Increased snowfall is actually pretty consistent with a warming climate. Increased temperature causes higher evaporation rates from lakes and oceans, and thus result in more moisture in the air. As long as the temperature remains below freezing, the increased moisture results in more intense snowfall.
In science, a theory is better than a fact. Theories provide explanations for facts, they bind facts together, and allow us to predict more facts in the future.
There's a difference between caring for myself and my children, and caring for "humanity" a million years from now, especially when saving "humanity" means that a few thousand people get to go to a space colony, and the other billions can just die on earth. What exactly are you saving here ? We're letting thousands of species go extinct on earth right now without as much as blinking an eye, but we have to go through insane amount of trouble to save one particular kind of hairless ape in some unknown future ?
Landing in a vacuum is easy using a rocket engine. That's proven technology. Landing in thick earth atmosphere is also proven technology. Landing exhaust flame first with supersonic speeds through the Martian atmosphere, with unpredictable side winds, is unexplored territory. Heat shields, parachutes and wings need to be really big on Mars to be effective in the very short time it takes from orbit to surface. Unfolding really big structures and keeping them intact at supersonic speeds is also unexplored territory. The glide ratio sucks so bad that with earth-sized wings or parachutes, you'll still be going supersonic when you crash into the ground. I agree that in theory it's just a matter of engineering, but it's quite difficult engineering, and you can't really test it anywhere else but on Mars, which makes it rather expensive and time-consuming to try out different ideas. That's why a manned landing would probably take a few decades.
Since the rest of the solar system is even more hostile than Mars, "beyond Mars" was referring to interstellar travel.
In addition, today's technology isn't up to the task of setting a man on the surface of Mars without killing him. Maybe you mean technology that we could potentially develop in the next decade(s) if we put a lot of effort in it.
I think you underestimate the amount of time and effort we would need to set up a viable colony on Mars that would be living self-sufficiently, and was capable of growing itself. We don't even have a clue how to safely land a heavy transport vehicle, let alone an entire semiconductor manufacturing plant. And for what ? Saving the abstract notion of "humanity" for a little while longer. Face it, humanity is going to disappear at some point in time. If the earth has been turned inhabitable, humans will do the same on Mars, and probably a lot quicker. After Mars, there's no other place to go.
What's so special about this technology that it will let us live on Mars in luxury, but condemns us to living in log cabins on earth ? Why won't the resources on Mars run out just as they do on earth ?
After analyzing 1000 rocks, the chance that the 1001th rock is going to provide some new information is getting small. The only difference is that the rover takes a few years to analyze those rocks, while a trained human could do it in a few days. After that, it's probably better to send some new instruments, and look in a different place. Now compare the time and effort it would take to send a trained human to Mars, and have him survive for a few days, compared to the effort to send a small rover and have it survive for a few years. It's not so obvious the human still wins.
We NEED to spread out, so that a single epidemic, or a catastrophic event doesn't wipe us out!
There's no realistic way of spreading beyond Mars. And Mars itself isn't really a better place to survive a catastrophic event. It would make more sense to build a couple of deep underground (or underwater) bunkers on earth, where a few people can take shelter from this catastrophic event. It would be several orders of magnitude cheaper, and more effective. At least, when the event has passed, you can climb out, and breathe the air, drink the water, and grow food.
While it is possible to assemble large structures in earth orbit, it is much less complicated to assemble the stuff on earth, and launch it with a super heavy lifter. Even if it's not feasible to launch the entire Mars vehicle in one time, you should at least try to minimize the number of parts, so it's better to use a 100 ton lifter than a 50 ton one. Given their track record, I'm pretty confident that SpaceX can design a Saturn V competitor that requires less than $1.5 billion per launch.
But actually I would much rather see more unmanned exploration of Mars. We get more science per dollar, and quicker results too.
50 tons isn't nearly enough. The Saturn V had a 119 ton capacity to LEO, and managed to land a tiny lander on the Moon. Mars requires a much heavier capsule, heavier lander, and much larger delta-V, even for a one way trip with short stay on Mars.
Wow. Can I just shoot you right now, so that I pay less for healthcare? I mean, I should be allowed to do it. After all, it lowers my health care bill.
No, but you can't also force someone to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. You've got your analogy wrong.
There's not a lot of difference. Most popular varieties of HFCS have 55% fructose (mostly used in soft drinks), or 42% fructose. Sugar is 50% fructose.
No, because a simple, backwards compatible, change is much easier to slip into a standard upgrade than a complete rewrite of the stack. For example, for my job I've implemented a simple IPv4 stack in an embedded device. I have no plans to support IPv6, but I would have been happy to add 50 lines of code to support optional 64 bit addressing.
The difference is that shortcomings of IPv4 have already been solved in other ways. Once a problem has been fixed, there's no need to convert to a new solution for the same problem. Really, the only thing missing was an extended address space.
What you gain is simplicity. Extending an IPv4 stack to use 64 bit addressing is a trivial amount of work. The rest of the IPv6 features aren't really that important. We managed to do without them for years without a problem.
With EPROMs, even a modest amount of light during operation would make it all funky. It wouldn't erase anything, but it would produce the wrong results while the light was hitting the device.
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Of course.
Increased snowfall is actually pretty consistent with a warming climate. Increased temperature causes higher evaporation rates from lakes and oceans, and thus result in more moisture in the air. As long as the temperature remains below freezing, the increased moisture results in more intense snowfall.
In science, a theory is better than a fact. Theories provide explanations for facts, they bind facts together, and allow us to predict more facts in the future.
There's a difference between caring for myself and my children, and caring for "humanity" a million years from now, especially when saving "humanity" means that a few thousand people get to go to a space colony, and the other billions can just die on earth. What exactly are you saving here ? We're letting thousands of species go extinct on earth right now without as much as blinking an eye, but we have to go through insane amount of trouble to save one particular kind of hairless ape in some unknown future ?
Landing in a vacuum is easy using a rocket engine. That's proven technology. Landing in thick earth atmosphere is also proven technology. Landing exhaust flame first with supersonic speeds through the Martian atmosphere, with unpredictable side winds, is unexplored territory. Heat shields, parachutes and wings need to be really big on Mars to be effective in the very short time it takes from orbit to surface. Unfolding really big structures and keeping them intact at supersonic speeds is also unexplored territory. The glide ratio sucks so bad that with earth-sized wings or parachutes, you'll still be going supersonic when you crash into the ground. I agree that in theory it's just a matter of engineering, but it's quite difficult engineering, and you can't really test it anywhere else but on Mars, which makes it rather expensive and time-consuming to try out different ideas. That's why a manned landing would probably take a few decades.
Since the rest of the solar system is even more hostile than Mars, "beyond Mars" was referring to interstellar travel. In addition, today's technology isn't up to the task of setting a man on the surface of Mars without killing him. Maybe you mean technology that we could potentially develop in the next decade(s) if we put a lot of effort in it.
I think you underestimate the amount of time and effort we would need to set up a viable colony on Mars that would be living self-sufficiently, and was capable of growing itself. We don't even have a clue how to safely land a heavy transport vehicle, let alone an entire semiconductor manufacturing plant. And for what ? Saving the abstract notion of "humanity" for a little while longer. Face it, humanity is going to disappear at some point in time. If the earth has been turned inhabitable, humans will do the same on Mars, and probably a lot quicker. After Mars, there's no other place to go.
What's so special about this technology that it will let us live on Mars in luxury, but condemns us to living in log cabins on earth ? Why won't the resources on Mars run out just as they do on earth ?
After analyzing 1000 rocks, the chance that the 1001th rock is going to provide some new information is getting small. The only difference is that the rover takes a few years to analyze those rocks, while a trained human could do it in a few days. After that, it's probably better to send some new instruments, and look in a different place. Now compare the time and effort it would take to send a trained human to Mars, and have him survive for a few days, compared to the effort to send a small rover and have it survive for a few years. It's not so obvious the human still wins.
We NEED to spread out, so that a single epidemic, or a catastrophic event doesn't wipe us out!
There's no realistic way of spreading beyond Mars. And Mars itself isn't really a better place to survive a catastrophic event. It would make more sense to build a couple of deep underground (or underwater) bunkers on earth, where a few people can take shelter from this catastrophic event. It would be several orders of magnitude cheaper, and more effective. At least, when the event has passed, you can climb out, and breathe the air, drink the water, and grow food.
It's still 4 million that can be spent on management bonuses. Not a bad deal.
While it is possible to assemble large structures in earth orbit, it is much less complicated to assemble the stuff on earth, and launch it with a super heavy lifter. Even if it's not feasible to launch the entire Mars vehicle in one time, you should at least try to minimize the number of parts, so it's better to use a 100 ton lifter than a 50 ton one. Given their track record, I'm pretty confident that SpaceX can design a Saturn V competitor that requires less than $1.5 billion per launch. But actually I would much rather see more unmanned exploration of Mars. We get more science per dollar, and quicker results too.
50 tons isn't nearly enough. The Saturn V had a 119 ton capacity to LEO, and managed to land a tiny lander on the Moon. Mars requires a much heavier capsule, heavier lander, and much larger delta-V, even for a one way trip with short stay on Mars.
Lousy aim ? Didn't you hear Obi-Wan ? "And these blast points, too accurate for Sandpeople. Only Imperial stormtroopers are so precise"
For cats, playing with food is a form of training exercise. The mother cat brings dead or half-dead prey to the kittens so they can practice hunting.
Or make lighter cars that are just as strong.
But the marketing value will quadruple, and that's all that matters.
Wow. Can I just shoot you right now, so that I pay less for healthcare? I mean, I should be allowed to do it. After all, it lowers my health care bill.
No, but you can't also force someone to smoke a pack of cigarettes a day. You've got your analogy wrong.
Sugar does have thousands of years more testing than artificial sweeteners...
Not in the quantities people are using now.
There's not a lot of difference. Most popular varieties of HFCS have 55% fructose (mostly used in soft drinks), or 42% fructose. Sugar is 50% fructose.
Because a lion won't attack you when you're sitting down ?
No, because a simple, backwards compatible, change is much easier to slip into a standard upgrade than a complete rewrite of the stack. For example, for my job I've implemented a simple IPv4 stack in an embedded device. I have no plans to support IPv6, but I would have been happy to add 50 lines of code to support optional 64 bit addressing.
The difference is that shortcomings of IPv4 have already been solved in other ways. Once a problem has been fixed, there's no need to convert to a new solution for the same problem. Really, the only thing missing was an extended address space.
What you gain is simplicity. Extending an IPv4 stack to use 64 bit addressing is a trivial amount of work. The rest of the IPv6 features aren't really that important. We managed to do without them for years without a problem.
With EPROMs, even a modest amount of light during operation would make it all funky. It wouldn't erase anything, but it would produce the wrong results while the light was hitting the device.