news for you, any manned space exploration we do in the next two centuries will still leave all our eggs in the earth basket.
That is true. Fortunately, any manned space colonization will reduce the basket problem somewhat.
Only if by colony you mean "actual self sustaining colony" rather than the "no visible means of self support" colony so beloved of SF or the "requires massive amounts of support from Earth" type that's pretty much all we're going to be able to build for at a couple of centuries.
That is until one of the many possible (and even likely) mega-disasters wipes us out and all of our culture and endeavours and civilization become just an archaeological study/ object lesson for another species that collectively figured out that putting all your eggs in one basket is a really bad idea!
This has to be one of the most colossally ignorant ideas I've ever heard. Not only do we not have the technology - we aren't even close.
The really sad thing is that dipshit Gingritch isn't interested in advancing science or human knowledge, but simply engaging in a petty dick waving contest with China over who can get to the moon first.
The sad part is that there has been huge number of upmoderated posts on Slashdot over the last decade and some... hoping for exactly that. Only now the the contest appears to be possibly in the offing, it's being proposed by the Wrong Party - so now it's a bad idea.
Many of the original missiles where converted ICBMs. Donated from the air force. Then man rated.
Nope. The Redstone, Atlas, and Titan's used for manned launches were all specifically manufactured for manned launch. (The Redstone in particular was heavily modified from the version used as a weapon.)
one huge reason is that America has largely abandoned the kind of job training that makes both good electronics assembly workers
Translation: American workers won't work long hours for low pay under dodgy conditions doing monkey work on assembly lines.
Seriously, it doesn't take any special or complex training to be an electronics assembly worker on anything less important than, say, the Space Shuttle's guidance system. It's mindless rote work like any other assembly line job. What they're really dodging are labor laws and unions.
Indeed. I've often wondered if the SR-71 ended up being a solution in search of a problem once they got the bugs worked out of satellite recce. The Blackbird is very famous and very popular for being fast, sexy, high tech, etc... But it was not without significant drawbacks, like it's inability to loiter, restricted flight track (due to it's low maneuverability at speed), piled on top of it's cost add up to a bird less useful than it's public reputation would suggest.
Translation: You don't actually know as much as you think you do about the current state of robotics development, but because you "have a degree in something similar" you believe yourself to be something of an expert.
Seriously, you think that a paltry $10 million is all that stands between us and something so widely desired and it's just nobody has bothered to do it? You're delusional.
One thing that stood out to me is that the real reason we're still flying the U-2 is that Dick Chaney killed the SR-71 program, which was kind of an evolution of the U-2 program.
That's what Ben Rich claims. What Ben Rich fails to tell you however is that the special tankers needed to refuel the SR-71 were just about worn out and badly in need of replacement - at a time when the USAF could barely get enough tankers for the rest of the force. (A problem we're still wrestling with.) He also doesn't tell you that many of the SR-71's systems were wearing out and spare parts were getting scarce, requiring cannibalization between airframes to keep them flying. He also doesn't tell you about the extreme expense involved operating the SR-71 even without these mounting costs... Etc.... etc...
Overall Ben Rich is not a very reliable source for much of anything outside of his direct experience. (I.E. design, engineering, manufacturing.)
Maybe it's not perfect, but after 1700 launches, they're pretty much got it figured out. The Space Shuttle was a lot sexier, but when it came to putting mass into orbit cheaply and reliably, Soyuz won hands down.
The problem is - that while the Soyuz is in fact cheaper than the Shuttle, the difference in reliability isn't all that great. For the currently active marks of the Soyuz booster you have 863 launches with 23 failures - 97.4 percent reliability. Compare that to the Space Shuttle, 135 launches with 2 failures - 98.5 percent reliability. (The numbers for Soyuz get even worse if you count all marks of the booster.)
The reliability of Soyuz is a myth born in echo chamber of space fanboys, it's not supported by reality.
I was always kind of surprised that they hadn't done this already.
Given Google's "throw darts at the dartboard" and "swerve and skid all over the landscape" strategies for G+ to date - how can you be surprised? The only thing Google has done right so far was to give early access to niche net celebrities (like Thomas Hawk or Marc Spagnuolo).
The only way for a general-purpose social network like G+ to compete with facebook is to win the younger generation of social networkers. They can't expect everyone to leave facebook and their 1000+ friends just for a cleaner interface and about 50 friends.
Five or ten years ago, the "younger generation" may have ruled the roost - but this is 2012, not 2007. The "younger generation" that built Facebook is now mostly twentysomething and firmly embedded on Facebook, along with their parents, grandparents, etc... All generations are deeply involved with all the things G+ lacks. Not just applications and games (though both are obviously huge), but high school, veterans and other fraternal groups and reunion pages. Pages for their favorite causes. Pages for their favorite websites. Pages for their town, neighborhood, and favorite local businesses and national brands. Pages for their favorite bands, both indy newcomers and ancient dinosaurs. Etc... etc...
No, G+'s problem isn't the lack of the younger generation. It's that their attempt to replace Facebook by not being Facebook has resulted in a sterile empty desert. Like requiring those who create a Google account to create a G+ account, this is nothing more than a desperate bid to boost their numbers without having to actually go to the bother of boosting their features.
Yes, you could probably get better answers on the technology side from just about any engineering student a few months into their course or anyone that bothered to read the news clippings from Apollo onwards, but it does give us a different perspective.
Well, that's my problem with the article up to the point where I gave up... It doesn't give us a different perspective. It's just the same old space fanboy echo chamber/urban legend. It has nothing whatsoever to do with technology, but rather with basic ignorance of the facts, or less charitably a version of the facts heavily self edited to match a predefined viewpoint.
I almost gave up on the second question - because it by then it was already clear he was pretty much clueless. (Though most people won't realize it, because they've grown up on the same fairy tales about the Shuttle.) The third cinched it, and I did give up with his nonsense about the Saturn V. He's just another fanboy pining for the glory days.
This is a prime example of celebrity journalism - his words are only considered as being valuable because he's famous (at least in a narrow circle). What's next Slashdot? Interviewing Clint Eastwood for his opinions because he's played an astronaut?
Maybe author a movie, but not star in it. They where great at the time (70's and 80's) but now they would risk looking outdated and desperately trying to cling to some sort of success.
Risk looking outdated? Myself, I'd take that as a given. Their day is past. Long past.
But most of the responses (so far) to story illustrate quite neatly (and for the umpteenth time) just why the entertainment industry (and I include the computer/console games industry in this) keep serving us up just more of the same... because they know people will eat it up with a fangirl "squuueeeeeee" and beg for more.
Soyuz program is the most successful launch platform by wide margin. It's safe, cheap, reliable and can launch frequently.
Not really It's reliability is statistically indistinguishable from that of the Shuttle. (They differ by something like.1% or so.) It may be cheap, but it's also pretty low performance. (I.E. a subcompact is cheaper than a full size pickup truck, but only a fool would confuse them.)
Soyuz has over 1700 successful launches.
It also have a couple of hundred failed launches too.
Yeah, we kept waiting for our eight year old CRT TV to die so we could replace it with a flatscreen/HDTV. This last Black Friday there was such a good deal at Costco that we finally just bit the bullet and upgraded.
Can you remember the last piece of technology hardware you had which outlived its warranty?
Sure, my camera (Canon T2i) just passed it's warranty date a few weeks and it's still going strong. So is my 2005 era Kodak point-and-shoot. Heck, the computer I'm typing this on (an off-the-shelf at Best Buy HP Pavilion) is still going strong on it's original OS installation after nearly six years. (It's companion is a year younger and has only required the mouse to be replaced, unsurprising on a machine primarily dedicated to gaming.)
In fact, I can't remember the last piece of technology hardware of mine that didn't long outlast it's warranty.
Doubly so if the questioner is a 'typical' Slashdotter and has spent the better part of the last decade driving the notion "don't attach unknown USB sticks to your computer" into the heads of his non-techie friends and relations.
No, they assume the fiancee either isn't a geek or into geek attention whoring. Nor is there anything incompatible between her being a geek *and* wanting a traditional wedding. This was the case with my bride... we had a traditional wedding and then spent the first three days of our honeymoon at the beach - the last three days were spent (by design) at an SCA event. At the first opportunity after our 'traditional' wedding, our SCA persona's were wed (in garb) at our Shire's Yule celebration.
My niece, a serious comics geek approached it a different way... The wedding was pretty much traditional, but the figures on their cake and the cartoon versions on their napkins were actually the secret identities of her and her husbands favorite superheroes. The geeks in the audience got it. The non geeks just assumed they were idealized and caricature versions (respectively) of the bride and groom.
"Don't worry about it, your wife will (thankfully) veto this (stupid) idea." "Hey Moron, Seek advice from your wife-to-be!" etc
That being said, I find it pretty sad that you think consulting with his partner is 'odd'.
Why? Because the invitation is actually not about you. It's about the person you're inviting. It's intended to communicate to them that you'd be tickled to death to see them on the biggest day of your life, and then to make it as easy as possible for them to get there. You're asking them for the honor of their presence even if you don't use that wording.
Precisely this.
Almost every wedding I've ever seen where the bride/groom/family made it all about how clever they were rather then acknowledging the social function of the wedding has ended in flaming disaster. The ones where one of the future partners made it all about them (not the same as the bride running the show BTW) were the messiest - especially the ones where they did it without the full knowledge and consent of the other partner.
After talking it out with my bride (as usually I'm the leader/planner in our partnership), I stepped back and let her and her mom run the show. All I had to do was show up in my Navy dress uniform and stand in the corner while my best man fed me enough shots to keep me loose and prevented me from taking so many that I was unable to function. 22 years later, we're still married. And I still fall asleep holding her hand.
Those paying attention will have noted a common theme above - talk to your prospective spouse, take consideration of others. That's what makes a wedding and a marriage work. If you aren't ready to start your partnership like that, you aren't ready to start a partnership.
That's a very complicated and heavier way of doing what's already being done - using smaller balloons inside the larger one to alter the pressure (and thus density and thus lift) of the larger balloon. (Saving the weight of the storage tanks, which is the ruling factor.)
Yes, the photograph is "clearly different" in that it's not the exact same photograph, but it is clearly the same compositional idea, with the only practical difference between a difference in angle. Also, the second photo was intentionally made to avoid licensing fees from using the original.
And here, you've hit the nail squarely on the head - but sadly these points are whooshing right over the heads of most commenters. They've entirely missed that was this was a deliberate and admitted attempt to copy an existing work in order to avoid paying the creator of said existing work.
Like the earlier suit over an album cover, this judgment reinforces that while being 'inspired by' is acceptable, direct copying of significant style elements is not.
That said, you didn't actually contradict GP. Whose main point was that there's not much reason to still be in hospital this long after a radiation exposure
Umm... No.
Like the OP you seem to suffer from the mistaken belief that clear bright lines exist, which means you missed my point entirely. You fail to realize that not only do such clear bright lines not exist, there is not sufficient data to make such categorical statements as "there is no reason to still be in a hospital".
Only a fairly small number of people (statistically speaking) have received whole body doses like the Fukishima 50 are likely to have experienced. The vast majority of them are poorly documented (at best, as with the Hiroshima or Nagasaki survivors), or were deliberately denied proper documentation (Chernobyl workers). Or those two groups, precisely none were given anything even approaching modern (circa 2010) medical diagnosis or treatment. (The first group because it didn't exist, the second because (again) they were deliberately denied.)
* High or Very high levels - severe radiation poisoning, die within hours or days, maybe a few weeks if you're unlucky - so wouldn't still be in the hospital.
* Moderate levels - something very similar to sunburn, might be in hospital for a short time for treatment, have increased risk of cancer developing, but that will take 5 - 25 years. People in this category would have been out of the hospital in maybe April or May of last year.
Well, the truth is we don't know much about these ranges. The vast majority of the cases of whole body exposure are either survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or are among the early clean up workers at Chernobyl. I.E. amounts and types of exposure are for the most part poorly documented, as are subsequent care and outcomes. On top of that, it's a fairly small number as such things go, so it's hard to say clearly where the bottom of the 'Moderate' category is. There's just not enough data.
And I haven't adressed the difference between whole body dosages and point dosages like the women exposed to Radium while painting watch dials. Or hospital workers exposed to ongoing low dosages of X-rays over extended periods...
Making the problem even more difficult is the fact that the media (and Wikipedia, and Slashdot commentary) seem to treat all radiation more or less the same - when nothing could be further from the truth. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, neutron, X-ray... all ionizing radiation, all with subtly different effects. The same goes for length of exposure, whole body doses received over short periods are going to be different than those received over long periods, even if the absolute exposure is the same.
All we really know is Exposure Is Bad, and try to avoid these levels.
* Low levels - No immediate health effects. Increased risk of cancer in 5 - 25 years.
* Very low levels - No health effects, essentially no increased risk of cancer (maybe something like.01 percent increased risk, but so close to zero as to be effectively zero increase in risk of cancer).
Here, we see the same problems as above - you're acting as if there are clear bright lines between the categories. There isn't. Most importantly, the boundary between (your) Low and Very Low levels is fuzzy and poorly understood.
Slashdot Mirror
Only if by colony you mean "actual self sustaining colony" rather than the "no visible means of self support" colony so beloved of SF or the "requires massive amounts of support from Earth" type that's pretty much all we're going to be able to build for at a couple of centuries.
This has to be one of the most colossally ignorant ideas I've ever heard. Not only do we not have the technology - we aren't even close.
The sad part is that there has been huge number of upmoderated posts on Slashdot over the last decade and some... hoping for exactly that. Only now the the contest appears to be possibly in the offing, it's being proposed by the Wrong Party - so now it's a bad idea.
Nope. The Redstone, Atlas, and Titan's used for manned launches were all specifically manufactured for manned launch. (The Redstone in particular was heavily modified from the version used as a weapon.)
Translation: American workers won't work long hours for low pay under dodgy conditions doing monkey work on assembly lines.
Seriously, it doesn't take any special or complex training to be an electronics assembly worker on anything less important than, say, the Space Shuttle's guidance system. It's mindless rote work like any other assembly line job. What they're really dodging are labor laws and unions.
Indeed. I've often wondered if the SR-71 ended up being a solution in search of a problem once they got the bugs worked out of satellite recce. The Blackbird is very famous and very popular for being fast, sexy, high tech, etc... But it was not without significant drawbacks, like it's inability to loiter, restricted flight track (due to it's low maneuverability at speed), piled on top of it's cost add up to a bird less useful than it's public reputation would suggest.
Translation: You don't actually know as much as you think you do about the current state of robotics development, but because you "have a degree in something similar" you believe yourself to be something of an expert.
Seriously, you think that a paltry $10 million is all that stands between us and something so widely desired and it's just nobody has bothered to do it? You're delusional.
That's what Ben Rich claims. What Ben Rich fails to tell you however is that the special tankers needed to refuel the SR-71 were just about worn out and badly in need of replacement - at a time when the USAF could barely get enough tankers for the rest of the force. (A problem we're still wrestling with.) He also doesn't tell you that many of the SR-71's systems were wearing out and spare parts were getting scarce, requiring cannibalization between airframes to keep them flying. He also doesn't tell you about the extreme expense involved operating the SR-71 even without these mounting costs... Etc.... etc...
Overall Ben Rich is not a very reliable source for much of anything outside of his direct experience. (I.E. design, engineering, manufacturing.)
The problem is - that while the Soyuz is in fact cheaper than the Shuttle, the difference in reliability isn't all that great. For the currently active marks of the Soyuz booster you have 863 launches with 23 failures - 97.4 percent reliability. Compare that to the Space Shuttle, 135 launches with 2 failures - 98.5 percent reliability. (The numbers for Soyuz get even worse if you count all marks of the booster.)
The reliability of Soyuz is a myth born in echo chamber of space fanboys, it's not supported by reality.
Given Google's "throw darts at the dartboard" and "swerve and skid all over the landscape" strategies for G+ to date - how can you be surprised? The only thing Google has done right so far was to give early access to niche net celebrities (like Thomas Hawk or Marc Spagnuolo).
Five or ten years ago, the "younger generation" may have ruled the roost - but this is 2012, not 2007. The "younger generation" that built Facebook is now mostly twentysomething and firmly embedded on Facebook, along with their parents, grandparents, etc... All generations are deeply involved with all the things G+ lacks. Not just applications and games (though both are obviously huge), but high school, veterans and other fraternal groups and reunion pages. Pages for their favorite causes. Pages for their favorite websites. Pages for their town, neighborhood, and favorite local businesses and national brands. Pages for their favorite bands, both indy newcomers and ancient dinosaurs. Etc... etc...
No, G+'s problem isn't the lack of the younger generation. It's that their attempt to replace Facebook by not being Facebook has resulted in a sterile empty desert. Like requiring those who create a Google account to create a G+ account, this is nothing more than a desperate bid to boost their numbers without having to actually go to the bother of boosting their features.
Well, that's my problem with the article up to the point where I gave up... It doesn't give us a different perspective. It's just the same old space fanboy echo chamber/urban legend. It has nothing whatsoever to do with technology, but rather with basic ignorance of the facts, or less charitably a version of the facts heavily self edited to match a predefined viewpoint.
I almost gave up on the second question - because it by then it was already clear he was pretty much clueless. (Though most people won't realize it, because they've grown up on the same fairy tales about the Shuttle.) The third cinched it, and I did give up with his nonsense about the Saturn V. He's just another fanboy pining for the glory days.
This is a prime example of celebrity journalism - his words are only considered as being valuable because he's famous (at least in a narrow circle). What's next Slashdot? Interviewing Clint Eastwood for his opinions because he's played an astronaut?
Risk looking outdated? Myself, I'd take that as a given. Their day is past. Long past.
But most of the responses (so far) to story illustrate quite neatly (and for the umpteenth time) just why the entertainment industry (and I include the computer/console games industry in this) keep serving us up just more of the same... because they know people will eat it up with a fangirl "squuueeeeeee" and beg for more.
Not really It's reliability is statistically indistinguishable from that of the Shuttle. (They differ by something like .1% or so.) It may be cheap, but it's also pretty low performance. (I.E. a subcompact is cheaper than a full size pickup truck, but only a fool would confuse them.)
It also have a couple of hundred failed launches too.
Why mess with what works?
Yeah, we kept waiting for our eight year old CRT TV to die so we could replace it with a flatscreen/HDTV. This last Black Friday there was such a good deal at Costco that we finally just bit the bullet and upgraded.
Sure, my camera (Canon T2i) just passed it's warranty date a few weeks and it's still going strong. So is my 2005 era Kodak point-and-shoot. Heck, the computer I'm typing this on (an off-the-shelf at Best Buy HP Pavilion) is still going strong on it's original OS installation after nearly six years. (It's companion is a year younger and has only required the mouse to be replaced, unsurprising on a machine primarily dedicated to gaming.)
In fact, I can't remember the last piece of technology hardware of mine that didn't long outlast it's warranty.
Doubly so if the questioner is a 'typical' Slashdotter and has spent the better part of the last decade driving the notion "don't attach unknown USB sticks to your computer" into the heads of his non-techie friends and relations.
No, they assume the fiancee either isn't a geek or into geek attention whoring. Nor is there anything incompatible between her being a geek *and* wanting a traditional wedding. This was the case with my bride... we had a traditional wedding and then spent the first three days of our honeymoon at the beach - the last three days were spent (by design) at an SCA event. At the first opportunity after our 'traditional' wedding, our SCA persona's were wed (in garb) at our Shire's Yule celebration.
My niece, a serious comics geek approached it a different way... The wedding was pretty much traditional, but the figures on their cake and the cartoon versions on their napkins were actually the secret identities of her and her husbands favorite superheroes. The geeks in the audience got it. The non geeks just assumed they were idealized and caricature versions (respectively) of the bride and groom.
That being said, I find it pretty sad that you think consulting with his partner is 'odd'.
Precisely this.
Almost every wedding I've ever seen where the bride/groom/family made it all about how clever they were rather then acknowledging the social function of the wedding has ended in flaming disaster. The ones where one of the future partners made it all about them (not the same as the bride running the show BTW) were the messiest - especially the ones where they did it without the full knowledge and consent of the other partner.
After talking it out with my bride (as usually I'm the leader/planner in our partnership), I stepped back and let her and her mom run the show. All I had to do was show up in my Navy dress uniform and stand in the corner while my best man fed me enough shots to keep me loose and prevented me from taking so many that I was unable to function. 22 years later, we're still married. And I still fall asleep holding her hand.
Those paying attention will have noted a common theme above - talk to your prospective spouse, take consideration of others. That's what makes a wedding and a marriage work. If you aren't ready to start your partnership like that, you aren't ready to start a partnership.
That's a very complicated and heavier way of doing what's already being done - using smaller balloons inside the larger one to alter the pressure (and thus density and thus lift) of the larger balloon. (Saving the weight of the storage tanks, which is the ruling factor.)
http://science.howstuffworks.com/transport/flight/modern/blimp1.htm
And here, you've hit the nail squarely on the head - but sadly these points are whooshing right over the heads of most commenters. They've entirely missed that was this was a deliberate and admitted attempt to copy an existing work in order to avoid paying the creator of said existing work.
Like the earlier suit over an album cover, this judgment reinforces that while being 'inspired by' is acceptable, direct copying of significant style elements is not.
Umm... No.
Like the OP you seem to suffer from the mistaken belief that clear bright lines exist, which means you missed my point entirely. You fail to realize that not only do such clear bright lines not exist, there is not sufficient data to make such categorical statements as "there is no reason to still be in a hospital".
Only a fairly small number of people (statistically speaking) have received whole body doses like the Fukishima 50 are likely to have experienced. The vast majority of them are poorly documented (at best, as with the Hiroshima or Nagasaki survivors), or were deliberately denied proper documentation (Chernobyl workers). Or those two groups, precisely none were given anything even approaching modern (circa 2010) medical diagnosis or treatment. (The first group because it didn't exist, the second because (again) they were deliberately denied.)
You'd have roughly an infinitesimal fraction of the money spent to date on solving this yet unsolved problem.
Well, the truth is we don't know much about these ranges. The vast majority of the cases of whole body exposure are either survivors of Hiroshima or Nagasaki, or are among the early clean up workers at Chernobyl. I.E. amounts and types of exposure are for the most part poorly documented, as are subsequent care and outcomes. On top of that, it's a fairly small number as such things go, so it's hard to say clearly where the bottom of the 'Moderate' category is. There's just not enough data.
And I haven't adressed the difference between whole body dosages and point dosages like the women exposed to Radium while painting watch dials. Or hospital workers exposed to ongoing low dosages of X-rays over extended periods...
Making the problem even more difficult is the fact that the media (and Wikipedia, and Slashdot commentary) seem to treat all radiation more or less the same - when nothing could be further from the truth. Alpha, Beta, Gamma, neutron, X-ray... all ionizing radiation, all with subtly different effects. The same goes for length of exposure, whole body doses received over short periods are going to be different than those received over long periods, even if the absolute exposure is the same.
All we really know is Exposure Is Bad, and try to avoid these levels.
Here, we see the same problems as above - you're acting as if there are clear bright lines between the categories. There isn't. Most importantly, the boundary between (your) Low and Very Low levels is fuzzy and poorly understood.