Because nerds don't read science fiction (i.e., Larry Niven)?
Sending criminals to the organ banks, and dropping the level of crime that gets one sent there, is the subject of a number of his stories. Also, I expect that the Chinese have Mother Hunts, another trophe from the pre-Kzin War period of Known Space.
eventually to the point where people are being dismantled for mere traffic violations.
That was REPEATED violations. Sort of like three strikes out, with Reckless Driving being the lowest level of strike. Given that people could have died in each offense, it wasn't quite so absurd as, frex, False Advertising, which also would get one sent to the organ banks.
Of course, the ultimate was on the Home colony, where walking on the grass would and did get someone shot (at least back before the Brennan Monster killed everyone outside of the right age range with aerosolized Tree-Of-Life virus).
Solution: Have the official executioner cut the spinal column near the head, then wait two minutes, and call the doctor. Besides, the Hippocratic Oath is considered outdated in more and more places, especially where some of its clauses become inconvenient.
We put steelworks next to power plants, not vice versa. Steel was built in Pittsburgh because it was close to the coal fields, and relatively easy to transport iron ore on the Great Lakes to a rail-head a bit over 100 miles distant. Aluminum plants were built in the Tennessee valley because of cheap TVA power, the TVA wasn't built to supply the aluminum industry.
Well, we currently only lose about 6-7% of the electric energy we generate to transmission losses.
6% of a trillion-dollar industry is "not all that much"?
6% in most anything big is not very big, especially if the 6% requires replacing the entire grid to get it. It is just the difference between a 93W and a 100W bulb.
imagine having transatlantic cables the thickness of the present internet fibreoptic cables that distributed terawatts of power as well as information. it would not need to be high voltage, so there would be no risk of arcing.
Limited current densities, due to its own induced magnetic fields quenching its superconductivity. Anyway, who is going to sell the current across the Atlantic? Both sides need all that they can generate.
now imagine those cables running across the world's deserts, to a massive array of solar collectors.
Now imagine North Africans NOT holding Europe hostage, or just whacking the cables for fun.
now imagine those cables running to deep ocean temperature-differential power stations (water 1 mile down is 3-4 centigrade lower temperature: you can get about 100 megawatts out of that).
First, the limitations on deep ocean thermal generation are primarily that it is a heat engine, with organic fouling running a close second. And, of course, 100 MW is not a very big generator.
Well, nuclear power hasn't had tremendous impact, or the idea of permanently closing plants after Fukishima would be laughed at by the populace, and those proposing it would be in danger from Green terrorists killing them like Muslim terrorists killing Dutch journalists disparaging Mohammed or Islamic immigrants.
The first uses and users will probably be military and the intelligence communities, and no government allows patent holders to withhold licensed rights for these. Once that is done, the flood gates will open.
And it will not matter if the Chinese discover it first - patents are not automatically granted worldwide like copyright.
Rocket fuels hasn't probably ever been coal and oil based, i very much doubt they ever were.
Saturn V first stage engines burned kerosene. I cannot remember what Project Gemini's Titan or Mercury's Atlas rockets used, but they looked fairly similar to the Apollo flames that I saw back in the good-old-days.
Well, that explains it. Seriously, public education frequently sucks (and I was a graduate of it).
Off Topic, however, since the class was probably 7th or 8th grade, and there is no graphic or even non-graphic sex, just a couple of killings and an unknowing act of species-genocide, at least in Ender's Game. Of course, there is some evidence that the teacher was also reading Internet pr0n to a class of children two years before they would become legal; if the teacher ejaculated the words it would be a class D felony of the 2nd degree in SC, at least according to wikipedia.
But reading Ender's Game where the worst hand-to-hand violence involves a broken nose, is unacceptable?
Broken nose, with the fragments deliberately driven into the brain, killing the assailant. There was another child kicked to death. Ender's Game is not for children, even if his first killing in self-defense occurs when he is six years old.
The parent should be required to read Lady Chatterly to class of 16 year olds.
They are old enough to legally have sex, they should certainly be able to read about it.
Also, it they react to it like I did, it will put them off wanting sex for years. Seriously, those were the most intensely boring sex scenes that I have ever read.
Fortunately, I had some Penthouse magazines back in my dorm room, to counteract Chatterley.
Also much easier when it comes time to deduct the home office use from your 1040. Not using your kitchen for work or your home office for your WoW raids makes the documentation much cleaner when the inevitable tax audit comes, somewhere in the next few years.
And, of course, the real expense is getting to High Earth Orbit. After that, as some hard SF writer put it, you are half way to anywhere. At least in delta-V terms.
I just checked my bookshelves. It was said by Robert Heinlein, and quoted by Jerry Pournelle, first in a column in Galaxy magazine in 1973, then in A Step Farther Out which was published in 1979.
Except that it was just Earth orbit, not high or low or geosynchronous. Even better, for the argument.
So, this was under the guy that the British and Americans overthrew in the early 1950s?
Oh, wait. This must have been under the Evil Shah. How is that possible?
Seriously, Ayatollah Khomeni hated that guy (YOU look up his name) from the 1950s more than he did the Shah, and I expect that attitude is still held by the rest of the mullahs. The reason that people bring up that guy is the same reason Irish Republicans bring up Strongbow and Cromwell, blaming things too long in the past is fun and guarantees no chance of fixing them.
You assume that Khatami had any power over Iranian actions, vs. being a meaningless noise unless backed by the mullahs, which he certainly was not; in fact, I recall them quickly repudiating his offer.
Iran is a theocracy with a civil "government" to handle traffic licenses and commercial matters. Important matters like sorcery, blasphemy, and which countries are Satan are reserved to the clergy, as is which people can be elected as chief of the bureaucracy, aka President of the Republic. I would not be surprised if only the mullahs could legally impose death sentences.
This is basically the equivalent of the situation in the Soviet Union, where the General Secretary of the Communist Party had the power, and the President of the country was just a major functionary.
The distance between TelAviv and Jerusalem is 60km. A nuclear blast would impact botch cities.
The Iranians are not going to be exploding another Tzar Bomba. The weapons used on Tel Aviv would not affect Jerusalem.
OTOH, why would the Iranians care if the Mosque in Jerusalem disappears? It could always be rebuilt after the radiation clears. It is not like it was there before the original Muslim armies took the city from the Roman Empire (that part called Byzantine, but always acknowledged as the continuation of Constantine's), or that it wasn't extensively rebuilt and re-purified after the city was recaptured from the Crusaders. Any holiness that the Sunni-controlled site has to the Iranian Shiites would only be improved by removing the nasty Arabs (Iranian view of Arabs being about what the 19th century English thought of the Catholic Irish).
The supply of ex-nazi rocket scientists has also dried up since we last went to the moon.
Yeah, but the Soviets did not use ex-Nazis much. Their designs, perhaps as starting points, but they tried to work on home-grown talent, after they drained their captured Germans of everything that they knew. Post WWII, the Russians didn't like the Germans enough to let them around anything as dangerous as a MIG, let alone repurposed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Yes. As they put it during Project Mercury, "No Bucks, no Buck Rogers." Well, the reverse is true, as well.
Otherwise, why haven't we covered the Moon in rover tracks by now? It is much easier than controlling them on Mars, after all, and probably easier to land them (although no aerobraking might compensate for the lighter gravity). Likewise, they could have dispersed a wide net of sensors around it, instead of depending on the few left from the Apollo landings.
And, of course, the real expense is getting to High Earth Orbit. After that, as some hard SF writer put it, you are half way to anywhere. At least in delta-V terms.
Slashdot Mirror
Because nerds don't read science fiction (i.e., Larry Niven)?
Sending criminals to the organ banks, and dropping the level of crime that gets one sent there, is the subject of a number of his stories. Also, I expect that the Chinese have Mother Hunts, another trophe from the pre-Kzin War period of Known Space.
eventually to the point where people are being dismantled for mere traffic violations.
That was REPEATED violations. Sort of like three strikes out, with Reckless Driving being the lowest level of strike. Given that people could have died in each offense, it wasn't quite so absurd as, frex, False Advertising, which also would get one sent to the organ banks.
Of course, the ultimate was on the Home colony, where walking on the grass would and did get someone shot (at least back before the Brennan Monster killed everyone outside of the right age range with aerosolized Tree-Of-Life virus).
So cremation is right out, then?
What did they do before modern embalming?
Solution: Have the official executioner cut the spinal column near the head, then wait two minutes, and call the doctor. Besides, the Hippocratic Oath is considered outdated in more and more places, especially where some of its clauses become inconvenient.
We put steelworks next to power plants, not vice versa. Steel was built in Pittsburgh because it was close to the coal fields, and relatively easy to transport iron ore on the Great Lakes to a rail-head a bit over 100 miles distant. Aluminum plants were built in the Tennessee valley because of cheap TVA power, the TVA wasn't built to supply the aluminum industry.
Well, we currently only lose about 6-7% of the electric energy we generate to transmission losses.
6% of a trillion-dollar industry is "not all that much"?
6% in most anything big is not very big, especially if the 6% requires replacing the entire grid to get it. It is just the difference between a 93W and a 100W bulb.
imagine having transatlantic cables the thickness of the present internet fibreoptic cables that distributed terawatts of power as well as information. it would not need to be high voltage, so there would be no risk of arcing.
Limited current densities, due to its own induced magnetic fields quenching its superconductivity. Anyway, who is going to sell the current across the Atlantic? Both sides need all that they can generate.
now imagine those cables running across the world's deserts, to a massive array of solar collectors.
Now imagine North Africans NOT holding Europe hostage, or just whacking the cables for fun.
now imagine those cables running to deep ocean temperature-differential power stations (water 1 mile down is 3-4 centigrade lower temperature: you can get about 100 megawatts out of that).
First, the limitations on deep ocean thermal generation are primarily that it is a heat engine, with organic fouling running a close second. And, of course, 100 MW is not a very big generator.
Well, nuclear power hasn't had tremendous impact, or the idea of permanently closing plants after Fukishima would be laughed at by the populace, and those proposing it would be in danger from Green terrorists killing them like Muslim terrorists killing Dutch journalists disparaging Mohammed or Islamic immigrants.
You're right. It should go to whoever has the biggest or most accurate guns.
EXIT SARC MODE
The first uses and users will probably be military and the intelligence communities, and no government allows patent holders to withhold licensed rights for these. Once that is done, the flood gates will open.
And it will not matter if the Chinese discover it first - patents are not automatically granted worldwide like copyright.
MOD this up, as Informative.
And it would be fattening.
On the bright side, if we can believe the Roadrunner cartoons, it should make satellite retrieval and anvil delivery fairly easy.
Rocket fuels hasn't probably ever been coal and oil based, i very much doubt they ever were.
Saturn V first stage engines burned kerosene. I cannot remember what Project Gemini's Titan or Mercury's Atlas rockets used, but they looked fairly similar to the Apollo flames that I saw back in the good-old-days.
What were you invested in, passbook accounts at the local Savings & Loan?
And it was a Catholic school!
Well, that explains it. Seriously, public education frequently sucks (and I was a graduate of it).
Off Topic, however, since the class was probably 7th or 8th grade, and there is no graphic or even non-graphic sex, just a couple of killings and an unknowing act of species-genocide, at least in Ender's Game. Of course, there is some evidence that the teacher was also reading Internet pr0n to a class of children two years before they would become legal; if the teacher ejaculated the words it would be a class D felony of the 2nd degree in SC, at least according to wikipedia.
But reading Ender's Game where the worst hand-to-hand violence involves a broken nose, is unacceptable?
Broken nose, with the fragments deliberately driven into the brain, killing the assailant. There was another child kicked to death. Ender's Game is not for children, even if his first killing in self-defense occurs when he is six years old.
The parent should be required to read Lady Chatterly to class of 16 year olds.
They are old enough to legally have sex, they should certainly be able to read about it.
Also, it they react to it like I did, it will put them off wanting sex for years. Seriously, those were the most intensely boring sex scenes that I have ever read.
Fortunately, I had some Penthouse magazines back in my dorm room, to counteract Chatterley.
Also much easier when it comes time to deduct the home office use from your 1040. Not using your kitchen for work or your home office for your WoW raids makes the documentation much cleaner when the inevitable tax audit comes, somewhere in the next few years.
And, of course, the real expense is getting to High Earth Orbit. After that, as some hard SF writer put it, you are half way to anywhere. At least in delta-V terms.
I just checked my bookshelves. It was said by Robert Heinlein, and quoted by Jerry Pournelle, first in a column in Galaxy magazine in 1973, then in A Step Farther Out which was published in 1979.
Except that it was just Earth orbit, not high or low or geosynchronous. Even better, for the argument.
So, this was under the guy that the British and Americans overthrew in the early 1950s?
Oh, wait. This must have been under the Evil Shah. How is that possible?
Seriously, Ayatollah Khomeni hated that guy (YOU look up his name) from the 1950s more than he did the Shah, and I expect that attitude is still held by the rest of the mullahs. The reason that people bring up that guy is the same reason Irish Republicans bring up Strongbow and Cromwell, blaming things too long in the past is fun and guarantees no chance of fixing them.
You assume that Khatami had any power over Iranian actions, vs. being a meaningless noise unless backed by the mullahs, which he certainly was not; in fact, I recall them quickly repudiating his offer.
Iran is a theocracy with a civil "government" to handle traffic licenses and commercial matters. Important matters like sorcery, blasphemy, and which countries are Satan are reserved to the clergy, as is which people can be elected as chief of the bureaucracy, aka President of the Republic. I would not be surprised if only the mullahs could legally impose death sentences.
This is basically the equivalent of the situation in the Soviet Union, where the General Secretary of the Communist Party had the power, and the President of the country was just a major functionary.
They had better be careful. The rating agencies in the West caused an awful lot of damage, there, too.
The distance between TelAviv and Jerusalem is 60km. A nuclear blast would impact botch cities.
The Iranians are not going to be exploding another Tzar Bomba. The weapons used on Tel Aviv would not affect Jerusalem.
OTOH, why would the Iranians care if the Mosque in Jerusalem disappears? It could always be rebuilt after the radiation clears. It is not like it was there before the original Muslim armies took the city from the Roman Empire (that part called Byzantine, but always acknowledged as the continuation of Constantine's), or that it wasn't extensively rebuilt and re-purified after the city was recaptured from the Crusaders. Any holiness that the Sunni-controlled site has to the Iranian Shiites would only be improved by removing the nasty Arabs (Iranian view of Arabs being about what the 19th century English thought of the Catholic Irish).
The supply of ex-nazi rocket scientists has also dried up since we last went to the moon.
Yeah, but the Soviets did not use ex-Nazis much. Their designs, perhaps as starting points, but they tried to work on home-grown talent, after they drained their captured Germans of everything that they knew. Post WWII, the Russians didn't like the Germans enough to let them around anything as dangerous as a MIG, let alone repurposed intercontinental ballistic missiles.
Is there any advantage to sending a person?
Yes. As they put it during Project Mercury, "No Bucks, no Buck Rogers." Well, the reverse is true, as well.
Otherwise, why haven't we covered the Moon in rover tracks by now? It is much easier than controlling them on Mars, after all, and probably easier to land them (although no aerobraking might compensate for the lighter gravity). Likewise, they could have dispersed a wide net of sensors around it, instead of depending on the few left from the Apollo landings.
And, of course, the real expense is getting to High Earth Orbit. After that, as some hard SF writer put it, you are half way to anywhere. At least in delta-V terms.