Where do you get that information from? I'm not a physical chemist, but the rocketry books I've read say that chemical fuels aren't going to get much past 450 to 500 seconds Isp. The SSMEs get about 450, I think. Isp (specific impulse) is directly proportional to exhaust temperature, which is always going to be an issue in practical rocket design.
The 1970's NERVA nuclear rocket program managed to get about twice the Isp of our best chemical rockets with a decent amount of thrust. Ion drives might give you an order of magnitude improvement over chemical rockets, but they don't have the thrust to be used in launch vehicles.
The only propulsion system I've seen proposed that could realistically produce 2 to 3 orders of magnitude increase in efficiency is the Orion drive. The government doesn't like the idea of building hundreds of small, clean nukes, though. Greenpeace gets a bit riled up about it, too.
Of course, if I had my way, they'd be welcome to protest right at the launch site.
But I don't know what the heck DSL is supposed to have to do with it; the physical *medium* consumer DSL uses (copper POTS lines) sure as hell isn't going to support a 9Gbps connection...
Sure it will... provided you're not more than three feet from the central office.
No kidding. Do you have any idea what kind of hardware they've got at Los Alamos? Just because the gov't is buying a huge ramdisk doesn't mean they want to use it to invade your privacy.
It's more likely that they just want to make bigger and better bombs.
Sounds about right. According to my detector here in California at about 200 feet elevation, I'm getting around 33 microroentgens per hour. I measured about 25% more than that up in the Sierras last summer due to the higher altitude.
Of course, *I* wrote the firmware in this thing, so God only knows how accurate it is.
Not sure why that's modded as flamebait. I'm pushing 100,000 miles on my '99 Accord, and I've never opened the hood except to add washer fluid when they forgot to during an oil change, or once in awhile just to look at it and think to myself, 'yep... I got one of those ULEV VTEC watchamacallits... cool...'
I'm perfectly capable of changing the oil and such myself, but I don't LIKE working on cars, and I've got plenty of other stuff to do with my time. I put up with crappy cars for years, and paying a bit more for dealer service is worth it for having a reliable car and not having to mess with it.
Now, I've got a friend who needs to have his COMPUTER welded shut. His wife has threatened to next time they buy a new one he hasn't had a chance to mess up yet...
The Oscar 7 satellite was launched from the same place in 1974. It spent about 20 years dead in space after its batteries shorted, before it started working again out of the blue.
Incidentally, that launch pad is about 3 miles from where I'm sitting. I can see it if I climb up on the antenna tower on the roof, but management got mad last time I did that to watch a launch.
Yeah, I discovered the same 'anti-traffic' thing myself. But you know what? At least in the LA area it really pisses people off. The general public doesn't understand why you wouldn't want cars packed bumper to bumper and braking in unison. Even if they start teaching this in driver's ed, how many people do you think will actually do it? Yeah, hopefully it'd be enough to make a difference, but it'll also give more gaps for those zig-zagging idiots who can't stand to wait in line with everyone else.
On a related note, check out the sample videos at DriveCam.com. So long as you're not at fault, this would be great to have. I was thinking of using a single-board computer with a couple of USB webcams under Linux and a solid state accelerometer to do the same sort of thing. I think I'd add a manual trigger to catch video of the idiot who ran a red light in front of me or cut me off, though.
Despite everyone here seeming to think that VoIP should be totally unregulated, 911 support is IMHO a very Good Thing.
People expect - and reasonably so - that they can pick up any phone in the country, dial 911, and get an emergency operator.
And how long is it going to be before people start installing VoIP payphones, if they haven't already? What about pre-wired apartment complexes offering cheap phone service?
Use of VoIP isn't limited to geeks with a dedicated and separate VoIP setup anymore.
It's so much better to just throw an unfinished, buggy, unenjoyable game on the market now because someone didn't set a realistic schedule.
You know, Microsoft is really doing themselves a disservice by waiting so long to release Windows 2007. If they'd just release it now, they'd be able to blow away the competition!
Unless, of course, Apple stops dragging their feet on OS XVI, or Linus gets with it and gives his blessing to the 3.4 kernel...
Yeah, I found that out the hard way when I was wiring up a jack once. That was back when I never carried a leatherman, and stripped wires with my teeth. Bad idea.
Still didn't hurt as much as the time I was up in my attic, hanging on to an antique test set and trying to figure out which one was my newly-installed ISDN line. I'd just clipped on to what turned out to be the main voice line when my girlfriend called. I could feel every cycle of that 90 volts pulse in time with the phone's mechanical ringer...
And to clarify a bit more, none of the company representatives I spoke to thought it was reasonable (or ethical) for the company to claim IP unrelated to the work I'm paid for. Apparently it's one of those boilerplate things the lawyers like, but I don't think any reasonable employer would have any object to making an exception for a well-defined case.
My situation's probably a little different, since I wasn't just hired at a new company exactly. The company took over a contract from my former employer, so I was probably in a better position to have some leverage.
Anyway, I'm involved in an open source project that doesn't relate to what I do at work at all, and there's no reason to believe they'd want to screw me, but I figured it was better to be safe. So after talking to the local HR guy, I wrote up a letter describing what it is I'm doing, what parts of the IP agreemenet bothered me, and what I wanted to be exempt from. The company ethics board reviewed it, saw no conflict, and gave me back a memo acknowledging my letter and stating their acceptance of my terms.
I didn't make a big deal of it, but it did throw the local HR people off a bit. They're not used to anyone questioning policy, but I explained the situation and they were understanding.
Now if I could just get someone to give me the diffs between the new ethics manual they just sent out and the old one, and tell me why it's so imperative we sign off on this one, I'd be happy...
Try this on Earth and you can see that it's not instantaneous. Find a long, solid object - a nice long stretch of unused train track will do. Have a friend go a few hundred meters down the track, and put your ear up to the rail while they hit it with a hammer. You'll notice that the impulse travels much faster than it does in air, but it's far slower than the speed of light. It's exactly the speed of sound in steel, in fact.
Remember, your 'solid' matter is still better than 99% empty space. Motion isn't just magically transferred between atoms - it takes time.
Start out on the bare metal - no operating system, BIOS, or anything else between you and the hardware. We did a little bit of this in some CS classes when I was in school, but not much. I do a lot more of it now as a hobby.
Most of my work is with Motorola HC08 series microcontrollers. There's nothing like being limited to 192 bytes of RAM to make you really stop and think about what you're doing.
Yes, that's BYTES, not kilobytes or megabytes for you PC programmers. And your stack comes out of that same 192 bytes, so you've got to keep that in mind every time you jump to a subroutine. That return address isn't stored by magic!
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Where do you get that information from? I'm not a physical chemist, but the rocketry books I've read say that chemical fuels aren't going to get much past 450 to 500 seconds Isp. The SSMEs get about 450, I think. Isp (specific impulse) is directly proportional to exhaust temperature, which is always going to be an issue in practical rocket design.
The 1970's NERVA nuclear rocket program managed to get about twice the Isp of our best chemical rockets with a decent amount of thrust. Ion drives might give you an order of magnitude improvement over chemical rockets, but they don't have the thrust to be used in launch vehicles.
The only propulsion system I've seen proposed that could realistically produce 2 to 3 orders of magnitude increase in efficiency is the Orion drive. The government doesn't like the idea of building hundreds of small, clean nukes, though. Greenpeace gets a bit riled up about it, too.
Of course, if I had my way, they'd be welcome to protest right at the launch site.
Sure it will... provided you're not more than three feet from the central office.
No leaking roof, but most of these silos fill up with ground water.
Plus you've got asbestos everywhere, contaminated propelant and diesel tanks... it'd be fun, but above all a giant money pit.
Someone gets this idea every few years. Probably from watching too many bad hacker movies.
Just smile, nod politely, and let the lawyers take care of it.
No kidding. Do you have any idea what kind of hardware they've got at Los Alamos? Just because the gov't is buying a huge ramdisk doesn't mean they want to use it to invade your privacy.
It's more likely that they just want to make bigger and better bombs.
So relax. =]
Doesn't observe it? It probably relies on it - tells you where the good stuff is!
Nonsense!
I just read a Halo book last weekend.
Of course, *I* wrote the firmware in this thing, so God only knows how accurate it is.
I was just reading that book again yesterday. Now if only we could un-make that awful movie.
I think I'll go make a thirty-second bomb.
"I am a thirty-second bomb! I am a thirty-second bomb! Twenty-nine!... twenty-eight!... twenty-seven!..."
Not sure why that's modded as flamebait. I'm pushing 100,000 miles on my '99 Accord, and I've never opened the hood except to add washer fluid when they forgot to during an oil change, or once in awhile just to look at it and think to myself, 'yep... I got one of those ULEV VTEC watchamacallits... cool...'
I'm perfectly capable of changing the oil and such myself, but I don't LIKE working on cars, and I've got plenty of other stuff to do with my time. I put up with crappy cars for years, and paying a bit more for dealer service is worth it for having a reliable car and not having to mess with it.
Now, I've got a friend who needs to have his COMPUTER welded shut. His wife has threatened to next time they buy a new one he hasn't had a chance to mess up yet...
Yeah, we used to do this in the Panama City mall. Good times...
See http://www.amsat.org/. Some of the satellites are very easy to work - I've talked to NO-44 with a handheld before.
12000 (30SCS HQ), off Airfield.
Incidentally, that launch pad is about 3 miles from where I'm sitting. I can see it if I climb up on the antenna tower on the roof, but management got mad last time I did that to watch a launch.
Yeah, I discovered the same 'anti-traffic' thing myself. But you know what? At least in the LA area it really pisses people off. The general public doesn't understand why you wouldn't want cars packed bumper to bumper and braking in unison. Even if they start teaching this in driver's ed, how many people do you think will actually do it? Yeah, hopefully it'd be enough to make a difference, but it'll also give more gaps for those zig-zagging idiots who can't stand to wait in line with everyone else.
Despite everyone here seeming to think that VoIP should be totally unregulated, 911 support is IMHO a very Good Thing.
People expect - and reasonably so - that they can pick up any phone in the country, dial 911, and get an emergency operator.
And how long is it going to be before people start installing VoIP payphones, if they haven't already? What about pre-wired apartment complexes offering cheap phone service?
Use of VoIP isn't limited to geeks with a dedicated and separate VoIP setup anymore.
It's so much better to just throw an unfinished, buggy, unenjoyable game on the market now because someone didn't set a realistic schedule.
You know, Microsoft is really doing themselves a disservice by waiting so long to release Windows 2007. If they'd just release it now, they'd be able to blow away the competition!
Unless, of course, Apple stops dragging their feet on OS XVI, or Linus gets with it and gives his blessing to the 3.4 kernel...
After all these years, I can put that C-64 mouse to use!
If I can find it, anyway. I think it's buried in a pile of VAXen...
Yeah, I found that out the hard way when I was wiring up a jack once. That was back when I never carried a leatherman, and stripped wires with my teeth. Bad idea.
Still didn't hurt as much as the time I was up in my attic, hanging on to an antique test set and trying to figure out which one was my newly-installed ISDN line. I'd just clipped on to what turned out to be the main voice line when my girlfriend called. I could feel every cycle of that 90 volts pulse in time with the phone's mechanical ringer...
And to clarify a bit more, none of the company representatives I spoke to thought it was reasonable (or ethical) for the company to claim IP unrelated to the work I'm paid for. Apparently it's one of those boilerplate things the lawyers like, but I don't think any reasonable employer would have any object to making an exception for a well-defined case.
My situation's probably a little different, since I wasn't just hired at a new company exactly. The company took over a contract from my former employer, so I was probably in a better position to have some leverage.
Anyway, I'm involved in an open source project that doesn't relate to what I do at work at all, and there's no reason to believe they'd want to screw me, but I figured it was better to be safe. So after talking to the local HR guy, I wrote up a letter describing what it is I'm doing, what parts of the IP agreemenet bothered me, and what I wanted to be exempt from. The company ethics board reviewed it, saw no conflict, and gave me back a memo acknowledging my letter and stating their acceptance of my terms.
I didn't make a big deal of it, but it did throw the local HR people off a bit. They're not used to anyone questioning policy, but I explained the situation and they were understanding.
Now if I could just get someone to give me the diffs between the new ethics manual they just sent out and the old one, and tell me why it's so imperative we sign off on this one, I'd be happy...
If you want to save it, raise the money to haul it off and put it on display somewhere. Anything less is meaningless.
Try this on Earth and you can see that it's not instantaneous. Find a long, solid object - a nice long stretch of unused train track will do. Have a friend go a few hundred meters down the track, and put your ear up to the rail while they hit it with a hammer. You'll notice that the impulse travels much faster than it does in air, but it's far slower than the speed of light. It's exactly the speed of sound in steel, in fact.
Remember, your 'solid' matter is still better than 99% empty space. Motion isn't just magically transferred between atoms - it takes time.
Start out on the bare metal - no operating system, BIOS, or anything else between you and the hardware. We did a little bit of this in some CS classes when I was in school, but not much. I do a lot more of it now as a hobby.
Most of my work is with Motorola HC08 series microcontrollers. There's nothing like being limited to 192 bytes of RAM to make you really stop and think about what you're doing.
Yes, that's BYTES, not kilobytes or megabytes for you PC programmers. And your stack comes out of that same 192 bytes, so you've got to keep that in mind every time you jump to a subroutine. That return address isn't stored by magic!
Now get off my damn lawn.