In my experience, it's the POWER button that's likely to suffer from attrition in this way. Until I removed the keycap from my power/sleep button, it had caused me untold grief. Caps Lock is a minor demon.
Oops, meant to say that relativistic time dilation allowed our intrepid explorers to see the ultimate evolution of the universe without dying of old age.
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, dated 1970, is based on the concept of a cyclical universe. The crew and passengers of an interstellar spacecraft find themselves in a situation where they have no option but to keep accelerating. In so doing, due to relativistic time dilation, the outside universe expands over billions of years, and eventually starts contracting again into 'the monobloc', containing almost all the matter and energy in the universe. Skillful piloting allows our heroes to successfully navigate to the next universe, where they set course for a young-earth-equivalent.
Top judge says internet 'could kill jury system' The jury system may not survive if it is undermined by social networking sites, England's top judge has said.
It'd probably be better to assemble a 'freighter' in orbit, with sub-module base component modules attached, and a human colony human crew. Arrive Mars orbit, deploy landers, humans follow some weeks later. Much cheaper to do it all at once. A bit more risky too because if for example all your power unit landers failed, you'd be screwed.
The point is that the marginal savings effected by a hollowpoint are completely negligible given the context -- and since actual people have to do the deed, the psychological downsides for the staff of cleaning brains from the wall massively outweigh the few thousand bucks savings you might be able to achieve.
At perihelion (closest approach) Mars is 206,669,000km away from the Sun; at aphelion, Earth is 152,098,232km.
The sun's power output is subject to the inverse cube law, so it works out that the power available at the best time in Mars orbit is 39.8% that of the worst time in Earth orbit (i.e. the most optimistic figure)
At Earth orbit, we receive around 1300W/m^2, which is reduced to around 1000W/m^2 at the Earth's surface, once atmospheric losses are taken into account. At Mars orbit, we'd see about 520W/m^2, and given Mars' tenuous atmosphere, I'd expect the Mars surface power to be around 500W/m^2
That's the AP's figure of 50%.
If you're growing crops, I don't think this is an energy source that can be easily dismissed.
There is the issue with thermal insulation -- this can probably be solved by using a multiwalled inflatable transparent greenhouse dome. The major issue with this is that untrammeled UV will damage the plastics used, unless there is a plastic I don't know about (quite likely). Also, all transparent substances absorb some proportion of the light traveling through them, so this reduces efficiency. An IR-reflective coating on the inside of the dome would be a very good idea to help retain heat (not sure if that's feasible)
Another issue is that the greenhouse will have to be heated, which also requires energy -- so an additional power source will be required, and it would probably prove cost-effective at that point to power some extra growing lights too. Nuclear is starting to sound quite attractive, although solar is probably the way forward here.
BTW Wind Turbines aren't going to get much energy from the very tenuous atmosphere of Mars, despite very high wind speeds. And I hope that we can achieve 95% or better landing&deployment success rate, meaning that total mission cost is massively reduced.
That is an incredibly good idea. Probably won't cover 1/10th of the cost though, unless one assumes an enormous population, massive demand, and usurious access fees. And if you want high production values, expect a corresponding increase in the mission cost. There will also need to be resupply and contingency missions on the launch roster, and that's not exactly peanuts either.
(Oh wait did you say weapons? Mars is already hazardous enough, thanks, we have enough violence already. There would be billions of regular viewers anyway, given our population and technology base ~2020 -- there is no need to add intentional violence in order to boost viewership figures.)
The idea of one-way trips to Mars is just downright sensible, even obvious, because it massively increases our long-term survival chances as a species. If we have to go media whoring to get there, so be it -- the objective is so incredibly valuable that it should be achieved at almost any cost.
Er no, IPv4 headers have space for exactly 4 bytes of destination address information. You might be able to kludge the protocol to allow for a larger address space, but as a kludge it would be inefficient, and encountering extended packets would break the majority of existing IPv4 stacks. The solution was arrived at by some very smart people, and that's IPv6. We won't run out of addresses on IPv6 for a very long time indeed.
SlashDot's link hygiene system doesn't recognize exclamation marks at the end of a URL as being part of the URL - notice that " [nyud.net]" has been inserted by/..
Slashdot Mirror
In my experience, it's the POWER button that's likely to suffer from attrition in this way. Until I removed the keycap from my power/sleep button, it had caused me untold grief. Caps Lock is a minor demon.
You! Know! It! Probably! Won't!
It's the CO2 in Rhea that's mysterious.
Lol you think our backwards Earthican gummints would let on if a GCU pitched up? No, SC would have to poll the populace ...
fail
Except it really is the SANDF. We South Africans almost always refer to South Africa as SA.
Oops, meant to say that relativistic time dilation allowed our intrepid explorers to see the ultimate evolution of the universe without dying of old age.
Tau Zero by Poul Anderson, dated 1970, is based on the concept of a cyclical universe. The crew and passengers of an interstellar spacecraft find themselves in a situation where they have no option but to keep accelerating. In so doing, due to relativistic time dilation, the outside universe expands over billions of years, and eventually starts contracting again into 'the monobloc', containing almost all the matter and energy in the universe. Skillful piloting allows our heroes to successfully navigate to the next universe, where they set course for a young-earth-equivalent.
But don't you see, an expert system as you have described would do exactly what currently happens! Otherwise it'd be broken.
Top judge says internet 'could kill jury system'
The jury system may not survive if it is undermined by social networking sites, England's top judge has said.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-11796648
It'd probably be better to assemble a 'freighter' in orbit, with sub-module base component modules attached, and a human colony human crew. Arrive Mars orbit, deploy landers, humans follow some weeks later. Much cheaper to do it all at once. A bit more risky too because if for example all your power unit landers failed, you'd be screwed.
The point is that the marginal savings effected by a hollowpoint are completely negligible given the context -- and since actual people have to do the deed, the psychological downsides for the staff of cleaning brains from the wall massively outweigh the few thousand bucks savings you might be able to achieve.
Breeding pairs.
At perihelion (closest approach) Mars is 206,669,000km away from the Sun; at aphelion, Earth is 152,098,232km.
The sun's power output is subject to the inverse cube law, so it works out that the power available at the best time in Mars orbit is 39.8% that of the worst time in Earth orbit (i.e. the most optimistic figure)
At Earth orbit, we receive around 1300W/m^2, which is reduced to around 1000W/m^2 at the Earth's surface, once atmospheric losses are taken into account. At Mars orbit, we'd see about 520W/m^2, and given Mars' tenuous atmosphere, I'd expect the Mars surface power to be around 500W/m^2
That's the AP's figure of 50%.
If you're growing crops, I don't think this is an energy source that can be easily dismissed.
There is the issue with thermal insulation -- this can probably be solved by using a multiwalled inflatable transparent greenhouse dome. The major issue with this is that untrammeled UV will damage the plastics used, unless there is a plastic I don't know about (quite likely). Also, all transparent substances absorb some proportion of the light traveling through them, so this reduces efficiency. An IR-reflective coating on the inside of the dome would be a very good idea to help retain heat (not sure if that's feasible)
Another issue is that the greenhouse will have to be heated, which also requires energy -- so an additional power source will be required, and it would probably prove cost-effective at that point to power some extra growing lights too. Nuclear is starting to sound quite attractive, although solar is probably the way forward here.
Duh, you give the colony the tools to bootstrap to self-sufficiency. That's the only way this enterprise could possibly work.
BTW Wind Turbines aren't going to get much energy from the very tenuous atmosphere of Mars, despite very high wind speeds. And I hope that we can achieve 95% or better landing&deployment success rate, meaning that total mission cost is massively reduced.
Mod parent up +Insightful
... unless there is a relay satellite, which, let's face it, there certainly would be.
That is an incredibly good idea. Probably won't cover 1/10th of the cost though, unless one assumes an enormous population, massive demand, and usurious access fees. And if you want high production values, expect a corresponding increase in the mission cost. There will also need to be resupply and contingency missions on the launch roster, and that's not exactly peanuts either.
(Oh wait did you say weapons? Mars is already hazardous enough, thanks, we have enough violence already. There would be billions of regular viewers anyway, given our population and technology base ~2020 -- there is no need to add intentional violence in order to boost viewership figures.)
The idea of one-way trips to Mars is just downright sensible, even obvious, because it massively increases our long-term survival chances as a species. If we have to go media whoring to get there, so be it -- the objective is so incredibly valuable that it should be achieved at almost any cost.
Moron. Google is your friend.
Worth reading
My kingdom for a mod point -- parent is the most insightful post I'll see today.
Er no, IPv4 headers have space for exactly 4 bytes of destination address information. You might be able to kludge the protocol to allow for a larger address space, but as a kludge it would be inefficient, and encountering extended packets would break the majority of existing IPv4 stacks. The solution was arrived at by some very smart people, and that's IPv6. We won't run out of addresses on IPv6 for a very long time indeed.
SlashDot's link hygiene system doesn't recognize exclamation marks at the end of a URL as being part of the URL - notice that " [nyud.net]" has been inserted by /..
"Against the assault of laughter nothing can stand." - Mark Twain
My money is on the heavily armed and armored killing machines.