>Motorcycle. Wonderful idea. Have you factored in the cost of the electric wheelchair after the >inevitable near-fatal injury?
The odds of being in a near-fatal crash are higher than in a car, but not that much higher, and motorcycles are far more fun to drive than cars are. The only thing more fun to drive than a motorcycle is a bicycle, but that is truly dangerous in most US cities.
Building the rocket is not the problem. The clever technology is in the communications system and the navigation. Making sure that something in space goes exactly where you want it to, and stays there, is not simple. There are governments that would pay a lot for the technology that NASA uses in some of its missions. As someone posted earlier, building a rocket that can launch, reach orbit, and then go where you want it to is essentially the same as building an ICBM.
I agree that a good deal of the ITAR regulations are nonsense though.
>How about releasing the info to -all- US citizens who paid their tax money for it?
The first reason is how do you stop the information from reaching other countries, and their militaries? There is a lot of knowledge that is needed for space flight that is ITAR controlled, which means that it is illegal to pass that information on to a non-US citizen. Putting some (not all) of this information into the public domain would be the equivalent of giving it to anyone in the world who wanted it.
The second reason is that the companies that do much of the actual building of spacecraft and the communications and navigations systems that these spacecraft use do not want other companies to learn their methods and techniques. There are a lot of trade secrets in spaceships.
That is correct. The transverse velocity of M31 relative to us is unknown. However, we do know the radial velocity, and we have a fairly good idea of the gravitational potential in the Local Group, so we can make some estimates about the total velocity of M31 relative to us, and thus constrain the transverse velocity. The results are somewhat uncertain, but they do suggest that M31 will pass close enough to use that the two galaxies will disrupt and ultimately merge into an elliptical galaxy. We do not need a head-on collision for this to happen, just an impact parameter smaller than roughly 200 kpc.
The current modelling suggests that the Sun has about another seven billion years before it becomes a red giant. The Earth, however, only has about a billion years left before the Sun is hot enough to boil off the oceans.
There are many people out there who are claiming that there is no such thing as climate change. These people are denying that the Earth's climate system is variable and denying that human activity may be affecting the climate. The term denier is quite reasonable. It describes what some of these people are doing. The Holocaust connection is something that the rose-coloured-glasses crowd came up with the try and portray themselves as victims. You have to admit, it works very well.
>What a great word. What a lovely set of implications it has. Are the climate change "denialists" related to > Holocaust deniers by any chance?
The only people who make that connection are the people who are trying to deny that climate change is happening. Painting oneself as a victim is a powerful propaganda technique, but it has no place in scientific debate.
The Solar cycles do not match the warming that has been seen over the past three or four decades. Also, the observed variation in insolation is only consistent with mean temperature changes of about 0.5 degrees, not the changes that have been observed. Solar variability is having an effect on Earth's climate, but the evidence suggests that it is not a large enough effect to explain what we are seeing.
The problems with the principle component analysis in the hockey stick diagram were not a case of academic dishonesty. They were a case of a subtle statistical error being found in the work. This sort of thing happens all the time. In general it is a self-correcting problem.
Jupiter is not in near-Earth space. There is not a lot of effort being put onto looking for small objects at the distance of Jupiter. This is because the distance makes them very hard to find, and a lot of effort is being put into finding objects that are on Earth-crossing orbits.
> The Earth has not yet faced a galaxy coming straight at it.
The Earth is facing a galaxy coming straight at it. The Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way, and there is a very real possibility that the Sun will be ejected from our Galaxy when this happens. Fortunately, this is not going to happen for about three billion years
This would be a good idea, if the charges were reasonable. Charging $1/Gb is unreasonable. Charging something like $0.05/Gb would be reasonable and I suspect would be widely supported.
The problem is that these companies are advertising that people will get 5 Mb/s and relegating the "or less" part to the fine print. Most customers are going to interpret that as an internet transfer rate of 5 Mb/s. What the communications companies should be doing is writing, in big, easy to read print, that 5Mb/s is the maximum rate and that the true rate will be significantly less under normal conditions.
That is only true if 60 MPH is the minimum speed in that zone. In most cases 60 MPH is the maximum speed in the zone, in which case it is perfectly legal (and sometimes mandatory) to drive at slower speeds.
The evidence for water on Mars is stronger than just erosion features. There is chemical evidence as well. Still, this does call into question how wide-spread the water was in the highland areas.
Well, there is truth to that, but it is not the underlying problem. The underlying problem is the lack of funding, and underlying that (which I did not mention in my original post) is the lack of a well-thought-out vision of what NASA is supposed to be doing. The NASA-is-a-bad-bureaucracy story is largely a myth. I have worked in many large organizations and NASA (where I currently work) is no worse than many others. The problem with the bureaucracy at NASA is that NASA has been in a holding pattern for a generation. That takes its toll. The only parts of NASA that have been moving forward are the unmanned science directorates, and they are doing amazing things with fairly small amounts of money, largely because they have reasonably coherent visions behind them (the astrophysics Decadal Surveys, for example). The manned programme needs a similar, well-though-out, set of goals.
The problem with NASA is that it has been hobbled by the past several administrations. NASA simply does not have enough money to do what it is supposed to do. This is particularly true with Bush's vision for space exploration. He wanted NASA to develop a new launch architecture, build a Moon base, and send people to Mars, all with the current level of funding. It is hardly surprising that things are not working. As Scotty might say... Ye canna change the laws of economics.
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>Motorcycle. Wonderful idea. Have you factored in the cost of the electric wheelchair after the
>inevitable near-fatal injury?
The odds of being in a near-fatal crash are higher than in a car, but not that much higher, and motorcycles are far more fun to drive than cars are. The only thing more fun to drive than a motorcycle is a bicycle, but that is truly dangerous in most US cities.
Building the rocket is not the problem. The clever technology is in the communications system and the navigation. Making sure that something in space goes exactly where you want it to, and stays there, is not simple. There are governments that would pay a lot for the technology that NASA uses in some of its missions. As someone posted earlier, building a rocket that can launch, reach orbit, and then go where you want it to is essentially the same as building an ICBM.
I agree that a good deal of the ITAR regulations are nonsense though.
That would knock the US back to where it was in the early 1960s, which would effectively leave the rest of the world decades ahead of the US in space.
>How about releasing the info to -all- US citizens who paid their tax money for it?
The first reason is how do you stop the information from reaching other countries, and their militaries? There is a lot of knowledge that is needed for space flight that is ITAR controlled, which means that it is illegal to pass that information on to a non-US citizen. Putting some (not all) of this information into the public domain would be the equivalent of giving it to anyone in the world who wanted it.
The second reason is that the companies that do much of the actual building of spacecraft and the communications and navigations systems that these spacecraft use do not want other companies to learn their methods and techniques. There are a lot of trade secrets in spaceships.
That is correct. The transverse velocity of M31 relative to us is unknown. However, we do know the radial velocity, and we have a fairly good idea of the gravitational potential in the Local Group, so we can make some estimates about the total velocity of M31 relative to us, and thus constrain the transverse velocity. The results are somewhat uncertain, but they do suggest that M31 will pass close enough to use that the two galaxies will disrupt and ultimately merge into an elliptical galaxy. We do not need a head-on collision for this to happen, just an impact parameter smaller than roughly 200 kpc.
The current modelling suggests that the Sun has about another seven billion years before it becomes a red giant. The Earth, however, only has about a billion years left before the Sun is hot enough to boil off the oceans.
There are many people out there who are claiming that there is no such thing as climate change. These people are denying that the Earth's climate system is variable and denying that human activity may be affecting the climate. The term denier is quite reasonable. It describes what some of these people are doing. The Holocaust connection is something that the rose-coloured-glasses crowd came up with the try and portray themselves as victims. You have to admit, it works very well.
>What a great word. What a lovely set of implications it has. Are the climate change "denialists" related to
> Holocaust deniers by any chance?
The only people who make that connection are the people who are trying to deny that climate change is happening. Painting oneself as a victim is a powerful propaganda technique, but it has no place in scientific debate.
The Solar cycles do not match the warming that has been seen over the past three or four decades. Also, the observed variation in insolation is only consistent with mean temperature changes of about 0.5 degrees, not the changes that have been observed. Solar variability is having an effect on Earth's climate, but the evidence suggests that it is not a large enough effect to explain what we are seeing.
The problems with the principle component analysis in the hockey stick diagram were not a case of academic dishonesty. They were a case of a subtle statistical error being found in the work. This sort of thing happens all the time. In general it is a self-correcting problem.
Jupiter is not in near-Earth space. There is not a lot of effort being put onto looking for small objects at the distance of Jupiter. This is because the distance makes them very hard to find, and a lot of effort is being put into finding objects that are on Earth-crossing orbits.
> The Earth has not yet faced a galaxy coming straight at it.
The Earth is facing a galaxy coming straight at it. The Andromeda Galaxy is on a collision course with the Milky Way, and there is a very real possibility that the Sun will be ejected from our Galaxy when this happens. Fortunately, this is not going to happen for about three billion years
Whenever anyone suggests that global warming may be a contributing factor to something legions of useful idiots deny it.
Wrong. A lot of the money that has gone into the "pipes" (at least in the US) came from the government or from deregulation of fees.
What we really need is regulation, with teeth.
This would be a good idea, if the charges were reasonable. Charging $1/Gb is unreasonable. Charging something like $0.05/Gb would be reasonable and I suspect would be widely supported.
The problem is that these companies are advertising that people will get 5 Mb/s and relegating the "or less" part to the fine print. Most customers are going to interpret that as an internet transfer rate of 5 Mb/s. What the communications companies should be doing is writing, in big, easy to read print, that 5Mb/s is the maximum rate and that the true rate will be significantly less under normal conditions.
>Snarky isn't a word (yet), it's just something made up by Americans. It's not in any print dictionaries.
It is in the OED, which is pretty much the gold standard of English language dictionaries.
That is only true if 60 MPH is the minimum speed in that zone. In most cases 60 MPH is the maximum speed in the zone, in which case it is perfectly legal (and sometimes mandatory) to drive at slower speeds.
No, they do not. See, for example, Snopes.com, and some other myth-busting Web sites.
scheme |skiËm|
noun
a large-scale systematic plan or arrangement for attaining some particular object or putting a particular idea into effect
Many of whom, when one looks closely, turn out not to be active climatology researchers.
The evidence for water on Mars is stronger than just erosion features. There is chemical evidence as well. Still, this does call into question how wide-spread the water was in the highland areas.
Well, there is truth to that, but it is not the underlying problem. The underlying problem is the lack of funding, and underlying that (which I did not mention in my original post) is the lack of a well-thought-out vision of what NASA is supposed to be doing. The NASA-is-a-bad-bureaucracy story is largely a myth. I have worked in many large organizations and NASA (where I currently work) is no worse than many others. The problem with the bureaucracy at NASA is that NASA has been in a holding pattern for a generation. That takes its toll. The only parts of NASA that have been moving forward are the unmanned science directorates, and they are doing amazing things with fairly small amounts of money, largely because they have reasonably coherent visions behind them (the astrophysics Decadal Surveys, for example). The manned programme needs a similar, well-though-out, set of goals.
The problem with NASA is that it has been hobbled by the past several administrations. NASA simply does not have enough money to do what it is supposed to do. This is particularly true with Bush's vision for space exploration. He wanted NASA to develop a new launch architecture, build a Moon base, and send people to Mars, all with the current level of funding. It is hardly surprising that things are not working. As Scotty might say... Ye canna change the laws of economics.