That wouldn't be a game based on 'Noo, Pagadee' ('I'll get you!' sorry for the transliteration) would it? My father-in-law gave me one of the handheld 'Noo, Pagadee' games after I found a derived game for the Palm Pilot.
Finally!!! A chance to foist my Symbolics 3675 off on someone!!! Bwahahah....
What are you laughing about? I'd take it in an instant. There's nothing like picking up the pieces of lost ideas in history. With systems like Java proving that the core idea of LISP machines was correct but too early, it has never been a better time to consider what the future of computing should look like.
I was doing an IP renumbering, and I reset the default route on their web server. I was telnetted in at the time, from another room. [snip] She walked me up to the console, all remaining 50 keys on the keyboard and shattered monitor and everything.
And it was still running! Can't get that type of reliability out of a PC!;-) I'll bet you could have even hooked a dumb terminal to the serial port and fixed everything without issue.
Bah, kids these days with their "disposable" Windows boxes. Wouldn't know real hardware if it hit them on the head! (Because they'd be unconscious. That shit is heavy!)
If you just want a *nix box to run sendmail or just for the sake of it, it's usually more efficent to have an old Pentium II (which are almost always faster unless you're doing 3D stuff on the SGI) and run Linux/BSD on it.
But they lack the flexibility of the Unix hardware. That stuff was designed to work no matter what, to be fixable no matter what, and to be remotely accessible no matter what. You just can't get that type of reliability out of an x86. It simply isn't built for the type of abuse that a Unix machine was engineered for.
Call me when PCs get OpenBoot, and I'll begin to consider them for serious work.
11 computers weighed my personal space down, sparc servers and stations, sgi indigo2s and dumb terminals
Hey, that's some good stuff there! I'm far happier that it all found a better home than to hear that it was simply trashed. Serious Unix machines never die. They are simply less powerful than a newer model. Doesn't mean you should throw them away though. You never know who might need a cheap Unix workstation to get some work done, run background computations, or perform simple serving (e.g. sendmail).
You can keep the x86 cruft, however. They're older than the dinosaurs the day after they're released.
You show typical engineer bias throughout your post. It carries the "holier than thou" attitude most engineers thrive on. Well, I'm a computer scientist. I chose my field because I enjoy working with software over hardware, programming instead of soddering, logic instead of circuits.
Oh dear Lord. Do you people go *seeking* offense? I certainly wasn't intending any.
Why you place engineers on some sort of higher pedastal over scientists, I'll never know.
Simple. I didn't. I placed Scientists as truly great people who advance our knowledge. Engineers don't do that. That's not their job.
then in the next paragraph you claim engineers would be the ones who would go out of their way to research some extragavant idea of colonizing some distant planet.
See, this is where you're confused. An Engineer will not do the research to say, create a warp in space time. Unless the research already exists, an Engineer won't be trying to create a warp drive. I think this is where you're confused. An engineer will tell you how we can go to Alpha Centauri with current tech.
e.g. Let's build a generational ship powered by a "railroad" Orion drive that will provide propulsion for the entire trip. The generational ship should be of a hub design approximately 1 kilometer in diameter and 1 kilometer in depth. (These figures are the best estimates of engineers on the largest spacecraft we could build with current materials.) This should get you there in about 100 years, at an astronomical expense.
The scientist OTOH, says "what are the properties of space time"? "What can I infer from what I already know?" "Is it possible to warp space-time?" Once he answers these questions, he does the research to prove his theories. Once the research is done, he passes it on to the engineers to build a warp drive, a stargate, a black hole generator, or whatever else the scientist has proven his research useful for.
A "software engineer" is a misnomer...the correct term is "computer scientist".
Bzzt! A true Computer Scientist is someone who researches computational theory, information theory, encryption theory, etc. He is a producer of knowledge and mathematics, not end products. To him, a modern computer is the end product of computational research. Yet it is not the end of that research, but the beginning. Is there any other way than electronics to run computations? What properties of quantum physics, biology, differential mechanics, and nanotech can be exploited to build a new computational machine? What advantages would that computational machine have? Are these advantages mathematically provable?
A true Software Engineer is someone who applies known computer science to build complex software architectures that meet the needs of a customer. For example, a Software Engineer may build an OS, a Database, a Transactional System, a Web Application, etc. based on a customer's (defined here as the company footing the bill) need. He does not concern himself with developing new provable math to make that happen. He assembles and develops based on the research already performed by computer scientists.
Then there's programmers. A programmer is simply someone who can write instructions for the computer to execute. The term does not imply whether he is actually able to apply the computational sciences. In many ways, he can be likened to a construction worker. He follows the plans laid by the engineers and does much of the grunt work.
Of course, the above is simply roles. I've done CompSci research before (and if I ever get around to it, I might even publish the stuff) because I needed to. No such research existed in the area, and it turned out that I was qualified to perform that research. However, the general case is that I am a software engineer. I used to think of myself as a computer scientist until I realized that I was not doing a computer scientist's job. I was doing the job of an engineer. I built things, I architected th
Do like I do. Change the Internet Explorer link to launch FireFox. Most people don't notice (or care enough) that it isn't Internet Explorer. Keep in mind that the switch is very much a physiological thing. They're used to hitting that IE button, and just don't feel the same if they don't.
Also, make sure that Flash, Java, RealPlayer, and other plugins are installed. You may hate them, but your mother is going to hate you if they don't work.
Adding a heavy duty rumble pack to the weapon and giving it hit points might liven it up a bit too.
Maybe it should be added to the legs and arms instead of the gun? If you added enough sensors on the player, you could calculate instant-kill hits and wound-causing hits. If the player is wounded, you could start a rumble in his legs or arms. This would make it more difficult for him to move or aim, thus simulating real battle damage. This idea could then be extended to the idea of playing with battle armor (simulated by the computer, of course). "Battle Armor" would certainly give the campers (sorry, snipers) a bad day!:-)
Depending on the concealed weapons laws in your state, it's probably illegal to have them not visible.
Depends. If he's transporting them in a proper case with the weapon unloaded and disassembled, he shouldn't be breaking any laws. Now if he was carrying a loaded shotgun in his backpack, or a handgun in an underarm holster, then he'd be in deep shit.
In any case, I don't know if electrodes in the vest is an especially good idea. The problem is that your skin conductivity changes as it gets wet, increasing the risk that you'd accidentally give somebody too much amperage across the heart. And it gets awfully bulky.
Piezo buzzers. That's the answer. Spread them throughout the suit. They will make the player uncomfortable when he gets hit, AND give him a general idea of where he was hit.
Suggestions of wiring eletrodes to the vest to zap players were met with blank stares and hostility. I still think that's the way to go... modify them from "laser tag" to "pain gun tag":)
A more serious idea might be to attach Piezo buzzers at various points of the player's suit. When the player gets "hit", his suit will rattle his bones a little bit and make him not *want* to get hit.
Hmm... maybe I should suggest this to the local Lazer Storm...
You want to fire at your friends and coworkers with real laser weapons?
Any laser should do. All you need to do is up the output to the Kilowatt or higher range. With a few kilowatts and the proper optics, you should have a handy little drill. Up it into the megawatt range and things will start combusting. Go for the GigaWatt range and you can watch things vaporize!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Now there's that little problem with the charge time on Gigawatt lasers...
The original post took up ways for a launch to fail. I was trying to make the point that these launches can be done every hour, maybe multiple times. So even if it should have a high loss rate, it's a good deal.
Ah. Sorry. 10% is actually high for most launchers today. They've gotten pretty good at building them.:-) The problem tends to be that the cargo is worth far more than the rocket. e.g. If my comsat required for 5th generation cell phones blows up, then I'm out of the market. By the time I build and launch another comsat, my competitors will have already cornered the market.
I realize a rocket could start rotating outside of the atmosphere. Why is this kind of rocket so much more probable to do it that it will be a killer for the design?
I'm not sure if you understand. It's not a matter of "might" it rotate, it's a matter of it "must" rotate to attain orbit. Allow me to explain.
You see, in order to obtain orbit, the spacecraft must have a speed parallel to the Earth that is sufficient to "miss" the ground. i.e. The craft is falling to the ground, but by the time it reaches where the ground would be, its forward accelertion propels beyond where the Earth is. The ship again starts falling to the Earth, but again misses (nothing to slow it down!).
In order to obtain an orbital trajectory, a spacecraft must apply a tremendous amount of force in a direction parallel to the ground. Thus most spacecraft start with 100% throttle to get off the ground, throttle back once in the air (The Space Shuttle throttles to 60% IIRC), continue thrusting until the desired altitude is reached (~200 miles for LEO), roll the ship to be perpendicular with the ground, throttle up to 100%, then continue thrusting until orbital velocity is achieved (~25,000 mph for LEO).
Technically, if there was no air resistence a spacecraft could orbit the Earth from an altitude of 5 feet off the ground. The only problem is that it would have to be going so fast that it will clear the earth in a matter of seconds.
I think a master's degree implies that you are able to take a task assigned to you, and complete it satisfactory.
No, it doesn't. While I've seen some truly brilliant Masters through the years, many of them really just crammed their way through without any good idea of what they're doing. (I even knew one guy who couldn't write a line of code or figure out an algorithm if his life depended on it. He *sounded* great during the interview, but it seems he was a professional bullshitter.)
I can't say how this is being accomplished, but a combination of lower standards and cheating seem to be the most common reasons discussed.
Then Again, if you only hirer senor Enginers, you will be in big shit 3 years down the road, because when the baby boomers start to retier you will have No more senior and LOADS of Untrained Jr, Eng. with NO MENTOR to help then. your momentary 5x boost will decrease to -15 if you don't maintaint your flow of jr/sr within your company.
The core of the problem is that companies are hiring *all* juniors. You need some juniors, but only as many as you can mentor. (Basically, apprentices.) The rest of your team should consist of regular and senior developers. The regular ones should be well trained enough to do their job effectively, with the seniors should be responsible for high level design, architecture, and more complex pieces of code.
If they REALLY had a sense of houmour, they would add "using proven Beatle2 technology".
Maybe I'm tired, but I'm completely missing the joke here. My first thought is that you're referring to the "Beagle Mars Probe" that failed. That would kind of ruin the whole "it's a bug" joke though.
My next thought is that you were referring to the new VW Beatle. My only problem is that I don't understand how that pertains to anything. It's a "trendy" car that has none of the features of the original. Can't see how that relates to two space probes where one is *supposed* to crash.
Assume a ten percent loss ratio. It's still a cheap way to send up easily replaceable material.
10% would be a damn good lossage factor. Many engine techniques get only about 30-50% efficeincy out of their fuels.
Why would the spacecraft start rotating?
A rocket's trajectory usually takes it up to optimum height where it then rolls to a parallel course with the Earth. During this portion of the launch, the rocket is throttled up to maximum power so that it can achieve orbital velocity.
Well actualy you forgot one last point, the MBA, and why they are paid 150,000$.
I didn't so much as "forget" it as simply "not address" the topic. MBAs are payed well because they should be generating money for a company and/or themselves. How they go about that is somewhat their business, with the exception of when screwy ideas begin to enter "MBA-land" as gospel. In particular, the "warm-bodies" idea is an idea that should be taken out and shot.
Many MBAs currently think that three $45,000 programmers should be able to do twice the work of one $150,000 engineer. In their minds, they're saving money and increasing productivity. The only problem is that they don't understand that a true engineer can achieve 5-10x the work that those 3 junior engineers can, because he works from more knowledge and experience than the juniors. In addition, the senior will attempt to reduce hidden maintenece costs down the road, while the juniors will develop things so slapdash that the design will have zero staying power. i.e. Every design will have to be redone from the ground up.
The sooner we can get stupid ideas like this out of MBAs heads, the sooner we can all go back to making money instead of "saving" it in the most expensive way possible.
Of course, we've kind of blurred that distinction in Computational Sciences. Now we have a field that does scientific research into mathematical concepts so that Engineers can (hopefully) apply them to the development of real world machines.
Exactly! Now if only such a system were as easy to implement in real life as it seems on paper. As much as an employers (and many employees!) would like to have resumes reduced to a set of competence numbers, people will always look for a way to cheat the system. Hell, we have bookstores devoted to cheating the system! "Preparing for your ACTs", "Passing Sun Certification", "C++ in 24 Hours", etc.
The only way such a system would work is if you have a human you trust making the evaluation. But how do you decide who you trust? And how do you account for personal feelings toward a student? All very difficult questions.:-/
"Sea Dragon" was chemical (yawn) and Energia Vulkan too, right?
Nothing wrong with chemical. As a planetary heavy launch solution, it actually isn't bad. In fact, Sea Dragon would be downright cheap. It's just that no one really *wants* to launch huge payloads. That's why we stopped manufacturing the Saturn V.
As for space-based propulsion, I would absolutely LOVE to see Zubrin's Nuclear Salt Water Rocket pan out. Speaking with nuclear engineers, they either believe it would take some serious R&D to make workable or that it wouldn't even work in the first place. Unfortunately, no one has tried building one yet.
(They really planned to launch using a gas core??)
Planned? No. There have been talks of launching Gas Cores, but the tech is still beyond us. Again, some engineers question the validity of the "Nuclear Lightbulb" concept. Here's more info on the idea.
The market signals say we do not need more engineers or scientists.
My belief is not so much that we need more engineers as we need more *real* engineers. Too many people of the current generation have entered hi-tech fields without the skills to actually do their job effectively. Many of these people would be much happier in other fields, but they were attracted to tech jobs by the money and the articifcial need in the market. The result is that we've got managers who believe that hardware/software/aerospace/electronics/whatever development is simply a matter of more warm bodies rather than hiring highly educated individuals with a passion for their field.
This "warm-body" mentality was prevelent in the dot-com boom, then the H1-B glut, and now the Indian Outsourcing fads. (I can't speek to previous aerospace booms, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same issue was appearing there.) Unless this changes, it's doubtful that the pace of technological development will again reach the levels seen throughout the 20th century.
Slashdot Mirror
Hase und Wolf (Hare and Wolf)
:-D
That wouldn't be a game based on 'Noo, Pagadee' ('I'll get you!' sorry for the transliteration) would it? My father-in-law gave me one of the handheld 'Noo, Pagadee' games after I found a derived game for the Palm Pilot.
"Noo, Ziatz! Pagadee!" ("I'll get you, hare!")
Finally!!! A chance to foist my Symbolics 3675 off on someone!!! Bwahahah....
What are you laughing about? I'd take it in an instant. There's nothing like picking up the pieces of lost ideas in history. With systems like Java proving that the core idea of LISP machines was correct but too early, it has never been a better time to consider what the future of computing should look like.
I was doing an IP renumbering, and I reset the default route on their web server. I was telnetted in at the time, from another room. [snip] She walked me up to the console, all remaining 50 keys on the keyboard and shattered monitor and everything.
;-) I'll bet you could have even hooked a dumb terminal to the serial port and fixed everything without issue.
And it was still running! Can't get that type of reliability out of a PC!
Bah, kids these days with their "disposable" Windows boxes. Wouldn't know real hardware if it hit them on the head! (Because they'd be unconscious. That shit is heavy!)
If you just want a *nix box to run sendmail or just for the sake of it, it's usually more efficent to have an old Pentium II (which are almost always faster unless you're doing 3D stuff on the SGI) and run Linux/BSD on it.
But they lack the flexibility of the Unix hardware. That stuff was designed to work no matter what, to be fixable no matter what, and to be remotely accessible no matter what. You just can't get that type of reliability out of an x86. It simply isn't built for the type of abuse that a Unix machine was engineered for.
Call me when PCs get OpenBoot, and I'll begin to consider them for serious work.
11 computers weighed my personal space down, sparc servers and stations, sgi indigo2s and dumb terminals
Hey, that's some good stuff there! I'm far happier that it all found a better home than to hear that it was simply trashed. Serious Unix machines never die. They are simply less powerful than a newer model. Doesn't mean you should throw them away though. You never know who might need a cheap Unix workstation to get some work done, run background computations, or perform simple serving (e.g. sendmail).
You can keep the x86 cruft, however. They're older than the dinosaurs the day after they're released.
You show typical engineer bias throughout your post. It carries the "holier than thou" attitude most engineers thrive on. Well, I'm a computer scientist. I chose my field because I enjoy working with software over hardware, programming instead of soddering, logic instead of circuits.
Oh dear Lord. Do you people go *seeking* offense? I certainly wasn't intending any.
Why you place engineers on some sort of higher pedastal over scientists, I'll never know.
Simple. I didn't. I placed Scientists as truly great people who advance our knowledge. Engineers don't do that. That's not their job.
then in the next paragraph you claim engineers would be the ones who would go out of their way to research some extragavant idea of colonizing some distant planet.
See, this is where you're confused. An Engineer will not do the research to say, create a warp in space time. Unless the research already exists, an Engineer won't be trying to create a warp drive. I think this is where you're confused. An engineer will tell you how we can go to Alpha Centauri with current tech.
e.g. Let's build a generational ship powered by a "railroad" Orion drive that will provide propulsion for the entire trip. The generational ship should be of a hub design approximately 1 kilometer in diameter and 1 kilometer in depth. (These figures are the best estimates of engineers on the largest spacecraft we could build with current materials.) This should get you there in about 100 years, at an astronomical expense.
The scientist OTOH, says "what are the properties of space time"? "What can I infer from what I already know?" "Is it possible to warp space-time?" Once he answers these questions, he does the research to prove his theories. Once the research is done, he passes it on to the engineers to build a warp drive, a stargate, a black hole generator, or whatever else the scientist has proven his research useful for.
A "software engineer" is a misnomer...the correct term is "computer scientist".
Bzzt! A true Computer Scientist is someone who researches computational theory, information theory, encryption theory, etc. He is a producer of knowledge and mathematics, not end products. To him, a modern computer is the end product of computational research. Yet it is not the end of that research, but the beginning. Is there any other way than electronics to run computations? What properties of quantum physics, biology, differential mechanics, and nanotech can be exploited to build a new computational machine? What advantages would that computational machine have? Are these advantages mathematically provable?
A true Software Engineer is someone who applies known computer science to build complex software architectures that meet the needs of a customer. For example, a Software Engineer may build an OS, a Database, a Transactional System, a Web Application, etc. based on a customer's (defined here as the company footing the bill) need. He does not concern himself with developing new provable math to make that happen. He assembles and develops based on the research already performed by computer scientists.
Then there's programmers. A programmer is simply someone who can write instructions for the computer to execute. The term does not imply whether he is actually able to apply the computational sciences. In many ways, he can be likened to a construction worker. He follows the plans laid by the engineers and does much of the grunt work.
Of course, the above is simply roles. I've done CompSci research before (and if I ever get around to it, I might even publish the stuff) because I needed to. No such research existed in the area, and it turned out that I was qualified to perform that research. However, the general case is that I am a software engineer. I used to think of myself as a computer scientist until I realized that I was not doing a computer scientist's job. I was doing the job of an engineer. I built things, I architected th
Um, it's not exactly puberty. Do you mean it's psychological?
Doh! Damn spellchecker. Yes, I meant psychological. I should really pay more attention to which spell correction I'm choosing.
Do like I do. Change the Internet Explorer link to launch FireFox. Most people don't notice (or care enough) that it isn't Internet Explorer. Keep in mind that the switch is very much a physiological thing. They're used to hitting that IE button, and just don't feel the same if they don't.
Also, make sure that Flash, Java, RealPlayer, and other plugins are installed. You may hate them, but your mother is going to hate you if they don't work.
"A few kilowatts?!? MegaWatts?! GIGAWATTS!?!?"
Yes, Gigawatts. I'm firing it to get even with Kent. It's a moral imperative.
You know, I'm suddenly getting this craving for some popcorn...
Prof. Jerry Hathaway: What do you want, Knight?
Chris Knight: World peace . . . but I don't think this is the time to discuss it.
Adding a heavy duty rumble pack to the weapon and giving it hit points might liven it up a bit too.
:-)
Maybe it should be added to the legs and arms instead of the gun? If you added enough sensors on the player, you could calculate instant-kill hits and wound-causing hits. If the player is wounded, you could start a rumble in his legs or arms. This would make it more difficult for him to move or aim, thus simulating real battle damage. This idea could then be extended to the idea of playing with battle armor (simulated by the computer, of course). "Battle Armor" would certainly give the campers (sorry, snipers) a bad day!
Depending on the concealed weapons laws in your state, it's probably illegal to have them not visible.
Depends. If he's transporting them in a proper case with the weapon unloaded and disassembled, he shouldn't be breaking any laws. Now if he was carrying a loaded shotgun in his backpack, or a handgun in an underarm holster, then he'd be in deep shit.
In any case, I don't know if electrodes in the vest is an especially good idea. The problem is that your skin conductivity changes as it gets wet, increasing the risk that you'd accidentally give somebody too much amperage across the heart. And it gets awfully bulky.
Piezo buzzers. That's the answer. Spread them throughout the suit. They will make the player uncomfortable when he gets hit, AND give him a general idea of where he was hit.
Suggestions of wiring eletrodes to the vest to zap players were met with blank stares and hostility. I still think that's the way to go... modify them from "laser tag" to "pain gun tag" :)
A more serious idea might be to attach Piezo buzzers at various points of the player's suit. When the player gets "hit", his suit will rattle his bones a little bit and make him not *want* to get hit.
Hmm... maybe I should suggest this to the local Lazer Storm...
You want to fire at your friends and coworkers with real laser weapons?
Any laser should do. All you need to do is up the output to the Kilowatt or higher range. With a few kilowatts and the proper optics, you should have a handy little drill. Up it into the megawatt range and things will start combusting. Go for the GigaWatt range and you can watch things vaporize!
BWHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!
Now there's that little problem with the charge time on Gigawatt lasers...
Ah well. You win some, you lose some. (Or should that be loose some?) ;-)
The original post took up ways for a launch to fail. I was trying to make the point that these launches can be done every hour, maybe multiple times. So even if it should have a high loss rate, it's a good deal.
:-) The problem tends to be that the cargo is worth far more than the rocket. e.g. If my comsat required for 5th generation cell phones blows up, then I'm out of the market. By the time I build and launch another comsat, my competitors will have already cornered the market.
Ah. Sorry. 10% is actually high for most launchers today. They've gotten pretty good at building them.
I realize a rocket could start rotating outside of the atmosphere. Why is this kind of rocket so much more probable to do it that it will be a killer for the design?
I'm not sure if you understand. It's not a matter of "might" it rotate, it's a matter of it "must" rotate to attain orbit. Allow me to explain.
You see, in order to obtain orbit, the spacecraft must have a speed parallel to the Earth that is sufficient to "miss" the ground. i.e. The craft is falling to the ground, but by the time it reaches where the ground would be, its forward accelertion propels beyond where the Earth is. The ship again starts falling to the Earth, but again misses (nothing to slow it down!).
In order to obtain an orbital trajectory, a spacecraft must apply a tremendous amount of force in a direction parallel to the ground. Thus most spacecraft start with 100% throttle to get off the ground, throttle back once in the air (The Space Shuttle throttles to 60% IIRC), continue thrusting until the desired altitude is reached (~200 miles for LEO), roll the ship to be perpendicular with the ground, throttle up to 100%, then continue thrusting until orbital velocity is achieved (~25,000 mph for LEO).
Technically, if there was no air resistence a spacecraft could orbit the Earth from an altitude of 5 feet off the ground. The only problem is that it would have to be going so fast that it will clear the earth in a matter of seconds.
I think a master's degree implies that you are able to take a task assigned to you, and complete it satisfactory.
No, it doesn't. While I've seen some truly brilliant Masters through the years, many of them really just crammed their way through without any good idea of what they're doing. (I even knew one guy who couldn't write a line of code or figure out an algorithm if his life depended on it. He *sounded* great during the interview, but it seems he was a professional bullshitter.)
I can't say how this is being accomplished, but a combination of lower standards and cheating seem to be the most common reasons discussed.
Then Again, if you only hirer senor Enginers, you will be in big shit 3 years down the road, because when the baby boomers start to retier you will have No more senior and LOADS of Untrained Jr, Eng. with NO MENTOR to help then. your momentary 5x boost will decrease to -15 if you don't maintaint your flow of jr/sr within your company.
The core of the problem is that companies are hiring *all* juniors. You need some juniors, but only as many as you can mentor. (Basically, apprentices.) The rest of your team should consist of regular and senior developers. The regular ones should be well trained enough to do their job effectively, with the seniors should be responsible for high level design, architecture, and more complex pieces of code.
If they REALLY had a sense of houmour, they would add "using proven Beatle2 technology".
Maybe I'm tired, but I'm completely missing the joke here. My first thought is that you're referring to the "Beagle Mars Probe" that failed. That would kind of ruin the whole "it's a bug" joke though.
My next thought is that you were referring to the new VW Beatle. My only problem is that I don't understand how that pertains to anything. It's a "trendy" car that has none of the features of the original. Can't see how that relates to two space probes where one is *supposed* to crash.
Assume a ten percent loss ratio. It's still a cheap way to send up easily replaceable material.
10% would be a damn good lossage factor. Many engine techniques get only about 30-50% efficeincy out of their fuels.
Why would the spacecraft start rotating?
A rocket's trajectory usually takes it up to optimum height where it then rolls to a parallel course with the Earth. During this portion of the launch, the rocket is throttled up to maximum power so that it can achieve orbital velocity.
Well actualy you forgot one last point, the MBA, and why they are paid 150,000$.
I didn't so much as "forget" it as simply "not address" the topic. MBAs are payed well because they should be generating money for a company and/or themselves. How they go about that is somewhat their business, with the exception of when screwy ideas begin to enter "MBA-land" as gospel. In particular, the "warm-bodies" idea is an idea that should be taken out and shot.
Many MBAs currently think that three $45,000 programmers should be able to do twice the work of one $150,000 engineer. In their minds, they're saving money and increasing productivity. The only problem is that they don't understand that a true engineer can achieve 5-10x the work that those 3 junior engineers can, because he works from more knowledge and experience than the juniors. In addition, the senior will attempt to reduce hidden maintenece costs down the road, while the juniors will develop things so slapdash that the design will have zero staying power. i.e. Every design will have to be redone from the ground up.
The sooner we can get stupid ideas like this out of MBAs heads, the sooner we can all go back to making money instead of "saving" it in the most expensive way possible.
Mathematics is NOT a science.
Of course, we've kind of blurred that distinction in Computational Sciences. Now we have a field that does scientific research into mathematical concepts so that Engineers can (hopefully) apply them to the development of real world machines.
Exactly! Now if only such a system were as easy to implement in real life as it seems on paper. As much as an employers (and many employees!) would like to have resumes reduced to a set of competence numbers, people will always look for a way to cheat the system. Hell, we have bookstores devoted to cheating the system! "Preparing for your ACTs", "Passing Sun Certification", "C++ in 24 Hours", etc.
:-/
The only way such a system would work is if you have a human you trust making the evaluation. But how do you decide who you trust? And how do you account for personal feelings toward a student? All very difficult questions.
"Sea Dragon" was chemical (yawn) and Energia Vulkan too, right?
Nothing wrong with chemical. As a planetary heavy launch solution, it actually isn't bad. In fact, Sea Dragon would be downright cheap. It's just that no one really *wants* to launch huge payloads. That's why we stopped manufacturing the Saturn V.
As for space-based propulsion, I would absolutely LOVE to see Zubrin's Nuclear Salt Water Rocket pan out. Speaking with nuclear engineers, they either believe it would take some serious R&D to make workable or that it wouldn't even work in the first place. Unfortunately, no one has tried building one yet.
(They really planned to launch using a gas core??)
Planned? No. There have been talks of launching Gas Cores, but the tech is still beyond us. Again, some engineers question the validity of the "Nuclear Lightbulb" concept. Here's more info on the idea.
The market signals say we do not need more engineers or scientists.
My belief is not so much that we need more engineers as we need more *real* engineers. Too many people of the current generation have entered hi-tech fields without the skills to actually do their job effectively. Many of these people would be much happier in other fields, but they were attracted to tech jobs by the money and the articifcial need in the market. The result is that we've got managers who believe that hardware/software/aerospace/electronics/whatever development is simply a matter of more warm bodies rather than hiring highly educated individuals with a passion for their field.
This "warm-body" mentality was prevelent in the dot-com boom, then the H1-B glut, and now the Indian Outsourcing fads. (I can't speek to previous aerospace booms, but it wouldn't surprise me if the same issue was appearing there.) Unless this changes, it's doubtful that the pace of technological development will again reach the levels seen throughout the 20th century.