I got to play the baseball game with my brother-inlaw's system (his wife camped out at 3:30 am to get his birthday present a month early).
When you get a solid hit (e.g. a homer or a double), there is a short rumble in the controller. I almost dropped the thing the first time it shook on my (nobody told me about it, and its remote-like appearance threw me off).
If the US went to war at some point in the next decade or two with Korea, Iran, China, etc., it would likely need the ability to rapidly re-deploy satellites that are knocked out. In case you think an altercation between China and the US is unlikely, they've reportedly already started messing around with US spy satelites by shining big ground based lazers at them (possibly to blind them).
Something to think about: if China or another nation knocked out an unmanned facility in "international" territory (e.g. a satelite) for whatever reason, do you think the US would go to war over it? Having a quick launch capability or ability to change orbits for existing satellites gives another option that doesn't involve applying force, such as "impounding" said country's space hardware.
Man Out Of Space (MOOS) (50's or 60's?) was a proposal for an emergency escape system from a spacecraft that invoved the use of a heat shield in a can. A foam filled bag that froze into a giant blob was deployed from the back of an astronaut that acted as a balute and heat shield. The astronaut actually used a hand held rocket gun to de-orbit. I've heard of ballutes with relation to other projects, but can't think of the source at the moment.
The Roton launch vehicle (1990's) looked something like DC-X (tail-first SSTO and landing) intended to use rotors to slow it down as it descended tail first from orbit, much like a helecopter during an unpowered landing. A prototype was flown that demonstrated a landing using rocket-powered rotors. Tom Clancy was involved in funding it, but he had to back out when his finances got scrambled by a divorce, eventually leading to the company's demise.
The crew compartment was finished, its just that the test regimine called for an unmanned flight first. At least one cosmonaut volunteered to take the chance and go up in it on that first flight, but was swatted down by management.
Its a shame that it was never used; its one flight was a complete success before the program was put on hold due to a financial crisis in the Soviet Union (partially due to the tremendous cost overruns of the Buran/Energia program itself). If one compares the US and Soviet shuttles (not Russian, they never flew it), the Buran was technically superior in terms of launch costs and capability. The only part of it used was the strap-on boosters; they are still today as stand-alone rockets.
Ironic that Murphy's Law (originally stated when a sensor was wired backward prior to a rocket-sled test) was coined by people eventually sucked into NASA.
"The bigger question is does NASA have the ego to handle letting outsiders look at projects and can they accept the constructive criticism that results? NASA is continually trying to do more with fewer dollars, perhaps its time they tried a more open source/distributed computing approach to some of the work."
National security concerns restrict access to some of the technologies. I'm sure N. Korea and other unfriendly countries would love to get unfettered to man-rated launch systems to improve their balistic missile systems. As much as I'd like to see the nitty-gritty details, I have to respect that there is a legitimate security concern by opening up development for public review.
How is criticizm that is not well-founded (unfounded?) good for anything, much less a bureaucracy? It seems to me that such criticizm only results in growth of said bureaucracy.
On my planet, a growing bureaucracy is generally considered to be about as desireable as a growing fungal infection.
We already did Apollo! It's time for something different, but you're not going to get it out of NASA. Every program with a significant engineering advance eventually gets pidgeon-holed or cancled by various factions composed of scientists ("unmanned-probes are a better return on investment, spend the money on my pet project") or politicians ("foster interanational cooperation" or "send jobs to my district").
Space is not for rocket scientists anymore than climbing Mt. Everest is only for explorers. Lots of average people want to go there because it is interesting. How many people are interested in sending unmanned probes to the top of Everest or to the ocean bottom? Some, for sure, but a lot more people are interested in visiting in person for reasons that have nothing to do with science.
Why do we have a government agency who has mottos like "doing [insert activity]... as only NASA can"? Enough people with financial means have finally asked themselves this question wo that there is finally a private space station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_1) and private human space flight. Does anyone find it that difficult to believe that a private individual or group will have functioning spaceship ready before Ares flies? I predict when that happens, NASA will undergo a tremendous shake-up as people see it has done more to hold back human spaceflight than to promote it.
Ares is just an Apollo repeat (initial Apollo plans called for a moon base too). Lets have them try for something better, like a true spaceship that can be reused. Ancient mariners were vastly limitted as long as they were unable/afraid to sail out of sight of land. We need a space equivalent to the vast ocean liners, container ships, research vessels, etc. that are capable of staying away from ports for long periods of time and with an open-ended lifespan. Think of the aircraft carriers that are nuclear power and capable of staying at see for several years!
Let's move past the current life rafts that can't even hold a dozen people and have NASA work on the big stuff that nobody else can do (yet). Hopefully NASA or its successor will get its charter changed to have it really work on space exploration instead of trying to be all things to all people and failing at most of them. But I wouldn't bet on it starting down this road until Ares fails or it gets shown up by private efforts doing the same thing at a fraction of the cost.
Prior to 486s, they used to have the floating point functions on a separate chip from the processor. If the GPU is moving to the processor now, what will be the next thing to get sucked in?
People do things the same way until they think of a better way. I hear a lot of people talking about "in-situ resource utilization", but most seem to be thinking of trying to duplicate what is currently done in the industrialized world. What they seem to gloss over is the need for the tools to make the tools to bootstrap in-situ industry in space. This is sort of like saying, how do you make a blacksmith shop (used for making other tools and finished goods) when you have limited carrying space on your person or in your covered wagon?
How about a new series of contests with prizes related to developing items using only the resources available in a certain local? For example, have a student competition that starts with dirt, sand, clay, etc. from a given area and challenge them to build something. One contest could be for simply developing a container. Simple, you say? What if the resource available is just sand? Granite? You could allow the use of other materials, but heavily penalize the use of consumables. Various levels of award money could be available for making a container capable of holding a liquid or even an air-tight container (bonus points for higher pressure capacity before bursting).
Another contest could be for creating electronic components using "in-situ" resources. Conductors, insulator, resistor, semiconductor, etc. are all needed for modern manufacturing. Also, contests for creating things like heating elements, power generators/collectors, etc. would be good for creating industrial components.
Some people have talked about using solar ovens, etc. as a means for making these things. Lets put it to the test! Its science fiction or speculation until somebody actually does it. Once people make progress in these areas in the public arena, you'll start to see some of the more successful ideas adapted for real missions.
Right idea, wrong phenomenon. Tornadoes are powered by mezocyclones found in supercells. Hurricanes are powered by a rising column of warm air centered in the eye (warm ocean water is the heat source).
Lots of posters are mentioning the mirror trick. Unfortunately, that won't work with some double amputees (i.e. portions of both arms or both legs amputated). This seems like it might help in these cases if they have some way to provide input corresponding to the phantom limb.
"Oil is the result of biomass getting compressed in the earth over a very long period of time."
And diamonds are the result of carbon being squished under heat and pressure in extinct volcanoes...except when their not. Many of the artificial diamonds talked about in the earlier article http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/2 6/0040204 use varients of the same processes used in the semiconductor industry to grow
The thing is, Titan is much colder than anything around here. Its "rocks" are likely water ice, it snows methane, etc. Different chemical reactions than what we're used to can happen if you lower the ambient temperature by that much.
"In most cases, the person owning the fire arm has to have a permit or a license to carry it, or even own it."
Um...not in the US. -Most states require background checks prior to purchasing a _hand_gun_ (doesn't affect other things like rifles or shotguns). -No restrictions on transporting or licensing handguns, rifles, shotguns, etc. as long as they aren't fully automatic (they may have to be cased or partially disassembled to transport). -Sales from one individual to another don't require any governement involvment (except sales tax which isn't usually enforced). -My state (MN) requires those born in the mid 80's or later to have had gun safety training prior to getting a hunting license, but this doesn't affect things like target practice
Perhaps the solution is a more-blunt tip (a la Kistler K-1). I spent some time working on control problems for supercavitating torpedos; they use a blunt nose (essentially a flat plate) to force the shockwave to spread out and detach further from the rest of the vehicle. The vehicle then resides in the "shadow" of the shockwave with only a very small portion being exposed to the shockwave.
If it's good enough to use for rail gun amo and satellite-launched gravity-well weapons, it may be a good fit for other high-temp, high-friction envirionments. My guess is that it isn't used for spacecraft already because of its mass; in this case, the mass doesn't matter as much since the fuel and launch mechanism isn't being launched with along with the payload.
The reason that most meteors don't hit the ground is because they are so small. The one that do hit the ground and are found right away often have FROST on them since they were so cold in space. As for exploding into a million pieces, meteors aren't designed for reentry.
Any compentent aeroshell engineer could design a case that would protect the payload (such as a capsule covered with the stuff they use for ablatively cooling rocket nozzles). The big concern usually with burning through airframes isn't that we don't have materials that can withstand the heat and friction; it is that those materials typically aren't very light-weight or are too expensive.
Besides, once the track is set up, it should be easy to try out new aeroshell designs! One of the stumbling blocks right now is trying to accellerate a test article to high enough speeds. Very often, they stick a test article on a sounding rocket that sends back data during re-entry.
A gauss gun is essentially an open-ended linear motor-instead of using magentic fields to push on magnetic fields produced by an armature that causes it to spin, the magnetic fields in the coil push on the payload in a linear fashion so it exits the end of the gun. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_gun
A rail gun has a conductor, such as a copper bar, placed accross two rails rails with opposing charges. When the bar completes the circuit between the rails, the current flowing through the bar causes a force (Lorentz force, I think) that causes it to accellerate down the rails. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gun
Rail guns actually exist capable of firing a projectile through several inches of armor (in labs, at any rate). The closest I've seen to a real gauss gun, other than video games and scifi, is when I saw a lab tech bring an electric clippers too close to an MRI (missed someone's head by _that_ much).
I got to see a laser demo in high school while attending a math competition. Assuming that low power meant "incapable of causing harm", I looked right into a lazer with both eyes to impress a friend.
What a complete idiot.
Amazingly, my night vision started returning about 7 years later!
Slashdot Mirror
I got to play the baseball game with my brother-inlaw's system (his wife camped out at 3:30 am to get his birthday present a month early).
When you get a solid hit (e.g. a homer or a double), there is a short rumble in the controller. I almost dropped the thing the first time it shook on my (nobody told me about it, and its remote-like appearance threw me off).
If the US went to war at some point in the next decade or two with Korea, Iran, China, etc., it would likely need the ability to rapidly re-deploy satellites that are knocked out. In case you think an altercation between China and the US is unlikely, they've reportedly already started messing around with US spy satelites by shining big ground based lazers at them (possibly to blind them).
Something to think about: if China or another nation knocked out an unmanned facility in "international" territory (e.g. a satelite) for whatever reason, do you think the US would go to war over it? Having a quick launch capability or ability to change orbits for existing satellites gives another option that doesn't involve applying force, such as "impounding" said country's space hardware.
X37 was a lifting body.
Two other methods for reentry.
Man Out Of Space (MOOS) (50's or 60's?) was a proposal for an emergency escape system from a spacecraft that invoved the use of a heat shield in a can. A foam filled bag that froze into a giant blob was deployed from the back of an astronaut that acted as a balute and heat shield. The astronaut actually used a hand held rocket gun to de-orbit. I've heard of ballutes with relation to other projects, but can't think of the source at the moment.
The Roton launch vehicle (1990's) looked something like DC-X (tail-first SSTO and landing) intended to use rotors to slow it down as it descended tail first from orbit, much like a helecopter during an unpowered landing. A prototype was flown that demonstrated a landing using rocket-powered rotors. Tom Clancy was involved in funding it, but he had to back out when his finances got scrambled by a divorce, eventually leading to the company's demise.
The crew compartment was finished, its just that the test regimine called for an unmanned flight first. At least one cosmonaut volunteered to take the chance and go up in it on that first flight, but was swatted down by management.
Its a shame that it was never used; its one flight was a complete success before the program was put on hold due to a financial crisis in the Soviet Union (partially due to the tremendous cost overruns of the Buran/Energia program itself). If one compares the US and Soviet shuttles (not Russian, they never flew it), the Buran was technically superior in terms of launch costs and capability. The only part of it used was the strap-on boosters; they are still today as stand-alone rockets.
"http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Murphys_law"
Ironic that Murphy's Law (originally stated when a sensor was wired backward prior to a rocket-sled test) was coined by people eventually sucked into NASA.
"The bigger question is does NASA have the ego to handle letting outsiders look at projects and can they accept the constructive criticism that results? NASA is continually trying to do more with fewer dollars, perhaps its time they tried a more open source/distributed computing approach to some of the work."
National security concerns restrict access to some of the technologies. I'm sure N. Korea and other unfriendly countries would love to get unfettered to man-rated launch systems to improve their balistic missile systems. As much as I'd like to see the nitty-gritty details, I have to respect that there is a legitimate security concern by opening up development for public review.
How is criticizm that is not well-founded (unfounded?) good for anything, much less a bureaucracy? It seems to me that such criticizm only results in growth of said bureaucracy.
On my planet, a growing bureaucracy is generally considered to be about as desireable as a growing fungal infection.
We already did Apollo! It's time for something different, but you're not going to get it out of NASA. Every program with a significant engineering advance eventually gets pidgeon-holed or cancled by various factions composed of scientists ("unmanned-probes are a better return on investment, spend the money on my pet project") or politicians ("foster interanational cooperation" or "send jobs to my district").
... as only NASA can"? Enough people with financial means have finally asked themselves this question wo that there is finally a private space station (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genesis_1) and private human space flight. Does anyone find it that difficult to believe that a private individual or group will have functioning spaceship ready before Ares flies? I predict when that happens, NASA will undergo a tremendous shake-up as people see it has done more to hold back human spaceflight than to promote it.
Space is not for rocket scientists anymore than climbing Mt. Everest is only for explorers. Lots of average people want to go there because it is interesting. How many people are interested in sending unmanned probes to the top of Everest or to the ocean bottom? Some, for sure, but a lot more people are interested in visiting in person for reasons that have nothing to do with science.
Why do we have a government agency who has mottos like "doing [insert activity]
Ares is just an Apollo repeat (initial Apollo plans called for a moon base too). Lets have them try for something better, like a true spaceship that can be reused. Ancient mariners were vastly limitted as long as they were unable/afraid to sail out of sight of land. We need a space equivalent to the vast ocean liners, container ships, research vessels, etc. that are capable of staying away from ports for long periods of time and with an open-ended lifespan. Think of the aircraft carriers that are nuclear power and capable of staying at see for several years!
Let's move past the current life rafts that can't even hold a dozen people and have NASA work on the big stuff that nobody else can do (yet). Hopefully NASA or its successor will get its charter changed to have it really work on space exploration instead of trying to be all things to all people and failing at most of them. But I wouldn't bet on it starting down this road until Ares fails or it gets shown up by private efforts doing the same thing at a fraction of the cost.
Prior to 486s, they used to have the floating point functions on a separate chip from the processor. If the GPU is moving to the processor now, what will be the next thing to get sucked in?
People do things the same way until they think of a better way. I hear a lot of people talking about "in-situ resource utilization", but most seem to be thinking of trying to duplicate what is currently done in the industrialized world. What they seem to gloss over is the need for the tools to make the tools to bootstrap in-situ industry in space. This is sort of like saying, how do you make a blacksmith shop (used for making other tools and finished goods) when you have limited carrying space on your person or in your covered wagon?
How about a new series of contests with prizes related to developing items using only the resources available in a certain local? For example, have a student competition that starts with dirt, sand, clay, etc. from a given area and challenge them to build something. One contest could be for simply developing a container. Simple, you say? What if the resource available is just sand? Granite? You could allow the use of other materials, but heavily penalize the use of consumables. Various levels of award money could be available for making a container capable of holding a liquid or even an air-tight container (bonus points for higher pressure capacity before bursting).
Another contest could be for creating electronic components using "in-situ" resources. Conductors, insulator, resistor, semiconductor, etc. are all needed for modern manufacturing. Also, contests for creating things like heating elements, power generators/collectors, etc. would be good for creating industrial components.
Some people have talked about using solar ovens, etc. as a means for making these things. Lets put it to the test! Its science fiction or speculation until somebody actually does it. Once people make progress in these areas in the public arena, you'll start to see some of the more successful ideas adapted for real missions.
My 6-year old has been trying to do this in the kitchen for a couple of years now, using baking soda, vinegar, a bottle and a balloon.
Right idea, wrong phenomenon. Tornadoes are powered by mezocyclones found in supercells. Hurricanes are powered by a rising column of warm air centered in the eye (warm ocean water is the heat source).
Lots of posters are mentioning the mirror trick. Unfortunately, that won't work with some double amputees (i.e. portions of both arms or both legs amputated). This seems like it might help in these cases if they have some way to provide input corresponding to the phantom limb.
"That was a lot of research and writing for a stupid knee jerk reaction to a rather simple and short-lived annoyance."
Lice is only annoying when it itches. People still found ways to get relief from it
"Oil is the result of biomass getting compressed in the earth over a very long period of time."
2 6/0040204 use varients of the same processes used in the semiconductor industry to grow
And diamonds are the result of carbon being squished under heat and pressure in extinct volcanoes...except when their not. Many of the artificial diamonds talked about in the earlier article http://science.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=06/10/
The thing is, Titan is much colder than anything around here. Its "rocks" are likely water ice, it snows methane, etc. Different chemical reactions than what we're used to can happen if you lower the ambient temperature by that much.
Well, Cassini-Huygens did find hydrocarbons on Titan. Don't know if Hubble was involved.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini-Huygens
Have you tried the above link on an XP home machine? The MS website says it is for Win NT and Win 2K.
"In most cases, the person owning the fire arm has to have a permit or a license to carry it, or even own it."
Um...not in the US.
-Most states require background checks prior to purchasing a _hand_gun_ (doesn't affect other things like rifles or shotguns).
-No restrictions on transporting or licensing handguns, rifles, shotguns, etc. as long as they aren't fully automatic (they may have to be cased or partially disassembled to transport).
-Sales from one individual to another don't require any governement involvment (except sales tax which isn't usually enforced).
-My state (MN) requires those born in the mid 80's or later to have had gun safety training prior to getting a hunting license, but this doesn't affect things like target practice
Perhaps the solution is a more-blunt tip (a la Kistler K-1). I spent some time working on control problems for supercavitating torpedos; they use a blunt nose (essentially a flat plate) to force the shockwave to spread out and detach further from the rest of the vehicle. The vehicle then resides in the "shadow" of the shockwave with only a very small portion being exposed to the shockwave.
If it's good enough to use for rail gun amo and satellite-launched gravity-well weapons, it may be a good fit for other high-temp, high-friction envirionments. My guess is that it isn't used for spacecraft already because of its mass; in this case, the mass doesn't matter as much since the fuel and launch mechanism isn't being launched with along with the payload.
The reason that most meteors don't hit the ground is because they are so small. The one that do hit the ground and are found right away often have FROST on them since they were so cold in space. As for exploding into a million pieces, meteors aren't designed for reentry.
Any compentent aeroshell engineer could design a case that would protect the payload (such as a capsule covered with the stuff they use for ablatively cooling rocket nozzles). The big concern usually with burning through airframes isn't that we don't have materials that can withstand the heat and friction; it is that those materials typically aren't very light-weight or are too expensive.
Besides, once the track is set up, it should be easy to try out new aeroshell designs! One of the stumbling blocks right now is trying to accellerate a test article to high enough speeds. Very often, they stick a test article on a sounding rocket that sends back data during re-entry.
And yes, IAARS.
A gauss gun is essentially an open-ended linear motor-instead of using magentic fields to push on magnetic fields produced by an armature that causes it to spin, the magnetic fields in the coil push on the payload in a linear fashion so it exits the end of the gun.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauss_gun
A rail gun has a conductor, such as a copper bar, placed accross two rails rails with opposing charges. When the bar completes the circuit between the rails, the current flowing through the bar causes a force (Lorentz force, I think) that causes it to accellerate down the rails.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rail_gun
Rail guns actually exist capable of firing a projectile through several inches of armor (in labs, at any rate). The closest I've seen to a real gauss gun, other than video games and scifi, is when I saw a lab tech bring an electric clippers too close to an MRI (missed someone's head by _that_ much).
Like I said, a _complete_ idiot. The friend was another guy.
I probably should gave preambled the act with something like "hey, watch this!" (would've included ya'all, but I'm from the midwest).
He invented the television bebore working on table top fusion devices, a.k.a. fusors.
Check out www.fusor.net
I got to see a laser demo in high school while attending a math competition. Assuming that low power meant "incapable of causing harm", I looked right into a lazer with both eyes to impress a friend.
What a complete idiot.
Amazingly, my night vision started returning about 7 years later!