Rey fighting Kylo Ren to a draw was something I could accept as fiction. The stormtrooper Fin fighting Kylo Ren with a lightsaber for more than a millisecond before being cut in half is what I couldn't suspend my disbelief for.
You seriously think the military industrial complex has a problem with Trump? Hah. One of his main campaign themes was that he would insist on raising the obscene military budget by even more than Clinton would insist on raising it, and his other main campaign theme was to shower big business in tax breaks and other free money. They couldn't be happier. As for the public service sector, they're not elated that Trump won but they're terrified of him being impeached... Pence is far more ideologically inclined to make big public sector cuts than Trump.
I hate electing relatives as much as anyone, but it's unfortunately a normal practice in democratic countries around the world. The Bushes were not the first to think of keeping the presidency in the family either. Unfortunately, having a famous name (Bush, Clinton, Trump) gets you halfway to the presidency regardless of qualifications because most voters are idiots.
The left wing isn't anti-Russia at all, only the center (Clinton) wing. His pro-Russia agenda was the only thing I liked about Trump, and it stood in clear contrast to Clinton's desire to create a new cold war and portray herself as the next Ronald Reagan. The left wing has always been against ballooning military spending and pointless international antagonism/interference.
I wouldn't be too sure about space debris being a problem. Space dust is quite diffuse and a microscopic probe means there's much less surface area to get hit.
Accelerating any significant mass to.1c may be practically impossible. Perhaps the least unlikely approach, given our continuing miniaturization progress, is a spacecraft that weighs micrograms. Laser acceleration would seem to be an option, but the problem there is deceleration at the destination, and transmission of data back to Earth. What we really need is something super-light capable of using solar power to both accelerate and decelerate to a sizeable fraction of c, and then the transmission problem can be solved by having it make a return trip using the destination star for power.
The ultimate unrealistic extreme of this approach in sci-fi would be the sophons from Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, which if I recall have the mass of one proton but unfold into useful spacecraft upon arrival.
In other words, copyright should work more like patents. Not that there aren't a ton of problems with the current patent system, but at least patents ensure publication of the invention and don't last forever.
Global warming might be solved by eliminating meat from people's diets, though. The carbon emissions of meat and especially of beef are extremely high compared to plant food, as is the land use. I eat meat because it tastes better and is cheap -- but perhaps it would be a good idea to tax meat for the external effects it has.
Simply browsing websites and consuming media is infinitely more pleasant on a desktop than on a phone -- at least until every website finishes lobotomizing itself with responsive makeovers. The only reason people use phones most of the time is that the phone is in their pocket most of the time. When they're at home, most of them would rather use a desktop if it's there.
If Merkel were being honest, she'd say "crime may be up a bit, but now we have some young people to do the work so we'll all be able to keep our health care and retire comfortably instead of facing a demographic crisis that'll make our generation work into their 90s." Europe's birthrates are below replacement level, so the options are either find some migrants or take away all the benefits the baby boomer generation is counting on.
I don't see arctic oil drill camps as being a large enough market to pay for the launch costs.
How about farmers? For as long as people continue eating, farms will continue to exist, and it will continue to make sense to put them outside of cities. Even in a highly developed place like California, there are millions of people who have no non-satellite internet options. An LEO satellite option with faster speeds and lower latency than GEO will find plenty of customers.
It worked fine for iridium, in every technical sense. They simply failed to turn a profit because of rapidly expanding cell tower coverage making their market much smaller than they'd counted on. That's always a risk when you're launching a fleet of satellites that take a few years to get up there. Thanks to SpaceX they seem to be launching a lot faster with the new LEO constellations, though.
It launched south, went over Antarctica and back up along the east coast of Africa and through the middle east. I believe SpaceX only uses California for polar orbits, Florida for normal orbits.
Sure it's overpriced compared to the rest of the world, but is your internet price actually going up? I live in a Comcast-only area where they can do whatever they want, but they've held the price steady at $50/mo for 6Mbps for a very long time.
Actually, you'll find companies are very interested in staking a claim to an island that has 1 billion units of oil reserves that cost 10 billion units to extract with current prices and technology. Hold the island for a while and it can make you a fortune when commodity prices go up or extraction prices come down.
Discovery is still in fine shape sitting in a museum.
I don't blame Bush for his decisions, but I also agree with killing Contellation -- both were the correct decisions at the time in light of evidence that Contellation was going nowhere and SpaceX was going somewhere. Unfortunately we're stuck with the SLS boondoggle.
If your cat frequently accidentally killed everyone in your house and your neighbors' houses as collateral damage when killing a mouse, you might start caring.
You think Trump cares about NASA's science mission? They'll find the money to go to the moon by scrapping all science and all robotic missions, no problem, it's actually a great plan to help ensure there's less data about climate change in the future.
You can convince a lot of people to never make their own food at home again. And you can sell them progressively more useless food -- say, $5 colored water -- on the basis of convenience and marketing.
restaurant workers now laid off elsewhere and their families will have less money to spend at restaurants.
Let's be honest here. Restaurant workers are already not the people who can afford to buy daily $3 coffees and the like. Even McDonald's is quite expensive compared to a grocery store. It's mostly busy middle class business types who buy fast food, and the deciding factor for them is how quick and painless you can make the experience. Making sure they don't have to deal with people if they don't want to is bound to increase orders.
The reason not to ship American food to poor countries is that it puts all the poor country's local farmers out of business, leaving the country you're "helping" worse off than before you "helped".
Slashdot Mirror
Rey fighting Kylo Ren to a draw was something I could accept as fiction. The stormtrooper Fin fighting Kylo Ren with a lightsaber for more than a millisecond before being cut in half is what I couldn't suspend my disbelief for.
You seriously think the military industrial complex has a problem with Trump? Hah. One of his main campaign themes was that he would insist on raising the obscene military budget by even more than Clinton would insist on raising it, and his other main campaign theme was to shower big business in tax breaks and other free money. They couldn't be happier. As for the public service sector, they're not elated that Trump won but they're terrified of him being impeached... Pence is far more ideologically inclined to make big public sector cuts than Trump.
I hate electing relatives as much as anyone, but it's unfortunately a normal practice in democratic countries around the world. The Bushes were not the first to think of keeping the presidency in the family either. Unfortunately, having a famous name (Bush, Clinton, Trump) gets you halfway to the presidency regardless of qualifications because most voters are idiots.
The left wing isn't anti-Russia at all, only the center (Clinton) wing. His pro-Russia agenda was the only thing I liked about Trump, and it stood in clear contrast to Clinton's desire to create a new cold war and portray herself as the next Ronald Reagan. The left wing has always been against ballooning military spending and pointless international antagonism/interference.
I wouldn't be too sure about space debris being a problem. Space dust is quite diffuse and a microscopic probe means there's much less surface area to get hit.
Accelerating any significant mass to .1c may be practically impossible. Perhaps the least unlikely approach, given our continuing miniaturization progress, is a spacecraft that weighs micrograms. Laser acceleration would seem to be an option, but the problem there is deceleration at the destination, and transmission of data back to Earth. What we really need is something super-light capable of using solar power to both accelerate and decelerate to a sizeable fraction of c, and then the transmission problem can be solved by having it make a return trip using the destination star for power.
The ultimate unrealistic extreme of this approach in sci-fi would be the sophons from Liu Cixin's The Three-Body Problem, which if I recall have the mass of one proton but unfold into useful spacecraft upon arrival.
In other words, copyright should work more like patents. Not that there aren't a ton of problems with the current patent system, but at least patents ensure publication of the invention and don't last forever.
Global warming might be solved by eliminating meat from people's diets, though. The carbon emissions of meat and especially of beef are extremely high compared to plant food, as is the land use. I eat meat because it tastes better and is cheap -- but perhaps it would be a good idea to tax meat for the external effects it has.
Their own shitty countries? The Muslims of Xinjiang are Chinese, and their ancestors have been Chinese for thousands of years.
Simply browsing websites and consuming media is infinitely more pleasant on a desktop than on a phone -- at least until every website finishes lobotomizing itself with responsive makeovers. The only reason people use phones most of the time is that the phone is in their pocket most of the time. When they're at home, most of them would rather use a desktop if it's there.
If Merkel were being honest, she'd say "crime may be up a bit, but now we have some young people to do the work so we'll all be able to keep our health care and retire comfortably instead of facing a demographic crisis that'll make our generation work into their 90s." Europe's birthrates are below replacement level, so the options are either find some migrants or take away all the benefits the baby boomer generation is counting on.
How about farmers? For as long as people continue eating, farms will continue to exist, and it will continue to make sense to put them outside of cities. Even in a highly developed place like California, there are millions of people who have no non-satellite internet options. An LEO satellite option with faster speeds and lower latency than GEO will find plenty of customers.
It worked fine for iridium, in every technical sense. They simply failed to turn a profit because of rapidly expanding cell tower coverage making their market much smaller than they'd counted on. That's always a risk when you're launching a fleet of satellites that take a few years to get up there. Thanks to SpaceX they seem to be launching a lot faster with the new LEO constellations, though.
It launched south, went over Antarctica and back up along the east coast of Africa and through the middle east. I believe SpaceX only uses California for polar orbits, Florida for normal orbits.
If 2016 is recently, then yes they had a pre-launch explosion during fueling recently. But accidents in 2016 do not affect the 2017 success rate.
What ISPs? My options are Comcast or paying way more for a high latency satellite connection. There's no competition most places.
Sure it's overpriced compared to the rest of the world, but is your internet price actually going up? I live in a Comcast-only area where they can do whatever they want, but they've held the price steady at $50/mo for 6Mbps for a very long time.
Actually, you'll find companies are very interested in staking a claim to an island that has 1 billion units of oil reserves that cost 10 billion units to extract with current prices and technology. Hold the island for a while and it can make you a fortune when commodity prices go up or extraction prices come down.
Really it hasn't changed that much in the space science field. The Soviets sent robotic rovers to the moon in the 60s and 70s.
Discovery is still in fine shape sitting in a museum.
I don't blame Bush for his decisions, but I also agree with killing Contellation -- both were the correct decisions at the time in light of evidence that Contellation was going nowhere and SpaceX was going somewhere. Unfortunately we're stuck with the SLS boondoggle.
If your cat frequently accidentally killed everyone in your house and your neighbors' houses as collateral damage when killing a mouse, you might start caring.
You think Trump cares about NASA's science mission? They'll find the money to go to the moon by scrapping all science and all robotic missions, no problem, it's actually a great plan to help ensure there's less data about climate change in the future.
You can convince a lot of people to never make their own food at home again. And you can sell them progressively more useless food -- say, $5 colored water -- on the basis of convenience and marketing.
Let's be honest here. Restaurant workers are already not the people who can afford to buy daily $3 coffees and the like. Even McDonald's is quite expensive compared to a grocery store. It's mostly busy middle class business types who buy fast food, and the deciding factor for them is how quick and painless you can make the experience. Making sure they don't have to deal with people if they don't want to is bound to increase orders.
The reason not to ship American food to poor countries is that it puts all the poor country's local farmers out of business, leaving the country you're "helping" worse off than before you "helped".