The Alas V is probably off the table for political reasons because of its Russian kerosene first stage engine, the RD-180. The proposed Atlas V Heavy is still a few years off with an extra RD-180 mounted on each side to act as boosters. The Delta IV Heavy is inefficient and costly because of its hydrogen engines made in the USA that are inefficient in the lower atmosphere. As well, it uses a lot of expensive helium gas to pressurize its tanks and to start its engines. Probably the only option that would not hurt NASA's pride and be a reasonable price and efficient would be a hybrid rocket with a Delta core and at least two Atlases used as strap-on boosters. That way they could say that the Russian rocket engines were only assisting, and still have an all-American core.
When Mike Jittlov was filming his movie "The Wizard of Speed and Time" he did not have enough money to pay for the "Happy Birthday" song, so he made his own version "Merry Birthday to You"
www.youtube.com/watch?v=52_BV2PtZZE
When I read this I remembered reading somewhere that this company was involved with internet entrepreneur Mark Rocket. I googled him and sure enough he is mentioned as a co-founder of Rocket Lab. Some years ago he was our neighbour and rented a house from my parents. I know that he did not have much money back then, but now he is a multi-millionaire.
Mr Rocket, who changed his name from Stevens, was the first New Zealander to book a seat on Virgin Galactic's sub-orbital space flight in 2010.
It's now approaching 1:00am but I thought it was nice to know that he has made a success of his life in the internet industry. I wish him and the company all the best in their endeavours.
No, it was at about $.50US at the time, but the price went down rapidly. A couple years later I got 400 kilobytes and then 800 kilobytes on a double sided disk. They were in Apple Macintosh format for the Computer Science department.
When jet engines with Full Authority Digital Engine Controllers (FADECs) were introduced in about the late 80's there were several cases of engines suddenly surging to uncommanded high speeds. It turned out that the digital commands were sometimes getting corrupted between the cockpit computers and the FADECs. This was cured by requiring the commands to be repeated several times before they were accepted by and acted on by the FADEC in question.
The Foundation series is reportedly incredibly popular in the Arab world, the title is usually translated as "Al Qaeda". Usually rendered into English as The Base, this also means The Foundation. A website quote says "Also, the book centers on a small group led by someone who has predicted the downfall of a powerful, yet decadent empire... which, some point out, could seem similar to the idea of religious terrorists vs. the decadent West"
I remember reading in the late 80's that many US weapon electronics actually had hidden enhanced capabilities and/or features, that in an emergency could be unlocked by some sort of code or special sequence of settings that was kept secret from its normal operators.
It was big news a few months ago a when a Tongan couple were discovered roasting an unwanted pet dog on their barbeque in Auckland, New Zealand. www.stuff.co.nz/national/2756912/Owner-roasts-family-pet-in-barbecue
Reminds me of the toilets in the living insectoid spaceship the "Lexx". As someone wrote on a website: "The titular living ship naturally has an organic lavatory, complete with a tongue, so you can finish your bowel movement with that fresh, just-licked-by-a-giant-space-bug clean feeling"
Whispergen in New Zealand has been making Stirling engines with a special "wobble yoke" for many years in my city that does something similar. I should think that their much-simpler engines would be more efficient. Their website http://www.whispertech.co.nz/ and a Flash animation showing its operation http://www.whispergen.com/content/library/whispergen.html
I find it amazing that computers generally stay about the same size. In the 80's when I got my first computer, I imagined that computers in the future would get smaller and slimmer as well as faster. Well, they are a lot faster but the specifications keep being increased so that most computers are still more or less the same size as many years ago. Back then I thought that ALL computers would have ended up like modern notebook or laptop computers!
How would this affect camcorders that record to flash memory? I'm interested in getting a camcorder that uses flash memory for its inherent ruggedness and low power consumption. If the memory ages with time is it better not to get the ones with built-in memory that are not easily replaced by simply inserting a new memory stick? Does it mean that the memory at the beginning of the stick will age more, given that it will be overwritten more?
I read somewhere that sailors used to have gold earrings so that if they drowned at sea and were washed up on land their discoverers would take their earrings for payment and give them a decent burial.
When Apple was moving away from the Motorola chips several prototype boards were created around the ARM (which Apple owned in part) but did not adopt. One of my computer science tutors at the University of Canterbury wrote an ARM emulator in the late eighties for his thesis; he now works for ARM in Texas, presumably in a similar line of work.
I'm 46 and I basically stopped using cursive once I started high school. I found it slower, and it was hard to read the writing of other people. Much as my writing was quite good, I found that other people tended to scrawl, making it hard to decipher. In Europe, they did not teach cursive but something that looked like Italic.
I remember using Apple MacIntoshes in the late 1980's and wishing that they had Unix installed on them. Well, eventually that happened much later with OS X, but I find it amazing that Linux is now appearing in low-end netbook and notebook computers, albeit often with unpopular distributions.
Slashdot Mirror
As a Kiwi (New Zealander), I always thought of it as being watched by Big SISter rather than Big Brother!
The Alas V is probably off the table for political reasons because of its Russian kerosene first stage engine, the RD-180. The proposed Atlas V Heavy is still a few years off with an extra RD-180 mounted on each side to act as boosters. The Delta IV Heavy is inefficient and costly because of its hydrogen engines made in the USA that are inefficient in the lower atmosphere. As well, it uses a lot of expensive helium gas to pressurize its tanks and to start its engines. Probably the only option that would not hurt NASA's pride and be a reasonable price and efficient would be a hybrid rocket with a Delta core and at least two Atlases used as strap-on boosters. That way they could say that the Russian rocket engines were only assisting, and still have an all-American core.
This is the first time that I read a post on Slashdot from a link on Google News - kdawson you're doing well!
When Mike Jittlov was filming his movie "The Wizard of Speed and Time" he did not have enough money to pay for the "Happy Birthday" song, so he made his own version "Merry Birthday to You" www.youtube.com/watch?v=52_BV2PtZZE
When I read this I remembered reading somewhere that this company was involved with internet entrepreneur Mark Rocket. I googled him and sure enough he is mentioned as a co-founder of Rocket Lab. Some years ago he was our neighbour and rented a house from my parents. I know that he did not have much money back then, but now he is a multi-millionaire. Mr Rocket, who changed his name from Stevens, was the first New Zealander to book a seat on Virgin Galactic's sub-orbital space flight in 2010. It's now approaching 1:00am but I thought it was nice to know that he has made a success of his life in the internet industry. I wish him and the company all the best in their endeavours.
No, it was at about $.50US at the time, but the price went down rapidly. A couple years later I got 400 kilobytes and then 800 kilobytes on a double sided disk. They were in Apple Macintosh format for the Computer Science department.
Some people are working on a mechanical binary clock to last 10,000 years. en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clock_of_the_Long_Now
Ha, I paid about 30 New Zealand dollars for a 200 kilobyte 3.5 inch floppy disk in the in the mid eighties
When jet engines with Full Authority Digital Engine Controllers (FADECs) were introduced in about the late 80's there were several cases of engines suddenly surging to uncommanded high speeds. It turned out that the digital commands were sometimes getting corrupted between the cockpit computers and the FADECs. This was cured by requiring the commands to be repeated several times before they were accepted by and acted on by the FADEC in question.
The Foundation series is reportedly incredibly popular in the Arab world, the title is usually translated as "Al Qaeda". Usually rendered into English as The Base, this also means The Foundation. A website quote says "Also, the book centers on a small group led by someone who has predicted the downfall of a powerful, yet decadent empire... which, some point out, could seem similar to the idea of religious terrorists vs. the decadent West"
I remember reading in the late 80's that many US weapon electronics actually had hidden enhanced capabilities and/or features, that in an emergency could be unlocked by some sort of code or special sequence of settings that was kept secret from its normal operators.
It was big news a few months ago a when a Tongan couple were discovered roasting an unwanted pet dog on their barbeque in Auckland, New Zealand. www.stuff.co.nz/national/2756912/Owner-roasts-family-pet-in-barbecue
Reminds me of the toilets in the living insectoid spaceship the "Lexx". As someone wrote on a website: "The titular living ship naturally has an organic lavatory, complete with a tongue, so you can finish your bowel movement with that fresh, just-licked-by-a-giant-space-bug clean feeling"
Whispergen in New Zealand has been making Stirling engines with a special "wobble yoke" for many years in my city that does something similar. I should think that their much-simpler engines would be more efficient. Their website http://www.whispertech.co.nz/ and a Flash animation showing its operation http://www.whispergen.com/content/library/whispergen.html
I find it amazing that computers generally stay about the same size. In the 80's when I got my first computer, I imagined that computers in the future would get smaller and slimmer as well as faster. Well, they are a lot faster but the specifications keep being increased so that most computers are still more or less the same size as many years ago. Back then I thought that ALL computers would have ended up like modern notebook or laptop computers!
How would this affect camcorders that record to flash memory? I'm interested in getting a camcorder that uses flash memory for its inherent ruggedness and low power consumption. If the memory ages with time is it better not to get the ones with built-in memory that are not easily replaced by simply inserting a new memory stick? Does it mean that the memory at the beginning of the stick will age more, given that it will be overwritten more?
I read somewhere that sailors used to have gold earrings so that if they drowned at sea and were washed up on land their discoverers would take their earrings for payment and give them a decent burial.
It's perfectly legal to modify your computer hardware in New Zealand, I believe it's the same in the EU
In New Zealand it is not illegal to modify your own computer hardware, I believe that the EU also has similar laws.
When Apple was moving away from the Motorola chips several prototype boards were created around the ARM (which Apple owned in part) but did not adopt. One of my computer science tutors at the University of Canterbury wrote an ARM emulator in the late eighties for his thesis; he now works for ARM in Texas, presumably in a similar line of work.
I'm 46 and I basically stopped using cursive once I started high school. I found it slower, and it was hard to read the writing of other people. Much as my writing was quite good, I found that other people tended to scrawl, making it hard to decipher. In Europe, they did not teach cursive but something that looked like Italic.
I remember using Apple MacIntoshes in the late 1980's and wishing that they had Unix installed on them. Well, eventually that happened much later with OS X, but I find it amazing that Linux is now appearing in low-end netbook and notebook computers, albeit often with unpopular distributions.
I once read of where someone did something similar, only it was done for his future reincarnation.
A 1,000 year DVD? Some people are working on a 10,000 year clock, "The Clock of the Long Now"
It's Endeavour not Endeavor!!