One of the big problems of modern PC design is cooling. Perhaps the answer is in plain sight - the side of the case.
Just provide a thermal path from the CPU to the side of the case. This may not be easy, but is solvable.
Ideas:
Heat pipes. Overclockers have used them, spacecraft use them - they're proven. A heat pipe with rounded ends and mounts with rounded receptacles and a bit of thermal paste. Conduct heat to the side of the case, and allow for variations of the CPU location.
Thermal strap. Some spacecraft use these, too. They conduct heat well. They are not as multidimentionally adjustable as above, but can be worked out.
At least one side of the case would have to be thermally conductive. Aluminum or copper would suffice. The case side could then be made flat or ridged. The "side" could also be the upper panel of the case, provided you don't really want a big, heavy monitor on top of it. Just imagine a sculpted, polished copper case sitting on top of your desk. A pain to clean, put purty.
The idea takes the concept of shrinking the PC, and also answers another problem - noise. One can eliminate a fan (or more, extend the idea to other components) and gain coolness.
1. DOS attacks can be accomplished, based on the design of your bird. I do not know the particulars of your command reciever, but some designs can be DOSed.
2. It is entirely possible to reverse engineer the telemetry and command databases. I know a guy who used to do this to Soviet satellites for a living. They could control Soviet birds however they willed.
3. I'll let others with more knowlegde on IPSEC to give a specific reccomendation. I am leery of this concept, however, given the historical security of anything attached to the Net.
It's really all just a matter of motivations. People listen to satellite telemetry all the time. Many of them reverse engineer it. Some can get images from the weather birds, but never try to command. Expect some eavesdropping, unless the bird goes really far away and requires >5 meter dishes to get a usable signal.
And remember, the CIA managed to "borrow" a Soviet Luna probe on world tour. They disassembled it, documented the design, and rebuilt it to get it to the destination in a pretty serious all-nighter. The Soviets never gave any indication of knowing.
Oh, and remember - keep the arrays pointed at the Sun.
FAA regulates space activity of US companies. If Bigelow is to do business in the US, regardless of where the spacecraft launch and/or land, they're regulated.
Check out AST. These guys are the regulators of space acitvity in the US. It's a new group, and they're not clued in completely to commercial space yet. They're learning, but it will take time before they figure out a business-friendly stance
I have to point out first that peroxide is not and can not act as a fuel. It is a propellant. A bit pedantic, but understanding the chemistry of this situation is important. Especially if you want to use the stuff and survive the experience.
Hydrogen peroxide is quite safe if you know what you are doing. The handling of it is no more onerous than for LOX - just different. It is the safest monopropellant known, and the easiest to get.
As a monoprop, its performance is not great. Most engines can hope for an ISP of 180 seconds.
As an oxidizer, it is quite cool. An engine can catalyze peroxide, liberating much heat - at rocket pressures, somewhere above 1600 deg. F. This, combined with the oxygen now available (2 H2O2 -> 2 H20 + O2 + heat) will ignite any hydrocarbon you care to inject. Beale chose kerosene (well, perhaps JP1, but it's pretty much equivalent.)
The advantage of this combination is a lack of cryogens. That allows you to store the propellants without heavy insulation. The denser propellants also lower gravity losses during launch.
Pressure fed is easier. It is also lower in performance. The decision is an engineering compromise among weight, performance, and complexity.
The German ME163 used peroxide and a special fuel. The fuel was mostly methanol, but was spiked with potassium permagenate. This chemical catalyzes peroxide. If the two propellants met, they ignited. That's why it was a pain to use, and accidents tended to lead to death.
Peroxide, IMHO, has a bad rap from early experiments without the purity and procedures available today. I have seen 90% H2O2 run through an engine, and breathed aerosols of the uncatalyzed propellant. It burns on the skin, and tastes quite bitter. I survived, and didn't even get white spots from it bleaching my skin. When I felt the burn, I poured water on the spots - that diluted the peroxide and ended the danger. Wear the right protection and know how to deal with the problems and peroxide is a great propellant.
I read the CSA interview, and I think Tito should be filing papers for restraint of trade.
These arguments are groundless and irrelevant.
When air travel started to become a commercial enterprise, people worried about the same things. Experience shows that the worries were empty.
How many of us know how to operate the oven of a 747? How many of us can land one? The plane, not the oven.
In order for manned spaceflight to become popular, we need pioneers like Mr. Tito. Spaceflight will become a different experience. We will see spacecraft designed to take paying passengers. As such, concerns like 'how do I pee in zero gee,' will be designed out of the way.
Even worse is that crap about the need to 'bond' before launching. Does a submarine crew do bonding exercises before departing on a mission for every new crew member? Does that hurt the performance of the boat? Give me a break.
As for training Mr. Tito, NASA found what they consider a silver bullet in their attempt to permanently ground him. If they delay and excuse and otherwise worm their way out of training him, they can argue he isn't ready for the trip. Mark my words - NASA has plans to never train him. If this delay gambit works, Tito will never see orbit.
NASA needs to disappear completely - they are now working against the best interest of humanity's expansion into space.
Soyuz 1 entered an uncontrollable spin. The spin lasted through reentry, and tangled the parachute shrouds when they deployed. The single occupant died on impact.
Souyz TM-1 (Soyuz 11) vented the internal atmosphere in orbit. This happened due to a bad valve setting when separating from the service section just prior to reentry. All three occupants suffocated.
Oh, and those rumors of earlier Soviet deaths are total B.S. I talked this over with a coworker whose job was watching the Soviet space program during the cold war. His work is now declassified. We know of all the fatalities during spaceflight - USSR 4, US 7.
Re:I work on FlightLinux...
on
Tux in Space
·
· Score: 1
"The problem is, in space heat does not radiate away from components. in order for heat to radiate, it must have air to radiate with, no air and you need to design a cooling system to keep the CPU from overheating."
I guess it's a nit, but heat does radiate is space. You mean heat dosen't convect in space. Heat is transferred by three basic mechanisms: radiation, conduction and convection.
Conduction requires direct contact. This is how heat travels from the CPU to the heat sink. Or how heat travels from you butt to an aluminum bench.
Convection requires air. Here, heat conducts into the air. The air is now warmer than the air around it. It expands, and rises due to being less dense than the surrounding air. Colder air replaces it. This is how Apple cubes keep cool.
Radiation is the primary method of heat rejection in space. Here, photons carry heat energy away from the hot object. Think of red hot metal. Incandescent light bulbs operate on this principle.
As for your other points, they're good. I used to operate communication satellites. As an operations engineer, I learned many details about satellite design. We must all keep in mind how different the orbital environment is from the terrestrial. Even in our modern age with our high technology, we can not correctly simulate the orbital environment.
The last paragraph says a lot about this concept. They may end up with a net energy loss.
The problem with Horizontal Takeoff, Horizontal Launch designs is resident time in air. Most boosters launch on a pretty vertical trajectory to get above the energy-robbing atmosphere. They do pitch over in the air, but only to use gravity to do most of the work for them. Boosters even launch up, reach a local maximum altitude, then decend under power in order to obtain the very large velocity required for orbit. Getting this velocity in air gives a lot up to drag.
This idea gets around the mass penalty for heavy landing gear by gaining weight in the air. Aircraft landing gear accounts for about 3% of the maximum total takeoff mass. This is for sufficient strength in a takeoff abort situation.
Pretty clever, but I think complicated machinery that requires extensive maintainance won't get us into space cheaply. The price of space travel is largely the cost of people on the ground. It takes about 10,000 people to service the Space Shuttle, hence its cost. LOX is cheap, and so is LH2.
It will be interesting technology, but I disbelieve that it will lower the cost. To get into space cheaply, I think we need to do two things:
1.) build it big.
2.) build it simple.
After all, NASA spent thousands to get an ink pen to write in space. The Russians used a pencil...
You're right about Tsu Miu. He was impressive in My Father is a Hero. Keep in mind that he was a martial arts champion before filming. I believe that's how they found him.
I guess that they would need to find gymnasts/martial artists that are 6 years old to do this flick. Quite a few. Then do some training. May even need to find 4 or 5 year olds showing promise so they would be the right age when filming. At least for the principals. It's quite a problem. Especially in our modern culture with demands for quick results and our overprotective mindset.
I've had contact with a number of amateur rocketeers. Some just like rockets for their own sake (I'm one of them.) Some have larger agendas. Getting them to achieve a complex goal is like herding cats.
The current situation is difficult. Part of the CATS prize was that the participants could not use any government assistance. That pretty much means any already sucessful space initiative is out. Max Hunter told me he didn't see why it is so hard - when he was involved with the start of the space program, his company worked well. He may just be remembering the good times and forgetting the bad.
I used to think that a problem was the amateur volunteer nature of the groups. They just don't have the time to devote to such an undertaking. With the recent failures of Rotary Rocket and Beale, that seems not to be the case. Even new start programs are having a tough go. I'm not sure quite what the problem is, beyond a lack of patience.
As for failure, my favorite is a quote I got from one of these rocketeers:
Failure is not an option - it's a requirement.
Keep the pointy end of the rocket up, and learn when it doesn't.
SatelliteBoy
And this is an important consideration in hybrid electric vehicles.
In my final two years of college (ME degree,) I got involved in a project to build a hybrid. We participated in the 1995 Hybrid Electric Vehicle Challenge, and won our class. I drove this car (a converted Saturn SL-2) all around California.
In watching the performance of the car, we noticed that we used power from the batteries in a very "spikey" manner. The engine would drive the car, then stepping on the pedal would cause a > 300A draw from the batteries. This would drop to less than 30A in about a second. This is from a 180V (nominal) battery pack.
As for energy density, that's the problem hybrids solve. The energy for this car came from the fuel. We never recharged the batteries from the grid, only by running the engine, and almost always while driving. We even drove the thing from Fresno to Yosemite valley, and put more energy into the batteries than we removed.
I'm rambling, I see, but my point is that these batteries would rock in a hybrid meant for performance. While ~350 lbs of these things would probably send the car ~4 miles before running out, a hybrid would replace the energy before you ever got that far. That is the beauty of hybrids - use the great acceleration of electric motors without having to cart 3000 lbs of lead to get anywhere useful.
One for general surfing,
one for surfing pr0n^h^h^h^h private matters.
Though I don't run IE (hard to do in Linux), all these browser bug reports have me concerned about protecting privacy. I'm coming to the conclusion that connecting to a network ends any reasonable expectation of privacy.
I'm too young to be bitter and cynical, but there you are.
Satellite use and profits have never been higher. Believe it or not, you communicate all the time by satellite without even realizing it. Pagers and gas stations are two good examples.
You mentioned cost, and that is just wrong. It may be cheaper to connect San Francisco and Tokyo by fiber in the long run. Connecting the entire continent of Africa is a gnu of a different color. Systems exist that allow, quite literally, you to fly over a site and drop by parachute a solar powered fixed station that would be ready to use the instant it hit the ground (and only that late because of the inconvenience of using it while still in the air.)
Satellites require antennas to connect, but no direct connection of copper or fiber. This is a big thing when running through areas so poor that locals dig up wires to sell as scrap just as fast as companies/governments can put them in.
Look at the roof of a gas staion, and you'll probably spot a small dish-like antenna. This is how those pumps communicate to verify your plastic. Yesterday I was buying power strips, and the company had a dialup verification system. It took noticably longer than do the pumps. How many times have we been delayed by long verification times at the pump? I can't think of any time it happened to me.
Satellites and satellite bandwidth are in more demand now than at any time in history. There are currently over 600 birds in geosynchronous orbit, most of them communications specific. Don't confuse a lousy business execution with a nonexistant market.
The worst thing about the failure of Iridium, which failed for business reasons, is that it poisoned an entire sector in many people's minds. Iridium failued because Iridium was a bad idea. Satellites are quite in demand, thank you.
Ah, but can you find true North with a digital watch?
Seriously, all analog watches can be used as sun compasses. It's a couple of steps, but an interesting trick:
First, hold the watch horizontal. Then, hold something thin over the center of the watch, making a sundial-like shadow. Line this shadow up with 12:00. Now, true North is half way between the hour hand and the shadow. You do need, however, to correct for daylight savings and have the correct time.
Take the signal itself. We have recently seen the growth of spread spectrum communications. ever seen a frequency analyzer plot of a SS signal? It can look as if there's nothing there. Further, SS communications don't use a carrier wave in the way traditioinal communitactions do, so detecting SS signals is very hard to impossible.
The military started using spread spectrum because it is resistant to jamming, and is more secure. Even if you know there's a signal there, unless you know the frequency code, you can't figure out what's there.
What does this mean to SETI? IF the LGM have spread spectrum and IF they use it (it is more efficient communication) and IF they don't intend for others to intercept it, THEN we won't hear anything, even if the antennas are pointed the right way and watching the right frequencies.
My personal biggest problem with SETI is that it is not really good science. You can not prove a negative, because all you get is an absense of proof. The scientific method does not apply. I do not really object to SETI@Home because I see it as using already wasted resources. It is cool technology, though.
Several studies into landfills (actually digging through them) have shown many assumtptions to be wrong. Among them:
1. Landfills do not see significant biodegreadation. Most of us have probably heard of these guys digging 50 year old newspapers out of New York landfills in still redable condition.
2. Plastic foam is a big problem. Foam crushes under the weight of the garbage on top of it, and makes up for less than 0.25% of the volume.
3. Paper products aren't a problem. Paper products make up more than 40% of the volume of a stable landfill.
As for a solution, I can see shrink wrapping around a "standard sized" piece of backing cardboard or a book (as in a user's manual). The biggest problem with this approach would be the "cheap" image it may project, and the possibility of the shrinkwrap breaking/being split by mishandling or non-principled people.
Launches are very expensive. The Pegasus, which is one of, if not the lowest cost launch, runs at about 11 Million US. It could, though, pack quite a few of these birds on it. I wonder about the satellites' maneuvering propellant margins...
As satellites become smaller and more capable, not to mention cheaper, this places a downward pressure on launch costs. IMHO, this product is a bit premature, as the cost of getting it up is greater than the cost of acquisition.
The only current way to mitigate launch cost is hitching a ride along with another satellite. This causes porblems (ask the OSCAR guys.) As an example, you need a special dispenser that releases multiple payloads in such a way that they enter their proper orbits and don't come into contact. This technology is rather close to a piece of ICBM tech...
It is important, though, to try to clean up the orbit areas if we want to establish any real long-term orbital presence. the threat to hardware (and, eventually, wetware) is too ugly to ignore.
One thing to keep in mind is that many parts of a movie are produced in parallel. To help with the editing, the editor/producer/director (varies by project) inserts temporary music. It is always "found" music, stuff they have already sitting around. The score written for the movie gets inserted later.
Problem is, sometimes, trailers get released with the temporary tracks in place. The Abyss did this with the original, and even used shots not used in the film. 2001 was edited with found music, then Kubrik pitched the score written for it in favor of the music he used to edit.
The found music is supposed to approximate the tempo and feel of the final cuts, but that can change, and often does. Be aware of the earliest trailers, as the music for the film probably hasn't been written by the time they had to ship it.
It's an interesting story very told in a unique manner. It essentially starts in the middle, and fills in backstory as the action happens. It takes a bit to get into it, but I think it's worth it. Saw it on the local PBS station (they're playing Urersei Yatsura and Neon Genesis Evangalon now), but it's on video (DVD on the way).
Actually, satellite ground systems are already using TCP/IP. Ground systems communicate through the satellite on special commanding boxes, but those boxes get their commands through ethernet.
Now, many amateurs receive signals from satellites, then decommutate and decode the telemetry. The old style C band satellite dishes work for this, they just need a little refit. One COULD command a bird with more hardware and some hacking - the US and USSR did it to each other's birds during the cold war.
What's my point? I don't think this necessarily makes satellites more vulnerable. After all, the commanding and payload (commercial signals) ususally pass through different paths, and the command paths have a bit of security involved, including encryption chips with closed-source algorithms, courtesy NSA. That encryption applies only to US owned birds, BTW.
At the MacWorld Expo earlier this year, I posed this questin directly in the Apple booth. The answer - they can't justify the maintainence support.
While it would be trivial to put out a binary, they would then have to answer questions about it, and given the Linux marketshare (and revenue potential added to offset the work), Apple can't justify it economically.
Perhaps we can get an unsupported "Beta" binary ALA RealPlayer out of them, but I suspect even that would be tough. I've been using Apple since the ][+, but they seem to have a knack for ignoring customer demands for as long as possible.
While Inmarsat is a good viable choice, Globalstar offers a lower price. The coverage is not as global at this point - they're still rolling out service.
There may be issues with the global roaming, but go to www.globalstar.com for more info.
The suit is asking the court to bar DoubleClick from using technology to collect personal information without the prior written consent of the Internet user.
This strikes to the heart of what bugs me. I'm capable of finding out about Doubleckick's shenanagins and Junkbuster to block it out. I worry for those who can't.
Doubleckick's dealings take the privacy of Joe Average who's gettin' on this "Internet Thing" without realising what's at stake. Notice all the new net-enabled stuff coming out (TV boxes, game consoles, microwave ovens). Now that web access comes in a box - just plug in and go, what technologies protect these people?
I really don't have too much problem with Doubleckick collecting info. I do have a problem with them doing it behind the back of the average person. I hope this suit helps the masses.
The point of the article is that the women (and the market) are out there - in the cold. If the magazines removed their sexist bias, they could increase their circulation.
A very cool game, and one that appeals to all, is Sonic Adventure. It's for Dreamcast, and manages to be a very fun and interesting combination of rocking 3D graphics, fast play, and adventure playing. I think there's plenty of room for more games like this - the games gets consistently great reviews.
Slashdot Mirror
Changing a cliché:
One of the big problems of modern PC design is cooling. Perhaps the answer is in plain sight - the side of the case.
Just provide a thermal path from the CPU to the side of the case. This may not be easy, but is solvable.
Ideas:
Heat pipes. Overclockers have used them, spacecraft use them - they're proven. A heat pipe with rounded ends and mounts with rounded receptacles and a bit of thermal paste. Conduct heat to the side of the case, and allow for variations of the CPU location.
Thermal strap. Some spacecraft use these, too. They conduct heat well. They are not as multidimentionally adjustable as above, but can be worked out.
At least one side of the case would have to be thermally conductive. Aluminum or copper would suffice. The case side could then be made flat or ridged. The "side" could also be the upper panel of the case, provided you don't really want a big, heavy monitor on top of it. Just imagine a sculpted, polished copper case sitting on top of your desk. A pain to clean, put purty.
The idea takes the concept of shrinking the PC, and also answers another problem - noise. One can eliminate a fan (or more, extend the idea to other components) and gain coolness.
I think I may start designing a case for myself.
1. DOS attacks can be accomplished, based on the design of your bird. I do not know the particulars of your command reciever, but some designs can be DOSed.
2. It is entirely possible to reverse engineer the telemetry and command databases. I know a guy who used to do this to Soviet satellites for a living. They could control Soviet birds however they willed.
3. I'll let others with more knowlegde on IPSEC to give a specific reccomendation. I am leery of this concept, however, given the historical security of anything attached to the Net.
It's really all just a matter of motivations. People listen to satellite telemetry all the time. Many of them reverse engineer it. Some can get images from the weather birds, but never try to command. Expect some eavesdropping, unless the bird goes really far away and requires >5 meter dishes to get a usable signal.
And remember, the CIA managed to "borrow" a Soviet Luna probe on world tour. They disassembled it, documented the design, and rebuilt it to get it to the destination in a pretty serious all-nighter. The Soviets never gave any indication of knowing.
Oh, and remember - keep the arrays pointed at the Sun.
Check out AST. These guys are the regulators of space acitvity in the US. It's a new group, and they're not clued in completely to commercial space yet. They're learning, but it will take time before they figure out a business-friendly stance
OK,
I have to point out first that peroxide is not and can not act as a fuel. It is a propellant. A bit pedantic, but understanding the chemistry of this situation is important. Especially if you want to use the stuff and survive the experience.
Hydrogen peroxide is quite safe if you know what you are doing. The handling of it is no more onerous than for LOX - just different. It is the safest monopropellant known, and the easiest to get.
As a monoprop, its performance is not great. Most engines can hope for an ISP of 180 seconds.
As an oxidizer, it is quite cool. An engine can catalyze peroxide, liberating much heat - at rocket pressures, somewhere above 1600 deg. F. This, combined with the oxygen now available (2 H2O2 -> 2 H20 + O2 + heat) will ignite any hydrocarbon you care to inject. Beale chose kerosene (well, perhaps JP1, but it's pretty much equivalent.)
The advantage of this combination is a lack of cryogens. That allows you to store the propellants without heavy insulation. The denser propellants also lower gravity losses during launch.
Pressure fed is easier. It is also lower in performance. The decision is an engineering compromise among weight, performance, and complexity.
The German ME163 used peroxide and a special fuel. The fuel was mostly methanol, but was spiked with potassium permagenate. This chemical catalyzes peroxide. If the two propellants met, they ignited. That's why it was a pain to use, and accidents tended to lead to death.
Peroxide, IMHO, has a bad rap from early experiments without the purity and procedures available today. I have seen 90% H2O2 run through an engine, and breathed aerosols of the uncatalyzed propellant. It burns on the skin, and tastes quite bitter. I survived, and didn't even get white spots from it bleaching my skin. When I felt the burn, I poured water on the spots - that diluted the peroxide and ended the danger. Wear the right protection and know how to deal with the problems and peroxide is a great propellant.
I read the CSA interview, and I think Tito should be filing papers for restraint of trade.
These arguments are groundless and irrelevant.
When air travel started to become a commercial enterprise, people worried about the same things. Experience shows that the worries were empty.
How many of us know how to operate the oven of a 747? How many of us can land one? The plane, not the oven.
In order for manned spaceflight to become popular, we need pioneers like Mr. Tito. Spaceflight will become a different experience. We will see spacecraft designed to take paying passengers. As such, concerns like 'how do I pee in zero gee,' will be designed out of the way.
Even worse is that crap about the need to 'bond' before launching. Does a submarine crew do bonding exercises before departing on a mission for every new crew member? Does that hurt the performance of the boat? Give me a break.
As for training Mr. Tito, NASA found what they consider a silver bullet in their attempt to permanently ground him. If they delay and excuse and otherwise worm their way out of training him, they can argue he isn't ready for the trip. Mark my words - NASA has plans to never train him. If this delay gambit works, Tito will never see orbit.
NASA needs to disappear completely - they are now working against the best interest of humanity's expansion into space.
IMHO, of course,
SatelliteBoy
4.
Soyuz 1 entered an uncontrollable spin. The spin lasted through reentry, and tangled the parachute shrouds when they deployed. The single occupant died on impact.
Souyz TM-1 (Soyuz 11) vented the internal atmosphere in orbit. This happened due to a bad valve setting when separating from the service section just prior to reentry. All three occupants suffocated.
Oh, and those rumors of earlier Soviet deaths are total B.S. I talked this over with a coworker whose job was watching the Soviet space program during the cold war. His work is now declassified. We know of all the fatalities during spaceflight - USSR 4, US 7.
"The problem is, in space heat does not radiate away from components. in order for heat to radiate, it must have air to radiate with, no air and you need to design a cooling system to keep the CPU from overheating."
I guess it's a nit, but heat does radiate is space. You mean heat dosen't convect in space. Heat is transferred by three basic mechanisms: radiation, conduction and convection.
Conduction requires direct contact. This is how heat travels from the CPU to the heat sink. Or how heat travels from you butt to an aluminum bench.
Convection requires air. Here, heat conducts into the air. The air is now warmer than the air around it. It expands, and rises due to being less dense than the surrounding air. Colder air replaces it. This is how Apple cubes keep cool.
Radiation is the primary method of heat rejection in space. Here, photons carry heat energy away from the hot object. Think of red hot metal. Incandescent light bulbs operate on this principle.
As for your other points, they're good. I used to operate communication satellites. As an operations engineer, I learned many details about satellite design. We must all keep in mind how different the orbital environment is from the terrestrial. Even in our modern age with our high technology, we can not correctly simulate the orbital environment.
Keep up the good work,
-SatelliteBoy
The last paragraph says a lot about this concept. They may end up with a net energy loss.
The problem with Horizontal Takeoff, Horizontal Launch designs is resident time in air. Most boosters launch on a pretty vertical trajectory to get above the energy-robbing atmosphere. They do pitch over in the air, but only to use gravity to do most of the work for them. Boosters even launch up, reach a local maximum altitude, then decend under power in order to obtain the very large velocity required for orbit. Getting this velocity in air gives a lot up to drag.
This idea gets around the mass penalty for heavy landing gear by gaining weight in the air. Aircraft landing gear accounts for about 3% of the maximum total takeoff mass. This is for sufficient strength in a takeoff abort situation.
Pretty clever, but I think complicated machinery that requires extensive maintainance won't get us into space cheaply. The price of space travel is largely the cost of people on the ground. It takes about 10,000 people to service the Space Shuttle, hence its cost. LOX is cheap, and so is LH2.
It will be interesting technology, but I disbelieve that it will lower the cost. To get into space cheaply, I think we need to do two things:
1.) build it big.
2.) build it simple.
After all, NASA spent thousands to get an ink pen to write in space. The Russians used a pencil...
SatelliteBoy
I can see the headline now:
Hack your AOL Spamputer to run Linux 6.4!
If you thought those AOL CD's were bad, imagine getting pre-configured computers in the mail. If it's cheap enough, it'll happen.
You're right about Tsu Miu. He was impressive in My Father is a Hero. Keep in mind that he was a martial arts champion before filming. I believe that's how they found him. I guess that they would need to find gymnasts/martial artists that are 6 years old to do this flick. Quite a few. Then do some training. May even need to find 4 or 5 year olds showing promise so they would be the right age when filming. At least for the principals. It's quite a problem. Especially in our modern culture with demands for quick results and our overprotective mindset.
I've had contact with a number of amateur rocketeers. Some just like rockets for their own sake (I'm one of them.) Some have larger agendas. Getting them to achieve a complex goal is like herding cats.
The current situation is difficult. Part of the CATS prize was that the participants could not use any government assistance. That pretty much means any already sucessful space initiative is out. Max Hunter told me he didn't see why it is so hard - when he was involved with the start of the space program, his company worked well. He may just be remembering the good times and forgetting the bad.
I used to think that a problem was the amateur volunteer nature of the groups. They just don't have the time to devote to such an undertaking. With the recent failures of Rotary Rocket and Beale, that seems not to be the case. Even new start programs are having a tough go. I'm not sure quite what the problem is, beyond a lack of patience.
As for failure, my favorite is a quote I got from one of these rocketeers:
Failure is not an option - it's a requirement.
Keep the pointy end of the rocket up, and learn when it doesn't.
SatelliteBoy
And this is an important consideration in hybrid electric vehicles.
In my final two years of college (ME degree,) I got involved in a project to build a hybrid. We participated in the 1995 Hybrid Electric Vehicle Challenge, and won our class. I drove this car (a converted Saturn SL-2) all around California.
In watching the performance of the car, we noticed that we used power from the batteries in a very "spikey" manner. The engine would drive the car, then stepping on the pedal would cause a > 300A draw from the batteries. This would drop to less than 30A in about a second. This is from a 180V (nominal) battery pack.
As for energy density, that's the problem hybrids solve. The energy for this car came from the fuel. We never recharged the batteries from the grid, only by running the engine, and almost always while driving. We even drove the thing from Fresno to Yosemite valley, and put more energy into the batteries than we removed.
I'm rambling, I see, but my point is that these batteries would rock in a hybrid meant for performance. While ~350 lbs of these things would probably send the car ~4 miles before running out, a hybrid would replace the energy before you ever got that far. That is the beauty of hybrids - use the great acceleration of electric motors without having to cart 3000 lbs of lead to get anywhere useful.
Later
Though I don't run IE (hard to do in Linux), all these browser bug reports have me concerned about protecting privacy. I'm coming to the conclusion that connecting to a network ends any reasonable expectation of privacy.
I'm too young to be bitter and cynical, but there you are.
-SB
At least ignorance can be fixed.
Satellite use and profits have never been higher. Believe it or not, you communicate all the time by satellite without even realizing it. Pagers and gas stations are two good examples.
You mentioned cost, and that is just wrong. It may be cheaper to connect San Francisco and Tokyo by fiber in the long run. Connecting the entire continent of Africa is a gnu of a different color. Systems exist that allow, quite literally, you to fly over a site and drop by parachute a solar powered fixed station that would be ready to use the instant it hit the ground (and only that late because of the inconvenience of using it while still in the air.)
Satellites require antennas to connect, but no direct connection of copper or fiber. This is a big thing when running through areas so poor that locals dig up wires to sell as scrap just as fast as companies/governments can put them in.
Look at the roof of a gas staion, and you'll probably spot a small dish-like antenna. This is how those pumps communicate to verify your plastic. Yesterday I was buying power strips, and the company had a dialup verification system. It took noticably longer than do the pumps. How many times have we been delayed by long verification times at the pump? I can't think of any time it happened to me.
Satellites and satellite bandwidth are in more demand now than at any time in history. There are currently over 600 birds in geosynchronous orbit, most of them communications specific. Don't confuse a lousy business execution with a nonexistant market.
The worst thing about the failure of Iridium, which failed for business reasons, is that it poisoned an entire sector in many people's minds. Iridium failued because Iridium was a bad idea. Satellites are quite in demand, thank you.
P.S. I make my living in the comm sat industry.
Seriously, all analog watches can be used as sun compasses. It's a couple of steps, but an interesting trick:
First, hold the watch horizontal. Then, hold something thin over the center of the watch, making a sundial-like shadow. Line this shadow up with 12:00. Now, true North is half way between the hour hand and the shadow. You do need, however, to correct for daylight savings and have the correct time.
Of course, there's always the GPS watch...
Take the signal itself. We have recently seen the growth of spread spectrum communications. ever seen a frequency analyzer plot of a SS signal? It can look as if there's nothing there. Further, SS communications don't use a carrier wave in the way traditioinal communitactions do, so detecting SS signals is very hard to impossible.
The military started using spread spectrum because it is resistant to jamming, and is more secure. Even if you know there's a signal there, unless you know the frequency code, you can't figure out what's there.
What does this mean to SETI? IF the LGM have spread spectrum and IF they use it (it is more efficient communication) and IF they don't intend for others to intercept it, THEN we won't hear anything, even if the antennas are pointed the right way and watching the right frequencies.
My personal biggest problem with SETI is that it is not really good science. You can not prove a negative, because all you get is an absense of proof. The scientific method does not apply. I do not really object to SETI@Home because I see it as using already wasted resources. It is cool technology, though.
-Russ
Several studies into landfills (actually digging through them) have shown many assumtptions to be wrong. Among them:
1. Landfills do not see significant biodegreadation. Most of us have probably heard of these guys digging 50 year old newspapers out of New York landfills in still redable condition.
2. Plastic foam is a big problem. Foam crushes under the weight of the garbage on top of it, and makes up for less than 0.25% of the volume.
3. Paper products aren't a problem. Paper products make up more than 40% of the volume of a stable landfill.
As for a solution, I can see shrink wrapping around a "standard sized" piece of backing cardboard or a book (as in a user's manual). The biggest problem with this approach would be the "cheap" image it may project, and the possibility of the shrinkwrap breaking/being split by mishandling or non-principled people.
Launches are very expensive. The Pegasus, which is one of, if not the lowest cost launch, runs at about 11 Million US. It could, though, pack quite a few of these birds on it. I wonder about the satellites' maneuvering propellant margins...
As satellites become smaller and more capable, not to mention cheaper, this places a downward pressure on launch costs. IMHO, this product is a bit premature, as the cost of getting it up is greater than the cost of acquisition.
The only current way to mitigate launch cost is hitching a ride along with another satellite. This causes porblems (ask the OSCAR guys.) As an example, you need a special dispenser that releases multiple payloads in such a way that they enter their proper orbits and don't come into contact. This technology is rather close to a piece of ICBM tech...
It is important, though, to try to clean up the orbit areas if we want to establish any real long-term orbital presence. the threat to hardware (and, eventually, wetware) is too ugly to ignore.
One thing to keep in mind is that many parts of a movie are produced in parallel. To help with the editing, the editor/producer/director (varies by project) inserts temporary music. It is always "found" music, stuff they have already sitting around. The score written for the movie gets inserted later.
Problem is, sometimes, trailers get released with the temporary tracks in place. The Abyss did this with the original, and even used shots not used in the film. 2001 was edited with found music, then Kubrik pitched the score written for it in favor of the music he used to edit.
The found music is supposed to approximate the tempo and feel of the final cuts, but that can change, and often does. Be aware of the earliest trailers, as the music for the film probably hasn't been written by the time they had to ship it.
It's an interesting story very told in a unique manner. It essentially starts in the middle, and fills in backstory as the action happens. It takes a bit to get into it, but I think it's worth it. Saw it on the local PBS station (they're playing Urersei Yatsura and Neon Genesis Evangalon now), but it's on video (DVD on the way).
Actually, satellite ground systems are already using TCP/IP. Ground systems communicate through the satellite on special commanding boxes, but those boxes get their commands through ethernet.
Now, many amateurs receive signals from satellites, then decommutate and decode the telemetry. The old style C band satellite dishes work for this, they just need a little refit. One COULD command a bird with more hardware and some hacking - the US and USSR did it to each other's birds during the cold war.
What's my point? I don't think this necessarily makes satellites more vulnerable. After all, the commanding and payload (commercial signals) ususally pass through different paths, and the command paths have a bit of security involved, including encryption chips with closed-source algorithms, courtesy NSA. That encryption applies only to US owned birds, BTW.
While it would be trivial to put out a binary, they would then have to answer questions about it, and given the Linux marketshare (and revenue potential added to offset the work), Apple can't justify it economically.
Perhaps we can get an unsupported "Beta" binary ALA RealPlayer out of them, but I suspect even that would be tough. I've been using Apple since the ][+, but they seem to have a knack for ignoring customer demands for as long as possible.
While Inmarsat is a good viable choice, Globalstar offers a lower price. The coverage is not as global at this point - they're still rolling out service.
There may be issues with the global roaming, but go to www.globalstar.com for more info.
This strikes to the heart of what bugs me. I'm capable of finding out about Doubleckick's shenanagins and Junkbuster to block it out. I worry for those who can't.
Doubleckick's dealings take the privacy of Joe Average who's gettin' on this "Internet Thing" without realising what's at stake. Notice all the new net-enabled stuff coming out (TV boxes, game consoles, microwave ovens). Now that web access comes in a box - just plug in and go, what technologies protect these people?
I really don't have too much problem with Doubleckick collecting info. I do have a problem with them doing it behind the back of the average person. I hope this suit helps the masses.
The interesting fact wedged in there -
50% of gamers are female!
The point of the article is that the women (and the market) are out there - in the cold. If the magazines removed their sexist bias, they could increase their circulation.
A very cool game, and one that appeals to all, is Sonic Adventure. It's for Dreamcast, and manages to be a very fun and interesting combination of rocking 3D graphics, fast play, and adventure playing. I think there's plenty of room for more games like this - the games gets consistently great reviews.
Have fun,