He may still be a little angry towards Nintendo because of Wolfenstein 3d for SNES
I sincerely doubt that. For one thing, we talking about something that happened over a decade ago. For another, Carmack strikes me as having too much character to hold a grudge that long. Nintendo got their comeupance during the N64 and Gamecube generations. As a result, they reinvented themselves into a very different company. A company that is a bit more tolerant of Id's brand of gaming than they were in the past.
I'm sure that Mr. Carmack is still *wary* of dealing with them (they're still the most "family friendly" of the console makers), but I sincerely doubt that he's being childish in his dealings with them.
I'd think that pushing out gorgeous graphics on the Wii would be a nice challenge for him.
You need to keep in mind that Id Software has made a business out of driving better graphical performance out of more and more advanced hardware, generally planning their engines to target the hardware available in the future rather than at the time of engine creation. So for them, the Wii is 90 degrees offset from their core competency while the XBox 360 and PS3 are more along the lines of what Id has long been interested in. To that end, the Wii is going to seem like too simplistic a device to be of interest to Id.
I think you'll find that it will take quite a while before the industry as a whole gets used to the idea of the Wii. It was a somewhat unexpected development (in comparison to the years of advance notice they're used to), leaving developers wondering what exactly should they be doing with this thing? If the Wii continues to deliver in the long term, however, you may see Id warm up to the idea a lot more. Not to mention that the next generation of consoles will be fought without a gamepad in sight.;)
Re:Some they left out
on
101 Free PC Games
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· Score: 3, Informative
Nexuiz - High quality open-source deathmatch game running on the Darkplaces engine, which is arguably superior to quite a bit of the stuff currently on the market.
Nexuiz is just incredible. It looks every bit as good as Quake 3 (perhaps better), but is based on the original Quake engine. Talk about parallel development!
I wouldn't worry too much, though. It's just another "look at all the free games!" list with very little time spent on trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the "games" are expansion packs, some are flash games, some are OSS games that everyone knows about, some are clear copyright violations, some are just plain weird, and some are repeated more than once.
The worst part of it all is that they missed a huge number of great games. For example, Privateer Remake is not on the list, but a Babylon 5 expansion pack is? Go figure.
If you're looking for a smaller list of free game recommendations, try my Top 10 OSS Games You've Never Played article. I have personally played all of them, and enjoyed them to a varying degree. Not everyone has the same tastes as I do, but it might be an interesting list for you to check out in addition to this article.:)
Republican Voodoo economics... what you support is taking your tax dollars and giving them to already profitable corporations. To take out massive loans at interest, and spend the borrowed money like a drunken sailor.
You make it sound like a bad thing.:P
Let's just say that I generally agree with the classic Repulican view on how government should be run. i.e. With assistance given to companies big and small, but with some constraints on the market. Additionally, knee-jerk reaction laws (*cough*Sarbanes-Oxley*cough*) are unacceptable burdens for companies to manage, but *some* monopoly restrictions are necessary. Last but not least, Congress should get the budget balanced again, and keep it that way when not in times of national emergency.
More or less, this is a classical republican view with a minor amount of democratic leaning. A view that the GOP party seems to have completely forgotten about as they get drunk on power, and allow any idiot that wants to be looked favorably on, on Fox news into their party.
As I said, libertarian is an extremist view that I'm just a bit too coservative to accept.
With the smallest Spartan3 starting at 1.4 million.
I see why you're confused. Those numbers are not the minimum number of gates, they're the maximum. Each of the chips listed on that page is a different family of chips. The Spartan 3 series was so successful for Xilinx, that they spun off the 3A and 3E for more specialized purposes. The 3E in particular is intended to be lower cost than its Spartan 3 parent. Spartan IIs and XLs are all but obsolete. Each of those families has a wide array of chips available.
You can see the Digikey pages I was looking at online in the non-dead tree format. Xilinx FPGAs are on pages 458 and 459 (pages 6 & 7 of the PDF) with CPLDs (smaller programmable logic chips; only mildly related to FPGAs) starting on page 459. Digikey doesn't actually carry that wide of a selection when it comes to FPGAs, but it's enough to get a good feel for what's available. Note that part of the variety is in chip packaging and pin counts.
Little Joe wasn't a strap on booster. It was a launch vehicle used to test the launch abort system on the Mercury.
You are correct. That was my misreading of the info. I don't know what I was thinking as I should have known better.
The Atlas *did* require strengthening however, which was done without strapons. Specifically, the Atlas LV-3B was created, a modified version of the Atlas D. Basically, my point still holds. The LV-3B carried all of 1.3 tonnes to a rather low orbit. That was barely enough to lift the craft itself, with the pilot being forced to accept extremely cramped conditions. (These guys were serious pioneers. I mean, almost nothing worked right on Glenn's Mercury 6 mission, on top of being crammed in a tiny space while suffering from either overheating or too much humidity!)
Most of the satellites/probes later deployed with the Atlas D were done with assistance from the Agena third stage (what I was probably thinking of before) used to provide the extra thrust necessary to move to a higher orbit or perform an orbital transfer/escape maneuver.
So yes, lots of stages were used in early rocketry. Only the smallest of small packages could be launched with two stages of a low-Isp rocket.
In fact the Shuttle was the first us in the US of large solid boosters in the US.
The solid rocket boosters were developed for the Titan 3C, which was itself developed for the Dynasoar project. While the X-20 didn't fly, the Titan 3C *did*. In fact, it had been chosen as the military's preferred launcher and started carrying USAF sats almost immediately upon its availability in 1965.
While 30 million *is* a lot, even the low end Spartan-3 FPGA's from Xilinx start at 5 million gates these days.
Don't you mean *end* at 5 million gates? I have a Digikey catalog in my hand at this very moment. The smallest Spartan 3 is 200,000 gates and the largest Spartan 3 is 1.5 million gates. The largest Xilinx FPGA offered by Digikey is a 5 million gate Virtex II costing ~$3157.70 per unit. You can get about a thousand off each if you purchase them in bulk.
Virtex 4 and 5 chips go much, much higher I'm sure, but that's not a gate count the majority of developers are going to see.:)
If Diebold was run by management that explicitly wanted Bush reelected, and Diebold machines were used in districts whose vote was mathematically off, and Diebold made their machines so no one could check the accuract of the vote, your skepticism isn't really open-minded anymore.
What's the litmus test? The litmus test is: Can the evidence hold up in a court of law? At the moment, the answer is 'no'. I'm just as inclined to believe that there's a problem due to Diebold's incompetence more than a nationwide conspiracy to fix the vote. Especially since hackers have torn the machines apart and found nothing more than the fact that they are completely insecure and unreliable. Which is more than enough reason to try and convict Diebold of wrongdoing. That does not, however, reflect directly back on the President himself. You need more than circumstantial evidence to convict a President of wrong doing. Especially in impeachment proceedings. (The only way the President can be touched.)
Everyone can believe what they want to believe, but I want to see the hard evidence. The only evidence I have in hand says that Diebold is run by a bunch of incompetent screw ups and that Bush doesn't know which corporations he should actually trust. (He effectively pardoned Microsoft for crying out loud!):-/
FWIW, half the reason why I don't think the vote was fixed in absence of a smoking gun is that Diebold *is* so incompetent. Far too incompetent to pull off a jury rigging of the vote without getting caught. If they showed even a modicum of competence, I'd believe that they might have rigged things. But as it is, the simplest explanation is that their so-called "voting machines" don't function as advertised.
Ummm, Libertarians are far more conservative than Republicans.
Only according to their own view. Their actual take on things is economic liberalism. I'm far too conservative to accept the overly liberal economic theories of the libertarian party.
In fact the Atlas one of the US's first ICBM and one of it's first launch vehicles only had a stage and half. It had one set of tanks but dropped two of it's motors.
Ahem: "The Atlas boosters required extra strengthening in order to handle the increased weight of the Mercury capsules beyond that of the nuclear warheads they were designed to carry. Little Joe was a solid-propellant booster designed specially for the Mercury program."
In other words, the Atlas had a mostly useless payload capability, and was really not all that successful. Its primary purpose was as an ICBM.
The Atlas II increased the standard number of stages to 3 so that it wouldn't require the Little Joe strap ons, and to improve the reliability of the craft. i.e. "In May 1988, the Air Force chose General Dynamics (now Lockheed-Martin) to develop the Atlas II vehicle, primarily to launch Defense Satellite Communications System payloads and for commercial users as a result of Atlas I launch failures in the late 1980s."
The Titan I and Titan II each had two stages. Not what I would call a large number.
For the payload they carried, that was huge. The Titan I had a theoretical payload of 1,800 kg to Low Earth Orbit. As you can imagine, it never boosted anything to space. Its only use was as an ICBM.
The Titan 23G (the refurbished Titan IIs used for Gemini) had a paltry capability of ~3.75 tonnes to Low Earth Orbit. That's less than a fully loaded Delta II, which is now considered too small to launch a capsule! In comparison, the 2 stage Ares I will lift 25 tonnes to Low Earth Orbit based on a single Solid Fuel Booster for the first stage and a single J-2X LHOx booster for the second stage. The reason why this works again comes back to power curves. The SRB thrust to weight ratio is so high that it can drive the craft up to Max-Q in an extremely short period of time, and drive it out of the atmosphere with minimal amounts of fuel spent.
You have to remember that the early capsules were spacecraft in the same way that dinghies are boats. You can venture out in one, but it's extremely dangerous and of limited utility. There's a reason why third stages started showing up almost immediately after the ICBM -> launch vehicle programs began. It was the only way to increase the payload using the existing fuels and technology. Thus it's no wonder that a monster like the Saturn IB (~15 tonnes to LEO) and Saturn V were tasked for useful manned spaceflight. The other rockets of the period were incapable of lifting enough weight.
As it so happens, the Saturn program was also the one that lead to the use of LHOx to improve the performance of upper stages. Combined with the improvements to the SRB developments in the Titan program, the two programs paved the way for modern super-boosters. The Space Shuttle is significantly smaller than the Saturn V, yet can carry (speaking theoretical maximums) more weight to orbit than the Saturn V. (Just don't get me started about how 80% of that weight is the Space Shuttle itself.)
That being said, I will admit that I misunderstood your point. Yes, two stage, low Isp rockets do exist. However, they are not useful as a launch platform in any modern context, save for the (rather odd, but amazingly functional) Zenit class of boosters.
Don't confuse Gun rate of fire with Ship rate of fire.
I'm not. According to the summary:
An interesting tidbit in the article is that the rail gun is only expected to fire ten times or less per day, presumably because of the amount of electricity needed. I guess we now need a warp core to power them.
There's nothing wrong with the nuclear reactors we have now; you could easily fit one of them into a destroyer without any problems. I'm sure Westinghouse Nuclear would be happy to draw you (assuming 'you' have a few billion bucks to spend) some plans of how it could be done.
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is true. In this case, by "improving", drawing up a destroyer-specific design is exactly what I had in mind. The primary difference is that nuclear technology (and actually technology in general) has improved enough to where a more compact and lower maintenance unit could be designed and installed. This would lower the number of necessary personnel, freeing up space for other equipment and weaponry.
The Russians have several nuclear powered ice breakers that aren't much larger than destroyers, and they used to have several nuclear-powered cruisers as well (although I think they've all been decommissioned).
There's actually one that has cruises around the North Sea. It's expensive, but I've been threatening my wife to go take a trip on it someday. Just so I can say I took a cruise on a nuclear wessel.:P
Ah, here we are. The Yamal. Book your tickets today!;)
The reason that surface ships haven't been built with nuclear reactors has more to do with the perceived economics of fossil fuels, rather than any real technical limitations. And for that matter, I've seen analyses that show that bulk supertankers could be economically driven by nuclear reactors -- if the NS Savannah was around today, and upgraded to use containerized cargo instead of manually loaded stuff, it would probably make money due to the high cost of bunker and diesel.
Actually, there's a different reason for the Navy vs. the Merchies. The Navy backed off nuclear power as a public relations maneuver. Especially since countries like Japan won't allow nuclear powered vessels to dock. (They are going to be so annoyed when the Kitty Hawk is replaced by a Nimtz-class carrier.)
In civilian usage, it took quite a long time for me to understand why the merchie fleets aren't jumping on the opportunity to run on nuclear power. The best reason I heard is not economic, but actually the matter of high seas piracy. With piracy still a major problem in the oceans today, the nuclear materials powering ocean going vessels would not be safe. No one in their right mind would attack a U.S. carrier to steal its reactor, but pirates would hardly think twice about boarding a merchant ship, killing the crew, and reselling the materials to countries we don't want to have them.
It kind of sucks, but until someone can find a solution to the issue of piracy, we may be stuck burning cruddy fossil fuels at the rate of gallons per foot.:-(
Notice that I said "usually". I think that in the Titan family the second stage used an engine with close to the same thrust as the first stage.
This is just a difference in power curves. Once you're at Max-Q, there's not much point in maintaining more thrust than necessary to overcome drag losses.
The older rockets struggled to reach space in comparison, and needed more stages to keep accelerating. As a result, rockets like the Titan family used a large number of stages, most of which are unnecessary in a modern rocket. Today, rockets tend to need only a lower stage for takeoff, and an upper stage for orbital insertion. The solid rocket boosters developed for the Titan program have become the mainstay of the first stage, providing the extra push for heavy loads. They're not only used by the Titan IV, Space Shuttle, and the new Shuttle-Derived Vehicles, but they're also being used on the cutting-edge Delta IV and Atlas V rockets.
Re:freaking me out
on
Who won?
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Stolen elections
One thing to keep in mind is that correlation != causation. The use of electronic voting machines is highly suspect, but it's not a smoking gun. It could be as simple as the voting machines were problematic for the democratic population segment. Another possibility is that the areas deploying the machines did so because they were more Republican leaning to begin with. (Remember, electronic voting was a push from Bush after the 2000 "hanging chad" scandals.)
So more evidence is still needed to determine if the election was actually stolen. Certainly, this does add credence to the possibility.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering where I stand on this:
1. I am republican. Truth be told, I've become disgusted with both parties. Yet I'm too conservative to go libratarian. 2. I think the government should mandate that Diebold is no longer allowed to sell voting machines to the government as they are "unsuitable" to tally votes according to legal requirements. 3. If the vote was stolen, it should be exposed. As should all the dirty laundry of politicians. Sadly, too much will remain hidden.:(
I doubt the actual rounds used in a battlefeild scenario would be dumb-fire lumps of metal, for just that reason.
You are correct, sir! (*DING*)
Unless something has changed in the last year or so, the railguns will fire Extended Range Guided Munitions - a type of GPS-guided "smart" shell.
On another subject, it seems I was right when I suspected that these ships would be unable to maintain a high rate of fire. I never expected it to be this bad, though. Seems our DD(X) class is going to need a fleet of tanker escorts shoud a real war break out.:-/
*grumbles something about failure to improve nuclear generators for destroyer use*
upper stage engines are usually less powerful than first stage engines.
That was a mistake. It was supposed to say, "more efficient".
It could be a good compromise for a SSTO system.
Agreed. The logistics of actually developing an SSTO would be difficult, but as I said in another post, more companies working on space technology can only be a good thing.:)
To be fair, the comparison really should be between Nintendo and Sony's Gaming division, right?
Yes! And no.
It all depends upon how much weight each company wants to throw into the ring. Sony's gaming division is the corner stone to their Blu Ray strategy. Their Blu Ray strategy ties back into their movie and music entertainment strategy. Their movie and music entertainment strategy ties back into their electronics strategy. So on and so forth.
Since the Playstation is so important to all their divisions, Sony can decide to subsidize the gaming division using funds from other divisions. Thus Sony gaming division can get a huge shot in the arm any time Sony Corp feels like it should.
I imagine that Sony is also counting on Nintendo to be Nintendo. Nintendo doesn't try to force the market in the same way Sony does, and is unlikely to throw its full force into the ring. This is especially important for Nintendo as they don't have as many other divisions to fall back on should their gaming strategy fail.
CEV/Constellation is becoming our "traditional" launch system.
No, they're the new hotness! *sizzle*:P
Sorry, when I refer to "traditional launch system", I mean a vertical take off rocket. The CEV program covers a huge number of vehicles and engines. What I'm referring to is that the methane engine is not planned for use as the first stage of a vertical takeoff; which is the area where kerosine is most commonly used.
Hehe... no I don't. XCOR is keeping the numbers close to their chest. As they should... the numbers belong to NASA under contract. But you can back out a rough guesstimate since they gave you the thrust.
Ugh. I'm horrible at making these sorts of guesstimates. Well, Astronautix lists the F-1 as having 94.07:1 Thrust to Weight. (1,740,134 lbf/~18,500lbs) Looking at the engine, it looks like solid stainless steel and either copper or brass. So... how does 100 to 150 lbs sound as a range? Which would give it a thrust to weight ratio of somewhere between 75:1 to 50:1.
How does that sound to you? Reasonable? (It sounds to me like I should be putting up hundreds of "warning: guesstimates ahead" signs.:D)
I'm actually a bit surprised that their market caps have even gotten that close, but I suppose it has as much to do with Sony's decline as it does Nintendo's resurgence.
Sony encompasses a great deal more markets than Nintendo, which is why they're significantly larger than Nintendo even at their worst.
I don't see what their target thurst is, but one can assume it's much larger than 7,500lbf.
7,5000 lbf is the target for this engine. It builds upon the 50 lbf XR-3M9 and 10,000 lbf 5M12. As pointed out by another poster, XCOR claims "the new Orion Crew Vehicle main engine design will be an interpolation between these recent designs."
Additionally, XCOR is advertising their engine developments as a possible base for methane-breathing Jet engines that would work in Mars atmosphere. (A very interesting development, indeed!)
BTW, if you have the projected thrust to weight ratios, please share them. I hate having to use the thrust values, because it can be (as you said) misleading. Unfortunately, I don't have the values for the XCOR engine. What I can say is that LHOx > methane > kerosine in terms of specific impulse/efficiency. In terms of thrust to weight, the formula is exactly reversed where kerosine > methane > LHOx. There are very few cases where both the thrust to weight and specific impulse are high. (Orion Project and MPD thrusters are the two I'm aware of.) Otherwise, they tend to be inversely proportional.
No, it has more to do with the subcontract they have with ATK to do research for NASA LINK.
Good catch. But it's still not being developed for a traditional launch system. According to their website, this engine would be used for the lunar -> LEO transfer stage on the CEV. Which again makes the thrust to weight ratio less important, and again non-comparable to kerosine engines. (From what I understand the Apollo Service Module used a hydrazine engine for the transearth injection.)
They were also pumping a lot more fuel and oxidizer per second (much larger m_dot). This is a small engine mounted to the back of a trailer. You could (almost) wrap your hands around it. The F-1's chamber is quite a bit bigger.
Agreed. However, I don't have the actual Thrust to Weight ratios for the XCOR engine, so all I can do is point out the differences in their thrust. If you have the actual ratios, feels free to chip in.
FWIW, I think it's a good thing that companies like XCOR are exploring other engine options. NASA only targets developments that are useful to NASA, potentially leaving behind massive swaths of rocketry that could prove useful in the future. By having more third parties working on rocket technology, we're increasing the experience in the industry, lowering costs through economics, and hopefully expanding our technology base to pave the way for consumer space flights. What's not to like?
Slashdot Mirror
I sincerely doubt that. For one thing, we talking about something that happened over a decade ago. For another, Carmack strikes me as having too much character to hold a grudge that long. Nintendo got their comeupance during the N64 and Gamecube generations. As a result, they reinvented themselves into a very different company. A company that is a bit more tolerant of Id's brand of gaming than they were in the past.
I'm sure that Mr. Carmack is still *wary* of dealing with them (they're still the most "family friendly" of the console makers), but I sincerely doubt that he's being childish in his dealings with them.
You need to keep in mind that Id Software has made a business out of driving better graphical performance out of more and more advanced hardware, generally planning their engines to target the hardware available in the future rather than at the time of engine creation. So for them, the Wii is 90 degrees offset from their core competency while the XBox 360 and PS3 are more along the lines of what Id has long been interested in. To that end, the Wii is going to seem like too simplistic a device to be of interest to Id.
I think you'll find that it will take quite a while before the industry as a whole gets used to the idea of the Wii. It was a somewhat unexpected development (in comparison to the years of advance notice they're used to), leaving developers wondering what exactly should they be doing with this thing? If the Wii continues to deliver in the long term, however, you may see Id warm up to the idea a lot more. Not to mention that the next generation of consoles will be fought without a gamepad in sight.
Nexuiz is just incredible. It looks every bit as good as Quake 3 (perhaps better), but is based on the original Quake engine. Talk about parallel development!
Here's the game: http://www.nexuiz.com/
And the Engine: http://icculus.org/twilight/darkplaces/
Works fine for me. If you really can't get to it, try the Coral Cache mirror:
1 56339
:)
http://www.1up.com.nyud.net:8090/do/feature?cId=3
I wouldn't worry too much, though. It's just another "look at all the free games!" list with very little time spent on trying to separate the wheat from the chaff. Some of the "games" are expansion packs, some are flash games, some are OSS games that everyone knows about, some are clear copyright violations, some are just plain weird, and some are repeated more than once.
The worst part of it all is that they missed a huge number of great games. For example, Privateer Remake is not on the list, but a Babylon 5 expansion pack is? Go figure.
If you're looking for a smaller list of free game recommendations, try my Top 10 OSS Games You've Never Played article. I have personally played all of them, and enjoyed them to a varying degree. Not everyone has the same tastes as I do, but it might be an interesting list for you to check out in addition to this article.
You make it sound like a bad thing.
Let's just say that I generally agree with the classic Repulican view on how government should be run. i.e. With assistance given to companies big and small, but with some constraints on the market. Additionally, knee-jerk reaction laws (*cough*Sarbanes-Oxley*cough*) are unacceptable burdens for companies to manage, but *some* monopoly restrictions are necessary. Last but not least, Congress should get the budget balanced again, and keep it that way when not in times of national emergency.
More or less, this is a classical republican view with a minor amount of democratic leaning. A view that the GOP party seems to have completely forgotten about as they get drunk on power, and allow any idiot that wants to be looked favorably on, on Fox news into their party.
As I said, libertarian is an extremist view that I'm just a bit too coservative to accept.
I don't know. Does Nintendo still make toys and playing cards for the Japanese market?
I see why you're confused. Those numbers are not the minimum number of gates, they're the maximum. Each of the chips listed on that page is a different family of chips. The Spartan 3 series was so successful for Xilinx, that they spun off the 3A and 3E for more specialized purposes. The 3E in particular is intended to be lower cost than its Spartan 3 parent. Spartan IIs and XLs are all but obsolete. Each of those families has a wide array of chips available.
You can see the Digikey pages I was looking at online in the non-dead tree format. Xilinx FPGAs are on pages 458 and 459 (pages 6 & 7 of the PDF) with CPLDs (smaller programmable logic chips; only mildly related to FPGAs) starting on page 459. Digikey doesn't actually carry that wide of a selection when it comes to FPGAs, but it's enough to get a good feel for what's available. Note that part of the variety is in chip packaging and pin counts.
Hope this helps!
You are correct. That was my misreading of the info. I don't know what I was thinking as I should have known better.
The Atlas *did* require strengthening however, which was done without strapons. Specifically, the Atlas LV-3B was created, a modified version of the Atlas D. Basically, my point still holds. The LV-3B carried all of 1.3 tonnes to a rather low orbit. That was barely enough to lift the craft itself, with the pilot being forced to accept extremely cramped conditions. (These guys were serious pioneers. I mean, almost nothing worked right on Glenn's Mercury 6 mission, on top of being crammed in a tiny space while suffering from either overheating or too much humidity!)
Most of the satellites/probes later deployed with the Atlas D were done with assistance from the Agena third stage (what I was probably thinking of before) used to provide the extra thrust necessary to move to a higher orbit or perform an orbital transfer/escape maneuver.
So yes, lots of stages were used in early rocketry. Only the smallest of small packages could be launched with two stages of a low-Isp rocket.
The solid rocket boosters were developed for the Titan 3C, which was itself developed for the Dynasoar project. While the X-20 didn't fly, the Titan 3C *did*. In fact, it had been chosen as the military's preferred launcher and started carrying USAF sats almost immediately upon its availability in 1965.
Don't you mean *end* at 5 million gates? I have a Digikey catalog in my hand at this very moment. The smallest Spartan 3 is 200,000 gates and the largest Spartan 3 is 1.5 million gates. The largest Xilinx FPGA offered by Digikey is a 5 million gate Virtex II costing ~$3157.70 per unit. You can get about a thousand off each if you purchase them in bulk.
Virtex 4 and 5 chips go much, much higher I'm sure, but that's not a gate count the majority of developers are going to see.
What's the litmus test? The litmus test is: Can the evidence hold up in a court of law? At the moment, the answer is 'no'. I'm just as inclined to believe that there's a problem due to Diebold's incompetence more than a nationwide conspiracy to fix the vote. Especially since hackers have torn the machines apart and found nothing more than the fact that they are completely insecure and unreliable. Which is more than enough reason to try and convict Diebold of wrongdoing. That does not, however, reflect directly back on the President himself. You need more than circumstantial evidence to convict a President of wrong doing. Especially in impeachment proceedings. (The only way the President can be touched.)
Everyone can believe what they want to believe, but I want to see the hard evidence. The only evidence I have in hand says that Diebold is run by a bunch of incompetent screw ups and that Bush doesn't know which corporations he should actually trust. (He effectively pardoned Microsoft for crying out loud!)
FWIW, half the reason why I don't think the vote was fixed in absence of a smoking gun is that Diebold *is* so incompetent. Far too incompetent to pull off a jury rigging of the vote without getting caught. If they showed even a modicum of competence, I'd believe that they might have rigged things. But as it is, the simplest explanation is that their so-called "voting machines" don't function as advertised.
Linky
Only according to their own view. Their actual take on things is economic liberalism. I'm far too conservative to accept the overly liberal economic theories of the libertarian party.
Ahem: "The Atlas boosters required extra strengthening in order to handle the increased weight of the Mercury capsules beyond that of the nuclear warheads they were designed to carry. Little Joe was a solid-propellant booster designed specially for the Mercury program."
In other words, the Atlas had a mostly useless payload capability, and was really not all that successful. Its primary purpose was as an ICBM.
The Atlas II increased the standard number of stages to 3 so that it wouldn't require the Little Joe strap ons, and to improve the reliability of the craft. i.e. "In May 1988, the Air Force chose General Dynamics (now Lockheed-Martin) to develop the Atlas II vehicle, primarily to launch Defense Satellite Communications System payloads and for commercial users as a result of Atlas I launch failures in the late 1980s."
For the payload they carried, that was huge. The Titan I had a theoretical payload of 1,800 kg to Low Earth Orbit. As you can imagine, it never boosted anything to space. Its only use was as an ICBM.
The Titan 23G (the refurbished Titan IIs used for Gemini) had a paltry capability of ~3.75 tonnes to Low Earth Orbit. That's less than a fully loaded Delta II, which is now considered too small to launch a capsule! In comparison, the 2 stage Ares I will lift 25 tonnes to Low Earth Orbit based on a single Solid Fuel Booster for the first stage and a single J-2X LHOx booster for the second stage. The reason why this works again comes back to power curves. The SRB thrust to weight ratio is so high that it can drive the craft up to Max-Q in an extremely short period of time, and drive it out of the atmosphere with minimal amounts of fuel spent.
You have to remember that the early capsules were spacecraft in the same way that dinghies are boats. You can venture out in one, but it's extremely dangerous and of limited utility. There's a reason why third stages started showing up almost immediately after the ICBM -> launch vehicle programs began. It was the only way to increase the payload using the existing fuels and technology. Thus it's no wonder that a monster like the Saturn IB (~15 tonnes to LEO) and Saturn V were tasked for useful manned spaceflight. The other rockets of the period were incapable of lifting enough weight.
As it so happens, the Saturn program was also the one that lead to the use of LHOx to improve the performance of upper stages. Combined with the improvements to the SRB developments in the Titan program, the two programs paved the way for modern super-boosters. The Space Shuttle is significantly smaller than the Saturn V, yet can carry (speaking theoretical maximums) more weight to orbit than the Saturn V. (Just don't get me started about how 80% of that weight is the Space Shuttle itself.)
That being said, I will admit that I misunderstood your point. Yes, two stage, low Isp rockets do exist. However, they are not useful as a launch platform in any modern context, save for the (rather odd, but amazingly functional) Zenit class of boosters.
I'm not. According to the summary:
There is absolutely no doubt in my mind that this is true. In this case, by "improving", drawing up a destroyer-specific design is exactly what I had in mind. The primary difference is that nuclear technology (and actually technology in general) has improved enough to where a more compact and lower maintenance unit could be designed and installed. This would lower the number of necessary personnel, freeing up space for other equipment and weaponry.
There's actually one that has cruises around the North Sea. It's expensive, but I've been threatening my wife to go take a trip on it someday. Just so I can say I took a cruise on a nuclear wessel.
Ah, here we are. The Yamal. Book your tickets today!
Actually, there's a different reason for the Navy vs. the Merchies. The Navy backed off nuclear power as a public relations maneuver. Especially since countries like Japan won't allow nuclear powered vessels to dock. (They are going to be so annoyed when the Kitty Hawk is replaced by a Nimtz-class carrier.)
In civilian usage, it took quite a long time for me to understand why the merchie fleets aren't jumping on the opportunity to run on nuclear power. The best reason I heard is not economic, but actually the matter of high seas piracy. With piracy still a major problem in the oceans today, the nuclear materials powering ocean going vessels would not be safe. No one in their right mind would attack a U.S. carrier to steal its reactor, but pirates would hardly think twice about boarding a merchant ship, killing the crew, and reselling the materials to countries we don't want to have them.
It kind of sucks, but until someone can find a solution to the issue of piracy, we may be stuck burning cruddy fossil fuels at the rate of gallons per foot.
This is just a difference in power curves. Once you're at Max-Q, there's not much point in maintaining more thrust than necessary to overcome drag losses.
The older rockets struggled to reach space in comparison, and needed more stages to keep accelerating. As a result, rockets like the Titan family used a large number of stages, most of which are unnecessary in a modern rocket. Today, rockets tend to need only a lower stage for takeoff, and an upper stage for orbital insertion. The solid rocket boosters developed for the Titan program have become the mainstay of the first stage, providing the extra push for heavy loads. They're not only used by the Titan IV, Space Shuttle, and the new Shuttle-Derived Vehicles, but they're also being used on the cutting-edge Delta IV and Atlas V rockets.
One thing to keep in mind is that correlation != causation. The use of electronic voting machines is highly suspect, but it's not a smoking gun. It could be as simple as the voting machines were problematic for the democratic population segment. Another possibility is that the areas deploying the machines did so because they were more Republican leaning to begin with. (Remember, electronic voting was a push from Bush after the 2000 "hanging chad" scandals.)
So more evidence is still needed to determine if the election was actually stolen. Certainly, this does add credence to the possibility.
Oh, and in case anyone is wondering where I stand on this:
1. I am republican. Truth be told, I've become disgusted with both parties. Yet I'm too conservative to go libratarian.
2. I think the government should mandate that Diebold is no longer allowed to sell voting machines to the government as they are "unsuitable" to tally votes according to legal requirements.
3. If the vote was stolen, it should be exposed. As should all the dirty laundry of politicians. Sadly, too much will remain hidden.
You are correct, sir! (*DING*)
Unless something has changed in the last year or so, the railguns will fire Extended Range Guided Munitions - a type of GPS-guided "smart" shell.
On another subject, it seems I was right when I suspected that these ships would be unable to maintain a high rate of fire. I never expected it to be this bad, though. Seems our DD(X) class is going to need a fleet of tanker escorts shoud a real war break out.
*grumbles something about failure to improve nuclear generators for destroyer use*
That was a mistake. It was supposed to say, "more efficient".
Agreed. The logistics of actually developing an SSTO would be difficult, but as I said in another post, more companies working on space technology can only be a good thing.
Yes!
And no.
It all depends upon how much weight each company wants to throw into the ring. Sony's gaming division is the corner stone to their Blu Ray strategy. Their Blu Ray strategy ties back into their movie and music entertainment strategy. Their movie and music entertainment strategy ties back into their electronics strategy. So on and so forth.
Since the Playstation is so important to all their divisions, Sony can decide to subsidize the gaming division using funds from other divisions. Thus Sony gaming division can get a huge shot in the arm any time Sony Corp feels like it should.
I imagine that Sony is also counting on Nintendo to be Nintendo. Nintendo doesn't try to force the market in the same way Sony does, and is unlikely to throw its full force into the ring. This is especially important for Nintendo as they don't have as many other divisions to fall back on should their gaming strategy fail.
No, they're the new hotness! *sizzle*
Sorry, when I refer to "traditional launch system", I mean a vertical take off rocket. The CEV program covers a huge number of vehicles and engines. What I'm referring to is that the methane engine is not planned for use as the first stage of a vertical takeoff; which is the area where kerosine is most commonly used.
Ugh. I'm horrible at making these sorts of guesstimates. Well, Astronautix lists the F-1 as having 94.07:1 Thrust to Weight. (1,740,134 lbf/~18,500lbs) Looking at the engine, it looks like solid stainless steel and either copper or brass. So... how does 100 to 150 lbs sound as a range? Which would give it a thrust to weight ratio of somewhere between 75:1 to 50:1.
How does that sound to you? Reasonable? (It sounds to me like I should be putting up hundreds of "warning: guesstimates ahead" signs.
Nintendo Market Capital: 34.5 billion
Sony Market Capital: 47.6 billion
I'm actually a bit surprised that their market caps have even gotten that close, but I suppose it has as much to do with Sony's decline as it does Nintendo's resurgence.
Sony encompasses a great deal more markets than Nintendo, which is why they're significantly larger than Nintendo even at their worst.
7,5000 lbf is the target for this engine. It builds upon the 50 lbf XR-3M9 and 10,000 lbf 5M12. As pointed out by another poster, XCOR claims "the new Orion Crew Vehicle main engine design will be an interpolation between these recent designs."
Additionally, XCOR is advertising their engine developments as a possible base for methane-breathing Jet engines that would work in Mars atmosphere. (A very interesting development, indeed!)
BTW, if you have the projected thrust to weight ratios, please share them. I hate having to use the thrust values, because it can be (as you said) misleading. Unfortunately, I don't have the values for the XCOR engine. What I can say is that LHOx > methane > kerosine in terms of specific impulse/efficiency. In terms of thrust to weight, the formula is exactly reversed where kerosine > methane > LHOx. There are very few cases where both the thrust to weight and specific impulse are high. (Orion Project and MPD thrusters are the two I'm aware of.) Otherwise, they tend to be inversely proportional.
Good catch. But it's still not being developed for a traditional launch system. According to their website, this engine would be used for the lunar -> LEO transfer stage on the CEV. Which again makes the thrust to weight ratio less important, and again non-comparable to kerosine engines. (From what I understand the Apollo Service Module used a hydrazine engine for the transearth injection.)
Agreed. However, I don't have the actual Thrust to Weight ratios for the XCOR engine, so all I can do is point out the differences in their thrust. If you have the actual ratios, feels free to chip in.
See my post for an explanation.
FWIW, I think it's a good thing that companies like XCOR are exploring other engine options. NASA only targets developments that are useful to NASA, potentially leaving behind massive swaths of rocketry that could prove useful in the future. By having more third parties working on rocket technology, we're increasing the experience in the industry, lowering costs through economics, and hopefully expanding our technology base to pave the way for consumer space flights. What's not to like?