There are three burns: boostback, reentry and landing. The boostback and reentry burns use 3 engines, IIRC. Only the landing burn uses a single engine. Most estimates of fuel needed for landing are in the 35-40 ton range.
The Shuttle SRB casings were 8mm thick steel in order to withstand crashing into the ocean. The F9 skin is in the region of 0.4 mm aluminium. The Shuttle SRB had a fuel fraction of only 80%.
The technique demonstrated here is platooning, where trucks can autonomously follow the truck in front of them. The truck at the front of the line is still driven manually.
An interesting development, but not quite autonomous driving.
The question that remains is how they'd prevent the convoy being broken up at traffic lights.
Commercial software is available now. Not so much 10 years ago.
From the report:
NASA made its decision regarding the architecture of the SCCS software nearly a decade ago and has continued on that path. In our view, this may no longer be the most prudent course of action given the significant advances in commercial command and control software over the last 10 years. Specifically, command and control software technology has matured to the point where COTS products may provide much of the functionality needed to launch the SLS and Orion with relatively little modification. Indeed, the two companies under contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station - Orbital Sciences Corporation and Space Exploration Technologies - both use COTS products to accomplish their missions.
Dedicated to the tireless developers who have come and gone. To those who have put their heart and soul into Mozilla products. To those who have seen their good intentions and hard work squandered. To those who really cared about the user, and cared about usability. To those who truly understood us and desired freedom, but were unheard. To those who knew that change is inevitable, but loss of vision is not. To those who were forced to give up the good fight.
Thank you. Pale Moon would not have been possible without you.
It's the heaviest Cygnus launch so far. As far as I've been able to find, the heaviest cargo load delivered to the ISS is the ESA ATV 5 mission (Georges Lemaitre), which carried 6600 kg.
Having the bus drive on the shoulder would be so stupid as to lead to murder
No. This is done routinely in the Netherlands, and doesn't lead to problems. If someone's walking on the shoulder he's easily spotted by the bus driver.
Reserved bus lanes are nice when available, but they're expensive and take up a lot of space. When those are not available (because your motorway goes through a built-up area and there's no space for more lanes), using the shoulder is a decent alternative.
Not so far off the mark. The ship used for one of the first cables was the SS Great Eastern, the biggest ship in the world at that time. This was the only ship big enough to carry the whole cable in one piece.
Earlier cables had been laid in sections and spliced together, but the splices were found to be a weak point. They also complicated the laying operation, so for a long time, cables were laid in one piece. These days, splicing has become feasible again, and is done routinely e.g. to repair cables.
The Wired article is a favorite of mine, too. Well worth the read.
Thanks to that article, I learned about the Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno, at the western tip of Cornwall (UK). It's the location where many undersea telegraph cables landed. The museum includes the tunnels that were dug in WW2 to provide a secure shelter for the operators and equipment. It's a fascinating place. I especially liked the working telegraph links they use for demos.
100,000 Mercedes S-class? 1. that's a $10 billion order. 2. that's the entire S-class production for I'd guess a year. 3. Almost nobody buys $100k S-class as taxis. That sort of outlay only makes sense if you can go without a driver completely. Given the state of automation of the current S, you still need a driver, and at that point you might as well spend $50k on an E-class (a common cab) instead.
I'm not claiming anything specific, hence the words "for example" in my text. I'm just saying that while counting different classes of gun deaths separately is a good idea, you also need to look at the overall effect of a change in legislation. And yes, that should include e.g. successful prevention of robberies, although those would be difficult to measure.
Those cases should be counted differently, but they are not independent. When a large group of people buy firearms for self-defence and the result is, for example 1000 deaths due to accidents and 23 deaths of perpetrators as a result of self-defence, the time has come to question if allowing guns for self-defence is worthwhile.
I've got Windows Update set to download, but notify me before installing. This has been fine for years, today the Action Center ("resolve PC issues") sees this as a "problem" that it wants to resolve by switching updates to Automatic. I don't think so, Bob.
What? The UK has neither a migrant crisis nor open borders. They stayed outside the Schengen agreement so they still have their borders manned by border control. Being an island also makes sneaking in difficult, see the Calais situation, thousands of migrants trying to get in illegally but can't.
I was talking about the Nimrod AEW.3 project which was abandoned in 1986 because they couldn't get the radar to work. You're talking about the Searchwater radar (and possibly other sensors like the IRST) on the MR2 version.
Slashdot Mirror
There are three burns: boostback, reentry and landing. The boostback and reentry burns use 3 engines, IIRC. Only the landing burn uses a single engine.
Most estimates of fuel needed for landing are in the 35-40 ton range.
Kepler already had 2 of its 4 reaction wheels fail. If a third is gone, it'd mean they have to use the thrusters more, reducing mission lifetime.
The Shuttle SRB casings were 8mm thick steel in order to withstand crashing into the ocean. The F9 skin is in the region of 0.4 mm aluminium. The Shuttle SRB had a fuel fraction of only 80%.
The technique demonstrated here is platooning, where trucks can autonomously follow the truck in front of them. The truck at the front of the line is still driven manually.
An interesting development, but not quite autonomous driving.
The question that remains is how they'd prevent the convoy being broken up at traffic lights.
So can it run 600 km on a single charge?
Chuck Norris chisels in stone. With his bare hands!
Commercial software is available now. Not so much 10 years ago.
From the report:
NASA made its decision regarding the architecture of the SCCS software nearly a decade ago and has continued on that path. In our view, this may no longer be the most prudent course of action given the significant advances in commercial command and control software over the last 10 years. Specifically, command and control software technology has matured to the point where COTS products may provide much of the functionality needed to launch the SLS and Orion with relatively little modification. Indeed, the two companies under contract with NASA to deliver supplies to the International Space Station - Orbital Sciences Corporation and Space Exploration Technologies - both use COTS products to accomplish their missions.
28-page PDF
I just did that in Pale Moon and got this:
Mozilla: In Memoriam
Dedicated to the tireless developers who have come and gone.
To those who have put their heart and soul into Mozilla products.
To those who have seen their good intentions and hard work squandered.
To those who really cared about the user, and cared about usability.
To those who truly understood us and desired freedom, but were unheard.
To those who knew that change is inevitable, but loss of vision is not.
To those who were forced to give up the good fight.
Thank you. Pale Moon would not have been possible without you.
It's the heaviest Cygnus launch so far.
As far as I've been able to find, the heaviest cargo load delivered to the ISS is the ESA ATV 5 mission (Georges Lemaitre), which carried 6600 kg.
That reads as if the module will be behind a closed door most of the time.
So, to defeat this attack, keep the key in a Faraday cage.
Maybe inside my foil-lined wallet next to my NFC cards, then.
Having the bus drive on the shoulder would be so stupid as to lead to murder
No. This is done routinely in the Netherlands, and doesn't lead to problems. If someone's walking on the shoulder he's easily spotted by the bus driver.
Reserved bus lanes are nice when available, but they're expensive and take up a lot of space. When those are not available (because your motorway goes through a built-up area and there's no space for more lanes), using the shoulder is a decent alternative.
The Wired piece has good information on how cables are laid these days (and on every other aspect of the business).
Not so far off the mark. The ship used for one of the first cables was the SS Great Eastern, the biggest ship in the world at that time. This was the only ship big enough to carry the whole cable in one piece.
Earlier cables had been laid in sections and spliced together, but the splices were found to be a weak point. They also complicated the laying operation, so for a long time, cables were laid in one piece. These days, splicing has become feasible again, and is done routinely e.g. to repair cables.
The Wired article is a favorite of mine, too. Well worth the read.
Thanks to that article, I learned about the Telegraph Museum in Porthcurno, at the western tip of Cornwall (UK). It's the location where many undersea telegraph cables landed. The museum includes the tunnels that were dug in WW2 to provide a secure shelter for the operators and equipment. It's a fascinating place. I especially liked the working telegraph links they use for demos.
100,000 Mercedes S-class?
1. that's a $10 billion order.
2. that's the entire S-class production for I'd guess a year.
3. Almost nobody buys $100k S-class as taxis. That sort of outlay only makes sense if you can go without a driver completely. Given the state of automation of the current S, you still need a driver, and at that point you might as well spend $50k on an E-class (a common cab) instead.
140 characters should be enough for anyone.
I'm not claiming anything specific, hence the words "for example" in my text. I'm just saying that while counting different classes of gun deaths separately is a good idea, you also need to look at the overall effect of a change in legislation. And yes, that should include e.g. successful prevention of robberies, although those would be difficult to measure.
Those cases should be counted differently, but they are not independent. When a large group of people buy firearms for self-defence and the result is, for example 1000 deaths due to accidents and 23 deaths of perpetrators as a result of self-defence, the time has come to question if allowing guns for self-defence is worthwhile.
I've got Windows Update set to download, but notify me before installing. This has been fine for years, today the Action Center ("resolve PC issues") sees this as a "problem" that it wants to resolve by switching updates to Automatic. I don't think so, Bob.
What? The UK has neither a migrant crisis nor open borders. They stayed outside the Schengen agreement so they still have their borders manned by border control. Being an island also makes sneaking in difficult, see the Calais situation, thousands of migrants trying to get in illegally but can't.
Expensive? SSD prices have been dropping like a rock for several years, getting closer to HDD by the month.
I was talking about the Nimrod AEW.3 project which was abandoned in 1986 because they couldn't get the radar to work.
You're talking about the Searchwater radar (and possibly other sensors like the IRST) on the MR2 version.
Contains everything I need to know, and links that add more information including the original source of the news.