No, I wasn't trolling, I was offering a contrary experience in an attempt at a mildly humorous format. Apart from one time I went with BA 4 years ago, I've not been on a flight with free drinks since I was a small child. Plenty of flights with a variety of operators where I've been able to buy food and drink, however. I linked ryanair because they're notorious for hidden extra charges, and even more so for their boss speculating in the media about additional charges he'd like to introduce (charge for use of the toilets on planes, replace seats with "standing frames" unless you pay extra, etc.)
Incidentally (may be wrong in this case, but it's frequently the case), those £9.99 specials will probably have cost you ~£70 by the time you've actually got off the plane at the other end).
Hmm, interesting. The large bins full of (mostly empty) bottles right before security control would seem to suggest I'm not alone in believing otherwise.
Really? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to in the UK. Of course, once you're through security, you can buy a new one at ridiculous prices and take THAT onto the plane (presumably first dispensing all your miniature bottles of liquid explosive into it).
If we send a probe now, and the probe could get to up 10% of light speed, in 40 years it will reach that solar system and in 80 years it will be back on Earth.
You do realise that the fuel requirements of sending a probe to Mars and back have prevented that from happening so far, let alone sending a probe a bazillion times further? If we do ever send a probe to Alpha Centauri, then I'd strongly suspect that it wouldn't be slowing down when it got there, let alone coming home again. A flyby is probably the best we can hope to expect, and even then, you'll be talking centuries to get there, in all probability. 0.1 C isn't exactly a trivial velocity to achieve.
Also worth pointing out that the log shows 40 gravities was experienced for just under 1ms - even without airbags etc, he would only have been accelerated towards the windscreen at ~1 metre per second by this acceleration. Obviously this was only part of the overall incident, I just want to point out that the magnitude of an acceleration is only one factor, the duration is just as important.
*headdesk*
So G is short for "G-force" - well what's that short for? That's certainly not a unit of measure, but a scale. Anyway, "Big G" is a universal constant. You're probably thinking of small g, often used as a measure of acceleration, representing the acceleration due to gravity at earth's surface. And as 99.9999998% of us have only ever experienced this one gravity well, it's usually not considered necessary to say "Earth surface gravities" and so "gravities" is a perfectly acceptable synonym for this (somewhat vague) unit of measure, the symbol for which would be "g" (NOT "G").
Cos they just don't. Perhaps there's a more compelling reason that I was either not taught or don't remember, but my utterly-insufficient classical (non-car) analogy would be that they're orbiting each other, due to their opposing electric charges, without actually touching, as they're so incredibly small. They'd have to touch to annihilate. But as you don't ever actually get free quarks, thinking of them as discrete balls is not exactly helpful.
Ignore my use of the word "flavour" in the above post... that's a quantum chronodynamics term, which I managed to confuse with the correct (and much more mundane) term, "type"
Quarks come in several different flavours, and protons and neutrons (i.e. almost all "normal" matter) are made of the two lightest flavours: up and down. The heavier flavours are much rarer, and generally very short-lived (which is why you need to "make" them in such an experiment before you can observe them).
Quarks normally group up in 3s; with a proton being two ups and a down, and a neutron being two downs and an up. Another form of quark grouping consists of a quark and an anti-quark of the same flavour, which is what's been observed here. And this is the first time that one of these pairs has been observed that consists of quarks with the beauty flavour. Other flavours of pair have been observed before, but its the fact that this one consists of beauty quarks that makes it "new"
Do you use short-sighted to additionally describe someone that cannot plan/see long-term consequences?
Yes, but as far as I recall it being used, it tends more to describe an action (e.g. "doing that was a bit short-sighted") than the person themselves. I don't recall ever experiencing any confusion over which form was meant.
Wikipedia page I links says near-sightedness (AmE) and short-sightedness (BrE) which I assume mean American and British English, respectively. Do you guys use "far-sightedness" where we'd use "long-sightedness" then?
You're right, in that the additional launch mass required for the drilling mechanism would seem likely to outweigh that needed for sufficient fuel to return the payload to orbit. But as a precursor to manned return... I'd want the drilling mechanism in place and demonstrated to be working before I set off. Ideally I'd want a nice habitat too, with a warm shower, robot butler and nice 1/3 g beds!
We're kinda arguing the same thing here. I'm only really trying to say that its risky enough even with extensive testing, to the extent that I wouldn't additionally add in a massive untested risk.
I absolutely realise those things. And all those incidents occurred with extremely rigorous testing. I doubt that there's the political will to send astronauts on an extremely expensive trip, that would be a suicide mission unless a drilling machine works first time on a planet its never been tested on. There'd be enough potential disasters on a manned mars mission without that!
Which is just one of the reasons that you're not an astronaut.
The main reasons being my nationality, my height, my short-sightedness, and my wife.
They risk their lives just to get out into space in the first place.
You do realise that manned spacecraft tend to be rigorously tested first? The first moon landing was done by the 11th Apollo craft for a reason, you know.
"Life-bearing" is presumably a relative term - Mars doesn't have plate tectonics, so there's not gonna be enough energy to stand-in for sunlight, like hydrothermal vents might do on Europa. I'd imagine that the only viable life would be rock-eating microbes.
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That's probably a large part of why we don't give cats legal rights: because they're mostly bastards.
The only time anybody has rights is when they are capable of making agreements, and abiding by them, and when they don't, such rights get forfeited.
Not exactly. People who lack capacity to make important (legal/financial, etc) decisions still have rights. Babies, etc. still have rights.
No, I wasn't trolling, I was offering a contrary experience in an attempt at a mildly humorous format. Apart from one time I went with BA 4 years ago, I've not been on a flight with free drinks since I was a small child. Plenty of flights with a variety of operators where I've been able to buy food and drink, however. I linked ryanair because they're notorious for hidden extra charges, and even more so for their boss speculating in the media about additional charges he'd like to introduce (charge for use of the toilets on planes, replace seats with "standing frames" unless you pay extra, etc.)
Incidentally (may be wrong in this case, but it's frequently the case), those £9.99 specials will probably have cost you ~£70 by the time you've actually got off the plane at the other end).
Hmm, interesting. The large bins full of (mostly empty) bottles right before security control would seem to suggest I'm not alone in believing otherwise.
You're also allowed to bring bottles.
Really? I could be wrong, but I'm pretty sure you're not allowed to in the UK. Of course, once you're through security, you can buy a new one at ridiculous prices and take THAT onto the plane (presumably first dispensing all your miniature bottles of liquid explosive into it).
Every flight I've ever been on offers free drinks.
ORLY? http://www.ryanair.com/
I think its more a question of what probability you'd accept "must" as an appropriate synonym for. 0.999? 0.99999999999?
If we send a probe now, and the probe could get to up 10% of light speed, in 40 years it will reach that solar system and in 80 years it will be back on Earth.
You do realise that the fuel requirements of sending a probe to Mars and back have prevented that from happening so far, let alone sending a probe a bazillion times further? If we do ever send a probe to Alpha Centauri, then I'd strongly suspect that it wouldn't be slowing down when it got there, let alone coming home again. A flyby is probably the best we can hope to expect, and even then, you'll be talking centuries to get there, in all probability. 0.1 C isn't exactly a trivial velocity to achieve.
Also worth pointing out that the log shows 40 gravities was experienced for just under 1ms - even without airbags etc, he would only have been accelerated towards the windscreen at ~1 metre per second by this acceleration. Obviously this was only part of the overall incident, I just want to point out that the magnitude of an acceleration is only one factor, the duration is just as important.
*headdesk*
So G is short for "G-force" - well what's that short for? That's certainly not a unit of measure, but a scale. Anyway, "Big G" is a universal constant. You're probably thinking of small g, often used as a measure of acceleration, representing the acceleration due to gravity at earth's surface. And as 99.9999998% of us have only ever experienced this one gravity well, it's usually not considered necessary to say "Earth surface gravities" and so "gravities" is a perfectly acceptable synonym for this (somewhat vague) unit of measure, the symbol for which would be "g" (NOT "G").
That's what I get for only reading the BBC's article. Thanks for the info!
Cos they just don't. Perhaps there's a more compelling reason that I was either not taught or don't remember, but my utterly-insufficient classical (non-car) analogy would be that they're orbiting each other, due to their opposing electric charges, without actually touching, as they're so incredibly small. They'd have to touch to annihilate. But as you don't ever actually get free quarks, thinking of them as discrete balls is not exactly helpful.
Ignore my use of the word "flavour" in the above post ... that's a quantum chronodynamics term, which I managed to confuse with the correct (and much more mundane) term, "type"
Quarks come in several different flavours, and protons and neutrons (i.e. almost all "normal" matter) are made of the two lightest flavours: up and down. The heavier flavours are much rarer, and generally very short-lived (which is why you need to "make" them in such an experiment before you can observe them). Quarks normally group up in 3s; with a proton being two ups and a down, and a neutron being two downs and an up. Another form of quark grouping consists of a quark and an anti-quark of the same flavour, which is what's been observed here. And this is the first time that one of these pairs has been observed that consists of quarks with the beauty flavour. Other flavours of pair have been observed before, but its the fact that this one consists of beauty quarks that makes it "new"
Do you use short-sighted to additionally describe someone that cannot plan/see long-term consequences?
Yes, but as far as I recall it being used, it tends more to describe an action (e.g. "doing that was a bit short-sighted") than the person themselves. I don't recall ever experiencing any confusion over which form was meant.
+5 insightful so apparently not
So what you're saying is, we need to send Bruce Willis and a bunch of morons?
Wikipedia page I links says near-sightedness (AmE) and short-sightedness (BrE) which I assume mean American and British English, respectively. Do you guys use "far-sightedness" where we'd use "long-sightedness" then?
Actually, not being american, I do mean shortsightedness. But I'll say Myopia if that helps.
You're right, in that the additional launch mass required for the drilling mechanism would seem likely to outweigh that needed for sufficient fuel to return the payload to orbit. But as a precursor to manned return ... I'd want the drilling mechanism in place and demonstrated to be working before I set off. Ideally I'd want a nice habitat too, with a warm shower, robot butler and nice 1/3 g beds!
We're kinda arguing the same thing here. I'm only really trying to say that its risky enough even with extensive testing, to the extent that I wouldn't additionally add in a massive untested risk.
I absolutely realise those things. And all those incidents occurred with extremely rigorous testing. I doubt that there's the political will to send astronauts on an extremely expensive trip, that would be a suicide mission unless a drilling machine works first time on a planet its never been tested on. There'd be enough potential disasters on a manned mars mission without that!
Which is just one of the reasons that you're not an astronaut.
The main reasons being my nationality, my height, my short-sightedness, and my wife.
They risk their lives just to get out into space in the first place.
You do realise that manned spacecraft tend to be rigorously tested first? The first moon landing was done by the 11th Apollo craft for a reason, you know.
Let's bring back some martian soil and ... contaminate it??? Urgh!
"Life-bearing" is presumably a relative term - Mars doesn't have plate tectonics, so there's not gonna be enough energy to stand-in for sunlight, like hydrothermal vents might do on Europa. I'd imagine that the only viable life would be rock-eating microbes.