I seem to recall that Buran program never progressed beyond a few aerodynamic trials and an unmanned test flight that went twice around the earth. Seems I was told at the time that the frame of the orbiter was bent so far out of whack during reentry that they couldn't have launched it again if they'd wanted to.
I haven't heard that story. Buran certainly flew unfinished (her avionics and life support systems were unfinished), but AFAIK she was then completed at Baikonur.
Was it more expensive than the present US shuttle?
No, much cheaper since the engines did not need to be reusable.
It was the collapse of Communism that did for Buran (ironic really since the costs of Buran had directly contributed to the busting of the Soviet economy). The Russians performed a miracle in keeping any part of their space industry going - let alone developing new vehicles (which they have managed), but the cost of that was the loss of the interplanetary programme and Buran.
Since Buran was every bit as much a political animal as the Shuttle, it had no support when the Soviet Union imploded. It was not widely missed, the ending of the Russian deep space programme was a major blow as it left NASA as the sole player in deep space exploration. And we all know how that budget has been dicked around with to keep the Shuttle going.
I hope that the Russia/ESA collaboration on probes will yield a new golden age in space exploration, there is a huge amount of talent in the former Soviet Union that produced some truly remarkable vessels; its time they got another chance.
information will these rovers be collecting? Will they be sending many photos back to Earth?
They have panoramic colour stereo cameras which will be sending LOTS of pictures back to Earth.
Each robot also comes with a microscope camera which will be used to return images of polished rock surfaces. The robot will drill into rocks, clean off any surface erosion and grind out a flat surface. The microscope camera will take a picture for analysis back on Earth.
Additionally, each rover is carrying a thermal emission spectrometer which is used to determine rock composition from their thermal characteristics. They have been tuned to look for carbonates and clay minerals both of which require water for formation.
There is also a MÃssbauer spectrometer, a device designed to look for iron-rich minerals (we suspect the surface of Mars is red because of iron compounds). This will also help determine the magnetic characteristics of the Martian soil.
Finally, there is an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer which is used to determine the presence of rare earth and actinide elements in the rocks and soil.
The rovers will not be looking for water or life. For that, there is the Beagle 2 lander, already en-route to Mars.
It seems although the two american rovers launch more than two weeks apart, they arrive within a day. So why didn't they launch them both at the most favorable day? Wouldn't that be cheaper?
It would require keeping two teams working simultaneously, separate launches allows one team to work, have people replaced if they go sick, then stand down and help the second launch team.
Also, they launch one rocket near the opening of the Mars launch window, if that one slips (as this one did), it doesn't matter too much as there is plenty of time left to launch and then launch the second.
On behalf of the Zhti Ti Kofft (and it is nice to see at least one of you using our proper names); I should like to take this opportunity to inform you of onesimple rule when approaching our planet.
Actually, you've pretty much nailed the Soviet philosophy of designing rockets. You build 'em, you fire 'em, if they work - do it again. If not, find out what went wrong, tweak the design, fire it again.
There was never the time or the money to build test stands for entire rockets, so they figured it was easier to build the rockets.
This approach meant they could quickly get the R7 ICBM ready for space purposes and launch Sputnik. Then by tweaking that design they got themselves a whole family of cheap, reliable rockets which are still going up today under the name Soyuz.
The downside is that as rockets got bigger and more complicated, it required more test flights to debug the designs. Proton was a wretched rocket during the late 1960s, if it didn't start cracking on the pad it would explode in flight. Today though it is a real star.
But when the Soviets came to design their N1 'Moon rocket', the test flight approach was unsustainable, the machine was too complicated and never flew reliably.
Most notably with the Soviet Union's dreadful record of getting spacecraft to Mars. A good number of the craft listed as failures actually never got away from Earth.
Take their early record, before Mars 1 got to Mars, they had had a series of attempts. Two, known to the West as Mars1960 A and B reached Earth orbit then disintegrated.
Mars1962 A exploded in orbit at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis - briefly causing a panic with the Americans thinking a missile attack was underway. Fortunately the computers soon told them that doomsday had been averted.
Next, was a partial success - Mars 1. Which smashed the record for deep-space communications with Earth across a distance of 106 million kilometres. Unfortunately it failed just before reaching Mars.
Mars1962 B exploded in Earth orbit and didn't appear in the Soviet record.
November 1964 saw the launch of Zond 2, a highly advanced probe using ion thrusters to perform stabilisation and orientation tasks. It may have also been the first probe to carry a lander. It died a long and lingering death before sweeping past Mars at only 1400 km altitude. (By this time the US had got their first Mars probe to the planet in working order, Mariner 4 took 22 pictures of the planet from 10 000 km. (Its sister ship, Mariner 3 had failed en-route)).
Neither side went to Mars in the next launch window, but 1969 was a busy year. Three attempts for the Soviet Union, including at least one lander. Mars 1969A exploded in flight as did Mars 1969B. Mars 1969C was removed from the pad after cracks developed in the relatively new Proton rocket design. (Cracking in the Proton was also a major reason for the failure of the Soviet Union to send a manned mission around the Moon during 1969). The US had a twin success with Mariners 5 and 6 flying past Mars.
On to 1971 and a pair of launches for the US, Mariner 8 ended up in the Atlantic, Mariner 9 went on to become one of the most successful missions ever and the first probe to orbit Mars. For the Soviets - mixed results again. Their first mission reached Earth orbit, but went no further and was named Kosmos 419. But then both Mars 2 and 3 left Earth orbit. They each comprised of a lander and an orbiter. The two craft jettisoned the lander before entering Martian orbit - just as the planet entered an intense dust storm with raging winds and almost total blackout.
Mars 2's lander was apparently DOA, it remained silent and does not appear to have returned any data. It was however the first craft to hit (not land on) Mars.
Mars 3's lander was more successful. It entered the atmosphere, deployed parachutes and landed on rockets. It deployed its antenna and began to transmit the first picture from the Martian surface. Sadly, just 20 seconds later the transmission stopped. The Soviets said that the lander's parachutes had been caught by the storm and pulled it over.
Mars 2 and Mars 3 orbiters remained on-line and performed experiments on the Martian atmosphere and took photos of the surface. So I would call both missions a partial success and Mars 3 almost a triumph.
The next window was 1973 and the Soviets planned no less than 4 missions to Mars. Mars 4 and Mars 5 would be orbital missions, studying the planet much like Mariner 9, but also serving as telecoms relays for the Mars 6 and Mars 7 heavy landers.
Incredibly, bearing in mind the past track record of the Soviets, all four missions reached Mars in working order. Then everything went wrong. Mars 4's main engine failed and the probe did not enter orbit, it relayed images of the planet as it swept past into solar orbit. Mars 5 was next and was the only unqualified success of the year; it was the first craft to return colour images of Mars.
The two landers then arrived, Mars 7 first, it deployed the lander, but an attitude problem meant that the lander actually missed the planet entirely! Mars 6 was more lucky, the probe entered the Martian atmosphere, took readings all the way down and went dead ab
You're forgetting that Sweden is one of the most egalitarian societies in the World. The gap between rich and poor is relatively narrow.
Part of Sweden's economic restructuring is to align the economy more strongly with the remainder of the Euro area. Sweden isn't yet in the Euro, the referendum is later this year, but its economy is strongly influenced by the Euro. Should Sweden choose to join the Euro, it will need to bring government spending, deficits and the like into line with ECB norms.
The Thatcherite/Reagan approach has served to widen the gap between rich and poor and to concentrate wealth at the top of society.
And those policies fuel the problems that Britain and America have with a huge part of the population unable to take a full part in society, whether it is because they can't get a decent house, that their health care is sub-standard or that they can't get into a university.
I doubt if there is one model that will make people happy, but I strongly suspect that neither extreme is the best solution.
Blair following Bush, they agreed ON ONE THING!!! how is he following him, are you stupid? yes, yes you are.
If only it were. Blair's government undermined a common EU response to the American refusal to deal with the ICC. Blair is busy undermining a common EU position on the import of GM foods and hormone-treated meat. He refuses to confront the US on its illegal steel and agriculture tariffs or the huge subsidies it has been paying to the airline industry. He is in the process of allowing American media companies to buy British media groups without insisting on reciprocal rights.
Blair refuses to condemn the US government's illegal holding of suspects (including Britons) following September 11th. As well as the latest bloodbath, Blair was the only foreign leader to back Bill Clinton's illegal and unjustified attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory - an attack which was there to distract from Bill's blow jobs. You can judge a man by the company he keeps - in which case Blair is a real creep.
Blair told the World that the future is monopolar (ie. American) and that we all have to do what it says. Strangely, the rest of the EU thought that one of the purposes of the EU was to build an effective counterweight to American power.
Bush is now using Blair's steps to peace between Israel and Palestine... and nobody mention a thing
What you forgot to mention was that the Israelis and the Americans insisted that no European diplomats took part in the so-called peace process. We're just expected to keep paying for rebuilding Palestine each time the Israelis bulldoze it.
Blair's sole regret in life is not the illegal bombing of a country justified on a lie; but that he wasn't born an American. Still, Libby Dole and her fellow right-wingers will be giving him a nice big shiny medal soon. What a good boy! Look, if you say free trade he rolls over and let's you tickle his tummy!
I do agree with you on one thing, Blair isn't a poodle, they're much more independent creatures.
Apart from that you are introducing complexity into a design for very little gain...?
The current rovers have been designed to survive the forces of the launch, the baking and freezing imposed by the journey to Mars, the impact of the solar wind, the forces imposed by re-entry, deceleration and impact, the constant UV flux and the highly reactive Martian surface.
AIBO was designed to get around a flat, friendly living room, it would fail all the above tests. It doesn't lift its legs very far to walk, nor does it recognise walls or drop-offs so obstacle avoidance isn't present.
Not to mention that AIBO is smaller and lighter for the simple reason he has no instrumentation onboard. He wouldn't be very useful.
You could add extra computing power to the system, but either that would be present on a lander, which would reduce the weight for actual science, or you'd have to send all the commands back to Earth for processing - which would be painful.
You could have a walking robot on Mars, but the benefits seem somewhat elusive. And if legged robots do go to Mars, I think they'll owe more to the likes of Genghis than to AIBO.
That, actually, is sort of interesting. What would it take to create an Sony Aibo based scientific rover?
A real problem with the Martian environment is that the dust on the surface is extraordinarily fine and penetrates deeply into any crevices. Worse still it is likely to be attracted by static charges that accumulate on the landers.
Since Martian dust is hard and abrasive it would quickly get to work on the joints of the machines making them much more prone to failure.
Wheels, particularly those on the rovers which are largely sealed units show much less vulnerability to wear and tear.
Notice that the Beagle II - part of the Mars Express mission - is totally privately funded. Blur [1] and Damien Hirst [2] were involved and they helped to raise funds.
Sorry, there is no private funding of Beagle 2. It has been paid for as a consortium by the Department of Trade and Industry, ESA, the Wellcome Trust and PPARC. The involvement of Damien Hirst and Blur has been on a volunteer basis - both for their contributions and for the publicity they can give the project.
In six months time you will be getting email offering surgery-free tentacle enlargement, low-low rate Mars Express credit cards (ahem) and cheap inkjet refills.
The Middle East has approximately 65% of all known reserves (and the largest amount of probable reserves in structures that have not been tapped). The Former Soviet Union possesses about 7% of World reserves of which a large amount can never be tapped due to bad management of reserves in the past. North America (which includes large reserves in Canada) comes in just below that with 6.7%. Europe trails in with a pitiful 2%, most of which is in Norway.
In recent years, just about all of the new big discoveries have been in the Middle East. America production is in steady long term decline no matter what those fantasists who want to dig up Alaska and the national parks like to think. The US is one of the best known geological regions in the World - there are no new 'giants' waiting to be discovered.
World production is increasingly concentrated in fewer large fields. 14% of World reserves lie in 8 enormous oil fields with more than 30 billion barrels apiece. Of the 50 000 or so oil fields in the World, more than 1/2 of production comes from just 120 fields. Almost none of which lie inside America.
No matter what, we are at the point where oil production is peaking. Fewer fields are being discovered and the average size of the new fields is falling. Billion barrel discoveries have been on a falling rate since the 1940s, 500 million barrel discoveries since the 1960s. More than 80% of global oil production is coming from fields discovered before the energy crunch of 1973, current discoveries are less than 1/3 of usage and falling.
All the time of course, oil consumption is rising.
If that wasn't gloomy enough there is the really worrying possibility is that almost all reserves have been inflated. The USGS has a long history of upping reserves without good reason and many members of OPEC have inflated their reserves to gain larger production quotas. We might actually have less oil than we think.
And as for Britain, well all that oil and gas which has been helping balance the government's books is really starting to run out. The big downturn in production is less than 10 years away.
Sooner or later we're all going to be looking in the same direction for the lovely stuff. One of the new big players in the Persian Gulf is the Chinese State Oil Company, the PRC has already declared that the Persian Gulf is a region of strategic interest for the Chinese. Oh good - the current superpower and the next superpower both looking hungrily at someone else's oil.
Part of the reason that the energia was pulled out of active service was the environmental impact of the thing. Claiming to lift up to 100 tones in to high altitude the rocket packed a huge punch in terms of fuel. So much so that it had a demonstratable impact on the launch site. This and the cost made it untenable. It's easier, less costly, lower risk to launch large structures (eg ISS) into orbit in a modular fashion.
The loss of its two major 'customers', Buran and Mir 2 were the killing blow to the Energia programme. The fragmentation of the Soviet industry when the Ukraine broke away prevented it being revived. The Ukrainians built the reusable strap-on boosters for Energia and chose to switch to the new Zenit booster which is now used by Sealaunch.
The reason is not all oil is the same. Some requires more processing and refining than others. Some is more suitable for certain tasks, than others. Oil from the Middle East tends to be of the higher quality variety. Oil from the North Sea and much of America is lower grade.
Not quite; it is to do with the relative fractions that can be distilled from the oil. North Sea oil is extremely light, sweet (low sulphur) oil which yields large amounts of gasoline without further catalytic cracking.
Middle Eastern crude from the Southern Gulf is a heavier oil better suited to fuel oil and kerosene. It can be turned into gasoline, but requires cracking.
North Sea oil is so desirable that Brent Crude is one of the international price benchmarks. Crude from the US covers almost the whole range of possible compositions.
Middle Eastern crude (of which the US is not a major customer) is liked because it can be raised extremely cheaply in vast quantities and the infrastructure exists to move it to market. And we'll carry on liking it because soon enough it will be all that's left.
The cinema has been repainted in that self-same homicidal shade of Easyjet orange.
I was waiting for a bus on the opposite side of the road yesterday and I think I might have suffered permanent retina damage.
The opening was delayed because Milton Keynes city council objected to the painting of the building in orange. They said it might bring down the architectural standard of the local buildings!
The Point (as in 'What's The Point'?) Milton Keynes was the first multiplex in the UK and probably cursed from that moment by opening with 'Rocky IV'.
The reason UCI pulled out was falling attendance at the cinema, which has to be blamed on the piss-poor state of the cinema.
Watching a movie at UCI was an act of endurance; there was no sound-proofing between screens - so you might be trying to enjoy a quiet movie whilst Arnie grunted his way through his latest crapfest.
And then the projectors were continually out of focus - subtitles were unreadable and 'The Phantom Menace' was actually worse than normal.
UCI were only interested in fleecing the customers, they claimed to regularly service their projectors - but things only got worse.
As soon as Cineworld opened over in the XScape complex we all went over there. (Although the Lara Croftesque advert for Cineworld is bloody annoying). UCI we didn't miss you.
A question. Since just about every hand-held camera these days has autofocus - why don't cinema projectors come complete with an autofocus to keep them sharp?
Best wishes,
Mike.
Okay so how do you kill a smart card?
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UK Pushing ID Cards
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· Score: 2, Interesting
With the current state of British politics, Blunkett is going to get his latest bit of Big Brother technology. The 'Opposition' is a waste of space, and the Labour Party has no spine. Blunkett, for some strange reason is in Blair's favour and a good contendor to take over the Party when Blair finally takes up his desired American citizenship.
Blunkett is a serial offender; even amongst all the members of the Cabinet, he has to be the worst of the lot. He screwed up education when he was minister there - and look what's happening there right now - unwanted tests, an exam system in chaos and schools on the point of collapse. Since going to the Home Office, he's picked on the judicial system for not being as populist as he is and been in a race with John Ashcroft to see who can introduce the most totalitarian laws.
Put it like this, he's making Michael Howard look liberal.
We're all going to need these cards if we want to do anything like open a bank account, claim our state entitlements, travel outside of the UK, get a job... and we're going to have to pay £25 for a card.
Blunkett has been told by fellow ministers, IT experts and the general public (as part of a so-called 'consultation exercise') that the technology is neither feasible, useful or wanted.
So, one question - how do you kill a smart card without obviously damaging the card? Electricity, the microwave, the hot cycle?
And as for Blunkett? I feel sorry for his guide dog.
The aluminium tubes were supposedly going to be used for the manufacture of centrifuges needed in a uranium enrichment programme.
Actually the origin was one of Blair's scare stories to panic the British population into war that was then picked up by the American government.
Had Blair even bothered to look at the evidence he would have seen that the Iraqis had never managed to get centrifuge cascades up and running and had barely got a single centrifuge working in the lab. They could not have afforded the energy nor the manpower needed to run a full scale enrichment programme.
That they didn't have any uranium to enrich was also a slight drawback to any weapons programme, but again none of our glorious leaders seemed to think that might put the mockers on the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme.
But hey, since when has Tony worried about the facts?
ESA abandoned the Ariane 5/Hermes mini-shuttle when the economics spiralled out of control. ESA have conducted studies on various spaceplanes, but always it comes down to the extraordinary amounts of money that would be required to get such a project up and running.
Buran was one of the major contributors to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Had it been continued the economics would have been almost as bad as those of the Shuttle. But Buran was a superior craft.
The Chinese have demonstrated models of a space shuttle and have announced they plan to build something along the lines of a reusable space craft, but their programme is secretive its difficult to tell what is going on.
Unless someone can show a good reason for men to travel into space, or unless some country decides that a bit of grandstanding is needed in space, then the Space Shuttle will be one of a kind.
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I haven't heard that story. Buran certainly flew unfinished (her avionics and life support systems were unfinished), but AFAIK she was then completed at Baikonur.
Anyone know for a fact?
Best wishes,
Mike.
No, much cheaper since the engines did not need to be reusable.
It was the collapse of Communism that did for Buran (ironic really since the costs of Buran had directly contributed to the busting of the Soviet economy). The Russians performed a miracle in keeping any part of their space industry going - let alone developing new vehicles (which they have managed), but the cost of that was the loss of the interplanetary programme and Buran.
Since Buran was every bit as much a political animal as the Shuttle, it had no support when the Soviet Union imploded. It was not widely missed, the ending of the Russian deep space programme was a major blow as it left NASA as the sole player in deep space exploration. And we all know how that budget has been dicked around with to keep the Shuttle going.
I hope that the Russia/ESA collaboration on probes will yield a new golden age in space exploration, there is a huge amount of talent in the former Soviet Union that produced some truly remarkable vessels; its time they got another chance.
Best wishes,
Mike.
BAe - British Aerospace. Still British, still crap. Best wishes, Mike.
They have panoramic colour stereo cameras which will be sending LOTS of pictures back to Earth.
Each robot also comes with a microscope camera which will be used to return images of polished rock surfaces. The robot will drill into rocks, clean off any surface erosion and grind out a flat surface. The microscope camera will take a picture for analysis back on Earth.
Additionally, each rover is carrying a thermal emission spectrometer which is used to determine rock composition from their thermal characteristics. They have been tuned to look for carbonates and clay minerals both of which require water for formation.
There is also a MÃssbauer spectrometer, a device designed to look for iron-rich minerals (we suspect the surface of Mars is red because of iron compounds). This will also help determine the magnetic characteristics of the Martian soil.
Finally, there is an alpha particle X-ray spectrometer which is used to determine the presence of rare earth and actinide elements in the rocks and soil.
The rovers will not be looking for water or life. For that, there is the Beagle 2 lander, already en-route to Mars.
Hope that helps.
Mike.
It would require keeping two teams working simultaneously, separate launches allows one team to work, have people replaced if they go sick, then stand down and help the second launch team.
Also, they launch one rocket near the opening of the Mars launch window, if that one slips (as this one did), it doesn't matter too much as there is plenty of time left to launch and then launch the second.
Best wishes,
Mike.
On behalf of the Zhti Ti Kofft (and it is nice to see at least one of you using our proper names); I should like to take this opportunity to inform you of one simple rule when approaching our planet.
We drive on the left.
Thank you.
There was never the time or the money to build test stands for entire rockets, so they figured it was easier to build the rockets.
This approach meant they could quickly get the R7 ICBM ready for space purposes and launch Sputnik. Then by tweaking that design they got themselves a whole family of cheap, reliable rockets which are still going up today under the name Soyuz.
The downside is that as rockets got bigger and more complicated, it required more test flights to debug the designs. Proton was a wretched rocket during the late 1960s, if it didn't start cracking on the pad it would explode in flight. Today though it is a real star.
But when the Soviets came to design their N1 'Moon rocket', the test flight approach was unsustainable, the machine was too complicated and never flew reliably.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Take their early record, before Mars 1 got to Mars, they had had a series of attempts. Two, known to the West as Mars1960 A and B reached Earth orbit then disintegrated.
Mars1962 A exploded in orbit at the height of the Cuban Missile Crisis - briefly causing a panic with the Americans thinking a missile attack was underway. Fortunately the computers soon told them that doomsday had been averted.
Next, was a partial success - Mars 1. Which smashed the record for deep-space communications with Earth across a distance of 106 million kilometres. Unfortunately it failed just before reaching Mars.
Mars1962 B exploded in Earth orbit and didn't appear in the Soviet record.
November 1964 saw the launch of Zond 2, a highly advanced probe using ion thrusters to perform stabilisation and orientation tasks. It may have also been the first probe to carry a lander. It died a long and lingering death before sweeping past Mars at only 1400 km altitude. (By this time the US had got their first Mars probe to the planet in working order, Mariner 4 took 22 pictures of the planet from 10 000 km. (Its sister ship, Mariner 3 had failed en-route)).
Neither side went to Mars in the next launch window, but 1969 was a busy year. Three attempts for the Soviet Union, including at least one lander. Mars 1969A exploded in flight as did Mars 1969B. Mars 1969C was removed from the pad after cracks developed in the relatively new Proton rocket design. (Cracking in the Proton was also a major reason for the failure of the Soviet Union to send a manned mission around the Moon during 1969). The US had a twin success with Mariners 5 and 6 flying past Mars.
On to 1971 and a pair of launches for the US, Mariner 8 ended up in the Atlantic, Mariner 9 went on to become one of the most successful missions ever and the first probe to orbit Mars. For the Soviets - mixed results again. Their first mission reached Earth orbit, but went no further and was named Kosmos 419. But then both Mars 2 and 3 left Earth orbit. They each comprised of a lander and an orbiter. The two craft jettisoned the lander before entering Martian orbit - just as the planet entered an intense dust storm with raging winds and almost total blackout.
Mars 2's lander was apparently DOA, it remained silent and does not appear to have returned any data. It was however the first craft to hit (not land on) Mars. Mars 3's lander was more successful. It entered the atmosphere, deployed parachutes and landed on rockets. It deployed its antenna and began to transmit the first picture from the Martian surface. Sadly, just 20 seconds later the transmission stopped. The Soviets said that the lander's parachutes had been caught by the storm and pulled it over.
Mars 2 and Mars 3 orbiters remained on-line and performed experiments on the Martian atmosphere and took photos of the surface. So I would call both missions a partial success and Mars 3 almost a triumph.
The next window was 1973 and the Soviets planned no less than 4 missions to Mars. Mars 4 and Mars 5 would be orbital missions, studying the planet much like Mariner 9, but also serving as telecoms relays for the Mars 6 and Mars 7 heavy landers.
Incredibly, bearing in mind the past track record of the Soviets, all four missions reached Mars in working order. Then everything went wrong. Mars 4's main engine failed and the probe did not enter orbit, it relayed images of the planet as it swept past into solar orbit. Mars 5 was next and was the only unqualified success of the year; it was the first craft to return colour images of Mars.
The two landers then arrived, Mars 7 first, it deployed the lander, but an attitude problem meant that the lander actually missed the planet entirely! Mars 6 was more lucky, the probe entered the Martian atmosphere, took readings all the way down and went dead ab
Part of Sweden's economic restructuring is to align the economy more strongly with the remainder of the Euro area. Sweden isn't yet in the Euro, the referendum is later this year, but its economy is strongly influenced by the Euro. Should Sweden choose to join the Euro, it will need to bring government spending, deficits and the like into line with ECB norms.
The Thatcherite/Reagan approach has served to widen the gap between rich and poor and to concentrate wealth at the top of society.
And those policies fuel the problems that Britain and America have with a huge part of the population unable to take a full part in society, whether it is because they can't get a decent house, that their health care is sub-standard or that they can't get into a university.
I doubt if there is one model that will make people happy, but I strongly suspect that neither extreme is the best solution.
Best wishes,
Mike.
If only it were. Blair's government undermined a common EU response to the American refusal to deal with the ICC. Blair is busy undermining a common EU position on the import of GM foods and hormone-treated meat. He refuses to confront the US on its illegal steel and agriculture tariffs or the huge subsidies it has been paying to the airline industry. He is in the process of allowing American media companies to buy British media groups without insisting on reciprocal rights.
Blair refuses to condemn the US government's illegal holding of suspects (including Britons) following September 11th. As well as the latest bloodbath, Blair was the only foreign leader to back Bill Clinton's illegal and unjustified attack on a Sudanese pharmaceutical factory - an attack which was there to distract from Bill's blow jobs. You can judge a man by the company he keeps - in which case Blair is a real creep.
Blair told the World that the future is monopolar (ie. American) and that we all have to do what it says. Strangely, the rest of the EU thought that one of the purposes of the EU was to build an effective counterweight to American power.
Bush is now using Blair's steps to peace between Israel and Palestine... and nobody mention a thing
What you forgot to mention was that the Israelis and the Americans insisted that no European diplomats took part in the so-called peace process. We're just expected to keep paying for rebuilding Palestine each time the Israelis bulldoze it.
Blair's sole regret in life is not the illegal bombing of a country justified on a lie; but that he wasn't born an American. Still, Libby Dole and her fellow right-wingers will be giving him a nice big shiny medal soon. What a good boy! Look, if you say free trade he rolls over and let's you tickle his tummy!
I do agree with you on one thing, Blair isn't a poodle, they're much more independent creatures.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The current rovers have been designed to survive the forces of the launch, the baking and freezing imposed by the journey to Mars, the impact of the solar wind, the forces imposed by re-entry, deceleration and impact, the constant UV flux and the highly reactive Martian surface.
AIBO was designed to get around a flat, friendly living room, it would fail all the above tests. It doesn't lift its legs very far to walk, nor does it recognise walls or drop-offs so obstacle avoidance isn't present.
Not to mention that AIBO is smaller and lighter for the simple reason he has no instrumentation onboard. He wouldn't be very useful.
You could add extra computing power to the system, but either that would be present on a lander, which would reduce the weight for actual science, or you'd have to send all the commands back to Earth for processing - which would be painful.
You could have a walking robot on Mars, but the benefits seem somewhat elusive. And if legged robots do go to Mars, I think they'll owe more to the likes of Genghis than to AIBO.
AIBO is great, I have two, but he's no explorer.
Best wishes,
Mike.
A real problem with the Martian environment is that the dust on the surface is extraordinarily fine and penetrates deeply into any crevices. Worse still it is likely to be attracted by static charges that accumulate on the landers.
Since Martian dust is hard and abrasive it would quickly get to work on the joints of the machines making them much more prone to failure.
Wheels, particularly those on the rovers which are largely sealed units show much less vulnerability to wear and tear.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Sorry, there is no private funding of Beagle 2. It has been paid for as a consortium by the Department of Trade and Industry, ESA, the Wellcome Trust and PPARC. The involvement of Damien Hirst and Blur has been on a volunteer basis - both for their contributions and for the publicity they can give the project.
Best wishes,
Mike.
In six months time you will be getting email offering surgery-free tentacle enlargement, low-low rate Mars Express credit cards (ahem) and cheap inkjet refills.
Best wishes,
Mike.
With Bush in power I think we'll need to move to a logarithmic scale of stupidity.
Best wishes,
Mike.
In recent years, just about all of the new big discoveries have been in the Middle East. America production is in steady long term decline no matter what those fantasists who want to dig up Alaska and the national parks like to think. The US is one of the best known geological regions in the World - there are no new 'giants' waiting to be discovered.
World production is increasingly concentrated in fewer large fields. 14% of World reserves lie in 8 enormous oil fields with more than 30 billion barrels apiece. Of the 50 000 or so oil fields in the World, more than 1/2 of production comes from just 120 fields. Almost none of which lie inside America.
No matter what, we are at the point where oil production is peaking. Fewer fields are being discovered and the average size of the new fields is falling. Billion barrel discoveries have been on a falling rate since the 1940s, 500 million barrel discoveries since the 1960s. More than 80% of global oil production is coming from fields discovered before the energy crunch of 1973, current discoveries are less than 1/3 of usage and falling.
All the time of course, oil consumption is rising.
If that wasn't gloomy enough there is the really worrying possibility is that almost all reserves have been inflated. The USGS has a long history of upping reserves without good reason and many members of OPEC have inflated their reserves to gain larger production quotas. We might actually have less oil than we think.
And as for Britain, well all that oil and gas which has been helping balance the government's books is really starting to run out. The big downturn in production is less than 10 years away.
Sooner or later we're all going to be looking in the same direction for the lovely stuff. One of the new big players in the Persian Gulf is the Chinese State Oil Company, the PRC has already declared that the Persian Gulf is a region of strategic interest for the Chinese. Oh good - the current superpower and the next superpower both looking hungrily at someone else's oil.
Best wishes,
Mike.
The loss of its two major 'customers', Buran and Mir 2 were the killing blow to the Energia programme. The fragmentation of the Soviet industry when the Ukraine broke away prevented it being revived. The Ukrainians built the reusable strap-on boosters for Energia and chose to switch to the new Zenit booster which is now used by Sealaunch.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Not quite; it is to do with the relative fractions that can be distilled from the oil. North Sea oil is extremely light, sweet (low sulphur) oil which yields large amounts of gasoline without further catalytic cracking.
Middle Eastern crude from the Southern Gulf is a heavier oil better suited to fuel oil and kerosene. It can be turned into gasoline, but requires cracking.
North Sea oil is so desirable that Brent Crude is one of the international price benchmarks. Crude from the US covers almost the whole range of possible compositions.
Middle Eastern crude (of which the US is not a major customer) is liked because it can be raised extremely cheaply in vast quantities and the infrastructure exists to move it to market. And we'll carry on liking it because soon enough it will be all that's left.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Soyuz has the Fregat.
Best wishes,
Mike.
I was waiting for a bus on the opposite side of the road yesterday and I think I might have suffered permanent retina damage.
The opening was delayed because Milton Keynes city council objected to the painting of the building in orange. They said it might bring down the architectural standard of the local buildings!
In Milton Keynes?
Best wishes,
Mike.
The reason UCI pulled out was falling attendance at the cinema, which has to be blamed on the piss-poor state of the cinema.
Watching a movie at UCI was an act of endurance; there was no sound-proofing between screens - so you might be trying to enjoy a quiet movie whilst Arnie grunted his way through his latest crapfest.
And then the projectors were continually out of focus - subtitles were unreadable and 'The Phantom Menace' was actually worse than normal.
UCI were only interested in fleecing the customers, they claimed to regularly service their projectors - but things only got worse.
As soon as Cineworld opened over in the XScape complex we all went over there. (Although the Lara Croftesque advert for Cineworld is bloody annoying). UCI we didn't miss you.
A question. Since just about every hand-held camera these days has autofocus - why don't cinema projectors come complete with an autofocus to keep them sharp?
Best wishes,
Mike.
Blunkett is a serial offender; even amongst all the members of the Cabinet, he has to be the worst of the lot. He screwed up education when he was minister there - and look what's happening there right now - unwanted tests, an exam system in chaos and schools on the point of collapse. Since going to the Home Office, he's picked on the judicial system for not being as populist as he is and been in a race with John Ashcroft to see who can introduce the most totalitarian laws.
Put it like this, he's making Michael Howard look liberal.
We're all going to need these cards if we want to do anything like open a bank account, claim our state entitlements, travel outside of the UK, get a job... and we're going to have to pay £25 for a card.
Blunkett has been told by fellow ministers, IT experts and the general public (as part of a so-called 'consultation exercise') that the technology is neither feasible, useful or wanted.
So, one question - how do you kill a smart card without obviously damaging the card? Electricity, the microwave, the hot cycle?
And as for Blunkett? I feel sorry for his guide dog.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Actually the origin was one of Blair's scare stories to panic the British population into war that was then picked up by the American government.
Had Blair even bothered to look at the evidence he would have seen that the Iraqis had never managed to get centrifuge cascades up and running and had barely got a single centrifuge working in the lab. They could not have afforded the energy nor the manpower needed to run a full scale enrichment programme.
That they didn't have any uranium to enrich was also a slight drawback to any weapons programme, but again none of our glorious leaders seemed to think that might put the mockers on the Iraqi nuclear weapons programme.
But hey, since when has Tony worried about the facts?
No wonder he and Dubya get on so well.
Best wishes,
Mike.
They're not allowed to do that in the UK.
Best wishes,
Mike.
Simple.
Money.
ESA abandoned the Ariane 5/Hermes mini-shuttle when the economics spiralled out of control. ESA have conducted studies on various spaceplanes, but always it comes down to the extraordinary amounts of money that would be required to get such a project up and running.
Buran was one of the major contributors to the collapse of the Soviet Union. Had it been continued the economics would have been almost as bad as those of the Shuttle. But Buran was a superior craft.
The Chinese have demonstrated models of a space shuttle and have announced they plan to build something along the lines of a reusable space craft, but their programme is secretive its difficult to tell what is going on.
Unless someone can show a good reason for men to travel into space, or unless some country decides that a bit of grandstanding is needed in space, then the Space Shuttle will be one of a kind.
Best wishes,
Mike.