Excellent question. I suppose that the answer would also depend on other factors, such as what methods scale up or down easily, the amount of aluminum required, and the rate at which it is consumed.
Given that asteroids can be several miles across, I'm sure you could fit a couple nuclear reactors, a mining operation, and an aluminum plant on the surface without too much difficulty. I suppose that the next question is, how small can an asteroid be, and still be worth mining?
I wonder how easy it would be to mine an asteroid. The almost total lack of gravity would make it easy to remove what you mine, but might make moving about the surface difficult - you would essentially have to fly everywhere. Every structure on the surface would have to be anchored.
Also, our aluminum extraction and production methods are based on the aluminum compounds we find here on earth. Asteroids with chemical compositions different than earth's crust may have different compounds, and different methods of refining it might be possible, or even required.
I think Mars would be easier to mine, assuming the resources we need are there in sufficient quantities. Of course, if some kind of microbial life is found on Mars, you might need that environmental impact statement anyway. What would they call Greenpeace on Mars? Redpeace?
Most of my post addressed ALICE propulsion through interplanetary space. Bigjeff5 mentioned resource scarcity beyond the solar system, (interstellar space, rather than interplanetary), and starting with "Outside the solar system", that's what my comment was addressing.
Anyone want to take bets whether the iPhone store will allow this app? (Hey, since the US is delaying anti-gambling regulations, I'm still okay asking this, right?)
Mobile phone mesh networks actually aren't a new idea, although this seems to include a slightly new wrinkle. The benefit is not just aggregating the phone-to-network links for higher bandwidth, but lower energy consumption by making optimal use of the amount of data delivered while the phone is in an high-powered state. Microsoft's approach differs from yours and the link above in that this does not appear to be designed to allow you to go off-network onto a parallel, ad-hoc peer-to-peer mobile version of the internet. It's basically designed to trunk 3G phone-to-network connections together.
The firefighter is not really paid for that small but crucial amount of time that they are in action. They are paid for the time that they're hanging around the station house unable to do anything BUT respond to fires.
They might have lots of time at the firehouse between fires, but they also have a lot of duties besides fire response. Ongoing training, equipment maintenance, and responding to non-fire emergencies can take up a considerable amount of time.
I have a curious defect in my brain that causes me to flip to another channel when commercials come on. This allows me 3 benefits: 1) I rarely sit through commercials, 2) I watch a couple shows at once, and 3) I am left to watch TV in peace, because no one else in my family can stand it, and so they leave me be and go do something else.
I don't think the problem is the free market itself, rather it is either a) marketing drones who are more interested in whiz-bang strobing flash animations than with creating a positive brand awareness, and/or b) somewhere, somehow, for some reason, millions of stupid schmoes actually click on these obnoxious things.
Advertisers suffer directly as a result of that even more than they do from people blocking ads cause they hate them, IMO
You would think this would lead to a Darwinian feedback loop in which crappy, intrusive, annoying ads lead to poorer results than more tasteful ones, and ergo are dropped from the next ad campaign by the advertiser. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case, judging by the continual fountain of annoying, over-animated crapvertisements littering the internet.
Current commercial methods of producing aluminum are energy-intensive processes, work best running continuously rather than start-and-stop, and are not well suited to containment in a vehicle that is not absolutely huge, so I don't think aluminum production facilities will be something that spaceships carry on board. As for water, we have already know water exists on the Moon and on Mars, and on comets throughout the solar system.
If we establish mining and production facilities on nearby bodies with local water supplies and relatively small gravity wells such as the Moon and Mars, we could conceivably build refueling stations in orbit. Facilities on the surface could use a space elevator or launch loop (with less gravity to overcome, current materials and technologies should work) to send fuel payloads up to the orbiting station. With solar and/or nuclear power on the surface to power mining, refining, production, and the launch technology, we could put substantial amounts of fuel in orbit for easy access without having to use substantial amounts of the fuel itself to get it there.
I see this technology as a useful way to shuttle ourselves and moderate amounts of stuff around the solar system. Outside the solar system, the distances and time involved likely wouldn't be a good match for combustion-based propulsion, except perhaps as an initial booster to get moving. Ion propulsion is the way to go through interstellar space.
Racial bigotry and religion stem from the same thing: blatant and unapologetic ignorance. As such racism and religion are equally offensive and to be mocked mercilessly.
Racial bigotry and persecution of XYZ religion stem from the same thing: blatant and unapologetic intolerance. You may be a perfectly logical asshole, but you are still an asshole.
That depends on the commodity in question and the consumer.
What about those who pay a similar amount to attend evening classes at a local community college for what may be the same basic computer knowledge?
I'll grant you that the Video Prof. DVDs are likely worth an order of magnitude or two less than that figure, and that taken in context you are right. However, if his DVDs delivered hundreds or thousands of dollars of value, and the knowledge they contain was scarce, and they cost a lot to produce, their actual value might justify the price tag.
I'd give it the same advice I'd give the how-to-fix-schools question.
It starts at the top. If you have shitty administration / management, it will flow downhill and poison everything else. Unfortunately, management and school administration positions seem to attract soulless boneheads. Until we can have a proper revolution complete with guillotines, I say pick your company and your kids' schools mighty damn carefully. Many times there's not a whole lot of choice, especially at times like these, but there is a choice. Just not always an appealing one.
Reward performance and creativity. I had a high school English teacher who thought I hated her because I ignored her and the sentence diagrams she was trying to teach. I preferred to read Edgar Allan Poe during class. Never mind that I could already identify a dangling participle and all the other minutiae she was teaching. I came close to failing the class even though I knew the subject matter. If I had been the teacher and she had been reading in class, I like to think I would have offered her a chance to test out of the stuff being taught in class, and given her an opportunity to read all she pleased. Tell her to head to the library and read all she liked, maybe write a paper and/or discuss it with me for extra credit. For crying out loud, what kind of English teacher doesn't wet their pants with joy when a student reads Edgar Allan fucking Poe voluntarily?
Build a community. Do your people occasionally hang out after work? Do your kids participate in sports or any other extracurricular activities? We're living in a world of silos, where people talk more through Twitter, Facebook, and goddamn Slashdot than they do face-to-face. The amazing advances in communication are great, but something gets lost without being face-to-face. It's harder (in most cases, anyway) to resent someone you know personally and enjoy being around, than it is to resent the disembodied voice on the other end of the phone in Accounts Payable who hasn't cut your expense check yet. Being part of a team when you're young teaches you how to be part of a work team when you're more mature.
Get rid of poison apples. Every company has at least one person whose main source of joy is spreading malicious gossip, giving off negative vibes, and backstabbing others. Every school has a few kids who consistently refuse to live within reasonable rules. Do what you can to rehabilitate them, but if they don't come around, at a certain point realize that they need to be elsewhere. There is no good way to do that in most public schools, but there ought to be.
Obama can fund schools all he wants (and that's a good start - I'm not knocking it), but it will be wasted if those in power don't wield it wisely. We need to keep the best teachers in place, but instead they're often the first to go. They either find better positions and move on, or are axed when the budget gets cut. I've never understood why the shitty teachers usually get spared and the good ones get cut loose. Probably because the good ones generally piss off the administration on a semi-regular basis, and the shitty ones do exactly as told, regardless of what's best for the school.
So, I guess that we need to find a way to align the rewards of teachers and administration with the needs of the students.
Hmm. So, he wants his sites indexed, and wants prominent placement in search results for free as always, but he himself doesn't want to contribute anything?
I'm tempted to say he should FOAD, but honestly, this seems to be more of a site design problem on Murdoch's end. He could easily have someone design a site that displays article titles and the first 1-2 paragraphs for any visitor, and the rest is behind a paywall. Allow Google & others to index article titles & summaries as non-logged in visitors, if that's how he wants to be about it. Put enough keywords on the summary page and it should appear in the appropriate news category, although without indexing the full article, he's taking his chances with poorer search result placement.
Absolutely. I recently had a relatively benign legal dispute, and I was tempted to say screw it, despite being right. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I were simultaneously dealing with depression.
If I hadn't already posted here, I'd give you points for that. Who thinks this is off-topic? It has everything to do with the debate (such as it is) over AGW. For crying out loud, stop modding down stuff you don't agree with.
Slashdot Mirror
Excellent question. I suppose that the answer would also depend on other factors, such as what methods scale up or down easily, the amount of aluminum required, and the rate at which it is consumed.
Given that asteroids can be several miles across, I'm sure you could fit a couple nuclear reactors, a mining operation, and an aluminum plant on the surface without too much difficulty. I suppose that the next question is, how small can an asteroid be, and still be worth mining? I wonder how easy it would be to mine an asteroid. The almost total lack of gravity would make it easy to remove what you mine, but might make moving about the surface difficult - you would essentially have to fly everywhere. Every structure on the surface would have to be anchored.
Also, our aluminum extraction and production methods are based on the aluminum compounds we find here on earth. Asteroids with chemical compositions different than earth's crust may have different compounds, and different methods of refining it might be possible, or even required.
I think Mars would be easier to mine, assuming the resources we need are there in sufficient quantities. Of course, if some kind of microbial life is found on Mars, you might need that environmental impact statement anyway. What would they call Greenpeace on Mars? Redpeace?
Most of my post addressed ALICE propulsion through interplanetary space. Bigjeff5 mentioned resource scarcity beyond the solar system, (interstellar space, rather than interplanetary), and starting with "Outside the solar system", that's what my comment was addressing.
Anyone want to take bets whether the iPhone store will allow this app? (Hey, since the US is delaying anti-gambling regulations, I'm still okay asking this, right?)
Mobile phone mesh networks actually aren't a new idea, although this seems to include a slightly new wrinkle. The benefit is not just aggregating the phone-to-network links for higher bandwidth, but lower energy consumption by making optimal use of the amount of data delivered while the phone is in an high-powered state. Microsoft's approach differs from yours and the link above in that this does not appear to be designed to allow you to go off-network onto a parallel, ad-hoc peer-to-peer mobile version of the internet. It's basically designed to trunk 3G phone-to-network connections together.
The firefighter is not really paid for that small but crucial amount of time that they are in action. They are paid for the time that they're hanging around the station house unable to do anything BUT respond to fires.
They might have lots of time at the firehouse between fires, but they also have a lot of duties besides fire response. Ongoing training, equipment maintenance, and responding to non-fire emergencies can take up a considerable amount of time.
I'm pretty sure that a lot of those "close" or "mute" buttons are decoys.
I have a curious defect in my brain that causes me to flip to another channel when commercials come on. This allows me 3 benefits: 1) I rarely sit through commercials, 2) I watch a couple shows at once, and 3) I am left to watch TV in peace, because no one else in my family can stand it, and so they leave me be and go do something else.
I don't think the problem is the free market itself, rather it is either a) marketing drones who are more interested in whiz-bang strobing flash animations than with creating a positive brand awareness, and/or b) somewhere, somehow, for some reason, millions of stupid schmoes actually click on these obnoxious things.
Advertisers suffer directly as a result of that even more than they do from people blocking ads cause they hate them, IMO
You would think this would lead to a Darwinian feedback loop in which crappy, intrusive, annoying ads lead to poorer results than more tasteful ones, and ergo are dropped from the next ad campaign by the advertiser. Unfortunately, that doesn't seem to be the case, judging by the continual fountain of annoying, over-animated crapvertisements littering the internet.
Current commercial methods of producing aluminum are energy-intensive processes, work best running continuously rather than start-and-stop, and are not well suited to containment in a vehicle that is not absolutely huge, so I don't think aluminum production facilities will be something that spaceships carry on board. As for water, we have already know water exists on the Moon and on Mars, and on comets throughout the solar system.
If we establish mining and production facilities on nearby bodies with local water supplies and relatively small gravity wells such as the Moon and Mars, we could conceivably build refueling stations in orbit. Facilities on the surface could use a space elevator or launch loop (with less gravity to overcome, current materials and technologies should work) to send fuel payloads up to the orbiting station. With solar and/or nuclear power on the surface to power mining, refining, production, and the launch technology, we could put substantial amounts of fuel in orbit for easy access without having to use substantial amounts of the fuel itself to get it there.
I see this technology as a useful way to shuttle ourselves and moderate amounts of stuff around the solar system. Outside the solar system, the distances and time involved likely wouldn't be a good match for combustion-based propulsion, except perhaps as an initial booster to get moving. Ion propulsion is the way to go through interstellar space.
Who is persecuting the invisible man, and how does he avoid it by watching me masturbate?
Racial bigotry and religion stem from the same thing: blatant and unapologetic ignorance. As such racism and religion are equally offensive and to be mocked mercilessly.
Racial bigotry and persecution of XYZ religion stem from the same thing: blatant and unapologetic intolerance. You may be a perfectly logical asshole, but you are still an asshole.
I offer a solution to your article problem. For a small fee, you can receive my new "How To Peruse Slashdot Summaries" CD.
That depends on the commodity in question and the consumer.
What about those who pay a similar amount to attend evening classes at a local community college for what may be the same basic computer knowledge?
I'll grant you that the Video Prof. DVDs are likely worth an order of magnitude or two less than that figure, and that taken in context you are right. However, if his DVDs delivered hundreds or thousands of dollars of value, and the knowledge they contain was scarce, and they cost a lot to produce, their actual value might justify the price tag.
If cocaine emitted neutrons, we'd have other problems.
No, the problem with America is people whose arseholes are wound so tight they can't crack a smile.
Actually if this thing makes black holes, they'll evaporate via Hawking radiation anyway, so calling them "white holes" might be okay.
Free beer is never free as in speech. Free speech is always free as in beer.
If you homebrew, beer is any damn thing you want it to be.
"Just kick the system and see what it does". Isn't that usually how we start figuring out how stuff works?
In physics, kicking it will tell you what something does.
In compsci, kicking it will tell you what something did.
Obama can fund schools all he wants (and that's a good start - I'm not knocking it), but it will be wasted if those in power don't wield it wisely. We need to keep the best teachers in place, but instead they're often the first to go. They either find better positions and move on, or are axed when the budget gets cut. I've never understood why the shitty teachers usually get spared and the good ones get cut loose. Probably because the good ones generally piss off the administration on a semi-regular basis, and the shitty ones do exactly as told, regardless of what's best for the school.
So, I guess that we need to find a way to align the rewards of teachers and administration with the needs of the students.
Hmm. So, he wants his sites indexed, and wants prominent placement in search results for free as always, but he himself doesn't want to contribute anything?
I'm tempted to say he should FOAD, but honestly, this seems to be more of a site design problem on Murdoch's end. He could easily have someone design a site that displays article titles and the first 1-2 paragraphs for any visitor, and the rest is behind a paywall. Allow Google & others to index article titles & summaries as non-logged in visitors, if that's how he wants to be about it. Put enough keywords on the summary page and it should appear in the appropriate news category, although without indexing the full article, he's taking his chances with poorer search result placement.
I couldn't have agreed more with you ... until you said "death cult". Most followers of Islam aren't like that, and I'm sure you know it.
Absolutely. I recently had a relatively benign legal dispute, and I was tempted to say screw it, despite being right. I can't imagine what it would have been like if I were simultaneously dealing with depression.
If I hadn't already posted here, I'd give you points for that. Who thinks this is off-topic? It has everything to do with the debate (such as it is) over AGW. For crying out loud, stop modding down stuff you don't agree with.
And don't burp ;-)
Then how am I supposed to sing the alphabet?