If you really need to get a file on or off of a PC with no removeable storage, eg broken CD and floppy, then something like FastLynx can be a godsend. If your just using DOS and or Window 9X then the the old DOS interserver is also a way to go, it will even transfer itself over the serial cable (I seem to recall Laplink used to do this as well). FastLynx has the advantage that it can transfer files between XP and say DOS or Linux, over Serial, Parallel, or USB. I haven't used Laplink for years, it may be as capable now.
Oh, and remember a double headed serial cable and appropriate parallel file transfer cable (4 UKP each last time I bought one, cheaper and easier than rolling your own!)
I don't know about the US, but there is no way you could (currently) legally use this outside of private property.
Since it has an engine, its a motorcycle (or moped or related description) and as such I'm pretty sure it needs plates, indicators, etc.
It would also probably need to pass some sort of type certification, have an MOT done (annual safety check), pay Road Fund Licence, Insurance (and how difficult it that going to be to get), and the driver would need to have passed a motorcycle driving test.
Electric bikes (and trikes) are specifically allowed for in the electric bicycle regulations, as (obviously) are other motor vehicles, but I don't see how anything like this would ever get legislation passed at the moment (noise, safety and pollution issues), and using it in the UK in anywhere near this level of construction would break enough laws to leave you reasonably broke from the fines (at best).
ESA was talking about this project (and five other) in September of last year.
See this link for a little information on them all, and some background gumf.
Re:The article doesn't say the launch was cancelle
on
More on Rosetta
·
· Score: 3, Informative
It looks like a launch can happen on Jan 22, Jan 23, Jan 26, or Jan 29.
The later article did say it was postponed, and it has been, probably for a year or more. This will make it impossible to get to Wirtanen, so another comet will need to be selected. This will probably mean delaying the launch well past the 12 months point.
The spacecraft will now have to be dismantled and returned for Kourou.
This element of the story came from the most recent BBC story (which for some reason appears to be inaccesable on the BBC web site?). There is no way that Rosetta is going to be dismantled. They will defuel it, and possibly remove some elements, but the vast majority of the spacecraft will be left assembled. Most likely it will be stored somewhere at Kourou (possibly in its shipping container) until the next launch opportunity. The last thing that ESA, Astrium, or any of the PIs would want, would be for the spacecraft to be dismantled. It would achieve nothing useful, cause any number of new faults, and require a massive amount of work and retesting.
Yes, removing the hydrazine will not be a nice exercise, but there will certainly be procedures for doing it, it just isn't something you particularily want to do with a spacecraft. The fueling process itself if pretty hazardous, and defueling won't be any safer.
Losing Wirtanen as a target is a big blow the Rosetta mission, but this is survivable, and the spacecraft can still go to another comet, this is vastly better than losing it at launch. The BBC story just seemed to be trying to dramatise things further.
All I can see working here is a "house arrest" type of solution. An ankle bracelet will sound an alarm if the wearer wanders too far away, or if the bracelet is tampered with....
Actually, rather than the system you describe which are used for enforcing House Arrest, a better approach may be to use the systems that stores use to stop shoplifting. The tags appear to be simple tuned circuits (some sort of inductor / capacitor circuit, doubling up as an antenna). This advantage would be that you could place the tags in clothing toys, bracelets etc. Cheap to replace the tags if they get lost.
This would however require more engineering than you may want to get involved in.
...does anyone else have an opinion on the fact that the US is now THE power in space? Although the article mentions India spending $500 mil on space, it doesn't come close to our spending or our expertise....
Leaving aside from the somewhat gung ho attitude of this post, many other nations have active space programs. ESA are currently funding many advanced satellites and systems (although addmitedly manned spaceflight is not a high priority currently). Just because the USSR is having funding problems doesn't leave the field clear for the US.
And just in case you haven't noticed, you ought to keep an eye on the Chinese space program, they are very enthusiastic, and have the political will to push things onwards rapidly.
that first link shows a girl riding that little C5 [nvg.ntnu.no] thing with a shoulder seatbelt on. If that thing gets hit and starts rolling she is *dead* she is tethered to that thing with no helmet - and *no* structure around her upper body to protect her in the event of a tip/roll/whatever.
Probably because it was covered under the legislation for Electrically Powerer Cycles (which included trikes). They have fairly stringent limitations on weight, any sort of metal roll cage would almost certainly exceed those and put it into the category of motorcycle (or moped).
That aside, no pushbike (or motorcycle) I've ever seen has a roll cage either, and I have serious doubts about the overall safety advantages of helmets, but that is another discussion altogether.
"The Outer Space Treaty states that States Parties shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried out by governmental agencies or non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the treaty. The Treaty further states that the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party."
Presumably TransOrbital is registered in the US, so the US government will be responsible for supervising any activities.
But polarizing contact lenses would work perfectly in this application.
...and for added sneakiness, if you don't know which way the screen is polarised, set up one eye to be polarised vertically and the other horizontally, then just close the eye which does not apply (ok, you could complicate things with various different angles, but horizontal or vertical seems the most likely scenarios).
Turns out that most of the world already (or always has?) used 13 digits.
The UK has been using 13 digit codes as long as we have had barcodes, you occasionally see 8 digit ones, istr that this is allowed for on small items without the room for the full 13 digit code.
If your end goal is actually to play YOUR music at Starbucks, would it not just be easier to bypass their system altogether and patch in a regular CD deck or Discman to play your CD's?
But where's the fun in that? This is the sort of thing that you do, just to prove that you can do it!
The problem I see presented is: once you have your bot in place under twelve miles of ice, how do you get your signal back? Through a tether? Then how do you get the tether through all that ice without it freezing in place and jamming the probe during descent?
Use the same technique that wire guided missiles use, the tether is deployed from the probe/tunneler it doesn't matter if it freezes in place then, in fact it would be a good idea, since that would probably support the mass of the tether and reduce risk of it breaking. Of course, if the ice isn't rock solidly imobile, then the slightest shift would slice most practical tethers instantly.
Plus, I could totally see that going awry: Peter gets all hot 'n bothered by MJ, and, completely distracted, he shoots webbing all over the place, random-like. Of course, I've always thought that Wolverine would have similar problems with his lovers, except instead of accidentally getting everything sticky, he'd probably destroy everything. Comics creators and movie directors just don't think much about those kinds of things...
Another nice thing about the design is that it will not be nearly as destructive as what everyone thinks of when they mention falling space elevators. One of the requirements for the glue for splicing the nanotubes is that it have a melting point that is below the heat experienced in re-entry. This means that all of the re-entering elevator except for the lower 60 to 100 miles of it will break up into little pieces each less than 10 cm in length and they will burn up on re-entry. The 60 to 100 miles that does not will fall into some of the emptiest ocean in the world.
But what about the cargo? I guess it's doable, to at least make sure that the cargo carriers break up on re-entry or have some sort of emergency survival option (especially if they are manned!) but that will be a lot more complex than the fibre itself simply breaking up.
Plus another thing I've thought about : radiation! Don't astronauts wear several layers of protection so that they don't turn into bacon?
I think that this is largely for thermal control, and is nothing to do with ionizing radiation. ie its designed to keep the astronauts cool when in sunlight and warm when in the shade. I think there is an element of micrometeorite protection as well. The best solution to radiation (Gamma, X-Ray, high energy protons, whatever) is to get indoors (ie back inside the shuttle/IIS/andsoforth).
What I don't understand from this theory is how bacteria can survive the reentry pressure and especially heat that is generated! Or does the inside of a big enough asteroid stay cool? I wouldn't think so but does anybody have a definitive answer?
Essentially, objects in space are very cold, and don't spend very long passing through the atmosphere, quoting from an article at Science@Nasa:
Objects from space that enter Earth's atmosphere are -- like space itself -- very cold and they remain so even as they blaze a hot-looking trail toward the ground. "The outer layers are warmed by atmospheric friction, and little bits flake away as they descend," explains Yeomans. This is called ablation and it's a wonderful way to remove heat. (Some commercial heat shields use ablation to keep spacecraft cool when they re-enter Earth's atmosphere.) "Rocky asteroids are poor conductors of heat," Yeomans continued. "Their central regions remain cool even as the hot outer layers are ablated away."
Except this appears to be in the form of removing 1s and replacing them by 0s only. If every 1 in 10 characters were inverted that would be more representative, but I don't really understand why they think that adding the noise demonstrates anything.
In practice this message should be broadcast repeatedly, eventually by averaging you should be able to remove most of the noise.
Frankly, I find the whole thing overly complex and obscure, as others have stated. If we have such a problem understanding it, what chance have any non-human intelligences? They are almost certainly to be totally unlike us, alien to be exact.
... the firm commissioned a Frankfurt musician-songwriter to write a perky ditty for the annual consultants' conference in 1999.... His KPMG challenge: to craft the right sound for a firm whose nebulous mission furrows the brows of even the brightest college grads... "The song needed to balance between being not too hero-like, not too fast, not too smooth -- not extreme in any direction -- to stay true to the KPMG identity,"...
I've been trying to find the Jungle and Hard Rock versions (or any other variants for that matter). The Corporate Anthems site http://www.corporateanthems.raettig.org/ has had to remove them due to demand, and the P2P networks (strangely!) don't seem to be much help. Anyone got any links?
It seems to me that this is just an incremental advance from older satellite-to-satellite communications systems.
Military satellite networks, for example MILSTAR have already implemented very narrow beam communications between satellites. This has been necessary to prevent interception or jamming of the signal.
Hardly "just" an incremental advance, since beamwidth is effectively a function of wavelength, the beamwidth is going to be around 10000 times narrower for optical vs microwave communications. For an optical communications link, you have to use active tracking systems to keep the transmitter and reciever continuously aligned (with some sort of feedback). With RF systems, you would need some tracking for any long term communications, but you could base that purely on satellite ephemeris, a much simpler problem.
The only time the relative velocity will be 0 is if they are both in exactly the same orbit.
...and on top of each other. Velocity is a vector. Being in the same orbit does not mean that they do not move relative to each other (depending on what reference frame you are using). Even if the two spacecraft were in the same orbit, the tracking system would still have to continuously repoint the laser/reciever.
After a few failed launches, new laws will be implemented world-wide "for our protection" that prevent anyone but registered governmental space agencies from launching manned missions, and commercial spaceflight will be relegated to satellites and probes forever.
Actually, there are existing international law, to which I am pretty sure the US has signed up, which make the Government of countries responsible for any mishaps which result from spaceflight. ie, you launch a rocket which prangs some camel in the middle of a desert, and the camels owner (or more likely, his Government) will come after your Government who is then quite likely to want to have a word in your ear about it. This is one of the reasons why totally commercial rocket launches have been a rarity, government bodies like the CAA, FAA, etc, do control what is going to be launched.
(Normal rules apply, IANAL, you are at risk of being locked away and forgotten about if you prang the ISS with your brand new home brew launch vehicle etc)
Slashdot Mirror
If you really need to get a file on or off of a PC with no removeable storage, eg broken CD and floppy, then something like FastLynx can be a godsend. If your just using DOS and or Window 9X then the the old DOS interserver is also a way to go, it will even transfer itself over the serial cable (I seem to recall Laplink used to do this as well). FastLynx has the advantage that it can transfer files between XP and say DOS or Linux, over Serial, Parallel, or USB. I haven't used Laplink for years, it may be as capable now.
Oh, and remember a double headed serial cable and appropriate parallel file transfer cable (4 UKP each last time I bought one, cheaper and easier than rolling your own!)
I don't know about the US, but there is no way you could (currently) legally use this outside of private property.
Since it has an engine, its a motorcycle (or moped or related description) and as such I'm pretty sure it needs plates, indicators, etc.
It would also probably need to pass some sort of type certification, have an MOT done (annual safety check), pay Road Fund Licence, Insurance (and how difficult it that going to be to get), and the driver would need to have passed a motorcycle driving test.
Electric bikes (and trikes) are specifically allowed for in the electric bicycle regulations, as (obviously) are other motor vehicles, but I don't see how anything like this would ever get legislation passed at the moment (noise, safety and pollution issues), and using it in the UK in anywhere near this level of construction would break enough laws to leave you reasonably broke from the fines (at best).
ESA was talking about this project (and five other) in September of last year.
See this link for a little information on them all, and some background gumf.
It looks like a launch can happen on Jan 22, Jan 23, Jan 26, or Jan 29.
The later article did say it was postponed, and it has been, probably for a year or more. This will make it impossible to get to Wirtanen, so another comet will need to be selected. This will probably mean delaying the launch well past the 12 months point.
See Rosetta Launch Postponed and ESA Press Release.
The spacecraft will now have to be dismantled and returned for Kourou.
This element of the story came from the most recent BBC story (which for some reason appears to be inaccesable on the BBC web site?). There is no way that Rosetta is going to be dismantled. They will defuel it, and possibly remove some elements, but the vast majority of the spacecraft will be left assembled. Most likely it will be stored somewhere at Kourou (possibly in its shipping container) until the next launch opportunity. The last thing that ESA, Astrium, or any of the PIs would want, would be for the spacecraft to be dismantled. It would achieve nothing useful, cause any number of new faults, and require a massive amount of work and retesting.
Yes, removing the hydrazine will not be a nice exercise, but there will certainly be procedures for doing it, it just isn't something you particularily want to do with a spacecraft. The fueling process itself if pretty hazardous, and defueling won't be any safer.
Losing Wirtanen as a target is a big blow the Rosetta mission, but this is survivable, and the spacecraft can still go to another comet, this is vastly better than losing it at launch. The BBC story just seemed to be trying to dramatise things further.
All I can see working here is a "house arrest" type of solution. An ankle bracelet will sound an alarm if the wearer wanders too far away, or if the bracelet is tampered with....
Actually, rather than the system you describe which are used for enforcing House Arrest, a better approach may be to use the systems that stores use to stop shoplifting. The tags appear to be simple tuned circuits (some sort of inductor / capacitor circuit, doubling up as an antenna). This advantage would be that you could place the tags in clothing toys, bracelets etc. Cheap to replace the tags if they get lost.
This would however require more engineering than you may want to get involved in.
In case of a fire or some other emergency, a stranger to the building needs to be able to exit.
A Red Emergency Stop type button above child height clearly marked "Door Release".
...does anyone else have an opinion on the fact that the US is now THE power in space? Although the article mentions India spending $500 mil on space, it doesn't come close to our spending or our expertise....
Leaving aside from the somewhat gung ho attitude of this post, many other nations have active space programs. ESA are currently funding many advanced satellites and systems (although addmitedly manned spaceflight is not a high priority currently). Just because the USSR is having funding problems doesn't leave the field clear for the US.
And just in case you haven't noticed, you ought to keep an eye on the Chinese space program, they are very enthusiastic, and have the political will to push things onwards rapidly.
that first link shows a girl riding that little C5 [nvg.ntnu.no] thing with a shoulder seatbelt on. If that thing gets hit and starts rolling she is *dead* she is tethered to that thing with no helmet - and *no* structure around her upper body to protect her in the event of a tip/roll/whatever.
Probably because it was covered under the legislation for Electrically Powerer Cycles (which included trikes). They have fairly stringent limitations on weight, any sort of metal roll cage would almost certainly exceed those and put it into the category of motorcycle (or moped).
That aside, no pushbike (or motorcycle) I've ever seen has a roll cage either, and I have serious doubts about the overall safety advantages of helmets, but that is another discussion altogether.
"Trailblazer is expected to launch from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan within the next nine to 12 months. "
So, WTF does it have to do withthe US government?
From the Space Law pages:
"The Outer Space Treaty states that States Parties shall bear international responsibility for national activities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, whether such activities are carried out by governmental agencies or non-governmental entities, and for assuring that national activities are carried out in conformity with the provisions set forth in the treaty. The Treaty further states that the activities of non-governmental entities in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies shall require authorization and continuing supervision by the appropriate State Party."
Presumably TransOrbital is registered in the US, so the US government will be responsible for supervising any activities.
Turns out that most of the world already (or always has?) used 13 digits.
The UK has been using 13 digit codes as long as we have had barcodes, you occasionally see 8 digit ones, istr that this is allowed for on small items without the room for the full 13 digit code.
If your end goal is actually to play YOUR music at Starbucks, would it not just be easier to bypass their system altogether and patch in a regular CD deck or Discman to play your CD's?
But where's the fun in that? This is the sort of thing that you do, just to prove that you can do it!
The problem I see presented is: once you have your bot in place under twelve miles of ice, how do you get your signal back? Through a tether? Then how do you get the tether through all that ice without it freezing in place and jamming the probe during descent?
Use the same technique that wire guided missiles use, the tether is deployed from the probe/tunneler it doesn't matter if it freezes in place then, in fact it would be a good idea, since that would probably support the mass of the tether and reduce risk of it breaking. Of course, if the ice isn't rock solidly imobile, then the slightest shift would slice most practical tethers instantly.
Plus, I could totally see that going awry: Peter gets all hot 'n bothered by MJ, and, completely distracted, he shoots webbing all over the place, random-like. Of course, I've always thought that Wolverine would have similar problems with his lovers, except instead of accidentally getting everything sticky, he'd probably destroy everything. Comics creators and movie directors just don't think much about those kinds of things...
Although science fiction authors do!
If you haven't seen this classic, have a look at Man of Steel, Woman of Kleenex
Another nice thing about the design is that it will not be nearly as destructive as what everyone thinks of when they mention falling space elevators. One of the requirements for the glue for splicing the nanotubes is that it have a melting point that is below the heat experienced in re-entry. This means that all of the re-entering elevator except for the lower 60 to 100 miles of it will break up into little pieces each less than 10 cm in length and they will burn up on re-entry. The 60 to 100 miles that does not will fall into some of the emptiest ocean in the world.
But what about the cargo? I guess it's doable, to at least make sure that the cargo carriers break up on re-entry or have some sort of emergency survival option (especially if they are manned!) but that will be a lot more complex than the fibre itself simply breaking up.
Plus another thing I've thought about : radiation! Don't astronauts wear several layers of protection so that they don't turn into bacon?
I think that this is largely for thermal control, and is nothing to do with ionizing radiation. ie its designed to keep the astronauts cool when in sunlight and warm when in the shade. I think there is an element of micrometeorite protection as well. The best solution to radiation (Gamma, X-Ray, high energy protons, whatever) is to get indoors (ie back inside the shuttle/IIS/andsoforth).
Essentially, objects in space are very cold, and don't spend very long passing through the atmosphere, quoting from an article at Science@Nasa:
About 10% noise has been added.
Except this appears to be in the form of removing 1s and replacing them by 0s only. If every 1 in 10 characters were inverted that would be more representative, but I don't really understand why they think that adding the noise demonstrates anything.
In practice this message should be broadcast repeatedly, eventually by averaging you should be able to remove most of the noise.
Frankly, I find the whole thing overly complex and obscure, as others have stated. If we have such a problem understanding it, what chance have any non-human intelligences? They are almost certainly to be totally unlike us, alien to be exact.
The article mentions a prototype generator that was built at Manzanares in Spain.
There's a picture of a "small" prototype, which is pretty damned impressive.
The story seems to be at http://www.fastcompany.com/launch/launch_feature/c orporate_songs.html.
... the firm commissioned a Frankfurt musician-songwriter to write a perky ditty for the annual consultants' conference in 1999 .... His KPMG challenge: to craft the right sound for a firm whose nebulous mission furrows the brows of even the brightest college grads ... "The song needed to balance between being not too hero-like, not too fast, not too smooth -- not extreme in any direction -- to stay true to the KPMG identity," ...
Some highlights from that site:
Boy, is KPMG [kmpg.com]'s theme song lame.
and then some.
I've been trying to find the Jungle and Hard Rock versions (or any other variants for that matter). The Corporate Anthems site http://www.corporateanthems.raettig.org/ has had to remove them due to demand, and the P2P networks (strangely!) don't seem to be much help. Anyone got any links?
It seems to me that this is just an incremental advance from older satellite-to-satellite communications systems.
Military satellite networks, for example MILSTAR have already implemented very narrow beam communications between satellites. This has been necessary to prevent interception or jamming of the signal.
Hardly "just" an incremental advance, since beamwidth is effectively a function of wavelength, the beamwidth is going to be around 10000 times narrower for optical vs microwave communications. For an optical communications link, you have to use active tracking systems to keep the transmitter and reciever continuously aligned (with some sort of feedback). With RF systems, you would need some tracking for any long term communications, but you could base that purely on satellite ephemeris, a much simpler problem.
The only time the relative velocity will be 0 is if they are both in exactly the same orbit.
...and on top of each other. Velocity is a vector. Being in the same orbit does not mean that they do not move relative to each other (depending on what reference frame you are using). Even if the two spacecraft were in the same orbit, the tracking system would still have to continuously repoint the laser/reciever.
After a few failed launches, new laws will be implemented world-wide "for our protection" that prevent anyone but registered governmental space agencies from launching manned missions, and commercial spaceflight will be relegated to satellites and probes forever.
Actually, there are existing international law, to which I am pretty sure the US has signed up, which make the Government of countries responsible for any mishaps which result from spaceflight. ie, you launch a rocket which prangs some camel in the middle of a desert, and the camels owner (or more likely, his Government) will come after your Government who is then quite likely to want to have a word in your ear about it. This is one of the reasons why totally commercial rocket launches have been a rarity, government bodies like the CAA, FAA, etc, do control what is going to be launched.
(Normal rules apply, IANAL, you are at risk of being locked away and forgotten about if you prang the ISS with your brand new home brew launch vehicle etc)