Look at the Mosquito aviation stuff: http://www.innovator.mosquito.net.nz/mbbs2/mosqspec.asp 1 hour endurance at 70mph at 5 gph. 1/3 the horsepower and higher cruise speed. The mosquito costs $30K. for a kit, 200 hours build time.
People build helicopters rather than lift-jets because moving a large volume of air slowly is more efficient than moving a small volume of air quickly. (force is goes as (M/s)*V, power as (M/s)*V^2).
A compact jet pack you could wear would be great, the this isn't it.
Understanding the universe has been a good investment in the past. There is good evidence for something that behaves like dark matter on galactic scales. If it isn't dark matter it might be something more interesting.
And I can watch that on my next international flight?
Also, its not the money for HBO that bothers me, its the problem that I may not be able to cancel without spending time on the phone during business hours.
Yes, but manned space is very expensive, and manned deep-space is basically impossible with present day budgets.
There are serious technical problems as well, but (like most things) they could be solved if the budget were there.
With the limited budgets we have, we get more science out of robots.
(and yes, personally I would happily pay my share and even work on a manned space program). I'm happy to see taxes increased very substantially even if only 10% of that went to space.
I can't comment on other sources. FELs based on superconducting accelerators do scale well to fairly high average powers - though at a very high cost. Our machine runs at a few mJ/pulse but is limited to the 120Hz rate of the room temperature accelerator. Superconducting machines run well at MHz rates (some like CEBAF have been doing this for years). There are some longer wavelength FELs (IR and near UV) with high average powers, its just more money to push them to the EUV. (maybe too much money).
Most of the mirrors I know about are grazing incidence, at 10nm it may be possible to do normal incidence multi-layer mirrors, but I'm not very familiar with that wavelength range. Its certainly tricky. There may be other tricks as well - we do high resolution (few angstrom) imaging by looking at scattered light - essentially working with the fourier transform. The reverse should be possible where you make a fourier mask of the image you want to project - would be a nice experiment actually. I agree though that the imaging system is the really difficult part.
In the US they are not quite "ignored". They are twisted and redefined. Still remember that the #1 goal of most politicians is to get re-elected, so they do in some ways respond to what voters want. I mostly blame a cowardly public that is willing to give up its rights and freedoms for a bit of extra safety.
One could imagine FEL based sources for EUV. At SLAC / LCLS we run reliably at even shorter wavelengths, 4nm is our long wavelength limit, 0.12 at the short end. Average power is low now, but there is a clear path to at least kilowatt average powers (see the LBNL NGLS) and 10s of KW are pretty straightforward.
The sources are very expensive - $100M-$1B, so they might be out of reach for even a large fab.
There has been quite a bit of work on EUV / Xray optics, but again the parts are really expensive (an X-ray mirror runs $1M. )
It probably ends up as an economic issue (not surprising), it it worth building sources like this.
Doesn't really help. Steganography tools will be considered suspicious and there will be versions with backdoors out there. I don't think this can be fought with technology - the large government organizations will have the resources to get the data they want, either by hacks, or by rubber-hose decryption. A tiny percentage of really expert users may be able to find ways to communicate securely, but the vast majority of people will not have the skill to do so. Since the "experts" need to communicate with non-experts this really doesn't solve much of the problem anyway.
If we want the government to stop snooping we need to change the LAWS. If there aren't enough votes to change the law, then we just need to suck it up, same as for any other decision by the majority.
I f the term "Department of Homeland Security" doesn't send shivers up your spine, you haven't read enough.
Unfortunately it seems that american citizens value their safety more than their freedoms: A decades of cowardice is throwing away the liberties won by centuries of heroism.
There may be nothing to be done - this may be the result of the democratic process. Just because *I* don't like the results, that doesn't mean that the majority of people agree with me.
If the corruption really has affected the majority of law enforcement, then its pretty much game over. If the legal system really doesn't work, there is no way to stop the corruption for spreading and eventually there will be collapse revolution and anarchy. At that point people will discover that anarchy really is the worst form of government.
Still, I don't think it is that bad. I think the majority of law enforcement are basically honest and that we can still fix the problem.
I agree that corruption is a problem, but it is not all pervasive and we need to focus on where we do have problems. What I fear is that people will come to accept that "government is corrupt" which quickly leads to " nothing we can do". Once you do have very broad corruption it is extremely difficult to fix without a revolution.
No, I don't think you can. In fact the attitude that "you will find this everywhere" is exactly what encourages this sort of behavior. I think that most government employees (like most private industry employees) are honest. I think we need to fight strongly against the idea that theft and corruption by an arm of the government is OK, or we will wind up in a situation where everyone does it. There are quite a few countries where this is true already - and I don't want to live in any of them.
Theft and abuse of power by what are essentially law enforcement personnel is a serious offense and should result is serious jail time.
Why keep this in the shadows and create all this controversy. If the American public wants this, then just repeal the 4th amendment and have at it. No one would be at all surprised to learn that China monitors all electronic communication, they have made no promises not to.
Now if there aren't enough votes to repeal the 4th amendment, maybe, this isn't what the public wants.
The great majority of 777 flights into SFO under these conditions are successful, and pilots who end up at the wrong airspeed or on the wrong glideslope are responsible for the error. That said, it is still possible that there is something about the way the 777 displays the information, or about the operation of the flight director or autopilot that makes it more likely that pilots will make these (rare) mistakes.
In the AF447 crash the pilots were at fault - but the way the airbus displayed information with malfunctioning sensors contributed to the confusion.
It is worth the NTSB investigating whether there is some sort of user interface issue with 777s.
The somewhat unusual visual picture of the approach into the SFO runways (basically they go right into the water) may also result in more pilot errors.
True, but if use of good security becomes widespread the government is likely to require backdoors, or outlaw some types of encryption. This is not a technology problem but a problem with giving too much power to government agencies. Unfortunately it may be that the voting public is willing to trade their freedoms for security. It is an unfortunate feature of democracy that sometimes the majority wants things that aren't in their own best interest.
A little fun can boost moral and increase efficiency far more than the loss of time. You will notice that most companies with knowledge workers take time for parties, outings etc.
The real waste in large organizations isn't from spending on photos, silly movies, or conferences in nice locations. The big waste is from spending on unneeded projects, or in starting large projects that are then canceled.
People have already posted about the government's power to do harm. Another issue is that the government is able to collect from all sources. Many people (including myself) post limited information associated with each online activity and also have a set of information that is never (intentionally) posted online. This prevents any company from forming a complete and possibly dangerous profile. The government has the ability to combine all of these sets of data and the budget to use very sophisticated data mining. This places people at risk of statistically matching some sort of undesirable (child molester, terrorist, etc) even though they themselves are innocent.
The data is also a very dangerous weapon if the government were to become more authoritarian. We've already seen a number of our constitutional rights weakened in the last decade or two - it is not beyond imagination the they will be weakened much further. If we at some point have a politically unified government there is the concern that it might use this data against political opponents.
If the government firewalled its own data, it would not be so bad. I don't mind the DOD having attack aircraft and tanks, but I would not give my local police department this technology. In the same way, if a federal organization who's only mission were to protect against external threats had full access to data I would not be very concerned, but under the current rules this data is share with local law enforcement.
If I ever receive an alert that does not represent an imminent and serious threat to safety in my immediate area, I will find a way to turn off the service - with a hammer if necessary. You only get to cry wolf once.
The concept of alerts is valuable, but worthless if it is misused even once.
There was a similar situation where residents of a coastal area with an approaching hurricane were told that it was "certain death" to stay. Many stayed and most (maybe all) lived. Next time there is a real "certain death" 'warning in that area it will be ignored .
I remember a 70s (probably popular science) article about using low grade waste heat to increase efficiency. In principle it works. bit the efficiency (Carnot limit) is very low, and the power density is low. In most places where waste heat is usable it is already in use (large power plants for example). It is often better to just use the heat for non power-generation applications (like heating buildings).
In a sense the 1800s idea of the "triple expansion" steam engine was to use the waste heat from the first stage.
Fortunately for me I'm a white, middle class, middle aged, non-muslim man, so I'm not likely to wind up in prison and I can exercise my 1st amendment rights with little fear of consequences.
I wish the same were true for other people, but sadly it isn't and I don't know how to fix it.
Slashdot Mirror
The jet blast will need a fair bit of open space as well, Not sure how it compares to the helicopeter. (which has a 18' rotor diameter).
I don't know what the jetpack does in the event of an engine failure. The helicopter can autorotate (at least in theory -its tricky in real life).
Look at the Mosquito aviation stuff: http://www.innovator.mosquito.net.nz/mbbs2/mosqspec.asp
1 hour endurance at 70mph at 5 gph. 1/3 the horsepower and higher cruise speed.
The mosquito costs $30K. for a kit, 200 hours build time.
People build helicopters rather than lift-jets because moving a large volume of air slowly is more efficient than moving a small volume of air quickly. (force is goes as (M/s)*V, power as (M/s)*V^2).
A compact jet pack you could wear would be great, the this isn't it.
Understanding the universe has been a good investment in the past. There is good evidence for something that behaves like dark matter on galactic scales. If it isn't dark matter it might be something more interesting.
And I can watch that on my next international flight?
Also, its not the money for HBO that bothers me, its the problem that I may not be able to cancel without spending time on the phone during business hours.
Yes, but manned space is very expensive, and manned deep-space is basically impossible with present day budgets.
There are serious technical problems as well, but (like most things) they could be solved if the budget were there.
With the limited budgets we have, we get more science out of robots.
(and yes, personally I would happily pay my share and even work on a manned space program). I'm happy to see taxes increased very substantially even if only 10% of that went to space.
Great, now they will tell me where I can legally pay to download the latest season of "game of thrones"
I can't comment on other sources. FELs based on superconducting accelerators do scale well to fairly high average powers - though at a very high cost. Our machine runs at a few mJ/pulse but is limited to the 120Hz rate of the room temperature accelerator. Superconducting machines run well at MHz rates (some like CEBAF have been doing this for years). There are some longer wavelength FELs (IR and near UV) with high average powers, its just more money to push them to the EUV. (maybe too much money).
Most of the mirrors I know about are grazing incidence, at 10nm it may be possible to do normal incidence multi-layer mirrors, but I'm not very familiar with that wavelength range. Its certainly tricky. There may be other tricks as well - we do high resolution (few angstrom) imaging by looking at scattered light - essentially working with the fourier transform. The reverse should be possible where you make a fourier mask of the image you want to project - would be a nice experiment actually. I agree though that the imaging system is the really difficult part.
In the US they are not quite "ignored". They are twisted and redefined. Still remember that the #1 goal of most politicians is to get re-elected, so they do in some ways respond to what voters want. I mostly blame a cowardly public that is willing to give up its rights and freedoms for a bit of extra safety.
One could imagine FEL based sources for EUV. At SLAC / LCLS we run reliably at even shorter wavelengths, 4nm is our long wavelength limit, 0.12 at the short end. Average power is low now, but there is a clear path to at least kilowatt average powers (see the LBNL NGLS) and 10s of KW are pretty straightforward.
The sources are very expensive - $100M-$1B, so they might be out of reach for even a large fab.
There has been quite a bit of work on EUV / Xray optics, but again the parts are really expensive (an X-ray mirror runs $1M. )
It probably ends up as an economic issue (not surprising), it it worth building sources like this.
Doesn't really help. Steganography tools will be considered suspicious and there will be versions with backdoors out there. I don't think this can be fought with technology - the large government organizations will have the resources to get the data they want, either by hacks, or by rubber-hose decryption. A tiny percentage of really expert users may be able to find ways to communicate securely, but the vast majority of people will not have the skill to do so. Since the "experts" need to communicate with non-experts this really doesn't solve much of the problem anyway.
If we want the government to stop snooping we need to change the LAWS. If there aren't enough votes to change the law, then we just need to suck it up, same as for any other decision by the majority.
No one can convince you that it was worth it. That really is the problem.
I f the term "Department of Homeland Security" doesn't send shivers up your spine, you haven't read enough.
Unfortunately it seems that american citizens value their safety more than their freedoms: A decades of cowardice is throwing away the liberties won by centuries of heroism.
There may be nothing to be done - this may be the result of the democratic process. Just because *I* don't like the results, that doesn't mean that the majority of people agree with me.
If the corruption really has affected the majority of law enforcement, then its pretty much game over. If the legal system really doesn't work, there is no way to stop the corruption for spreading and eventually there will be collapse revolution and anarchy. At that point people will discover that anarchy really is the worst form of government.
Still, I don't think it is that bad. I think the majority of law enforcement are basically honest and that we can still fix the problem.
I agree that corruption is a problem, but it is not all pervasive and we need to focus on where we do have problems. What I fear is that people will come to accept that "government is corrupt" which quickly leads to " nothing we can do". Once you do have very broad corruption it is extremely difficult to fix without a revolution.
No, I don't think you can. In fact the attitude that "you will find this everywhere" is exactly what encourages this sort of behavior. I think that most government employees (like most private industry employees) are honest. I think we need to fight strongly against the idea that theft and corruption by an arm of the government is OK, or we will wind up in a situation where everyone does it. There are quite a few countries where this is true already - and I don't want to live in any of them.
Theft and abuse of power by what are essentially law enforcement personnel is a serious offense and should result is serious jail time.
Why keep this in the shadows and create all this controversy. If the American public wants this, then just repeal the 4th amendment and have at it. No one would be at all surprised to learn that China monitors all electronic communication, they have made no promises not to.
Now if there aren't enough votes to repeal the 4th amendment, maybe, this isn't what the public wants.
The great majority of 777 flights into SFO under these conditions are successful, and pilots who end up at the wrong airspeed or on the wrong glideslope are responsible for the error. That said, it is still possible that there is something about the way the 777 displays the information, or about the operation of the flight director or autopilot that makes it more likely that pilots will make these (rare) mistakes.
In the AF447 crash the pilots were at fault - but the way the airbus displayed information with malfunctioning sensors contributed to the confusion.
It is worth the NTSB investigating whether there is some sort of user interface issue with 777s.
The somewhat unusual visual picture of the approach into the SFO runways (basically they go right into the water) may also result in more pilot errors.
True, but if use of good security becomes widespread the government is likely to require backdoors, or outlaw some types of encryption. This is not a technology problem but a problem with giving too much power to government agencies. Unfortunately it may be that the voting public is willing to trade their freedoms for security. It is an unfortunate feature of democracy that sometimes the majority wants things that aren't in their own best interest.
A little fun can boost moral and increase efficiency far more than the loss of time. You will notice that most companies with knowledge workers take time for parties, outings etc.
The real waste in large organizations isn't from spending on photos, silly movies, or conferences in nice locations. The big waste is from spending on unneeded projects, or in starting large projects that are then canceled.
People have already posted about the government's power to do harm. Another issue is that the government is able to collect from all sources. Many people (including myself) post limited information associated with each online activity and also have a set of information that is never (intentionally) posted online. This prevents any company from forming a complete and possibly dangerous profile. The government has the ability to combine all of these sets of data and the budget to use very sophisticated data mining. This places people at risk of statistically matching some sort of undesirable (child molester, terrorist, etc) even though they themselves are innocent.
The data is also a very dangerous weapon if the government were to become more authoritarian. We've already seen a number of our constitutional rights weakened in the last decade or two - it is not beyond imagination the they will be weakened much further. If we at some point have a politically unified government there is the concern that it might use this data against political opponents.
If the government firewalled its own data, it would not be so bad. I don't mind the DOD having attack aircraft and tanks, but I would not give my local police department this technology. In the same way, if a federal organization who's only mission were to protect against external threats had full access to data I would not be very concerned, but under the current rules this data is share with local law enforcement.
Its not that anyone believed, them, its just fun to post "I told you so" posts.
What about cars where there is a special "valet" key that doesn't allow access to the trunk.
If the key can't open the trunk, can TSA destroy the car because it is suspicious?
If I ever receive an alert that does not represent an imminent and serious threat to safety in my immediate area, I will find a way to turn off the service - with a hammer if necessary. You only get to cry wolf once.
The concept of alerts is valuable, but worthless if it is misused even once.
There was a similar situation where residents of a coastal area with an approaching hurricane were told that it was "certain death" to stay. Many stayed and most (maybe all) lived. Next time there is a real "certain death" 'warning in that area it will be ignored .
I remember a 70s (probably popular science) article about using low grade waste heat to increase efficiency. In principle it works. bit the efficiency (Carnot limit) is very low, and the power density is low. In most places where waste heat is usable it is already in use (large power plants for example). It is often better to just use the heat for non power-generation applications (like heating buildings).
In a sense the 1800s idea of the "triple expansion" steam engine was to use the waste heat from the first stage.
Fortunately for me I'm a white, middle class, middle aged, non-muslim man, so I'm not likely to wind up in prison and I can exercise my 1st amendment rights with little fear of consequences.
I wish the same were true for other people, but sadly it isn't and I don't know how to fix it.