In fact we don't. No bulk sample has even come close to the required strength. Almost no bulk sample has even beaten current materials. Theoretical strength and strength of nanometer size CNT for example does not imply high bulk strength for a number of different reasons. All materials in bulk are much weaker than what is implied by intermolecular forces for example. There has even been a paper on CNT and that bulk strength may not get the required strength for a space elevator because of dislocations and other defects which arise spontaneously due to thermodynamic reasons.
Read what i said again. Also read my other posts. What i was answering was that we will never get such a material without a space elevator as motivation. This is clearly false. Such a material is so insanely fantastic that we are trying to make such a material in bulk right now, and its not for elevators. I have also said its not a given it can be done either, bulk material strength is always just a shadow of theoretical strength. But then again just because we can't make it now does not mean we won't be able to some time in the future.
We do not in fact have the materials. No matter how much money you spend you cannot get even a foot of +6GPa strength cable. Not only have we not ever made such a material, but we don't know how yet either. It is a R&D project. It is also not a given that it is even possible.
And we'll continue not having them until someone pays to build a space elevator and does the needed research. By 2050 it's not impossible to think materials will be around to make this feasible.
Not true. The utility of a 63GPa material with the density in the 3000-2000kg/m3 department is so ridiculously awesome that its is indistinguishable from magic compared to today's materials. Think *easy* to build SSTO RV rockets for starters. Even if expensive its just plain awesome. You don't need space elevators for motivation.
However it is not a given such a material is even possible. Bulk material strength is always far less that perfect theoretical strength. There has already been a paper suggesting that SWCN may not be up to the task due to "dislocations".
Also it may not be economical even if you have the material. The same material makes alternatives much cheaper too, such as plain old boring rockets. Or more exotic ideas such as launch loops or tethers.
Finally there is the problem with transit time. If you spend too long in the radiation belts, this is probably the last thing you would do..... A week sounds too slow.
If by follow the rules, you mean field your entry after the deadline specified by the rules... then yes they followed the rules... oh wait, no they didn't. If you are going to give one team extra time, you better give all the teams extra time, or i am going to call judge shenanigans.
There is also Armadillo aerospace headed by JC of Doom fame. The had a smaller design that did this for an X prize. Due to some judge shenanigans they came only 2nd however.
I use gmail now for everything. Sure it is not "secure" in the general sense and google can sell information. But over all i am one person in millions on gmail where i am one person out of 100s in my department. And despite the lack of deep security that SSL provides, I am pretty confidant the university is not eaves dropping on gmail traffic.
How many cases was there? Oh wait we don't know because a lot of people who get the flu don't go to the doctor and don't get tested. Hell in NZ during the swine flu "epidemic" *anyone* reporting flu symptoms, was counted as a swine flu case... Why? Because we don't need to test, its all swine flu this year. Same problem with bird flu, if you only get data on the ones that end up seriously ill or dead, you don't get an accurate picture at all.
Communication is an essential part of "understand" for any practical purpose. Understand a problem, and knowing the solution, but not being able to communicate that solution with your peers makes understanding, and even knowing the solution pointless.
I don't personally think the grey goo apocalypse has real merit. You need to ignore some fundamental physics and the fact that life is already grey goo.
Let e.coli replicate at its max rate, and its the mass of planet earth in something like a week. Of course this does not happen for a number of fundamental physical reasons.
Excrement! The source materiel must be precisely in the right proportions so that subsequent generations don't end up trying to eat it's parents crap. More importantly crap will have even worse material ratios so it can't use it if it the "same thing".
Energy. It will need an energy source, it will produce heat. Its got to come from somewhere, the heat has to go somewhere. It will be rate limited at best, and energy starved often.
Surface area vrs Volume. Heat dissipation and food adsorption is determined by the surface area rather than volume, already this stops limitless exponential growth
Finite rates. Things are limited by transport and other process, it won't proceed really fast. In fact already modern life is pretty close to a lot of the limits in ideal growth media.
Seriously? will they get in "trouble" or will heads really roll? I get the impression that you have to be pretty bad fairly repeatedly before the bar does anything.
Gun devices are not as easy as they look, and more importantly are woefully ineffective, meaning you need on the order of 10x more bomb grade material. They are more sensitive to contaminants as well.
Despite what you read in books getting hold of bomb grade material is very very hard. First of all even a disenfranchised Russian is not stupid or completely amoral for example. Next is that it is not easy to hide for a number of reasons. Finally you have to be careful how you move it around or it will go "delayed neutron" critical. Easy to spot and stop.
In fact getting hold of bomb grade material is so hard that it would be easier to devlop a implosion type device and save on smuggling all that extra materiel. Implosion devices where hard in the 50s, its not difficult these days and you could devlop it without bomb grade material.
The hard part remains getting hold of the bomb grade Pu or U.
Impact factor is such a awful and quite unscientific metric. I hate it. However after 2 postdocs i need to move on, and first screening of applicants is often done with impact factor of your papers. Even worse some journals can jump large amounts year to year.
As a reviewer i have often suggested citations that IMO where missing. In fact some scientist deliberately leave out citations that may have inconvenient viewpoints/data/results, I have such a paper that once side of the debate just pretends does not exist. Out of all the times i have reviewed and suggested citations, i have only suggested one of my papers once. Also i typically don't require anonymous review, ie i give my name when permitted.
I don't think it matters. Java is not certified for medical applications either. Of course most C compilers aren't either. But at least some are. I don't there is a single certified java implementation.
Case in point i am aware of a company that is trying to use smart phones to help diabetics. However the smart phone is nothing more than a glorified display since they are not permitted to be used directly on a critical piece of medical equipment. There is a certified piece of hardware that does the critical lifting.
No its not. It is because a flying nuclear reactor is politically untenable as a small portable ones. The Russians did have small portable reactors. Just because we don't does not mean we can't. There are some very compact high power designs proposed for space too.
However it is true that shielding requirements are a little less in the military.
His 1MW demo was hilarious. There was a fault so it only produced about "500kW" or something... There was a 500kW generator at the front that was only used to "bootstrap" the system.... and was never turned off. Yea right. A fool and his money. I just gota work out how to meet these fools with all this money.
Even ITER left out any generating equipment because even at only about 500MW, the cost of turbines generators etc would put the price up appreciably.
When you work out the price of the electricity generated however, it doesn't sound so bad. 500MW will generate about $600k of electricity per day. Assuming of course good up times.
This is fraud all over. Its not even his first time.
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In fact we don't. No bulk sample has even come close to the required strength. Almost no bulk sample has even beaten current materials. Theoretical strength and strength of nanometer size CNT for example does not imply high bulk strength for a number of different reasons. All materials in bulk are much weaker than what is implied by intermolecular forces for example. There has even been a paper on CNT and that bulk strength may not get the required strength for a space elevator because of dislocations and other defects which arise spontaneously due to thermodynamic reasons.
Read what i said again. Also read my other posts. What i was answering was that we will never get such a material without a space elevator as motivation. This is clearly false. Such a material is so insanely fantastic that we are trying to make such a material in bulk right now, and its not for elevators. I have also said its not a given it can be done either, bulk material strength is always just a shadow of theoretical strength. But then again just because we can't make it now does not mean we won't be able to some time in the future.
Nothing wrong with being an optimist. But the assumption that it will just happen is *not* a given. See flying cars ;) well maybe one day.
Otherwise best optimist/pessimist debate so far.
We do not in fact have the materials. No matter how much money you spend you cannot get even a foot of +6GPa strength cable. Not only have we not ever made such a material, but we don't know how yet either. It is a R&D project. It is also not a given that it is even possible.
And we'll continue not having them until someone pays to build a space elevator and does the needed research. By 2050 it's not impossible to think materials will be around to make this feasible.
Not true. The utility of a 63GPa material with the density in the 3000-2000kg/m3 department is so ridiculously awesome that its is indistinguishable from magic compared to today's materials. Think *easy* to build SSTO RV rockets for starters. Even if expensive its just plain awesome. You don't need space elevators for motivation.
However it is not a given such a material is even possible. Bulk material strength is always far less that perfect theoretical strength. There has already been a paper suggesting that SWCN may not be up to the task due to "dislocations".
Also it may not be economical even if you have the material. The same material makes alternatives much cheaper too, such as plain old boring rockets. Or more exotic ideas such as launch loops or tethers.
Finally there is the problem with transit time. If you spend too long in the radiation belts, this is probably the last thing you would do..... A week sounds too slow.
If by follow the rules, you mean field your entry after the deadline specified by the rules... then yes they followed the rules... oh wait, no they didn't. If you are going to give one team extra time, you better give all the teams extra time, or i am going to call judge shenanigans.
Otherwise interesting.
There is also Armadillo aerospace headed by JC of Doom fame. The had a smaller design that did this for an X prize. Due to some judge shenanigans they came only 2nd however.
I use gmail now for everything. Sure it is not "secure" in the general sense and google can sell information. But over all i am one person in millions on gmail where i am one person out of 100s in my department. And despite the lack of deep security that SSL provides, I am pretty confidant the university is not eaves dropping on gmail traffic.
My android has no UI lag and is instantly responsive as far as I can tell.
How many cases was there? Oh wait we don't know because a lot of people who get the flu don't go to the doctor and don't get tested. Hell in NZ during the swine flu "epidemic" *anyone* reporting flu symptoms, was counted as a swine flu case... Why? Because we don't need to test, its all swine flu this year. Same problem with bird flu, if you only get data on the ones that end up seriously ill or dead, you don't get an accurate picture at all.
Communication is an essential part of "understand" for any practical purpose. Understand a problem, and knowing the solution, but not being able to communicate that solution with your peers makes understanding, and even knowing the solution pointless.
Let e.coli replicate at its max rate, and its the mass of planet earth in something like a week. Of course this does not happen for a number of fundamental physical reasons.
Also see my sig.
Seriously? will they get in "trouble" or will heads really roll? I get the impression that you have to be pretty bad fairly repeatedly before the bar does anything.
Gun devices are not as easy as they look, and more importantly are woefully ineffective, meaning you need on the order of 10x more bomb grade material. They are more sensitive to contaminants as well.
Despite what you read in books getting hold of bomb grade material is very very hard. First of all even a disenfranchised Russian is not stupid or completely amoral for example. Next is that it is not easy to hide for a number of reasons. Finally you have to be careful how you move it around or it will go "delayed neutron" critical. Easy to spot and stop.
In fact getting hold of bomb grade material is so hard that it would be easier to devlop a implosion type device and save on smuggling all that extra materiel. Implosion devices where hard in the 50s, its not difficult these days and you could devlop it without bomb grade material.
The hard part remains getting hold of the bomb grade Pu or U.
Impact factor is such a awful and quite unscientific metric. I hate it. However after 2 postdocs i need to move on, and first screening of applicants is often done with impact factor of your papers. Even worse some journals can jump large amounts year to year.
As a reviewer i have often suggested citations that IMO where missing. In fact some scientist deliberately leave out citations that may have inconvenient viewpoints/data/results, I have such a paper that once side of the debate just pretends does not exist. Out of all the times i have reviewed and suggested citations, i have only suggested one of my papers once. Also i typically don't require anonymous review, ie i give my name when permitted.
It is easier to send it into interstellar space. Which is *not* easy.
If you are really paranoid, you can add a optical isolator to ensure data can go just one way.
Power cables are much larger than 8mm. Power cables at 50Hz are designed with the skin effect in mind.
Skin effect at 50Hz in Copper is the order of a few cm. More than enough to matter when moving megawatts of power.
I don't think it matters. Java is not certified for medical applications either. Of course most C compilers aren't either. But at least some are. I don't there is a single certified java implementation.
Case in point i am aware of a company that is trying to use smart phones to help diabetics. However the smart phone is nothing more than a glorified display since they are not permitted to be used directly on a critical piece of medical equipment. There is a certified piece of hardware that does the critical lifting.
No its not. It is because a flying nuclear reactor is politically untenable as a small portable ones. The Russians did have small portable reactors. Just because we don't does not mean we can't. There are some very compact high power designs proposed for space too.
However it is true that shielding requirements are a little less in the military.
Further more, it was set up by... you guess it, Rossi!
His 1MW demo was hilarious. There was a fault so it only produced about "500kW" or something... There was a 500kW generator at the front that was only used to "bootstrap" the system.... and was never turned off. Yea right. A fool and his money. I just gota work out how to meet these fools with all this money.
Even ITER left out any generating equipment because even at only about 500MW, the cost of turbines generators etc would put the price up appreciably.
When you work out the price of the electricity generated however, it doesn't sound so bad. 500MW will generate about $600k of electricity per day. Assuming of course good up times.
This is fraud all over. Its not even his first time.
You know he has already been to jail for fraud before... in Italy of all places.