The truth is that single stage to orbit vehicles aren't economical at all in their current. The payloads they take up have to be small due to the amount of fuel they require.
I recall that a group from Stanford presented a concept for a single STEP to orbit vehicle at last years's Mars Society conference. Here the vehicle refuels in-flight at a high altitude negating the need to carry all fuel at take-off...
Because some, or even most, Napster users are breaking the law, that doesn't mean you can punish them without some sort of proof or due process. (Well, actually you can because of the DMCA, but that doesn't make it right.)
Remember, you don't have any such right to due process. The Napster people can refuse you service at their discretion. It's their software.
Yes, but the difference is that sharks attack humans because they think they are seals. This happens quite frequently, especially in places like Hawaii.
On the other hand, dolphins are VERY rarily known to attack unprovoked. Sure, there have been some fatal attacks, such as one in Brazil a few years ago, where the dolphin had various object shoved down its blowhole when visiting near the beach.
Sharks are more suited to large prey, such as seals (and people), while dolphins eat smaller fish. Just look at teeth sizes.
Right now, all they can do is get dolphins to reproduce some of the introduced whistles...there's no communication, or transfer of information between humans and dolphins. This kind of thing has been tried before, and hasn't gone anywhere.
Also it's documented that dolphins communicate just as much through whistles as they do through movement.
While a simplified signing language has worked with an ape, remember that apes communicate similarily to humans; dolphins do not...
Having lived in a few radically different countries, and being a US citizen, I can see where you are coming from.
The US has one thing going for it that other countries do not, and that's starting to go thanks to globalization and our beloved internet. It's been THE place to make MONEY in the past century.
I have a distaste for much of American culture, so Australia is my recommendation. In my opinion it has a nice mix of European and American culture, it's mostly safe and clean, chances are you won't get shot at work or at school...only it's somewhat inconviniently located...
The Russians have great ideas. Just this past summer at the World Expo in Hannover they showcased models for a jet sea-rescue plane, a GIGANTIC underwater research vessel for the arctic regions (dwarfs current nuclear subs), and many more things. The ideas are there, sure. Lots of them.
But the money isn't. This is 60 billion dollars we're talking about. For something that has little economic merit, and certainly wouldn't repay itself anytime soon. We're talking about a country in a very large economic ditch. All this stuff is "vaporware."
The widely accepted theories put varying emphasis on the following:
1) Frozen in the ice caps
2) Frozen into the regolith (permafrost layer)
3) Underground, in large geothermically heated pools.
Most of it would likely be found in the northern hemisphere, as this is where we see the most signs of ancient ocean/water erosion. Also, it's important to keep in mind that the northern polar ice cap is estimated to contain about two million cubic kilometres of water.
To answer your question, planets follow "lifecycles" of cooling, warming, cooling, etc. It's all mostly theory, but it's been proposed that while a planet the size of Earth can get locked into a cycle of freezing/thawing (the ice ages), a smaller planet such as Mars may not be able to have such a continuous cycle, or the cycle may be much longer. Hence the lack of liquid water...
The gravity doesn't have as much to do with it directly as the internal geological processes that keep the atmosphere from freezing. Mars, it is theorized, had a thick atmosphere at the time when it was still a geologically active planet.
The atmosphere doesn't escape into space - the gravity is still too strong for that. It freezes and gets caught in the regolith (Martian topsoil) where the majority of it is today.
This machine, as described, does the same exact thing as Dr. Robert Zubrin's oxygen extracting machine, designed nearly a decade ago while he was working at the Martin Marianetta labs (sp?). The idea here isn't terraforming the planet, but providing the Martian explorers with breathable air, as well as propellant for the return to Earth.
All of this is described in his book, The Case for Mars, in great detail. If you're interested in the details of the chemistry involved (ie byproducts, etc, it's explained in the aforementioned book).
Terraforming the planet, by comparison, is much, much grander. As well as a very long way off. First let's concentrate on getting another probe there in one piece, eh?
Anyone who buys moonland from them is an idiot...
on
80 Proof Quickies
·
· Score: 2
Because technically, and physically, they have absolutely no rights to it either. For all purpose and intent, you could just as well claim moonland bought by other people as your own, or better yet, if it ever came around to it, land on the moon and claim ALL of the land as your property, even if it's been bought out by people through this "company".
The same goes obviously for all the other celestial bodies they're putting up for sale. This is just the same as buying Joe Smith's pigs by paying Jack Burns for them, who lives on the other side of the river and doesn't even know of the former...
All in all though, this is somewhat of an interesting topic given that other than the fact that governments can't own the moon or any other bodies, nothing is stopping companies or individuals from doing so. I forget the actual name, but there's a colorado (I think) based company that's planning on landing a probe on a near-Earth asteroid and claiming all rights to it. And even if any laws are put into place, who will enforce them?
Fran De Aquino has published a paper ( released on January 30th, 2000 ):" Gravitation and Electromagnetism: Correlation and Grand Unification ". This paper has demonstrated that a weight reduction of the System-G apparatus has been observed and experimentaly verified at room temperature. The experiment has also shown an important gravitational phenomenon; when System-G has been energized, it has been observed a GRAVITATIONAL SHIELDING EFFECT : the weight of everything inside of the annealed iron tube ( iron powder, ELF antenna,... ) has been nullified, the scale has just shown the weight of the steel tube with the annealed iron.
I haven't gone over the actual math, but it seems much too easy to be true. Show me the money (levitating spacecraft).
Silly thing called a budget, which is unfortunate. And in this wonderful society, there still happen to be people that don't quite see anything larger than the area in front of their face, so really, the middle management guy that tailored the testing to allow that engine error to happen wasn't likely to even be thinking about Mars. What Mars? I just need this engine to pass testing so I don't have to worry about it! And so we don't have to pay for an extensive redesign! But, you can't blame NASA for something like this I guess, having all "good" people in such a giant organization isn't very easy.
By the way, Mars Direct is actually designed for an Ares booster system, which is basically two main Shuttle boosters and 5 Shuttle engines stuck together.
But, you could just be cool and use the Energia. So much more fun;-)
I have chatted with the man about lecturing at a local community college. He seems like a nice guy.
I look forward to meeting him at this year's Mars Society conference.
The OLD NASA, yes.:-) But I do know that in the back of Director Dan Goldin's mind, he's thinking about building Mars rockets. And he has looked at Zubrin's ideas and even funded some small studies for in-situ propellant manufacturing, among others.
True, they've put a bit of money down for in-situ propellant manufacturing, but it seems to me that it isn't really being done with an objective in mind. The same research was being done at Lockheed Martin by Zubrin years ago. As for NASA's Faster. Cheaper. Better, great, but from here it looks like that means more robotic exploration than any human Mars expeditions.
At least it's nice to see NASA bending and trying to adapt something in the tone of a Mars Semi-Direct plan. Although it's doubtful that they could do anything within the next ten years, without any real incentive or urgency.
The way I see it, the only way anyone's going to Mars any time soon is through a privately or a joint private/government funded mission, and right now, there don't seem to be many contenders. Zubrin proposed an interesting reward system where the government would award a certain sum of money for each progressive milestone accomplished by a company in relation to Mars exploration. The proposed reward for a successful human Mars mission using Mars Direct was something like 20 billion dollars. Surely enough to justify a 4-6 billion investment.
Yeah, Zubrin's Mars Direct calls for either the resurrection of the Saturn V, something rather impossible given the lack of necessity/space race today, or the use of the russian Energia.
A privately funded Mars mission would, with the cost of reviving and using two Energia launches, plus the various other necessities, weigh in at about 4-6 billion dollars -- 35 Billion less than a NASA venture.
Mr. Gates could set up a few bases on Mars in the name of free enterprise.
Talk about tragic misallocation of valuable resources.
Beal's booster seems more of a satellite launch vehicle than anything, capable of high capacity launches to LEO and HEO...
Slashdot Mirror
The truth is that single stage to orbit vehicles aren't economical at all in their current. The payloads they take up have to be small due to the amount of fuel they require.
I recall that a group from Stanford presented a concept for a single STEP to orbit vehicle at last years's Mars Society conference. Here the vehicle refuels in-flight at a high altitude negating the need to carry all fuel at take-off...
Because some, or even most, Napster users are breaking the law, that doesn't mean you can punish them without some sort of proof or due process. (Well, actually you can because of the DMCA, but that doesn't make it right.)
Remember, you don't have any such right to due process. The Napster people can refuse you service at their discretion. It's their software.
Yeah. Doing it is one thing. Trying to justify it as some kind of righteous crusade against evil recording labels is quite another.
It's nice, but it's illegal.
Yes, but the difference is that sharks attack humans because they think they are seals. This happens quite frequently, especially in places like Hawaii.
On the other hand, dolphins are VERY rarily known to attack unprovoked. Sure, there have been some fatal attacks, such as one in Brazil a few years ago, where the dolphin had various object shoved down its blowhole when visiting near the beach.
Sharks are more suited to large prey, such as seals (and people), while dolphins eat smaller fish. Just look at teeth sizes.
Source.
Right now, all they can do is get dolphins to reproduce some of the introduced whistles...there's no communication, or transfer of information between humans and dolphins. This kind of thing has been tried before, and hasn't gone anywhere.
Also it's documented that dolphins communicate just as much through whistles as they do through movement.
While a simplified signing language has worked with an ape, remember that apes communicate similarily to humans; dolphins do not...
Having lived in a few radically different countries, and being a US citizen, I can see where you are coming from.
The US has one thing going for it that other countries do not, and that's starting to go thanks to globalization and our beloved internet. It's been THE place to make MONEY in the past century.
I have a distaste for much of American culture, so Australia is my recommendation. In my opinion it has a nice mix of European and American culture, it's mostly safe and clean, chances are you won't get shot at work or at school...only it's somewhat inconviniently located...
The Russians have great ideas. Just this past summer at the World Expo in Hannover they showcased models for a jet sea-rescue plane, a GIGANTIC underwater research vessel for the arctic regions (dwarfs current nuclear subs), and many more things. The ideas are there, sure. Lots of them.
But the money isn't. This is 60 billion dollars we're talking about. For something that has little economic merit, and certainly wouldn't repay itself anytime soon. We're talking about a country in a very large economic ditch. All this stuff is "vaporware."
The widely accepted theories put varying emphasis on the following:
1) Frozen in the ice caps
2) Frozen into the regolith (permafrost layer)
3) Underground, in large geothermically heated pools.
Most of it would likely be found in the northern hemisphere, as this is where we see the most signs of ancient ocean/water erosion. Also, it's important to keep in mind that the northern polar ice cap is estimated to contain about two million cubic kilometres of water.
To answer your question, planets follow "lifecycles" of cooling, warming, cooling, etc. It's all mostly theory, but it's been proposed that while a planet the size of Earth can get locked into a cycle of freezing/thawing (the ice ages), a smaller planet such as Mars may not be able to have such a continuous cycle, or the cycle may be much longer. Hence the lack of liquid water...
The gravity doesn't have as much to do with it directly as the internal geological processes that keep the atmosphere from freezing. Mars, it is theorized, had a thick atmosphere at the time when it was still a geologically active planet.
The atmosphere doesn't escape into space - the gravity is still too strong for that. It freezes and gets caught in the regolith (Martian topsoil) where the majority of it is today.
This machine, as described, does the same exact thing as Dr. Robert Zubrin's oxygen extracting machine, designed nearly a decade ago while he was working at the Martin Marianetta labs (sp?). The idea here isn't terraforming the planet, but providing the Martian explorers with breathable air, as well as propellant for the return to Earth.
All of this is described in his book, The Case for Mars, in great detail. If you're interested in the details of the chemistry involved (ie byproducts, etc, it's explained in the aforementioned book).
Terraforming the planet, by comparison, is much, much grander. As well as a very long way off. First let's concentrate on getting another probe there in one piece, eh?
Because technically, and physically, they have absolutely no rights to it either. For all purpose and intent, you could just as well claim moonland bought by other people as your own, or better yet, if it ever came around to it, land on the moon and claim ALL of the land as your property, even if it's been bought out by people through this "company".
The same goes obviously for all the other celestial bodies they're putting up for sale. This is just the same as buying Joe Smith's pigs by paying Jack Burns for them, who lives on the other side of the river and doesn't even know of the former...
All in all though, this is somewhat of an interesting topic given that other than the fact that governments can't own the moon or any other bodies, nothing is stopping companies or individuals from doing so. I forget the actual name, but there's a colorado (I think) based company that's planning on landing a probe on a near-Earth asteroid and claiming all rights to it. And even if any laws are put into place, who will enforce them?
Fran De Aquino has published a paper ( released on January 30th, 2000 ) :" Gravitation and Electromagnetism: Correlation and Grand Unification ". This paper has demonstrated that a weight reduction of the System-G apparatus has been observed and experimentaly verified at room temperature. The experiment has also shown an important gravitational phenomenon; when System-G has been energized, it has been observed a GRAVITATIONAL SHIELDING EFFECT : the weight of everything inside of the annealed iron tube ( iron powder, ELF antenna,... ) has been nullified, the scale has just shown the weight of the steel tube with the annealed iron.
I haven't gone over the actual math, but it seems much too easy to be true. Show me the money (levitating spacecraft).
Silly thing called a budget, which is unfortunate. And in this wonderful society, there still happen to be people that don't quite see anything larger than the area in front of their face, so really, the middle management guy that tailored the testing to allow that engine error to happen wasn't likely to even be thinking about Mars. What Mars? I just need this engine to pass testing so I don't have to worry about it! And so we don't have to pay for an extensive redesign! But, you can't blame NASA for something like this I guess, having all "good" people in such a giant organization isn't very easy.
Eeek. Scary.
;-)
By the way, Mars Direct is actually designed for an Ares booster system, which is basically two main Shuttle boosters and 5 Shuttle engines stuck together.
But, you could just be cool and use the Energia. So much more fun
I have chatted with the man about lecturing at a local community college. He seems like a nice guy.
:-) But I do know that in the back of Director Dan Goldin's mind, he's thinking about building Mars rockets. And he has looked at Zubrin's ideas and even funded some small studies for in-situ propellant manufacturing, among others.
I look forward to meeting him at this year's Mars Society conference.
The OLD NASA, yes.
True, they've put a bit of money down for in-situ propellant manufacturing, but it seems to me that it isn't really being done with an objective in mind. The same research was being done at Lockheed Martin by Zubrin years ago. As for NASA's Faster. Cheaper. Better, great, but from here it looks like that means more robotic exploration than any human Mars expeditions.
At least it's nice to see NASA bending and trying to adapt something in the tone of a Mars Semi-Direct plan. Although it's doubtful that they could do anything within the next ten years, without any real incentive or urgency.
The way I see it, the only way anyone's going to Mars any time soon is through a privately or a joint private/government funded mission, and right now, there don't seem to be many contenders. Zubrin proposed an interesting reward system where the government would award a certain sum of money for each progressive milestone accomplished by a company in relation to Mars exploration. The proposed reward for a successful human Mars mission using Mars Direct was something like 20 billion dollars. Surely enough to justify a 4-6 billion investment.
Yeah, Zubrin's Mars Direct calls for either the resurrection of the Saturn V, something rather impossible given the lack of necessity/space race today, or the use of the russian Energia.
A privately funded Mars mission would, with the cost of reviving and using two Energia launches, plus the various other necessities, weigh in at about 4-6 billion dollars -- 35 Billion less than a NASA venture.
Mr. Gates could set up a few bases on Mars in the name of free enterprise.
Talk about tragic misallocation of valuable resources.
Beal's booster seems more of a satellite launch vehicle than anything, capable of high capacity launches to LEO and HEO...