People think because you add the word "Internet" to a social problem, that suddenly makes it new and special... le sigh.
No shit. And it's hardly unheard of for two countries to be engaged in some form of conflict (open or covert, economic or armed) while also being at the conference table. The anonymous reader/submitter needs to study his history.
I have a good knowledge of science and engineering and a practical turn of mind that could let me make a real contribution to the project.
That's where most, if not all, of the volunteers here on Slashdot get it wrong. They don't need scientists and engineers - they need mechanics and technicians. They don't need retirees with only a 'few good years left', they need twenty and thirty somethings that not only have the endurance and strength to remain in condition all the way to Mars - but also to be able to put in a fulls days worth of once they get there.
This isn't going to be colonization like you see on Star Trek where everyone spends their days staring at screens and nights hanging about their luxurious quarters. It's going to be work, and a fair amount of it physical and technical.
That's covered in Zubrin's book, "A Case for Mars" that describes his Mars Direct approach.
Sure, if by "covered" you mean "totally untested and largely theoretical technologies treated as if they were already at the off-the-shelf stage", then sure. Otherwise, not so much. Zubrin is a very smart man, but he's totally clueless on the difference between theory and reality and the often tortuous and expensive road between them.
I mean, seriously - they claim to have identified "potential suppliers" for equipment... when most of the technologies involved are barely at the "laboratory bench prototype" stage... (And keeping in mind that "things get heavier and more expensive is practically a law of nature in aerospace.)
I know! I mean, when Kennedy had the audacity to say we should send a man to the moon, he already had the Saturn V sitting on the pad at the cape with every system fully developed and tested and ready to go.
No, they didn't. But both the F-1 and J-2 engines were already in development and had been since 1956 (F-1) and 1960 (J-2). The studies that lead to the Saturn family of rockets got underway in 1957, and hardware engineering was underway as early as 1960. Studies for what became Apollo started in 1959, and the contracts for the CSM were awarded in 1961...
Kennedy didn't choose the moon landing as a goal in a vacuum. He wanted a project that was both audacious and could be completed withing a reasonable time frame - and of the various things proposed, Apollo had a huge leg up because significant development was already underway.
By comparison, most of the requisite technologies for the proposed Mars mission are somewhere around 1952...
Facebook has put me face-to-face with the fact that my online "friends" all suck. Almost all of my network turns out to be people I knew in high school and haven't talked to in 20 years, half of them are religious or political nuts, and none of them are really my "friends". My real friends don't use Facebook.
That says more about you than it does about Facebook. My network consists entirely of people I *want* to communicate with - because I either never friended folks I didn't want to talk to in the first place, or unsubscribed when that option was made available. It's connected me with folks that I want to be connected with, including relatives, shipmates, high school friends, real life friends from the SCA and Geocaching communities, etc...
Facebook allows you to be the master of your own communications and connections - and if you can't be bothered, or don't have any 'real' friends or contacts... that's not their fault.
Because they rely on being cool in order to continue to make money.
So sayeth the Slashdot demographic as they stand in the cold and stare hungrily at the "cool kids" through the window.
But it's bullshit. Facebook stopped being about cool years ago, and it continues to pull huge traffic and hold onto enormous numbers of users. Why? Because it's not about being cool - it's about being useful, and they've pretty much mastered that.
To be honest I'm surprised we don't see this kind of thing more often. Not just on travel sites, but on any kind of site that doesn't have strict MSRP pricing such as Amazon.
Except Amazon doesn't have strict MSRP pricing - they've been using variable pricing for years.
This - and after reading their [laughable] 'FAQ', I'd expand that to "what are you smoking?'.
I mean, seriously - they claim to have identified "potential suppliers" for equipment... when most of the technologies involved are barely at the "laboratory bench prototype" stage... (And keeping in mind that "things get heavier and more expensive is practically a law of nature in aerospace.) Not to mention the laughable notion that reality TV will fund even a fraction of the quoted six billion dollar cost*, let alone that someone will be insane enough to provide significant bridge funding.
* I don't have the numbers, but I would not be surprised if that adds up to the show having to be the most popular show ever - year after year for decades. Six billion is a *lot* of money, and the interest/expected ROI on the bridge funding is going to add at least billion or so more.
If your concept of life in other parts of the Universe is bacteria and fellow bald monkeys, then you will never find it. Or to put in another way, having a concept of alien life based upon Hollywood Sci-Fi - like that crap Star Trek - will have you horribly disappointed for all eternity.
Wow - you call Hollywood "crap", and then you cite 2010?
Tesla is starting high-end and going towards low. In 2014, they are expected to introduce their sub 30K electric car. Unlike the garbage that is out there, it will likely be a 4 seater, and have decent performance and torque (i.e. 0-60 under 6 if not 5) and a range of around 120 miles.
Paper cars are always on schedule and meet specs. Real world cars, like all real world engineering - not so much.
Why the hell do people obsess about 0-60 time? How often do you ever accelerate flat out from 0 to 60?
For two reasons: First, it's a (more-or-less) objective measurement of the cars performance. Second, because many of us do accelerate from near zero to near sixty on a daily basis - on highway on ramps. There, reasonable zero to sixty times equates to greater safety because it's easier to match speed with and merge into existing traffic.
What would Alan had given us with another 20 years?
Hard to tell. In his latter years, he went wandering off down all kinds of intellectual paths. He might have produced great things, he might have produced mediocre things, he might have produced nothing of use at all.
We are not talking cheap high-rise blocks thrown up, there is some real skill and craftsmanship here.
And you can tell that from two small pictures... how exactly? Just because it looks "authentic", doesn't mean it's not a cheap veneer over a cheap superstructure.
To anyone watching the parking lot for an extended amount of time to before deciding whether or not to shop there? I'm not sure that necessarily proves the principle is sound, it just proves that some people believe in the principle.
The first Costco was alongside a medium busy road, so lots of chances for people to see the lot day after day. But it was also in a somewhat dodgy somewhat rundown semi industrial area, so convincing those people that they were open and a going concern was probably not without value.
ever see a single dollar bill in a tip jar? Priming isn't new.
Yep. At least according to local legend, when the built the first Costco they had the employees park close in and move their cars several times a day - to create the illusion of a busy parking lot.
The last employer I worked for I gave them a chance to compete on wage before I left.
No, you didn't, You issued an ultimatum (pay me what I want or else), and then blamed them for not meeting that ultimatum and used that as an excuse for leaving.
I don't really agree with your last point, and that's because I lived through that era.
And what makes you think I didn't?
Not that your anecdotes refute my point anyhow. You're mistaking your worms eye view for the big picture. Just because programmers or biologists weren't being glamorized doesn't mean that the work wasn't being done. (Not that aerospace engineers are interchangeable with either...) Just because a vanishly small number of movies and TV programs (out of the total) of the period are SF, doesn't mean that society as a whole was focused on SPACE, SPACE, SPACE to the exclusion of all else. Etc... etc...
I think you're wrong about the second, however. The Chinese appear to have the same general interest in space stunts that the Soviets did: to convince their own population that progress is amazing, that the future is Chinese, and that all those peculiar rumors about brutality and privation in the countryside, or crashing real estate prices on the coast, or high-speed rail roadbeds cracking because of shoddy and corrupt construction, or the wild male/female imbalance in 20-year-olds are just...the mutterings of wreckers, evil propaganda from jealous foreign devils, et cetera.
Actually, you and I are in 111% percent agreement on that. Their program exists to a) provide propaganda and proof to the world that they're a Real Nation, and b) provide propaganda and proof to their citizens that they're a Real Nation. And the thing is, they can do that with a program pretty much like the one they have... they don't need to be in a sterile 'race' because (unlike the situation in the 1960's) there's nobody to race. (Much to the dismay of space fanboys and xenophobic alarmists.)
And it is possible that we did have to choose -- that there was only so much technological talent and capital available in 1976, and if it went into a robust rockets to the Moon program it would not have been available elsewhere.
Yes, there was only so much talent available - and it was busy doing both. It's not a zero sum game because of the sheer size of the pool. Or, as a friend of mine used to put it, "it's humbling to realize that both the Manhattan and Apollo Project's were run on scraps [compared to the size of the economy at the time]".
The first US moon landing program took less than 10 years from conceptual announcement to a giant leap for mankind.
Only because work on key components had started as early as 1956, and because design and engineering on pretty much everything involved was already well underway when Kennedy made his speech. Without that running start and all that prep work, the goal of "the end of the decade" would have been unreachable. Kennedy didn't make his choice of stunts in a vacuum.
How long would it take for the US to do the same thing again?
That depends entirely on how much money the US is willing to spend.
I hate to break it to you - but where you live isn't the whole of the world. Back in the day, they were fairly common *everywhere*. Today, they are all but extinct despite the presence of a few clusters of survivors.
a renewed debate has arisen over the implications of Chinese space feats
Well, no. Not really. A couple of pundits and usual suspects lobbing blog entries back and forth at each other, and an article from a third string news service (Yahoo!) does not a renewed debate make... Most because the pundits and usual suspects have never shut up in the first place. If they weren't "debating" China, they'd be "debating" commercial space, or Mars missions, or something else they have no power to influence.
It's a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.
In reality, the implications of China's move could be a much cooler third option: a new space race between the Chinese government and U.S. startups.
If it's anything like the last space race (a bunch of sterile stunts), I can't see why anyone with any sense would think it was cool. Not that China has shown any interest in such a race, or in any other manner of giving wood to the space fanboy crowd.
Slashdot Mirror
No shit. And it's hardly unheard of for two countries to be engaged in some form of conflict (open or covert, economic or armed) while also being at the conference table. The anonymous reader/submitter needs to study his history.
That's where most, if not all, of the volunteers here on Slashdot get it wrong. They don't need scientists and engineers - they need mechanics and technicians. They don't need retirees with only a 'few good years left', they need twenty and thirty somethings that not only have the endurance and strength to remain in condition all the way to Mars - but also to be able to put in a fulls days worth of once they get there.
This isn't going to be colonization like you see on Star Trek where everyone spends their days staring at screens and nights hanging about their luxurious quarters. It's going to be work, and a fair amount of it physical and technical.
Sure, if by "covered" you mean "totally untested and largely theoretical technologies treated as if they were already at the off-the-shelf stage", then sure. Otherwise, not so much. Zubrin is a very smart man, but he's totally clueless on the difference between theory and reality and the often tortuous and expensive road between them.
No, they didn't. But both the F-1 and J-2 engines were already in development and had been since 1956 (F-1) and 1960 (J-2). The studies that lead to the Saturn family of rockets got underway in 1957, and hardware engineering was underway as early as 1960. Studies for what became Apollo started in 1959, and the contracts for the CSM were awarded in 1961...
Kennedy didn't choose the moon landing as a goal in a vacuum. He wanted a project that was both audacious and could be completed withing a reasonable time frame - and of the various things proposed, Apollo had a huge leg up because significant development was already underway.
By comparison, most of the requisite technologies for the proposed Mars mission are somewhere around 1952...
That says more about you than it does about Facebook. My network consists entirely of people I *want* to communicate with - because I either never friended folks I didn't want to talk to in the first place, or unsubscribed when that option was made available. It's connected me with folks that I want to be connected with, including relatives, shipmates, high school friends, real life friends from the SCA and Geocaching communities, etc...
Facebook allows you to be the master of your own communications and connections - and if you can't be bothered, or don't have any 'real' friends or contacts... that's not their fault.
No, you can't actually. Not unless the username is unique... because otherwise the email addy is [username]+[ID number]@facebook.com
So sayeth the Slashdot demographic as they stand in the cold and stare hungrily at the "cool kids" through the window.
But it's bullshit. Facebook stopped being about cool years ago, and it continues to pull huge traffic and hold onto enormous numbers of users. Why? Because it's not about being cool - it's about being useful, and they've pretty much mastered that.
Except Amazon doesn't have strict MSRP pricing - they've been using variable pricing for years.
This - and after reading their [laughable] 'FAQ', I'd expand that to "what are you smoking?'.
I mean, seriously - they claim to have identified "potential suppliers" for equipment... when most of the technologies involved are barely at the "laboratory bench prototype" stage... (And keeping in mind that "things get heavier and more expensive is practically a law of nature in aerospace.) Not to mention the laughable notion that reality TV will fund even a fraction of the quoted six billion dollar cost*, let alone that someone will be insane enough to provide significant bridge funding.
* I don't have the numbers, but I would not be surprised if that adds up to the show having to be the most popular show ever - year after year for decades. Six billion is a *lot* of money, and the interest/expected ROI on the bridge funding is going to add at least billion or so more.
Wow - you call Hollywood "crap", and then you cite 2010?
Turing wasn't a chemist.
Paper cars are always on schedule and meet specs. Real world cars, like all real world engineering - not so much.
For two reasons: First, it's a (more-or-less) objective measurement of the cars performance. Second, because many of us do accelerate from near zero to near sixty on a daily basis - on highway on ramps. There, reasonable zero to sixty times equates to greater safety because it's easier to match speed with and merge into existing traffic.
Hard to tell. In his latter years, he went wandering off down all kinds of intellectual paths. He might have produced great things, he might have produced mediocre things, he might have produced nothing of use at all.
And you can tell that from two small pictures... how exactly? Just because it looks "authentic", doesn't mean it's not a cheap veneer over a cheap superstructure.
The first Costco was alongside a medium busy road, so lots of chances for people to see the lot day after day. But it was also in a somewhat dodgy somewhat rundown semi industrial area, so convincing those people that they were open and a going concern was probably not without value.
Yep. At least according to local legend, when the built the first Costco they had the employees park close in and move their cars several times a day - to create the illusion of a busy parking lot.
No, you didn't, You issued an ultimatum (pay me what I want or else), and then blamed them for not meeting that ultimatum and used that as an excuse for leaving.
And what makes you think I didn't?
Not that your anecdotes refute my point anyhow. You're mistaking your worms eye view for the big picture. Just because programmers or biologists weren't being glamorized doesn't mean that the work wasn't being done. (Not that aerospace engineers are interchangeable with either...) Just because a vanishly small number of movies and TV programs (out of the total) of the period are SF, doesn't mean that society as a whole was focused on SPACE, SPACE, SPACE to the exclusion of all else. Etc... etc...
I can *already* identify you from two blocks away with a prosumer grade camera and a crap kit lens.
This is Slashdot - we don't do subtle.
Actually, you and I are in 111% percent agreement on that. Their program exists to a) provide propaganda and proof to the world that they're a Real Nation, and b) provide propaganda and proof to their citizens that they're a Real Nation. And the thing is, they can do that with a program pretty much like the one they have... they don't need to be in a sterile 'race' because (unlike the situation in the 1960's) there's nobody to race. (Much to the dismay of space fanboys and xenophobic alarmists.)
Yes, there was only so much talent available - and it was busy doing both. It's not a zero sum game because of the sheer size of the pool. Or, as a friend of mine used to put it, "it's humbling to realize that both the Manhattan and Apollo Project's were run on scraps [compared to the size of the economy at the time]".
Only because work on key components had started as early as 1956, and because design and engineering on pretty much everything involved was already well underway when Kennedy made his speech. Without that running start and all that prep work, the goal of "the end of the decade" would have been unreachable. Kennedy didn't make his choice of stunts in a vacuum.
That depends entirely on how much money the US is willing to spend.
I hate to break it to you - but where you live isn't the whole of the world. Back in the day, they were fairly common *everywhere*. Today, they are all but extinct despite the presence of a few clusters of survivors.
Well, no. Not really. A couple of pundits and usual suspects lobbing blog entries back and forth at each other, and an article from a third string news service (Yahoo!) does not a renewed debate make... Most because the pundits and usual suspects have never shut up in the first place. If they weren't "debating" China, they'd be "debating" commercial space, or Mars missions, or something else they have no power to influence.
It's a bunch of sound and fury signifying nothing.
If it's anything like the last space race (a bunch of sterile stunts), I can't see why anyone with any sense would think it was cool. Not that China has shown any interest in such a race, or in any other manner of giving wood to the space fanboy crowd.