, and from my chair here it looks like he's just getting warmed up.
And it's not just him... there's a ton of cool stuff in the pipeline over the next few years. There's half a dozen other players in the "NewSpace" market, such as Masten, Sierra Nevada, XCOR, MoonEx... And these will enable further ventures such as Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries.
And it's not just in space... We're going to have grid-level electricity storage on the market within the next couple of years, in multipleforms. That alone will make energy cheaper and easier to manage, not to mention all the new "alternative" energy sources under development, too numerous to list, any one of which could be a game changer, at least to some degree.
Trouble is, the DCX never made it to orbit (not even close) whereas the Falcon 9 has.
This is a modification to the existing F9 platform. IIRC, they expect it to reduce the payload capacity by about 25~30%. And yes, they intend to salvage the upper stage too. If they can do that, they'll reduce costs to a few million$ per launch. (About $250k in fuel; skirt/solar module for the Dragon; launchpad services, etc..)
They generally launch from Cape Canaveral, though they are trying to get the legislature to approve a launch site in Texas too.
No, it's 25deg above the horizontal. The point is to increase your "sideways" velocity parallel to the earth's surface, which (in space) is what really determines the height of your orbit.
Even if they never succeed at recovering the second stage, just reusing the first stage could cut the cost per flight in half, if not more. But they seem to be making pretty good progress thus far, and Musk has said he hopes to attempt a 1st-stage recovery as early as next spring. So I wouldn't be surprised to see them succeed with the 2nd stage too.
That's well within the capability of a conventional rocket, just in terms of thrust. The problem would be figuring out how to grapple the object and stop its rotation. If it's only 5m wide, you could probably just throw some kind of net around it. I wouldn't be surprised to see plans to capture this particular object starting to appear in the near future.
All true, but in this case Ellison may have stumbled upon the truth. If there's anyone at Apple with Jobs's level of creativity and tyranny, we haven't heard about him/her yet. At the moment, the current "iteration" of Jobs seems to be Elon Musk, and he doesn't work for Apple.
I'm sure that Apple, the company, will continue to exist for many years. (After all, AOL still exists.) But the competition is catching up, and Apple is about due for the Next Big Thing[tm].
Yes, but more robust and secure, completely impervious to network attack, and only vulnerable by physical force. Also with AI at a similar level to "Rosie Robot's" to allow it to recognize certain failure modes... such as when the nanny-cam sees Rosie entering the baby's room with a butcher knife in hand.
Slashdot Mirror
not enough sunlight in many parts of the country
Actually most of the USA gets more sun than Germany but they are building out their solar capacity at record speed.
high capital cost, maintenance costs, etc
In case you missed it, the price of solar cells has fallen off a cliff in the last few years. And some companies will install the system for no money down, then sell you electricity at a rate lower than the utility.
Did they say it was a FIVE-stage rocket? Yes, apparently the Minotaur V has five stages. Makes sense, I guess, if you want to get a 600kg payload the moon, but it's the first time I've heard that phrase, at least not from NASA. Just strikes me as weird.
Speaking of SpaceX, it's funny to hear Elon Musk talk about space-solar power. He absolutely hates it. The last interview I saw, he said something like, "It's so stupid! I wish I could just drive a stake through the heart of that idea, once and for all!"
part of humor is taking controversial things and making fun of them
Another important part of humor is originality and creativity. Prison-rape jokes lost all hope of either many years ago. The GP was not making fun of rape, he was making fun of the rape victim.
In a democracy, We The People are responsible for the ethical treatment of inmates. It's one thing to laugh at a random "FAIL" video on YouTube, quite another to laugh at the horrid abuse of people who could EASILY be protected if we took a few simple measures to change how our prisons are managed.
http://www.justdetention.org/
Don't forget, a quarter of the prison population is there for non-violent drug offenses. It's not the rapists who get raped in prison (ie: people who might justifiably deserve it), it's the weak ones who get victimized.
Don't forget the marketing and data mining aspect. Once HuffPo has your real-life ID, imagine all the fun they could have. Imagine all the lovely, wonderful folks who would pay for the privilege of trawling through your online activities... especially if you go for all those "convenient" opportunities to "link" your HuffPo account to your Facebook, Twitter, etc... Better still, unlike those naughty NSA types, HuffPo does all this with your explicit permission, because along the way you clicked "ACCEPT" on some TOS contract.
They're doing this to "protect the community" from trolls??? Yeah, riiiiight...
The question is: What is Obama the figurehead of? It's not just the military-industrial complex, it's morphed into a much larger corporate octopus comprising the half-dozen of so largest in banks, chemical companies, oil companies, etc. And it has near total control of the US government.
The root of all this evil is a string of SCOTUS decisions which over the years have established the legal fiction of "corporate personhood." Citizens United would never have even come up if corporations weren't already considered as "artificial persons" under the constitution.
The only solution I can see, realistically, is a constitutional amendment. Here are two organizations working toward that goal right now. Check 'em out, and lend a hand.
https://movetoamend.org/
http://www.wolf-pac.com/
Pre-natal environment can also have a huge effect on development. A small change in hormone levels can alter physical development, including the physiology of the brain. Just having Lennon's DNA is a nice start, but it's unlikely to produce another musician like him, no matter how hard they try to force it.
For me, that is the real crux of the ethical issue with cloning. I don't care if someone copies Lennon's DNA, but I'd consider it a form of child abuse to try to "sculpt" the baby into another great musician.
You need to watch Peter Hadfield's excellent video series on climate change.
Well spoken, Bruce!
Actually it's called "eminent domain" (at least I think that's what you're getting at) and this is one of the greatest advantages of Musk's plan. There is already a broad "right of way" along the I-5 corridor, and the Hyperloop can be built on top of it, whereas the proposed HSR line would require the gov't to use its power of eminent domain to acquire the right of way for an entire new rail line.
Even in those few places where the Hyperloop cannot track the I-5 corridor, it only needs a house-sized plot of land every few hundred feet rather than a 20m-wide stripe across the landscape. Farmers can drive around pylons and farm under elevated tubes, but a railway across your land can really ruin your whole day.
Where to start...?
- Why should I accept what the Parent is saying if the Parent shows significant ignorance of the topic?
- Why should I give the Parent's armchair ramblings more credence than the 57-page write-up of one of the most innovative and successful entrepreneurs of recent years, which was produced with the help of some of the top engineers in the field?
- Why should I accept the Parent's arbitrary declaration that "the 7+ billion price-tag is way too low"?? (Would there be cost overruns? Almost certainly, but even at 2x the price, it's still a fraction of the projected cost of the proposed HSR line.)
contains a lot of unproven technology.
No, actually it doesn't. Obviously all this proven technology has never been combined in this particular way before, but there's nothing in the plan that's not available off the shelf today.
The "sugar high" may well be propaganda, but sugar toxicity is not. (Or if you prefer print over video, this is a pretty good summary.)
This.^^ Also: the real key is to make the landscape more impervious to both flood and drought using permaculture design and holistic management. By putting dams in runoff areas and swales on contour you can slow down the water and keep it in the soil much longer. In this way, even the most arid climates can be transformed. In many cases the transformation can be quite dramatic. Add to this the multiplier effect of managed grazing, and you can not just re-green the desert but also sequester vast quantities of CO2 in the process.
Wish I had mod points... +1 Informative!
Well, according to your Wikipedia link, the station brings in around $8m a year in gross revenue. Even if half of that gets eaten up by operational costs, the project will pay for itself in ten years. Granted, you could probably get a faster ROI by putting in a gas turbine, but this solar setup is not such a bad investment.
As for the OTEC thing in China, yeah $300m is rather pricey.
I'm inclined to add a few 4 letter expletives in amongst those words
You'll get no argument from me. Musk has had a hell of a run the last couple of years, and from my chair here it looks like he's just getting warmed up.
And it's not just him... there's a ton of cool stuff in the pipeline over the next few years. There's half a dozen other players in the "NewSpace" market, such as Masten, Sierra Nevada, XCOR, MoonEx... And these will enable further ventures such as Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries.
And it's not just in space... We're going to have grid-level electricity storage on the market within the next couple of years, in multiple forms. That alone will make energy cheaper and easier to manage, not to mention all the new "alternative" energy sources under development, too numerous to list, any one of which could be a game changer, at least to some degree.
We live in "interesting times" indeed.
Here ya' go...
Trouble is, the DCX never made it to orbit (not even close) whereas the Falcon 9 has.
This is a modification to the existing F9 platform. IIRC, they expect it to reduce the payload capacity by about 25~30%. And yes, they intend to salvage the upper stage too. If they can do that, they'll reduce costs to a few million$ per launch. (About $250k in fuel; skirt/solar module for the Dragon; launchpad services, etc..)
They generally launch from Cape Canaveral, though they are trying to get the legislature to approve a launch site in Texas too.
No, it's 25deg above the horizontal. The point is to increase your "sideways" velocity parallel to the earth's surface, which (in space) is what really determines the height of your orbit.
Even if they never succeed at recovering the second stage, just reusing the first stage could cut the cost per flight in half, if not more. But they seem to be making pretty good progress thus far, and Musk has said he hopes to attempt a 1st-stage recovery as early as next spring. So I wouldn't be surprised to see them succeed with the 2nd stage too.
Here's a video of the shceme.
Water is extremely precious in space .
That's well within the capability of a conventional rocket, just in terms of thrust. The problem would be figuring out how to grapple the object and stop its rotation. If it's only 5m wide, you could probably just throw some kind of net around it. I wouldn't be surprised to see plans to capture this particular object starting to appear in the near future.
All true, but in this case Ellison may have stumbled upon the truth. If there's anyone at Apple with Jobs's level of creativity and tyranny, we haven't heard about him/her yet. At the moment, the current "iteration" of Jobs seems to be Elon Musk, and he doesn't work for Apple.
I'm sure that Apple, the company, will continue to exist for many years. (After all, AOL still exists.) But the competition is catching up, and Apple is about due for the Next Big Thing[tm].
Yes, but more robust and secure, completely impervious to network attack, and only vulnerable by physical force. Also with AI at a similar level to "Rosie Robot's" to allow it to recognize certain failure modes... such as when the nanny-cam sees Rosie entering the baby's room with a butcher knife in hand.