And how to they know that? I don't know ACM, in fact only a few people do anymore (it's ancient), but I worked on a bunch of other things, and whether a real warhead was in place was not communicated to the launcher. The change for us was to put a telemeter and attached radio inside for test flights (replacing the warhead), and that's it. Oh, well, the ESAD (Electronic Safe and Arm Device: the thing that fires the warhead) would be inert, too.
Perhaps nuclear weapons are different. Myself, I would think that treating all the warheads as nuclear would be excellent practice and in general a good idea. If you *know* different, cite a source.
Blackmailing people with falsehoods isn't impossible, but I think it's more difficult than you make it out to be. For example:
(a) Deposit $20k in my bank, then try to blackmail me? Report to DSS: you think banks don't have any records?
(b) Photoshop in some bimbos? How exactly is that going to help: are they sneaking into my house to leave them for my wife? Who cares if they present them to me, except as an art critique. You think it's impossible to explain strangers offering compromising pictures to your wife?
(c) Do you think it's that common for people to get into others computers at work? Where I formerly worked, it was armed guards and turnstiles with badge readers. Unfamiliar faces better have a badge and an escort. So lets say it was the home PC. Then what? If they simply threaten me with this, then go to DSS. If they first put the pictures there, then threaten me: unplug computer and go to DSS. Going to the authorities without threatening me first will almost certainly be excruciatingly destructive to a career/life, but doesn't get them closer to their info.
Using a stick against someone isn't easy: it's much easier to use a carrot against their weaknesses. Therefore if you minimize weaknesses by hiring people who have minimal "adverse information" (this is the DSS term), then you are safer.
I am a *very* private person in many ways, and yet I was willing to fill out the EPSQ (Electronic Personnel Survey Questionnaire, I believe) and put up with the investigation for my clearances. I wouldn't call DSS a font of sense or ability, but in general they took their responsibilities seriously and our security personnel were very good about personal issues, which they could grasp (computer security was a whole 'nother deal).
So, no, I don't think your assertion:
There are ALWAYS ways to blackmail someone. If NASA believes that these sorts of background checks really work, they've been breathing too much vacuum.
is true. I haven't looked to see if the desire to be safer in this instance is merited (NASA? Strikes me as likely to be unnecessary), but the "checks really work" thing has generally proven to be true, given the number of people who have clearances and the reported losses.
Or maybe we suck at catching the people who leak info and cheat. I dunno.
Redhat user? The new Firewire stack was marked experimental, but at least the Redhat folks decided that the benefits of the (much) better security model were worth it. Actually, I think Debian has gone to it now, too (?). Basically, it was *known* that there would be regressions, and the new stack was inserted to give a wider group of people a chance to try it, which suddenly led to various distros jumping all over it.
The new stack is 1/3rd the size of the old and discards a lot of garbage. There're really only 2 guys doing active kernel development (Kristian (new stack author) and Stefan Richter (who graciously took over maintenance of the old stack but largely works with just the sbp2 stuff)). Occasionally you might see something out of Dan Dennedy (libraw1394 and some other libraries) or someone, but really there's not a lot going on there. I say this as someone who uses just about *all* the features the old stack has to offer and who had to mod the driver to do what I wanted.
Just moved from Tucson, AZ back into Tempe, AZ. I didn't check before I moved, and as I'm 16,000ft (~4900m) from the wiring doodad, the offered speed was 768kbps down, 128kbps up (yes, bits), and the provider noted that they wouldn't be able to support VoIP or whathaveyou. Which wasn't too saddening to me, since in Tucson I was paying $104/month for 1.5Mbps down/ 384kbps up w/ 5 static IPs and VoIP w/ unlimited calling.
So now I'm going to cable for Internet access + POTS phone. I actually kinda wanted a POTS line because the VoIP service was pretty crap: unreliable dialtone, weird echoes on the line, and despite the fact that I configured things (per the instructions) to prioritize phone calls, downloads (like 'apt-get upgrade') would cause voice calls to cut out. This was Speakeasy. My new Internet provider is Cox Communications (a cable company) who provides 7Mbps down / 512kbps up for ~$30.00/month (I haven't checked the yen recently, but 3600Y @ 120Y/$). Then another ~$20.00/month for local phone + possibility of $0.05/minute toll calls from Qwest.
Thusly, I am looking at.875MBps for $50. I think I could get to 1.5MBps for another $10/month, but I am curious as to what fraction of this 7Mbps I can obtain first, and to how that feels after 1.5Mbps for seven years.
Probably pretty damn awesome at 45,000 feet: Stinger don't go that high. And otherwise you're probably on the receiving end of a Hellfire and trying to figure out which pieces of your buddy go together, and thus otherwise preoccupied.
and assuming an aircraft @ 100k feet, it should be visible from *way* beyond missile range (643km: we agree-ish). I'm going to say that's about 1/10th the speed of the plane, e.g. you have 6 minutes from the time you see it until it's overhead. Do you want to tail chase the plane? If not, make that firing decision quickly. @ 2.4k/s, your 200km missile has 83 seconds to make the intercept. But 200km is probably "fall out of the sky, no kinetic energy to make a maneuver" kinda range. Let's say you have 60 seconds. I wonder, though.
Takes 12.5 seconds from speed 0 when accelerating at a constant 40g (probably that's high: none of *my* missiles have motors that good for that long (boost is usually 5-6 seconds)) to reach 30,480m (100k feet). Oh dang, I see Wikipedia says 100g of accel. Well, that won't be for long with a 2,000kg missile w/ rocket motor efficiencies. I can't seem to get the math right for motor propellant specific impulses and whatnot, but you gotta be burning significant mass per second to hold that crazy speed (though I suppose it gets easier as mass goes down).
Lessee. Assume 100g == 1km/s^2. So top velocity in 2.5 seconds. Cover 3065m. You have 27,416m to go. Takes 11seconds at 2.5km/s. So changes to 13.5 seconds from 12.5 seconds. Not too different.
To me, it looks pretty dicey. I guess probably not awful if you have orders to shoot down everything, but what if the plane just goes into an altitude zoom when the missile lifts? 1770 m/s horizontal at 30km up vs the missile coming straight up? Who loses control effectiveness first (cannot maneuver)?
I think the plane wins, in general. I know I am the hand-waving winner.
Hey Charlie. I guess you're used to the reading comprehension of Slashdotters by now, but it's sort of depressing, no?
I'll leave out the interstellar stuff since I, sadly, don't think I'll get to be a part of it. On the intrastellar front, though, I think there's reason for hope. My thinking goes like this:
1. Putting stuff up in rockets is expensive. 2. Not everything is fragile and requires rockets. 3. Railguns are cool.
I think we could deliver some robotic stuff to the Moon (or Mars) with a gun, and then, probably over the course of years (sigh), use that equipment to build a habitat. I'm not going to check, but presumably we could put together a mean concrete or two from materials on the Lunar surface. I hope that heat could substitute for water (why use a cement binder when we can just go molten and build some kind of bubble), elsewise we have more fun stuff to send up via the gun.
I believe that there are various "launch loops" that can substitute for guns if we must, but in general I think we've sorted our Bulk Delivery problems. I work with guys who are building mechanical systems to withstand 15,000g of launch shock, so that's a reasonably well-understood problem at this point. Make the gun/loop longer if that becomes a concern.
So: robots to moon: CHECK. Robots build life support. Then: people to Moon.
And actually, here's when I have the problem. I think that when people currently think "Permanently Manned Base" they mean "scientists come and go, but there's always someone there". (a) Boring (b) Tells us what?
I wanted to say that it's not viable, but I think it is. We put people in an orbiting dumpster for months at a time, and its only a few days longer to the moon. We could continue like this and learn tons, I'm sure, but for me the real excitement doesn't start until there's a baby born ("conceived" would probably be lots of fun, too) off planet (and just thinking, what would low-g birth be like: "baby richochet"? Naked space babies free spinning, anchored only by umbilical?).
Then: little spacesuits. Weird Lunar baby buggies. Used diaper (nappies, you Pom!) shots into the sun. Earth history vs Lunar history. "What the hell trees are" in science class. Well, there will likely be parks: how well do trees behave in 1/6th of a g? This weird shit called "rain". Or rainbows.
Now we're cooking with gas! We'll have a whole culture of people who aren't safety-obsessed pussies (I hope) or under the tyrannical control of an Earth or Lunar Authority (Heinlein. You knew it was coming). They can convert substantial portions of their giant rock to fuel, plus hey 1/6th of a g. Fall downstairs toward the Earth to pick up even more energy and away you go. Nuclear pulse to get speed: raw and horrific radiation spat into space to fall like dewy drops of love on the Who-gives-a-shit-its-baked surface of the Moon.
Use crazy space porn to fund the missions! Hot lesbian bitches in space just for you! etc etc.
Okay, going too long now, but I just hope I live to see a few frontier societies come into effect. Societies built around trusting your gear and the people near you, and a big Fuck You to Earth who do and can do nothing for or with or to you. A little autonomy. A little independence. A People shedding their Sheepskins and Forgetting "Baaaaa!".
Those regions already exist. Any of over half a dozen European powers, Australia, and even our neighbor Canada have the military resources, technology and skill to smack down a carrier battlegroup that threatened its territory with near impunity. It would take a lot of US blood and lucre to, say, bring a war to Sweden.
Color me intrigued. I think the United States could smack the shit out of Sweden in perhaps 24 hours assuming that a larger NATO/Russian/Chinese force didn't loom. I live in the U.S. so I will now resorting to calling the U.S. "we" and those hot, hot Swedish Bikini Warriors "they/them".
Why we'd win:
1) We know where all their hidden runways are: we run the satellites and Global Hawk. Fly that Saab out of that hole *BANG* 2) They get *no* GPS. Magellan has 1 bird aloft so far as I know, and no weapons that can use it. 3) We make all their weapons. 4) Presumably we're striking first, so we get the element of surprise. If you want to say that a carrier group cannot move without the element of surprise, I think your imagination is broke. Who is going to tell them where it is? Also, we still have Ohio and Los Angeles class subs and they can carry Tomahawks: I think 2 Ohios are being refitted to carry 154 Tomahawks apiece. See Wikipedia. 5) What Swedish Navy? 6) Do you think the Swedes can penetrate the shell of air defense over a modern U.S. carrier group? How? 1st there's F-18s. Then there's cruisers with Aegis and Standard Missile. Closer in we go to RAM and Phalanx and lots of AAA. 7) Do you think that they train for this fight? 8) Do you think that their anti-ship missiles are things we (a) don't make (b) haven't taken apart and examined in great detail? One of the few heartening things from the Falklands is how it seems to have motivated the U.S. to take ship protection very, very seriously.
All the European nations are similar: I believe that none could withstand more than a few hours of full-on attack, much like Iraq. They spend 1.5% of their GDP on defense because they know the Americans will do all the heavy lifting. They make very little defense gear other than tanks or occasionally an aircraft. We possess cruise missiles that have ranges far greater than any country's size (save Australia), so there's no safe spot You know we have penetrators, and I'm guessing there're guys working on the next-gen after the retarded "let's do nukes" discussions in Afghanistan.
Invading would be another thing (and think) entirely. It would probably just be safer to reduce all their assets, military or otherwise, to rubble from afar and wait for them to starve and surrender.
Of course, I can't think of anything that would persuade us to attack. It was just the way in which the challenge was posed that provoked much thought and roiled blood (Yar, whoop them Yurpeens but good!).
Canada'd be both tougher and easier due to the land invasion type o' thing. No way to spring stuff on them, but seriously, North Jersey has more than sufficient guns to bring Canada to its knees. "This season on the Sopranos, can Tony and Carmella subjugate Toronto, or will problems with the scattered French separatists coalesce into something serious?" It's not war, it's HBO!
Off-topic, Ben Rich says in his book that the codename Aurora that everyone likes to think refers to some hypersonic aircraft, was actually the codename placed on the B-2 project as Lockheed and Northrop were competing for the contract. It's funny to think that to this day, folks still hang onto this and imagine some mythical hypersonic airplane. Which never existed. Or does it?
I work with a bunch of former B-2 folks, and they've *never* mentioned this. I'm guessing it would have come up.
Western values? like supporting dictatorships in Chile, central America countries, Greece, Pakistan etc?
What are you talking about? You're going back to 1973 for Pinochet in Chile. He's dead, for Christ's sake. Chile has had a deomocratic government for ~18 years.
Central American countries? Who? I don't think anyone would believe that the Contra affair was a swell idea, but there's no "dictatorship" there. Guatemala? The coup there was in 1954: Carter cut off military aid in 1979.
Pakistan? Musharaff is an asshat, but would you have us do? Depose him? There's not much choice but to deal with him. And holy Jesus, can you imagine the cries of "interference" if we did depose him? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. We've put pressure on him, and I think he is finding out that being a dictatorial asshat can be hard work: his attempt to remove the Supreme Court Justice will hopefully moderate his stupidity.
Let's talk about Russia, then. Chechnya? Kazakhstan? Ukraine? Georgia? Cyberwarfare over a fucking war memorial? Assassinations on foreign soil. Destroying Yukos through "taxes". Putting potential political opponents in jail (Khodorkovsky, if not more). Assassinating journalists critical of the administration. Seeking extradition of others (Berezovsky) for completely bullshit reasons?
Western values like allowing friend countries to invade and occupy foreign countries (Turkey over Cyprus) while doing the exact opposite thing with non-friend countries?
Oh, yeah, totally we should have stopped that. Everyone loves us when we interfere. Hey, is it the United States or France that wants to (or could) keep Turkey out of the EU (god forbid all those poor Muslims get freedom of movement)?
Western values like increasing the price of imported goods from Africa in order to protect domestic production?
Yes, you're absolutely right. No one except the United States has protections on agriculture. Not the Europeans, not the Japanese, no one except the United States. We must prostrate ourselves before the will of all international fuckwits.
Western values like economically supporting all the 'orange' revolutions in former soviet union countries in order to get the geopolitical advantage?
Instead we should have let Putin install his toady. God forbid we support the Ukrainian people's choice. It's a little known fact that every single person that camped in the city's square was a CIA employee: wow, huh?! I guess that Putin miscalculated the dose on the dioxin poisoning there, huh? "Geopolitical advantage"? Give me a break.
"Western values like dismantling Yugoslavia because the southern part has the largest deposits of a rare metal which USA wants for replacing enhanced uranium in its weapons?"
You smoke too much crack. We "dismantled" Yugoslavia? What, we went back in time and incited the hundreds of years of historical hatreds. We invaded them and kept them under an iron curtain until the friction of authoritarian rule from above caused them to explode?
Western values like lying about WMDs in Iraq?
Bush is a fucking retard. I don't think anyone is denying this.
Western values like taking the culture of one country and arbitrarily assign it to another (yeap, I am talking about the so called country of 'Macedonia', one of the biggest thefts of cultural identity in history) ?
Totally. We assigned McDonalds and Nike to go in there and set that up. We R teh Awesomez!
Western values like giving money under the table to enemies of Chaves so as that he is overthrown, even if he is legally elected?
Maybe some evidence with those accusations, hrm? Our approach to Chavez is, "Oh god, what a nutcase". Do you know *anything* about
I drive a 2001 Nissan Maxima: 18.5 gallon tank. I fill the tank once a week: usually in the area of 16-17 gallons. @ $3/gal: ~$50. Thats $200/month or $2400/year. That's about 3% of my gross income (~$80k).
In case you're wondering, I'm averaging ~24.3mpg and drive 340-420 miles per week, or 18k+ miles/year.
Why is it hanging in front of half your face? If I'm being shot at, my first concern is going to be shooting back accurately, and if that damn thing gets in my way it's going off and not coming back till after everything is done. The preferred option should have been a full width half-visor, similar to a hockey visor. See-through (probably slightly tinted), non shiny, not-in-the-way, but if you want data displayed on it, you can use it as a projection surface. Build the projection hardware into the helmet. You don't need much, because really, you don't need full-colour 30FPS. You are describing MANTIS. Dunno how that's going (or is even still in development).
And speaking of information... this is the one part that worries me. You're taking these soldiers, who have to keep their location 100% secret or they die, and sticking a transmitter on them. It doesn't matter if it's encrypted, or if it goes up to a satellite or connects to AOL and uses a Buddy List to update everyone on where you are... it's still putting out power, and it's not gonna take long before someone goes "Hey, I don't need to know what is being sent out, I just have to get a scanner to see if there's any signals being radiated, and from where". Broadcasting your location probably isn't the best idea, it's just a matter of time until it gets you killed. You are missing a key ingredient here: the comms are almost certainly spread spectrum. Transmissions will look like noise.
I have never worked on Land Warrior myself, and it looks like there are severe problems that could well make using it a mistake currently. But consider things from the developers' point of view: how are they going to learn what works without giving something to people? It sounds like some general somewhere asked for the kitchen sink, but hopefully soldiers will bitch and get that fixed, and the devices will surely only get lighter and faster and better. Of course there will always be some lag behind the commercial best, but then I'd be curious how long a Handspring or Blackberry or whatever would last in combat. Or at -40F, or in 100% humidity. Or at 18,000 ft.
Perhaps the next generation is 8lbs and the software ceases to suck (as much). Is that enough? 4lbs? You know that's coming until the limit is the battery and the computing stuff is some little wafer of a module (I'm guessing the RF and associated power stuff is the heavier piece even now). Unless 2nd system effect creeps in.
Yeah, I work at a military contractor. In general, we are massively bloated and fucking disgusting. But a fair chunk of that's what the government forces us to be. You have no idea about the paperwork, but it's what *you* required. The rest of it is because the barriers to entry are so high, there's no competition to force people to do better. And sometimes government oversight justs sucks and you have no idea how shit could get so bad (look at Lockheed-Martin and the Coast Guard's Deep Water program, recently in the news. Wow.)
Put a diesel engine in a Insight, and you'd probably get a similar boost in mileage as between an gasoline Jetta and a TDI Jetta. Heck, you might crack 100mpg without breaking a sweat. I wonder 'bout that. The Insight has a 1 Liter inline 3: 73hp (54.4kW), 79 ft-lbs (107 N-m). I don't think you could go with putting an even tinier diesel in there with the requisite turbo plumbing and come out on top by very much. Heck, it's even set up like a diesel: peak torque is at 1500rpm according to Edmunds, and the redline is at 5700rpm. Does Honda even make a diesel? And emissions in the US now are much tougher on diesels (particulates): only Mercedes has any new diesels (Bluetec) this year, so far as I know, and it's not even 50 state legal (48: no California and no mumble). Other manufacturers are apparently going to use Bluetec tech as well, so it must be some pretty rough stuff. There's apparently urea injection at some point. Could be heavy, and the Insight is only 1850 lb (~840kg).
Still, I'd like to see someone do it. We really need some Hondas with modifications other than huge, farty exhausts.
Best of all -- for a spaceport -- there's land near this infrastructure. Hundreds of thousands of acres of land, sparsely populated. Near a missile range. Where they test PAC-3 (Patriot Advanced Capability), a missile interceptor. It's a mean thought, but comon', *so* delicious. No one's ever shot down a space craft before, right? And there aren't many opportunities for "firsts" anymore.
It spins end over end every 4 hours like a football that has been kicked...
...The answer is that it is as big as Pluto -- along its longest dimension.
To me that's just staggering. According to Google, Pluto's diameter is 2274km, so the circumference of a circle described by this thing spinning would be ~7144km. So to cover this in 4 hours, the radial velocity is 1786km/hour (1110mph)! Yeah, I can see why it's streched out.
Please stop. No one is using femtoseconds for uptime.
Something more reasonable is that the nav system (presumably GPS) didn't like having the date change after aquisition. You'd think that'd be a fairly normal thing to have happen, but after the horrible crap I've seen happen with Rockwell Collins' receivers (they SUCK), it wouldn't be too surprising.
To expand on the Rockwell Collins (they SUCK) theme, we eventually got them to admit to us how to retrieve their diagnostic info, including a register that counting up floating point exceptions (yay, divide by zero!). It had well and truly saturated. On a test flight of an, in part, GPS-guided missile, it once croaked right at launch. Since we never understood that we were moving, we never turned on the autopilot. However, rocket motors don't have much in the way of an off switch, so away we went without autopilot. Boink!
So there are plenty of ways for nav systems to suck (especially if they are made by Rockwell Collins (they SUCK)) without needing something completely stupid like measuring data in femtoseconds.
The operating frequency is 94GHz vs ~2.4GHz for a microwave oven: this is a 3mm wavelength (lambda*f = c). So you need something with a gap of no more than ~1.5mm. That's a pretty fine mesh.
I bet it would bounce off a sheet of aluminum (aluminium) pretty good, though. However, and I'm not real clear on my diffraction physics, I think it could "turn the corner" on the edges pretty quick, so there wouldn't be much of a shadow, i.e. you can bounce some back, but you can't easily hide behind a flat sheet.
I bet a portable shitter (if made out of aluminum and not fiberglass), would be a pretty good defense. However, you can't have an opening to see or shoot from... hrm, maybe a rubber gasket sprayed with a metallic paint or something? Transparent aluminum would be choice for a window.
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And how to they know that? I don't know ACM, in fact only a few people do anymore (it's ancient), but I worked on a bunch of other things, and whether a real warhead was in place was not communicated to the launcher. The change for us was to put a telemeter and attached radio inside for test flights (replacing the warhead), and that's it. Oh, well, the ESAD (Electronic Safe and Arm Device: the thing that fires the warhead) would be inert, too.
Perhaps nuclear weapons are different. Myself, I would think that treating all the warheads as nuclear would be excellent practice and in general a good idea. If you *know* different, cite a source.
(a) Deposit $20k in my bank, then try to blackmail me? Report to DSS: you think banks don't have any records?
(b) Photoshop in some bimbos? How exactly is that going to help: are they sneaking into my house to leave them for my wife? Who cares if they present them to me, except as an art critique. You think it's impossible to explain strangers offering compromising pictures to your wife?
(c) Do you think it's that common for people to get into others computers at work? Where I formerly worked, it was armed guards and turnstiles with badge readers. Unfamiliar faces better have a badge and an escort. So lets say it was the home PC. Then what? If they simply threaten me with this, then go to DSS. If they first put the pictures there, then threaten me: unplug computer and go to DSS. Going to the authorities without threatening me first will almost certainly be excruciatingly destructive to a career/life, but doesn't get them closer to their info.
Using a stick against someone isn't easy: it's much easier to use a carrot against their weaknesses. Therefore if you minimize weaknesses by hiring people who have minimal "adverse information" (this is the DSS term), then you are safer.
I am a *very* private person in many ways, and yet I was willing to fill out the EPSQ (Electronic Personnel Survey Questionnaire, I believe) and put up with the investigation for my clearances. I wouldn't call DSS a font of sense or ability, but in general they took their responsibilities seriously and our security personnel were very good about personal issues, which they could grasp (computer security was a whole 'nother deal).
So, no, I don't think your assertion:
is true. I haven't looked to see if the desire to be safer in this instance is merited (NASA? Strikes me as likely to be unnecessary), but the "checks really work" thing has generally proven to be true, given the number of people who have clearances and the reported losses.
Or maybe we suck at catching the people who leak info and cheat. I dunno.
No. They. Aren't. Try doing some research.
Redhat user? The new Firewire stack was marked experimental, but at least the Redhat folks decided that the benefits of the (much) better security model were worth it. Actually, I think Debian has gone to it now, too (?). Basically, it was *known* that there would be regressions, and the new stack was inserted to give a wider group of people a chance to try it, which suddenly led to various distros jumping all over it.
The new stack is 1/3rd the size of the old and discards a lot of garbage. There're really only 2 guys doing active kernel development (Kristian (new stack author) and Stefan Richter (who graciously took over maintenance of the old stack but largely works with just the sbp2 stuff)). Occasionally you might see something out of Dan Dennedy (libraw1394 and some other libraries) or someone, but really there's not a lot going on there. I say this as someone who uses just about *all* the features the old stack has to offer and who had to mod the driver to do what I wanted.
Yes, very definitely let's. Maggie Q is yummy.
And a hell of a presidential candidate, to boot. I think you mean "McClain" or "McClane" summat like that.
Even better: hot chicks with scars! Mmmmmmm...
Just moved from Tucson, AZ back into Tempe, AZ. I didn't check before I moved, and as I'm 16,000ft (~4900m) from the wiring doodad, the offered speed was 768kbps down, 128kbps up (yes, bits), and the provider noted that they wouldn't be able to support VoIP or whathaveyou. Which wasn't too saddening to me, since in Tucson I was paying $104/month for 1.5Mbps down/ 384kbps up w/ 5 static IPs and VoIP w/ unlimited calling.
.875MBps for $50. I think I could get to 1.5MBps for another $10/month, but I am curious as to what fraction of this 7Mbps I can obtain first, and to how that feels after 1.5Mbps for seven years.
So now I'm going to cable for Internet access + POTS phone. I actually kinda wanted a POTS line because the VoIP service was pretty crap: unreliable dialtone, weird echoes on the line, and despite the fact that I configured things (per the instructions) to prioritize phone calls, downloads (like 'apt-get upgrade') would cause voice calls to cut out. This was Speakeasy. My new Internet provider is Cox Communications (a cable company) who provides 7Mbps down / 512kbps up for ~$30.00/month (I haven't checked the yen recently, but 3600Y @ 120Y/$). Then another ~$20.00/month for local phone + possibility of $0.05/minute toll calls from Qwest.
Thusly, I am looking at
Probably pretty damn awesome at 45,000 feet: Stinger don't go that high. And otherwise you're probably on the receiving end of a Hellfire and trying to figure out which pieces of your buddy go together, and thus otherwise preoccupied.
I am going to make the assumption of Mach 6 == 660mph. See:
. shtml
http://aerospaceweb.org/question/atmosphere/q0112
6 * 660mph -> 6373 kilometers an hour.
I dunno SA-12 radar range. From:
www.tscm.com/rdr-hori.pdf
and assuming an aircraft @ 100k feet, it should be visible from *way* beyond missile range (643km: we agree-ish). I'm going to say that's about 1/10th the speed of the plane, e.g. you have 6 minutes from the time you see it until it's overhead. Do you want to tail chase the plane? If not, make that firing decision quickly. @ 2.4k/s, your 200km missile has 83 seconds to make the intercept. But 200km is probably "fall out of the sky, no kinetic energy to make a maneuver" kinda range. Let's say you have 60 seconds. I wonder, though.
Takes 12.5 seconds from speed 0 when accelerating at a constant 40g (probably that's high: none of *my* missiles have motors that good for that long (boost is usually 5-6 seconds)) to reach 30,480m (100k feet). Oh dang, I see Wikipedia says 100g of accel. Well, that won't be for long with a 2,000kg missile w/ rocket motor efficiencies. I can't seem to get the math right for motor propellant specific impulses and whatnot, but you gotta be burning significant mass per second to hold that crazy speed (though I suppose it gets easier as mass goes down).
Lessee. Assume 100g == 1km/s^2. So top velocity in 2.5 seconds. Cover 3065m. You have 27,416m to go. Takes 11seconds at 2.5km/s. So changes to 13.5 seconds from 12.5 seconds. Not too different.
To me, it looks pretty dicey. I guess probably not awful if you have orders to shoot down everything, but what if the plane just goes into an altitude zoom when the missile lifts? 1770 m/s horizontal at 30km up vs the missile coming straight up? Who loses control effectiveness first (cannot maneuver)?
I think the plane wins, in general. I know I am the hand-waving winner.
Try running Supreme Commander under Windows 2000. Oops.
And so on. What, you use Windows for something *other* than games? Weirdo.
Hey Charlie. I guess you're used to the reading comprehension of Slashdotters by now, but it's sort of depressing, no?
I'll leave out the interstellar stuff since I, sadly, don't think I'll get to be a part of it. On the intrastellar front, though, I think there's reason for hope. My thinking goes like this:
1. Putting stuff up in rockets is expensive.
2. Not everything is fragile and requires rockets.
3. Railguns are cool.
I think we could deliver some robotic stuff to the Moon (or Mars) with a gun, and then, probably over the course of years (sigh), use that equipment to build a habitat. I'm not going to check, but presumably we could put together a mean concrete or two from materials on the Lunar surface. I hope that heat could substitute for water (why use a cement binder when we can just go molten and build some kind of bubble), elsewise we have more fun stuff to send up via the gun.
I believe that there are various "launch loops" that can substitute for guns if we must, but in general I think we've sorted our Bulk Delivery problems. I work with guys who are building mechanical systems to withstand 15,000g of launch shock, so that's a reasonably well-understood problem at this point. Make the gun/loop longer if that becomes a concern.
So: robots to moon: CHECK.
Robots build life support.
Then: people to Moon.
And actually, here's when I have the problem. I think that when people currently think "Permanently Manned Base" they mean "scientists come and go, but there's always someone there". (a) Boring (b) Tells us what?
I wanted to say that it's not viable, but I think it is. We put people in an orbiting dumpster for months at a time, and its only a few days longer to the moon. We could continue like this and learn tons, I'm sure, but for me the real excitement doesn't start until there's a baby born ("conceived" would probably be lots of fun, too) off planet (and just thinking, what would low-g birth be like: "baby richochet"? Naked space babies free spinning, anchored only by umbilical?).
Then: little spacesuits. Weird Lunar baby buggies. Used diaper (nappies, you Pom!) shots into the sun. Earth history vs Lunar history. "What the hell trees are" in science class. Well, there will likely be parks: how well do trees behave in 1/6th of a g? This weird shit called "rain". Or rainbows.
Now we're cooking with gas! We'll have a whole culture of people who aren't safety-obsessed pussies (I hope) or under the tyrannical control of an Earth or Lunar Authority (Heinlein. You knew it was coming). They can convert substantial portions of their giant rock to fuel, plus hey 1/6th of a g. Fall downstairs toward the Earth to pick up even more energy and away you go. Nuclear pulse to get speed: raw and horrific radiation spat into space to fall like dewy drops of love on the Who-gives-a-shit-its-baked surface of the Moon.
Use crazy space porn to fund the missions! Hot lesbian bitches in space just for you! etc etc.
Okay, going too long now, but I just hope I live to see a few frontier societies come into effect. Societies built around trusting your gear and the people near you, and a big Fuck You to Earth who do and can do nothing for or with or to you. A little autonomy. A little independence. A People shedding their Sheepskins and Forgetting "Baaaaa!".
Someday.
Color me intrigued. I think the United States could smack the shit out of Sweden in perhaps 24 hours assuming that a larger NATO/Russian/Chinese force didn't loom. I live in the U.S. so I will now resorting to calling the U.S. "we" and those hot, hot Swedish Bikini Warriors "they/them".
Why we'd win:
1) We know where all their hidden runways are: we run the satellites and Global Hawk. Fly that Saab out of that hole *BANG*
2) They get *no* GPS. Magellan has 1 bird aloft so far as I know, and no weapons that can use it.
3) We make all their weapons.
4) Presumably we're striking first, so we get the element of surprise. If you want to say that a carrier group cannot move without the element of surprise, I think your imagination is broke. Who is going to tell them where it is? Also, we still have Ohio and Los Angeles class subs and they can carry Tomahawks: I think 2 Ohios are being refitted to carry 154 Tomahawks apiece. See Wikipedia.
5) What Swedish Navy?
6) Do you think the Swedes can penetrate the shell of air defense over a modern U.S. carrier group? How? 1st there's F-18s. Then there's cruisers with Aegis and Standard Missile. Closer in we go to RAM and Phalanx and lots of AAA.
7) Do you think that they train for this fight?
8) Do you think that their anti-ship missiles are things we (a) don't make (b) haven't taken apart and examined in great detail? One of the few heartening things from the Falklands is how it seems to have motivated the U.S. to take ship protection very, very seriously.
All the European nations are similar: I believe that none could withstand more than a few hours of full-on attack, much like Iraq. They spend 1.5% of their GDP on defense because they know the Americans will do all the heavy lifting. They make very little defense gear other than tanks or occasionally an aircraft. We possess cruise missiles that have ranges far greater than any country's size (save Australia), so there's no safe spot You know we have penetrators, and I'm guessing there're guys working on the next-gen after the retarded "let's do nukes" discussions in Afghanistan.
Invading would be another thing (and think) entirely. It would probably just be safer to reduce all their assets, military or otherwise, to rubble from afar and wait for them to starve and surrender.
Of course, I can't think of anything that would persuade us to attack. It was just the way in which the challenge was posed that provoked much thought and roiled blood (Yar, whoop them Yurpeens but good!).
Canada'd be both tougher and easier due to the land invasion type o' thing. No way to spring stuff on them, but seriously, North Jersey has more than sufficient guns to bring Canada to its knees. "This season on the Sopranos, can Tony and Carmella subjugate Toronto, or will problems with the scattered French separatists coalesce into something serious?" It's not war, it's HBO!
I work with a bunch of former B-2 folks, and they've *never* mentioned this. I'm guessing it would have come up.
Look for POWER 6: 4.7GHZ.
Look for bumps in Cell or Cell2: Cell2 expected @ > 4GHz.
Note that these will go into machines where more expensive heat dissipation devices can be used, i.e. any of IBM's machine or RoadRunner.
Because somehow she hasn't been able to get your sister's number from the CIA/NSA/DIA as yet.
No, totally. Condi is straight.
What are you talking about? You're going back to 1973 for Pinochet in Chile. He's dead, for Christ's sake. Chile has had a deomocratic government for ~18 years.
Central American countries? Who? I don't think anyone would believe that the Contra affair was a swell idea, but there's no "dictatorship" there. Guatemala? The coup there was in 1954: Carter cut off military aid in 1979.
Pakistan? Musharaff is an asshat, but would you have us do? Depose him? There's not much choice but to deal with him. And holy Jesus, can you imagine the cries of "interference" if we did depose him? Damned if you do, damned if you don't. We've put pressure on him, and I think he is finding out that being a dictatorial asshat can be hard work: his attempt to remove the Supreme Court Justice will hopefully moderate his stupidity.
Let's talk about Russia, then. Chechnya? Kazakhstan? Ukraine? Georgia? Cyberwarfare over a fucking war memorial? Assassinations on foreign soil. Destroying Yukos through "taxes". Putting potential political opponents in jail (Khodorkovsky, if not more). Assassinating journalists critical of the administration. Seeking extradition of others (Berezovsky) for completely bullshit reasons?
Oh, yeah, totally we should have stopped that. Everyone loves us when we interfere. Hey, is it the United States or France that wants to (or could) keep Turkey out of the EU (god forbid all those poor Muslims get freedom of movement)?
Yes, you're absolutely right. No one except the United States has protections on agriculture. Not the Europeans, not the Japanese, no one except the United States. We must prostrate ourselves before the will of all international fuckwits.
Instead we should have let Putin install his toady. God forbid we support the Ukrainian people's choice. It's a little known fact that every single person that camped in the city's square was a CIA employee: wow, huh?! I guess that Putin miscalculated the dose on the dioxin poisoning there, huh? "Geopolitical advantage"? Give me a break.
You smoke too much crack. We "dismantled" Yugoslavia? What, we went back in time and incited the hundreds of years of historical hatreds. We invaded them and kept them under an iron curtain until the friction of authoritarian rule from above caused them to explode?
Bush is a fucking retard. I don't think anyone is denying this.
Totally. We assigned McDonalds and Nike to go in there and set that up. We R teh Awesomez!
Maybe some evidence with those accusations, hrm? Our approach to Chavez is, "Oh god, what a nutcase". Do you know *anything* about
I drive a 2001 Nissan Maxima: 18.5 gallon tank. I fill the tank once a week: usually in the area of 16-17 gallons. @ $3/gal: ~$50. Thats $200/month or $2400/year. That's about 3% of my gross income (~$80k).
In case you're wondering, I'm averaging ~24.3mpg and drive 340-420 miles per week, or 18k+ miles/year.
The preferred option should have been a full width half-visor, similar to a hockey visor. See-through (probably slightly tinted), non shiny, not-in-the-way, but if you want data displayed on it, you can use it as a projection surface. Build the projection hardware into the helmet. You don't need much, because really, you don't need full-colour 30FPS. You are describing MANTIS. Dunno how that's going (or is even still in development). And speaking of information... this is the one part that worries me. You're taking these soldiers, who have to keep their location 100% secret or they die, and sticking a transmitter on them. It doesn't matter if it's encrypted, or if it goes up to a satellite or connects to AOL and uses a Buddy List to update everyone on where you are... it's still putting out power, and it's not gonna take long before someone goes "Hey, I don't need to know what is being sent out, I just have to get a scanner to see if there's any signals being radiated, and from where". Broadcasting your location probably isn't the best idea, it's just a matter of time until it gets you killed. You are missing a key ingredient here: the comms are almost certainly spread spectrum. Transmissions will look like noise.
I have never worked on Land Warrior myself, and it looks like there are severe problems that could well make using it a mistake currently. But consider things from the developers' point of view: how are they going to learn what works without giving something to people? It sounds like some general somewhere asked for the kitchen sink, but hopefully soldiers will bitch and get that fixed, and the devices will surely only get lighter and faster and better. Of course there will always be some lag behind the commercial best, but then I'd be curious how long a Handspring or Blackberry or whatever would last in combat. Or at -40F, or in 100% humidity. Or at 18,000 ft.
Perhaps the next generation is 8lbs and the software ceases to suck (as much). Is that enough? 4lbs? You know that's coming until the limit is the battery and the computing stuff is some little wafer of a module (I'm guessing the RF and associated power stuff is the heavier piece even now). Unless 2nd system effect creeps in.
Yeah, I work at a military contractor. In general, we are massively bloated and fucking disgusting. But a fair chunk of that's what the government forces us to be. You have no idea about the paperwork, but it's what *you* required. The rest of it is because the barriers to entry are so high, there's no competition to force people to do better. And sometimes government oversight justs sucks and you have no idea how shit could get so bad (look at Lockheed-Martin and the Coast Guard's Deep Water program, recently in the news. Wow.)
Blah, now I'm depressed.
Still, I'd like to see someone do it. We really need some Hondas with modifications other than huge, farty exhausts.
Just saying.
Sentence fragment.
It spins end over end every 4 hours like a football that has been kicked...
...The answer is that it is as big as Pluto -- along its longest dimension.
To me that's just staggering. According to Google, Pluto's diameter is 2274km, so the circumference of a circle described by this thing spinning would be ~7144km. So to cover this in 4 hours, the radial velocity is 1786km/hour (1110mph)! Yeah, I can see why it's streched out.Wow!
Perhaps it's per listener/connection. Also, so far as I know, Soma has no advertising. Revised math:
365 * 24 * 60 = 525,600 minutes a year
4 minutes a song -> 131,400 songs/year
131,400 * $0.02 = $2,628 listener/year
Say 1k listeners -> $2.628 million a year
Please stop. No one is using femtoseconds for uptime.
Something more reasonable is that the nav system (presumably GPS) didn't like having the date change after aquisition. You'd think that'd be a fairly normal thing to have happen, but after the horrible crap I've seen happen with Rockwell Collins' receivers (they SUCK), it wouldn't be too surprising.
To expand on the Rockwell Collins (they SUCK) theme, we eventually got them to admit to us how to retrieve their diagnostic info, including a register that counting up floating point exceptions (yay, divide by zero!). It had well and truly saturated. On a test flight of an, in part, GPS-guided missile, it once croaked right at launch. Since we never understood that we were moving, we never turned on the autopilot. However, rocket motors don't have much in the way of an off switch, so away we went without autopilot. Boink!
So there are plenty of ways for nav systems to suck (especially if they are made by Rockwell Collins (they SUCK)) without needing something completely stupid like measuring data in femtoseconds.
Hold up, I got a few more of these:
Rockwell Collins (they SUCK)
Rockwell Collins (they SUCK)
Rockwell Collins (they SUCK)
That is all.
Their resolution's not nearly high enough to make that a priority.
Yeah. I said it.
The operating frequency is 94GHz vs ~2.4GHz for a microwave oven: this is a 3mm wavelength (lambda*f = c). So you need something with a gap of no more than ~1.5mm. That's a pretty fine mesh.
I bet it would bounce off a sheet of aluminum (aluminium) pretty good, though. However, and I'm not real clear on my diffraction physics, I think it could "turn the corner" on the edges pretty quick, so there wouldn't be much of a shadow, i.e. you can bounce some back, but you can't easily hide behind a flat sheet.
I bet a portable shitter (if made out of aluminum and not fiberglass), would be a pretty good defense. However, you can't have an opening to see or shoot from... hrm, maybe a rubber gasket sprayed with a metallic paint or something? Transparent aluminum would be choice for a window.