Last night's episode they dumped hydrogen straight down the carb of a old caddy, completely unmodified and it started right up. Since they weren't doing it very safely, just holding a hydrogen hose from a tank over the carb, Jaime also almost blew himself up the second time they tried it. Hooking the output of their home-made electrolisis device did not do the trick though as it didn't generate hydrogen fast enough.
The electrolysis device didn't work for three reasons - none of them 'the device didn't work fast enough'. (About par for the course for them.)
The attached the hose directly to the top of the engine - allowing no combustion air into the engine.
Their system (as designed) pulled a vacuum.
Even with problems 1. and 2. sorted out, their wasn't enough hydrogen in the device to even turn the car over.
Even if the device worked 'fast enough', thus correcting for #3, the device still would not have worked because of 1. and 2! Operate the device over several days, or multiple in parallel, correct the problems I would have noted at age 12 (#'s 1 and 2) - and the device would work just fine. (It would be a bad idea because of efficiency problems though.)
In general using Mythbusters as source of science and engineering information is only slighty better than using Emeril Live as such a source. (But only slightly.)
Re:Protesting a plant != fear of nuclear power
on
"H-Prize" Announced
·
· Score: 1
When I heard that my university academic advisor had been arrested for protesting at a nuclear power plant, I just had to ask him why? He was, IMHO, a very savvy fellow and I was frankly surprised he would be against nuclear power. When asked, however, he replied: "I have nothing against nuclear power at all... I have something against the idiots at TVA running a nuclear power plant."
This was some years ago. Chernobyl and Three-mile Island have since demonstrated his point.
Oh yes - two non TVA plants failing and three TVA plants running happily (not mention many others across the country and the globe) really proves his point. Not.
Did unions protect steel workers? Or textile workers or airline employees here in the US? Steel and textiles are pretty much gone from the US. Why do you think an IT union would stop offshoring?
Indeed it was several steel strikes in the 50's and 60's that caused buyers to go offshore for steel - and they discovered the material was of high quality (contrary to USS FUD) and that it could be delivered on time and one budget (contrary to USS FUD). Absent those lengthy strikes - the buyers would have been kept in the dark.
I certainly do not want to belong to an organization where I can only be guaranteed a salary increase across the board next to the same slacker programmer who didn't contribute.
The biggest battle that unions have to fight is the battle against the FUD that the corporations (including corporate-run media) has been putting out.
That's very true - and their second biggest battle is concealing their own misdeeds. In third place is preserving the union itself. In fourth place is the actual interests of their members.
Can someone lay out what the ISS has actually done for us?
Why would you have expected it to do anything? It's *under construction*. One hardly expects an incomplete facility of any kind to accomplish anything.
Now, if one one want to make the arguement that the design and construction process is flawed - you are on firm ground. But complaining about it not having accomplished yet is like driving up to a fast food place before the walls are up - and complaining about the service or lack thereof.
"Thankfully they still haven't evolved opposable thumbs"
It is interesting to note that whales/dophin have hand bone structure. These mammals evolved from those that were once land animals. As a result the flipper is actually a modified hand structure.
One can have an actual hand - not a modified structure, and still lack proper thumbs. The Panda's 'thumb' is actually a modified wrist bone and fully mobile or opposable.
Why should they be forced to use a proprietary product for a fully open standard, just because they're disabled? Shouldn't this be something that the OSS movement jumped on?
And in the end, that's what bothers me about certain segments of the OSS movement and Open Office in particular. Their sole focus is on 'beating Microsoft' - useabilty, documentation, interoperabilty, etc... etc... are seen as benefits only as they apply to that goal.
If they don't, they are dismissed with an airy 'well, its open source, we don't have to fix it - because anyone can'.
What is there about entire state governments switching to Open Document Format (ODF) that sounds like "limited markets"?
The fact that those state goverments together aren't as big as any one of the top 100 in the Fortune 500. Collectively, they are a fair size market - but comparatively, they are vanishingly small.
When you pool resources you get things like the ISS. At this point in that project can we really say we haved saved money by doing it the international way?
As a NASA employee who has worked on ISS, no.
[snippage: discussion of costs and problems caused by the partnership]
You missed one of the biggests costs and impacts of the partnership; an increase in total risk to the Shuttle and astronauts caused shifting the orbital plane to one the Russians can reach. This reduces the effective cargo capability - thus requiring more flights.
I'm sure many of you have international project success stories. For a large aerospace program, however, I think the only model that is really cost effective is having an international partner supply a subsytem as a "black box" and in a role subordinate to a overall integrator. That worked for the FGB module of ISS (which was procured from Krunichev under subcontract, on time, on budget).
Except the full deliverables called out for under the contract have yet to the provided. Last I heard, the Russians had not delivered the full documentation or the control codes. (I say 'the Russians' because the various agencies/companies/etc... are largely one incestous game of twister.)
Partnership is definitely not cheaper.
The problem with the ISS 'partnership' is that the Russians are in the drivers seat, have been so from fairly early on, and are fully aware of it and take full advantage of it. The 'partnership' was doomed the day the Russians were added to the critical path to Core Complete. (Even without the delays subsequent to the Columbia accident.)
On the other hand, given advances in computing, you could probably do the same thing more cheaply,
Probably not - as the computing is going to be a very small fraction of the total effort of such a system.
and you've already got the preliminary research (and prototyping) down.
So what? The expensive parts, design validation, sytems integration, and system validation have to be redone. The earlier research and prototyping is essentially meaningless, because the entire vehicle will have to redone practically from scratch. It's about the equivalent of basing a modern PC on the 'preliminary research and prototyping' for a 386. There's that much difference involved.
We've got the methodology, assuming it's still applicable with advances in satellite defenses, so we ought to be halfway there.
The moon has no atmosphere. Mars DOES have an atmosphere. You don't need space suits on Mars, just suits to handle lower atmospheric pressure.
And insulation to handle the extreme temperatures.
So, it has been 30 years since the last spacesuit redesign, and these things aren't even space suits, why the heck are they so damned big and bulky?
Because they still include the same two systems that made space suits of the 60's so big and bulky - insulation and a pressure retention layer (and all the hardware to prevent 'balooning' and to preserve mobility).
You'd think 30 to 50 years of technological advancement would have led to bigger improvements than this...
This is probably a good way to gain technology while minimizing cost. How much would it cost for NASA to do this in house? 100 million? 200 million? Too expensive? Here's the solution. Offer college students 2.5 million as a prize for a "competition". Good work guys.
Historically such competitions and prizes tend to breed solutions optimized towards winning the prize or competition - not general technologies.
Furthermore, I fail to see what 'technologies' NASA stands to gain here. Vehicle control algorithms of this nature are medium well explored and must be tailored to the individual vehicle, so this contest doesn't really much offer there. The fuels, engines, controls, guidance, tankage, and structure of a full scale lander will be radically different from a model lander as well. (Take guidance for example - the real thing will use inertial/radar with visual backup (from the cockpit). The models will almost certainly use GPS with visual backup - from the operators position.)
The contest makes NASA look modern, using 'open source' and 'competition' and 'the marketplace' and all the other current buzzwords, but it's almost certain to yield little beyond good press.
Web masters have been forced to go out of their way to optimize to "what Google likes" and cut out flash, ajax, and everything else that the Google bot can't crawl for waayy too long.
Oddly enough, I find that to be a *good thing*. It means Google serves up (in the main) simple and straightforward web pages - rather than the masturbatory fantasies of web designers.
This is, by far, the most disgusting "coffee" drink I've ever had, and this come from someone who's been known to suck on plugs of grounds like chewing tobacco when there's no hot water around...
There's a reason for this. It's called aspartame . I bought a 4 pack of the Wolfgang Puck coffee when it came out last year. I had no problems with any of the cans, they all worked fine. However, it wasn't until I got home with my purchase that I looked at the ingredients list and saw aspartame as an ingredient. I don't know why so many beverage manufacturers refuse to accept the fact that the vast majority of consumers despise the taste of this artificial "sweetener".
Oh, I don't know. Maybe they keep selling products containing aspartame because consumers buy them by the case lot? That's pretty solid evidence that that vast majority doesn't care one way or another about the taste.
There probably are a few sick individuals who actually like the taste, but I've talked to people who drank diet drinks regularly and almost all of them told me that they didn't like the taste of aspartame, but put up with it to get a reduced calorie beverage.
They put up with it because they are addicted to sodas and coffee, etc... etc... Fruit juices and tap water are both perfectly fine low calorie beverages - but the food industry knows that people are addicted and that they (the industry) need not change their ways.
Yup. In fact with my browser and fonts, it's completely unreadable (half the text overflows the white box and ends up displayed as black on dark blue...).
Yep, silly web designer for actually trying to make a page attractive - it breaks on the browsers of people with utterly no graphics experience who know far better than you who does.
I suppose it probably displays properly in Internet Explorer if you happen to have exactly the same settings as the page designer ("but, but, it worked for me!!").
It renders just fine in Mozilla with the default settings.
"The fault is not in our stars Horatio, but in ourselves" (I.E. it's easier to blame the web designer rather than to accept responsibility for ourselves.)
It was tested, and it worked. They killed a satellite. Then the program, for whatever reason, was dropped.
Mostly, I think, because of anti-profliferation concerns. Reagan used this program, and others, to force the Russians to the bargaining table - starting and stopping them as it suited him.
But it did work. I'd guess, given a real need, no more than 12 months to dust off the plans, upgrade, test, and have a few missiles ready to launch.
In some fantasy world - sure. Here in reality that bird is based on technology nearly thirty years old, and not in production anymore. You can't build from old plans when you can't buy the parts.
The targeting and missile motor worked then, no reason it couldn't work now. Just because there isn't a fleet of them hanging around doesn't mean we can't recreate it.
As I said above, the problem isn't that we once had them and don't anymore - but that things like the seeker and guidance electronics are based on very old tech. Re-creating it means either re-opening ancient production lines or redesigning to the old spec but with modern components - the first is hellishly expensive and time consuming, and the second moderately expensive and time consuming.
No. It produced a prototype - not a fielded weapons system, and it did it twenty odd years ago.
I don't think they threw away the technical documentation
Wouldn't matter too much considering how much of the hardware would have to be redesigned - practically from scratch. I doubt any of it's electronics are manufactured now-a-days.
Since we've already paid to do the research to construct one, let's modify it if need be and use it.
To modify and use it - it first has to exist. This program was cancelled decades ago - it's an ex-parrot.
Not that we realistically need an anti-satellite capability for the likely threats the US faces in the next 20-30 years.
The threat is 20-30 years off? *Good*. That makes now the perfect time to start research and development - when we have the luxury of time to do it right.
Yes, they are, by legal standards, pirate sites. The question is, though, whether they are in the wrong or whether the law is. The first step to dictatorship is when the citizens of a country don't question the laws imposed onto them anymore.
You'll get no argument from me on that front. Where my argument lies is with the general replacement of laws with anarchy. 'I have the unlimited right to copy, distribute, rip, burn, etc... anything, anytime, anywhere' is the attitude so often espoused.
If there is something that the general population (as "general" as gamers can be) wants to have, and if this commodity is not distributed or offered for money from anyone anymore, who gets hurt by offering it for free? Who is damaged? Who loses money?
Precisely the arguement I expected. You don't question the law - you insist that you have rights not currently enshrined in law without demonstrating that the law is wrong or immoral.
If "abandonware" games threaten the sales of current games, the question isn't whether the old games should be banned, the question is rather why old games with outdated graphics, ancient gameplay and "low tech" offer more entertainment value than new games with state of the art graphics and modern gamepl... ok, with state of the art graphics.
And then you follow it up with an irrelevant strawman facing down a claim nobody made.
The real "pirates" are the greedy assholes that want to lock away our cultural heritage to preserve some so-called "right" to profit that they aren't even using anyway!
ROTFL. A game is hardly an artifact of 'cultural heritage', it's (in general) something enjoyed by a vast minority and discarded as soon as they were bored with it or the next big thing came along.
With this, abandonware sites are just pirates sites to be shut down soon.
Abandonware sites *are* pirate sites - period. The excuse of 'preventing the game from going extinct' is their version of 'well, the door was unlocked anyhow|she was dressed like she was asking for it'.
Even if I didn't have the health condition, and were fit as a fiddle, I'd be doing the equivalent of driving without car insurance. I'm one serious traffic accident or cancerous tumor away from financial ruin if I don't have healthcare.
Slashdot Mirror
Even if the device worked 'fast enough', thus correcting for #3, the device still would not have worked because of 1. and 2! Operate the device over several days, or multiple in parallel, correct the problems I would have noted at age 12 (#'s 1 and 2) - and the device would work just fine. (It would be a bad idea because of efficiency problems though.)
In general using Mythbusters as source of science and engineering information is only slighty better than using Emeril Live as such a source. (But only slightly.)
Unions aren't angels.
Now, if one one want to make the arguement that the design and construction process is flawed - you are on firm ground. But complaining about it not having accomplished yet is like driving up to a fast food place before the walls are up - and complaining about the service or lack thereof.
TFA is somewhat out of date - and misses the point mostly.
Much better coverage can be found in Jim Oberg's essay at The Space Review.
If they don't, they are dismissed with an airy 'well, its open source, we don't have to fix it - because anyone can'.
You missed one of the biggests costs and impacts of the partnership; an increase in total risk to the Shuttle and astronauts caused shifting the orbital plane to one the Russians can reach. This reduces the effective cargo capability - thus requiring more flights.
Except the full deliverables called out for under the contract have yet to the provided. Last I heard, the Russians had not delivered the full documentation or the control codes. (I say 'the Russians' because the various agencies/companies/etc... are largely one incestous game of twister.)The problem with the ISS 'partnership' is that the Russians are in the drivers seat, have been so from fairly early on, and are fully aware of it and take full advantage of it. The 'partnership' was doomed the day the Russians were added to the critical path to Core Complete. (Even without the delays subsequent to the Columbia accident.)Furthermore, I fail to see what 'technologies' NASA stands to gain here. Vehicle control algorithms of this nature are medium well explored and must be tailored to the individual vehicle, so this contest doesn't really much offer there. The fuels, engines, controls, guidance, tankage, and structure of a full scale lander will be radically different from a model lander as well. (Take guidance for example - the real thing will use inertial/radar with visual backup (from the cockpit). The models will almost certainly use GPS with visual backup - from the operators position.)
The contest makes NASA look modern, using 'open source' and 'competition' and 'the marketplace' and all the other current buzzwords, but it's almost certain to yield little beyond good press.
"The fault is not in our stars Horatio, but in ourselves" (I.E. it's easier to blame the web designer rather than to accept responsibility for ourselves.)
No, I'm just a grownup with a sense of proportion and a fond attachment to reality.