The reason for doing recovery on water is that when you launch eastward from Florida the rocket will come down over water unless you expect a ton of fuel to get back to land.
The engines in these things operate not terribly far from the limits of materials technology
The whole Space-X strategy from the start has been to use a lot of little less complicated interchangeable engines instead of a big one. A Falcon 9 is 9 engines, the heavy is 27 engines. And because there's so many of them, they don't have to be used at a full burn. It appears likely to be a lot easier to recover and reuse these.
YES, you'd be stupid to not build disposable ones. Like the Soyuz... fifty years and as cheaply indestructible as ever.
The Soyuz accident rate is worse than the shuttle, and it costs more than even the current non-reusable Space-X flights.
The wiki says it'll be completely reusable within 2 days of landing because of ceramic tiles that protect it from the heat of re-entry. Sounds like a space shuttle. Doubtful that practice will work as well as theory.
£25 is a lot more than $30. But I can walk into any grocery store and see an array of $30 android smartphones that can do everything this nokia can do.
People will be living on near-absolute-zero ice balls with no local energy sources in the interstellar void instead of somewhere interesting for what reason?
Surely moving people is cheaper (and more direct - that is, localized) than trying to control emissions.
The cost of moving people out of 1/3 of the world's major cities is about the same as if there were a global nuclear war in which 1/3 of the world's cities were nuked (well actually much higher because you're better off economically if everyone dies instead of becoming homeless). The world economy would be completly devastated and set back perhaps a century. Whereas we could cut emissions drastically just by cutting future global economic growth by a few percent without regressing at all. Controlling emissions is hugely cheaper.
Also, forcing people to leave the coast and not rebuild there will throw the population of most coastal regions into open rebellion and continuous war. It's not possible to make billions of people their homes and lose their jobs voluntarily, especially when you don't have replacements for them (but really even if you did).
Bullet trains are much more limited in their destinations and ability to adapt to changing needs -- it takes us 30 years and perhaps a hundred billion dollars to build the high speed rail here in California, and far less to build a new airport to serve a new destination. And you can't do connecting flights to distant destinations on a train.
Does it sound fair to someone who has never created a single patentable invention in his life? Or written a best-selling novel? Or composed a symphony? Or written a screenplay?
Sounds fair to me, and I make my living from copyright.
less than $350k [usdebtclock.org] per citizen. That won't solve much. Even if you distributed it, most people would be broke in a year - wealth is a habit more than anything else.
Give me $350K and I can live on it for the rest of my life. As could most poor people.
I'm a socialist and atheist (congratulations on the white part). If you people like you ever grow up and realize that politics should not be a team sport and that people are not automatically idiots just because they belong to the other "team", the world will become a much better place. I know and respect some people who are republicans and am smart enough not to paint half the country with such an absurdly broad brush. Many republicans are not racist, many are not even religious.
As for Mars, water sublimates but does not melt around the poles. Carbon dioxide freezes in a seasonal cycle.
A lot of people would rather own than rent even when renting is a lot cheaper. They want their own car which they become personally attached to, not a cheaper form of a taxi. And when it comes to travel, it's psychologically much easier to get in the car and go for a drive when you don't have to pay for it directly. Having to think about the cost every time you drive somewhere, instead of just every time you fill up the tank, causes some stress and will make people prefer the psychologically easier more expensive option.
Today's driverless car patents probably won't be worth much in 20 years -- but today's developments will lead to more patents in 15 years that may become very valuable if driverless cars go mainstream in 30 years.
Supernatural events could easily be observed and established as much (example method: the Randi prize) -- that would at least prove the supernatural which would make god seem much more possible. Religions have constantly made many testable predictions of the supernatural, it just happens that every single one of them has been shown wrong as knowledge and tech advanced enough to check them out. So religions withdraw each supernatural claim and move to another one that we don't yet have the ability to check.
Fact is, many republicans don't stereotype muslims and are educated non-idiots. You're feeling all satisfied about them being on the receiving end of stereotyping when they never stereotyped, just because some other people under the same huge umbrella did.
And just in case you don't realize, tons of terrorists aren't muslims and tons of religious fanatics and idiots aren't republicans. And no, I'm not a republican either.
The people who would live and work there would need to be attracted to live on a sea platform, so low-paid workers and destitute beggars aren't even an issue.
You could say the same of Qatar. All you have to do is offer the job that sounds fair to entice the desperate worker to come, then you have complete control over their lives and can change the terms and abuse them as slaves as much as you like. It's not as if they can swim for shore from international waters, or appeal to a fair legal system. A sea platform is the perfect system to exploit trapped workers.
Pretty sure Hollywood has done hundreds of movies about assassinating Fidel Castro already. Fidel never cared, because he was too busy worrying about the CIA's actual attempts.
You can't get hundreds of people to agree on a single new project to collaborate and donate their time and money to. Sure something original would be nice, but you'd never get enough people enthusiastic about to reach the same production quality without the instant brand recognition of something like Star Trek.
Slashdot Mirror
The reason for doing recovery on water is that when you launch eastward from Florida the rocket will come down over water unless you expect a ton of fuel to get back to land.
The engines in these things operate not terribly far from the limits of materials technology
The whole Space-X strategy from the start has been to use a lot of little less complicated interchangeable engines instead of a big one. A Falcon 9 is 9 engines, the heavy is 27 engines. And because there's so many of them, they don't have to be used at a full burn. It appears likely to be a lot easier to recover and reuse these.
YES, you'd be stupid to not build disposable ones. Like the Soyuz... fifty years and as cheaply indestructible as ever.
The Soyuz accident rate is worse than the shuttle, and it costs more than even the current non-reusable Space-X flights.
The wiki says it'll be completely reusable within 2 days of landing because of ceramic tiles that protect it from the heat of re-entry. Sounds like a space shuttle. Doubtful that practice will work as well as theory.
Ancient peoples were just as smart as us
Not necessarily, considering their poor nutrition.
India was considered communist-aligned, so the USA was frequently antagonistic.
Heh. If only your rose-colored view of slashdot were correct.
£25 is a lot more than $30. But I can walk into any grocery store and see an array of $30 android smartphones that can do everything this nokia can do.
People will be living on near-absolute-zero ice balls with no local energy sources in the interstellar void instead of somewhere interesting for what reason?
Bring it through a portal from an alternate universe where it can be built.
Surely moving people is cheaper (and more direct - that is, localized) than trying to control emissions.
The cost of moving people out of 1/3 of the world's major cities is about the same as if there were a global nuclear war in which 1/3 of the world's cities were nuked (well actually much higher because you're better off economically if everyone dies instead of becoming homeless). The world economy would be completly devastated and set back perhaps a century. Whereas we could cut emissions drastically just by cutting future global economic growth by a few percent without regressing at all. Controlling emissions is hugely cheaper.
Also, forcing people to leave the coast and not rebuild there will throw the population of most coastal regions into open rebellion and continuous war. It's not possible to make billions of people their homes and lose their jobs voluntarily, especially when you don't have replacements for them (but really even if you did).
Bullet trains are much more limited in their destinations and ability to adapt to changing needs -- it takes us 30 years and perhaps a hundred billion dollars to build the high speed rail here in California, and far less to build a new airport to serve a new destination. And you can't do connecting flights to distant destinations on a train.
Poor people aren't flying often. Most of us have never even been on a plane.
Does it sound fair to someone who has never created a single patentable invention in his life? Or written a best-selling novel? Or composed a symphony? Or written a screenplay?
Sounds fair to me, and I make my living from copyright.
less than $350k [usdebtclock.org] per citizen. That won't solve much. Even if you distributed it, most people would be broke in a year - wealth is a habit more than anything else.
Give me $350K and I can live on it for the rest of my life. As could most poor people.
INTERPOL already exists, and has no need for a world government.
I'm a socialist and atheist (congratulations on the white part). If you people like you ever grow up and realize that politics should not be a team sport and that people are not automatically idiots just because they belong to the other "team", the world will become a much better place. I know and respect some people who are republicans and am smart enough not to paint half the country with such an absurdly broad brush. Many republicans are not racist, many are not even religious.
As for Mars, water sublimates but does not melt around the poles. Carbon dioxide freezes in a seasonal cycle.
A lot of people would rather own than rent even when renting is a lot cheaper. They want their own car which they become personally attached to, not a cheaper form of a taxi. And when it comes to travel, it's psychologically much easier to get in the car and go for a drive when you don't have to pay for it directly. Having to think about the cost every time you drive somewhere, instead of just every time you fill up the tank, causes some stress and will make people prefer the psychologically easier more expensive option.
Today's driverless car patents probably won't be worth much in 20 years -- but today's developments will lead to more patents in 15 years that may become very valuable if driverless cars go mainstream in 30 years.
Supernatural events could easily be observed and established as much (example method: the Randi prize) -- that would at least prove the supernatural which would make god seem much more possible. Religions have constantly made many testable predictions of the supernatural, it just happens that every single one of them has been shown wrong as knowledge and tech advanced enough to check them out. So religions withdraw each supernatural claim and move to another one that we don't yet have the ability to check.
Time traveler problems.
Fact is, many republicans don't stereotype muslims and are educated non-idiots. You're feeling all satisfied about them being on the receiving end of stereotyping when they never stereotyped, just because some other people under the same huge umbrella did.
And just in case you don't realize, tons of terrorists aren't muslims and tons of religious fanatics and idiots aren't republicans. And no, I'm not a republican either.
They did ramming speed already in Nemesis.
The people who would live and work there would need to be attracted to live on a sea platform, so low-paid workers and destitute beggars aren't even an issue.
You could say the same of Qatar. All you have to do is offer the job that sounds fair to entice the desperate worker to come, then you have complete control over their lives and can change the terms and abuse them as slaves as much as you like. It's not as if they can swim for shore from international waters, or appeal to a fair legal system. A sea platform is the perfect system to exploit trapped workers.
Pretty sure Hollywood has done hundreds of movies about assassinating Fidel Castro already. Fidel never cared, because he was too busy worrying about the CIA's actual attempts.
You can't get hundreds of people to agree on a single new project to collaborate and donate their time and money to. Sure something original would be nice, but you'd never get enough people enthusiastic about to reach the same production quality without the instant brand recognition of something like Star Trek.