And that's precisely why Zubrin and many others think NASA isn't the future of (successful) space exploration. I, on the other hand, still hold out hope that the bureacracy can be cut down and engineers will once again start returning to NASA. We all need to realize that mistakes happen and that the best thing we can do about it is to learn from them, rather than refusing to put ourselves in a position of risk ever again. As someone who works on the ground floor, I hope there is something you can do about it (though I'm afraid that there may be very little). And of course there is no doubt that they need a lot more money.
. (or tax-free lifetime for any corp or individual participating in a Mars shot;-)
Oh God I hope they don't actually do that. If they were to open space up to corporations and encourage them to be profitable (and presumably there is a lot of money waiting up there), then the money those companies would make from it out there would look really good sitting on the bottom line of the nation's tax budget. The taxes we'd get from privatizing space would probably be enough to finally adequately fund our space program. How's that for irony?
I think the way Zubrin managed to fit the budget under $20B was by getting away from NASA (not because of ineptitude or any scientific reason, but rather because bureacracy is expensive), and by buying heavy lifters from Russia, and other shoe-string kinds of things like that. Generally, he made it sound as if NASA would have to spend a lot more money than that, but I would tend to support a NASA mission first, even if it costed 2-5 times as much. There are numerous tangible and intangible benefits to having a government agency doing our space research and exploration as opposed to some company that wants to make money and perhaps keep secrets from us.
But presumably there is some way to clean up NASA and (coupled with a much needed influx of funding) to allow something this forward-looking to succeed.
We'd probably just blow up their ships and their bases while they're out their. Covertly, of course, and we'd blame it on the terrorists, which would be a fabulous excuse for even more unnecessary military funding. Here's to hoping the Chinese at least wait until a different, perhaps more reasonable, administration before they do anything that is potentially interesting or useful, lest we destroy it.
The scientists get back from the first manned trip by getting on the return vehicle that was sent 6 months ahead of them and had spent all the intervening time creating rocket fuel, air, and water from the Mars atmosphere. Chemically, the atmosphere on Mars contains everything necessary to create what would be needed, and Zubrin and his team demonstrated a device which would do the conversions. That's how they get home.
Zubrin recommended for funding that NASA (or the government in general) put up a $20 billion reward for the first company/person to do it, thus avoiding bureacratic waste and protecting themselves from cost overruns. I don't know if I like that idea, but it would probably work.
I think the next sobig will be.g, because.f already happened. At least, that's how the naming scheme has gone so far, but I could be wrong. Who knows, maybe they'll try to throw us off by using the same name as last time...
Re:Now I know we love apple and hate the RIAA, but
on
Beatles Bite Apple
·
· Score: 1
fallback plan of buying Apple Records wholesale if necessary
Yeah, and the way to solve violence is by killing everyone who isn't like you. That's much easier than, say, removing their reasons for resorting to violence. And everybody knows that we should all just grow up and realize that it is more important to do the easy thing, rather than the right thing.
I don't think it's the scientist who has to grow up. It's the president. This is the real world, where actions have real consequences, and real people are dying. And it's not cheap.
I actually just terminated my phone service because I got tired of paying more in taxes than I was for the actual service. You want to talk to me? Fine. Email me. IM me. Meet me in my private IRC channel. Roger Wilco me.
Actually they are at the point where they see clearly that there is something there, and the something is unexplainably generated heat. Since it is a chemical reaction, they expected to be able to explain the heat by a chemical process, but there was way too much heat generated for any known chemical process to explain it. The level of heat placed the reaction in the realm of nuclear processes, though there was (and is) no known way to initiate a nuclear reaction through chemical methods.
They see what they see, and they have plenty of evidence for it. What they don't know is exactly what it is. Either it is a chemical reaction that produces heat in levels that are factors of ten higher than should be possible for chemical reactions, or it is a nuclear reaction started in a way that shouldn't be possible for nuclear reactions. Either way, the phenomenon is worth investigating, even if everybody gets up in arms just when they hear the name.
Perhaps people should get over the fact that they (perhaps foolishly) decided to call it "Cold Fusion" and look at the phenomenon itself.
No offense, but are you being stupid just for fun? Say what you will about Microsoft's crappy products, but their attorneys are absolutely unsurpassed. These guys don't just go about "finding ways to screw things up." They go about finding ways to convince judges and juries that the alleged infractions are merely illusions and that punishment would somehow stifle competition and innovation. The only thing Microsoft does well is litigate.
Actually, the "marketing kids" who wrote that line (even though they were, in all likelihood, not marketing types if they wrote something like that) were right: those are all acronyms.
I'll make it easier for you and for anyone else who might not know the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym. An abbreviation is a truncation, whereas an acronym is derived from the initial letters of several consecutive words. Thus, BSD, IPv6, API, and so forth, are all acronyms.
Does anyone else recognize Slashdotters by their sigs more often than their user names?
I know I do. An idea (which can be conveyed in a sig) is often much more memorable than a "name" (which are so often unintelligible strings of seemingly-random characters).
Bear in mind that a lot of the Top 500 supercomputers are based on IBM Power series processors, and that the G5 (PPC 970) is a cheaper version of the Power4. It is quite reasonable for them to buy Macs for this cluster, since they are virtually the same as Power 4 processors from IBM for less, why would they want Intels when they could get IBM Power processors for a bargain.
How many companies (let alone non-profit organizations) have resources adequate to maintain it? NASA is underfunded at billions of dollars per year (and they have no obligation to try to turn a profit). Selling it would not be a good idea.
Slashdot Mirror
And that's precisely why Zubrin and many others think NASA isn't the future of (successful) space exploration. I, on the other hand, still hold out hope that the bureacracy can be cut down and engineers will once again start returning to NASA. We all need to realize that mistakes happen and that the best thing we can do about it is to learn from them, rather than refusing to put ourselves in a position of risk ever again. As someone who works on the ground floor, I hope there is something you can do about it (though I'm afraid that there may be very little). And of course there is no doubt that they need a lot more money.
. (or tax-free lifetime for any corp or individual participating in a Mars shot ;-)
Oh God I hope they don't actually do that. If they were to open space up to corporations and encourage them to be profitable (and presumably there is a lot of money waiting up there), then the money those companies would make from it out there would look really good sitting on the bottom line of the nation's tax budget. The taxes we'd get from privatizing space would probably be enough to finally adequately fund our space program. How's that for irony?
I think the way Zubrin managed to fit the budget under $20B was by getting away from NASA (not because of ineptitude or any scientific reason, but rather because bureacracy is expensive), and by buying heavy lifters from Russia, and other shoe-string kinds of things like that. Generally, he made it sound as if NASA would have to spend a lot more money than that, but I would tend to support a NASA mission first, even if it costed 2-5 times as much. There are numerous tangible and intangible benefits to having a government agency doing our space research and exploration as opposed to some company that wants to make money and perhaps keep secrets from us.
But presumably there is some way to clean up NASA and (coupled with a much needed influx of funding) to allow something this forward-looking to succeed.
We'd probably just blow up their ships and their bases while they're out their. Covertly, of course, and we'd blame it on the terrorists, which would be a fabulous excuse for even more unnecessary military funding. Here's to hoping the Chinese at least wait until a different, perhaps more reasonable, administration before they do anything that is potentially interesting or useful, lest we destroy it.
The scientists get back from the first manned trip by getting on the return vehicle that was sent 6 months ahead of them and had spent all the intervening time creating rocket fuel, air, and water from the Mars atmosphere. Chemically, the atmosphere on Mars contains everything necessary to create what would be needed, and Zubrin and his team demonstrated a device which would do the conversions. That's how they get home.
Zubrin recommended for funding that NASA (or the government in general) put up a $20 billion reward for the first company/person to do it, thus avoiding bureacratic waste and protecting themselves from cost overruns. I don't know if I like that idea, but it would probably work.
I think the next sobig will be .g, because .f already happened. At least, that's how the naming scheme has gone so far, but I could be wrong. Who knows, maybe they'll try to throw us off by using the same name as last time...
fallback plan of buying Apple Records wholesale if necessary
I bet they'd have to pay retail...
Yeah, and the way to solve violence is by killing everyone who isn't like you. That's much easier than, say, removing their reasons for resorting to violence. And everybody knows that we should all just grow up and realize that it is more important to do the easy thing, rather than the right thing.
I don't think it's the scientist who has to grow up. It's the president. This is the real world, where actions have real consequences, and real people are dying. And it's not cheap.
I actually just terminated my phone service because I got tired of paying more in taxes than I was for the actual service. You want to talk to me? Fine. Email me. IM me. Meet me in my private IRC channel. Roger Wilco me.
You don't have a girlfriend, do you?
Actually they are at the point where they see clearly that there is something there, and the something is unexplainably generated heat. Since it is a chemical reaction, they expected to be able to explain the heat by a chemical process, but there was way too much heat generated for any known chemical process to explain it. The level of heat placed the reaction in the realm of nuclear processes, though there was (and is) no known way to initiate a nuclear reaction through chemical methods.
They see what they see, and they have plenty of evidence for it. What they don't know is exactly what it is. Either it is a chemical reaction that produces heat in levels that are factors of ten higher than should be possible for chemical reactions, or it is a nuclear reaction started in a way that shouldn't be possible for nuclear reactions. Either way, the phenomenon is worth investigating, even if everybody gets up in arms just when they hear the name.
Perhaps people should get over the fact that they (perhaps foolishly) decided to call it "Cold Fusion" and look at the phenomenon itself.
But he probably wanted to figure it out within a few weeks...
In Soviet Russia, all our base belong to YOU!
(Microsoft legal will find a way to screw it up)
No offense, but are you being stupid just for fun? Say what you will about Microsoft's crappy products, but their attorneys are absolutely unsurpassed. These guys don't just go about "finding ways to screw things up." They go about finding ways to convince judges and juries that the alleged infractions are merely illusions and that punishment would somehow stifle competition and innovation. The only thing Microsoft does well is litigate.
Actually, the "marketing kids" who wrote that line (even though they were, in all likelihood, not marketing types if they wrote something like that) were right: those are all acronyms.
I'll make it easier for you and for anyone else who might not know the difference between an abbreviation and an acronym. An abbreviation is a truncation, whereas an acronym is derived from the initial letters of several consecutive words. Thus, BSD, IPv6, API, and so forth, are all acronyms.
Then you realized it was actually you, and not Apple, that was on hash. And that explains the whole misunderstanding... ;)
Does anyone else recognize Slashdotters by their sigs more often than their user names?
I know I do. An idea (which can be conveyed in a sig) is often much more memorable than a "name" (which are so often unintelligible strings of seemingly-random characters).
Maybe it'll be Windows after Gates dies and his screw-up grandson inherits the whole fortune.
Bear in mind that a lot of the Top 500 supercomputers are based on IBM Power series processors, and that the G5 (PPC 970) is a cheaper version of the Power4. It is quite reasonable for them to buy Macs for this cluster, since they are virtually the same as Power 4 processors from IBM for less, why would they want Intels when they could get IBM Power processors for a bargain.
This technology in a mass transit system? How often does a city bus ever need to parallel park?
I figure the Math for that is not THAT complex.
Yeah... it's not like it's rocket science or anything. *ducks*
How many companies (let alone non-profit organizations) have resources adequate to maintain it? NASA is underfunded at billions of dollars per year (and they have no obligation to try to turn a profit). Selling it would not be a good idea.
And some people are capable of working for more than 5 minutes at a time. But we don't talk about those...
I hate sitting in one place basically doing nothing for more than 5 mins.
I bet your employer just loves you. Maybe you're the one people should take less seriously.
What deck did you get and for how much? I really need that audio in jack. Thanks in advance.
Or higher quality construction? Or new features first (802.11g, Bluetooth, DVD-R, Firewire, USB)? The trolls have really run out of things to say.