Make friends with a college chemistry professor. Manufacturing the parts is difficult, but with a bit of mechanical skill, and some initial oversight to teach you proper safety procedures around heavy machinery, most people could get by. The design is "rocket science", but to be honest, it's really just a bit of math and a lot of experience. Pick up some books on rocket propulsion and fluid mechanics, read them, and then read them a couple more times.
The hard part is the manufacturing of the fuel, and by hard, I mean dangerous. These aren't chemicals you can just buy. You're going to have to make them on your own. Aluminum is simple enough, and while the binder is a rather complex chemical, it's otherwise fairly safe. The problem is the oxidizer. Any high test oxidizer is going to be extremely dangerous to handle. Consumer grade peroxide is only 3%, and even commercial grade is only 25-30%. You are absolutely going to want someone with prior experience who knows what they are doing to manufacture the stuff.
Get some real backing by someone with money to blow. Getting into space really isn't all that difficult. Once you get staging figured out, I doubt these guys would have all that much trouble getting a rocket up 100km. There have been commercial sounding rockets capable of that since the 50s. Getting into actual orbit is an order of magnitude more difficult, and you're looking at development costs in the tens of millions to come up with something from scratch capable of doing so, even with no payload.
You are being naive. Having a balloon get you up to 30km, with no velocity besides whatever the jetstream is at that altitude, you have all of a couple percent of the energy needed to put you into low earth orbit, much less lunar orbit. You could make a modest decrease in the size of your rocket, at the cost of an absolutely monstrous balloon needed to get that much mass up that high.
The problem with balloon launches is the same problem with mothership launches like the SpaceShipOne. Once you get up to altitude, and modest speed, so what? The White Knight gets you to around 15km and 200m/s. Balloons get you to around 30km and 0m/s. Meanwhile, LEO starts around 150km and 8000m/s, which at that altitude is only good for a couple days before you re-enter. They can get you a decent chunk of the altitude, but are nowhere near the velocity requirements. Remember, fuel and launch mass varies exponentially with your velocity requirement. As for getting out of the thick low atmosphere, that's only going to save you a couple hundred meters per second at the most.
Now that space donut is something completely different. While motherships and balloons can't achieve the necessary velocity to be worthwhile, guns can. The problem with guns is that you need a very long barrel to get sufficiently low acceleration to be useful for more delicate payloads. You have to launch at a high inclination, so you either need an extremely deep mine shaft, or an extremely tall structure (or one built up the side of a tall mountain). The space donut is a way to build that tall structure. Rather than having it self-supporting, you use buoyancy to do it for you. Make it lighter than air, and use guy wires to position and stabilize it. You can build it as tall as the atmosphere will support it.
That sounds like you're referring to something like Infiniband, commonly available up to 40Gbps, with latencies of a microsecond or less, and switch backplanes reaching up into the terabit range.
Of course, one of the other Democrats could decide to run as an independent, without the backing of either party, but I don't know the last time an independent had any real chance of victory. More likely, a Democrat running as an independent would do nothing but pull votes from Obama, assuring the win for the Republican nomination.,
Is a patent with "secret sauce" still actually a valid patent? If other people don't know what that sauce is, how could they possibly prevent themselves from inadvertently violating the patent? That's like claiming some other company stole your code and open sourced it, and then faffing about in court for years without giving any evidence to that fact.
All of the different "Operating Systems" they were able to run were different blends of Linux, running the 2.6.32 kernel. It seems like what they're doing is less virtualization, and more isolation. You get the bare install that just provides a basic X server and selection screen. You then have several other distributions that you basically just chroot into. You have multiple live userlands that you can swap into, but they are all running the same instance of the kernel. It's basically everything FreeBSD jails, Solaris Containers, and Linux VServers have been doing for a decade.
Hydrogen is reactive. It will react with something on the way up through the atmosphere, that makes it sufficiently heavy to stick around. The problem with helium is that it is inert. It's perfectly content on its own, so it will simply float to the top of the atmosphere and exist in trace densities not economical to capture.
A standard screwdriver won't do it. You need a torx set, usually T6 or T8, and some use the security pin. It's not hard to find in a bit set online. Alternatively, you can just drill the screws.
An alternative would be something like ZFS or BTRFS. They use live checksumming to verify files. If told to store multiple copies, or used in an array with parity or mirroring, they can automatically restore files that have rotten. You can snapshot for backups, and you can send those incremental backups across the network or internet to a remote copy of the filesystem. It's the same behavior as you are describing, but operating as intended, rather than shoehorning onto a version control system.
Generally, when you're archiving stuff like images and video, your collection is only going to grow. That move to "recent technology" every couple years fits perfectly in line with a move to more dense storage right as you're running out of room on your current solution.
Are you implying this is the expensive solution? The largest portable flash drives are going to be 320GB, and cost several hundred dollars. Meanwhile, a single platter hard disk that size goes for around $40. Keep two for your own local mirror, one more for local backup, and two others for remote backup that you cycle. $200 total, plus another $25 for the hotswap caddy. The flash drive will run around $500 and is a single point of failure. A 400GB LTO tape is only going to cost you $25-$30, and will give you archival rating for maybe a decade, but the tape drive itself is $1500-$2000.
It all depends on the quantity of data you need to store. For a small amount of data, a couple USB flash drives, or maybe online storage, is the most economical. For anything maybe 50GB or more, rotating hard drives becomes the most economical. Someone who takes a lot of home videos likely falls into this category. If you're looking to store tens of TB over long periods, then the up front cost of a tape drive and bulk LTO5 cartridges may actually result in the cheapest solution.
That benchmark puts the a low end Radeon 5450 at comparable to the best Intel graphics in some tests, and significantly outperforming it in other tests. Meanwhile, this benchmark puts the GF520 at somewhere around 50-100% better performance than the Radeon 5450, depending on the test. So yes, this card is far more powerful than anything Intel offers, but it's moot because no one looking for one of these cards or Intel graphics cares much about graphical performance.
You are absolutely correct. Technically, the GF520 is still considerably more powerful than anything Intel produces, but the Intel part will make up for at least in part with latency and bandwidth. That's besides the point, however, as no one looking to use onboard Intel graphics, or one of these cards, has any care for any meaningful graphical or computational performance. They both run hardware accelerated decoding well enough, and the new system will idle around 1/3rd the power as the old Athlon/P4 combined with discrete graphics.
Yes, and with each new version of OSX, there are more and more safeguards to prevent such use. I bet there's some documentation in the license agreement about only using it on Apple hardware too.
In this case, it really does refer to a solid material made from a petrochemical base. Carbon fiber is... a fiber, like thread of fabric. It only works in tension, not compression. Think of it as analogous to the rebar in reinforced concrete. The carbon fiber provides tensile strength, while the thermalset polymer resin (plastic) acts as a sheer web and provides compressive strength.
You don't necessarily have to use plastic. Some higher temperature applications use carbon fiber reinforced metals, such as titanium or aluminum. Carbon fiber reinforced ceramics, using graphite or silicon carbide, have been used for high performance brakes for decades. The graphite version, also known as carbon-carbon, is used for the leading edge thermal shielding on the Space Shuttle.
It's not like that at all. Every jet airliner before this has drawn large amounts of high pressure bleed air from the compressor, using it to power everything from avionics, to deicers, to the cabin air supply. The 787 gets rid of all this bleed air, instead replacing it with a local electric generator on the shaft, and electrical conduits run all over the aircraft. It's not a simple evolutionary improvement like "Let's use another 5% composites on this plane than the last." It's a very radical change in how the entire aircraft operates.
Easy to fix. Add a series of capillaries to the exterior hull. Fill the capillaries with alternating resin and activator. When the hull is breached, air pressure forces the fluid out of the capillaries. They mix in the gap, harden, and seal the hull.
OK, maybe it's not easy but its certainly doable. With years of research, and hundreds of millions in budget, there's no reason why it couldn't be accomplished. We have been using self-sealing fuel tanks for military aircraft since before WWII.
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Make friends with a college chemistry professor. Manufacturing the parts is difficult, but with a bit of mechanical skill, and some initial oversight to teach you proper safety procedures around heavy machinery, most people could get by. The design is "rocket science", but to be honest, it's really just a bit of math and a lot of experience. Pick up some books on rocket propulsion and fluid mechanics, read them, and then read them a couple more times.
The hard part is the manufacturing of the fuel, and by hard, I mean dangerous. These aren't chemicals you can just buy. You're going to have to make them on your own. Aluminum is simple enough, and while the binder is a rather complex chemical, it's otherwise fairly safe. The problem is the oxidizer. Any high test oxidizer is going to be extremely dangerous to handle. Consumer grade peroxide is only 3%, and even commercial grade is only 25-30%. You are absolutely going to want someone with prior experience who knows what they are doing to manufacture the stuff.
We look forward to your high altitude rocket launch made entirely out of plastic parts from a 3D printer.
Get some real backing by someone with money to blow. Getting into space really isn't all that difficult. Once you get staging figured out, I doubt these guys would have all that much trouble getting a rocket up 100km. There have been commercial sounding rockets capable of that since the 50s. Getting into actual orbit is an order of magnitude more difficult, and you're looking at development costs in the tens of millions to come up with something from scratch capable of doing so, even with no payload.
You are being naive. Having a balloon get you up to 30km, with no velocity besides whatever the jetstream is at that altitude, you have all of a couple percent of the energy needed to put you into low earth orbit, much less lunar orbit. You could make a modest decrease in the size of your rocket, at the cost of an absolutely monstrous balloon needed to get that much mass up that high.
Why not use hydrogen?
On the contrary. Rocket motors become more efficient at altitude, as the reduced pressure allows for increased expansion and higher exhaust velocity.
The problem with balloon launches is the same problem with mothership launches like the SpaceShipOne. Once you get up to altitude, and modest speed, so what? The White Knight gets you to around 15km and 200m/s. Balloons get you to around 30km and 0m/s. Meanwhile, LEO starts around 150km and 8000m/s, which at that altitude is only good for a couple days before you re-enter. They can get you a decent chunk of the altitude, but are nowhere near the velocity requirements. Remember, fuel and launch mass varies exponentially with your velocity requirement. As for getting out of the thick low atmosphere, that's only going to save you a couple hundred meters per second at the most.
Now that space donut is something completely different. While motherships and balloons can't achieve the necessary velocity to be worthwhile, guns can. The problem with guns is that you need a very long barrel to get sufficiently low acceleration to be useful for more delicate payloads. You have to launch at a high inclination, so you either need an extremely deep mine shaft, or an extremely tall structure (or one built up the side of a tall mountain). The space donut is a way to build that tall structure. Rather than having it self-supporting, you use buoyancy to do it for you. Make it lighter than air, and use guy wires to position and stabilize it. You can build it as tall as the atmosphere will support it.
That sounds like you're referring to something like Infiniband, commonly available up to 40Gbps, with latencies of a microsecond or less, and switch backplanes reaching up into the terabit range.
Of course, one of the other Democrats could decide to run as an independent, without the backing of either party, but I don't know the last time an independent had any real chance of victory. More likely, a Democrat running as an independent would do nothing but pull votes from Obama, assuring the win for the Republican nomination.,
Is a patent with "secret sauce" still actually a valid patent? If other people don't know what that sauce is, how could they possibly prevent themselves from inadvertently violating the patent? That's like claiming some other company stole your code and open sourced it, and then faffing about in court for years without giving any evidence to that fact.
All of the different "Operating Systems" they were able to run were different blends of Linux, running the 2.6.32 kernel. It seems like what they're doing is less virtualization, and more isolation. You get the bare install that just provides a basic X server and selection screen. You then have several other distributions that you basically just chroot into. You have multiple live userlands that you can swap into, but they are all running the same instance of the kernel. It's basically everything FreeBSD jails, Solaris Containers, and Linux VServers have been doing for a decade.
Hydrogen is reactive. It will react with something on the way up through the atmosphere, that makes it sufficiently heavy to stick around. The problem with helium is that it is inert. It's perfectly content on its own, so it will simply float to the top of the atmosphere and exist in trace densities not economical to capture.
Are you saying just strip the screws and pry it open?
A standard screwdriver won't do it. You need a torx set, usually T6 or T8, and some use the security pin. It's not hard to find in a bit set online. Alternatively, you can just drill the screws.
An alternative would be something like ZFS or BTRFS. They use live checksumming to verify files. If told to store multiple copies, or used in an array with parity or mirroring, they can automatically restore files that have rotten. You can snapshot for backups, and you can send those incremental backups across the network or internet to a remote copy of the filesystem. It's the same behavior as you are describing, but operating as intended, rather than shoehorning onto a version control system.
Do you mean RAID1 and 2TB drives?
Generally, when you're archiving stuff like images and video, your collection is only going to grow. That move to "recent technology" every couple years fits perfectly in line with a move to more dense storage right as you're running out of room on your current solution.
Are you implying this is the expensive solution? The largest portable flash drives are going to be 320GB, and cost several hundred dollars. Meanwhile, a single platter hard disk that size goes for around $40. Keep two for your own local mirror, one more for local backup, and two others for remote backup that you cycle. $200 total, plus another $25 for the hotswap caddy. The flash drive will run around $500 and is a single point of failure. A 400GB LTO tape is only going to cost you $25-$30, and will give you archival rating for maybe a decade, but the tape drive itself is $1500-$2000.
It all depends on the quantity of data you need to store. For a small amount of data, a couple USB flash drives, or maybe online storage, is the most economical. For anything maybe 50GB or more, rotating hard drives becomes the most economical. Someone who takes a lot of home videos likely falls into this category. If you're looking to store tens of TB over long periods, then the up front cost of a tape drive and bulk LTO5 cartridges may actually result in the cheapest solution.
That benchmark puts the a low end Radeon 5450 at comparable to the best Intel graphics in some tests, and significantly outperforming it in other tests. Meanwhile, this benchmark puts the GF520 at somewhere around 50-100% better performance than the Radeon 5450, depending on the test. So yes, this card is far more powerful than anything Intel offers, but it's moot because no one looking for one of these cards or Intel graphics cares much about graphical performance.
You are absolutely correct. Technically, the GF520 is still considerably more powerful than anything Intel produces, but the Intel part will make up for at least in part with latency and bandwidth. That's besides the point, however, as no one looking to use onboard Intel graphics, or one of these cards, has any care for any meaningful graphical or computational performance. They both run hardware accelerated decoding well enough, and the new system will idle around 1/3rd the power as the old Athlon/P4 combined with discrete graphics.
Yes, and with each new version of OSX, there are more and more safeguards to prevent such use. I bet there's some documentation in the license agreement about only using it on Apple hardware too.
Erm... if you want Mac OS, then you can't do homebrew.
In this case, it really does refer to a solid material made from a petrochemical base. Carbon fiber is... a fiber, like thread of fabric. It only works in tension, not compression. Think of it as analogous to the rebar in reinforced concrete. The carbon fiber provides tensile strength, while the thermalset polymer resin (plastic) acts as a sheer web and provides compressive strength.
You don't necessarily have to use plastic. Some higher temperature applications use carbon fiber reinforced metals, such as titanium or aluminum. Carbon fiber reinforced ceramics, using graphite or silicon carbide, have been used for high performance brakes for decades. The graphite version, also known as carbon-carbon, is used for the leading edge thermal shielding on the Space Shuttle.
It's not like that at all. Every jet airliner before this has drawn large amounts of high pressure bleed air from the compressor, using it to power everything from avionics, to deicers, to the cabin air supply. The 787 gets rid of all this bleed air, instead replacing it with a local electric generator on the shaft, and electrical conduits run all over the aircraft. It's not a simple evolutionary improvement like "Let's use another 5% composites on this plane than the last." It's a very radical change in how the entire aircraft operates.
Easy to fix. Add a series of capillaries to the exterior hull. Fill the capillaries with alternating resin and activator. When the hull is breached, air pressure forces the fluid out of the capillaries. They mix in the gap, harden, and seal the hull.
OK, maybe it's not easy but its certainly doable. With years of research, and hundreds of millions in budget, there's no reason why it couldn't be accomplished. We have been using self-sealing fuel tanks for military aircraft since before WWII.