Look. Mental addiction is just mental. It's bullshit. You bitch slap the person till the get in fucking line.
You're obviously speaking as someone who has never dealt with such an addiction either in yourself or in a close family member. Long story short - you're not only wrong, you're clueless. It's nowhere near that simple.
I find that someone considers even comparing drug addiction to cell phone addiction to be very fucking insulting.
So you're a self centered jackass. So what?
For example, when I would get put in jail (and i would, on occasion, because thats where real addiction can land you), I would get physically sick without my dope. I'd end up puking, having the runs, not able to eat, wishing i was dead, or better, that i could get well (which I didn't realize at the time, i was getting well, by not using!).
And you think people with mental addictions can just walk away from whatever they're addicted to with no repercussions? You think they don't suffer physical symptoms or replace one destructive behavior with another? You're wrong on both counts.
Anyways, this is bullshit, and insult to anyone who's built their life back up after losing it to a truelly addictive thing.
Do you honestly expect a 16 year old to want to be involved in someone's 70th birthday?
I don't see why not. I was glad to go to my Grandaddy's 70th - if nothing else it meant I got some time with Grandaddy (not so much as on other days as he was busy with the adults and the raftloads of family there that day) and got to hang out with my uncles and cousins. But then, my parents taught me to that family was important - and that being with them was both fun and the right thing to do. (Disclaimer: I'm a Southerner, and we take these things more seriously than most.)
The problem with most 16 year old isn't that they're teenagers, it's bad parenting. If she's still throwing tantrums like that at 16, something is seriously wrong.
I'm impressed that the Falcon-9 rocket can lie on its side, supported at only two points. Many large US rockets don't have enough strength in torsion for that, and must be assembled vertically.
That's one stage laying on it's side for transport - something that every US rocket is capable of doing.
This reduces cost. The thing can be built in a factory bay of reasonable size, then barged and/or trucked to the launch site. There's no need to do final assembly near the launch pad.
The first is not unique to Falcon - it's how every rocket is built.
The second is not only an assumption, it confuses assembly (manufacturing the stages) and assembly (stacking the individual stages into a flight vehicle). Not only is horizontal assembly (manufacture) standard, horizontal assembly (stacking) is increasingly common as well.
The Saturn V was produced in small numbers and using 1960s cost was no option development. Using modern production methods the cost should be much lower if they produced it today.
Well, in a universe where the Saturn V was developed using 'cost is no option' (by which I assume you mean 'cost is no consideration'), you'd have a point. But here in the real world, NASA was considerably budget limited. Which is why they went with the Saturn V to start with - LOR was the only option that fit within the budget and the timeline.
Not to mention that production wasn't the real cost driver - it was the enormous number of man hours required for assembly, checkout, and launch.
I guess you are. a. a Space X fanboi or b, kind of clueless.
You forgot "c. knowledgeable and not biased".
I mean really Space X is the one with size issues. They are the ones that put out the headline saying they where building "The World's Biggest Rocket". It is the hype that ticks me off. Had the headline was SpaceX is producing the cheapest rocket or a new breakthrough in launch costs then I would have never bothered to make a comment. But really when they are not even matching the old Saturn V and bragging about size? Yea they need to be called out.
Had you called SpaceX out, you'd have a point. But whiny bitching about not being as big as a now obsolete dinosaur and complaining that they aren't making your virtual penis big enough and hard enough is not "calling out".
But as to being disappointed yes I am. I was a child during Apollo and we where told that we would have space stations, and moon bases by now. We sort of have a space station but it sure is tiny compared to what we where supposed to have by now.
You're still a child - a whiny, bitchy, clueless, delusional one. We were never 'supposed' to have anything at any given time. We were never 'promised' anything.
If you want to feel 'sorry' for her for using a tool designed to do what she wanted to do - why not just suggest she hop in her horse and buggy and get down to the telegraph office? Your suggestions are just about that antiquated.
Seriously, if you want to keep in contact with large numbers of people and keep them all up-to-date... Facebook is vastly superior to any of the methods you list. It's many-to-many, and you don't have any of the hassles associated with trying to keep track of who has called who, email bouncing, etc... etc... It's because these older tools were unsuitable that things like Live Journal and Facebook were invented.
What is interesting is that they seem intent on developing the vehicle using the current Merlin engines rather than than a new F-1 class engine (the rocket engines used on the Saturn 5, five on the first stage and one on the second stage).
Saturn V had five F-1 on the first stage, five J-2 on the second, and one J-2 on the third.
That being said - using smaller, existing, engines is a way to cut development costs and to bring the booster to market early. (I.E. pretty much standard corporate behavior, but a behavior we've all seen go badly wrong before.)
A cluster of 27 engines (!) will power the first stage. This technique of small rocket clusters is known to have caused trouble for the Soviets when they tried it (four launch failures in a row).
It's also known to be wildly successful for the Soviets too. The N1's problems were less due to clustering than due to lack of proper engineering and testing and a deeply flawed assembly, checkout, and launch flow.
They'll probably have to make a more sophisticated avionics and control system, plumbing/pumping to supply the much larger engine cluster, and the vehicle frame, but I suspect that they won't have to do much more than that.
Wow... It's only April and that's pretty much a shoo-in for the "Understatement Of The Year" award.
Between now a flying rocket there are a number of significant hurdles to jump...
They'll have to develop a complex and sophisticated thrust structure that can take the thrust and (when maneuvering) side loads of all those engines without having any nasty vibration modes. (And it has to handle a large number of arbitrary modes where one or more engines are shut down.) Making that job even harder is the need to route a complex and sophisticated piping system to deliver the fuel and oxidizer in the required quantities without flow problems or their own nasty vibration modes through that thrust structure. And the piping system has to handle startup transients gracefully, fail gracefully when engines shut down in arbitrary numbers and locations, and handle shutdown transients at end of burn gracefully regardless of how many engines are running and in what locations.
All of that's going to be a tall order indeed. I'm not saying it's impossible mind you, just that you vastly underestimate the issues.
And that's without even mentioning the vast issues the engine and flight control systems will have of their very own.
Now we have a rocket that not only would be vastly cheaper, but capable of carrying far more payload than the Shuttle.
It might be vastly cheaper, it might not be. It might be capable of carrying far more, or it might not be. It's a paper rocket, and paper rockets are always wonderful. There's a lot of really big "if's" and unknowns both known and unknown between here and there.
This may be our chance to get our space program back on track from when it derailed in the 70s.
There's two huge unspoken assumptions buried in that statement:
First, that there's some preordained or ideal course for our space program.
Second, that choosing a course based on political expediency back in the 60's and abandoning slow step-by-step development in favor of Big Stunts (I.E. the course you want to return to) wasn't itself a derailment of a reasonable space program.
Call me when we have something that can out lift the Saturn V.
That'll probably be never - and that's a good thing. Big heavy payloads costs in the billions-to-tens-of-billions range, which means that they are hard to get funded, which means we end up spending more billions keeping the heavy lifter on standby for the once-in-a-blue-moon heavy payload. Smaller rockets are cheaper to design, build, and operate* - and since they'll fly more often those costs and their fixed [annual] costs can be amortized over more flights. Smaller rockets are also more flexible because you can either launch them singly, or launch your cargoes in sections for on-orbit assembly.
Yes I know they say this will cheaper but still I expected us to be much farther along than we are.
There are other ways of making progress than simply increasing the size of your penile substitute. This whole attitude of "if it isn't Big and Very Bold has held making real progress back for decades.
* With the caveat that cost scales only weakly with size and very strongly with complexity. This is why Pegasus is so much more expensive than other launchers in it's weight class. Like the Shuttle, it's flexibility and abilities come at a heavy price.
TI has $6.5 billion in cash lying around and we're wondering why our economy is in the shitter and where all the jobs are?
The intelligent among us realize there is little to no connection between the two. Everybody with any intelligence keeps at least some cash around regardless of economic conditions.
Corporate tax laws should be changed so they're taxed for wealth as well as income. Maybe they could put that money to work for something besides buying out the competition.
Yeah. Tax success and prudence and give business even less reason to grow and to keep cash and capital on hand for future use. That's a good plan.
Not to mention that 'all cash' only means that TI paid the owners of NS cash, not that TI had it all laying around. There's bonds, lines-of-credit, etc... etc...
So, after all the statements from Google and comments here on Slashdot insisting there was no fragmentation - now Google wants to prevent what isn't happening from happening.
The most common design uses an explosion to mix polonium and beryllium, which then release enough neutrons to trigger the reaction. That kind of neutron generator was used in the Little Boy device.
No. The Little Boy used a two part initiator - one part mounted on the projectile and the other mounted on the target. The initiator was activated by the physical impact of the two portions when the projectile impacted the target.
The whole reason the GOP is trying to suppress this story is that it is not reasonable to whine about how hard it is to live on triple the median income.
Like the OP, you're substituting handwaving, smokescreens, and whining for facts.
I spend half my after tax income on healthcare and saving for retirement, as most taxpayers do.
"The Examiner reports that Wisconsin Republicans claim that no one else can republish a video of United States Representative Sean Duffy (R-WI) complaining about how he is 'struggling' to get by on his $174,000 salary without their permission, even though they originally released the video on YouTube for the whole world to see
Well, I have to say the GOP may have a case here. Releasing it on You Tube 'for the whole world to see' does not mean giving up their rights under copyright. (Yes, there are fair use exceptions - but political attacks don't fall under fair use.)
If you can't friggin' make do with $174k/yr (and maybe even, God forbid, SAVE money....) then perhaps you should re-evaluate your lifestyle within that budget.
Maybe you should look up the cost of living (food, utilities, transport, etc...) in the D.C. area (like many metro areas, it isn't cheap) and then consider a Congressman has to maintain a residence both in D.C. *and* in his home district.
It's easy to be all populist and get pissed because he makes more money than you. It's harder to be honest and get the facts.
Which is non-proliferation efforts have focused on weaponized designs (that is, advanced designs rather than the crude WWII era designs) and on the availability of the requisite nuclear fuels.
Not really, everything including technical schematics from the Manhattan Project have been available for decades.
Actually, not everything. The initiator (the 'Urchin') for the Fat Man (implosion) device remains classified and no details (AFAIK, and I do follow the topic being an amateur nuclear historian) have ever come to light. There's been some educated guesses made from secondary references, but no primary references.
How long before his book get's the Anarchist's Cookbook treatment? I expect we'll see new headlines in the coming weeks, reflecting how the government has now classified all his research and writings
Considering this book was first discussed on Slashdot two years ago, was published nearly seven years ago, and his work was widely discussed on newgroups, forums, and mailing lists where nuclear historians hang out as much as a decade ago...
The government has had plenty of opportunity to do so, and has declined to do so.
Again, modify the "base model" slightly for various environments. Add insulation, cooling, shock absorbers, bigger treads, etc. as needed. Very minor customizations that are roughly the equivalent of getting your Scion xB with a sunroof or not.
No. Very *major* customizations, the equivalent of which there isn't in ordering a car from the dealer.
Develop a simple delivery vehicle that includes three pieces: the rover itself, a reverse-thrust delivery pod (which provides a heat shield for atmospheric planets, and reverse-thrusters to slow it to a soft landing on non-atmospheric ones), and a module that separates and stays in orbit, which can then be used to relay signals back to Earth.
Won't work. You need vastly different levels of thrust depending on the body being landed on and vastly different heat shields depending on the atmosphere you're going through. (Not to mention that landing under rocket power alone takes a great deal of fuel - your "simple" system is going to be complex, large, heavy, and expensive.)
NASA needs to mass-produce about 100 more of these, and get them to every solid surface in this solar system.
Well, they'd never reach 99% of the solid surfaces in the Solar system intact - they'd crash because there was either no atmosphere or insufficient atmosphere for their parachutes to function. If you did modify them to not require parachutes, they'd still fail within seconds of landing as they froze or boiled to death in temperatures well outside those they're designed to handle. So in order for your scheme to work, they *can't* be mass produced.
And I haven't even mentioned the lack of the communications infrastructure (Mars orbiters) they rely on and their inability to communicate with Earth (and Earth with them) much beyond Mars orbit. Nor have I mentioned the lack of power because of the drop in insolation once you get to Jupiter - let alone beyond....
Etc... etc...
If you know something's technologically sound, use it everywhere you can.
They pretty much *are* being used everywhere they can be. The rovers (and their associated landing systems) are pretty specialized pieces of equipment designed to reach and survive on flat, low altitude, low latitude sites on Mars.
That's what I've been wondering. With constant GPS signal all over the place, what do we need land-based atomic clock synchronisation for?
GPS has only been widely available for less than eight years or so... so there's going to be a lot of legacy equipment out there. Also, GPS needs more and more expensive hardware to decode the time signal.
The whole idea of a healthcare insurance is to spread the risk between people... therefore it's pretty much necessary that healthy and unhealthy people pay the same.
No, the whole idea behind insurance is to spread the risk among people and to charge premiums in proportion to the risk. When you change it to a subsidy scheme (as you describe), then it's no longer insurance - it's a tax.
Slashdot Mirror
You're obviously speaking as someone who has never dealt with such an addiction either in yourself or in a close family member. Long story short - you're not only wrong, you're clueless. It's nowhere near that simple.
So you're a self centered jackass. So what?
And you think people with mental addictions can just walk away from whatever they're addicted to with no repercussions? You think they don't suffer physical symptoms or replace one destructive behavior with another? You're wrong on both counts.
Grow up, the world doesn't revolve around you.
I don't see why not. I was glad to go to my Grandaddy's 70th - if nothing else it meant I got some time with Grandaddy (not so much as on other days as he was busy with the adults and the raftloads of family there that day) and got to hang out with my uncles and cousins. But then, my parents taught me to that family was important - and that being with them was both fun and the right thing to do. (Disclaimer: I'm a Southerner, and we take these things more seriously than most.)
The problem with most 16 year old isn't that they're teenagers, it's bad parenting. If she's still throwing tantrums like that at 16, something is seriously wrong.
That's one stage laying on it's side for transport - something that every US rocket is capable of doing.
The first is not unique to Falcon - it's how every rocket is built.
The second is not only an assumption, it confuses assembly (manufacturing the stages) and assembly (stacking the individual stages into a flight vehicle). Not only is horizontal assembly (manufacture) standard, horizontal assembly (stacking) is increasingly common as well.
Well, in a universe where the Saturn V was developed using 'cost is no option' (by which I assume you mean 'cost is no consideration'), you'd have a point. But here in the real world, NASA was considerably budget limited. Which is why they went with the Saturn V to start with - LOR was the only option that fit within the budget and the timeline.
Not to mention that production wasn't the real cost driver - it was the enormous number of man hours required for assembly, checkout, and launch.
You forgot "c. knowledgeable and not biased".
Had you called SpaceX out, you'd have a point. But whiny bitching about not being as big as a now obsolete dinosaur and complaining that they aren't making your virtual penis big enough and hard enough is not "calling out".
You're still a child - a whiny, bitchy, clueless, delusional one. We were never 'supposed' to have anything at any given time. We were never 'promised' anything.
Grow the fuck up.
If you want to feel 'sorry' for her for using a tool designed to do what she wanted to do - why not just suggest she hop in her horse and buggy and get down to the telegraph office? Your suggestions are just about that antiquated.
Seriously, if you want to keep in contact with large numbers of people and keep them all up-to-date... Facebook is vastly superior to any of the methods you list. It's many-to-many, and you don't have any of the hassles associated with trying to keep track of who has called who, email bouncing, etc... etc... It's because these older tools were unsuitable that things like Live Journal and Facebook were invented.
I'll get off your lawn now.
Saturn V had five F-1 on the first stage, five J-2 on the second, and one J-2 on the third.
That being said - using smaller, existing, engines is a way to cut development costs and to bring the booster to market early. (I.E. pretty much standard corporate behavior, but a behavior we've all seen go badly wrong before.)
It's also known to be wildly successful for the Soviets too. The N1's problems were less due to clustering than due to lack of proper engineering and testing and a deeply flawed assembly, checkout, and launch flow.
Wow... It's only April and that's pretty much a shoo-in for the "Understatement Of The Year" award.
Between now a flying rocket there are a number of significant hurdles to jump...
They'll have to develop a complex and sophisticated thrust structure that can take the thrust and (when maneuvering) side loads of all those engines without having any nasty vibration modes. (And it has to handle a large number of arbitrary modes where one or more engines are shut down.) Making that job even harder is the need to route a complex and sophisticated piping system to deliver the fuel and oxidizer in the required quantities without flow problems or their own nasty vibration modes through that thrust structure. And the piping system has to handle startup transients gracefully, fail gracefully when engines shut down in arbitrary numbers and locations, and handle shutdown transients at end of burn gracefully regardless of how many engines are running and in what locations.
All of that's going to be a tall order indeed. I'm not saying it's impossible mind you, just that you vastly underestimate the issues.
And that's without even mentioning the vast issues the engine and flight control systems will have of their very own.
It might be vastly cheaper, it might not be. It might be capable of carrying far more, or it might not be. It's a paper rocket, and paper rockets are always wonderful. There's a lot of really big "if's" and unknowns both known and unknown between here and there.
There's two huge unspoken assumptions buried in that statement:
First, that there's some preordained or ideal course for our space program.
Second, that choosing a course based on political expediency back in the 60's and abandoning slow step-by-step development in favor of Big Stunts (I.E. the course you want to return to) wasn't itself a derailment of a reasonable space program.
That'll probably be never - and that's a good thing. Big heavy payloads costs in the billions-to-tens-of-billions range, which means that they are hard to get funded, which means we end up spending more billions keeping the heavy lifter on standby for the once-in-a-blue-moon heavy payload. Smaller rockets are cheaper to design, build, and operate* - and since they'll fly more often those costs and their fixed [annual] costs can be amortized over more flights. Smaller rockets are also more flexible because you can either launch them singly, or launch your cargoes in sections for on-orbit assembly.
There are other ways of making progress than simply increasing the size of your penile substitute. This whole attitude of "if it isn't Big and Very Bold has held making real progress back for decades.
* With the caveat that cost scales only weakly with size and very strongly with complexity. This is why Pegasus is so much more expensive than other launchers in it's weight class. Like the Shuttle, it's flexibility and abilities come at a heavy price.
The intelligent among us realize there is little to no connection between the two. Everybody with any intelligence keeps at least some cash around regardless of economic conditions.
Yeah. Tax success and prudence and give business even less reason to grow and to keep cash and capital on hand for future use. That's a good plan.
Not to mention that 'all cash' only means that TI paid the owners of NS cash, not that TI had it all laying around. There's bonds, lines-of-credit, etc... etc...
So, after all the statements from Google and comments here on Slashdot insisting there was no fragmentation - now Google wants to prevent what isn't happening from happening.
How 1984 of you Google.
I think this falls under the heading of "those who know can't talk, those who don't won't shut up".
Or maybe it's cheaper/more efficient to hire a third party so Kroger can concentrate on their actual business - selling groceries.
No. The Little Boy used a two part initiator - one part mounted on the projectile and the other mounted on the target. The initiator was activated by the physical impact of the two portions when the projectile impacted the target.
Do pay attention. The issue under discussion is copyright, not the First Amendment.
The DCMA takedown is not being issued for a news site. Do pay the fuck attention to what's going on.
Like the OP, you're substituting handwaving, smokescreens, and whining for facts.
[[Citation needed]]
Well, I have to say the GOP may have a case here. Releasing it on You Tube 'for the whole world to see' does not mean giving up their rights under copyright. (Yes, there are fair use exceptions - but political attacks don't fall under fair use.)
Maybe you should look up the cost of living (food, utilities, transport, etc...) in the D.C. area (like many metro areas, it isn't cheap) and then consider a Congressman has to maintain a residence both in D.C. *and* in his home district.
It's easy to be all populist and get pissed because he makes more money than you. It's harder to be honest and get the facts.
Which is non-proliferation efforts have focused on weaponized designs (that is, advanced designs rather than the crude WWII era designs) and on the availability of the requisite nuclear fuels.
Actually, not everything. The initiator (the 'Urchin') for the Fat Man (implosion) device remains classified and no details (AFAIK, and I do follow the topic being an amateur nuclear historian) have ever come to light. There's been some educated guesses made from secondary references, but no primary references.
Considering this book was first discussed on Slashdot two years ago, was published nearly seven years ago, and his work was widely discussed on newgroups, forums, and mailing lists where nuclear historians hang out as much as a decade ago...
The government has had plenty of opportunity to do so, and has declined to do so.
Better adjust that tinfoil hat.
No. Very *major* customizations, the equivalent of which there isn't in ordering a car from the dealer.
Won't work. You need vastly different levels of thrust depending on the body being landed on and vastly different heat shields depending on the atmosphere you're going through. (Not to mention that landing under rocket power alone takes a great deal of fuel - your "simple" system is going to be complex, large, heavy, and expensive.)
Well, they'd never reach 99% of the solid surfaces in the Solar system intact - they'd crash because there was either no atmosphere or insufficient atmosphere for their parachutes to function. If you did modify them to not require parachutes, they'd still fail within seconds of landing as they froze or boiled to death in temperatures well outside those they're designed to handle. So in order for your scheme to work, they *can't* be mass produced.
And I haven't even mentioned the lack of the communications infrastructure (Mars orbiters) they rely on and their inability to communicate with Earth (and Earth with them) much beyond Mars orbit. Nor have I mentioned the lack of power because of the drop in insolation once you get to Jupiter - let alone beyond....
Etc... etc...
They pretty much *are* being used everywhere they can be. The rovers (and their associated landing systems) are pretty specialized pieces of equipment designed to reach and survive on flat, low altitude, low latitude sites on Mars.
GPS has only been widely available for less than eight years or so... so there's going to be a lot of legacy equipment out there. Also, GPS needs more and more expensive hardware to decode the time signal.
No, the whole idea behind insurance is to spread the risk among people and to charge premiums in proportion to the risk. When you change it to a subsidy scheme (as you describe), then it's no longer insurance - it's a tax.