I thought that exact same thing. They spend billions on missile-based defense systems and as an afternoon exercise the ESA does the same job with a laser. Non-projectile weapons are obviously the way to go.
outer limits or twilight zone did things like this their was no contiuning plot in those shows have it be one show but a week or 2 of one plot and than go to the next
Exactly. There was one new Outer Limits episode where they tried to link up some of the plotlines, but for Trek the plotline/timeline is already there, they'd just have to pick bits and pieces of it and put it on film.
A TV show or any other entertainment property is all about building equity. You invest in the characters and the stories... you need to be able to sell lunch pails and action figures
Yeah, probably true. I think one of the bonuses would be that you'd get to kill/maim/defect/whatever major characters at will since they're only going to there for a few more episodes anyway. Almost all of the suspense in Star Trek is tempered by the fact that the characters are sure to survive intact in time for next week. Whoopty do.
I've always thought a mini-series approach would work well with Star Trek. Rather than picking 7 years of the Trek universe and focusing on one lousy ship and crew, they would have half a dozen shows focusing on some interesting aspect of the whole Trek future history. Show them from different races points of view, even. I for one would like to see the separation of the Romulans and the Vulcans. The founding of the Federation, Kahless and the Klingon Empire, Changlings and the Dominion, even the Borg Collective (one of the better Voyager episodes was suggestive along these lines). The Cardassian occupation of Bajor. The wars with the Romulans and Klingons and why the Feds have the Prime Directive. Events leading to the destruction of the Enterprise-C. What happened in the period between First Contact and Enterprise. The Orion Syndicate. There's hundreds of years and thousands of concepts that could be explored.
This way, there's tremendous continuity between episodes of each 'series', but you need only have a smattering of knowledge about Star Trek to pick up on a new one. Also, there's enough time to do some character development, but not enough that they have to get radically desperate for ideas the way they did with some episodes.
I was an avid Trek fan all through TNG and DS9 (went to conventions, had a major periphenalia collection, etc, etc) and even I skipped the last 2 years of Voyager. It lasted 7 years because, as bad as it was, it was about the best UPN had to offer.
how come in the past 10,000 years of history it has never lasted nor succeeded
Actually, for most of its existence mankind operated under a kind of anarchy. Look at primitive tribal structures. They have a chieftain of some kind, but on small scales he or, in rare cases, she is usually fairly limited in power; none of the god-autocrat stuff you get with larger civilizations. When it comes to inter-tribal relations, there's no UN or body of laws regarding behavior. Each member can do what he wants and is restrained only by remembering that their victims (or their next of kin) can do whatever they want in retribution. See: Blood Feud (noun). This sort of system obviously doesn't scale well beyond a few dozen/hundred people. And you're right, when faced with a larger force under a more centralized authority, they cannot help but lose.
However, it's conceivable that technology could render all our governments moot and turn the clock back a bit. Consider: Weapons tech has always been a race between the offense and defense, right? Suppose something was developed as an inexpensive and almost perfect defense against weaponry of the physical variety (chemical and biological are a different story). A government could impose its will on unruly members only with great difficulty and expense; it'd be impossible to put down a general uprising. Individuals, lacking the means to physically hurt each other, might become somewhat civil without a system of laws and punishments imposed from above to ensure Domestic Tranquility.
Re:Gravity is not a 'force' per se
on
Mapping Gravity
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· Score: 2
Use the term "Sudden Deceleration Trauma" to describe someone who fell off a building and you'll get dirty looks. I know, I've tried. Using the phrase, I mean, not jumping off a building.
Oh, and it's electromagnetism that binds a rubber ball together and keeps it from merging with the ground, not the weak nuclear force. That one's responsible for atomic decay. It and the strong force have very little direct influence outside the nucleus.
Re:Gravity increasing over time due to space dust
on
Mapping Gravity
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· Score: 4, Insightful
2.5 Tera-tons might seem like a lot to you and me, but it's still less than a millionth of Earth's total mass. Assuming that it remains constant at that rate and losing none of the gains to outgassing (or it's offset by periodic large impacts), to accumulate a 1% increase in mass would take a half trillion years. Don't hold your breath.
Re:And what about...
on
Mapping Gravity
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· Score: 4, Interesting
The effect of velocity on perception of elapsed time is not linear as far as i know
Correct. As I recall, you have to ramp up to.85c just to age half as slowly (or mass twice as much or be half as long). The equation is pretty simple; I don't happen to remember it at the moment and am to lazy to Google it.
actually, "moving through time" at all is pretty meaningless, unless you have another time axis to measure against
Why? If I'm moving at all (though the effects only become noticable relativisticly), I'm 'moving through time' at a different rate than someone in an different inertial frame. You don't need a y and z axis to describe differences in motion along x. I get headaches thinking about 4 dimensional geometry.
so moving through time "at the speed of light" is meaningless
Very true. If you move at the speed of light, your perception of the passage of time drops to zero and the life of the universe passes by you in no time. Literally. But since accelerating a body to that speed would require an infinite amount of energy (which I had once, but misplaced), it's not something I feel I need to worry about.
I've always been fascinated by the potential loophole here. You can go slower than light (everything we see) or you can go faster (tachyons?). The only thing actually forbidden is attaining that exact velocity. So figure out a way to jump from one speed to another without going through the intervening velocities (an easy task, right?) and you're golden.
As I recall, the debate is between an asteroid/comet impact in the Yucatan vs a violent and prolonged period of volcanic activity in India causing the mass extinctions 65 MYears ago. Both would produce huge amounts of dust and ash and lay waste to whole continents. Problem is, geology can't quite pin down which one caused it. Hell, it could be both that pushed them over the edge, though the timing for that would be rather amazing.
A suicide prevention website generally isn't R-rated material
Normally, no. But within the letter of the law, it is. It deals with an adult topic and can be in a visual or purely written form. That's all the OFLC needs to deem it rated R and therefore unsuitable to minors. Granted, there's a chance no one is going to use it to that extreme, but it's insane to take that kind of bet. This is the sort of law that everyone breaks and makes it very easy for governments to get rid of "enemies of the state".
I think it's more like $400M a launch, which works out to about $6000 per pound. And you're right, much of that cost is due to salaries of engineers and technicians and whatnot (fuel is comparitively cheap), but they don't spend all their time on their bums. They have to practically rebuild the friggin thing after every launch.
So basically, NASA says "It costs us $X to send up a fully loaded Shuttle and a fully loaded shuttle has Y kilograms of cargo, so it therefore costs $X/Y to send up a single kilo." Point is, it ain't cheap.
Good, then you of all people should know that it's easier to put renewable resources on the power grid than to try to fit them into your car and that even nasty fossil fuel power plants are more efficient than anything you'll find in your auto. The US may use mostly oil and coal, but not all nations do.
Dunno if it's a hippy conspiracy or not but it's certainly been over-hyped to some degree.
Um, you realize that putting solar cells on cars to crack hydrogen would produce the exact same result as putting solar cells on cars to charge batteries?
Uh, hello? Did you even read my post? "The whole point is to use H2 as a battery to power the car" I believe was what I said. You could use a flywheel, too. Ordinary chemical batteries pretty much suck in comparison. They're toxic and have to be replaced every few years regardless of use.
As in, you wouldn't get nearly enough energy to do anything unless your car was like 20 pounds
You really didn't actually read the post, did you? "However, if solar panels become reasonable useful" was what I said. Nowhere did I say "Yes, our current panels are so good you could run all the cabs in New York off a single square meter of them."
adding hydrogen cracking and recomposition would only make the system less efficient then using a normal battery
Explain to me where you got that from. Yes, putting all that equipment would make it less efficient than it was before, you'll note that I said that the first time, but where you get the comparison to chemical batteries? I'd love to see you back that statement up.
Wouldn't help much. When it crystallizes at 14 K its density is 0.088 g/cm^3. Compare that to the liquid density of 0.07 g/cm^3 and you see its not much of an improvement. Gasoline, by comparison, is around 700 g/cm^3.
This is about the single most limiting factor in hydrogen powered vehicles. There are people working on tricks to store hydrogen at greater densities, but I don't know if any of them are close or whatever. Storing it as a liquid isn't a good anwer anyway, it takes wayyyy to much power to do it. Several times what you'd get by burning it, in fact.
lets see to make hydrogen you need ahhh, could it be electricity? ___ You Burn the Coal to get the Electricty to get the Hydrogen to Put in the car. Oil baby the stuff just comes out of the ground like majic, you burn it and get CO2, and that feeds the rainforests
Hey, did you know that some power plants actually use Uranium or sunlight or water or wind rather than coal and oil? It's amazing! Oh, and did you know that there are almost no power plants on the grid that go around on wheels? And that they are therefore 10 zillion times as efficient as the portable variety in your car? Who'd have thought?!? Anyone who put more than 2 seconds thought into it, that's who.
Energy Density. Look it up. The whole point of using gasoline is that it stores so much energy per unit weight/volume. Hydrogen fuel cells could work, but just to store energy, there are many better alternatives as far as energy density is concerned.
I thought that Hydrogen had the highest energy density, many times that of gasoline... why did I think that?
Because you're right? I dunno if it's the highest, but it's certainly higher than gasoline. MJ/kg: H2 = 141.90, Gasoline = 47.27. The catch is that even as a liquid, H2 can't be as dense as gas. At best, it's 1/10. So by weight, it's much better, but by volume it's only a third as good.
Sure there are difficulties with transportation and storage of hydrogen, but there are similar issues with gasoline and natural gas and we seem to cope with them relatively easily.
Well sure. Oil is available in only a few places and must be refined and then shipped out to the world. H2 can be made from water, which is slightly more ubiquitous. Currently, H2 is more expensive but that would change with millions of new customers.
If a vehicle uses water to store the needed H2, it will also need an electrical source to electrolyze the water. Where does this come from? Why not just use an electrical motor?
You got it backwards, silly. If H2 is a battery, water is a dead battery. You put H2 into the car, not water. Yes, you could do that and 'charge' it using lead-acid batteries or a normal gas engine, but that's defeating the purpose of using H2 in the first place.
I just don't think H2 is a viable source of power. Unlike a hydrocarbon, combustion breaks very few bonds and therefore releases very little energy
Hmmm, well, actually, no. By unit mass, combusting Hydrogen has 3 times the energy density of gasoline. It just can't be stored as compactly, even as a cold liquid.
And on top of that, most batteries only last a few years before having to be thrown away. And they're not exactly the most eco-friendly item in the landfill.
Slashdot Mirror
One? It's great to bring back an extinct species, but it kinda sucks if there's only one of them.
I thought that exact same thing. They spend billions on missile-based defense systems and as an afternoon exercise the ESA does the same job with a laser. Non-projectile weapons are obviously the way to go.
outer limits or twilight zone did things like this their was no contiuning plot in those shows have it be one show but a week or 2 of one plot and than go to the next
Exactly. There was one new Outer Limits episode where they tried to link up some of the plotlines, but for Trek the plotline/timeline is already there, they'd just have to pick bits and pieces of it and put it on film.
A TV show or any other entertainment property is all about building equity. You invest in the characters and the stories... you need to be able to sell lunch pails and action figures
Yeah, probably true. I think one of the bonuses would be that you'd get to kill/maim/defect/whatever major characters at will since they're only going to there for a few more episodes anyway. Almost all of the suspense in Star Trek is tempered by the fact that the characters are sure to survive intact in time for next week. Whoopty do.
When is Paramount going to finally visit a graveyard and realize that Roddenbury is dead?
Well, you do know that he was cremated and some of his ashes were sent up with the Shuttle and scattered in outer space? Hard to find, these days...
I've always thought a mini-series approach would work well with Star Trek. Rather than picking 7 years of the Trek universe and focusing on one lousy ship and crew, they would have half a dozen shows focusing on some interesting aspect of the whole Trek future history. Show them from different races points of view, even. I for one would like to see the separation of the Romulans and the Vulcans. The founding of the Federation, Kahless and the Klingon Empire, Changlings and the Dominion, even the Borg Collective (one of the better Voyager episodes was suggestive along these lines). The Cardassian occupation of Bajor. The wars with the Romulans and Klingons and why the Feds have the Prime Directive. Events leading to the destruction of the Enterprise-C. What happened in the period between First Contact and Enterprise. The Orion Syndicate. There's hundreds of years and thousands of concepts that could be explored.
This way, there's tremendous continuity between episodes of each 'series', but you need only have a smattering of knowledge about Star Trek to pick up on a new one. Also, there's enough time to do some character development, but not enough that they have to get radically desperate for ideas the way they did with some episodes.
I was an avid Trek fan all through TNG and DS9 (went to conventions, had a major periphenalia collection, etc, etc) and even I skipped the last 2 years of Voyager. It lasted 7 years because, as bad as it was, it was about the best UPN had to offer.
how come in the past 10,000 years of history it has never lasted nor succeeded
Actually, for most of its existence mankind operated under a kind of anarchy. Look at primitive tribal structures. They have a chieftain of some kind, but on small scales he or, in rare cases, she is usually fairly limited in power; none of the god-autocrat stuff you get with larger civilizations. When it comes to inter-tribal relations, there's no UN or body of laws regarding behavior. Each member can do what he wants and is restrained only by remembering that their victims (or their next of kin) can do whatever they want in retribution. See: Blood Feud (noun). This sort of system obviously doesn't scale well beyond a few dozen/hundred people. And you're right, when faced with a larger force under a more centralized authority, they cannot help but lose.
However, it's conceivable that technology could render all our governments moot and turn the clock back a bit. Consider: Weapons tech has always been a race between the offense and defense, right? Suppose something was developed as an inexpensive and almost perfect defense against weaponry of the physical variety (chemical and biological are a different story). A government could impose its will on unruly members only with great difficulty and expense; it'd be impossible to put down a general uprising. Individuals, lacking the means to physically hurt each other, might become somewhat civil without a system of laws and punishments imposed from above to ensure Domestic Tranquility.
Use the term "Sudden Deceleration Trauma" to describe someone who fell off a building and you'll get dirty looks. I know, I've tried. Using the phrase, I mean, not jumping off a building.
Oh, and it's electromagnetism that binds a rubber ball together and keeps it from merging with the ground, not the weak nuclear force. That one's responsible for atomic decay. It and the strong force have very little direct influence outside the nucleus.
2.5 Tera-tons might seem like a lot to you and me, but it's still less than a millionth of Earth's total mass. Assuming that it remains constant at that rate and losing none of the gains to outgassing (or it's offset by periodic large impacts), to accumulate a 1% increase in mass would take a half trillion years. Don't hold your breath.
The effect of velocity on perception of elapsed time is not linear as far as i know
.85c just to age half as slowly (or mass twice as much or be half as long). The equation is pretty simple; I don't happen to remember it at the moment and am to lazy to Google it.
Correct. As I recall, you have to ramp up to
actually, "moving through time" at all is pretty meaningless, unless you have another time axis to measure against
Why? If I'm moving at all (though the effects only become noticable relativisticly), I'm 'moving through time' at a different rate than someone in an different inertial frame. You don't need a y and z axis to describe differences in motion along x. I get headaches thinking about 4 dimensional geometry.
so moving through time "at the speed of light" is meaningless
Very true. If you move at the speed of light, your perception of the passage of time drops to zero and the life of the universe passes by you in no time. Literally. But since accelerating a body to that speed would require an infinite amount of energy (which I had once, but misplaced), it's not something I feel I need to worry about.
I've always been fascinated by the potential loophole here. You can go slower than light (everything we see) or you can go faster (tachyons?). The only thing actually forbidden is attaining that exact velocity. So figure out a way to jump from one speed to another without going through the intervening velocities (an easy task, right?) and you're golden.
As I recall, the debate is between an asteroid/comet impact in the Yucatan vs a violent and prolonged period of volcanic activity in India causing the mass extinctions 65 MYears ago. Both would produce huge amounts of dust and ash and lay waste to whole continents. Problem is, geology can't quite pin down which one caused it. Hell, it could be both that pushed them over the edge, though the timing for that would be rather amazing.
A suicide prevention website generally isn't R-rated material
Normally, no. But within the letter of the law, it is. It deals with an adult topic and can be in a visual or purely written form. That's all the OFLC needs to deem it rated R and therefore unsuitable to minors. Granted, there's a chance no one is going to use it to that extreme, but it's insane to take that kind of bet. This is the sort of law that everyone breaks and makes it very easy for governments to get rid of "enemies of the state".
Similar situation. There was a law the text of which was copyrighted and thus could not be printed or publicly displayed without the owner's approval.
... here it is. I can't find any recent news on it so I assume that the rulings in favor of the copyright holder are still in effect.
And
Did anyone else notice the scene where Amidala had her hair in those damned earmuffs?
And, more importantly, you would never even need to get out of bed!
Well, to do that you'll also need a catheter.
I think it's more like $400M a launch, which works out to about $6000 per pound. And you're right, much of that cost is due to salaries of engineers and technicians and whatnot (fuel is comparitively cheap), but they don't spend all their time on their bums. They have to practically rebuild the friggin thing after every launch.
So basically, NASA says "It costs us $X to send up a fully loaded Shuttle and a fully loaded shuttle has Y kilograms of cargo, so it therefore costs $X/Y to send up a single kilo." Point is, it ain't cheap.
Good, then you of all people should know that it's easier to put renewable resources on the power grid than to try to fit them into your car and that even nasty fossil fuel power plants are more efficient than anything you'll find in your auto. The US may use mostly oil and coal, but not all nations do.
Dunno if it's a hippy conspiracy or not but it's certainly been over-hyped to some degree.
And who the hell modded me down as OT?
Um, you realize that putting solar cells on cars to crack hydrogen would produce the exact same result as putting solar cells on cars to charge batteries?
Uh, hello? Did you even read my post? "The whole point is to use H2 as a battery to power the car" I believe was what I said. You could use a flywheel, too. Ordinary chemical batteries pretty much suck in comparison. They're toxic and have to be replaced every few years regardless of use.
As in, you wouldn't get nearly enough energy to do anything unless your car was like 20 pounds
You really didn't actually read the post, did you? "However, if solar panels become reasonable useful" was what I said. Nowhere did I say "Yes, our current panels are so good you could run all the cabs in New York off a single square meter of them."
adding hydrogen cracking and recomposition would only make the system less efficient then using a normal battery
Explain to me where you got that from. Yes, putting all that equipment would make it less efficient than it was before, you'll note that I said that the first time, but where you get the comparison to chemical batteries? I'd love to see you back that statement up.
Wouldn't help much. When it crystallizes at 14 K its density is 0.088 g/cm^3. Compare that to the liquid density of 0.07 g/cm^3 and you see its not much of an improvement. Gasoline, by comparison, is around 700 g/cm^3.
This is about the single most limiting factor in hydrogen powered vehicles. There are people working on tricks to store hydrogen at greater densities, but I don't know if any of them are close or whatever. Storing it as a liquid isn't a good anwer anyway, it takes wayyyy to much power to do it. Several times what you'd get by burning it, in fact.
lets see to make hydrogen you need ahhh, could it be electricity? ___ You Burn the Coal to get the Electricty to get the Hydrogen to Put in the car. Oil baby the stuff just comes out of the ground like majic, you burn it and get CO2, and that feeds the rainforests
Hey, did you know that some power plants actually use Uranium or sunlight or water or wind rather than coal and oil? It's amazing! Oh, and did you know that there are almost no power plants on the grid that go around on wheels? And that they are therefore 10 zillion times as efficient as the portable variety in your car? Who'd have thought?!? Anyone who put more than 2 seconds thought into it, that's who.
Energy Density. Look it up. The whole point of using gasoline is that it stores so much energy per unit weight/volume. Hydrogen fuel cells could work, but just to store energy, there are many better alternatives as far as energy density is concerned.
I thought that Hydrogen had the highest energy density, many times that of gasoline... why did I think that?
Because you're right? I dunno if it's the highest, but it's certainly higher than gasoline. MJ/kg: H2 = 141.90, Gasoline = 47.27. The catch is that even as a liquid, H2 can't be as dense as gas. At best, it's 1/10. So by weight, it's much better, but by volume it's only a third as good.
Sure there are difficulties with transportation and storage of hydrogen, but there are similar issues with gasoline and natural gas and we seem to cope with them relatively easily.
Well sure. Oil is available in only a few places and must be refined and then shipped out to the world. H2 can be made from water, which is slightly more ubiquitous. Currently, H2 is more expensive but that would change with millions of new customers.
If a vehicle uses water to store the needed H2, it will also need an electrical source to electrolyze the water. Where does this come from? Why not just use an electrical motor?
You got it backwards, silly. If H2 is a battery, water is a dead battery. You put H2 into the car, not water. Yes, you could do that and 'charge' it using lead-acid batteries or a normal gas engine, but that's defeating the purpose of using H2 in the first place.
I just don't think H2 is a viable source of power. Unlike a hydrocarbon, combustion breaks very few bonds and therefore releases very little energy
Hmmm, well, actually, no. By unit mass, combusting Hydrogen has 3 times the energy density of gasoline. It just can't be stored as compactly, even as a cold liquid.
And on top of that, most batteries only last a few years before having to be thrown away. And they're not exactly the most eco-friendly item in the landfill.