But the most relevant part was that they shot fireworks off the pier into the mar, sea, which exploded off of the water, something I doubt they would do in America...
Ah, the famous/. reflexive America bashing. Fact is however that where water is available to shoot them over, it is virtually always done. (For safety and because the reflections on the water are lovely...) In the county where I live (which just misses being an island) every major show is over water, as are the majority of the smaller shows.
That would be 'mostly correct'. Voyager 2 was the backup for Voyager 1, but it was planned from fairly early on that if Voyager 1 sucessfully flew by Titan (and thus completed the primary mission of Voyager 1/2) then Voyager 2 would be diverted to Uranus and Neptune.
Sounds just like normal mining to me. Mining around the world is hazardous and often produces toxic waste.
Sounds like you don't know much about mining then. The raw rock being mined isn't generally toxic (biologically or chemically). The hazards are generally physical not chemical or biological.
The concentration of gold on a PCB is quite a lot higher than in many gold mines around the world.
But the concentration of PCBs in a landfill is vanishingly small. I'd wager the total concentration of valuable metals in a given landfill is much smaller than would be currently economical to extract.
Perhaps someone knows a way to do the landfill equivalent of the fractional distillation stuff in oil refining.
I can think, offhand, of a couple of different ways. All extremely energy intensive (much more so than current mining) and extremely polluting (much more so than current mining).
Really, I've often wondered when "landfill mining" was going to take off as a viable enterprise, as the higher cost of materials justifies the complicated means.
In Italy, before WW2, they mined iron from the slag heaps of Roman-era smelters - it had a higher iron concentration than any ore that could then be found in Italy.
There are companies doing the same thing with silver mining and processing tailings in Nevada today. And in the 60's Hanford processed tailings from WWII and late 40's Plutonium enrichment because they were handy, being more-or-less next door to the processing plant.
But neither condition (high concentration or handily located) applies to landfills... Not to mention the problem of the biological and chemical nasties in the landfill alongside the small quantity of materials of interest.
Tory fanboys perpetually bleat that what Thatcher did to our heavy industry was a necessary evil - but it wasn't necessary for the frogs and they were in as bad a state as we were in the 1970s. We voluntarily gave up our capacity to engage in any project on a larger scale than a new shopping mall.
Really, I've often wondered when "landfill mining" was going to take off as a viable enterprise, as the higher cost of materials justifies the complicated means.
Probably not for a very long time, if ever. "Landfill mining" sounds great from your basement or over a bar napkin - but rapidly loses its bloom once you start thinking of the real issues involved... Like the extremely low concentration of valuable materials versus the need to handle and dispose of tons of extremely toxic waste. Like the exposure to your miners and extraction plant operators to a wide variety of potentially dangerous molds/bacteria/etc. etc... (And no, robotics aren't the solution. Not with anything even remotely resembling the current state of the art anyhow.) Like the fact that composition of your input stream will be wildly variable (vastly complicating the design of your processing machinery).
This is not the first time that French courts show a complete misunderstanding of how the Internet works...
I sometimes think rather the opposite is the problem... The 'net and many of it's denizens don't understand how the real world works and don't think they should have to anyhow. As if the 'net was some free form construct completely unconnected to the real world.
As soon as one knows how many atoms go in a kg (the measuring of the atom weight is the tough part here), it's an easy calculation on how many atoms one needs to put that sphere together.
Certainly - but the hard and absolutely necessary part is then actually creating the sphere. The whole idea is to have a provable, repeatable, transferable central standard. Because it must be a physical standard, letting everyone create their own (no matter how rigid the specification) introduces the possibility of the standards diverging from each other.
I wonder how they created the reference kg in the first place, to get to that kg. Lots of other things depend on it after all, it can't be a random quantity of material.
The gram was defined in the early 19th century as (IIRC) 1 cubic centimeter of distilled water at a given temperature. Because of the effects of meniscus and surface tension, it proved essentially impossible to create a repeatable and transferable standard - so they created the (metal) Reference Kilogram, declared it to be the standard, and redefined the gram to be one thousandth of the Reference Kilogram. I'd guess they built a reference kilogram rather than a reference gram as it is far easier to make a precise large object than a precise small object.
On the other hand, isn't the exact mass of atoms known? Then it should be easy to say "this number of atoms is exactly one kilogram". The creation of the sphere being an exercise left to the reader.
The creation of the sphere can't be left as an exercise for the reader - as without a physical kilogram you can't actually use the definition to calibrate physical scales. Which is the whole point.
ISS components have (after some delay) gone up on Proton - so they must've had an autonomous flight capabiltiy.
Compare the amount of the station that's gone up on Proton (2 small modules) to the balance of the station.
The European ATV has autonomous flight capability
Sure - but so what? Compare the launch weight (20 tons including cargo) to the amount of cargo delivered (8 tons). As the basis for a building block, ATV sucks.
In fact, there have been proposals in Europe to use the ATV as a building block for interplanetary space craft.
Those proposals use the ATV itself - not the ATV as a building block.
If you notice - the ISS isn't being launched on the launchers you mentioned in your first post, which means no autonomous flight capability and thus a much smaller performance hit. OTOH, the cost of the station has been driven up by the factors I mentioned in my previous post.
It's also worth noting that gaining experience in something also means learning how well that something works.
Fine, so you just have to add one extra launch to your moon/mars ship.
At the handwaving over bar napkins levels of engineering, sure.
In the real world of engineering you've significantly increased programmatic risk (as you now have six launches rather than one). You also now have six control models (and navigation models, and thermal models, and vibration models, etc.). You've significantly increased the complexity of the vehicle because now it must be designed to survive and operate in each of the six different configurations. Etc. Etc.
We've developed the capability of getting ~100t craft in orbit using 20t chunks, why not use it?
In some handwaving world where we've developed that kind of capability, sure.
Assuming you could build a radio transmitter tough enough to handle it...
That's actually pretty trivial - they were doing it with vacuum tube electronics and putting them inside artillery shells back in WWII. Building one that a) is tough enough to take the beating, b) is light enough not to affect the balls, and c) doesn't cost a small fortune is the problem....
On a serious note, I don't see why an interplanetary mission can't be assembled from a bunch of ~20t pieces instead of putting it all up in one shot.
Because a 20t chunk requires 4t for autonomous flight capability (so it can dock with the remainder of the mission), docking & interconnection hardware, etc. etc. A good chunk of this (2t per 16t of actual payload delivered) remains with the vehicle forever... 12% is a pretty significant hit.
First, dear NASA: Permitting whatever mission creep that has led to this embiggining of Ares V is a fatal mistake. Driving up the cost only provides a larger surface on which to paint a bullseye.
Dear Topspin: It's not mission creep - it's the way of world. Paper projects are light and cheap, real world projects are neither. Let's take the Saturn V for example - it's paper version had four F1 engines. In the last revision before bending metal, they had to add a fifth F1 (a 20% increase in 1st stage thrust) and despite this Saturn V performance was still barely enough.
It is in the interest of the people to provide a safety net for those who cannot earn enough to feed, clothe, house, and educate their families. A slight subsidy to lower-income families helps keep them out of subsistence crime.
That was a workable and plausible theory in the past. [Illicit] drugs changed all that.
They could then threaten to move the distribution centers to other states, and fire everyone there unless they relocate. Yes it's cold-blooded and etc.
But, it would make most states (esp. states where jobs and money are tight) stand up and take notice that you're about to cut a chunk of jobs (and income tax revenue, property tax revenue, injection of money into the local and state economy, etc) out from under them. Call the state next door and say "I'd like to build a large distribution center and hire (n*1000) employees for it in your state... we'll pay all the other taxes, but please don't charge us for sales tax. If the benefits outweigh the loss of sales tax, I'm willing to bet the state (esp. hard-hit or not-so-large states like Mississippi and etc.) would happily take the deal.
Sure, but the problem is that not all states are equally desirable for locating distribution centers. There's issues of transportation infrastructure connectivity, availability of workers, taxes other than sales (I.E. property, employment), etc. etc. (Not to mention the physical plant of the distribution centers isn't exactly cheap.)
Its not nearly as simple as you'd like to believe.
IIRC, Wal-Mart does this all the time (at least with local governments) - getting sweetheart tax waivers in exchange for the locality getting jobs and other economic benefits.
Sure, but there is also an increasing public backlash against such practices. There's also an increasing desire by the states to collect sales tax on internet sales - Amazon [for example] will soon run out of desirable states.
I don't foresee many issues with local government in the middle of the desert.
What, you don't think the 'middle of the desert' doesn't have a local (I.E. city/town) government? If it doesn't, then it has a country government. Neither level is going to be particularly likely to let plants go up willy-nilly without significant enviromental review. If they don't do the review, then the local Greens and their lawyers will ensure it happens.
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Ah, the famous /. reflexive America bashing. Fact is however that where water is available to shoot them over, it is virtually always done. (For safety and because the reflections on the water are lovely...) In the county where I live (which just misses being an island) every major show is over water, as are the majority of the smaller shows.
That would be 'mostly correct'. Voyager 2 was the backup for Voyager 1, but it was planned from fairly early on that if Voyager 1 sucessfully flew by Titan (and thus completed the primary mission of Voyager 1/2) then Voyager 2 would be diverted to Uranus and Neptune.
Sounds like you don't know much about mining then. The raw rock being mined isn't generally toxic (biologically or chemically). The hazards are generally physical not chemical or biological.
But the concentration of PCBs in a landfill is vanishingly small. I'd wager the total concentration of valuable metals in a given landfill is much smaller than would be currently economical to extract.
I can think, offhand, of a couple of different ways. All extremely energy intensive (much more so than current mining) and extremely polluting (much more so than current mining).
There are companies doing the same thing with silver mining and processing tailings in Nevada today. And in the 60's Hanford processed tailings from WWII and late 40's Plutonium enrichment because they were handy, being more-or-less next door to the processing plant.
But neither condition (high concentration or handily located) applies to landfills... Not to mention the problem of the biological and chemical nasties in the landfill alongside the small quantity of materials of interest.
Is that so?
Probably not for a very long time, if ever. "Landfill mining" sounds great from your basement or over a bar napkin - but rapidly loses its bloom once you start thinking of the real issues involved... Like the extremely low concentration of valuable materials versus the need to handle and dispose of tons of extremely toxic waste. Like the exposure to your miners and extraction plant operators to a wide variety of potentially dangerous molds/bacteria/etc. etc... (And no, robotics aren't the solution. Not with anything even remotely resembling the current state of the art anyhow.) Like the fact that composition of your input stream will be wildly variable (vastly complicating the design of your processing machinery).
I sometimes think rather the opposite is the problem... The 'net and many of it's denizens don't understand how the real world works and don't think they should have to anyhow. As if the 'net was some free form construct completely unconnected to the real world.
Certainly - but the hard and absolutely necessary part is then actually creating the sphere. The whole idea is to have a provable, repeatable, transferable central standard. Because it must be a physical standard, letting everyone create their own (no matter how rigid the specification) introduces the possibility of the standards diverging from each other.
The gram was defined in the early 19th century as (IIRC) 1 cubic centimeter of distilled water at a given temperature. Because of the effects of meniscus and surface tension, it proved essentially impossible to create a repeatable and transferable standard - so they created the (metal) Reference Kilogram, declared it to be the standard, and redefined the gram to be one thousandth of the Reference Kilogram. I'd guess they built a reference kilogram rather than a reference gram as it is far easier to make a precise large object than a precise small object.
The creation of the sphere can't be left as an exercise for the reader - as without a physical kilogram you can't actually use the definition to calibrate physical scales. Which is the whole point.
I'd guess its because a sphere has no edges to chip.
That's a lot of /. in a nutshell right there - they 'see' the consumer face and from their basements think that's all there is to see.
Because if you lack a feature, any feature, then your e-penis is too small.
Compare the amount of the station that's gone up on Proton (2 small modules) to the balance of the station.
Sure - but so what? Compare the launch weight (20 tons including cargo) to the amount of cargo delivered (8 tons). As the basis for a building block, ATV sucks.
Those proposals use the ATV itself - not the ATV as a building block.
If you notice - the ISS isn't being launched on the launchers you mentioned in your first post, which means no autonomous flight capability and thus a much smaller performance hit. OTOH, the cost of the station has been driven up by the factors I mentioned in my previous post.
It's also worth noting that gaining experience in something also means learning how well that something works.
At the handwaving over bar napkins levels of engineering, sure.
In the real world of engineering you've significantly increased programmatic risk (as you now have six launches rather than one). You also now have six control models (and navigation models, and thermal models, and vibration models, etc.). You've significantly increased the complexity of the vehicle because now it must be designed to survive and operate in each of the six different configurations. Etc. Etc.
In some handwaving world where we've developed that kind of capability, sure.
That's actually pretty trivial - they were doing it with vacuum tube electronics and putting them inside artillery shells back in WWII. Building one that a) is tough enough to take the beating, b) is light enough not to affect the balls, and c) doesn't cost a small fortune is the problem....
Because a 20t chunk requires 4t for autonomous flight capability (so it can dock with the remainder of the mission), docking & interconnection hardware, etc. etc. A good chunk of this (2t per 16t of actual payload delivered) remains with the vehicle forever... 12% is a pretty significant hit.
Dear Topspin: It's not mission creep - it's the way of world. Paper projects are light and cheap, real world projects are neither. Let's take the Saturn V for example - it's paper version had four F1 engines. In the last revision before bending metal, they had to add a fifth F1 (a 20% increase in 1st stage thrust) and despite this Saturn V performance was still barely enough.
Because you have to model it as *something*.
The usage rate was so small as to amount to that.
That was a workable and plausible theory in the past. [Illicit] drugs changed all that.
Sure, but the problem is that not all states are equally desirable for locating distribution centers. There's issues of transportation infrastructure connectivity, availability of workers, taxes other than sales (I.E. property, employment), etc. etc. (Not to mention the physical plant of the distribution centers isn't exactly cheap.)
Its not nearly as simple as you'd like to believe.
Sure, but there is also an increasing public backlash against such practices. There's also an increasing desire by the states to collect sales tax on internet sales - Amazon [for example] will soon run out of desirable states.
What, you don't think the 'middle of the desert' doesn't have a local (I.E. city/town) government? If it doesn't, then it has a country government. Neither level is going to be particularly likely to let plants go up willy-nilly without significant enviromental review. If they don't do the review, then the local Greens and their lawyers will ensure it happens.
Another issue is just who owns huge chunks of land in the Southwest.
Yeah, it "didn't exist" from the time of the Big Bang until February 29th, 1964. The first flight of the SR-71 was Dec 22, 1964.
You do the math.
What do you think makes the soil alkaline?