They are over 100 launches per year and over 8000 objects being tracked in Earth orbit, including about 500 active satellites. So having a few dozen additional satellites in orbit at any given time will not make tracking any more difficult than it already is.
As for the weapon bit, these satellite would be no more likely to be weapons than any other. Given their low number I don't see how this would make other nations uneasy. Plus deterrence works you know.
If you had paid attention you will know that his reactor didn't work. An Am-241 alpha source with an Al/Be target is much too feeble of a neutron source to start a breeder. You'll need a strong neutron emitter like Cf-252. But you won't find that in a hardware store. My estimate of 200 billion detectors is based on the critical mass of Am-241/Np-237.
Do you know that the MERs lowered the landing platform on a cable, followed by rocket engine ignition and a brief hover period ? Do you know that, for some reason, it worked, twice, with no broken or tangled cable ?
MSL uses the exact same technique, only it is simpler since after the cables are cut the rover is already on the ground. So the second part with the platform egress is not required. The only new elements are the detection of the touchdown and the fly away. The first has been extensively studied after the failure of Mars Polar Lander and the second is trivial. So no surprise there.
In summary, the MSL EDL sequence is simpler than that of the MERs and almost entirely flight proven.
Yet for some reason I see a number of jackasses like yourself who see the video and claim that it is too complicated. Maybe you could document yourself or (shockingly) admit that the JPL is not staffed by idiots.
You need to take into account the number of years of operation. Building a given power capacity as nuclear is more expensive than as solar, but the lifetime is at least twice longer. According to your own reference the lifetime cost per kWh is one and a half time better for nuclear than solar. That is the proper metric to use for comparison.
Of course, nuclear has many advantages over solar, like a constant power output, a much smaller footprint and a lower number of deaths per kWh. These advantages are not apparent in the per kWh cost.
One thing that is well established is that the targets were deliberately spared conventional bombing so that the effects of the nuclear bombs could be properly studied. Of course that doesn't mean that getting this data was the reason beyond the bombing, just a side benefit.
About the last part. The consensus among high ranking officers at the time was that the bombing had no military value, in the sense that they would not have significantly helped future military operations (like an invasion).
They might however have been useful in forcing a surrender by breaking the will to continue the war, but that is not the same thing.
Apart from the desire to end the war quickly, one reason that is often mentioned is that being able to credit the quick end of the war on nuclear weapons was politically useful as it justified the enormous expense of the Manhattan project. Especially since it was not stopped after the defeat of Germany (and with the knowledge that the Japanese had no serious nuclear weapon development program).
If don't understand the concept behind inconveniencing people to rally them to your cause. If you put a banner up, I might read it and support your cause, if you piss me off, I certainly won't.
If the point is to demonstrate the consequences of the law, well, I think I am quite capable of imagining what it means for a site to be shutdown. Or perhaps you are trying to emulate the stupid filmmaker who thought he had to demonstrate that eating to much will cause you to gain weight, as if this wasn't obvious.
The problem with this report is that whatever evidence might exist has not been published. It is just a string of unproved allegations. It is also of a very poor quality. A lot of stuff has been debunked already. For example they claimed Iran hired a guy to develop an implosion system. Simple research showed that he is fact specialized in nanodiamonds, something that has nothing to do with nuclear technology.
It is very similar to the fabrications concerning Iraq, like the Niger uranium forgeries for instance.
So, the point still stand, where is the smoking gun ?
Do you have any evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons ? Because as far as I know, all they are doing is producing fuel for nuclear power stations and medical isotopes production reactors. It amazes me that after the lies in the lead-up to the Iraq war people still takes U.S. propaganda at face value.
We already produce more food than needed to feed everyone. GM food doesn't help the starving, on the contrary. Imagine a farmer that cannot afford to pay the Monsanto one year tax: oops, no seeds !
If your AP offers it, use its "guest" feature. Otherwise, you need to put the internal network behind a firewall. It means that you have two AP. The first AP is public and directly connected to the internet. That's the AP included with the internet router. The second AP is password-protected and located behind the firewall. If you don't use WIFI for your internal network then you don't need a second AP. For the firewall you can use a dedicated appliance or stick something like pfSense or IPCop on any old box.
Please, not that again. We haven't landed more than 1 ton at a time yet but we could do it within a few years if we wanted too. There are no fundamental limitations. See for example the hypercone concept.
Why do you believe it isn't the case ? Anything NASA writes in-house is in the public domain, by law. Any copyright notice or restriction you might see has been added by an over-zealous employee and can be safely ignored.
The NPT is a deal that gives a signatory access to nuclear technology in exchange for the promise not to develop weapons. Since Iran doesn't not have a nuclear weapon program, it is not in their interest to withdraw, since they would then no longer be able to buy fuel, advice or technology from a NPT member.
As for the consequence of a withdrawal: In theory, they could withdraw and do whatever they wanted, but that assumes that the security council follows international law. Remember India ? They didn't sign the NPT yet were sanctionned when they conducted nuclear tests. Being punished for violating a treaty you didn't sign is an interesting concept, yet that's the world we live in. The US is also pushing for the NPT to be obligatory for all UN members (with an exemption for Israel of course). If Iran withdrew, the US would interpret the move as an admission of the existence of a nuclear weapon program, and that would be bad.
The real issue is that the US wants to deny Iran any dual-use technology. It doesn't matter that enrichment for peaceful purpose if perfectly legal or that there is not proof of the existence of a military program in Iran. As long as the US maintains that position and as long as Iran refuses to abandon its right to technological development and energy security, there will be no solution.
TAI, like the other modern time scales, takes relativity into account. It is defined as the proper time of an observer on the geoid. Thus TAI is the same for everyone.
Pulling the plug will not influence the fate of the bill, it will only annoy users. I never understood the idea that you will make people sympathetic to your cause by annoying them. Putting a banner that explains why you think SOPA is wrong is a good idea. It gives visibility to your arguments and might convince people. Turning the site off is easier but accomplishes none of this. On the contrary, not being exposed to arguments against SOFA and not knowing why I should care, I might support it just to piss off the idiot that blocked my access to the site.
Slashdot Mirror
Yes you can. It is called nuclear energy.
Not to mention their idiot president threatening to punish the engineers involved in recent failures. That's a great way to stop the brain drain.
They are over 100 launches per year and over 8000 objects being tracked in Earth orbit, including about 500 active satellites. So having a few dozen additional satellites in orbit at any given time will not make tracking any more difficult than it already is.
As for the weapon bit, these satellite would be no more likely to be weapons than any other. Given their low number I don't see how this would make other nations uneasy. Plus deterrence works you know.
Movies have a much larger audience than games. They sell at a lower price, but they sell more. You have to look at total revenues, not per unit price.
If you had paid attention you will know that his reactor didn't work. An Am-241 alpha source with an Al/Be target is much too feeble of a neutron source to start a breeder. You'll need a strong neutron emitter like Cf-252. But you won't find that in a hardware store. My estimate of 200 billion detectors is based on the critical mass of Am-241/Np-237.
...in the candle industry.
Has slashdot morphed into the history channel ?
You'll need more than 200 billion detectors though. Good luck with that.
Do you know that the MERs lowered the landing platform on a cable, followed by rocket engine ignition and a brief hover period ? Do you know that, for some reason, it worked, twice, with no broken or tangled cable ?
See it here (3:03 - 3:33).
MSL uses the exact same technique, only it is simpler since after the cables are cut the rover is already on the ground. So the second part with the platform egress is not required. The only new elements are the detection of the touchdown and the fly away. The first has been extensively studied after the failure of Mars Polar Lander and the second is trivial. So no surprise there.
In summary, the MSL EDL sequence is simpler than that of the MERs and almost entirely flight proven.
Yet for some reason I see a number of jackasses like yourself who see the video and claim that it is too complicated. Maybe you could document yourself or (shockingly) admit that the JPL is not staffed by idiots.
You need to take into account the number of years of operation. Building a given power capacity as nuclear is more expensive than as solar, but the lifetime is at least twice longer. According to your own reference the lifetime cost per kWh is one and a half time better for nuclear than solar. That is the proper metric to use for comparison.
Of course, nuclear has many advantages over solar, like a constant power output, a much smaller footprint and a lower number of deaths per kWh. These advantages are not apparent in the per kWh cost.
One thing that is well established is that the targets were deliberately spared conventional bombing so that the effects of the nuclear bombs could be properly studied. Of course that doesn't mean that getting this data was the reason beyond the bombing, just a side benefit.
About the last part. The consensus among high ranking officers at the time was that the bombing had no military value, in the sense that they would not have significantly helped future military operations (like an invasion).
They might however have been useful in forcing a surrender by breaking the will to continue the war, but that is not the same thing.
Apart from the desire to end the war quickly, one reason that is often mentioned is that being able to credit the quick end of the war on nuclear weapons was politically useful as it justified the enormous expense of the Manhattan project. Especially since it was not stopped after the defeat of Germany (and with the knowledge that the Japanese had no serious nuclear weapon development program).
They aren't. The pilots is not included.
If don't understand the concept behind inconveniencing people to rally them to your cause. If you put a banner up, I might read it and support your cause, if you piss me off, I certainly won't.
If the point is to demonstrate the consequences of the law, well, I think I am quite capable of imagining what it means for a site to be shutdown. Or perhaps you are trying to emulate the stupid filmmaker who thought he had to demonstrate that eating to much will cause you to gain weight, as if this wasn't obvious.
The problem with this report is that whatever evidence might exist has not been published. It is just a string of unproved allegations. It is also of a very poor quality. A lot of stuff has been debunked already. For example they claimed Iran hired a guy to develop an implosion system. Simple research showed that he is fact specialized in nanodiamonds, something that has nothing to do with nuclear technology.
It is very similar to the fabrications concerning Iraq, like the Niger uranium forgeries for instance.
So, the point still stand, where is the smoking gun ?
Do you have any evidence that Iran is pursuing nuclear weapons ? Because as far as I know, all they are doing is producing fuel for nuclear power stations and medical isotopes production reactors. It amazes me that after the lies in the lead-up to the Iraq war people still takes U.S. propaganda at face value.
What if the primary goal was to funnel taxpayer money to defense contractors ? Then I'll say it was a success.
We already produce more food than needed to feed everyone. GM food doesn't help the starving, on the contrary. Imagine a farmer that cannot afford to pay the Monsanto one year tax: oops, no seeds !
If your AP offers it, use its "guest" feature. Otherwise, you need to put the internal network behind a firewall. It means that you have two AP. The first AP is public and directly connected to the internet. That's the AP included with the internet router. The second AP is password-protected and located behind the firewall. If you don't use WIFI for your internal network then you don't need a second AP. For the firewall you can use a dedicated appliance or stick something like pfSense or IPCop on any old box.
Please, not that again. We haven't landed more than 1 ton at a time yet but we could do it within a few years if we wanted too. There are no fundamental limitations. See for example the hypercone concept.
Why do you believe it isn't the case ? Anything NASA writes in-house is in the public domain, by law. Any copyright notice or restriction you might see has been added by an over-zealous employee and can be safely ignored.
The NPT is a deal that gives a signatory access to nuclear technology in exchange for the promise not to develop weapons. Since Iran doesn't not have a nuclear weapon program, it is not in their interest to withdraw, since they would then no longer be able to buy fuel, advice or technology from a NPT member.
As for the consequence of a withdrawal: In theory, they could withdraw and do whatever they wanted, but that assumes that the security council follows international law. Remember India ? They didn't sign the NPT yet were sanctionned when they conducted nuclear tests. Being punished for violating a treaty you didn't sign is an interesting concept, yet that's the world we live in. The US is also pushing for the NPT to be obligatory for all UN members (with an exemption for Israel of course). If Iran withdrew, the US would interpret the move as an admission of the existence of a nuclear weapon program, and that would be bad.
The real issue is that the US wants to deny Iran any dual-use technology. It doesn't matter that enrichment for peaceful purpose if perfectly legal or that there is not proof of the existence of a military program in Iran. As long as the US maintains that position and as long as Iran refuses to abandon its right to technological development and energy security, there will be no solution.
TAI, like the other modern time scales, takes relativity into account. It is defined as the proper time of an observer on the geoid. Thus TAI is the same for everyone.
I didn't know writting a CD driver counted as "innovation".
Pulling the plug will not influence the fate of the bill, it will only annoy users. I never understood the idea that you will make people sympathetic to your cause by annoying them. Putting a banner that explains why you think SOPA is wrong is a good idea. It gives visibility to your arguments and might convince people. Turning the site off is easier but accomplishes none of this. On the contrary, not being exposed to arguments against SOFA and not knowing why I should care, I might support it just to piss off the idiot that blocked my access to the site.
Please, not that quote again. Kennedy was "not that interested in space".