Blackberry most likely feels being proactive and potentially violating individual's civil rights as well as privacy laws is better than waiting to be subpoenaed and looking like they are protecting looters and criminals.
There, fixed that for you. It doesn't sound nearly so pretty when you include all the facts.
There's a difference between protesting and rioting/looting.
From the point of view of individual privacy - no, there isn't. Regardless of the actions they are accused of, all should have equal rights and equal protection under the law.
The Atlas V uses Kerosene / LOX for it's 1st stage instead of Liquid Hydrogen. Something we learned in the 60's then forgot with the shuttle.
We didn't forget - we just didn't use them. The same way I didn't "forget" to use my hammer to snip a bit of wire when I was fixing my fence this afternoon. Different tools for different uses.
"In other words, it's OK if you're the only person charging your Chevy Volt at 2am in the morning, but if a whole town does it exactly the same time... there will be issues."
I've been saying this for years - despite what boosters of electric cars would have you believe, there isn't a magical well of electrical power available at night. The utilities have spent the better part of a century either finding customers for the overnight low demand period or optimizing their networks to not generate unneeded power in the first place. Even without this, you cannot place additional loads on the network without there being consequences.
As far as I can tell from that list, Dr. Pratt is the only hard scientist. The others are more involved in managing the program (Meyer) or designing the instruments (Christensen, Dundas, McEwen).
Translation: It's only important if you're getting the test tubes dirty. The rest of it isn't 'real' science. After all, having a Master's in oceanography and specializing in research on extremophiles (Meyer) is meaningless. Dr Christensen's 11 page CV (PDF link) showing 30 odd years of work involving Martian geology - beneath consideration! They're 'just' managers and instrument designers... Heck, anyone could do that.
Interestingly, there are no post-docs or graduate students listed, and they would have been the lead investigators doing the actual work -- perhaps this is a reaction to the Felisa Wolfe-Simon snafu?
Um, no. Post-docs and graduate students aren't listed precisely because post-docs and graduate students *aren't* lead investigators on a major project like this. (And what constitutes 'actual' work is largely a matter of bias rather than of fact anyhow.)
Seriously, you have a deeply flawed and juvenile vision of how large, complex, and long running scientific investigations like this are conducted. It's a team effort and the managers and instrument designers are just as important as the 'hard' scientists.
Dr Miller apparently never did any serious cooking. Are you aware how much task-switching and parallel monitoring is involved in preparing a multi-course meal alone for a couple of guys?
Dr Miller may or may not have done any serious cooking, but he almost certainly understands something you don't: The plural of anecdote is not data. (He probably also understands something else you're innocent of: bell curves.)
The problem with generating electricity is that you can't (normally) store electricity -- so generating capacity is dimensioned for the peak load. A lot of excess capacity is available at night
Yes and no. I suspect less excess is available than you might think. Excess capacity costs money, and utilities have spend decades either finding customers for that excess or finding ways to minimize it's generation or not generating it at all.
running a few lightbulbs or a TV set doesn't use the amount of power you need for driving.
No, but it does diminish the range available in the car in the event the blackout or emergency/disaster persists. Also, in my case, I'll need enough power to run a small heater in subfreezing temperatures in case the incident occurs during winter.
You really thought the Republicans were fighting this fight truly to solve and end the debt woes of this country rather than politicking for 2012?
The sad part is that you, like many other Americans, operate under the delusion that a single party got us into this mess. They may disagree on *which* party, but they all agree that it was only *one* party.
Re:Economist: Republicans are at fault.
on
Debt Deal Reached
·
· Score: 1
Why wonder when you can do the math?
Missing money in Iraq: $17 billion. Social Security pension payments in 2010: $584 billion.
I always wonder how big of a rocket is the minimum needed to get something hand-sized or smaller into orbit. I did some back-of-the-envelope calculations once and determined I wouldn't be launching anything from my backyard anytime soon. Has anyone else taken a closer look at this though?
That's kind of like taking a closer look at the boiling point of water or the value of G - there's no point. The answer is well known. (And your BOTE is correct.)
I'm pretty sure someone trying to sell $1000 speaker cables back then would be categorically laughed at, if not worse.
No, there were people around back then who'd happily sell you $200 ($1000 in today's money) stereo cables - and fools who'd buy them. Audiophiles have long been something of a sucker market.
Talk to any sound engineer (read non-audiphile subscriber) and they will have tons of stories on how fickle sound set ups can be when no one knowledgeable is watching the setup and correcting things.
I thoroughly understand the placebo effect - I have no need for another demonstration.
No, it's not *your* culture. It's their commercial creation, always has been.
"Always"? Much of our culture was created to make money.
What you've forgotten is that equally much was not so created. Grow the fuck up and stop insisting you have some kind of rights over other's creations.
And until about 100 years ago, it went into the public domain after a few years. Then, a few decades. Now, never?
Now? In a few decades. Grow the fuck up and join the real world and create your own stuff rather than relying on spoon fed pablum.
Whats wrong with government spending money to create jobs?
Because the government doesn't really 'create' jobs - it merely shuffles them around. The solar installer gets a job paid with my tax money and now has money to spend on goods and services... And I (and others like me) all have fractionally less to spend on goods and services. (Or, if it's done with debt financing, the government has less to spend in the future.) Now in some areas (like the government funding the development of the 'net), this makes sense because permanent economic and business opportunities are created. In areas like solar power, where (in the near and medium term) the economic 'opportunity' only exists so long as the subsidy does... not so much.
What I hate is that only DC and Marvel and Hollywood moguls will profit indefinitely from what is OUR culture.
No, it's not *your* culture. It's their commercial creation, always has been.
Imagine how much more interesting culture would be if the everyday person was allowed to tell and retell these stories, too.
Considering how uninteresting it is when the mass entertainment industry tells and retells the same story, and how flippin' bad 99.999999% of all fanfic is.... I don't think it would be very interesting at all.
The truss will be as old as the modules, and it's systems (all those pumps, valves, and electronics) quite well worn. Not to mention that taking apart the rest of the station to get at the truss will be a fairly expensive endeavor of it's very own.
Put it into a lunar transfer orbit and use it as a "shuttle" to the moon. you'd just need to send a small capsule (like a dragon) to dock with it and hitch a ride.
The ISS not only doesn't have the structural strength to take any significant boost, each passage through the Van Allen belts will fry it's electronics (which are only shielded for the far gentler radiation environment of LEO).
Because there's no place to attach the tankage for the tens of tons of fuel required to reach lunar orbit, let alone to attach the engine. (Not to mention the engine doesn't exist.)
Nobody will be living on the thing (it has to go through the Van Allen radiation belts) so all the power for life support from those huge solar arrays will be available.
Leaving aside the fact that the ISS isn't really capable of unattended operation, and that the power system isn't designed to deliver all of it's power to a single point... The radiation in the Van Allen belts will fry the electronics and the solar cells during the months it will require to traverse them. (Said items only being hardened sufficiently for the much lower radiation levels of LEO.)
By the way, does anyone know if (now that the space shuttle doesn't go there anymore) it can be boosted to a much higher orbit? (the space shuttle barely had enough fuel to reach it). I believe Soyuz, Falcon 9/Dragon and the European resupply ship can go considerably higher.
To answer your first question, yes the Shuttle can go somewhat higher. To your unasked second question, no we can't boost the ISS higher as it's the Soyuz not the Shuttle that's the prime limit on ISS altitude.
Had I been talking about "bringing it down", you'd have a point. But I wasn't, as anyone with the reading comprehension of a fifth grader will realize.
We've always said we wanted to go eventually do a permanent structure on the moon - why not the next best thing? Hook a Dragon up to it, turn on the thrusters, and aim for Luna.
*A* Dragon? More like several thousand Dragons. The ISS is big and heavy and will take an enormous amount of energy both to put into a translunar trajectory and then to brake in into lunar orbit.
Fortunately, nice, low gravity and no air resistance means you can move the ISS, very, very slowly, with almost no propellant needed for anything other than getting momentum started, and course corrections.
Um, no. While an object in motion tends to stay in motion - it only does so until subjected to an opposing force. In this case, that opposing force is Earth's gravity, and all a "little propellant" buys you is a slightly higher orbit.
If it takes a month to get there, unmanned, who cares? It took longer to build it than we're letting it run for - why destroy it now?
But obtaining the required energy to put it on a translunar trajectory is just the beginning of your problems. Once it gets high enough, it'll encounter the high radiation of the Van Allen belts - and since it's electronics are not shielded against that radiation (being built for the far lower levels of LEO), they'll be fried if they spend more than a few hours there.
Oh, and did I mention that the ISS isn't structurally strong enough to take the thrust needed to ensure a quick passage of the Belt?
Nor does the fun stop there! The ISS' thermal control systems are based around having a nice warm Earth filling almost half it's "sky". They won't be able to handle the load of being in a translunar trajectory or in lunar orbit.
Not to mention stopping in Lunar orbit on your way to or from other destinations is like driving from Atlanta to LA via Seattle. Sure, you can do it if you want to... But it eats a lot of fuel getting into and out of Lunar orbit for no particular gain. On top of that, ensuring the Moon is in the right position for arrival or departure places huge constraints on when you can do so. I haven't worked it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if an Earth/Moon/Mars trajectory window only opened every ten or twelve years - as opposed to the every nineteen months or so for Earth/Mars trajectories.
Now that the Space Shuttle has been retired, is this just a political maneuver to get more funding by making a "modest proposal" of what will happen if they don't?
Nope. De-orbiting the station at end-of-life has always been the plan.
Considering the extended time and money it took to assemble, it seems like a huge waste to deorbit it in just 9 years.
No doubt it will be extended a time or two before all is said and done... But they have to keep some kind of date in mind to start advanced planning for disposal.
It would take a manned mission over 200 days just to get to Mars. This is my point.
Your mistake lies in believing that your point is somehow relevant or insightful, or even based on anything even remotely resembling actually knowing what you're talking about.
You would need 400 days of food, water, oxygen and a lot of luck and boredom just to get them there for that day.
So? None of these are particularly onerous requirements. Hell, I've done 90 days at a pop no sweat. (And the highest tech entertainment we had was cassette tape players and VCRs.)
And they would need to bring samples back for analysis, they wouldn't be able to do what the rovers do and analyse on-site (sending their results back to Earth within hours) - if you sent them with equipment that could analyse on-site, well... they could have just sent the rover with the same equipment instead, because it's not like the humans added anything.
For the extremely simple and basic analysis the rovers have done to date, or are likely to be able to do in the near future - sure. For anything beyond that, no. We aren't sending automated X-ray crystallography equipment or electronic microscopes anytime soon. Let alone the complex equipment required to prepare the samples for analysis. (Hint: There's a reason why field geologists have labs back home to do the analysis.)
Distance covered isn't that much of a factor if you're not actually looking at what you're rolling over. How much of that 7.2 manned miles was filmed, recorded, analysed, sampled? Next to nothing.
And how many miles of those covered by the rovers has been filmed, recorded, analyzed, and sampled to the same absurdly high standard you're holding a manned mission to? Pretty much none of them. You really need to pull your head out of your ass or the clouds or wherever it is you're keeping it and learn how both the rovers and the manned missions accomplished their tasks - and the current state of robotic technology. Because quite frankly, you're utterly fucking clueless.
And the fact is that the rovers have collected consistent data over 12 years - several winters on Mars - whereas Apollo only sampled a handful of days. How do you know those conditions weren't just a one-off, especially if you're going to plan your lunar base around such measurements?
Seriously, are you as stupid as you act? We'll get the data for bases, on the Moon or Mars, the same way - from orbiters. Not from rovers.
The rovers could have done 200mph if anyone had needed them to.
Slashdot Mirror
There, fixed that for you. It doesn't sound nearly so pretty when you include all the facts.
From the point of view of individual privacy - no, there isn't. Regardless of the actions they are accused of, all should have equal rights and equal protection under the law.
We didn't forget - we just didn't use them. The same way I didn't "forget" to use my hammer to snip a bit of wire when I was fixing my fence this afternoon. Different tools for different uses.
[[citation needed]]
There fixed that for you.
No - for a find to viable, the cost of extraction and processing has to be less than the market will pay for the refined material.
"In other words, it's OK if you're the only person charging your Chevy Volt at 2am in the morning, but if a whole town does it exactly the same time... there will be issues."
I've been saying this for years - despite what boosters of electric cars would have you believe, there isn't a magical well of electrical power available at night. The utilities have spent the better part of a century either finding customers for the overnight low demand period or optimizing their networks to not generate unneeded power in the first place. Even without this, you cannot place additional loads on the network without there being consequences.
Translation: It's only important if you're getting the test tubes dirty. The rest of it isn't 'real' science. After all, having a Master's in oceanography and specializing in research on extremophiles (Meyer) is meaningless. Dr Christensen's 11 page CV (PDF link) showing 30 odd years of work involving Martian geology - beneath consideration! They're 'just' managers and instrument designers... Heck, anyone could do that.
Um, no. Post-docs and graduate students aren't listed precisely because post-docs and graduate students *aren't* lead investigators on a major project like this. (And what constitutes 'actual' work is largely a matter of bias rather than of fact anyhow.)
Seriously, you have a deeply flawed and juvenile vision of how large, complex, and long running scientific investigations like this are conducted. It's a team effort and the managers and instrument designers are just as important as the 'hard' scientists.
Dr Miller may or may not have done any serious cooking, but he almost certainly understands something you don't: The plural of anecdote is not data. (He probably also understands something else you're innocent of: bell curves.)
Yes and no. I suspect less excess is available than you might think. Excess capacity costs money, and utilities have spend decades either finding customers for that excess or finding ways to minimize it's generation or not generating it at all.
No, but it does diminish the range available in the car in the event the blackout or emergency/disaster persists. Also, in my case, I'll need enough power to run a small heater in subfreezing temperatures in case the incident occurs during winter.
The sad part is that you, like many other Americans, operate under the delusion that a single party got us into this mess. They may disagree on *which* party, but they all agree that it was only *one* party.
Why wonder when you can do the math?
Missing money in Iraq: $17 billion.
Social Security pension payments in 2010: $584 billion.
17/584=0.029109589
365*0.029109589=10.625
That's kind of like taking a closer look at the boiling point of water or the value of G - there's no point. The answer is well known. (And your BOTE is correct.)
No, there were people around back then who'd happily sell you $200 ($1000 in today's money) stereo cables - and fools who'd buy them. Audiophiles have long been something of a sucker market.
I thoroughly understand the placebo effect - I have no need for another demonstration.
What you've forgotten is that equally much was not so created. Grow the fuck up and stop insisting you have some kind of rights over other's creations.
Now? In a few decades. Grow the fuck up and join the real world and create your own stuff rather than relying on spoon fed pablum.
I suspect the word 'logic' in my universe means something else than in yours. Or, you need to sober up before posting.
Because the government doesn't really 'create' jobs - it merely shuffles them around. The solar installer gets a job paid with my tax money and now has money to spend on goods and services... And I (and others like me) all have fractionally less to spend on goods and services. (Or, if it's done with debt financing, the government has less to spend in the future.) Now in some areas (like the government funding the development of the 'net), this makes sense because permanent economic and business opportunities are created. In areas like solar power, where (in the near and medium term) the economic 'opportunity' only exists so long as the subsidy does... not so much.
No, it's not *your* culture. It's their commercial creation, always has been.
Considering how uninteresting it is when the mass entertainment industry tells and retells the same story, and how flippin' bad 99.999999% of all fanfic is.... I don't think it would be very interesting at all.
The truss will be as old as the modules, and it's systems (all those pumps, valves, and electronics) quite well worn. Not to mention that taking apart the rest of the station to get at the truss will be a fairly expensive endeavor of it's very own.
The ISS not only doesn't have the structural strength to take any significant boost, each passage through the Van Allen belts will fry it's electronics (which are only shielded for the far gentler radiation environment of LEO).
Because there's no place to attach the tankage for the tens of tons of fuel required to reach lunar orbit, let alone to attach the engine. (Not to mention the engine doesn't exist.)
Leaving aside the fact that the ISS isn't really capable of unattended operation, and that the power system isn't designed to deliver all of it's power to a single point... The radiation in the Van Allen belts will fry the electronics and the solar cells during the months it will require to traverse them. (Said items only being hardened sufficiently for the much lower radiation levels of LEO.)
To answer your first question, yes the Shuttle can go somewhat higher. To your unasked second question, no we can't boost the ISS higher as it's the Soyuz not the Shuttle that's the prime limit on ISS altitude.
Had I been talking about "bringing it down", you'd have a point. But I wasn't, as anyone with the reading comprehension of a fifth grader will realize.
*A* Dragon? More like several thousand Dragons. The ISS is big and heavy and will take an enormous amount of energy both to put into a translunar trajectory and then to brake in into lunar orbit.
Um, no. While an object in motion tends to stay in motion - it only does so until subjected to an opposing force. In this case, that opposing force is Earth's gravity, and all a "little propellant" buys you is a slightly higher orbit.
But obtaining the required energy to put it on a translunar trajectory is just the beginning of your problems. Once it gets high enough, it'll encounter the high radiation of the Van Allen belts - and since it's electronics are not shielded against that radiation (being built for the far lower levels of LEO), they'll be fried if they spend more than a few hours there.
Oh, and did I mention that the ISS isn't structurally strong enough to take the thrust needed to ensure a quick passage of the Belt?
Nor does the fun stop there! The ISS' thermal control systems are based around having a nice warm Earth filling almost half it's "sky". They won't be able to handle the load of being in a translunar trajectory or in lunar orbit.
Not to mention stopping in Lunar orbit on your way to or from other destinations is like driving from Atlanta to LA via Seattle. Sure, you can do it if you want to... But it eats a lot of fuel getting into and out of Lunar orbit for no particular gain. On top of that, ensuring the Moon is in the right position for arrival or departure places huge constraints on when you can do so. I haven't worked it out, but I wouldn't be surprised if an Earth/Moon/Mars trajectory window only opened every ten or twelve years - as opposed to the every nineteen months or so for Earth/Mars trajectories.
Nope. De-orbiting the station at end-of-life has always been the plan.
No doubt it will be extended a time or two before all is said and done... But they have to keep some kind of date in mind to start advanced planning for disposal.
Your mistake lies in believing that your point is somehow relevant or insightful, or even based on anything even remotely resembling actually knowing what you're talking about.
So? None of these are particularly onerous requirements. Hell, I've done 90 days at a pop no sweat. (And the highest tech entertainment we had was cassette tape players and VCRs.)
For the extremely simple and basic analysis the rovers have done to date, or are likely to be able to do in the near future - sure. For anything beyond that, no. We aren't sending automated X-ray crystallography equipment or electronic microscopes anytime soon. Let alone the complex equipment required to prepare the samples for analysis. (Hint: There's a reason why field geologists have labs back home to do the analysis.)
And how many miles of those covered by the rovers has been filmed, recorded, analyzed, and sampled to the same absurdly high standard you're holding a manned mission to? Pretty much none of them. You really need to pull your head out of your ass or the clouds or wherever it is you're keeping it and learn how both the rovers and the manned missions accomplished their tasks - and the current state of robotic technology. Because quite frankly, you're utterly fucking clueless.
Seriously, are you as stupid as you act? We'll get the data for bases, on the Moon or Mars, the same way - from orbiters. Not from rovers.
No, they couldn't.