I thought I read that they had an engine failure in last May's launch, too.
Also, can the Falcon 9 fly one-engine-down from any point after launch? The GP mentions the Saturn V being able to run one-engine-down, but that was only after a certain point into the flight. They needed all 5 F-1s for at least the first minute or two.
The space shuttle could also run one-engine-down, after a certain point during the launch. I believe I also remember hearing them mark a two-engine-down point, where they could complete the mission on only one engine. (or at least some safe abort profile)
But then again, in Apollo 13, something did go horribly wrong. It was nip and tuck several times whether or not they would survive. Had the mission gone as planned, it would have been quite boring, and they never would have made a movie of it. Don't forget that by the later Apollo missions there was practically no TV coverage at all. Though there was good TV coverage of the Apollo 17 liftoff from the moon, since that was the first time it could ever be seen live. I certainly was glued to the screen, at the time.
I'm not saying that tax cuts and deregulation are never the correct course - sometimes they are. I'm just saying that no single simplistic solution is always the correct course - and that counts for more regulation and throwing money at the problem, also.
I will say this about tax cuts - look at history. The Bush tax cuts were one of the first things he did upon inaguration. They don't appear to have worked wonders, and we've had them for nearly 12 years. OK, we can discount them working during the Obama administration, and blame that on him. But for the 8 years prior to that they weren't working either - at least not for working Americans. My personal sense of finance peaked under Clinton, and hasn't gotten back to the same level.
EVERY problem can be solved by tax cuts and deregulation!
Or to paraphrase what my wife told me she once read... Democrats like to regulate and throw money at problems. Republicans like to deregulate and throw money at Republicans.
It's newfangled "new science", not like the good old dependable science of Sir Isaac Newton. I don't know about embryology, but evolution and quantum mechanics both really started in the mid 1800s. (William Rowan Hamilton doesn't get the general credit he deserves.)
It's on the internet. The fundamental enabling technology for the internet is the semiconductor. The semiconductor is a child of quantum mechanics - there is no classical behavior that would predict it. Even though quantum mechanics are present in all chemistry and even vacuum tubes, those both have classical behavior that can be seen with the naked eye, and appreciated without quantum mechanics.
Semiconductors can't. They're "Devil Science", just like those others.
No, not too good to fight for my country. I also knew that my shooting was mediocre. At my time, I was in one of the last lotteries - I don't know what my actions would have been had I been picked, other than take the physical. I think by that time they weren't calling anyone up. Beyond that, the only apparent logical choice to me was to move on to college as directly as possible, and continue my education. The other options you speak of weren't apparent, at the time. They also may not have existed at the time.
As for the rest, thank you for the education in logic. There are elements of that logic that I've been missing for some time, and you have clarified them for me.
A few comments, tangentially related. I was one of those who liked "Starship Troopers" and didn't see it as facist.
I never served, and sometimes I wish I had, but I think there's another problem with the concept. After high school I was college bound - I grew up during the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo days, and when my country called for STEM, I answered. I wasn't going to college to party for 4 years, or to dodge the draft - I was going for science, and wound up in engineering. Would it have been the best use of our nation's resource - me and others like me - to take someone headed for science and engineering, and park him behind a gun?
In decades-later retrospect, I wish there had been more sensible alternatives for national service for people like me. I think of an internship in a lab somewhere, spending some time as a bottle-washer, some time as a gofor, and likely some time getting lessons and tutoring.
As for sacrifice... "They" keep talking about the "fiscal cliff" and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts as if it's the worst possible thing, and will absolutely KILL the economy. I seem to remember feeling at my personally most prosperous during the Clinton years - before the Bush tax cuts. Since then I have a bad joke as another year goes with no pay raise, "We've all got to make sacrifices so our CEO can get his double-digit compensation increase." I would be willing to make the sacrifice of my share of that tax cut, if it would help balance the budget. It might crimp my style a little, but I strongly suspect a little drop in my spending is nothing compared to economic loss of laid-off workers from budget cuts.
As far as I can tell, the people who generally don't want to make any sacrifice for the good of their nation are the top tax bracket - keeping in mind that that top tax bracked has only been lower a few times since before the Great Depression. One of those low-tax times was immediately before the Great Depression, too. And if the Bush tax cuts expire, the top rate goes from somthing like third-lowest to fourth-lowest - during the Clinton years it just wasn't that high. (I'll agree that capital gains are another matter, but there are other arguments about that one.)
I used to live less than a mile up the road from where Art Arfons built the Green Monsters. Back in the day, he used surplus jet engines from the B58 Hustler program. You could hear it at our house when he test-fired.
Heinlein and EE Doc Smith both spent a fair amount of time disparaging the pee-pul, and both were bullish on capitalists.
I don't think either would have recognized most of today's industry leaders as capitalists. They were both big on "good pay for good work," "enlightened self-interest," and the like. I think the concept of a company that exists pretty much solely to extract value out of other working companies, saddling them with debt, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy, would have been shocking to them.
Many people felt that the "Starship Troopers" book was facist claptrap, and apparently the people behind the movie were some of them, so they turned it into a farce.
IMHO, "Starship Troopers" is the story of The Bug War as told by a World War II veteran. "The Forever War" is the story of The Bug War as told by a Viet Nam veteran.
Side note... In "Forever Free" it was interesting to see them make the armaments (especially the fighting suits) of "The Forever War" seem quaint and cute.
No, the best part was when they said the drill's hull was made of "unobtanium" and said it with a straight face. That's only a good part when the rest of the movie is definitely bad. The jury's still out on Avatar, where they made the same straight-faced reference.
The second best part was stepping through the frames when the birds are hitting the building, and finding the fish hitting, too.
That's a little out of context. Sometimes I think the climate skeptics want to hear a prediction like, "On October 5th there will be a Cat-5 hurricane making landfall 60 miles north of Galveston, Tx.
I understand what you said, and I agree with you. I also said that predictions will be "statistical", though I guess I didn't add what you did, that the predictions have been optimistic.
You mistake me for admiring the situation. I don't. As for another really bad scenario... Let's say that there's a "Great Dying" among humanity before the impact on the rest of the world gets too bad. That's not worst-case, but it's certainly bad enough. It's not unreasonable to guess that we could well be knocked back to wood and charcoal for energy. The easy oil, gas, and coal are already gone. The easy mining is gone, but the junkyards of today are the mines of tomorrow - assuming there are enough "low alloys" that we can still work using charcoal. Climbing out that that hole, back to a technological society is going to be darned tough.
A large part of the problem is with TPTB. They've made their fortunes and power on the status quo, and they're reluctant to accept change. The fear here is they they're taking us with them. The annoyance is that their power and money will give them a better chance to weather out the chaos on some south-seas island.
I was being charitable. I was trying to cede just about everything possible, and maintain that there is STILL a problem.
I will take exception to one thing you say. You say we're headed for an extinction event. We're not - we're already well into it. It's simply that most of the species dying out are of concern only to scientists - they're not on of the few dozen food or pet species that most people think about.
As for "will humans survive"? Absolutely. We are one of the meanest, nastiest predators on the planet. After an extinction event, if there is any large animals around, humans will likely be among them. But civilization won't survive, and the humans that are around will be part of a pack or a tribe, not a society.
Slashdot Mirror
I thought I read that they had an engine failure in last May's launch, too.
Also, can the Falcon 9 fly one-engine-down from any point after launch? The GP mentions the Saturn V being able to run one-engine-down, but that was only after a certain point into the flight. They needed all 5 F-1s for at least the first minute or two.
The space shuttle could also run one-engine-down, after a certain point during the launch. I believe I also remember hearing them mark a two-engine-down point, where they could complete the mission on only one engine. (or at least some safe abort profile)
Time for you to feed the alien.
But then again, in Apollo 13, something did go horribly wrong. It was nip and tuck several times whether or not they would survive. Had the mission gone as planned, it would have been quite boring, and they never would have made a movie of it. Don't forget that by the later Apollo missions there was practically no TV coverage at all. Though there was good TV coverage of the Apollo 17 liftoff from the moon, since that was the first time it could ever be seen live. I certainly was glued to the screen, at the time.
Sometimes snark is a defense mechanism against becoming too cynical. Really, the difference is whether or not you've completely given up. I haven't.
I thought I read somewhere that He3 fusion was simpler - assuming you had a supply of He3.
I'm not saying that tax cuts and deregulation are never the correct course - sometimes they are. I'm just saying that no single simplistic solution is always the correct course - and that counts for more regulation and throwing money at the problem, also.
I will say this about tax cuts - look at history. The Bush tax cuts were one of the first things he did upon inaguration. They don't appear to have worked wonders, and we've had them for nearly 12 years. OK, we can discount them working during the Obama administration, and blame that on him. But for the 8 years prior to that they weren't working either - at least not for working Americans. My personal sense of finance peaked under Clinton, and hasn't gotten back to the same level.
Makes you wish someone would do a feasibility study of He3 power. That would get us to the moon, FAST!
That's not part of next quarter's profits, nor within the tenure of any currently elected politician.
Forget it.
Oh, come on...
EVERY problem can be solved by tax cuts and deregulation!
Or to paraphrase what my wife told me she once read...
Democrats like to regulate and throw money at problems.
Republicans like to deregulate and throw money at Republicans.
That's because GPS needs to understand that Devil Science, special relativity.
It's newfangled "new science", not like the good old dependable science of Sir Isaac Newton. I don't know about embryology, but evolution and quantum mechanics both really started in the mid 1800s. (William Rowan Hamilton doesn't get the general credit he deserves.)
It's on the internet. The fundamental enabling technology for the internet is the semiconductor. The semiconductor is a child of quantum mechanics - there is no classical behavior that would predict it. Even though quantum mechanics are present in all chemistry and even vacuum tubes, those both have classical behavior that can be seen with the naked eye, and appreciated without quantum mechanics.
Semiconductors can't. They're "Devil Science", just like those others.
No, not too good to fight for my country. I also knew that my shooting was mediocre. At my time, I was in one of the last lotteries - I don't know what my actions would have been had I been picked, other than take the physical. I think by that time they weren't calling anyone up. Beyond that, the only apparent logical choice to me was to move on to college as directly as possible, and continue my education. The other options you speak of weren't apparent, at the time. They also may not have existed at the time.
As for the rest, thank you for the education in logic. There are elements of that logic that I've been missing for some time, and you have clarified them for me.
A few comments, tangentially related. I was one of those who liked "Starship Troopers" and didn't see it as facist.
I never served, and sometimes I wish I had, but I think there's another problem with the concept. After high school I was college bound - I grew up during the Mercury/Gemini/Apollo days, and when my country called for STEM, I answered. I wasn't going to college to party for 4 years, or to dodge the draft - I was going for science, and wound up in engineering. Would it have been the best use of our nation's resource - me and others like me - to take someone headed for science and engineering, and park him behind a gun?
In decades-later retrospect, I wish there had been more sensible alternatives for national service for people like me. I think of an internship in a lab somewhere, spending some time as a bottle-washer, some time as a gofor, and likely some time getting lessons and tutoring.
As for sacrifice... "They" keep talking about the "fiscal cliff" and the expiration of the Bush tax cuts as if it's the worst possible thing, and will absolutely KILL the economy. I seem to remember feeling at my personally most prosperous during the Clinton years - before the Bush tax cuts. Since then I have a bad joke as another year goes with no pay raise, "We've all got to make sacrifices so our CEO can get his double-digit compensation increase." I would be willing to make the sacrifice of my share of that tax cut, if it would help balance the budget. It might crimp my style a little, but I strongly suspect a little drop in my spending is nothing compared to economic loss of laid-off workers from budget cuts.
As far as I can tell, the people who generally don't want to make any sacrifice for the good of their nation are the top tax bracket - keeping in mind that that top tax bracked has only been lower a few times since before the Great Depression. One of those low-tax times was immediately before the Great Depression, too. And if the Bush tax cuts expire, the top rate goes from somthing like third-lowest to fourth-lowest - during the Clinton years it just wasn't that high. (I'll agree that capital gains are another matter, but there are other arguments about that one.)
I used to live less than a mile up the road from where Art Arfons built the Green Monsters. Back in the day, he used surplus jet engines from the B58 Hustler program. You could hear it at our house when he test-fired.
Heinlein and EE Doc Smith both spent a fair amount of time disparaging the pee-pul, and both were bullish on capitalists.
I don't think either would have recognized most of today's industry leaders as capitalists. They were both big on "good pay for good work," "enlightened self-interest," and the like. I think the concept of a company that exists pretty much solely to extract value out of other working companies, saddling them with debt, sometimes to the point of bankruptcy, would have been shocking to them.
Did you mean "Bug Hunt" or "Butt Hunt". The former would be Sci-Fi action, the latter would be pr0n.
Many people felt that the "Starship Troopers" book was facist claptrap, and apparently the people behind the movie were some of them, so they turned it into a farce.
IMHO, "Starship Troopers" is the story of The Bug War as told by a World War II veteran. "The Forever War" is the story of The Bug War as told by a Viet Nam veteran.
Side note... In "Forever Free" it was interesting to see them make the armaments (especially the fighting suits) of "The Forever War" seem quaint and cute.
I believe that this is the lowest S/N ratio that I have ever seen on a Slashdot story, particularly a science story.
No, the best part was when they said the drill's hull was made of "unobtanium" and said it with a straight face. That's only a good part when the rest of the movie is definitely bad. The jury's still out on Avatar, where they made the same straight-faced reference.
The second best part was stepping through the frames when the birds are hitting the building, and finding the fish hitting, too.
Don't you mean "wasn't that the concocted and overblown incident used as an excuse to start the whole Middle Earth war?"
I know you're joking, but I read elsewhere that they very carefully mothballed the SSMEs for potential future use.
That's a little out of context. Sometimes I think the climate skeptics want to hear a prediction like, "On October 5th there will be a Cat-5 hurricane making landfall 60 miles north of Galveston, Tx.
I understand what you said, and I agree with you. I also said that predictions will be "statistical", though I guess I didn't add what you did, that the predictions have been optimistic.
You mistake me for admiring the situation. I don't. As for another really bad scenario... Let's say that there's a "Great Dying" among humanity before the impact on the rest of the world gets too bad. That's not worst-case, but it's certainly bad enough. It's not unreasonable to guess that we could well be knocked back to wood and charcoal for energy. The easy oil, gas, and coal are already gone. The easy mining is gone, but the junkyards of today are the mines of tomorrow - assuming there are enough "low alloys" that we can still work using charcoal. Climbing out that that hole, back to a technological society is going to be darned tough.
A large part of the problem is with TPTB. They've made their fortunes and power on the status quo, and they're reluctant to accept change. The fear here is they they're taking us with them. The annoyance is that their power and money will give them a better chance to weather out the chaos on some south-seas island.
I was being charitable. I was trying to cede just about everything possible, and maintain that there is STILL a problem.
I will take exception to one thing you say. You say we're headed for an extinction event. We're not - we're already well into it. It's simply that most of the species dying out are of concern only to scientists - they're not on of the few dozen food or pet species that most people think about.
As for "will humans survive"? Absolutely. We are one of the meanest, nastiest predators on the planet. After an extinction event, if there is any large animals around, humans will likely be among them. But civilization won't survive, and the humans that are around will be part of a pack or a tribe, not a society.