To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any working probes on or around Mars at this time.
Then "the best of your knowledge" is pretty darned poor. It states right there in the article that you clearly didn't read that:
Hill and his team will be looking at the area of the formation using the Thermal Emission Imaging System or THEMIS, one of the instruments on the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter. THEMIS will also check out heightened cloud activity around Mars' shield volcanoes as well as around the southern site spotted by the amateurs.
He3 is a big deal if you're interested in one of the ways to accomplish aneutronicfusion. Those pesky neutrons tend to make everything they touch nasty and radioactive.
My scale cheats! If I get on it, I get reading 'A'. If I get on it again, I get reading 'A'. If I press on it with just one leg and coax it to reading something much less than A, the next time I get on it it reads only somewhat near 'A'. It caches the last read value and if the new value is 'close' it returns the previous weight to make you think it's accurate and precise.
I love these sorts of posts. My first computer had 16K of RAM (TRS-80). I do hobby work with embedded controller CPUs that have a whopping 384 BYTES of RAM, and I can do all sorts of cool things - take temp/pres readings and send them to the mother ship via ZigBee, etc.There are even TCP stacks for these sorts of chips that have somewhat more memory.
I didn't say I disagreed with the rest of your post, just a single physics faux pas; in fact, my correction supports the thrust of it - vacuum isn't that far 1 atmosphere and it only takes 10m of water to create the same pressure difference.
What blew me away as a kid was realizing that a column of air 1 square inch by all-those-miles-to-space tall only weighs about 15 lbs.
Those pesky neutrons are still there to mess things up.
Not if you can get your hands on He3 or one of the other isotope pairs that can be used for aneutronic fusion. He3 was why there was a burst of interest in mining the moon - supposedly there's He3 near/on the surface yearning to be harvested.
The p + 15N -> C12 + He4 reaction is particularly funny to me - a highly sophisticated fusion reaction that generates helium and puts out soot like a badly-tuned Diesel engine.
That's one way to divide the windfall. Doing it by straight percentages works, too. Multiply everyone's cost by 0.8 and it all adds up - every paying customer gets the same percentage back and no one gets beaten up.
It all depends on the definition of 'fair' - dollar amount or percentage?
Then either you know that everything I said is true and by its very nature cannot be 'fixed' (emphasis and profanity notwithstanding), or you're really just a knob-twiddler and do not understand RF as well you say you do.
So you exercise every single NAND flash memory cell to within inches of its rated life in a year? I don't think so. One bad flash chip with only 10K good cycles in it instead of 100k or 1M will take longer than a year to find.
You can't fix the plane against cheap consumer devices that may be erroneously (and illegally) emitting IN THE BAND USED BY THE AVIONICS. Everyone on this thread assumes all devices work perfectly. If that were true then there would be no need for any restrictions on low power devices. That is not the case, however, so you have to protect against the defective/poorly designed/faulty devices that _may_ interfere.
Also, no one seems to understand the actual nature of RF signals. Even with perfectly operating devices a single corroded rivet on a plane (or on someone's luggage) can act as an RF mixer and create sum/difference products between your WiFi signal and any other signal. Example: WiFi channel 1 is centered on 2412 MHz, and channel 14 is centered on 2484 MHz. Since the channels are 11 MHz wide and are spread spectrum, when there are two users on those channels a whole host of difference freqs all the way from 50 to 94 MHz can be generated. Guess what aviation system might be affected? the OMI indicator that's used when landing. There are a zillion aviation systems that use freqs all the way from HF to the GHz range and an infinite number of (N1 * F1 +- N2 * F2) freq/harmonic combinations that could cause issues.
As I said, I agree completely that humans are far better at general tasks. I just wanted to point out that those who argue that "robots can't do what people can do" have to carefully consider the goal, not the means to achieve that goal.
I'm a real cheerleader for manned exploration, but I also realize that I have to temper my enthusiasm with the realization that _for specific tasks_ robots can be a better solution.
Show me a robot that can scale the mountains in Antarctica...
I agree with your post, but you have to be careful how you define the goal of a robot. If your goal is to "Show me a robot that can scale the mountains in Antarctica just like a human would", then I agree robots are not the answer. If the goal is "Reach the top of an Antarctic mountain" then autonomous robots are far superior.
Hopefully it's not the silicon analog to methane - silane. Here on Earth it's toxic and pyrophoric (self-igniting) in air. Nasty business. Imagine opening a valve on a silane tank and getting a '30 FOOT TONGUE OF LETHAL FLAME!' [homage to a jet dragster commercial from my youth].
Interesting aside from the 100W equivalent model being 4100K vs 2700K for all the others.
As for the site itself, on the 'specs' page there's an annoying double-dimmable error (one should be 'Approvals') and 'efficacy' does not seem to be the right word - 'efficiency' would be a better choice, IMHO.
Nope, just an amateur radio geek. We're required by law to evaluate our stations for MPE (Maximum Permissible Exposure). Here's an article about it, and here's the FCC page where you can download Bulletin 65 and its supplements. There are lots of calculators online - these rules apply to most every transmitter, so if you know a few details you can discover the MPE exclusion zone(s) for it.
This thing is way over the maximum permissible exposure limit as allowed by the FCC unless exposure is limited to 150 mS per 30 minutes or so. Turning that on a crowd may be a lawsuit waiting to happen (as if you could sue the FedGov anyway).
The limits (as shown here) for uncontrolled/public access permit a 30 minute average of 1.0 mW/cm^2. This thing is running 12 W/cm^2. 0.15 secs exposure to this thing is your 30 minute averaged exposure. [The controlled access limit is the same 0.15 sec, but exposure can be repeated after only 6 minutes instead of 30].
Assuming 2MW (the low end of the spec), the antenna gain must be about 55 dB given the 12W/cm^2 at 700 yds = 2100 ft quoted in the article (using this calculator). This magnitude of gain figure is easily attainable at 95GHz and is also is justified given the apparent narrow beamwidth at 700 yds. Guess what the uncontrolled access compliance distance is? 44 MILES!!!.
No one said it is. At least in VA the condition is called "Driving Under The Influence", which it most certainly is. Drunk is not mentioned in the statues as far as I know, however 'intoxicated' is.
The problem I have with that scenario is having a law enforcement officer performing a medical procedure without a license. That would result in an instant lawsuit from me. LICENSED Nurse/MD = ok. Anyone else? Not ok.
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To the best of my knowledge, we don't have any working probes on or around Mars at this time.
Then "the best of your knowledge" is pretty darned poor. It states right there in the article that you clearly didn't read that:
Hill and his team will be looking at the area of the formation using the Thermal Emission Imaging System or THEMIS, one of the instruments on the NASA Mars Odyssey orbiter. THEMIS will also check out heightened cloud activity around Mars' shield volcanoes as well as around the southern site spotted by the amateurs.
[Emphasis mine]
...making it a shoe-in for military funding...
Just so you know, it's shoo-in. See my sig for advice re: this sort of faux pas.
He3 is a big deal if you're interested in one of the ways to accomplish aneutronic fusion. Those pesky neutrons tend to make everything they touch nasty and radioactive.
My scale cheats! If I get on it, I get reading 'A'. If I get on it again, I get reading 'A'. If I press on it with just one leg and coax it to reading something much less than A, the next time I get on it it reads only somewhat near 'A'. It caches the last read value and if the new value is 'close' it returns the previous weight to make you think it's accurate and precise.
What would I do with 256 MB of RAM?
I love these sorts of posts. My first computer had 16K of RAM (TRS-80). I do hobby work with embedded controller CPUs that have a whopping 384 BYTES of RAM, and I can do all sorts of cool things - take temp/pres readings and send them to the mother ship via ZigBee, etc.There are even TCP stacks for these sorts of chips that have somewhat more memory.
I didn't say I disagreed with the rest of your post, just a single physics faux pas; in fact, my correction supports the thrust of it - vacuum isn't that far 1 atmosphere and it only takes 10m of water to create the same pressure difference.
What blew me away as a kid was realizing that a column of air 1 square inch by all-those-miles-to-space tall only weighs about 15 lbs.
Those pesky neutrons are still there to mess things up.
Not if you can get your hands on He3 or one of the other isotope pairs that can be used for aneutronic fusion. He3 was why there was a burst of interest in mining the moon - supposedly there's He3 near/on the surface yearning to be harvested.
The p + 15N -> C12 + He4 reaction is particularly funny to me - a highly sophisticated fusion reaction that generates helium and puts out soot like a badly-tuned Diesel engine.
That's one way to divide the windfall. Doing it by straight percentages works, too. Multiply everyone's cost by 0.8 and it all adds up - every paying customer gets the same percentage back and no one gets beaten up.
It all depends on the definition of 'fair' - dollar amount or percentage?
In terms of the vacuum of space, 30 m of water is the same pressure difference as going from sea level to space.
IIRC, it's more like 10 m or 33 ft.
Yeah, but the prize would be 100 lbs of whale blubber or some such.
Then either you know that everything I said is true and by its very nature cannot be 'fixed' (emphasis and profanity notwithstanding), or you're really just a knob-twiddler and do not understand RF as well you say you do.
So you exercise every single NAND flash memory cell to within inches of its rated life in a year? I don't think so. One bad flash chip with only 10K good cycles in it instead of 100k or 1M will take longer than a year to find.
You can't fix the plane against cheap consumer devices that may be erroneously (and illegally) emitting IN THE BAND USED BY THE AVIONICS. Everyone on this thread assumes all devices work perfectly. If that were true then there would be no need for any restrictions on low power devices. That is not the case, however, so you have to protect against the defective/poorly designed/faulty devices that _may_ interfere.
Also, no one seems to understand the actual nature of RF signals. Even with perfectly operating devices a single corroded rivet on a plane (or on someone's luggage) can act as an RF mixer and create sum/difference products between your WiFi signal and any other signal. Example: WiFi channel 1 is centered on 2412 MHz, and channel 14 is centered on 2484 MHz. Since the channels are 11 MHz wide and are spread spectrum, when there are two users on those channels a whole host of difference freqs all the way from 50 to 94 MHz can be generated. Guess what aviation system might be affected? the OMI indicator that's used when landing. There are a zillion aviation systems that use freqs all the way from HF to the GHz range and an infinite number of (N1 * F1 +- N2 * F2) freq/harmonic combinations that could cause issues.
As I said, I agree completely that humans are far better at general tasks. I just wanted to point out that those who argue that "robots can't do what people can do" have to carefully consider the goal, not the means to achieve that goal.
I'm a real cheerleader for manned exploration, but I also realize that I have to temper my enthusiasm with the realization that _for specific tasks_ robots can be a better solution.
Show me a robot that can scale the mountains in Antarctica...
I agree with your post, but you have to be careful how you define the goal of a robot. If your goal is to "Show me a robot that can scale the mountains in Antarctica just like a human would", then I agree robots are not the answer. If the goal is "Reach the top of an Antarctic mountain" then autonomous robots are far superior.
IIRC no integral is needed; the vector sum of forces will do.
$3 bills aren't as fake as you'd think. They have existed in the US albeit not as Federal Reserve Notes.
Hopefully it's not the silicon analog to methane - silane. Here on Earth it's toxic and pyrophoric (self-igniting) in air. Nasty business. Imagine opening a valve on a silane tank and getting a '30 FOOT TONGUE OF LETHAL FLAME!' [homage to a jet dragster commercial from my youth].
He called them 'canali' which is Italian for channels; a word that does not carry the same anthropomorphic baggage as canals.
Thank heaven it didn't get mistranslated into cannoli - we'd have a line of Paula Dean wannabees lines up for launch.
And 73 to you DE K4DET :-)
Interesting aside from the 100W equivalent model being 4100K vs 2700K for all the others.
As for the site itself, on the 'specs' page there's an annoying double-dimmable error (one should be 'Approvals') and 'efficacy' does not seem to be the right word - 'efficiency' would be a better choice, IMHO.
Nope, just an amateur radio geek. We're required by law to evaluate our stations for MPE (Maximum Permissible Exposure). Here's an article about it, and here's the FCC page where you can download Bulletin 65 and its supplements. There are lots of calculators online - these rules apply to most every transmitter, so if you know a few details you can discover the MPE exclusion zone(s) for it.
Thanks for the kudos!
This thing is way over the maximum permissible exposure limit as allowed by the FCC unless exposure is limited to 150 mS per 30 minutes or so. Turning that on a crowd may be a lawsuit waiting to happen (as if you could sue the FedGov anyway).
The limits (as shown here) for uncontrolled/public access permit a 30 minute average of 1.0 mW/cm^2. This thing is running 12 W/cm^2. 0.15 secs exposure to this thing is your 30 minute averaged exposure. [The controlled access limit is the same 0.15 sec, but exposure can be repeated after only 6 minutes instead of 30].
Assuming 2MW (the low end of the spec), the antenna gain must be about 55 dB given the 12W/cm^2 at 700 yds = 2100 ft quoted in the article (using this calculator). This magnitude of gain figure is easily attainable at 95GHz and is also is justified given the apparent narrow beamwidth at 700 yds. Guess what the uncontrolled access compliance distance is? 44 MILES!!!.
No one said it is. At least in VA the condition is called "Driving Under The Influence", which it most certainly is. Drunk is not mentioned in the statues as far as I know, however 'intoxicated' is.
The problem I have with that scenario is having a law enforcement officer performing a medical procedure without a license. That would result in an instant lawsuit from me. LICENSED Nurse/MD = ok. Anyone else? Not ok.