Amen. We have this problem in my design class. A lot of the more lazy students cite wikipedia as a source for facts because they dont want to take the time to read (or at least skim) the real source. Its becoming a real problem, and I fear that it wont stop when they get into industry. People need to stop being so lazy and realize that its an encyclopedia, not a quotable source.
Energy is the first thing that would be assisted with a more complete and accurate standard model. This would allow for better predictions of nuclear reactions by understanding the structure of the nucleus. That's where all the excitement takes place, and it's still described by a semi-empirical model. And by tomorrow I meant next generation. Are you so concerned about the problems of today that you're willing to sacrifice even the progress which will make your children's lives better?
When Faraday was asked what his findings about induction could possibly be useful for, he replied "Of what use is a child?". The theoretical physics of today is the engineering of tomorrow. Also, it's not just your money, most of the world is contributing to this project, its just located at the old CERN site because its the biggest synchotron structure built to date. Stop being shortsighted.
"Browser, Email Client, IM Client. I'm sorry, if you want to play music as well you're going to have to upgrade to a better operating system. It's called Windows 98, you may have heard of it."
Ridiculous Microsoft... truly.
How is this different from what EU accuses Microsoft of doing with IE? I'm tired of these double standards, and I'm tired of having crapware forced on my if I want to use one good program.
This sort of technology seems to be the first step towards a tricorder... albeit a primitive one designed to help you be a "better" consumer. Now they just need to add this into a visor (like the ones you can plug into your ipod or whatever), and you'd have a HUD.
Obama needs to make clear what is considered a space weapon. SM-3, ABL, lasers, THAAD, etc. can all be easily modified to acquire and successfully engage satellites because of their physical specifications which are necessary for the roles they are intended to fill. If it's only dedicated ASAT weapons, then that's fine. Weapons in space is bad for America because we dominate space. If it's all weapons that could be potentially used as ASAT, then we're talking a surprising volume of existing military hardware.
You make some good points (1-3), but 4 is not correct depending on your definition of space weapon. If you mean projectiles to physically destroy a satellite, then your analysis is correct. However, a satellite can be rendered inoperable through far more innocuous means. Namely, the use of medium powered laser weapons (we're talking tens or hundreds of watts.. definitely doable) can destroy the optics on a satellite and is testable in a covert manner. China has been taking pot shots at our spy sats with lasers for some time (I would suspect the new ones we put up have countermeasures). Optics are used to look down on Earth, but also to do attitude determination which is necessary for spacecraft pointing. Without pointing, communications becomes nearly impossible. That's the full C4ISTAR range of space operations. The US need not have weapons in space, but we still need to have the capability to respond in the event of an anti-sat attack by an adversary. More importantly, we need the capability to quickly replace lost assets.
In a fire, the best way to evacuate the building is simply to quickload from when you were about to enter the building, and not enter at all. Duh.... Oh, and if anyone gets critically wounded, just run up to them and hit them with your shock paddles. They can instantly heal bullet wounds, shrapnel, burns and broken limbs (at least, that's what it does in battlefield. That's accurate, right?). Just go around reviving ppl and you'll definitely get the gold star that round!
Since you were kind enough to respond in numbered points, I'll reply similarly. 0. Humanity was sustainable up until the industrial revolution. Rome was, oddly enough, sustainable. The population explosion which has resulted from the rapid growth of medicine and other technologies is what has gotten us into this mess. 1. While the space shuttle did not effect its promise to significantly lower launch costs, it was (and in most ways still is) the pinnacle of aerospace technology. The ancillary developments made to make such a spacecraft possible can be seen in use on many of today's existing aircraft and ground vehicles and would not have been developed otherwise. Hypersonic flight will only be possible because of technologies developed for the space shuttle.
2. Full participation in the apollo program was not limited to the few individuals who orbited the moon. Indeed, a program of such a large undertaking created jobs and economic prosperity for tens of thousands of highly trained technical people. Every engineer who contributed to that program participated in something that he could tell his grandchildren about... and indeed his grandchildren's grandchildren will probably hear of it as well. I do not personally want to go to the moon (bad internet connection, you understand), but it is my life's dream to make it reachable for others. For an engineer or technician, this is full participation. 3. While spinoff technology may be more relevant, "apollo" programs here on Earth would require considerably larger budjets to develop technology because of the differences you support. A space program concentrates its funds into building one thing, and the technologies which spin off are only minor parts. Comparably, an environmental program here would have to divert the majority of its funds to implementing its development. This leaves less funds for innovation. In addition, the cost of the apollo program (estimated at 80bn 2005 dollars) would be but a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of many environmental projects envisioned by people today. I would submit that it is more cost effective to concentrate funds in one place to develop technology, and then make your programs to disseminate and apply these technologies on the wide scale. In that way you might consider the space program a prototype factory (indeed it is. Solar cells would not have ever reached the efficiencies they have today if it had not been for the efforts of space agencies to improve efficiencies for use as power supplies for spacecraft). If it weren't for these developments from the space industry, solar power would still have an efficiency of only 6 percent and would still be completely unviable for municipal power generation today. I would submit that this is one of the space program's greatest contributions to the environmental movement, and one of the best pieces of proof that most space enthusiasts (every group has its crack pots, but w/e) care about this planet very deeply. I know space technology has far to go before it is open for everyone, but it is coming. As Stephen Hawking said when touring the engineering set of the enterprise, "We're working on that."
Yeah, um, no. An ICBM is a suborbital munition which needs only attain a delta V sufficient to guarantee a ballistic trajectory to its target. This is an orbital missile which was capable of inserting a spacecraft into LEO. If the nuke is nice and light, you could likely place it on the same rocket with guidance modifications. Simply put, if you have the delta v to put something into LEO, you have the delta v to put it somewhere on Earth.
I realize this was sarcasm, but now I'm curious. Does video gaming lead to breast feeding, and alternatively does breast feeding lead to video gaming? I wonder how much government money you could get to do that BS study.
Fine, but the lessons in extreme efficiency learned from the pursuit of living in space is going to be a big part of putting food on all those extra people's plates (I say extra not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense that humanity is fast approaching or has already surpassed this planet's natural carrying capacity). More importantly, I wasn't talking about the people who aren't here in America (I would submit most people have a TV and most people eat relatively well here). I was talking about the people who will end up paying for the technological advances for all the other people who don't have food. Manned space exploration produces hope and technology which increase productivity and efficiency, which ultimately helps to serve your goal of feeding way more people than this planet can support. Furthermore, the pace of technological advance has not sped up because of the recession of the space program, but because that is the nature of suddenly having computers...which were developed for simulating nukes and the space program.
The sad part about DRM is that people who steal the game get a better experience than people who buy the game. Failures like this are exactly the kind of things that alienate those who pay and lead to more and more pirates. And they wonder why PC gaming is failing:(
Ok, that settles it. I'm moving to Japan. No wonder they're typically good players, they have unrealistically good internets! Seriously though, do they have higher wireless specifications or something too? Cause otherwise you'd only be able to tap the full potential of that kind of internet on the computer connected to the hard line.
One quick note: we're aerospace engineers, not doctors. Yell at them to get on the ball if you want that stuff fixed. One more quick note: if people want to have kids... then something has to kill other people off. Earth cannot support infinite people, maybe there should be a war on overpopulation instead.
The point is not that they can do more science, but that they can do different science. Your assertion that self sustained life off of Earth is so far off that humans will have become something different is fallacious and without merit. We have the science today, we could have the technology tomorrow to make such a feat happen. What it is clear we don't have is the commitment or the force of will to do it, which saddens me. The most common attack against manned spaceflight is that it is not economically pragmatic to do so. I beg to disagree. The costs of supporting humans in spaceflight are much higher than the costs of supporting a computer, this is undeniably true. However, it is in the challenge of supporting humans in spaceflight that forces a magnitude of innovation which would otherwise be absent from the program. The technologies developed in perfecting the support of humans in space is commonly that technology which is most applicable to daily life.
Yeah there's a big problem with this, and its that you would have to really know where your satellite solar beam is pointing. And unlike laser communications, where missing means a lost message and at most someone's eye put out, with this you could be talking about delivering lethal levels of energy to lots of living things if you lose proper attitude/someone hacks it.
Orbital debris would not be a significant problem as most man made debris is concentrated in LEO and GEO. Placing your collectors in a 60000km orbit would keep them fairly safe, though there would still be a lifetime due to the ultimate degradation of solar cells.
And even good lasers are still very power inefficient, so if you collect 1 GW of power from 10 billion dollars of collectors (you do have to launch them up there, and that is expensive), by the time you've beamed twice and gone through atmosphere you might be talking about only 50MW of power. Much easier to just put solar panels on house roofs.
That's what you say now, and that's reasonable to assume given the way the space program has sort of stagnated over the past 15 years. People are working on fixing that. Space is the future of humanity. In the past 60 years developments from that industry have radically altered our way of life and contributed to our standard of living. Is this not in sync with the goal of eliminating abject misery? Hope is a big part of the equation, and an ambitious space program inspires hope in a way some joker politician cannot. One day soon we will perfect advanced propulsion systems which can cut transit times to nearby planetary bodies. This is the first step, but no one ever said it would be a quick ride to the stars (and if they did, they were being retarded). You can't innovate if you don't try. That's the point of the space program.
1. We have discovered and confirmed neutron stars.
2. Neutron stars have a density on the order of atomic nuclei, the strong force and electroweak forces keep gravity from completely collapsing the matter into a singularity.
3. Supermassive black holes found in things like AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei) can produce particles with energy on the order of 10^19 eV, as compared to the LHC which can produce particles with energy on the order of 10^12 eV. Some of these energetic particles inevitably strike neutron stars as they do our atmosphere.
4. Neutron stars exist. This means that with 7 orders of higher energy and a much larger particle target, black holes still have not formed and sucked up all neutron stars. Given the frequency with which ultra high energy particles are observed in our own atmosphere, this should occur a relatively short time after a neutron star was first formed.
So the point: LHC cannot make black holes which suck up the Earth thereby ending human life because neutron stars exist and are not short lived.
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Amen. We have this problem in my design class. A lot of the more lazy students cite wikipedia as a source for facts because they dont want to take the time to read (or at least skim) the real source. Its becoming a real problem, and I fear that it wont stop when they get into industry. People need to stop being so lazy and realize that its an encyclopedia, not a quotable source.
Energy is the first thing that would be assisted with a more complete and accurate standard model. This would allow for better predictions of nuclear reactions by understanding the structure of the nucleus. That's where all the excitement takes place, and it's still described by a semi-empirical model. And by tomorrow I meant next generation. Are you so concerned about the problems of today that you're willing to sacrifice even the progress which will make your children's lives better?
Hmm, yeah, I guess I forgot I wasn't a lawyer. I'm glad I have /. to keep track of these sorts of things for me. Thanks ./ !
When Faraday was asked what his findings about induction could possibly be useful for, he replied "Of what use is a child?". The theoretical physics of today is the engineering of tomorrow. Also, it's not just your money, most of the world is contributing to this project, its just located at the old CERN site because its the biggest synchotron structure built to date. Stop being shortsighted.
"Browser, Email Client, IM Client. I'm sorry, if you want to play music as well you're going to have to upgrade to a better operating system. It's called Windows 98, you may have heard of it." Ridiculous Microsoft... truly.
How is this different from what EU accuses Microsoft of doing with IE? I'm tired of these double standards, and I'm tired of having crapware forced on my if I want to use one good program.
This sort of technology seems to be the first step towards a tricorder... albeit a primitive one designed to help you be a "better" consumer. Now they just need to add this into a visor (like the ones you can plug into your ipod or whatever), and you'd have a HUD.
Obama needs to make clear what is considered a space weapon. SM-3, ABL, lasers, THAAD, etc. can all be easily modified to acquire and successfully engage satellites because of their physical specifications which are necessary for the roles they are intended to fill. If it's only dedicated ASAT weapons, then that's fine. Weapons in space is bad for America because we dominate space. If it's all weapons that could be potentially used as ASAT, then we're talking a surprising volume of existing military hardware.
You make some good points (1-3), but 4 is not correct depending on your definition of space weapon. If you mean projectiles to physically destroy a satellite, then your analysis is correct. However, a satellite can be rendered inoperable through far more innocuous means. Namely, the use of medium powered laser weapons (we're talking tens or hundreds of watts.. definitely doable) can destroy the optics on a satellite and is testable in a covert manner. China has been taking pot shots at our spy sats with lasers for some time (I would suspect the new ones we put up have countermeasures). Optics are used to look down on Earth, but also to do attitude determination which is necessary for spacecraft pointing. Without pointing, communications becomes nearly impossible. That's the full C4ISTAR range of space operations. The US need not have weapons in space, but we still need to have the capability to respond in the event of an anti-sat attack by an adversary. More importantly, we need the capability to quickly replace lost assets.
In a fire, the best way to evacuate the building is simply to quickload from when you were about to enter the building, and not enter at all. Duh.... Oh, and if anyone gets critically wounded, just run up to them and hit them with your shock paddles. They can instantly heal bullet wounds, shrapnel, burns and broken limbs (at least, that's what it does in battlefield. That's accurate, right?). Just go around reviving ppl and you'll definitely get the gold star that round!
Since you were kind enough to respond in numbered points, I'll reply similarly. 0. Humanity was sustainable up until the industrial revolution. Rome was, oddly enough, sustainable. The population explosion which has resulted from the rapid growth of medicine and other technologies is what has gotten us into this mess. 1. While the space shuttle did not effect its promise to significantly lower launch costs, it was (and in most ways still is) the pinnacle of aerospace technology. The ancillary developments made to make such a spacecraft possible can be seen in use on many of today's existing aircraft and ground vehicles and would not have been developed otherwise. Hypersonic flight will only be possible because of technologies developed for the space shuttle. 2. Full participation in the apollo program was not limited to the few individuals who orbited the moon. Indeed, a program of such a large undertaking created jobs and economic prosperity for tens of thousands of highly trained technical people. Every engineer who contributed to that program participated in something that he could tell his grandchildren about... and indeed his grandchildren's grandchildren will probably hear of it as well. I do not personally want to go to the moon (bad internet connection, you understand), but it is my life's dream to make it reachable for others. For an engineer or technician, this is full participation. 3. While spinoff technology may be more relevant, "apollo" programs here on Earth would require considerably larger budjets to develop technology because of the differences you support. A space program concentrates its funds into building one thing, and the technologies which spin off are only minor parts. Comparably, an environmental program here would have to divert the majority of its funds to implementing its development. This leaves less funds for innovation. In addition, the cost of the apollo program (estimated at 80bn 2005 dollars) would be but a drop in the bucket compared to the cost of many environmental projects envisioned by people today. I would submit that it is more cost effective to concentrate funds in one place to develop technology, and then make your programs to disseminate and apply these technologies on the wide scale. In that way you might consider the space program a prototype factory (indeed it is. Solar cells would not have ever reached the efficiencies they have today if it had not been for the efforts of space agencies to improve efficiencies for use as power supplies for spacecraft). If it weren't for these developments from the space industry, solar power would still have an efficiency of only 6 percent and would still be completely unviable for municipal power generation today. I would submit that this is one of the space program's greatest contributions to the environmental movement, and one of the best pieces of proof that most space enthusiasts (every group has its crack pots, but w/e) care about this planet very deeply. I know space technology has far to go before it is open for everyone, but it is coming. As Stephen Hawking said when touring the engineering set of the enterprise, "We're working on that."
They learned from the best. But now they're a little arrogant and full of themselves and they think they can take on the champs.
Yeah, um, no. An ICBM is a suborbital munition which needs only attain a delta V sufficient to guarantee a ballistic trajectory to its target. This is an orbital missile which was capable of inserting a spacecraft into LEO. If the nuke is nice and light, you could likely place it on the same rocket with guidance modifications. Simply put, if you have the delta v to put something into LEO, you have the delta v to put it somewhere on Earth.
Because Richard Dean Anderson reprised his role of MacGyver (see:legendary action hero with smarts), even if it was to make fun of himself.
I realize this was sarcasm, but now I'm curious. Does video gaming lead to breast feeding, and alternatively does breast feeding lead to video gaming? I wonder how much government money you could get to do that BS study.
Fine, but the lessons in extreme efficiency learned from the pursuit of living in space is going to be a big part of putting food on all those extra people's plates (I say extra not in the pejorative sense, but in the sense that humanity is fast approaching or has already surpassed this planet's natural carrying capacity). More importantly, I wasn't talking about the people who aren't here in America (I would submit most people have a TV and most people eat relatively well here). I was talking about the people who will end up paying for the technological advances for all the other people who don't have food. Manned space exploration produces hope and technology which increase productivity and efficiency, which ultimately helps to serve your goal of feeding way more people than this planet can support. Furthermore, the pace of technological advance has not sped up because of the recession of the space program, but because that is the nature of suddenly having computers...which were developed for simulating nukes and the space program.
The sad part about DRM is that people who steal the game get a better experience than people who buy the game. Failures like this are exactly the kind of things that alienate those who pay and lead to more and more pirates. And they wonder why PC gaming is failing :(
Nice post.
I wish I was that ape. He must have ridiculous internet!
Ok, that settles it. I'm moving to Japan. No wonder they're typically good players, they have unrealistically good internets! Seriously though, do they have higher wireless specifications or something too? Cause otherwise you'd only be able to tap the full potential of that kind of internet on the computer connected to the hard line.
One quick note: we're aerospace engineers, not doctors. Yell at them to get on the ball if you want that stuff fixed. One more quick note: if people want to have kids... then something has to kill other people off. Earth cannot support infinite people, maybe there should be a war on overpopulation instead.
The point is not that they can do more science, but that they can do different science. Your assertion that self sustained life off of Earth is so far off that humans will have become something different is fallacious and without merit. We have the science today, we could have the technology tomorrow to make such a feat happen. What it is clear we don't have is the commitment or the force of will to do it, which saddens me. The most common attack against manned spaceflight is that it is not economically pragmatic to do so. I beg to disagree. The costs of supporting humans in spaceflight are much higher than the costs of supporting a computer, this is undeniably true. However, it is in the challenge of supporting humans in spaceflight that forces a magnitude of innovation which would otherwise be absent from the program. The technologies developed in perfecting the support of humans in space is commonly that technology which is most applicable to daily life.
Yeah there's a big problem with this, and its that you would have to really know where your satellite solar beam is pointing. And unlike laser communications, where missing means a lost message and at most someone's eye put out, with this you could be talking about delivering lethal levels of energy to lots of living things if you lose proper attitude/someone hacks it. Orbital debris would not be a significant problem as most man made debris is concentrated in LEO and GEO. Placing your collectors in a 60000km orbit would keep them fairly safe, though there would still be a lifetime due to the ultimate degradation of solar cells. And even good lasers are still very power inefficient, so if you collect 1 GW of power from 10 billion dollars of collectors (you do have to launch them up there, and that is expensive), by the time you've beamed twice and gone through atmosphere you might be talking about only 50MW of power. Much easier to just put solar panels on house roofs.
That's what you say now, and that's reasonable to assume given the way the space program has sort of stagnated over the past 15 years. People are working on fixing that. Space is the future of humanity. In the past 60 years developments from that industry have radically altered our way of life and contributed to our standard of living. Is this not in sync with the goal of eliminating abject misery? Hope is a big part of the equation, and an ambitious space program inspires hope in a way some joker politician cannot. One day soon we will perfect advanced propulsion systems which can cut transit times to nearby planetary bodies. This is the first step, but no one ever said it would be a quick ride to the stars (and if they did, they were being retarded). You can't innovate if you don't try. That's the point of the space program.
1. We have discovered and confirmed neutron stars. 2. Neutron stars have a density on the order of atomic nuclei, the strong force and electroweak forces keep gravity from completely collapsing the matter into a singularity. 3. Supermassive black holes found in things like AGN (Active Galactic Nuclei) can produce particles with energy on the order of 10^19 eV, as compared to the LHC which can produce particles with energy on the order of 10^12 eV. Some of these energetic particles inevitably strike neutron stars as they do our atmosphere. 4. Neutron stars exist. This means that with 7 orders of higher energy and a much larger particle target, black holes still have not formed and sucked up all neutron stars. Given the frequency with which ultra high energy particles are observed in our own atmosphere, this should occur a relatively short time after a neutron star was first formed. So the point: LHC cannot make black holes which suck up the Earth thereby ending human life because neutron stars exist and are not short lived.