For one thing, maintenance is easier with gravity.
Not when you're having to haul people and gear up and down into a gravity well. That's adding a great deal of cost and complexity.
And if you can seal off the area and add atmosphere, your techs can work in shirtsleeves instead of bulky, restrictive suits.
And the same wouldn't apply to orbit why?
and can respond quickly in case of problems, rather than having to schedule and launch a flight each time something breaks.
Why does this only apply to being on the surface? That's an issue of having a base/station, not an issue of being in a gravity well versus not being in a gravity well.
Data storage and relay will also probably have higher bandwith because you have better computing and power resources.
Why does this only apply to being on the surface? That's an issue of having a base/station, not an issue of being in a gravity well versus not being in a gravity well.
Perhaps the biggest benefit would come in the field of radio astronomy. On the back side of the moon, you're essentially isolated from all the radio noise emanating from earth and low orbit.
So is the Earth-Moon L2 point. And it's not located in a costly gravity well, nor full of hugely problematic dust problems. Lunar dust gets into almost everything. It'd be a nightmare for long-term structures that have to move a lot. And airborne lunar dust could interfere with observations. And I didn't even go into all of the issues with it. Just as another example: being in a gravity well equals far, far greater structural support requirements and makes it a lot harder to rotate to arbitrary angles. Or how about another one -- moonquakes. Want another? Except in very limited locations at the poles (which aren't radio-shielded), it's 2 weeks of darkness followed by two weeks of light. I can keep going if you want.
It just makes no sense to put it in a problematic gravity well when you can get better results by just staying in space.
Okay, I'll make you a deal: once we've exhausted all of the 238 trillion kilograms of lithium in our oceans -- or even, say, 10% of it -- I'll support going to asteroids to mine it.;)
If you'll pardon the pun, I wouldn't hold my breath. On earth, space for solar power means practically free desert land. In orbit, it means thousands of dollars per kilogram of launch costs, and correspondingly (pardon the pun again) astronomical installation and maintenance costs. I don't see how it'd be remotely possible to make up for that extreme difference simply because you get more sunlight. And this isn't even counting the transmission challenges and losses, micrometeorite/radiation damage (cells die a lot faster in space than on the surface), stationkeeping, the risk of catastrophic failure, and so forth.
I really don't get the notion of He3 mining on the moon.
Let's just ignore for the moment that we have no practical way of burning it. Is it really useful to mine something from the freaking moon just to reduce a neutron flux? And if we can burn He3, we can probably scale all the way up to burn boron, which is a better fuel and readily available here on Earth. And even on the moon, He3 is rare -- tens of parts per billion, overwhelmed orders of magnitude over by regular helium. And, we can make He3 right here on Earth. It's a decay product of tritium, which is in turn produced by Li blankets exposed to a neutron flux.
It's just a really illogical thing to bank space travel on. Comes across as more of a contrived excuse to go to the moon than anything. Same with lunar telescopes. Tell me again why it's better to have your telescopes stuck in a gravity well that's expensive to get in and out of, where they'll be constantly exposed to electrostatic lunar dust and not able to readily angle in any direction, rather than just in orbit?
Say the hydrogen economy is a pipe dream and we should be making better Lithium batteries instead? Well, you've only just moved the problem around. Lithium production is unlikely to meet future demands for electric vehicles, even though it has an atomic number of 3 and is therefore fairly abundant in the universe at large.
I love the Evil(tm) sounding statements like, 'If you're IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible.' Can't you just picture them wearing a white lab coat and Dr. Horrible glasses while saying that? "Now Google is here! To make you quake with fear! To make the whole world kneel."
Are you referring to the standards which increase the per-capita consumption of gasoline?
Oh, god, another Jevonite...
Right. And if our cars get 300 miles per gallon, I'll suddenly start driving 120,000 miles per year for no particular reason. Have you ever looked at a graph of the US's oil consumption? See that one major time in modern US history where there was a protracted drop in oil consumption? There was a dip during the 1973 oil crisis, but then consumption kept growing (despite oil prices plateauing at near the 1973 levels)... up until 1978. Then for years (despite the end of the 1979 energy crisis), consumption kept falling. In the 80s, consumption bottomed out, and then continued a steady rise. What happened in 1978 that was so different? The creation of CAFE. But then CAFE stagnated, and so eventually the market was saturated with vehicles produced under CAFE standards, and the continued growth of the US population and auto market overwhelmed it.
The "rebound effect" you refer to is estimated by the National Research Council to only be about 10-20%.
The Professor's plan is a shot at all the enviro nuts who enjoyed $5+ gas and praised it as forcing us to consider new options, when in fact it didn't do shit.
1) That doesn't make it not a plot hole. 2) Didn't do anything? Really? Have you checked out CAFE standards lately? Or how much hybrid sales went up while gas prices were high and how SUV sales collapsed?
Probably a tiny spec of dark matter wrapped in a big ol' Nibbler turd.
Don't you remember Fry being ticketed for "Failure to Scoop" because he couldn't lift it?
Nibbler isn't magic. The Niblonians are advanced, but they don't have magic powers.
They have the power to leave the universe at a whim.
Obviously a joke about pollution.
It's still a plot hole.
The ship was towed by Niblonians, duh.
So they off-camera gained the ability to fly? Come on...
it's a cartoon, expect exaggeration
Exaggeration is fine. Plot holes are not. They're bad writing. If you do introduce a plot hole, at least come up with a cheesy excuse for it in the movie; don't just leave your audience going, "Huh?" Heck, you don't even have to come up with an excuse -- just acknowledge it. The characters sharing in the audience's confusion can be even funnier than excusing it away.
What got me about it was that it had more plot holes than Fry's novel in The Day the Earth Stood Stupid.
* The professor's plan to deal with high fuel prices is... to destroy fuel? So that people will come up with something better? How are they going to do that with everything shut down? Why not just invent something better? I mean, he runs a delivery company; he has the most to lose.
* Doesn't Dark Matter "weigh as much as a thousand suns"? What are people doing handling it like it's nothing?
* If Nibbler can outright step out of the universe, what's he doing trapped in a cage?
* A mere scientific research outpost filled up an entire planet with dark matter? What about the rest of the species then?
* If dark matter no longer works as fuel, and the new power source is to be towed around by Niblonians, how did the ship get back to Earth?
And on and on. The one that really bugs me is the mass issue. They could probably make up cheap excuses for the rest of the stuff, but come on... if you, as a writer, create a Rule of the Universe, be consistent about it! Physical properties shouldn't spontaneously change without explanation or reason.
By the way: Am I the only one who sees things like this:
Matt Groening is quoted as saying, 'We're thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.'... and automatically pictures Groening's voice as Professor Farnsworth's?
I get up early when the sleeping pill wakes me I take a wake up pill and fill with energy I power on hard and I check my messages But I don't have any messages I take a driving pill and head to my car I drive around a bit cuz work isn't very far I call my phone and I check my messages But I don't have any messages
All I know is driving on drugs feels better when they're prescription All I know is the world looks beautiful, the world looks so damn beautiful
I feel fantastic And I never felt as good as how I do right now Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day When I felt the way that I do right now, right now. I feel fantastic And I never felt as good as how I do right now Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
Work is anything but quiet these days I try to medicate my concentration haze I can feel/see the day unfold in front of me So I take the stairs and hit the gym The phone is ringing when I get to my desk What was a stinging's now a sharp pain in my chest So I take a Calminex and just chill And then it's time for lunch again
All I know is work is easy when you don't stress out about deadlines All I know is I take my medicine I always take my medicine.
And I feel fantastic And I never felt as good as how I do right now Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now. I feel fantastic And I never felt as good as how I do right now Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now. (6 right now's that fade out)
Sometimes I'd like to slow things down Enjoy the moment But when I look the moment's gone
Work is over but I can't stay to work late Got to leave and get ready for my second date With a pretty girl that I met at the pharmacy Right in the prescription line I take a pill for my social anxiety I get a table and a nice bottle of chablis Now it's getting late and there's still no sign of her I have another glass of wine
All I know is the wine lasts longer when you don't gotta share it with someone All I know is the steak tastes better when I take my steak tastes better pill
And I feel fantastic And I never felt as good as how I do right now Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day When I felt the way that I do right now, right now. And I feel fantastic And I never felt as good as how I do right now Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
Second, quite frankly, the technique means crap, because they are inefficient, cheap panels, which makes no sense unless you have a huge roof.
1. There's no shortage of unused roof space in the world right now. What matters is cost per watt. Make it cheap enough, and it'll be installed everywhere.
2. Home-scale inverters would be a heck of a lot cheaper if their volume went up 1,000-fold. And that's what'd happen if solar panels that were easy to install on new (or especially existing) homes could be made cheaply enough.
3. Solar panels aren't only used on roofs. I actually have a flexible solar panel. It's only 12V/5W -- not exactly a roof-scale installation. I use it for backpacking. I wired it up to a car lighter socket->USB converter, and when it's sunny, I can charge AAs and AAAs (two at a time, in a couple hours), a cell phone, or run other USB accessories.
Besides, a lot of electronic equipment can run off DC. Why should you invert the power, then run it through a rectifier, then pump it into your laptop?
To change the voltage. Historically, it's been hard to change DC voltages in a small, efficient, compact device. It's possible nowadays, however, so one can hope that things like Green Plug take off. I'd love to see something like that be standard for house wiring.
Five points if anyone can tell me what song lyric, round-tripped between English and Japanese, yields this:
"(13) Design, pony, well, it is the best way to learn to kill me?"
Here's a hint: other famous lyrics by the same artist (different songs) end up as:
(6) In this case, you must eat something in the brain? We can not be forced to - I can not, in the first place. (5) TERODAKUTIRUMANDERUBURO Rorschach, a set of light occurs. (13) May ROGUINMANEJAHOWAITOAPPU this page is to create a country code monkey. (10) Unfortunately, I think I have a weapon. We are working to improve.
(that latter one has some funny intermediaries, such as "(4) Unfortunately, I do and I have a weapon. It tries to do good.")
Oh, here's something really weird: try round-tripping between English and Japanese "our robot". For some reason, it thinks that "our robot" in Japanese is "Google" (Google no ROBOTO -- "Google's robots"). Bizarre.
I prefer to round-trip them until they stabilize;) Greek has fun with capitalization. Japanese goes off on a tangent about milk. Korean has a funny second cycle. The hebrew translation gets really excited.
They're undergoing divergent evolution. It's not like we haven't seen this before. Pigeons are rock doves that have adapted to urban life instead of their traditional cliff-dwelling habitat.
Exactly. Rockets don't care much for idealism. They're all about pragmatism. And I think SpaceX has taken a very pragmatic approach. Yeah, it sucks working on a completely new stack because you can't fall back on all of the old testing (read: risk retirement) that's been done before (as well as having higher capital costs). But, for god's sake, it's about time we had new a stack designed from scratch making use of gathered knowledge and modern technology. I really do believe that, given time to retire the risk (which most other stacks retired long ago), they can achieve at least a good portion of their target cost reduction while maintaining reliability. Their turnaround time on launch attempts with only minimal staff is really amazing, and they've made some good design decisions. For example, I like their use of partially pressure-stabilized tanks -- the tanks are strong enough that you don't have to keep them pressurized while transporting them, but not strong enough to withstand the forces of launch without being fully pressurized. Seems to me the perfect middle ground.
Slashdot Mirror
Radio telescopes on the lunar far side are shielded from the radio background noise from the Earth.
So are orbiting radio telescopes at the Earth-Moon L2 point. Care to try again?
For one thing, maintenance is easier with gravity.
Not when you're having to haul people and gear up and down into a gravity well. That's adding a great deal of cost and complexity.
And if you can seal off the area and add atmosphere, your techs can work in shirtsleeves instead of bulky, restrictive suits.
And the same wouldn't apply to orbit why?
and can respond quickly in case of problems, rather than having to schedule and launch a flight each time something breaks.
Why does this only apply to being on the surface? That's an issue of having a base/station, not an issue of being in a gravity well versus not being in a gravity well.
Data storage and relay will also probably have higher bandwith because you have better computing and power resources.
Why does this only apply to being on the surface? That's an issue of having a base/station, not an issue of being in a gravity well versus not being in a gravity well.
Perhaps the biggest benefit would come in the field of radio astronomy. On the back side of the moon, you're essentially isolated from all the radio noise emanating from earth and low orbit.
So is the Earth-Moon L2 point. And it's not located in a costly gravity well, nor full of hugely problematic dust problems. Lunar dust gets into almost everything. It'd be a nightmare for long-term structures that have to move a lot. And airborne lunar dust could interfere with observations. And I didn't even go into all of the issues with it. Just as another example: being in a gravity well equals far, far greater structural support requirements and makes it a lot harder to rotate to arbitrary angles. Or how about another one -- moonquakes. Want another? Except in very limited locations at the poles (which aren't radio-shielded), it's 2 weeks of darkness followed by two weeks of light. I can keep going if you want.
It just makes no sense to put it in a problematic gravity well when you can get better results by just staying in space.
You think the world would notice if 10% of the lithium went missing from the oceans? Fine -- how about 1% of it?
It's essentially an inexhaustible source no matter how you cut it.
Okay, I'll make you a deal: once we've exhausted all of the 238 trillion kilograms of lithium in our oceans -- or even, say, 10% of it -- I'll support going to asteroids to mine it. ;)
If you'll pardon the pun, I wouldn't hold my breath. On earth, space for solar power means practically free desert land. In orbit, it means thousands of dollars per kilogram of launch costs, and correspondingly (pardon the pun again) astronomical installation and maintenance costs. I don't see how it'd be remotely possible to make up for that extreme difference simply because you get more sunlight. And this isn't even counting the transmission challenges and losses, micrometeorite/radiation damage (cells die a lot faster in space than on the surface), stationkeeping, the risk of catastrophic failure, and so forth.
I really don't get the notion of He3 mining on the moon.
Let's just ignore for the moment that we have no practical way of burning it. Is it really useful to mine something from the freaking moon just to reduce a neutron flux? And if we can burn He3, we can probably scale all the way up to burn boron, which is a better fuel and readily available here on Earth. And even on the moon, He3 is rare -- tens of parts per billion, overwhelmed orders of magnitude over by regular helium. And, we can make He3 right here on Earth. It's a decay product of tritium, which is in turn produced by Li blankets exposed to a neutron flux.
It's just a really illogical thing to bank space travel on. Comes across as more of a contrived excuse to go to the moon than anything. Same with lunar telescopes. Tell me again why it's better to have your telescopes stuck in a gravity well that's expensive to get in and out of, where they'll be constantly exposed to electrostatic lunar dust and not able to readily angle in any direction, rather than just in orbit?
Say the hydrogen economy is a pipe dream and we should be making better Lithium batteries instead? Well, you've only just moved the problem around. Lithium production is unlikely to meet future demands for electric vehicles, even though it has an atomic number of 3 and is therefore fairly abundant in the universe at large.
Nonsense.
I love the Evil(tm) sounding statements like, 'If you're IBM, Microsoft and Oracle, your worst nightmare is now visible.' Can't you just picture them wearing a white lab coat and Dr. Horrible glasses while saying that? "Now Google is here! To make you quake with fear! To make the whole world kneel."
And they won't feeeeeeeeel! ... a thing.
If you noticed a plot hole RIGHT THEN, it's bad writing./I.
Exactly; bad writing.
Are you referring to the standards which increase the per-capita consumption of gasoline?
Oh, god, another Jevonite...
Right. And if our cars get 300 miles per gallon, I'll suddenly start driving 120,000 miles per year for no particular reason. Have you ever looked at a graph of the US's oil consumption? See that one major time in modern US history where there was a protracted drop in oil consumption? There was a dip during the 1973 oil crisis, but then consumption kept growing (despite oil prices plateauing at near the 1973 levels)... up until 1978. Then for years (despite the end of the 1979 energy crisis), consumption kept falling. In the 80s, consumption bottomed out, and then continued a steady rise. What happened in 1978 that was so different? The creation of CAFE. But then CAFE stagnated, and so eventually the market was saturated with vehicles produced under CAFE standards, and the continued growth of the US population and auto market overwhelmed it.
The "rebound effect" you refer to is estimated by the National Research Council to only be about 10-20%.
"...solving the problem once and for all."
"But-"
"ONCE AND FOR ALL!"
The Professor's plan is a shot at all the enviro nuts who enjoyed $5+ gas and praised it as forcing us to consider new options, when in fact it didn't do shit.
1) That doesn't make it not a plot hole.
2) Didn't do anything? Really? Have you checked out CAFE standards lately? Or how much hybrid sales went up while gas prices were high and how SUV sales collapsed?
Probably a tiny spec of dark matter wrapped in a big ol' Nibbler turd.
Don't you remember Fry being ticketed for "Failure to Scoop" because he couldn't lift it?
Nibbler isn't magic. The Niblonians are advanced, but they don't have magic powers.
They have the power to leave the universe at a whim.
Obviously a joke about pollution.
It's still a plot hole.
The ship was towed by Niblonians, duh.
So they off-camera gained the ability to fly? Come on...
it's a cartoon, expect exaggeration
Exaggeration is fine. Plot holes are not. They're bad writing. If you do introduce a plot hole, at least come up with a cheesy excuse for it in the movie; don't just leave your audience going, "Huh?" Heck, you don't even have to come up with an excuse -- just acknowledge it. The characters sharing in the audience's confusion can be even funnier than excusing it away.
What got me about it was that it had more plot holes than Fry's novel in The Day the Earth Stood Stupid.
* The professor's plan to deal with high fuel prices is... to destroy fuel? So that people will come up with something better? How are they going to do that with everything shut down? Why not just invent something better? I mean, he runs a delivery company; he has the most to lose.
* Doesn't Dark Matter "weigh as much as a thousand suns"? What are people doing handling it like it's nothing?
* If Nibbler can outright step out of the universe, what's he doing trapped in a cage?
* A mere scientific research outpost filled up an entire planet with dark matter? What about the rest of the species then?
* If dark matter no longer works as fuel, and the new power source is to be towed around by Niblonians, how did the ship get back to Earth?
And on and on. The one that really bugs me is the mass issue. They could probably make up cheap excuses for the rest of the stuff, but come on... if you, as a writer, create a Rule of the Universe, be consistent about it! Physical properties shouldn't spontaneously change without explanation or reason.
but the ending and the movie completely fucked it over so much that I can't go and rewatch it. It's just so bad.
It's just an object. Doesn't mean what you think.
Well, at least they're not Fox. ;)
By the way: Am I the only one who sees things like this:
Matt Groening is quoted as saying, 'We're thrilled Futurama is coming back. We now have only 25,766 episodes to make before we catch up with Bender and Fry in the year 3000.' ... and automatically pictures Groening's voice as Professor Farnsworth's?
I get up early when the sleeping pill wakes me
I take a wake up pill and fill with energy
I power on hard and I check my messages
But I don't have any messages
I take a driving pill and head to my car
I drive around a bit cuz work isn't very far
I call my phone and I check my messages
But I don't have any messages
All I know is driving on drugs feels better when they're prescription
All I know is the world looks beautiful, the world looks so damn beautiful
I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now.
I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
Work is anything but quiet these days
I try to medicate my concentration haze
I can feel/see the day unfold in front of me
So I take the stairs and hit the gym
The phone is ringing when I get to my desk
What was a stinging's now a sharp pain in my chest
So I take a Calminex and just chill
And then it's time for lunch again
All I know is work is easy when you don't stress out about deadlines
All I know is I take my medicine I always take my medicine.
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now. (6 right now's that fade out)
Sometimes I'd like to slow things down
Enjoy the moment
But when I look the moment's gone
Work is over but I can't stay to work late
Got to leave and get ready for my second date
With a pretty girl that I met at the pharmacy
Right in the prescription line
I take a pill for my social anxiety
I get a table and a nice bottle of chablis
Now it's getting late and there's still no sign of her
I have another glass of wine
All I know is the wine lasts longer when you don't gotta share it with someone
All I know is the steak tastes better when I take my steak tastes better pill
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now.
And I feel fantastic
And I never felt as good as how I do right now
Except for maybe when I think of how I felt that day
When I felt the way that I do right now, right now, right now.
(Live) (JoCopedia) (Store)
Second, quite frankly, the technique means crap, because they are inefficient, cheap panels, which makes no sense unless you have a huge roof.
1. There's no shortage of unused roof space in the world right now. What matters is cost per watt. Make it cheap enough, and it'll be installed everywhere.
2. Home-scale inverters would be a heck of a lot cheaper if their volume went up 1,000-fold. And that's what'd happen if solar panels that were easy to install on new (or especially existing) homes could be made cheaply enough.
3. Solar panels aren't only used on roofs. I actually have a flexible solar panel. It's only 12V/5W -- not exactly a roof-scale installation. I use it for backpacking. I wired it up to a car lighter socket->USB converter, and when it's sunny, I can charge AAs and AAAs (two at a time, in a couple hours), a cell phone, or run other USB accessories.
Besides, a lot of electronic equipment can run off DC. Why should you invert the power, then run it through a rectifier, then pump it into your laptop?
To change the voltage. Historically, it's been hard to change DC voltages in a small, efficient, compact device. It's possible nowadays, however, so one can hope that things like Green Plug take off. I'd love to see something like that be standard for house wiring.
Five points if anyone can tell me what song lyric, round-tripped between English and Japanese, yields this:
"(13) Design, pony, well, it is the best way to learn to kill me?"
Here's a hint: other famous lyrics by the same artist (different songs) end up as:
(6) In this case, you must eat something in the brain? We can not be forced to - I can not, in the first place.
(5) TERODAKUTIRUMANDERUBURO Rorschach, a set of light occurs.
(13) May ROGUINMANEJAHOWAITOAPPU this page is to create a country code monkey.
(10) Unfortunately, I think I have a weapon. We are working to improve.
(that latter one has some funny intermediaries, such as "(4) Unfortunately, I do and I have a weapon. It tries to do good.")
Oh, here's something really weird: try round-tripping between English and Japanese "our robot". For some reason, it thinks that "our robot" in Japanese is "Google" (Google no ROBOTO -- "Google's robots"). Bizarre.
AeroVironment makes some pretty neat stuff. They also make extremely high power electric vehicle chargers -- as much as 250kW.
I prefer to round-trip them until they stabilize ;) Greek has fun with capitalization. Japanese goes off on a tangent about milk. Korean has a funny second cycle. The hebrew translation gets really excited.
They're undergoing divergent evolution. It's not like we haven't seen this before. Pigeons are rock doves that have adapted to urban life instead of their traditional cliff-dwelling habitat.
I've always liked SpaceX. They're actually working on orbital rocketry, rather than unscaleable joyrides.
Exactly. Rockets don't care much for idealism. They're all about pragmatism. And I think SpaceX has taken a very pragmatic approach. Yeah, it sucks working on a completely new stack because you can't fall back on all of the old testing (read: risk retirement) that's been done before (as well as having higher capital costs). But, for god's sake, it's about time we had new a stack designed from scratch making use of gathered knowledge and modern technology. I really do believe that, given time to retire the risk (which most other stacks retired long ago), they can achieve at least a good portion of their target cost reduction while maintaining reliability. Their turnaround time on launch attempts with only minimal staff is really amazing, and they've made some good design decisions. For example, I like their use of partially pressure-stabilized tanks -- the tanks are strong enough that you don't have to keep them pressurized while transporting them, but not strong enough to withstand the forces of launch without being fully pressurized. Seems to me the perfect middle ground.
You post like a dairy farmer!