If you want a flaming hellscape, Kilauea is a little candle compared to Bárðarbunga in Iceland. Kilauea erupts a couple cubic meters per second. Bárðarbunga erupts a couple hundred. Kilauea's gas emissions barely show up on satellite images. Bárðarbunga's just last night caused levels so high in a town a hundred kilometers away that it went off the top of the safety scale (which they got from Hawaii;) ). Bárðarbunga has already erupted more lava than of Mauna Loa's multi-year eruptions in modern history, in under two months, and is up to about 1/6th the volume emitted by Kilauea in the entire 31 years of its eruption, with no signs of stopping. And it's doing all of this through a dike dozens of kilometers long. The magma chamber itself may still actually go off, mind you. An area the size of Manhattan is currently dropping by about a foot per day into the caldera, and has been doing so for months, causing one in every five powerful earthquakes on Earth. The caldera has released the largest lava eruptions on Earth since the last Ice Age, as well as floods several times larger than all of Earth's major rivers combined.
But nobody cares about Icelandic volcanoes unless they take out European air travel;)
What percent of the US's population do you think is in the risk of a major natural disaster of some kind - volcano, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, landslide, avalanche, etc? This time the dice got rolled and it was their homes that came up snake eyes. It should be noted that the town was built before Pu'u 'O'o became a "thing". There were no signs back then that Pu'u 'O'o was even likely to become an active vent, let alone one that would erupt for over three decades.
Among them, things that don't accidentally go wrong but which someone can make go wrong
What exactly are you talking about - in good real-world systems - that is more silently corruptible than paper elections? E-voting even offers ways for users to confirm their vote on file with the electoral commission (without being able to prove their vote to others), something that regular paper voting does not.
The current administration isn't trying to bring democracy to Iraq. They're trying to.........actually I have no idea what they're trying to do.
It's okay, neither do they;)
Really though, while this is said to be due to terrorism, oppression, genocide, and the like, we really know the reason: it's that IS's ideology involves extensie use of MS Paint and an arabic version of Comic Sans. One simply cannot allow that to flourish.
If you're looking at such tiny statistical differences that barely even surpass statistical noise, which is what the vast majority of these suppossed "psyhological gender differences" are (far, far more variation within groups than between groups), crediting them to some sort of innate difference is an extreme stretch, when a far easier explanation is simply culture and upbringing.
The study you linked "doesn't mention all female groups", your words. I'm saying that that claim needs a cite or needs to be dropped. And I can't read what your link itself says because I get a 403 error. But your very description of it states that it doesn't address the claim made that "all male groups work well" but "all female groups were unstable long term". Which is just gross stereotyping presented as if it's some sort of scientific fact.
Surely it had absolutely nothing to the fact that by and large women were actively discouraged if not banned from higher education throughout most of modern history, with as a general rule up until the 20th century only aristocratic women being able to take up the sciences (as a hobby - but even that was actively discouraged, supposedly "bad for their health"), and the few women that managed to publish scientific findings generally had to do so under a male name. No, clearly that had no influence whatsoever!. Clearly science is all about aggressiveness! Which is why the world's greatest scientific discoveries have been made by wolverines.
Right. So the US didn't care enough to Assange to even watch him and inform the Swedes when he left the country, nor to inform the UK police (or simply stop him) when he jumped bail and fled to the Ecuadorian embassy... but despite not even taking the time to watch him they're instead planning an outright abduction and to "disappear" him outside of the courts system? When even Manning, the source of the leaks, the person who actually broke her military oaths and wasn't even arguably a journalist, will only be serving 7 years? Yeaaaaaah, got it.
Sorry, but the world does not revolve around Assange as much as he likes to pretend it does. Assange was living in a paranoid fantasyland pretending to be a spy in the middle of diplomatic intrigue long before he became famous through Wikileaks. Given that his family spent years running and hiding from a cult as he was growing up, there is context to his behavior.
Yes, there is a Wikileaks investigation - one which has been declared all but impossible to charge Assange in. There are no charges. The GP is correct.
Even Mr. Conspiracy Theory, Assange himself, doesn't believe the "Stratfor endictment". Stratfor for the most part is just people BSing about what they read from things that are in the public record. The most hilarious example was when Wikileaks retweeted from one of their Stratfor docs, "New #Stratfor docs: US soldier stealing $22M from Iraq?" What was this amazing Stratfor doc? It was a Stratfor guy commenting on an email that he received:
Dear Friend,
My name is Sgt.Walter Evans, an American soldier; with Swiss Background, serving in the military of the 3rd Infantry Division in Iraq with a very desperate need for Assistance. I and my partners moved one of the boxes containing funds which we believe is belonging to Saddam Hussein in March 2003, the total fund in this box is (TWENTY-TWO MILLION UNITED STATE DOLLARS), this fund had been moved via a safe Diplomatic Courier Service to a secured security company...
Basically since we are working for the American government we cannot keep these funds, we are Three (3) persons in involved. This means that you will take 25% percent and 75% will be for me / my partners.
Yes, that's a typical Nigerian-style spam email. Which Wikileaks retweeted as being a Stratfor-sourced scandal.
Hmm, now I'm curious. A fighter may have a takeoff weight of say 15000kg. Let's say that the "short lean female" saves 40kg over an "average male". With the other reductions - clothing, oxygen, etc - you probably get down to maybe a 60kg savings. That's a 0,4% reduction in system mass. The rocket equation (applicable here too) probably boosts that up to about a 0,5% benefit in many regards. Still not that much
However, if you can shrink the cockpit , then you're looking at a much bigger advantage - possibly 100-200kg extra weight savings and maybe cutting 5-10% off the total aero drag. That could actually be a big deal - relevantly faster accelerations, top speed, range, etc.
There is no "how human societies have been organized". Some societies have had (and even continue to have) near complete segregation of the sexes except for reproductive purposes. Some have had full integration.
And "popular wisdom" is in general stereotype BS. It was "popular wisdom" that said that people of African descent were worthless for anything except manual labor and it's pointless to try to educate a woman, that gays are a social evil that needs to be obliterated, that burning witches is the only way to save the town, and that letting the races mix is tantamount to national suicide.
You seriously think you can make a claim credited to a scientific study, and then when you can't show evidence that such a study claiming what you did was ever conducted, suddenly switch to a "but everyone knows" laden with old gender stereotypes and the standard lame appeal to darwin - and think that will fly?
In almost any sentence where people say "Women (verb)..." or "Men (verb)..." and it's about something psychological (as opposed to, say, something involving reproductive organs or a statistical difference in strength / height or the like), 99% of the time it's equally accurate to simply say "People (verb)..." The popular perception of differences between genders (including the effects of both brain structure and hormones) is often vastly different from the statistical reality. Screw Mars and Venus; men and women are from Earth. Psychologically, we're statistically virtually identical in most measures. And in many cases where there are differences that even manage to meet statistical significance, what differences there are may well be artifacts of culture.
How little are most of these "differences"? This set of graphs puts it into perspective.
Again: Either present your supposed "study" or drop the issue.
That is, of course, for a given radiation dose, which is independent of body cross section - which is relevant in real-world scenarios. If we assume an isotropic radiation exposure profile, an average male height of 174cm, an average female height of 161 cm, and asssume an equivalent profile, then a man presents a 17% higher profile to radiation exposurediation exposure, so if a woman has a 50% higher (150%) cancer risk, then it's only 29% higher for a fixed radiation flux per square meter.
However, let's look further at this. Given the smaller size of members of a female crew, you can shrink the spacecraft occupant space by 8% on each axis, or a volumetric decrease of 26%. Mass changes are more difficult to reckon. Life support, food, water, etc is dependent on metabolism, which the article shows is dramatically lower for women in space. Fuel needs are proportional to all other mass issues. Only a few things (such as computers and scientific equipment) don't trace back to crew member size and mass. Regardless, for a given launch weight, it's clear that you can afford the mass of a significantly increased amount of radiation shielding for a female crew due to the weight savings elsewhere, probably easily more than offsetting the cancer risk.
Beyond this, the average US astronaut age is 34, an age well after when most women are done having children (assuming that they even want to have children). Given that the article states the risk is from breast, ovarian, and utirine cancer, I wouldn't be surprised if many would consider full hysterectomy for the ability to travel to Mars.
Despite how radical that statement sounds, it's actually perfectly reasonable for a zero-G environment. They're not only dead weight, they're also in the way and make you require larger accomodations.
Even in Mars's gravity field a legless person would deal quite well, at least inside the facility (picture how easily you could get around without your legs if you suddenly were given 2.5x the arm strength, didn't have your legs weighing you down, and on top of that add in how most double amputees already have good arm strength to begin with). They should be able to "hop" with their arms all the way to a 2 1/2 meter ceiling without trouble, and the full arc would take a good two seconds to come back down. On the moon it'd be even easier. Of course, if they're legless, why would they even need such tall ceilings to begin with?
I agree. If by "poisoning" they mean people making insolts or dispatching flying penises in Second Life or stuff like that, then it's a bill too far. But if by "poisoning" they mean launching flickering images on an epilepsy forum to try to cause seizures, "doxxing", making legitimate rape and murder threats, etc, then I think it's absolutely justified. All too often is there the assumption that what happens online doesn't warrant enforcement, even if it's something that crosses over into the real world.
Everyone has the right to free speech, but it ceases being free speech when it crosses certain bounds (shouting fire in a crowded theatre, incitement to violence, solicitation of criminal activity, etc). All of these cases are nuanced and require careful balance, but what they should not be is ignored.
Exactly what I'm thinking. I respect peer-reviewed research, and take results seriously - preferably consensus positions, but on lesser researched topics, individual studies. But isn't this pretty useless without more details? Is it sugar consumption? Then diet soda doesn't count. Is it phosphate consumption? Then are all kinds of other foods also a threat? Is it caffeine? If so, then coffee is a threat and caffeine-free soda is fine. Is it other lesser ingredients, such as certain flavorants or colorants? What element in their test soda is so harmful that it has such a dramatic effect? Surely it's not all ingredients, or the act of consuming them at once...
Wrong. I said mass manufacture - you don't have to re-engineer curiosity from scratch and hand-build it every time. And if you can pay to build a super-heavy-lift vehicle, or tons of smaller (but still very large) launches to get your ~100 tonne manned Mars round trip spacecraft into orbit, then you can launch a 100x 889kg curiosity rovers.
You literally can launch about 100 mass-manufactured curiosity-sized rovers for the cost of one manned mission. The scientific bang for your buck is way, way, way higher with robots.
And FYI, if your goal is to be able to help people "live on another planet", then you absolutely should not be supporting wasting money on a trip to Mars on today's way overpriced launch systems. You should be supporting spending it on developing novel systems for orders-of-magnitude reduction of launch prices, be they scramjets, launch loops, coilguns, metastable fuels, nuclear thermal propulsion, or in general insert-your-favorite-potential-cost-reducer-here, so that it doesn't cost an impractical amount of money to send people there. (never mind that we're not even centuries away from being able to recreate a full self-sustainable tech tree on Mars.. see earlier in the thread)
I always find it funny to hear people the same alt-space fanboys complaining vitriolically about how maintaining ISS is a huge waste of money but then insisting that we set up a manned outpost that would cost orders of magnitude more to maintain;)
What "all purpose robot"? A robot or person's capabilities are limited by what scientific equipment they have on hand, not by whether they can digest corn or catch a cold. I'm talking about a robot like Curiosity. A person could mass-manufacture and dispatch a hundred Curiosity rovers to every corner of Mars for the cost of one manned mission and would collect dozens of times more data.
Ref. It took 30 seconds. Please don't ask other people to use Google for you, you're (presumedly) an adult and should be able to manage these sort of things on your own.
But in order to avoid thermalizing your fission fragments the reaction is going to need to be in near-vacuum
The reaction is done in a near vacuum. But that doesn't mean that there's almost no fuel. Fission fragments and neutrons behave totally differently, fission fragments are positively charged and respect Lorenz force, neutrons are neutral and do not, so it's easy to separate the two (as well as from the fuel, which becomes negatively charged and is not moving at relativistic velocities).
These things have been fully simulated, there's nothing unreasonable about them.
but our best neutron mirrors can only get total reflectance at angles of incidence of less than a single degree
I have no clue where this is coming from. Neutron reflectors (more properly thought of as scatterers) can scatter back, and in fact moderators produce a relatively anisotropic thermal neutron flux. The current proposal for a dusty fission fragment reactor involves U235 fuel and a moderator in the shell of the reactor.
Slashdot Mirror
Meh.
If you want a flaming hellscape, Kilauea is a little candle compared to Bárðarbunga in Iceland. Kilauea erupts a couple cubic meters per second. Bárðarbunga erupts a couple hundred. Kilauea's gas emissions barely show up on satellite images. Bárðarbunga's just last night caused levels so high in a town a hundred kilometers away that it went off the top of the safety scale (which they got from Hawaii ;) ). Bárðarbunga has already erupted more lava than of Mauna Loa's multi-year eruptions in modern history, in under two months, and is up to about 1/6th the volume emitted by Kilauea in the entire 31 years of its eruption, with no signs of stopping. And it's doing all of this through a dike dozens of kilometers long. The magma chamber itself may still actually go off, mind you. An area the size of Manhattan is currently dropping by about a foot per day into the caldera, and has been doing so for months, causing one in every five powerful earthquakes on Earth. The caldera has released the largest lava eruptions on Earth since the last Ice Age, as well as floods several times larger than all of Earth's major rivers combined.
But nobody cares about Icelandic volcanoes unless they take out European air travel ;)
What percent of the US's population do you think is in the risk of a major natural disaster of some kind - volcano, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, landslide, avalanche, etc? This time the dice got rolled and it was their homes that came up snake eyes. It should be noted that the town was built before Pu'u 'O'o became a "thing". There were no signs back then that Pu'u 'O'o was even likely to become an active vent, let alone one that would erupt for over three decades.
Now who's laughing?
What exactly are you talking about - in good real-world systems - that is more silently corruptible than paper elections? E-voting even offers ways for users to confirm their vote on file with the electoral commission (without being able to prove their vote to others), something that regular paper voting does not.
It's okay, neither do they ;)
Really though, while this is said to be due to terrorism, oppression, genocide, and the like, we really know the reason: it's that IS's ideology involves extensie use of MS Paint and an arabic version of Comic Sans. One simply cannot allow that to flourish.
If you're looking at such tiny statistical differences that barely even surpass statistical noise, which is what the vast majority of these suppossed "psyhological gender differences" are (far, far more variation within groups than between groups), crediting them to some sort of innate difference is an extreme stretch, when a far easier explanation is simply culture and upbringing.
The study you linked "doesn't mention all female groups", your words. I'm saying that that claim needs a cite or needs to be dropped. And I can't read what your link itself says because I get a 403 error. But your very description of it states that it doesn't address the claim made that "all male groups work well" but "all female groups were unstable long term". Which is just gross stereotyping presented as if it's some sort of scientific fact.
Surely it had absolutely nothing to the fact that by and large women were actively discouraged if not banned from higher education throughout most of modern history, with as a general rule up until the 20th century only aristocratic women being able to take up the sciences (as a hobby - but even that was actively discouraged, supposedly "bad for their health"), and the few women that managed to publish scientific findings generally had to do so under a male name. No, clearly that had no influence whatsoever!. Clearly science is all about aggressiveness! Which is why the world's greatest scientific discoveries have been made by wolverines.
Right. So the US didn't care enough to Assange to even watch him and inform the Swedes when he left the country, nor to inform the UK police (or simply stop him) when he jumped bail and fled to the Ecuadorian embassy... but despite not even taking the time to watch him they're instead planning an outright abduction and to "disappear" him outside of the courts system? When even Manning, the source of the leaks, the person who actually broke her military oaths and wasn't even arguably a journalist, will only be serving 7 years? Yeaaaaaah, got it.
Sorry, but the world does not revolve around Assange as much as he likes to pretend it does. Assange was living in a paranoid fantasyland pretending to be a spy in the middle of diplomatic intrigue long before he became famous through Wikileaks. Given that his family spent years running and hiding from a cult as he was growing up, there is context to his behavior.
Yes, there is a Wikileaks investigation - one which has been declared all but impossible to charge Assange in. There are no charges. The GP is correct.
Even Mr. Conspiracy Theory, Assange himself, doesn't believe the "Stratfor endictment". Stratfor for the most part is just people BSing about what they read from things that are in the public record. The most hilarious example was when Wikileaks retweeted from one of their Stratfor docs, "New #Stratfor docs: US soldier stealing $22M from Iraq?" What was this amazing Stratfor doc? It was a Stratfor guy commenting on an email that he received:
Yes, that's a typical Nigerian-style spam email. Which Wikileaks retweeted as being a Stratfor-sourced scandal.
The Daily Mail, really?
Hmm, now I'm curious. A fighter may have a takeoff weight of say 15000kg. Let's say that the "short lean female" saves 40kg over an "average male". With the other reductions - clothing, oxygen, etc - you probably get down to maybe a 60kg savings. That's a 0,4% reduction in system mass. The rocket equation (applicable here too) probably boosts that up to about a 0,5% benefit in many regards. Still not that much
However, if you can shrink the cockpit , then you're looking at a much bigger advantage - possibly 100-200kg extra weight savings and maybe cutting 5-10% off the total aero drag. That could actually be a big deal - relevantly faster accelerations, top speed, range, etc.
Good. Space suit design needs a modernization anyway.
There is no "how human societies have been organized". Some societies have had (and even continue to have) near complete segregation of the sexes except for reproductive purposes. Some have had full integration.
And "popular wisdom" is in general stereotype BS. It was "popular wisdom" that said that people of African descent were worthless for anything except manual labor and it's pointless to try to educate a woman, that gays are a social evil that needs to be obliterated, that burning witches is the only way to save the town, and that letting the races mix is tantamount to national suicide.
Males are not optional. ... Male aggressive creativity would be essential to survival
Strangely not creative enough to hide your gross sexism. Perhaps an aggressive retort would help defend your point?
You seriously think you can make a claim credited to a scientific study, and then when you can't show evidence that such a study claiming what you did was ever conducted, suddenly switch to a "but everyone knows" laden with old gender stereotypes and the standard lame appeal to darwin - and think that will fly?
In almost any sentence where people say "Women (verb)..." or "Men (verb)..." and it's about something psychological (as opposed to, say, something involving reproductive organs or a statistical difference in strength / height or the like), 99% of the time it's equally accurate to simply say "People (verb)..." The popular perception of differences between genders (including the effects of both brain structure and hormones) is often vastly different from the statistical reality. Screw Mars and Venus; men and women are from Earth. Psychologically, we're statistically virtually identical in most measures. And in many cases where there are differences that even manage to meet statistical significance, what differences there are may well be artifacts of culture.
How little are most of these "differences"? This set of graphs puts it into perspective.
Again: Either present your supposed "study" or drop the issue.
Okay, so I'll take this as "urban legend" until you can find backing.
That is, of course, for a given radiation dose, which is independent of body cross section - which is relevant in real-world scenarios. If we assume an isotropic radiation exposure profile, an average male height of 174cm, an average female height of 161 cm, and asssume an equivalent profile, then a man presents a 17% higher profile to radiation exposurediation exposure, so if a woman has a 50% higher (150%) cancer risk, then it's only 29% higher for a fixed radiation flux per square meter.
However, let's look further at this. Given the smaller size of members of a female crew, you can shrink the spacecraft occupant space by 8% on each axis, or a volumetric decrease of 26%. Mass changes are more difficult to reckon. Life support, food, water, etc is dependent on metabolism, which the article shows is dramatically lower for women in space. Fuel needs are proportional to all other mass issues. Only a few things (such as computers and scientific equipment) don't trace back to crew member size and mass. Regardless, for a given launch weight, it's clear that you can afford the mass of a significantly increased amount of radiation shielding for a female crew due to the weight savings elsewhere, probably easily more than offsetting the cancer risk.
Beyond this, the average US astronaut age is 34, an age well after when most women are done having children (assuming that they even want to have children). Given that the article states the risk is from breast, ovarian, and utirine cancer, I wouldn't be surprised if many would consider full hysterectomy for the ability to travel to Mars.
I love the fact that Mars is the only planet known to man that is solely inhabited by robots
Despite how radical that statement sounds, it's actually perfectly reasonable for a zero-G environment. They're not only dead weight, they're also in the way and make you require larger accomodations.
Even in Mars's gravity field a legless person would deal quite well, at least inside the facility (picture how easily you could get around without your legs if you suddenly were given 2.5x the arm strength, didn't have your legs weighing you down, and on top of that add in how most double amputees already have good arm strength to begin with). They should be able to "hop" with their arms all the way to a 2 1/2 meter ceiling without trouble, and the full arc would take a good two seconds to come back down. On the moon it'd be even easier. Of course, if they're legless, why would they even need such tall ceilings to begin with?
Citation so we know what you're talking about?
I agree. If by "poisoning" they mean people making insolts or dispatching flying penises in Second Life or stuff like that, then it's a bill too far. But if by "poisoning" they mean launching flickering images on an epilepsy forum to try to cause seizures, "doxxing", making legitimate rape and murder threats, etc, then I think it's absolutely justified. All too often is there the assumption that what happens online doesn't warrant enforcement, even if it's something that crosses over into the real world.
Everyone has the right to free speech, but it ceases being free speech when it crosses certain bounds (shouting fire in a crowded theatre, incitement to violence, solicitation of criminal activity, etc). All of these cases are nuanced and require careful balance, but what they should not be is ignored.
Exactly what I'm thinking. I respect peer-reviewed research, and take results seriously - preferably consensus positions, but on lesser researched topics, individual studies. But isn't this pretty useless without more details? Is it sugar consumption? Then diet soda doesn't count. Is it phosphate consumption? Then are all kinds of other foods also a threat? Is it caffeine? If so, then coffee is a threat and caffeine-free soda is fine. Is it other lesser ingredients, such as certain flavorants or colorants? What element in their test soda is so harmful that it has such a dramatic effect? Surely it's not all ingredients, or the act of consuming them at once...
Wrong. I said mass manufacture - you don't have to re-engineer curiosity from scratch and hand-build it every time. And if you can pay to build a super-heavy-lift vehicle, or tons of smaller (but still very large) launches to get your ~100 tonne manned Mars round trip spacecraft into orbit, then you can launch a 100x 889kg curiosity rovers.
You literally can launch about 100 mass-manufactured curiosity-sized rovers for the cost of one manned mission. The scientific bang for your buck is way, way, way higher with robots.
And FYI, if your goal is to be able to help people "live on another planet", then you absolutely should not be supporting wasting money on a trip to Mars on today's way overpriced launch systems. You should be supporting spending it on developing novel systems for orders-of-magnitude reduction of launch prices, be they scramjets, launch loops, coilguns, metastable fuels, nuclear thermal propulsion, or in general insert-your-favorite-potential-cost-reducer-here, so that it doesn't cost an impractical amount of money to send people there. (never mind that we're not even centuries away from being able to recreate a full self-sustainable tech tree on Mars.. see earlier in the thread)
I always find it funny to hear people the same alt-space fanboys complaining vitriolically about how maintaining ISS is a huge waste of money but then insisting that we set up a manned outpost that would cost orders of magnitude more to maintain ;)
What "all purpose robot"? A robot or person's capabilities are limited by what scientific equipment they have on hand, not by whether they can digest corn or catch a cold. I'm talking about a robot like Curiosity. A person could mass-manufacture and dispatch a hundred Curiosity rovers to every corner of Mars for the cost of one manned mission and would collect dozens of times more data.
Ref. It took 30 seconds. Please don't ask other people to use Google for you, you're (presumedly) an adult and should be able to manage these sort of things on your own.
The reaction is done in a near vacuum. But that doesn't mean that there's almost no fuel. Fission fragments and neutrons behave totally differently, fission fragments are positively charged and respect Lorenz force, neutrons are neutral and do not, so it's easy to separate the two (as well as from the fuel, which becomes negatively charged and is not moving at relativistic velocities).
These things have been fully simulated, there's nothing unreasonable about them.
I have no clue where this is coming from. Neutron reflectors (more properly thought of as scatterers) can scatter back, and in fact moderators produce a relatively anisotropic thermal neutron flux. The current proposal for a dusty fission fragment reactor involves U235 fuel and a moderator in the shell of the reactor.