Rockets aren't hard, launching a rocket into space isn't really hard. It's expensive, but not hard.
Ha! Spoken like someone who has never tried to successfuly stabilize a chaotic system with over ten-thousand input variables to the dynamics model equations. Sorry geekoid, but anyone who honestly believes launching a rocket into space, a vehicle that is, quite literally, the size of a skyscraper which expends the energy of a large military warhead in a semi-controlled manner in under 5 minutes "isn't really hard," has officially lost all credibility on the topic of launch vehicles.
Commercial space flight has no vision beyond sending tourists to LEO and throwing more satellites into higher orbits.
Meanwhile, the founder and CEO of a commercial spaceflight company says:
'I'm planning to retire to Mars'
-- Elon Musk: Founder and CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (Spacex) Citation: here.
If that's not vision, I don't know what the hell definition of vision you are using. I've personally toured the facilities of SpaceX, ULA, Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Gruman, and JPL. I can tell you right now, the energy, enthusiasm, and drive at SpaceX is in a class of its own. That company, and its founder, has more vision for the space industry than the sum total of the other agencies I have listed combined.
Mark my words as an aerospace engineer: SpaceX is the future of successful United States space business, and they have the gumption and drive to pull off the stuff folks have been declaring to be impossible for about twenty years now. Just like Google lit a fire under the ass of stale computer companies like Microsoft and Apple, SpaceX is going to be the spark that fans a whole new flame and era of space exploration for the United States.
As a young engineer I want to thank you (anonymous as you may be) for the work you did in the space industry. If it weren't for you and your coworkers my generation of space enthusiasts wouldn't have the pages and pages of source material, research documentation, and local engineering wisdom to learn from. Folks like you helped fuel the space industry for the last 30 years, and without folks like you, I wouldn't have an industry to work in right now.
So thank you.
I hope that one day I'll be able to contribute as significantly to the U.S. space program as you did.
For future reference, I work in the launch industry, and we routinely launch on days with 20% to 30% chance for acceptable weather. Try not to be so negative. This is space we're talking about!
I like the thought of the government defending its citizenry's fundamental human rights. But these days nobody seems to value that role of the government.
Of course, it does give a few (some would say unscrupulous) companies the ability to deprive U.S. citizens of access to the Internet, something that the U.N. has declared to be a fundamental human rights.
Thus far, for-profit companies do not have a particularly stellar track record when it comes to protecting fundamental human rights.
Incidentally, that's how I was first intorduced to computers back in the early '90's (well, minus the VM). My dad would just bring home computers from work with nothing but DOS and Lotus 3-2-1 on it and let me go to town. As painful as it was, it made me a lot more comfortable with computers as I got older.
I've got a question. Has anyone heard or read anything about whether or not Google tethers your search history/data with your Google+ profile once you sign up? I know Google scrapes search data based on cookies or something. I know that G-mail, Youtube, and Google Voice accounts are loosely linked (though I really don't know what that means at all). However, I haven't heard anything about whether or not G+ will use your search data to post "more relevant" ads to your profile space as you browse or anything.
I guess what I am getting at is, how likely is it that someday, somehow, people's sick porn searching habits from Google are going to end up connected to their G+ profiles in any public manner?
Yeah, but Mark Zuckerberg's a dick. Google is just greedy and monolithic. I'd much rather my digital soul be sold by Google to earn them profit than to have my digital soul continue to put profits in the pocket of someone of such douchebag status as Zuckerberg.
Besides, it's not like you have to use Google+, Facebook, or either. Competition just creates choice. It doesn't force change.
So they want to use a somewhat intelligent(?) computer to augment and/or replace their customer support? And here I didn't think customer support could get any worse than the current automation/unknowledgeable representative hell that exists?
If any company is going to honestly transfer its customer service division into the hands of a computer, you can kiss any useful support goodbye permanently from that company.
Mining the seabed is an order of magnitude easier than mining an asteroid.
Yeah, but mining the asteroid might get Ben Affleck off the face of the planet. Cost-benefit analyses should not necessarily restrict themselves to monetary units.
First off, that's absolutely false. They *are* nuclear reactors. However, I'll cut you some slack on that and assume you meant that they aren't similar in danger to traditional large-scale nuclear power plants. This is true, but I've never claimed otherwise.\
I am pretty sure you have no idea what the hell you are talking about at this point. RTG's are not nuclear reactors. They use the excess heat shed by nuclear material to drive an electric current through semi-conductive materials. There is no nuclear reaction being sustained, they simply use the natural half-life of the material contained within them to provide energy. That's all. For more details please read Chapter 6, section 4.2.1 of Vincent L. Pisacane's Fundamentals of Space Systems, Edition II, aptly titled, "RTG Description," before commenting further on this topic.
That source gives a nice, compoenent-level description of how RTG's work. Until you have that basic knowledge, you really aren't qualified to be commenting on this topic in any authority. Thank you for your opinions, however.
You should probably look up the failure/success rate of the Atlas V rocket (the actual launch vehicle that will be carrying MSL) before you go off on some sort of rant about how dangerous rockets are.
From one point of view, you are right: rockets, in general, are complex, chaotic, dangerous machines.
From another point of view, (the one that I would say is most applicable) your explanation is nearly pointless. The Atlas V vehicle has a nearly spotless track record. The few failures that did occur were at the very beginning of its operation cycle. In the last ten years or so, the Atlas V success rate is something absurdly high, as in nearly 100% successful. So, for this particular spacecraft, your point is moot.
Current American launch vehicle providers may not provide the cheapest ride to space, but you can bet your bollocks on a barn dance that they certainly provide the safest ride to space (Orbital Space Systems small-class launch vehicles being a bit of an exception to this rule).
And just to get a shameless self-plug in here, I go into some detail about this in my blog where I dicuss the merits and drawbacks of various active launchers in the space industry here.
Since it is Nadir facing, they probably put hard stops in to prevent its field of view from ever being steered in a direction that would harm the optics of the instrument. They also are probably going to mount it on a part of the ISS that keeps its FOV in a safe orientation during various attitude maneuvers and so on.
...violence doesn't have nearly the same kind of effect on the mind.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on that. I had the misfortune of stumbling upon an internet video of some masked terrorists (the word does fit here) sawing off a live gentleman's head with what appeared to be a large bread knife. To this day that image is burned far deeper into my brain than any of the naked men and women I've seen in my years (and I have seen some exceptionally fine naked women).
I will agree that violence has a different effect on the mind than sex does. I won't agree that images of nudity will be burned into an individual's brain so vividly that it changes their life. To this day I can't remember the first pornography picture that I witnessed, but I will never forget that awful video.
A good starting point for all this is to vilify the right-wing Christian culture...
So your solution to deal with a group whose main problem is the demonization of others is to...demonize them?
In general, if your solution to a problem involves villifying or demonizing a particular group of people, regardless of context or differences within that group, it's probably a shitty solution. A saner, less-violent means of ironing out the whole sex vs. violence issue would be to show folks how living a liberal-sex, anti-violence lifestyle can result in a happier, better life.
For instance, if, through your personal actions, you can demonstrate that having sex in a responsible manner can be both fun and healthy, and, furthermore, you can demonstrate that superior intellect and critical thought can achieve greater results than brute force and a blunt hammer, everyone who knows you and sees you discuss these types of matters with "right-wing Christians" will witness a clear display of how violence is unnecessary and sex is not a soul-destroying action.
In other words, fuck more, fight less, and be proud and open about it. Folks will notice the discrepancy between their preconeived notions and the reality they are witnessing.
I see you haven't been to California. We may have the worst politics this side of the Prime Meridian, but spend a day on the white sands of Longbeach or Santa Monica and you will be ashamed your local girls don't look as good in a bikini. And if you think that's great, wait until you get a couple of them into bed (and yes, most Cali girls do swing that way). The golden coast still has a thing or two goin' for it..
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Rockets aren't hard, launching a rocket into space isn't really hard. It's expensive, but not hard.
Ha! Spoken like someone who has never tried to successfuly stabilize a chaotic system with over ten-thousand input variables to the dynamics model equations. Sorry geekoid, but anyone who honestly believes launching a rocket into space, a vehicle that is, quite literally, the size of a skyscraper which expends the energy of a large military warhead in a semi-controlled manner in under 5 minutes "isn't really hard," has officially lost all credibility on the topic of launch vehicles.
Commercial space flight has no vision beyond sending tourists to LEO and throwing more satellites into higher orbits.
Meanwhile, the founder and CEO of a commercial spaceflight company says:
'I'm planning to retire to Mars'
-- Elon Musk: Founder and CEO of Space Exploration Technologies Corp. (Spacex) Citation: here.
If that's not vision, I don't know what the hell definition of vision you are using. I've personally toured the facilities of SpaceX, ULA, Lockheed, Boeing, Northrop Gruman, and JPL. I can tell you right now, the energy, enthusiasm, and drive at SpaceX is in a class of its own. That company, and its founder, has more vision for the space industry than the sum total of the other agencies I have listed combined.
Mark my words as an aerospace engineer: SpaceX is the future of successful United States space business, and they have the gumption and drive to pull off the stuff folks have been declaring to be impossible for about twenty years now. Just like Google lit a fire under the ass of stale computer companies like Microsoft and Apple, SpaceX is going to be the spark that fans a whole new flame and era of space exploration for the United States.
As a young engineer I want to thank you (anonymous as you may be) for the work you did in the space industry. If it weren't for you and your coworkers my generation of space enthusiasts wouldn't have the pages and pages of source material, research documentation, and local engineering wisdom to learn from. Folks like you helped fuel the space industry for the last 30 years, and without folks like you, I wouldn't have an industry to work in right now.
So thank you.
I hope that one day I'll be able to contribute as significantly to the U.S. space program as you did.
Woops, cynicism fail.
For future reference, I work in the launch industry, and we routinely launch on days with 20% to 30% chance for acceptable weather. Try not to be so negative. This is space we're talking about!
I like the thought of the government defending its citizenry's fundamental human rights. But these days nobody seems to value that role of the government.
Of course, it does give a few (some would say unscrupulous) companies the ability to deprive U.S. citizens of access to the Internet, something that the U.N. has declared to be a fundamental human rights.
Thus far, for-profit companies do not have a particularly stellar track record when it comes to protecting fundamental human rights.
Incidentally, that's how I was first intorduced to computers back in the early '90's (well, minus the VM). My dad would just bring home computers from work with nothing but DOS and Lotus 3-2-1 on it and let me go to town. As painful as it was, it made me a lot more comfortable with computers as I got older.
Linux From Scratch?
You are a sick, sick man....
I just wanted to hide my porn habits...not post the full text of the Scientology cult-manuals .... errrr .... "holy texts."
Thanks! I can't access a lot of Google stuff from my day-use computer, so I had to ask rather than Google Google....um...yeah.
Anyways, thanks for the info.!
I've got a question. Has anyone heard or read anything about whether or not Google tethers your search history/data with your Google+ profile once you sign up? I know Google scrapes search data based on cookies or something. I know that G-mail, Youtube, and Google Voice accounts are loosely linked (though I really don't know what that means at all). However, I haven't heard anything about whether or not G+ will use your search data to post "more relevant" ads to your profile space as you browse or anything.
I guess what I am getting at is, how likely is it that someday, somehow, people's sick porn searching habits from Google are going to end up connected to their G+ profiles in any public manner?
Yeah, but Mark Zuckerberg's a dick. Google is just greedy and monolithic. I'd much rather my digital soul be sold by Google to earn them profit than to have my digital soul continue to put profits in the pocket of someone of such douchebag status as Zuckerberg.
Besides, it's not like you have to use Google+, Facebook, or either. Competition just creates choice. It doesn't force change.
So they want to use a somewhat intelligent(?) computer to augment and/or replace their customer support? And here I didn't think customer support could get any worse than the current automation/unknowledgeable representative hell that exists?
If any company is going to honestly transfer its customer service division into the hands of a computer, you can kiss any useful support goodbye permanently from that company.
Maybe he won't, but some other reader may. Who knows?
Mining the seabed is an order of magnitude easier than mining an asteroid.
Yeah, but mining the asteroid might get Ben Affleck off the face of the planet. Cost-benefit analyses should not necessarily restrict themselves to monetary units.
Not exactly something you pick up at Fry's or NewEgg....unfortunately
FTFY.
Also, sorry for the typos. I am still working on this morning's coffee.
First off, that's absolutely false. They *are* nuclear reactors. However, I'll cut you some slack on that and assume you meant that they aren't similar in danger to traditional large-scale nuclear power plants. This is true, but I've never claimed otherwise.\
I am pretty sure you have no idea what the hell you are talking about at this point. RTG's are not nuclear reactors. They use the excess heat shed by nuclear material to drive an electric current through semi-conductive materials. There is no nuclear reaction being sustained, they simply use the natural half-life of the material contained within them to provide energy. That's all. For more details please read Chapter 6, section 4.2.1 of Vincent L. Pisacane's Fundamentals of Space Systems, Edition II, aptly titled, "RTG Description," before commenting further on this topic.
That source gives a nice, compoenent-level description of how RTG's work. Until you have that basic knowledge, you really aren't qualified to be commenting on this topic in any authority. Thank you for your opinions, however.
You should probably look up the failure/success rate of the Atlas V rocket (the actual launch vehicle that will be carrying MSL) before you go off on some sort of rant about how dangerous rockets are.
From one point of view, you are right: rockets, in general, are complex, chaotic, dangerous machines.
From another point of view, (the one that I would say is most applicable) your explanation is nearly pointless. The Atlas V vehicle has a nearly spotless track record. The few failures that did occur were at the very beginning of its operation cycle. In the last ten years or so, the Atlas V success rate is something absurdly high, as in nearly 100% successful. So, for this particular spacecraft, your point is moot.
Current American launch vehicle providers may not provide the cheapest ride to space, but you can bet your bollocks on a barn dance that they certainly provide the safest ride to space (Orbital Space Systems small-class launch vehicles being a bit of an exception to this rule).
And just to get a shameless self-plug in here, I go into some detail about this in my blog where I dicuss the merits and drawbacks of various active launchers in the space industry here.
Since it is Nadir facing, they probably put hard stops in to prevent its field of view from ever being steered in a direction that would harm the optics of the instrument. They also are probably going to mount it on a part of the ISS that keeps its FOV in a safe orientation during various attitude maneuvers and so on.
...violence doesn't have nearly the same kind of effect on the mind.
I'm going to respectfully disagree with you on that. I had the misfortune of stumbling upon an internet video of some masked terrorists (the word does fit here) sawing off a live gentleman's head with what appeared to be a large bread knife. To this day that image is burned far deeper into my brain than any of the naked men and women I've seen in my years (and I have seen some exceptionally fine naked women).
I will agree that violence has a different effect on the mind than sex does. I won't agree that images of nudity will be burned into an individual's brain so vividly that it changes their life. To this day I can't remember the first pornography picture that I witnessed, but I will never forget that awful video.
I'm still looking for the place wherre violent sex is okay. Find me that country and I'll pack my bags.
A good starting point for all this is to vilify the right-wing Christian culture...
So your solution to deal with a group whose main problem is the demonization of others is to...demonize them?
In general, if your solution to a problem involves villifying or demonizing a particular group of people, regardless of context or differences within that group, it's probably a shitty solution. A saner, less-violent means of ironing out the whole sex vs. violence issue would be to show folks how living a liberal-sex, anti-violence lifestyle can result in a happier, better life.
For instance, if, through your personal actions, you can demonstrate that having sex in a responsible manner can be both fun and healthy, and, furthermore, you can demonstrate that superior intellect and critical thought can achieve greater results than brute force and a blunt hammer, everyone who knows you and sees you discuss these types of matters with "right-wing Christians" will witness a clear display of how violence is unnecessary and sex is not a soul-destroying action.
In other words, fuck more, fight less, and be proud and open about it. Folks will notice the discrepancy between their preconeived notions and the reality they are witnessing.
I see you haven't been to California. We may have the worst politics this side of the Prime Meridian, but spend a day on the white sands of Longbeach or Santa Monica and you will be ashamed your local girls don't look as good in a bikini. And if you think that's great, wait until you get a couple of them into bed (and yes, most Cali girls do swing that way). The golden coast still has a thing or two goin' for it..
;)
poor brainwashed fool.
poor tool is more like it.
You know, being a condescending jerk is not usually the best means by which to enlighten someone, even if you are right.