Re:What it is good for?
on
On to Mars
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· Score: 1
Oh yeah? Well then the first mistake was made when we got down from the trees in the first place. Back then there were no wars and weapons were not destructive at all. There was no pollution and other bad things. Tell me humans lived better back then. You'd be wrong, because their lifespan was ~20 years and they would often just get eaten by a bigger animal. Tell me we don't live better now. And about "reduced resources" on Earth: We haven't even begun exploiting Earth's resources. May be just oil. So say when we in the future have to dig deeper and deeper for aluminum or iron or whatever at higher and higher cost, would it not be better to go to an asteroid that is 90% made of metals and just mine it instead of Earth. Making Earth perfect before we go off to space is impossible and infeasible. The solution of Earth's problemd goes via space. If you want to stop pollution, then build your industry somewhere else, like in orbit or on Mars, or on an asteroid. Besides you yourself say that nothing has really changed in centuries. What is the prospect of it changing in the next few centuries? Then why not spend that little amount on space exploration? Whiners like you are shame for humanity and slashdot.
Re:First we need a good launcher...
on
On to Mars
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· Score: 1
Two words: Nuclear Propulsion. Not that we will see it any time soon...
Re:Another benefit of the Station...
on
On to Mars
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· Score: 1
While you could construct a Mars craft in orbit on the ISS, you would not be able to launch it to Mars without some significant cost overhead. This is because the ISS is in an orbit that is not feasible for going off to Mars. I think the Russians demanded that. Anyway, I think there are rockets that could get a manned Mars mission craft in one go.
A primate monkey would be better than elephant because it is almost as complex as human. Also, monkeys have a sort of vague consciousness in the sense that they are somewhat aware of themselves existing.
Why did people evolve so slowly until the 1800's? Well, as far as I know, people haven't evolved much in the last 100,000 years. Still 5 fingers, two eyes, a bit less hairy, etc. You mean the rate of progress of science.
You may have a point on this one. But consider this: in order to undertake and complete a large free software project, you need some resources (money) to start with. Microsoft for example has been sucessful with IE, which is "free" and is probably the best browser around. But they had like 1000 programmers working on it paid for by Windows sales revenue. I can see free software written under a licence of the sort of "free for non-commercial use". For example a big company financing a software project that would benefit it and then giving the software away for free for non-commercial use so that other companies can't use it. Notice by the way I am not speaking against open-source software. Open source is good, but I guess what is preventing people from releasing a lot of source code is the licensing, especially the GPL. I know that if I ever released some of my source, it will not be GPL'd. Another thing with free software is that usually it does not come with a warranty or a guarantee of any kind and if something goes wrong, there is noone you can blame for it. That is, you are responsible if the free software you got fails. And software often fails. Imagine a mission critical system. Imagine people dying, because Joe Freesoftware didn't care to catch an exception. Oh well, I may be ranting but I am just being devil's advocate here.
First, there is a difference between free and open source software. You are talking about free software. The problem here is that in the scientific and mathematical communities it is not companies that are doing work but individuals, who cannot profit from their work. Companies are also into scientific research beacause they can make profit from patents. It is the same with software. Companies are in it because they can make a profit. With this profit thousands of programmers feed their children. Those same programmers maybe write free software in their free time. Now the problem is that non-software companies would use free software and make a profit of their own. Now why are you willing to help a large corporation by reducing their cost on software expenditure. Besides, software is not a mathematical truth or a scientific discovery. It is more like a machine. All machines cost money. Writing software involves a lot of creativity. Why don't artists give away their paintings for free? Because they have to eat maybe? Imagine a large and sophisticated CAD package. Say 100 programmers spent a year developing it. Why should it be free? Taking over the world? Give me a break.
Did the fighters you mention use afterburners for cruise? The Concorde does too, I think. However, the F-22 is supposed to cruise without using afterburner i.e. just normal turbofan regime. The SR-71 uses a ramjet engine so it's in a league of its own.
Sharon Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to fly in space Well, I agree on everything, except that she didn't quite fly in space. It was still suborbital when that (bad) thing happened. So more accurately, the first teacher that would fly in space. Sorry. Had to.
Challenger did not *explode*. It was more of fuel conflagration (burning more fuel than it should, faster). I think 'explosion' by definition requires air(gases) going at supersonic speeds, which did not happen in the Challanger disaster.
I agree than Real Player is now a bloated piece of junk. Why does it have to be >40 megs? The damn thing (at least for Win) has an Internet Explorer engine inside it. It takes 5 minutes to start so it want to load "StartCenter" so that it keeps half of the player always running and thus loading the thing faster when you need it. Window Media Player is much better. That is if you have Windows.
...because if you use a compiler, your program includes both your mistakes and the mistakes made by the person(s) who wrote the compiler, eh? Twice the mistakes.
The V2 actually did a lot of damage to England during WWII. Sure, it was not that accurate but it worked. A very similar design is still used today as the Scud missile (the ones Iraq fired against Israel during the Gulf war). Also, IIRC, the V2 was one of the first rockets to reach the upper atmosphere (about low Earth orbit altitude) and take video footage of the Earth.
OK, I agree that Smaller, Cheaper, Better is not *that* bad, but I was just pissed that gov keeps decreasing the NASA budget and then are pissed that missions fail and cut its budget again. Right now NASA is the only agency that has the ability to do space exploration and it is a pity... I read about a survey that asked people what % of the budget was spent on NASA and most people said 10%-20%, while in fact less than 1% of the US budget goes to NASA. That is probably why people don't care if they cut it more. Besides, there is nobody to compete with these days. I think if someone finds a commercial use for space exploration private companies will take ir over from the government and hopefully... Ah, but I'm babbling.
Apparently the "smaller, cheaper, better" NASA directive is not successful. They should go back to the big and expensive missions. Like Gallileo, Cassini and the ones before them (Chandra, Viking, Voyager, etc.). At least they don't fail(I think from the big ones only Mars Observer failed by exploding before landing). Also, I've noticed that too many Mars missions are failing. The Russians lost all 3 of theirs (one returned some data about Phobos) and NASA is not doing much better. It must be the Martian Air Force as a previous poster said.
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Oh yeah? Well then the first mistake was made when we got down from the trees in the first place. Back then there were no wars and weapons were not destructive at all. There was no pollution and other bad things. Tell me humans lived better back then. You'd be wrong, because their lifespan was ~20 years and they would often just get eaten by a bigger animal. Tell me we don't live better now.
And about "reduced resources" on Earth: We haven't even begun exploiting Earth's resources. May be just oil. So say when we in the future have to dig deeper and deeper for aluminum or iron or whatever at higher and higher cost, would it not be better to go to an asteroid that is 90% made of metals and just mine it instead of Earth.
Making Earth perfect before we go off to space is impossible and infeasible. The solution of Earth's problemd goes via space. If you want to stop pollution, then build your industry somewhere else, like in orbit or on Mars, or on an asteroid. Besides you yourself say that nothing has really changed in centuries. What is the prospect of it changing in the next few centuries? Then why not spend that little amount on space exploration? Whiners like you are shame for humanity and slashdot.
Two words: Nuclear Propulsion. Not that we will see it any time soon...
While you could construct a Mars craft in orbit on the ISS, you would not be able to launch it to Mars without some significant cost overhead. This is because the ISS is in an orbit that is not feasible for going off to Mars. I think the Russians demanded that.
Anyway, I think there are rockets that could get a manned Mars mission craft in one go.
Maybe they should start selling the coffee cold then? Thus avoiding severe scalding.
A primate monkey would be better than elephant because it is almost as complex as human. Also, monkeys have a sort of vague consciousness in the sense that they are somewhat aware of themselves existing.
Why did people evolve so slowly until the 1800's?
Well, as far as I know, people haven't evolved much in the last 100,000 years. Still 5 fingers, two eyes, a bit less hairy, etc. You mean the rate of progress of science.
You may have a point on this one. But consider this: in order to undertake and complete a large free software project, you need some resources (money) to start with. Microsoft for example has been sucessful with IE, which is "free" and is probably the best browser around. But they had like 1000 programmers working on it paid for by Windows sales revenue. I can see free software written under a licence of the sort of "free for non-commercial use". For example a big company financing a software project that would benefit it and then giving the software away for free for non-commercial use so that other companies can't use it. Notice by the way I am not speaking against open-source software. Open source is good, but I guess what is preventing people from releasing a lot of source code is the licensing, especially the GPL. I know that if I ever released some of my source, it will not be GPL'd. Another thing with free software is that usually it does not come with a warranty or a guarantee of any kind and if something goes wrong, there is noone you can blame for it. That is, you are responsible if the free software you got fails. And software often fails. Imagine a mission critical system. Imagine people dying, because Joe Freesoftware didn't care to catch an exception. Oh well, I may be ranting but I am just being devil's advocate here.
No, I just want to be able to make a living from writing software.
First, there is a difference between free and open source software. You are talking about free software. The problem here is that in the scientific and mathematical communities it is not companies that are doing work but individuals, who cannot profit from their work. Companies are also into scientific research beacause they can make profit from patents. It is the same with software. Companies are in it because they can make a profit. With this profit thousands of programmers feed their children. Those same programmers maybe write free software in their free time. Now the problem is that non-software companies would use free software and make a profit of their own. Now why are you willing to help a large corporation by reducing their cost on software expenditure.
Besides, software is not a mathematical truth or a scientific discovery. It is more like a machine. All machines cost money.
Writing software involves a lot of creativity. Why don't artists give away their paintings for free? Because they have to eat maybe?
Imagine a large and sophisticated CAD package. Say 100 programmers spent a year developing it. Why should it be free?
Taking over the world? Give me a break.
I think you are the nazi. Just read your own stuff and see who's the zealot. The guy was just kidding.
Did the fighters you mention use afterburners for cruise? The Concorde does too, I think. However, the F-22 is supposed to cruise without using afterburner i.e. just normal turbofan regime. The SR-71 uses a ramjet engine so it's in a league of its own.
Java3D uses OpenGL.
Sharon Christa McAuliffe, the first teacher to fly in space Well, I agree on everything, except that she didn't quite fly in space. It was still suborbital when that (bad) thing happened. So more accurately, the first teacher that would fly in space. Sorry. Had to.
Challenger did not *explode*. It was more of fuel conflagration (burning more fuel than it should, faster). I think 'explosion' by definition requires air(gases) going at supersonic speeds, which did not happen in the Challanger disaster.
I agree than Real Player is now a bloated piece of junk. Why does it have to be >40 megs? The damn thing (at least for Win) has an Internet Explorer engine inside it. It takes 5 minutes to start so it want to load "StartCenter" so that it keeps half of the player always running and thus loading the thing faster when you need it. Window Media Player is much better. That is if you have Windows.
In fact it might be hard for the Hubble to see even if it crashed on Earth, not on Mars! (well, depending on how big a crater it made, if any).
I hope you are not serious about all this...
Anything short of intelligent life would be news for only about a day or less. Nobody really cares about microbes. You will see...
...because if you use a compiler, your program includes both your mistakes and the mistakes made by the person(s) who wrote the compiler, eh? Twice the mistakes.
The V2 actually did a lot of damage to England during WWII. Sure, it was not that accurate but it worked. A very similar design is still used today as the Scud missile (the ones Iraq fired against Israel during the Gulf war). Also, IIRC, the V2 was one of the first rockets to reach the upper atmosphere (about low Earth orbit altitude) and take video footage of the Earth.
Actually I think a lot of game programming is still done in assembly, because of the need for speed.
OK, I agree that Smaller, Cheaper, Better is not *that* bad, but I was just pissed that gov keeps decreasing the NASA budget and then are pissed that missions fail and cut its budget again. Right now NASA is the only agency that has the ability to do space exploration and it is a pity... I read about a survey that asked people what % of the budget was spent on NASA and most people said 10%-20%, while in fact less than 1% of the US budget goes to NASA. That is probably why people don't care if they cut it more. Besides, there is nobody to compete with these days. I think if someone finds a commercial use for space exploration private companies will take ir over from the government and hopefully... Ah, but I'm babbling.
Apparently the "smaller, cheaper, better" NASA directive is not successful. They should go back to the big and expensive missions. Like Gallileo, Cassini and the ones before them (Chandra, Viking, Voyager, etc.). At least they don't fail(I think from the big ones only Mars Observer failed by exploding before landing). Also, I've noticed that too many Mars missions are failing. The Russians lost all 3 of theirs (one returned some data about Phobos) and NASA is not doing much better. It must be the Martian Air Force as a previous poster said.
Yeah, that happens if you don't restart(or shut down) your computer at all. My IP hardly ever changes too (twice or three times for 6 months now).
Yep. First Java, then Dylan. Smells like Cornell. Me too. 100, 212.