It depends on how bad they are. The world's first ICBM had a high, 5km CEP. But still, plot a 5km circle on any major city, you're still going to hit a densely populated area.
That said, it's quite true that NK's nuclear weapons are (comparatively) quite weak, and (probably) heavy.
Note to the new owners of Slashdot: this here conversation is precisely the sort of rare case where you should actually get involved (where the person or people involved don't care if they get modded down to zero and will just keep popping back up with more angry, offtopic rants in whatever thread they feel like)
Until it crushes. Not all aerogels are strong, and in the picture we can see the guy bending it. And even the strength of "strong" aerogels is often overstated - they're high strength for their weight, but not for their volume.
I fail to see how it's at all like composite building - it's a moulded product. Also note: frozen and freeze dried for two days. So if you want to make boats out of the stuff, you have to amortize in the cost of two days (per unit) usage of a thermally-regulated vacuum chamber large enough to put a boat in, which is a pretty expensive piece of kit.
Also, how long is the sonication process?
Making boats or surfboards out of the stuff sounds kind of pointless. As you already clearly know, the ideal boat hull is a twinwall composite, where you have composite layers of high tensile fabric bonded to either side of a lightweight foam or honeycomb core - the latter existing primarily to space the former out. If you replace the inner layer with aerogel, you're only cutting out the weight of the foam or honeycomb - and foams and honeycombs are already quite light. I mean, you'd save some weight... but enough to justify the cost and difficulty?
I guess if you're going really upmarket... after all, some people buy Monster cables;)
Aerogel is of course nothing at all like loose-fill cellulose insulation. But no, it should not pose a fire risk either. Depending on the type, aerogels are generally considered either fire retardant or non-flammable; even if they're made of something that "burns" on a macroscopic level, there's so little "something" there to burn that the flame barrier properties that they provide generally well outweighs the heat output of their own combustion.
Re: the MIT capsule: it's nothing like the Hyperloop Alpha concept (hence my post). SpaceX's test track that they're building is designed to handle a wide variety of vehicles, not just the one laid out in the Hyperloop Alpha concept. IMHO the MIT concept is utterly uninspiring. The drag levels are vastly higher, which are going to ruin pretty much every appealing aspect of the concept.
(but no, the tube has no electromagnets, the MIT design involves induced magnetic fields for propulsion)
No, they're making the claim that there will be an increase in the launch rate, an increase that we haven't seen. The burden falls on them to prove that one is suddenly going to materialize. It's their claim. My counter is simply: "where is it?" Where is this supposed surge?
Indeed. That's one of the few things that one can say has nothing to do with either the original Hyperloop alpha concept or the new college competition entries. Pneumatic tubes mean that they make use of pressure to push things - that's what the word "pneumatic" means. Pressure being the one thing Hyperloop (all permutations) distinctly lacks.
Seriously. I was a big fan of Hyperloop Alpha. But the MIT team that won the "Hyperloop" contest is proposing something nothing like Hyperloop. The test track that SpaceX is building is designed to support a wide range of vehicles, most nothing like that in the Hyperloop Alpha document. So if I say "I like hyperloop", I don't know what exactly it is I'm supporting anymore. What exactly is "Hyperloop" these days?
All I can say is that I really liked the alpha one. The MIT team's maglev thing is Meh^2.
If you're dedicated enough to climb onto a well elevated tube, cut a hole large enough to pour concrete in through inch-thick steel - after sabotaging all of the pressure sensors tbrough the whole length of the tube and feeding them false data - and then using a concrete pump with a very tall boom fill in the tube with concrete, in order to kill people.... then why not just fly planes into skyscrapers like most people? I mean, if you're going to go through that much work.
Since you have experience... I've often had interest in physical computing, but have never gotten around to learning / messing around with it. What would you find to be a good "introductory" system (for someone with lots of programming experience but only grade-school/100-in-1-electronics-kit/basic soldering/etc level electronics experience) for the purposes of, say, controlling steppers, variable-RPM drive motors, taking voltage readings, etc?
Of course they're taking business from other players - but that's not the question. The question is if they're making new business that otherwise wouldn't be there. Thusfar, I haven't seen anything to suggest that.
But, the potential is there in the future if they can keep bringing down costs, as they're hoping.
And IMHO, we're not even remotely near the point where space junk is going to stop us from launching things into space. Not even close. Particularly in LEO where orbits decay relatively quickly. It's always a threat, a threat that rises with the launch rate, but as far as being prohibitive... no. And there's some good evidence that things are moving in a positive direction - increasingly, nations are passing laws mandating that satellites be moved to disposal or graveyard orbits at the end of their service life, rather than just leaving them out there as potential collision/debris generation hazards.
I wouldn't expect a huge shift in the size of the global launch market at current Falcon 9 pricing. Now, with reusable Falcon 9s, or multiple payloads from Falcon Heavies at current quoted launch prices, that could be a different story...
Slashdot Mirror
Word salad dances singingly dogs into the breeze?
You might want to call guiness about that chip on your shoulder, you're approaching record territory.
Why, are you unemployed?
If you killing yourself would mean I'd see the acronym "SJW" less often on Slashdot, then by all means go right ahead.
One obviously doesn't count failed launches toward CEPs. Anything involving "spinning out of control" is as failure, as far as deployment goes.
It depends on how bad they are. The world's first ICBM had a high, 5km CEP. But still, plot a 5km circle on any major city, you're still going to hit a densely populated area.
That said, it's quite true that NK's nuclear weapons are (comparatively) quite weak, and (probably) heavy.
Note to the new owners of Slashdot: this here conversation is precisely the sort of rare case where you should actually get involved (where the person or people involved don't care if they get modded down to zero and will just keep popping back up with more angry, offtopic rants in whatever thread they feel like)
Is this good enough?
After all, he has the motive...
Until it crushes. Not all aerogels are strong, and in the picture we can see the guy bending it. And even the strength of "strong" aerogels is often overstated - they're high strength for their weight, but not for their volume.
I fail to see how it's at all like composite building - it's a moulded product. Also note: frozen and freeze dried for two days. So if you want to make boats out of the stuff, you have to amortize in the cost of two days (per unit) usage of a thermally-regulated vacuum chamber large enough to put a boat in, which is a pretty expensive piece of kit.
Also, how long is the sonication process?
Making boats or surfboards out of the stuff sounds kind of pointless. As you already clearly know, the ideal boat hull is a twinwall composite, where you have composite layers of high tensile fabric bonded to either side of a lightweight foam or honeycomb core - the latter existing primarily to space the former out. If you replace the inner layer with aerogel, you're only cutting out the weight of the foam or honeycomb - and foams and honeycombs are already quite light. I mean, you'd save some weight... but enough to justify the cost and difficulty?
I guess if you're going really upmarket... after all, some people buy Monster cables ;)
Because nobody doesn't like molten boron!
Aerogel is of course nothing at all like loose-fill cellulose insulation. But no, it should not pose a fire risk either. Depending on the type, aerogels are generally considered either fire retardant or non-flammable; even if they're made of something that "burns" on a macroscopic level, there's so little "something" there to burn that the flame barrier properties that they provide generally well outweighs the heat output of their own combustion.
Huh? You want to trap hydrogen in an open cell substance?
In addition to what bws111 wrote:
Re: the MIT capsule: it's nothing like the Hyperloop Alpha concept (hence my post). SpaceX's test track that they're building is designed to handle a wide variety of vehicles, not just the one laid out in the Hyperloop Alpha concept. IMHO the MIT concept is utterly uninspiring. The drag levels are vastly higher, which are going to ruin pretty much every appealing aspect of the concept.
(but no, the tube has no electromagnets, the MIT design involves induced magnetic fields for propulsion)
No, they're making the claim that there will be an increase in the launch rate, an increase that we haven't seen. The burden falls on them to prove that one is suddenly going to materialize. It's their claim. My counter is simply: "where is it?" Where is this supposed surge?
Or seriplane, hyperplane, or delaplane!
Indeed. That's one of the few things that one can say has nothing to do with either the original Hyperloop alpha concept or the new college competition entries. Pneumatic tubes mean that they make use of pressure to push things - that's what the word "pneumatic" means. Pressure being the one thing Hyperloop (all permutations) distinctly lacks.
The lecture didn't cover anything newer than Hawking Radiation. Where's the discussion over the Firewall Paradox?
Anyway, my preferred hypothesis: singularities don't exist, crossable event horizons don't exist, there is no disjoint region of spacetime beyond them, there is no unusual quantum behavior, localized inflation maintains a continuous spacetime metric at black holes by deforming infalling partial motions to a tangential path, matter/energy that falls into a black hole is as thoroughly fried and scrambled as they would be falling into such an extreme environment even if spacetime deformation weren't an issue, but the result is nearly frozen in time, released as the black hole explodes in an inflationary blast - and the Big Bang was a colossal such event.
Seriously. I was a big fan of Hyperloop Alpha. But the MIT team that won the "Hyperloop" contest is proposing something nothing like Hyperloop. The test track that SpaceX is building is designed to support a wide range of vehicles, most nothing like that in the Hyperloop Alpha document. So if I say "I like hyperloop", I don't know what exactly it is I'm supporting anymore. What exactly is "Hyperloop" these days?
All I can say is that I really liked the alpha one. The MIT team's maglev thing is Meh^2.
If you're dedicated enough to climb onto a well elevated tube, cut a hole large enough to pour concrete in through inch-thick steel - after sabotaging all of the pressure sensors tbrough the whole length of the tube and feeding them false data - and then using a concrete pump with a very tall boom fill in the tube with concrete, in order to kill people.... then why not just fly planes into skyscrapers like most people? I mean, if you're going to go through that much work.
Since you have experience... I've often had interest in physical computing, but have never gotten around to learning / messing around with it. What would you find to be a good "introductory" system (for someone with lots of programming experience but only grade-school/100-in-1-electronics-kit/basic soldering/etc level electronics experience) for the purposes of, say, controlling steppers, variable-RPM drive motors, taking voltage readings, etc?
Of course they're taking business from other players - but that's not the question. The question is if they're making new business that otherwise wouldn't be there. Thusfar, I haven't seen anything to suggest that.
But, the potential is there in the future if they can keep bringing down costs, as they're hoping.
And IMHO, we're not even remotely near the point where space junk is going to stop us from launching things into space. Not even close. Particularly in LEO where orbits decay relatively quickly. It's always a threat, a threat that rises with the launch rate, but as far as being prohibitive... no. And there's some good evidence that things are moving in a positive direction - increasingly, nations are passing laws mandating that satellites be moved to disposal or graveyard orbits at the end of their service life, rather than just leaving them out there as potential collision/debris generation hazards.
Complexity. Money. Risk of inadvertent rocket damage.
Best just to learn to land the rockets right.
I wouldn't expect a huge shift in the size of the global launch market at current Falcon 9 pricing. Now, with reusable Falcon 9s, or multiple payloads from Falcon Heavies at current quoted launch prices, that could be a different story...
Not seeing the connection. Somebody's going to be launching satellites either way, whether it's SpaceX or a competitor.
Also, don't confuse cores with launches. The Falcon Heavy is three cores. Of course, offsetting that, there's the potential for reuse of rockets...