This 10 MEGAWatt, virtually no maintenance 'nuclear battery' only needs refueling every 30 years. It's a 'fast' neutron reactor, so it's very efficient with its fuel. See this article on the non-plutonium-proliferating, efficient Integral Fast (Breeder) Reactor.
... to test a Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor. No oxygen to support combustion of the liquid sodium, and high efficiency so that you don't have to refuel it as often.
I'd love for us to use these here on Earth, but there's still too much flat-out wrong information floating around for them to be accepted.
Your analysis is quite thorough, but I don't know if it's correct. Without e-ink current figures, we're both stabbing in the dark. You appear to assume that a single replacement e-ink battery would need to have the same ampacity * voltage (wattacity?) as the string of 2016's. I imagine that the relatively high voltage needed is required to generate an electric field across the ink blob, but that it doesn't require a large amount of current (think of driving a MOSFET gate - much higher voltage than bipolar, but at almost negligible current at low frequencies). My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the 5 e-ink batteries will last longer than the CPU battery, and that they chose 5 batteries in series to get 15V. If there were a 15V, 18 mAh battery around, I bet it would've served the purpose.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember 'A' and 'B' batteries from the tube radio days. The 'A' battery supplied around 1.5 volts and gobs of current for heating the filaments, and the 'B' battery provided 90V or so at fairly low current for the plate. This setup was also used in Geiger counters, where the GM tube needs a very high voltage field to count radiation events. There's a guy on the net that goes by 'allnilo' that makes little DC-DC converters to replace Geiger counter batteries.
Thanks for the replies, I enjoy debating design choices!
I can't imagine that a charge pump would be larger and more expensive than all those additional batteries. I googled around and couldn't find any current draw specs for segmented e-ink displays, but I gotta believe that a single 3V battery or at worst a pair of 3V batteries in parallel could drive the CPU (especially in 32 kHz mode) and the display for a very long time. Since the display changes so infrequently, the CPU and charge pump can both be put to sleep between updates. I'd love to see the actual performance figures for the e-ink display. Epson and Dialog both make controllers for e-ink displays, but their websites lack useful details.
If you go to a group of Christians... they may give you a Bible to read... If you go a group of Muslims and do the same thing, you will likely get the same results.
Wow. I think I would've looked into using a DC-DC converter to generate the 18V instead of 6 batteries - I hope they at least considered it. The e-Ink can't take that much current. The PIC is spec'ed to run from 2.0V to 5.5V, so it can run off 1 battery.
Excellent tool, thanks! A suggestion, though. Break the monolithic satellite list into several checkboxed categories. For instance, I use Amateur Radio satellites on occasion, and it would be nice to have a selection for just active amateur radio sats. Similarly, I often observe visible sats at dusk, so a list of those would be nice. A list for weather sats, debris only, comm sats, etc would be nice.
BTW, you can get directions to a satellite's subpoint on the globe - that's funny.
I disagree. Your cable modem does indeed MOdulate and DEModulate digital signals to and from analog channels, just like the old-school telephone modem. Amateur radio folk call the things that convert digital signals to an analog representation and back 'modems'.
It's not that the surface is perfect to the limit of our ability to measure, it's that the performance of the telescope _system_ is constrained by something other than the shape of the mirror (diffraction-limited). The mirror is "utterly indistinguishable" from perfect because any more perfection out of the mirror will not increase the _system's_ performance. In other words, the telescope's performance would not be enhanced at all if the mirror were replaced with a mathematically perfect one.
I agree it sounds a bit like sygyt-style Tuvan throat singing, but it sounds like there's a little of what sounds like a bowed instrument of some kind. There's also some khoomei-style in there, down low (the kind that Paul 'Earthquake' Pena sang).
Oh, and I love the part where Woe-to-Hice is ankle-deep in the Pacific ocean, wondering of the Japanese can detect him by his patterns disturbing the sea.
My wife said the exact same thing, and she followed thru! We eloped to Grand Cayman and were wed on the beach, toes in the sand. There were exactly 5 people present - she and I, the minister, the photographer, and our best friend. The photographer and the friend were the required two witnesses. The flights, ceremony, flowers, etc and a two week stay in an all-inclusive resort cost us $6,000, and we're the envy of almost every couple we talk to for having the guts to do what we wanted.
Actually, I'd just as soon forget it. C was a very thin layer over assembly language, and C++ is an absolute abomination containing the worst of procedural and object-oriented languages (new and malloc in the same language? Oh my!) What I was describing happens after you've used your variable as a parameter to a function. As soon as you're no longer in the same block as the declaration, you lose the original size data. That's a fairly dangerous thing, IMHO.
Which will return the size of a char * (pointer to character) on your system (typically 4 bytes), _not_ the length of the array. There is no way in C to get the length of an array after it's been allocated. Arrays are 'stupid' chunks of memory, not objects with properties.
If there were enormous differences in the amount of shielding on different sides of the spacecraft and if it weren't tumbling, then maybe. Otherwise I'd think there wouldn't be any net momentum change because the direction of the emitted particle (and subsequently the vector of the momentum transfer) would be random.
This graph seems to indicate that the correlation is between the decay rate and the radius of Earth's orbit squared, not just r.
Could it be that the correlation between decay rates is with Earth's orbital velocity, acceleration, or dTheta/dT (rate of change of the Earth/Sun vector due to Earth's elliptical orbit)?
Additionally, there seems to be a phase shift between peak r^2 and peak decay rates with the decay rate peak seemingly correlated with our peak acceleration toward the sun.
My Verizon phone (a RAZR), has a USB charging port on it, but will NOT accept any other USB charger. If I try to use my Blackberry charger the phone says something like "Unauthorized charger detected" and refuses to charge.
I'm tempted to call their support line and ask how I can 'authorize' a different charger for my phone.
Slashdot Mirror
This 10 MEGAWatt, virtually no maintenance 'nuclear battery' only needs refueling every 30 years. It's a 'fast' neutron reactor, so it's very efficient with its fuel. See this article on the non-plutonium-proliferating, efficient Integral Fast (Breeder) Reactor.
... to test a Liquid Metal Fast Breeder Reactor. No oxygen to support combustion of the liquid sodium, and high efficiency so that you don't have to refuel it as often.
I'd love for us to use these here on Earth, but there's still too much flat-out wrong information floating around for them to be accepted.
They did run the decay vs r^2 story - I remember commenting on it.
For those too lazy to click the link and look at the page source, this HTML comment appears near the bottom of the page:
<!-- if the lhc actually destroys the earth & this page isn't yet updated please email mikex@frxxxc.org to receive a full refund -->
Your analysis is quite thorough, but I don't know if it's correct. Without e-ink current figures, we're both stabbing in the dark. You appear to assume that a single replacement e-ink battery would need to have the same ampacity * voltage (wattacity?) as the string of 2016's. I imagine that the relatively high voltage needed is required to generate an electric field across the ink blob, but that it doesn't require a large amount of current (think of driving a MOSFET gate - much higher voltage than bipolar, but at almost negligible current at low frequencies). My guess, and it is only a guess, is that the 5 e-ink batteries will last longer than the CPU battery, and that they chose 5 batteries in series to get 15V. If there were a 15V, 18 mAh battery around, I bet it would've served the purpose.
I don't know if you're old enough to remember 'A' and 'B' batteries from the tube radio days. The 'A' battery supplied around 1.5 volts and gobs of current for heating the filaments, and the 'B' battery provided 90V or so at fairly low current for the plate. This setup was also used in Geiger counters, where the GM tube needs a very high voltage field to count radiation events. There's a guy on the net that goes by 'allnilo' that makes little DC-DC converters to replace Geiger counter batteries.
Thanks for the replies, I enjoy debating design choices!
I can't imagine that a charge pump would be larger and more expensive than all those additional batteries. I googled around and couldn't find any current draw specs for segmented e-ink displays, but I gotta believe that a single 3V battery or at worst a pair of 3V batteries in parallel could drive the CPU (especially in 32 kHz mode) and the display for a very long time. Since the display changes so infrequently, the CPU and charge pump can both be put to sleep between updates. I'd love to see the actual performance figures for the e-ink display. Epson and Dialog both make controllers for e-ink displays, but their websites lack useful details.
If you go to a group of Christians ... they may give you a Bible to read ... If you go a group of Muslims and do the same thing, you will likely get the same results.
I doubt the Muslims would hand you a Bible.
Wow. I think I would've looked into using a DC-DC converter to generate the 18V instead of 6 batteries - I hope they at least considered it. The e-Ink can't take that much current. The PIC is spec'ed to run from 2.0V to 5.5V, so it can run off 1 battery.
If he hit someone important, that would "Driving Over the Influential".
DOI? What's that, Driving OVER the Influence?
Excellent tool, thanks! A suggestion, though. Break the monolithic satellite list into several checkboxed categories. For instance, I use Amateur Radio satellites on occasion, and it would be nice to have a selection for just active amateur radio sats. Similarly, I often observe visible sats at dusk, so a list of those would be nice. A list for weather sats, debris only, comm sats, etc would be nice.
BTW, you can get directions to a satellite's subpoint on the globe - that's funny.
I disagree. Your cable modem does indeed MOdulate and DEModulate digital signals to and from analog channels, just like the old-school telephone modem. Amateur radio folk call the things that convert digital signals to an analog representation and back 'modems'.
The digital camera in this thing generates 15TB of data a day ...
I hope they don't have Comcast.
It's not that the surface is perfect to the limit of our ability to measure, it's that the performance of the telescope _system_ is constrained by something other than the shape of the mirror (diffraction-limited). The mirror is "utterly indistinguishable" from perfect because any more perfection out of the mirror will not increase the _system's_ performance. In other words, the telescope's performance would not be enhanced at all if the mirror were replaced with a mathematically perfect one.
I agree it sounds a bit like sygyt-style Tuvan throat singing, but it sounds like there's a little of what sounds like a bowed instrument of some kind. There's also some khoomei-style in there, down low (the kind that Paul 'Earthquake' Pena sang).
Do you get the idea that I love this book?
Oh, and I love the part where Woe-to-Hice is ankle-deep in the Pacific ocean, wondering of the Japanese can detect him by his patterns disturbing the sea.
My wife said the exact same thing, and she followed thru! We eloped to Grand Cayman and were wed on the beach, toes in the sand. There were exactly 5 people present - she and I, the minister, the photographer, and our best friend. The photographer and the friend were the required two witnesses. The flights, ceremony, flowers, etc and a two week stay in an all-inclusive resort cost us $6,000, and we're the envy of almost every couple we talk to for having the guts to do what we wanted.
Actually, I'd just as soon forget it. C was a very thin layer over assembly language, and C++ is an absolute abomination containing the worst of procedural and object-oriented languages (new and malloc in the same language? Oh my!) What I was describing happens after you've used your variable as a parameter to a function. As soon as you're no longer in the same block as the declaration, you lose the original size data. That's a fairly dangerous thing, IMHO.
That's one manifestation that changes with r^2, but there are other things that could cause this without being field-like.
Which will return the size of a char * (pointer to character) on your system (typically 4 bytes), _not_ the length of the array. There is no way in C to get the length of an array after it's been allocated. Arrays are 'stupid' chunks of memory, not objects with properties.
If there were enormous differences in the amount of shielding on different sides of the spacecraft and if it weren't tumbling, then maybe. Otherwise I'd think there wouldn't be any net momentum change because the direction of the emitted particle (and subsequently the vector of the momentum transfer) would be random.
This graph seems to indicate that the correlation is between the decay rate and the radius of Earth's orbit squared, not just r.
Could it be that the correlation between decay rates is with Earth's orbital velocity, acceleration, or dTheta/dT (rate of change of the Earth/Sun vector due to Earth's elliptical orbit)?
Additionally, there seems to be a phase shift between peak r^2 and peak decay rates with the decay rate peak seemingly correlated with our peak acceleration toward the sun.
My Verizon phone (a RAZR), has a USB charging port on it, but will NOT accept any other USB charger. If I try to use my Blackberry charger the phone says something like "Unauthorized charger detected" and refuses to charge.
I'm tempted to call their support line and ask how I can 'authorize' a different charger for my phone.