Read the update. The whole story is Fake News, once again. Vetting "policy-related statements" sounds like a no-brainer when a new administration comes in. Tell me that exact some thing didn't happen when the last president took office.
For college, athletics should be an entirely separate organization. They should have to pay for the rights to use the school's name, and otherwise be self-supporting. With all of the ticket sales, merchandizing, tie-ins to professional sports, etc - that should make it a profit center. Athletic scholarships should likewise be paid from the athletic organization, paid directly to the student as an offset to normal college costs. Nets the same to the scholarship'ed student, and prevents the masses of non-jocks from having to pay for that new stadium.
Perhaps there should be a mandatory high school class covering how much college costs, the actual cost when interest and minimum payments are made, and average earning potential of various degrees (gender studies vs engineering, for example). And a little education on how permanent student loan debt is would be nice too: it survives bankruptcy, and is near impossible to get "forgiven" with processes politicians keep talking about.
A lot like the "truth in lending disclosure" you get with mortgages. A little sticker shock might be the fix many folks need.
Space elevator cable would need a cable material with a specific strength of at least 100,000 kN/(kg/m).
Modern fibre materials such as kevlar, fibreglass and carbon/graphite fibre have breaking lengths of 100–400 km/m.
Nanoengineered materials such as carbon nanotubes and, more recently discovered, graphene ribbons (perfect two-dimensional sheets of carbon) are expected to have breaking lengths of 5000–6000 km/m.
So in short... no. A breakthrough of double the strength of graphene gets us maybe 10% there. Space elevators just aren't going to happen for at least few hundred years, at best.
This material has more potential as a spacecraft structural component. Weight is the #1 concern for anything going to space.
As far as collecting space junk - I have yet to see a proposal that addresses the real enormity of space. Imagine building a net or block (made of anything) on the surface of the earth. You want to use this net to clean up random trash people dropped. How much progress would you make over, say, Ohio. Or how about the USA. Maybe you just focus on North America. How big does your net need to be to make a dent?
Now factor in that space is a 3D volume. Even the cubic volume between LEO and geosynchronous is mind boggling. Say LEO is 160 kilometers up, geosynchronous is 35,786 kilometers up. Area of 2nd sphere less 1st sphere is: 192044931750177-17164190 = 192,044,914,585,987 cubic kilometers.
Tell me again how big your net is? And how are you going to move around something that large?
After all that, you've neglected the space junk above geosynchronous.
A TL;DR version: The outside carbon fiber overwrap for a tank is permeable for liquid oxygen. They tried filling in liquid helium so cold that the liquid oxygen froze. Just like water in pavement cracks freezing, bad things happened. Only, space rocket bad.
I took a look at their web site, and man, does it feel like vapor-ware. All I wanted was information about the car, but 95% of the web site is on features of the seats, doors, and phone integration. Odd sales pitch for a car.
What little I could see about the car part of the car left me saying that it's a just like a Tesla. Except you can actually buy & drive a Tesla.
Remember when we were told that "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows"?
Ya, and this move is exactly what I expected. Windows will keep changing, complete with random, pointless UI changes. Nothing in the update schedule has changed. Mark my words - at some point "Windows 10" will change it's name because of sales & marketing pressure. Forced updates and user-hostile changes will continue unabated.
Got an example of sanctions working? Cuba, Iran, Iraq, China- any place I can think of where sanctions were tried didn't work. The most impact any of them had was to hurt the lowest class of a country. The leaders dug in and doubled down.
Bombs only work if there is overwhelming, swift victory with an unconditional surrender. Anything less, and you end up fighting the same battle again later.
Sanctions have never worked, at any time they have been implemented. Sanctions as a politician's tool to say they did something without actually making a tough decision. Especially with 20 (make that 19 now) days left in his presidency, this move means nothing. It's all getting rolled back anyway. Too little, too late.
All this report does is confirm that the Russians didn't hack the election. They might have released a few E-Mails, but Hillary did her own part to make E-Mail a meaningful factor in the election. Democrats and media types who didn't read the report will cite is as (yet another) excuse as to why the democrats lost the election, totally missing the point.
Someone needs to google the term "economies of scale".
Urban farming will never be more than a niche hobby, unless you count weed. As that gets legalized, industrial scale farming efficiencies will drive that away too.
The design requirements of a road have nothing in common with the design requirements of solar panels. Nuts, off the top of my head: Road vs Solar: Must support many tons, Support only own weight Must be x lanes wide for miles, can be any shape Ideally parallel to ground, Ideally aiming toward the sun Must have high-traction surface, must have smooth transparent surface Ideally covered from weather, Must be exposed to weather and full sun Ideally at or near ground level, ideally above trees & buildings Must be safe for vehicles, bikes, and foot traffic, must have high voltage wires integrated Designed to be covered by cars & trucks while in use, Any partial shade at all will drastically drop output for segments
The idea of sporking these two needs together has always seemed a bit daft to me. There's a lot of land/buildings/poles that the government has access to without resorting to this.
notes that all 3 stages are solid propellant systems.I see no mention of liquid propellants, though there may be some for the spin-up and station keeping.
If this really is a completely solid propellant system, the cost savings would be incredible. One number I saw was 1/3 the cost of traditional systems. At least for earth orbit, that should give the Space-X crew some competition for a while - which is good for everyone.
From my limited KSP playing experience, the biggest drawback for solid fuel propulsion is the inability to throttle back (or shut down) the rocket. I have seen a growing number of non-booster stages that use solid rocket fuel systems. Has this problem been solved?
Requiring work, even if it's busy work, has the benefit of establishing a work ethic.
I know several people who are frequently/chronically unemployed, because they never developed a work ethic. (Efforts on my part to help them develop skills are rebuffed, as it's always someone else's fault.) Some folks just haven't figured out that if you want to keep a job, you have to show up on time. A government program to help instill some basic job skills wouldn't be a bad thing.
Typical California thinking. Not everyone is cooling their homes. For the past few months, the vast majority of my utility bill has been heating. Electronics (that I already manage power settings on, thank-you-very-much) giving off heat is a side benefit to me at least half the year - maybe more.
What's the actual, positive use case for a chat bot? A better form of automated telephone menu system?
I see no market demand for chat bots, short of the trolls that like to see how quickly they can Tay a system. Nobody like trying to interact with a phone menu tree, and a chat bot will be a thousand times worse. If I have a problem that's bad enough I need to call in, I'm mashing pound or zero until I get a human. If my only on-line support option is an online chat bot, I'm canceling service that same day.
Some executive somewhere thinks that a script texting "your issue is very important to me" is customer service. As a customer, it's rage inducing.
Burger King tried that, oh, 10 years ago? It was simply a ploy to have fast food slower. Didn't work. If I'm going to a sit-down restaurant where I wait to get food, I sure as heck ain't choosing McDonalds.
TFA isn't clear, and mixes terminology. The summary seems to say this will act like a net to remove many little particles, but the technology is a single tether line.
As I recall, years ago there was a tether test that generated so much power (moving through the Earth's magnetic field) that it shorted out part of the test satellite. The goal of that test, if memory serves, was to use the tether as a propulsion/braking system. Run power through to go faster, drain power out for braking. Presumable a resistance coil / heater.
If this is that same technology, it isn't going to do anything for debris that isn't already captured or attached to the tether. Keeping a dead satellite from becoming space junk is good, but this won't help with the countless particles out there already.
Dude, Japan is turning into a real live Children of Men. With near zero immigration, and below replacement rate both rate, they are doomed. Japan is going to have t have some serious cultural changes within the next 10-15 years, or the new lace will be a ghost town.
Slashdot Mirror
Look at the timing. We're close to the end of the month. A recent post said in about a month. That's mighty close to April 1st....
Read the update. The whole story is Fake News, once again.
Vetting "policy-related statements" sounds like a no-brainer when a new administration comes in. Tell me that exact some thing didn't happen when the last president took office.
"News" has become the realm of rumor and slander.
>Then, there's the costs of athletic programs,
For college, athletics should be an entirely separate organization. They should have to pay for the rights to use the school's name, and otherwise be self-supporting. With all of the ticket sales, merchandizing, tie-ins to professional sports, etc - that should make it a profit center. Athletic scholarships should likewise be paid from the athletic organization, paid directly to the student as an offset to normal college costs. Nets the same to the scholarship'ed student, and prevents the masses of non-jocks from having to pay for that new stadium.
Best comment on this post.
Perhaps there should be a mandatory high school class covering how much college costs, the actual cost when interest and minimum payments are made, and average earning potential of various degrees (gender studies vs engineering, for example). And a little education on how permanent student loan debt is would be nice too: it survives bankruptcy, and is near impossible to get "forgiven" with processes politicians keep talking about.
A lot like the "truth in lending disclosure" you get with mortgages. A little sticker shock might be the fix many folks need.
Oh, you did pay for it. And you'll be paying for it the rest of your life.
What's your tax rate again?
As per Wikipedia:
Space elevator cable would need a cable material with a specific strength of at least 100,000 kN/(kg/m).
Modern fibre materials such as kevlar, fibreglass and carbon/graphite fibre have breaking lengths of 100–400 km/m.
Nanoengineered materials such as carbon nanotubes and, more recently discovered, graphene ribbons (perfect two-dimensional sheets of carbon) are expected to have breaking lengths of 5000–6000 km/m.
So in short... no. A breakthrough of double the strength of graphene gets us maybe 10% there. Space elevators just aren't going to happen for at least few hundred years, at best.
This material has more potential as a spacecraft structural component. Weight is the #1 concern for anything going to space.
As far as collecting space junk - I have yet to see a proposal that addresses the real enormity of space. Imagine building a net or block (made of anything) on the surface of the earth. You want to use this net to clean up random trash people dropped. How much progress would you make over, say, Ohio. Or how about the USA. Maybe you just focus on North America. How big does your net need to be to make a dent?
Now factor in that space is a 3D volume. Even the cubic volume between LEO and geosynchronous is mind boggling.
Say LEO is 160 kilometers up, geosynchronous is 35,786 kilometers up. Area of 2nd sphere less 1st sphere is: 192044931750177-17164190 =
192,044,914,585,987 cubic kilometers.
Tell me again how big your net is? And how are you going to move around something that large?
After all that, you've neglected the space junk above geosynchronous.
A TL;DR version: The outside carbon fiber overwrap for a tank is permeable for liquid oxygen. They tried filling in liquid helium so cold that the liquid oxygen froze. Just like water in pavement cracks freezing, bad things happened. Only, space rocket bad.
A nice summary of the issue (and work-around) from Scott Manley:
https://plus.google.com/102502...
I took a look at their web site, and man, does it feel like vapor-ware. All I wanted was information about the car, but 95% of the web site is on features of the seats, doors, and phone integration. Odd sales pitch for a car.
What little I could see about the car part of the car left me saying that it's a just like a Tesla. Except you can actually buy & drive a Tesla.
I predict a quick collapse of this company.
Remember when we were told that "Windows 10 is the last version of Windows"?
Ya, and this move is exactly what I expected. Windows will keep changing, complete with random, pointless UI changes. Nothing in the update schedule has changed.
Mark my words - at some point "Windows 10" will change it's name because of sales & marketing pressure. Forced updates and user-hostile changes will continue unabated.
Got an example of sanctions working? Cuba, Iran, Iraq, China- any place I can think of where sanctions were tried didn't work. The most impact any of them had was to hurt the lowest class of a country. The leaders dug in and doubled down.
Bombs only work if there is overwhelming, swift victory with an unconditional surrender. Anything less, and you end up fighting the same battle again later.
Sanctions have never worked, at any time they have been implemented. Sanctions as a politician's tool to say they did something without actually making a tough decision. Especially with 20 (make that 19 now) days left in his presidency, this move means nothing. It's all getting rolled back anyway. Too little, too late.
All this report does is confirm that the Russians didn't hack the election. They might have released a few E-Mails, but Hillary did her own part to make E-Mail a meaningful factor in the election. Democrats and media types who didn't read the report will cite is as (yet another) excuse as to why the democrats lost the election, totally missing the point.
Someone needs to google the term "economies of scale".
Urban farming will never be more than a niche hobby, unless you count weed.
As that gets legalized, industrial scale farming efficiencies will drive that away too.
The design requirements of a road have nothing in common with the design requirements of solar panels. Nuts, off the top of my head:
Road vs Solar:
Must support many tons, Support only own weight
Must be x lanes wide for miles, can be any shape
Ideally parallel to ground, Ideally aiming toward the sun
Must have high-traction surface, must have smooth transparent surface
Ideally covered from weather, Must be exposed to weather and full sun
Ideally at or near ground level, ideally above trees & buildings
Must be safe for vehicles, bikes, and foot traffic, must have high voltage wires integrated
Designed to be covered by cars & trucks while in use, Any partial shade at all will drastically drop output for segments
The idea of sporking these two needs together has always seemed a bit daft to me. There's a lot of land/buildings/poles that the government has access to without resorting to this.
As commented above, the article at:
http://spaceflightnow.com/2016...
notes that all 3 stages are solid propellant systems.I see no mention of liquid propellants, though there may be some for the spin-up and station keeping.
If this really is a completely solid propellant system, the cost savings would be incredible. One number I saw was 1/3 the cost of traditional systems. At least for earth orbit, that should give the Space-X crew some competition for a while - which is good for everyone.
From my limited KSP playing experience, the biggest drawback for solid fuel propulsion is the inability to throttle back (or shut down) the rocket.
I have seen a growing number of non-booster stages that use solid rocket fuel systems. Has this problem been solved?
Requiring work, even if it's busy work, has the benefit of establishing a work ethic.
I know several people who are frequently/chronically unemployed, because they never developed a work ethic. (Efforts on my part to help them develop skills are rebuffed, as it's always someone else's fault.) Some folks just haven't figured out that if you want to keep a job, you have to show up on time. A government program to help instill some basic job skills wouldn't be a bad thing.
What should all my passengers be forced to have their phones off?
What about my GPS app?
Any phone to implement this feature will not sell well, for a million reasons.
Typical California thinking. Not everyone is cooling their homes. For the past few months, the vast majority of my utility bill has been heating.
Electronics (that I already manage power settings on, thank-you-very-much) giving off heat is a side benefit to me at least half the year - maybe more.
What's the actual, positive use case for a chat bot? A better form of automated telephone menu system?
I see no market demand for chat bots, short of the trolls that like to see how quickly they can Tay a system.
Nobody like trying to interact with a phone menu tree, and a chat bot will be a thousand times worse. If I have a problem that's bad enough I need to call in, I'm mashing pound or zero until I get a human. If my only on-line support option is an online chat bot, I'm canceling service that same day.
Some executive somewhere thinks that a script texting "your issue is very important to me" is customer service. As a customer, it's rage inducing.
This is all a bad idea that no customer wants.
Found a good link for those who want to know more:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Burger King tried that, oh, 10 years ago? It was simply a ploy to have fast food slower. Didn't work.
If I'm going to a sit-down restaurant where I wait to get food, I sure as heck ain't choosing McDonalds.
TFA isn't clear, and mixes terminology. The summary seems to say this will act like a net to remove many little particles, but the technology is a single tether line.
As I recall, years ago there was a tether test that generated so much power (moving through the Earth's magnetic field) that it shorted out part of the test satellite. The goal of that test, if memory serves, was to use the tether as a propulsion/braking system. Run power through to go faster, drain power out for braking. Presumable a resistance coil / heater.
If this is that same technology, it isn't going to do anything for debris that isn't already captured or attached to the tether. Keeping a dead satellite from becoming space junk is good, but this won't help with the countless particles out there already.
Dude, Japan is turning into a real live Children of Men.
With near zero immigration, and below replacement rate both rate, they are doomed.
Japan is going to have t have some serious cultural changes within the next 10-15 years, or the new lace will be a ghost town.