00:10 $600M for the launch
00:32 11yrs and $1.9B to develop
00:41 6 tons of cargo
01:13 6 month duration and then burns up on reentry
I dunno, 11yrs and $2.5B to resupply and reboost the ISS for 6 months might qualify as 'hugely' expensive. I am disappointed that lifting 6 tons of cargo into LEO with an unmanned, single use vehicle is as expensive as the entire Mars Science Laboratory project.
I'll be the first to admit that the Gmail app isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer but IMHO it is a much better experience than the terribly mischaracterized 'great Gmail experience in the mobile browser' on my 9700. The Gmail app is one click to see all of my incoming mail and to easily search and retrieve current or archived mail is another click with the refresh times an order of magnitude better than going through the browser or using the RIM mail app for Gmail. The Gmail app at least had a slight 'feel' of regular Gmail whereas the RIM catch-all mail & message emporium works like a twitter feed, with none of the handy Gmail specific tie-ins that make using the Gmail app a relative pleasure. I'm sorry to see that it's being dropped rather than improved.
Coworkers leaving your computer alone due to DVORAK layout -- priceless
Actually, on this note... I use an HP48G at school and once my classmates got a look at that monster, the RPN input and the lack of an "=" they didn't bother asking to borrow it again!
Hurray for products for the 2% of us that are different! (or here on/., the 98% that are different!)
Can't you see where this is headed? Of course a little tritium gas isn't going to power a lightsaber (what did the How Things Work article say, we needed about 3MW of power to get in the game?) but I can imagine if we cranked up the efficiency a couple of order of magnitude and then swap in a radioactive source with a little more jam we could light up Obi Wan's trusty enforcer. Now just have to figure out where to get those crystals and how to align them...
Actually, the Buran was designed right IMHO. No unbelievably complex main engines that had to be squashed into the Shuttle airframe and then connected via external fuel lines to a massive tank of H2. Instead they designed it to be carried into space by a big-assed, reliable, dumb-as-a-post heavy-lift booster (the technology for which was worked out many years ago) and the Buran itself only had maneuvering engines. Much easier, much safer, much cheaper.
Making man-rated resusable engines of the power required to lift the Shuttle turned out to be virtually impossible to construct (as you probably know, the Shuttle has to be be essentially completely rebuilt after every flight because the machinery cannot be made reliably reusable for the demanding conditions the Shuttle operates under). Its maybe not as sexy (Buran/Energia) but I'll take cheaper/reliable/safer going into space over sexy anyday.
BTW, did you know that the Buran actually flew? Launch, orbit, landing... remote control.
Actually, liquid hydrogen is stored at cryogenic temperature and atmospheric pressure. Gaseous hydrogen is stored at ambient temperature but high pressure. But you are right, the stuff is hard as hell to contain and will outgas through and/or embrittle many materials.
Every book I have ever encountered re: Relativity (and I have about 6) spends about 3 lines on the '... and the speed of light is constant' part and about 180 pages on the almost trivial vector math to determine the relative motion of an object from two different frames of reference (which IMHO, is just a huge, long-winded setup of the fact that trivial vector math doesn't work). BUT the fact that the speed of light is constant is the thing that breaks the model and no one ever explains that! It's just referred to axiomatically. In the book I would like to find, the whole book would be about how and why the speed of light is constant and then in the appendix they could state 'And oh, by the way, the speed of light being constant means that time dilation occurs and Lorenz tranformations have to be used instead of trivial vector math in order to figure out the position of objects in space and time'. Anyone know that title of that book?
Dude, what are you talking about? I hold a valid Category 1 medical in Canada and I have a serious red/green deficiency (like a significant portion of the male population)... chances are almost zero that I'll ever get a night rating (technically I could pass with a light gun test versus the colour-blindness test but I haven't tried yet) but I hold a VFR daytime private pilot's license now and was working towards a commercial one. Unless you are talking about a total colour deficiency (i.e. can't see colour at all) I don't think colour blindness will be the reason to fail either a cat 1 or a cat 3. If you have links or references to the contrary, I'd be interested in hearing about them. Cheers!
Look, a particular problem cost-justifies a superomputer or it doesn't. It would appear that for many problems, a cluster is a better solution. It would also appear that there are many more of those problems than problems that require a supercomputer-based solution. If these latter problems are important enough, companies/goverment will be willling to pay and someone will step up and provide a supercomputer solution. I don't think we need to bias the situation by artificially propping up the supercomputer industry.
Government/Industry will either accept the lower performance/throughput and drastically lower cost of a clustered solution (because it is good enough) or they will pony up the big bucks for the big iron (because they really need it). If the supercomputer industry needs to rationalize to survive in a market with lower demand, so be it. Welcome to the Real World(tm).
Dude, that's the key phrase. Modern rockets (fairly easily) reach Mach 7 and above. This is an airbreathing jet engine, a much less energetic way to go fast. Sustainable supersonic combustion for an airbreathing engine is a fairly recent development. Note that the engines on supersonic aircraft (even the SR-71, arguably the fastest jet powered aircraft in the world) operate subsonically (that is, the incoming air must be slowed down to below the speed of sound in order for the engine to operate)
Back in the mid-80's, that's the way our univ. VAXen were serviced... some (well-groomed, btw) dudes in suits would show up, carefully remove and hang up their jackets, open up their stainless-steel tool cases and proceed to take the machines apart. As a lowly comp. sci. student, I marveled at what kind of technology allowed (and required!) the 'mechanics' to dress in three-piece suits.
Slashdot Mirror
Not alien per se, General Products hulls https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wik...
Why, yes there is!
Hmm, shades of UniComp. Doesn't to lead self-driving flying cars.
As the natural conclusion to this line of reasoning, I present http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
From the video,
00:10 $600M for the launch
00:32 11yrs and $1.9B to develop
00:41 6 tons of cargo
01:13 6 month duration and then burns up on reentry
I dunno, 11yrs and $2.5B to resupply and reboost the ISS for 6 months might qualify as 'hugely' expensive. I am disappointed that lifting 6 tons of cargo into LEO with an unmanned, single use vehicle is as expensive as the entire Mars Science Laboratory project.
I'll be the first to admit that the Gmail app isn't the sharpest knife in the drawer but IMHO it is a much better experience than the terribly mischaracterized 'great Gmail experience in the mobile browser' on my 9700. The Gmail app is one click to see all of my incoming mail and to easily search and retrieve current or archived mail is another click with the refresh times an order of magnitude better than going through the browser or using the RIM mail app for Gmail. The Gmail app at least had a slight 'feel' of regular Gmail whereas the RIM catch-all mail & message emporium works like a twitter feed, with none of the handy Gmail specific tie-ins that make using the Gmail app a relative pleasure. I'm sorry to see that it's being dropped rather than improved.
Hey, someone mod this guy Funny! That crack just made my day and me without mod points. :-(
I think Uniquitous is referring to this
Something like this? http://www.digitalmars.com/d/
I believe you are thinking of the movie "Primer": http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primer_(film)
Bzzt... wikipedia is your friend: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fat_man and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_Boy
Just a small correction. According to my copy of "Rockets of the World" by Peter Alway and http://www.astronautix.com/lvs/energia.htm and http://www.buran-energia.com/energia/energia-desc. php, Energia used LOX/Kerosene strap on boosters and a LOX/LH2 core. No toxic, hypergolic fuels (though they were considered early in the design).
Actually, on this note... I use an HP48G at school and once my classmates got a look at that monster, the RPN input and the lack of an "=" they didn't bother asking to borrow it again!
Hurray for products for the 2% of us that are different! (or here on /., the 98% that are different!)
Hmmm... that's one intelligent drnking cup you have there!
a nce.html
u ter
http://ed-thelen.org/comp-hist/vs-mit-apollo-guid
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_Guidance_Comp
Can't you see where this is headed? Of course a little tritium gas isn't going to power a lightsaber (what did the How Things Work article say, we needed about 3MW of power to get in the game?) but I can imagine if we cranked up the efficiency a couple of order of magnitude and then swap in a radioactive source with a little more jam we could light up Obi Wan's trusty enforcer. Now just have to figure out where to get those crystals and how to align them...
Making man-rated resusable engines of the power required to lift the Shuttle turned out to be virtually impossible to construct (as you probably know, the Shuttle has to be be essentially completely rebuilt after every flight because the machinery cannot be made reliably reusable for the demanding conditions the Shuttle operates under). Its maybe not as sexy (Buran/Energia) but I'll take cheaper/reliable/safer going into space over sexy anyday.
BTW, did you know that the Buran actually flew? Launch, orbit, landing... remote control.
Actually, liquid hydrogen is stored at cryogenic temperature and atmospheric pressure. Gaseous hydrogen is stored at ambient temperature but high pressure. But you are right, the stuff is hard as hell to contain and will outgas through and/or embrittle many materials.
Every book I have ever encountered re: Relativity (and I have about 6) spends about 3 lines on the '... and the speed of light is constant' part and about 180 pages on the almost trivial vector math to determine the relative motion of an object from two different frames of reference (which IMHO, is just a huge, long-winded setup of the fact that trivial vector math doesn't work). BUT the fact that the speed of light is constant is the thing that breaks the model and no one ever explains that! It's just referred to axiomatically. In the book I would like to find, the whole book would be about how and why the speed of light is constant and then in the appendix they could state 'And oh, by the way, the speed of light being constant means that time dilation occurs and Lorenz tranformations have to be used instead of trivial vector math in order to figure out the position of objects in space and time'. Anyone know that title of that book?
Yes, stuff a lemon wedge down the neck (ala Corona) and I think you're on to something!
Dude, what are you talking about? I hold a valid Category 1 medical in Canada and I have a serious red/green deficiency (like a significant portion of the male population)... chances are almost zero that I'll ever get a night rating (technically I could pass with a light gun test versus the colour-blindness test but I haven't tried yet) but I hold a VFR daytime private pilot's license now and was working towards a commercial one. Unless you are talking about a total colour deficiency (i.e. can't see colour at all) I don't think colour blindness will be the reason to fail either a cat 1 or a cat 3. If you have links or references to the contrary, I'd be interested in hearing about them. Cheers!
Look, a particular problem cost-justifies a superomputer or it doesn't. It would appear that for many problems, a cluster is a better solution. It would also appear that there are many more of those problems than problems that require a supercomputer-based solution. If these latter problems are important enough, companies/goverment will be willling to pay and someone will step up and provide a supercomputer solution. I don't think we need to bias the situation by artificially propping up the supercomputer industry.
Government/Industry will either accept the lower performance/throughput and drastically lower cost of a clustered solution (because it is good enough) or they will pony up the big bucks for the big iron (because they really need it). If the supercomputer industry needs to rationalize to survive in a market with lower demand, so be it. Welcome to the Real World(tm).
Just my $0.02
The german V-2 rockets produced...
Dude, that's the key phrase. Modern rockets (fairly easily) reach Mach 7 and above. This is an airbreathing jet engine, a much less energetic way to go fast. Sustainable supersonic combustion for an airbreathing engine is a fairly recent development. Note that the engines on supersonic aircraft (even the SR-71, arguably the fastest jet powered aircraft in the world) operate subsonically (that is, the incoming air must be slowed down to below the speed of sound in order for the engine to operate)
It's not always about getting there fast...
:-)
Yes it is.
Back in the mid-80's, that's the way our univ. VAXen were serviced... some (well-groomed, btw) dudes in suits would show up, carefully remove and hang up their jackets, open up their stainless-steel tool cases and proceed to take the machines apart. As a lowly comp. sci. student, I marveled at what kind of technology allowed (and required!) the 'mechanics' to dress in three-piece suits.
A Forth web-server can be found at http://www.jwdt.com/~paysan/httpd-en.html.
Sorry, I can't get past the lameness filter for links because I'm stoopid.