GIMP's main target is Joe Point and Shoot? It seems a bit too complex to be targetted at them. That and the fact windows isn't supported yet...
But without profiles, its simply not useful for anyone else, much less graphics professionals or even semi-amateurs who may, at some point, want accurate reproductions of their work. A properly calibrated monitor (and software that can recognize it) is essential to anything thats non-toy graphics work.
its still a bit of a voodoo science to get the colors "just right", even with OSX and windows, but canon for example distributes its own photo print tool that uses canon provided profiles (based on their OEM paper and ink).
You still need some sort of monitor calibrator though to get the right colors. This can be as simple as the adobe gamma software, or the more accurate colorimeter packages which come with a sensor that suction cups to the monitor.
I just can't take a photo editting package seriously if it doesn't have at least some support for color profiles. Joe Point n' shoot might not use them, but Joe Point n' shoot doesn't use Linux either.
if you ever want to get well into digital photography where you print out your own photos on your photo printer, calibration is a must have if you have at least a passing demand of accuracy and quality.
You will never get your printed output to look exactly like whats on your screen without profiling. In many cases, the colors may be quite off because of variations in screens, video drivers, printer ink, printer paper, printer drivers etc.
Then again, I doubt any modern USB 2.0 photo printer is supported on any non OSX or windows system so perhaps the whole idea of printing in general doesn't get much attention from the gimp team.
That page has a good overview of the different types of propulsion systems and their proper usages. Key point: Getting to orbit requires high thrust chemical. Once you're there, you can start up your more efficient but slower accelerating nuclear engine.
ion engines only throw out lightweight ions - even if you put a nuclear engine on one. It won't be enough to get you off the ground. These work great in space where you don't have resistance to overcome and you can build your velocity slowly over time through orbitting.
Chemical rockets on the other hand generate steam and other heavier mass exhaust gasses which generate more force in the short term and giving you massive acceleration, which is what you need to get off the ground and stay off it.
work in monochrome. Actually all CCD's do. Your consumer camera has built in color filters attached physically to the CCD with a separate color per charge well. While this makes processing for you and the camera simple, it lowers the resolution and sensitivity than if you were using a single filter across the whole CCD and then later combine it into a mosaic.
The filter wheel also includes infrared and ultraviolet filters so that the camera can explore in those wavelengths as well. So it can still see more than what your consumer camera can.
And while its all fine and good the PCSAT has been lucky enough to work with off the shelf parts, if you're given a big budget and told to send something to mars (several months and a whole lot of radiation away..once you leave earth's somewhat protective magnetic field you're in a really dangerous environment) and you want to be really sure things work well, its best to get your equipment space certified and well proven, even if it sacrifices the cutting edge.
Gen IV nuclear reactors are extremely safe (and most certainly won't EXPLODE) and if you're going to see reactors in space (besides what the soviets launched decades ago) they'll be of similar and extremely safe compact designs. You only need a few kilos of uranium to power a spacecraft for months and uranium isn't all that dangerous either.
Its unlikely a nuclear engine will provide launch power from earth, but I can see one being put in space and then going from there.
The last thing we need is a probe to burn up and cause a nuclear explosion in the Martian atmosphere
Ignorance regarding nuclear power. No probe can ever cause a "nuclear explosion". Several probes sent to mars have included RTG's which contain Pu238, including the Vikings. RTG's are extremely safe sources of power - in fact, as far as radioactive elements go, Pu238 is one of the safest to handle since it only produces alpha particles which are stopped by a sheet of paper.
The RTG's themselves are titanium shelled and designed to survive re-entry or explosion. In the unlikely event they are cracked open, the Pu238 is bound in oxide form in a ceramic which resists producing Plutonium dust in an explosion (Pu oxide tends to form chunks) which is the main hazardous form of plutonium.
Actually landing something with rockets requires a liquid fueled throttle controlled engine attached to the radar altimeter which is very complex and expensive to build. The vikings landed this way at ~$1 billion 1976 dollars. Their landings were *amazingly* accurate, designed to disturb the ground as little as possible. Viking 2 I believe landed with an estimated disturbance of less than 1 mm of dust blown off the ground.
How this mars lander worked was to deploy a parachute to slow it down and then fire some solid rocket motors (can't be shut down or throttled and are really cheap) to bring it to a dead stop around 20-40 ft in the air and then deploy airbags to cushion the last few feet fallen. The system, though complex as it is, is far cheaper and less complex than a liquid fueled rocket motor landing system.
The reason for stopping in mid-air is because of timing variations in calculations. Its difficult to tell exactly what conditions the lander will encounter from 300 million miles away and months before launch. So they fire the rockets early enough to bring it to a stop well before it would hit the ground.
Apple has historically offered products with 1.5x the ability as the commodity standard at 2x the price.
But people pay the price because of the perceived (and usually actual) quality, style and support. Along with that 'uniqueness' factor in having something not everyone else does. If apple were to start commoditizing their products, they'd lose the die-hard best customer support from people who purchase Apple for reasons besides money.
Apple is to computers what volkswagen is to cars. Hmm, that makes me wonder about how many VW drivers are also mac users compared to other car brands... I bet it's a higher than normal percentage.
Google doesn't have a monopoly on search techniques and knowledge. Though they are fanatical about maintaining secrecy about some details of how their engine works, the main idea behind the majority of their ranking and a few improvements are well known.
Some claim Alltheweb is better than google, but I find its about equal.
Some other experimental engines I've seen have alot of potential, especially the ones who come up with narrowing suggestions and do accurate self-categorization. Teoma is a good example of that.
that most search engines have a difficult time with is "Microwave dish". It's a perfectly valid search term and not especially generic. Let's assume you're searching for basic information regarding microwave antennas (the search engine doesnt know this of course) but don't know a whole lot about them.
But...
Am I talking about the dish antenna's used with microwave radiation?
Or possibly cookware that is microwave safe...
Or just recipes for food that can be cooked in a microwave.
Most engines return a combination of all the above in no decent order. Google even returns some obscure clause in some apartment's lease as its #5 hit.
Better engines organize them into categories, or offer suggestions to clarify your search. Teoma does this though I see its closest approximation to microwave antennas is "Microwave Antenna Broadband Home".
I liked the stardust campaign a little better. Unlike being encoded onto a DVD like the mars lander, stardust microprinted the names onto metal plates affixed to the spacecraft. I suppose theres not much difference but in a million years you could put the plate under a microscope and read the names off, whereas the dvd format will be long gone...
Since the spacecraft portion will continue flying throughout the solar system after returning to earth and dropping its lander off in 2006, the plates should last forever...
one of the great advances of this rover is it is loaded with stereoscopic engineering cameras. Basically what this means is mission control gives the rover a location to go to, but the rover finds its own way there while avoiding things it would get hung up on.
It takes its time doing it, only moving a foot or two at a time and then stopping to consider its next move, but considering the 20 minute relay time between mission control saying "go here" and the rover's camera showing whats going on to mission control, having a rover that can decide how it should go on its own is a great asset.
Pu238 is used in radiothermal generators. Pu238 (an isotope which is completely useless for weapons...) generates large amounts of heat through decay which is converted to electricity. This heat through decay process is one reason why fission weapons can't be made with it, its too unstable.
Also, it readily binds into an oxide which can be turned into a ceramic material which is whats found in the titanium shelled RTG canisters. This is a very safe way to handle it. One reason is that in the event of explosion or re-entry disaster, titanium is very strong and unlikely to break open. Second, even if it does, the ceramic-oxide will tend to form dense clumps as opposed to dust particles, which is how plutonium is harmful.
Did you know you could eat a piece of plutonium and would suffer no ill effects? It would pass through you before doing any real damage. Breathing microscopic dust particles is another matter, however.
Virtually all long distance probes use it, as solar power generating ability drops off quickly from distance from the sun. ie, Solar cells on mars will only generate half the wattage they do on earth. Go out far beyond mars and you'll get virtually nothing.
Beagle2 was a very underfunded craft. Built on the cheap, but the Brits managed to do a great job of it with the money they had.
Also, Britain has historically placed a very low priority (almost non-existant) on space missions of any sorts. I'm sure securing the funding they did get for Beagle was a fight and a half.
Though Beagle's landing operation may have failed, landing is the most difficult and expensive part of the craft construction. But the rest of the construction is important as well and surely they learned alot from it. From what I saw the Beagle2 was a clever, innovative and useful craft.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the USA there is a saying... it's not whether you win or lose, its how you play the game. We all - USA included - have alot more to learn about building reliable spacecraft that doesn't break the bank. There is alot of room for individual innovations in engineering there.
For a first try, Beagle2 was a great craft. I hope a setback as it was doesn't kill future opportunities for space operations there.
as airspace is already heavily regulated and there are relatively few aircraft in the skies at any one point which are usually piloted by far more competant people. (compared to say, rushhour where tens of millions of cars are on the road and driven by people of often dubious skills)
There are also generally only a few flight corridors that get alot of use due to popular routes, the earth's curvature and weather patterns, unlike road systems.
but most modern passenger planes are flown by software, most notably the 777.
Lots were learned from therac-25, the ariane disaster, and airbus issues in terms of what needs to be done in regards to safety critical software.
The 777 avionics system for instance, was thoroughly proven with formal mathematical methods and then put through literally millions of hours of simulator testing. They practically redefined the science of how to test software validity with it.
Oh, and it was done in ada, as most safety critical applications are as ada is extremely fault tolerant and requires the same of software written in it.
Such a system wouldn't be allowed by the FAA if it didn't undergo the same type of verification and fault tolerant design from the onset and addressed every conceivable scenario. But I can see these systems enterring use in 10-15 years (about how long it takes make something like this)
the mirror are so large and focused on such long distance objects, all the supports and equipment do is reduce the photons by a very slight amount. to compare, hold the end of a paperclip as close to your eye as you're comfortable with, and look off into the distance. You'll hardly notice its there.
by combining telescopes you can get the resolution benefits of a huge telescope, however, you will not get the same photon collecting ability which you need for very dim objects.
So yes, you can see very big bright objects with astounding clarity using your idea. But dim things, nope.
Oh, and its called interferometry and is actually one of the first instances of 'distributed' computing, long before it became a slashdot topic (and before slashdot was around). Its early implementations were localized sine they were limited by the lack of a reliable global high speed networks, though nowadays with the internet and internet2 its more feasible to do on a continental scale. If memory serves it wasn't until around 1990 that they were able to do an experiment using telescopes on opposite sides of the planet...
which makes it economically questionable. As you said, getting up to the speed gently is an issue. By the time you'd get up high enough in the atmosphere and a high enough speed, then you can go hypersonic...but then you have to prepare to slow down and come back in. For short trips it makes it useless because of the time those two operating modes require make up much of the trip.
It would really only be useful if you have to fly literally halfway around the world... even a new york -> LA trip would only very briefly enter hypersonic speeds.
during an early gemini mission they tried doing things like this to get a handle on navigating spacecraft while in orbit to practice docking procedures. The mission had to be cut short early because they started running low on fuel as fighting the physics of orbital mechanics is fairly futile.
in any case if you want to use rocket engines to counteract the force of gravity while orbitting at low speed, you're going to need engines of the power and fuel consumption similar to what got you into orbit in the first place.
this would require huge tanks of fuel which would have to be carried aloft into orbit from launch, which would mean your launch system would have to be all that more powerful, or your spacecraft could carry little to no cargo.
Then there is the issue of controlling your final descent back to ground...
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GIMP's main target is Joe Point and Shoot? It seems a bit too complex to be targetted at them. That and the fact windows isn't supported yet...
But without profiles, its simply not useful for anyone else, much less graphics professionals or even semi-amateurs who may, at some point, want accurate reproductions of their work. A properly calibrated monitor (and software that can recognize it) is essential to anything thats non-toy graphics work.
its still a bit of a voodoo science to get the colors "just right", even with OSX and windows, but canon for example distributes its own photo print tool that uses canon provided profiles (based on their OEM paper and ink).
You still need some sort of monitor calibrator though to get the right colors. This can be as simple as the adobe gamma software, or the more accurate colorimeter packages which come with a sensor that suction cups to the monitor.
I just can't take a photo editting package seriously if it doesn't have at least some support for color profiles. Joe Point n' shoot might not use them, but Joe Point n' shoot doesn't use Linux either.
if you ever want to get well into digital photography where you print out your own photos on your photo printer, calibration is a must have if you have at least a passing demand of accuracy and quality.
You will never get your printed output to look exactly like whats on your screen without profiling. In many cases, the colors may be quite off because of variations in screens, video drivers, printer ink, printer paper, printer drivers etc.
Then again, I doubt any modern USB 2.0 photo printer is supported on any non OSX or windows system so perhaps the whole idea of printing in general doesn't get much attention from the gimp team.
note the thrust of the solid rocket boosters during the critical first few seconds: 3.1 million lbs each.
e m/ 11/29.cfm
Nuclear is great once you're in space. But you still have to get to space.
http://aerospacescholars.jsc.nasa.gov/HAS/cirr/
That page has a good overview of the different types of propulsion systems and their proper usages. Key point: Getting to orbit requires high thrust chemical. Once you're there, you can start up your more efficient but slower accelerating nuclear engine.
There's a page describing some martian 'city' this guy thinks he's found.
ion engines only throw out lightweight ions - even if you put a nuclear engine on one. It won't be enough to get you off the ground. These work great in space where you don't have resistance to overcome and you can build your velocity slowly over time through orbitting.
Chemical rockets on the other hand generate steam and other heavier mass exhaust gasses which generate more force in the short term and giving you massive acceleration, which is what you need to get off the ground and stay off it.
work in monochrome. Actually all CCD's do. Your consumer camera has built in color filters attached physically to the CCD with a separate color per charge well. While this makes processing for you and the camera simple, it lowers the resolution and sensitivity than if you were using a single filter across the whole CCD and then later combine it into a mosaic.
The filter wheel also includes infrared and ultraviolet filters so that the camera can explore in those wavelengths as well. So it can still see more than what your consumer camera can.
And while its all fine and good the PCSAT has been lucky enough to work with off the shelf parts, if you're given a big budget and told to send something to mars (several months and a whole lot of radiation away..once you leave earth's somewhat protective magnetic field you're in a really dangerous environment) and you want to be really sure things work well, its best to get your equipment space certified and well proven, even if it sacrifices the cutting edge.
Gen IV nuclear reactors are extremely safe (and most certainly won't EXPLODE) and if you're going to see reactors in space (besides what the soviets launched decades ago) they'll be of similar and extremely safe compact designs. You only need a few kilos of uranium to power a spacecraft for months and uranium isn't all that dangerous either.
Its unlikely a nuclear engine will provide launch power from earth, but I can see one being put in space and then going from there.
The last thing we need is a probe to burn up and cause a nuclear explosion in the Martian atmosphere
Ignorance regarding nuclear power. No probe can ever cause a "nuclear explosion". Several probes sent to mars have included RTG's which contain Pu238, including the Vikings. RTG's are extremely safe sources of power - in fact, as far as radioactive elements go, Pu238 is one of the safest to handle since it only produces alpha particles which are stopped by a sheet of paper.
The RTG's themselves are titanium shelled and designed to survive re-entry or explosion. In the unlikely event they are cracked open, the Pu238 is bound in oxide form in a ceramic which resists producing Plutonium dust in an explosion (Pu oxide tends to form chunks) which is the main hazardous form of plutonium.
Actually landing something with rockets requires a liquid fueled throttle controlled engine attached to the radar altimeter which is very complex and expensive to build. The vikings landed this way at ~$1 billion 1976 dollars. Their landings were *amazingly* accurate, designed to disturb the ground as little as possible. Viking 2 I believe landed with an estimated disturbance of less than 1 mm of dust blown off the ground.
How this mars lander worked was to deploy a parachute to slow it down and then fire some solid rocket motors (can't be shut down or throttled and are really cheap) to bring it to a dead stop around 20-40 ft in the air and then deploy airbags to cushion the last few feet fallen. The system, though complex as it is, is far cheaper and less complex than a liquid fueled rocket motor landing system.
The reason for stopping in mid-air is because of timing variations in calculations. Its difficult to tell exactly what conditions the lander will encounter from 300 million miles away and months before launch. So they fire the rockets early enough to bring it to a stop well before it would hit the ground.
Apple has historically offered products with 1.5x the ability as the commodity standard at 2x the price.
But people pay the price because of the perceived (and usually actual) quality, style and support. Along with that 'uniqueness' factor in having something not everyone else does. If apple were to start commoditizing their products, they'd lose the die-hard best customer support from people who purchase Apple for reasons besides money.
Apple is to computers what volkswagen is to cars. Hmm, that makes me wonder about how many VW drivers are also mac users compared to other car brands... I bet it's a higher than normal percentage.
Some claim Alltheweb is better than google, but I find its about equal.
Some other experimental engines I've seen have alot of potential, especially the ones who come up with narrowing suggestions and do accurate self-categorization. Teoma is a good example of that.
that most search engines have a difficult time with is "Microwave dish". It's a perfectly valid search term and not especially generic. Let's assume you're searching for basic information regarding microwave antennas (the search engine doesnt know this of course) but don't know a whole lot about them.
But...
Am I talking about the dish antenna's used with microwave radiation?
Or possibly cookware that is microwave safe...
Or just recipes for food that can be cooked in a microwave.
Most engines return a combination of all the above in no decent order. Google even returns some obscure clause in some apartment's lease as its #5 hit.
Better engines organize them into categories, or offer suggestions to clarify your search. Teoma does this though I see its closest approximation to microwave antennas is "Microwave Antenna Broadband Home".
And to believe that anything that flies (birds, planes etc) is to believe they're equipped with anti-grav generators...
It might not actually be the case.
I liked the stardust campaign a little better. Unlike being encoded onto a DVD like the mars lander, stardust microprinted the names onto metal plates affixed to the spacecraft. I suppose theres not much difference but in a million years you could put the plate under a microscope and read the names off, whereas the dvd format will be long gone...
Since the spacecraft portion will continue flying throughout the solar system after returning to earth and dropping its lander off in 2006, the plates should last forever...
one of the great advances of this rover is it is loaded with stereoscopic engineering cameras. Basically what this means is mission control gives the rover a location to go to, but the rover finds its own way there while avoiding things it would get hung up on.
It takes its time doing it, only moving a foot or two at a time and then stopping to consider its next move, but considering the 20 minute relay time between mission control saying "go here" and the rover's camera showing whats going on to mission control, having a rover that can decide how it should go on its own is a great asset.
Pu238 is used in radiothermal generators. Pu238 (an isotope which is completely useless for weapons...) generates large amounts of heat through decay which is converted to electricity. This heat through decay process is one reason why fission weapons can't be made with it, its too unstable.
Also, it readily binds into an oxide which can be turned into a ceramic material which is whats found in the titanium shelled RTG canisters. This is a very safe way to handle it. One reason is that in the event of explosion or re-entry disaster, titanium is very strong and unlikely to break open. Second, even if it does, the ceramic-oxide will tend to form dense clumps as opposed to dust particles, which is how plutonium is harmful.
Did you know you could eat a piece of plutonium and would suffer no ill effects? It would pass through you before doing any real damage. Breathing microscopic dust particles is another matter, however.
Virtually all long distance probes use it, as solar power generating ability drops off quickly from distance from the sun. ie, Solar cells on mars will only generate half the wattage they do on earth. Go out far beyond mars and you'll get virtually nothing.
Beagle2 was a very underfunded craft. Built on the cheap, but the Brits managed to do a great job of it with the money they had.
Also, Britain has historically placed a very low priority (almost non-existant) on space missions of any sorts. I'm sure securing the funding they did get for Beagle was a fight and a half.
Though Beagle's landing operation may have failed, landing is the most difficult and expensive part of the craft construction. But the rest of the construction is important as well and surely they learned alot from it. From what I saw the Beagle2 was a clever, innovative and useful craft.
I don't know about the rest of the world, but in the USA there is a saying... it's not whether you win or lose, its how you play the game. We all - USA included - have alot more to learn about building reliable spacecraft that doesn't break the bank. There is alot of room for individual innovations in engineering there.
For a first try, Beagle2 was a great craft. I hope a setback as it was doesn't kill future opportunities for space operations there.
as airspace is already heavily regulated and there are relatively few aircraft in the skies at any one point which are usually piloted by far more competant people. (compared to say, rushhour where tens of millions of cars are on the road and driven by people of often dubious skills)
There are also generally only a few flight corridors that get alot of use due to popular routes, the earth's curvature and weather patterns, unlike road systems.
but most modern passenger planes are flown by software, most notably the 777.
Lots were learned from therac-25, the ariane disaster, and airbus issues in terms of what needs to be done in regards to safety critical software.
The 777 avionics system for instance, was thoroughly proven with formal mathematical methods and then put through literally millions of hours of simulator testing. They practically redefined the science of how to test software validity with it.
Oh, and it was done in ada, as most safety critical applications are as ada is extremely fault tolerant and requires the same of software written in it.
Such a system wouldn't be allowed by the FAA if it didn't undergo the same type of verification and fault tolerant design from the onset and addressed every conceivable scenario. But I can see these systems enterring use in 10-15 years (about how long it takes make something like this)
the mirror are so large and focused on such long distance objects, all the supports and equipment do is reduce the photons by a very slight amount. to compare, hold the end of a paperclip as close to your eye as you're comfortable with, and look off into the distance. You'll hardly notice its there.
by combining telescopes you can get the resolution benefits of a huge telescope, however, you will not get the same photon collecting ability which you need for very dim objects.
So yes, you can see very big bright objects with astounding clarity using your idea. But dim things, nope.
Oh, and its called interferometry and is actually one of the first instances of 'distributed' computing, long before it became a slashdot topic (and before slashdot was around). Its early implementations were localized sine they were limited by the lack of a reliable global high speed networks, though nowadays with the internet and internet2 its more feasible to do on a continental scale. If memory serves it wasn't until around 1990 that they were able to do an experiment using telescopes on opposite sides of the planet...
It would really only be useful if you have to fly literally halfway around the world... even a new york -> LA trip would only very briefly enter hypersonic speeds.
during an early gemini mission they tried doing things like this to get a handle on navigating spacecraft while in orbit to practice docking procedures. The mission had to be cut short early because they started running low on fuel as fighting the physics of orbital mechanics is fairly futile.
in any case if you want to use rocket engines to counteract the force of gravity while orbitting at low speed, you're going to need engines of the power and fuel consumption similar to what got you into orbit in the first place.
this would require huge tanks of fuel which would have to be carried aloft into orbit from launch, which would mean your launch system would have to be all that more powerful, or your spacecraft could carry little to no cargo.
Then there is the issue of controlling your final descent back to ground...