This is extremely good news! As I said previously, if we had lost any of the orbiters, the shuttle program would be over. And if the shuttle program is over, manned space flight as we know it would be over. While many think that the shuttle is a very poor vehicle (actually it's amazingly engineered, but always lacked a real purpose), having it around pushes Congress to fund something simpler and cheaper.
What part of "Not that there's anything that wrong with that, but give credit where credit is due" is so damned hard to understand?!
Re:Duplicate story....
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So, can you make an RTG out of U-235, or does it not emit the right kind of radiation?
You could use U-235, but you wouldn't get much power out of it. You see, U-235 has a half-life of 7.038E8 years. That means that in 7.038E8 years, 1/2 of the U-235 will decay into Thorium. Of that Thorium, it will decay into other products such as Radon, Radium, and Lead. These processes also take a certain amount of time. The remaining mass of the U-235 will become Alpha and Gamma radiation.
Now each radioactive particle has a certain force and penetration power. Gamma rays penetrate very deep, but have no mass. (It's basically a photon.) Alpha particles are very heavy, but are easily stopped because of their +2 charge. (i.e. Helium ions) Collision events from the radiation causes kinetic energy to become heat.
Here's the problem. If you've got a half-life in the range of millions of years, you've probably only got a few radiological events every minute. A single alpha particle doesn't carry much kinetic energy.:-(
This is where Pu-238 comes in. Pu-238 has a half-life of 87 years. That means, that in 87 years, 1/2 of the plutonium you have will become Uranium-234. 87 years may sound like a long time, but that's enough radiological events to produce massive amounts of heat! If you were to hold a chunk in your hand (not a big deal!), the plutonium would feel hot in your hand. Placing that same chunk in water would rapidly cause the water to boil.
Obviously, anything with a shorter half-life is going to be hotter than Pu-238. Pu-237, for example, has a half-life of 45.7 days. That stuff would be so hot, that you'd probably be cooked to a crisp by a small portion of it. Even worse, the fast decay rate would make the Gamma effects more pronounced, thus increasing your internally absorbed radiation dosage.
Then there's the thermal output, which seems like it should be considerable. How many BTUs would something like this put out?
You'd have to do the calculations to convert it to BTUs (something I'm too lazy to do right now). However, you can't tap the waste heat, because that's what the RTG is already doing. If you fail to cool the RTG, you'll no longer have a heat differential. Without a heat differential, the pelter will not operate.
Look up a Stirling engine sometime. I think you'll find that a bit easier to understand. Basically, the engine makes use of the fact that heat wants to equalize. Thus the heat will move toward the cold side of the engine. By putting a piston in the way of a heated medium, you can tap the differential for power. BTW, radiological Stirling engines do exist as something called an "SRG" or "Stirling Radioisotope Generator". They're actually quite a bit more efficient than RTGs. The trick is that they're rather new tech, despite the fact that Stirling engines are about as old tech as you can get.
There's some note that the material could be used for a "dirty bomb," which is a concern in this age of terrorism
Dirty bombs are stupid and won't work. Sure, they might cause some panic, but there are better ways of doing that. Amazingly enough, the terrorists seem to be smart enough to realize this, and have pretty much given up on the "Dirty Bomb" concept. It now exists only as a phrase the media likes to use to stir things up.
So in summary, Pu-238 is used because it produces a lot of thermal power. U-235 produces negligible thermal power from radioactive decay, and is much more useful as a fissable material. We also learned that half-life has everything to do with how radiologically "hot" a substance is.
Re:Portable nuke? Cool!
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The one detail I do recall was that many small reactors of the era were using ceramic encapsulated fuel pellets.
Ah, a modular Pebble Bed Reactor. Yes, those are top on the list of low maintenance reactors. There's been a lot of talk of building self-contained units, but no one has yet done it. AFAIK, there's only one production PBR online, and that's in South Africa. It just came online in 2003, so the world is keeping a close eye on it to see how it performs.
The biggest downside to PBRs, is that they don't scale as large as other designs. A few hundred megawatts is really the largest they can go. That being said, it makes more sense to simply use more reactors rather than bigger reactors. This way you gain redundancy, better maintenance abilities, and lower line transmission losses (by placing the reactor closer to its consumers).
It's worse. The de Gaul isn't even a supercarrier. It's a standard carrier, about 3/4 the length of a US supercarrier, and half the displacement. Even worse, she's usually laid up in dock because SOMETHING is broken.
The ship does utilize nuclear power (a plus), but that doesn't help if she can't endure more than a few days out at sea.
I agree. The Buran was not a failure. However, it was ripped from the US design, and development soaked up ~17 billion US dollars. The US shuttle program only sucked up ~5 billion for development.
That being said, I don't really care about the orbiter. It was a "better" version of the shuttle, but the Energia rocket is far more interesting. Especially if we could pour some money into making it fully reusable. (i.e. the Energia-2 that was being worked on)
Re:Duplicate story....
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It's a matter of nuclear materials. IIRC, they get about 75W from each kilogram of PU-238. For the same amount of U-235, they get megawatts of power. There's simply nowhere to get enough Pu-238 from. However, it may be that Toshiba's design simply dumped a bunch of materials in a can, and didn't worry about optimizing for the best heat potential or life. In that case, they'd be able to obtain more materials, but they'd need a lot more shielding.
Build your own damn supercarriers, neutron bombs, and space lasers instead of sitting on your thumbs.
Like France?
You're joking, right? France? Has a supercarrier? And neutron bombs? And space lasers? They can't even get the ONE carrier they have out of dock!
Re:Portable nuke? Cool!
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Way to miss the point, chief. The U.S. is a federalist republic, so therefore we have congress-critters and a president who represent us. We can put pressure on their policies by contacting them and telling why we will or will not vote. Not every country has that, so they have to contact their government directly and beg/plead/bow before their dictator about what they want in world affairs.
Re:Portable nuke? Cool!
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I know that. Some countries don't have a representative government, so they have to contact their "UN representative" (i.e. their government) directly.
Re:Asimov's Foundation
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You'd need antimatter to initiate critical fission in so little material and still shield the user from the radiation and collect power. That shouldn't be too hard to build, just as long as you can find a good way of moderating the reaction.
Re:Portable nuke? Cool!
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Those sound like RTGs, not reactors. They're commonly used in space and in harsh conditions where power is difficult to come by. They were even used in Pacemakers for a decade or two. As the anti-nuke activists heated things up in the 80's, RTGs kind of disappeared. They've been making a comeback ever since Cassini flew.
The protests against Cassini may actually have been the best thing that could have happened. Since they all guaranteed we'd die and we didn't, it sort of shot the anti-nuke credibility all to hell.:-)
Re:Arrogance
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Who made the United States the ruler of world affairs?
Europe. Happened in WWII when the rest of the world proved that it couldn't keep from trying to destroy itself. So the Allied powers were given certain rights, and the rest of the world was divided up into little pieces. (Germany, the Middle East, etc.) Our then ally (Russia) then immediately did an about face and became a cold war enemy. They chose to begin taking over the various countries through use of their "Communist ideals".
They then proceeded to sap up all the countries that we hadn't broken into tiny pieces, in an effort to gain more world power. The remaining European allies lacked the necessary GDP to defend against any war that Russia might start, so it was left up to the US to be the "good guys". Don't like it? Too bad. Build your own damn supercarriers, neutron bombs, and space lasers instead of sitting on your thumbs.
As for countries like Iran, Hussein's Iraq, Pakistan, etc, they were broken up for a reason. Very simply: we can't trust them as far as we can kick them. September 11 only proves that. It doesn't stop us from being friendly and trying to help these countries out, but you can bet your ass that the US and UN are not looking to allow them nuclear weapons!
You want to stop nuclear proliferation? How about starting with the United States, Israel, England, France, India...
Leave the US and England out of this. Our nuclear weapons are pretty much at the "yeah, we have some" point. A large chunk of our arsenal has been destroyed, and many of their silos abandoned. I'd say leave France out of this too, but they've had dealings with the Middle East that puts them in the spotlight.
Everyone else in the Middle East is looking to point atomic weapons at each other. Why? None of their excuses make sense to us, so we just try to keep them from lobbing any of those nukes at us or any of our allies.
Re:Portable nuke? Cool!
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If you want to let Iran or North Korea develop their own nuclear programs, fine. But the US government and the UN would rather not let them go unsupervised. If you've got an issue with that, petition your representatives in the UN or US.
Re:Duplicate story....
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I don't believe that's the same reactor. Toshiba didn't say that they'd actually built a critical reactor. Instead they called theirs a "nuclear battery" that produced a constant 900C of heat. It's quite possible that Toshiba's model was simply radioisotope powered (i.e. RTG), or maybe it was a simple fission pile. Either one could produce a lot of heat and electricity WITHOUT actually running in a critical state. (as with normal reactors).
I'm sure someone will come along and provide more details and insult me in a few moments.
Actually, I didn't say it was "invented" by iTunes. My point is that Microsoft copied, copied, copied, directly from iTunes, and now this guy thinks they're the greatest thing ever. At least Apple had to do some would to invent a new interface that worked well and was easy to use. Microsoft just copied, copied, copied!
Not that there's anything that wrong with that, but give credit where credit is due!
P.S. I hate to break it to you, but the iTunes UI is far from perfect.
Of course it's not perfect! Is any GUI? But it certainly is the best media center design to date. I used to use MediaMatch, and I can say that I was not impressed. Options were in the oddest of places, interfaces were confusing, error messages were unhelpful, etc., etc., etc.
Can't you see that the whole article is a satire of the breathless worship of iTunes? I mean, you go on about how WMP10 has 'stolen' features from iTunes, even though Apple never invented them in the first place.
Well, lemme see. I said "WinAMP" for the crossfade, because AFAIK, they were the first to have it. As for the playlist design, that was an iTunes invention. WinAMP handled playlists through the use of playlist files.
One way or another, my point is that Microsoft copied iTunes, and now this guy is shouting from the rooftops that Microsoft is so amazing! I'd be just as disgusted if someone gushed as hard about Safari. "Ooo! It's got tabbed browsing! A 'leet feature not seen anywhere else!" Ugh.
Portable nuke? Cool!
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Sarcasm aside, "portable" may be stretching it for something that weight 500 metric tons. "Self-contained" would be a better term. Which would be an impressive feat if they can pull it off. Most of our existing reactors require quite a bit of supervision to ensure that they operate within expected tolerances. The safety systems should kick in if anything goes wrong, but the power going out is enough of a problem in of itself. Of course, most of our reactors are pretty old tech, so a self-contained reactor may be possible now. I think it would be kind of cool if every suburb could have one of these things.
Not sure about the whole third-world idea, though. All I can say is, it's better than letting them build their own reactors. At least with these, we'll 100% KNOW if plutonium is missing.
Have you read the review? The guy gushes all over the place about how wonderful Microsoft is, and how WiMP is "the best"! Where the hell did his head go? Some samples:
I am a Windows Media Player junkie. Having used the program for a number of years I think it is quite simply a brilliant piece of software - a masterpiece developed by extremely talented engineers in so many ways. Even more spectacular is that is free. Microsoft gives it away. If Microsoft didn't give this software away I'd gladly pay money for it. I love it.
Ugh. I feel so... dirty... after reading that.
Mp3 ripping. It's admirable that Microsoft finally listened to their users on this one and gave in. In all of the previous versions of Window's Media Player Microsoft forced you to rip your tunes to WMA. [...] Windows Media Player 10 fully supports mp3 ripping and high quality encoding at that. Kudos to Microsoft.
Something that iTunes has had... lemme see... forever?
The new "Composer" menu on the left hand window is a handy feature. Check it out. It's new and I love it. Want to create a Bob Dylan covers playlist? Select Dylan under the composer menu then sort the window by artist and select all but Bob Dylan as a performer and save it as a Bob Dylan covers playlist. Very simple, very easy.
More gushing + feature stolen from iTunes.
Ratings. WMP 10's rating system is first rate. [...] Microsoft developed a fine ratings system. How does this work? Rate each song you hear from one to five stars with a stroke of a right mouse click. Later when you are relaxing you can listen to only your favorite tracks.
That sounds great! Microsoft really outdid themselves by copying from iTunes^W^W^W innovating this really amazing feature! (end sarcasm)
Crossfading. In the past one of the things I hated most was that long silence between songs. One song would end and then prior to the next one there would be more silence.
WinAMP, iTunes, etc? Nope, it's a Microsoft invention don't you know.
Improved interface. Microsoft provided a much improved cosmetic overhaul to WMP 10. One of the things I like a lot in the libraries is that they color code (light blue and a lighter blue) between lines now making it easier to follow the data on a track across the screen.
Look at the screenshot on the page. It looks like crap. Usable, sure, but definitely not attractive.
Anyway, this "review" just hurts, so I'll stop there. I just wish we could rate this review '-1 Microsoft Leg Humper'.
Yes, it was. The Buran was designed to the shuttle's specifications, with only minor differences in dimensions and control systems. It even had engines in the rear for maneuvering, despite the fact that the craft didn't use Shuttle type engines for lift off!
The Buran was definitely an improvement on the shuttle, as it didn't use internal engines fueled by a mated to a tank. Instead, the Buran was mated to an Energia rocket. The rocket did the job of getting the ship up, and the shuttle did the job of getting everything back down. Actually, a pretty smart modification when you think about it.
The Buran also had more advanced flight avionics, but it was also flown 20 years after the space shuttle. Its only flight was in a fully automated mode.
b) Sealar *did* get off the drawing board, and was an attempt to prove Sea Dragon. It failed. Not due to lack of funding, but because of catastrophic failures of its main tank during testing led to little lack of enthusiasm for continuing the project.
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have any links to back this up? All I can find is that the SEALAR "got some funding from the Navy". And not very much at that.
Did you ignore what I wrote about the decline in market for heavy lift?
No, I didn't. I'm saying that manned space travel needs a paradigm of heavy lifters. We need A LOT of materials up there. "Smaller" doesn't do it. There's a decline in payload for the commercial satellite market, which is a different beast than we're discussing.
Because we want to *reuse it*?
Like you reuse a paper cup. The shuttle has to be rebuilt and certified after every flight. That's where the economics of it broke down. It's such a complex machine, that it's very expensive to "reuse". For the cargo the Shuttle is sending, It would be cheaper to use anything from a Proton to a Titan IV.
Besides, when you state "~29 metric tons of cargo, plus another 104 metric tons for its own orbiter weight", that is disingenous in that it makes it sound like it's dead weight. It's not. Most of that is things like the fuel tanks, engines, turbopumps, frame, and whatnot that would have had to be included in any upper stage rocket (the orbiter is, after all, the uppermost stage).
It gets to orbit, therefore it's payload. The fact that we're sending up 104 metric tons of orbital glider is irrelevant. The Russians were able to learn from us when they built the Buran. Instead of putting all the engine components inside the orbiter, they simply strapped a vehicle with no engines to a BDB, and lit her up. Total dry mass of the orbiter? 82-87 metric tons. The payload capacity was even slightly higher than the space shuttle!
Even then, there's no reason to fly a cargo ship like that, when there's no need for the cargo to come back. It would be cheaper to strap the cargo to a Proton rocket, then fly the crew in a five person orbiter launched on the back of another Proton booster.
Bullocks back at you - look at the numbers. Energia had an 88,000 kg payload to LEO. Launch cost was 774 million in 1985 dollars. That's 8.8k$/kg in 1985 dollars. Even many types of US rockets are cheaper than that, when you adjust for inflation, let alone other Russian rockets, Chinese rockets, and Indian rockets.
Do you have a link for those numbers? The only link I could find states the launch cost at $3000-$5000 per kg. Using these rocket cost figures and the maximum weight to LEO on Wikipedia, a "small" Delta II costs about $9000/kg to LEO. ($45m / 4971kg to LEO) A Proton is *cheap* with a cost somewhere in the $1750 - $3500 per kg to LEO range.
A very interesting thing, is that the above link lists Energia launches at arounf $110 m per launch. Since only the 4 booster configuration flew, we must assume that is what the cost figures are for. According to Wikipedia, the maximum mass to LEO in a standard configuration was 100 metric tons. 100 metric tons at 110 million per launch, leaves us with a cost of $1100 per kg to LEO. Consider that the entire ISS could have gone up on only two such launches, and almost the entire station to date would have fit in ONE Vulkan launch (175 metric tons according to Wikipedia).
Now a Long March 3 can lift 4.8 metric tons to LEO, and weighs in at a cost of 33 million per launch. That works out to ~$6800 per kg to LEO. Nowhere near as cheap as the Russian solutions. The Long March 3B was also the rocket that officially
I do believe that I specifically pshawed home automation in my original post. I said that a home computer would provide integrated computing and multimedia capabilities. I don't see automated toasters any time soon. Some people will do the whole X.10 thing, and good for them. Most people will stick with watching television over the internet, using thin client desktops, and other features I mentioned in my original post.:-)
Sun, SGI, HPs, PDPs, etc. Machines from over ten years ago can easily run the latest version of the OS, and all the programs that go with it. The biggest difference is speed.
but i would love to see the day when my computer is 10 years old and plays the latest games:).
You wish! I do see consoles integrating with the home system, so that you can purchase games off the internet and play with other players. In all, I expect the console experience to become much more PC-like in the future.:-)
A rather bad example. It fits on the nose of a rocket because it's small, and it's small because it fit just one person was possible.
That's not too hard to scale. You can lengthen the craft, you can broaden the booster, you can use strap on boosters, etc. You can even do like the Energia/Buran did and mate the craft to the side of the booster. Just as long as you use a normal booster, and none of this "install the engines/turbo pumps/everything else in the craft, and mate it to a gas tank." All those parts have to be rerated after a flight!
Slashdot Mirror
This is extremely good news! As I said previously, if we had lost any of the orbiters, the shuttle program would be over. And if the shuttle program is over, manned space flight as we know it would be over. While many think that the shuttle is a very poor vehicle (actually it's amazingly engineered, but always lacked a real purpose), having it around pushes Congress to fund something simpler and cheaper.
What part of "Not that there's anything that wrong with that, but give credit where credit is due" is so damned hard to understand?!
So, can you make an RTG out of U-235, or does it not emit the right kind of radiation?
:-(
You could use U-235, but you wouldn't get much power out of it. You see, U-235 has a half-life of 7.038E8 years. That means that in 7.038E8 years, 1/2 of the U-235 will decay into Thorium. Of that Thorium, it will decay into other products such as Radon, Radium, and Lead. These processes also take a certain amount of time. The remaining mass of the U-235 will become Alpha and Gamma radiation.
Now each radioactive particle has a certain force and penetration power. Gamma rays penetrate very deep, but have no mass. (It's basically a photon.) Alpha particles are very heavy, but are easily stopped because of their +2 charge. (i.e. Helium ions) Collision events from the radiation causes kinetic energy to become heat.
Here's the problem. If you've got a half-life in the range of millions of years, you've probably only got a few radiological events every minute. A single alpha particle doesn't carry much kinetic energy.
This is where Pu-238 comes in. Pu-238 has a half-life of 87 years. That means, that in 87 years, 1/2 of the plutonium you have will become Uranium-234. 87 years may sound like a long time, but that's enough radiological events to produce massive amounts of heat! If you were to hold a chunk in your hand (not a big deal!), the plutonium would feel hot in your hand. Placing that same chunk in water would rapidly cause the water to boil.
Obviously, anything with a shorter half-life is going to be hotter than Pu-238. Pu-237, for example, has a half-life of 45.7 days. That stuff would be so hot, that you'd probably be cooked to a crisp by a small portion of it. Even worse, the fast decay rate would make the Gamma effects more pronounced, thus increasing your internally absorbed radiation dosage.
Then there's the thermal output, which seems like it should be considerable. How many BTUs would something like this put out?
You'd have to do the calculations to convert it to BTUs (something I'm too lazy to do right now). However, you can't tap the waste heat, because that's what the RTG is already doing. If you fail to cool the RTG, you'll no longer have a heat differential. Without a heat differential, the pelter will not operate.
Look up a Stirling engine sometime. I think you'll find that a bit easier to understand. Basically, the engine makes use of the fact that heat wants to equalize. Thus the heat will move toward the cold side of the engine. By putting a piston in the way of a heated medium, you can tap the differential for power. BTW, radiological Stirling engines do exist as something called an "SRG" or "Stirling Radioisotope Generator". They're actually quite a bit more efficient than RTGs. The trick is that they're rather new tech, despite the fact that Stirling engines are about as old tech as you can get.
There's some note that the material could be used for a "dirty bomb," which is a concern in this age of terrorism
Dirty bombs are stupid and won't work. Sure, they might cause some panic, but there are better ways of doing that. Amazingly enough, the terrorists seem to be smart enough to realize this, and have pretty much given up on the "Dirty Bomb" concept. It now exists only as a phrase the media likes to use to stir things up.
So in summary, Pu-238 is used because it produces a lot of thermal power. U-235 produces negligible thermal power from radioactive decay, and is much more useful as a fissable material. We also learned that half-life has everything to do with how radiologically "hot" a substance is.
The one detail I do recall was that many small reactors of the era were using ceramic encapsulated fuel pellets.
Ah, a modular Pebble Bed Reactor. Yes, those are top on the list of low maintenance reactors. There's been a lot of talk of building self-contained units, but no one has yet done it. AFAIK, there's only one production PBR online, and that's in South Africa. It just came online in 2003, so the world is keeping a close eye on it to see how it performs.
The biggest downside to PBRs, is that they don't scale as large as other designs. A few hundred megawatts is really the largest they can go. That being said, it makes more sense to simply use more reactors rather than bigger reactors. This way you gain redundancy, better maintenance abilities, and lower line transmission losses (by placing the reactor closer to its consumers).
It's worse. The de Gaul isn't even a supercarrier. It's a standard carrier, about 3/4 the length of a US supercarrier, and half the displacement. Even worse, she's usually laid up in dock because SOMETHING is broken.
The ship does utilize nuclear power (a plus), but that doesn't help if she can't endure more than a few days out at sea.
I agree. The Buran was not a failure. However, it was ripped from the US design, and development soaked up ~17 billion US dollars. The US shuttle program only sucked up ~5 billion for development.
That being said, I don't really care about the orbiter. It was a "better" version of the shuttle, but the Energia rocket is far more interesting. Especially if we could pour some money into making it fully reusable. (i.e. the Energia-2 that was being worked on)
It's a matter of nuclear materials. IIRC, they get about 75W from each kilogram of PU-238. For the same amount of U-235, they get megawatts of power. There's simply nowhere to get enough Pu-238 from. However, it may be that Toshiba's design simply dumped a bunch of materials in a can, and didn't worry about optimizing for the best heat potential or life. In that case, they'd be able to obtain more materials, but they'd need a lot more shielding.
Build your own damn supercarriers, neutron bombs, and space lasers instead of sitting on your thumbs.
Like France?
You're joking, right? France? Has a supercarrier? And neutron bombs? And space lasers? They can't even get the ONE carrier they have out of dock!
Way to miss the point, chief. The U.S. is a federalist republic, so therefore we have congress-critters and a president who represent us. We can put pressure on their policies by contacting them and telling why we will or will not vote. Not every country has that, so they have to contact their government directly and beg/plead/bow before their dictator about what they want in world affairs.
I know that. Some countries don't have a representative government, so they have to contact their "UN representative" (i.e. their government) directly.
You'd need antimatter to initiate critical fission in so little material and still shield the user from the radiation and collect power. That shouldn't be too hard to build, just as long as you can find a good way of moderating the reaction.
Those sound like RTGs, not reactors. They're commonly used in space and in harsh conditions where power is difficult to come by. They were even used in Pacemakers for a decade or two. As the anti-nuke activists heated things up in the 80's, RTGs kind of disappeared. They've been making a comeback ever since Cassini flew.
:-)
The protests against Cassini may actually have been the best thing that could have happened. Since they all guaranteed we'd die and we didn't, it sort of shot the anti-nuke credibility all to hell.
Who made the United States the ruler of world affairs?
Europe. Happened in WWII when the rest of the world proved that it couldn't keep from trying to destroy itself. So the Allied powers were given certain rights, and the rest of the world was divided up into little pieces. (Germany, the Middle East, etc.) Our then ally (Russia) then immediately did an about face and became a cold war enemy. They chose to begin taking over the various countries through use of their "Communist ideals".
They then proceeded to sap up all the countries that we hadn't broken into tiny pieces, in an effort to gain more world power. The remaining European allies lacked the necessary GDP to defend against any war that Russia might start, so it was left up to the US to be the "good guys". Don't like it? Too bad. Build your own damn supercarriers, neutron bombs, and space lasers instead of sitting on your thumbs.
As for countries like Iran, Hussein's Iraq, Pakistan, etc, they were broken up for a reason. Very simply: we can't trust them as far as we can kick them. September 11 only proves that. It doesn't stop us from being friendly and trying to help these countries out, but you can bet your ass that the US and UN are not looking to allow them nuclear weapons!
You want to stop nuclear proliferation? How about starting with the United States, Israel, England, France, India...
Leave the US and England out of this. Our nuclear weapons are pretty much at the "yeah, we have some" point. A large chunk of our arsenal has been destroyed, and many of their silos abandoned. I'd say leave France out of this too, but they've had dealings with the Middle East that puts them in the spotlight.
Everyone else in the Middle East is looking to point atomic weapons at each other. Why? None of their excuses make sense to us, so we just try to keep them from lobbing any of those nukes at us or any of our allies.
If you want to let Iran or North Korea develop their own nuclear programs, fine. But the US government and the UN would rather not let them go unsupervised. If you've got an issue with that, petition your representatives in the UN or US.
I don't believe that's the same reactor. Toshiba didn't say that they'd actually built a critical reactor. Instead they called theirs a "nuclear battery" that produced a constant 900C of heat. It's quite possible that Toshiba's model was simply radioisotope powered (i.e. RTG), or maybe it was a simple fission pile. Either one could produce a lot of heat and electricity WITHOUT actually running in a critical state. (as with normal reactors).
I'm sure someone will come along and provide more details and insult me in a few moments.
Actually, I didn't say it was "invented" by iTunes. My point is that Microsoft copied, copied, copied, directly from iTunes, and now this guy thinks they're the greatest thing ever. At least Apple had to do some would to invent a new interface that worked well and was easy to use. Microsoft just copied, copied, copied!
Not that there's anything that wrong with that, but give credit where credit is due!
P.S. I hate to break it to you, but the iTunes UI is far from perfect.
Of course it's not perfect! Is any GUI? But it certainly is the best media center design to date. I used to use MediaMatch, and I can say that I was not impressed. Options were in the oddest of places, interfaces were confusing, error messages were unhelpful, etc., etc., etc.
Can't you see that the whole article is a satire of the breathless worship of iTunes? I mean, you go on about how WMP10 has 'stolen' features from iTunes, even though Apple never invented them in the first place.
Well, lemme see. I said "WinAMP" for the crossfade, because AFAIK, they were the first to have it. As for the playlist design, that was an iTunes invention. WinAMP handled playlists through the use of playlist files.
One way or another, my point is that Microsoft copied iTunes, and now this guy is shouting from the rooftops that Microsoft is so amazing! I'd be just as disgusted if someone gushed as hard about Safari. "Ooo! It's got tabbed browsing! A 'leet feature not seen anywhere else!" Ugh.
A portable nuclear reactor? Cool! Just sling it over your back and go!
Sarcasm aside, "portable" may be stretching it for something that weight 500 metric tons. "Self-contained" would be a better term. Which would be an impressive feat if they can pull it off. Most of our existing reactors require quite a bit of supervision to ensure that they operate within expected tolerances. The safety systems should kick in if anything goes wrong, but the power going out is enough of a problem in of itself. Of course, most of our reactors are pretty old tech, so a self-contained reactor may be possible now. I think it would be kind of cool if every suburb could have one of these things.
Not sure about the whole third-world idea, though. All I can say is, it's better than letting them build their own reactors. At least with these, we'll 100% KNOW if plutonium is missing.
Have you read the review? The guy gushes all over the place about how wonderful Microsoft is, and how WiMP is "the best"! Where the hell did his head go? Some samples:
I am a Windows Media Player junkie. Having used the program for a number of years I think it is quite simply a brilliant piece of software - a masterpiece developed by extremely talented engineers in so many ways. Even more spectacular is that is free. Microsoft gives it away. If Microsoft didn't give this software away I'd gladly pay money for it. I love it.
Ugh. I feel so... dirty... after reading that.
Mp3 ripping. It's admirable that Microsoft finally listened to their users on this one and gave in. In all of the previous versions of Window's Media Player Microsoft forced you to rip your tunes to WMA. [...] Windows Media Player 10 fully supports mp3 ripping and high quality encoding at that. Kudos to Microsoft.
Something that iTunes has had... lemme see... forever?
The new "Composer" menu on the left hand window is a handy feature. Check it out. It's new and I love it. Want to create a Bob Dylan covers playlist? Select Dylan under the composer menu then sort the window by artist and select all but Bob Dylan as a performer and save it as a Bob Dylan covers playlist. Very simple, very easy.
More gushing + feature stolen from iTunes.
Ratings. WMP 10's rating system is first rate. [...] Microsoft developed a fine ratings system. How does this work? Rate each song you hear from one to five stars with a stroke of a right mouse click. Later when you are relaxing you can listen to only your favorite tracks.
That sounds great! Microsoft really outdid themselves by copying from iTunes^W^W^W innovating this really amazing feature! (end sarcasm)
Crossfading. In the past one of the things I hated most was that long silence between songs. One song would end and then prior to the next one there would be more silence.
WinAMP, iTunes, etc? Nope, it's a Microsoft invention don't you know.
Improved interface. Microsoft provided a much improved cosmetic overhaul to WMP 10. One of the things I like a lot in the libraries is that they color code (light blue and a lighter blue) between lines now making it easier to follow the data on a track across the screen.
Look at the screenshot on the page. It looks like crap. Usable, sure, but definitely not attractive.
Anyway, this "review" just hurts, so I'll stop there. I just wish we could rate this review '-1 Microsoft Leg Humper'.
Whoops! Sorry! I found a mirror here, but you might want to download the page and applet to your hard drive so that it doesn't happen again.
Buran wasn't a Shuttle rip-off.
Yes, it was. The Buran was designed to the shuttle's specifications, with only minor differences in dimensions and control systems. It even had engines in the rear for maneuvering, despite the fact that the craft didn't use Shuttle type engines for lift off!
The Buran was definitely an improvement on the shuttle, as it didn't use internal engines fueled by a mated to a tank. Instead, the Buran was mated to an Energia rocket. The rocket did the job of getting the ship up, and the shuttle did the job of getting everything back down. Actually, a pretty smart modification when you think about it.
The Buran also had more advanced flight avionics, but it was also flown 20 years after the space shuttle. Its only flight was in a fully automated mode.
b) Sealar *did* get off the drawing board, and was an attempt to prove Sea Dragon. It failed. Not due to lack of funding, but because of catastrophic failures of its main tank during testing led to little lack of enthusiasm for continuing the project.
Not that I don't believe you, but do you have any links to back this up? All I can find is that the SEALAR "got some funding from the Navy". And not very much at that.
Did you ignore what I wrote about the decline in market for heavy lift?
No, I didn't. I'm saying that manned space travel needs a paradigm of heavy lifters. We need A LOT of materials up there. "Smaller" doesn't do it. There's a decline in payload for the commercial satellite market, which is a different beast than we're discussing.
Because we want to *reuse it*?
Like you reuse a paper cup. The shuttle has to be rebuilt and certified after every flight. That's where the economics of it broke down. It's such a complex machine, that it's very expensive to "reuse". For the cargo the Shuttle is sending, It would be cheaper to use anything from a Proton to a Titan IV.
Besides, when you state "~29 metric tons of cargo, plus another 104 metric tons for its own orbiter weight", that is disingenous in that it makes it sound like it's dead weight. It's not. Most of that is things like the fuel tanks, engines, turbopumps, frame, and whatnot that would have had to be included in any upper stage rocket (the orbiter is, after all, the uppermost stage).
It gets to orbit, therefore it's payload. The fact that we're sending up 104 metric tons of orbital glider is irrelevant. The Russians were able to learn from us when they built the Buran. Instead of putting all the engine components inside the orbiter, they simply strapped a vehicle with no engines to a BDB, and lit her up. Total dry mass of the orbiter? 82-87 metric tons. The payload capacity was even slightly higher than the space shuttle!
Even then, there's no reason to fly a cargo ship like that, when there's no need for the cargo to come back. It would be cheaper to strap the cargo to a Proton rocket, then fly the crew in a five person orbiter launched on the back of another Proton booster.
Bullocks back at you - look at the numbers. Energia had an 88,000 kg payload to LEO. Launch cost was 774 million in 1985 dollars. That's 8.8k$/kg in 1985 dollars. Even many types of US rockets are cheaper than that, when you adjust for inflation, let alone other Russian rockets, Chinese rockets, and Indian rockets.
Do you have a link for those numbers? The only link I could find states the launch cost at $3000-$5000 per kg. Using these rocket cost figures and the maximum weight to LEO on Wikipedia, a "small" Delta II costs about $9000/kg to LEO. ($45m / 4971kg to LEO) A Proton is *cheap* with a cost somewhere in the $1750 - $3500 per kg to LEO range.
A very interesting thing, is that the above link lists Energia launches at arounf $110 m per launch. Since only the 4 booster configuration flew, we must assume that is what the cost figures are for. According to Wikipedia, the maximum mass to LEO in a standard configuration was 100 metric tons. 100 metric tons at 110 million per launch, leaves us with a cost of $1100 per kg to LEO. Consider that the entire ISS could have gone up on only two such launches, and almost the entire station to date would have fit in ONE Vulkan launch (175 metric tons according to Wikipedia).
Now a Long March 3 can lift 4.8 metric tons to LEO, and weighs in at a cost of 33 million per launch. That works out to ~$6800 per kg to LEO. Nowhere near as cheap as the Russian solutions. The Long March 3B was also the rocket that officially
I do believe that I specifically pshawed home automation in my original post. I said that a home computer would provide integrated computing and multimedia capabilities. I don't see automated toasters any time soon. Some people will do the whole X.10 thing, and good for them. Most people will stick with watching television over the internet, using thin client desktops, and other features I mentioned in my original post. :-)
i don't know what you mean with "Unix hardware"
:).
:-)
Sun, SGI, HPs, PDPs, etc. Machines from over ten years ago can easily run the latest version of the OS, and all the programs that go with it. The biggest difference is speed.
but i would love to see the day when my computer is 10 years old and plays the latest games
You wish! I do see consoles integrating with the home system, so that you can purchase games off the internet and play with other players. In all, I expect the console experience to become much more PC-like in the future.
A rather bad example. It fits on the nose of a rocket because it's small, and it's small because it fit just one person was possible.
That's not too hard to scale. You can lengthen the craft, you can broaden the booster, you can use strap on boosters, etc. You can even do like the Energia/Buran did and mate the craft to the side of the booster. Just as long as you use a normal booster, and none of this "install the engines/turbo pumps/everything else in the craft, and mate it to a gas tank." All those parts have to be rerated after a flight!