F-22 is mainly an Air to Air platform, the F-35 is mainly an Air to Ground platform. It's much faster with its supercruise capability, and *likely* includes other cool gadgets that no one will know about for a few more years. Why should we, the US, risk valuable pilots by attacking enemy planes using similar generation planes. The next generation planes (F-22, F-35) represent a huge step forward in technology, and thus will keep our losses to a minimum.
FYI, the F-35 will cost about half of what the F-22 does...and that's still not cheap. But the technology on both is simply astounding.
Re:In space nobody can here you play golf!
on
Golf in Space
·
· Score: 1
Considering the ball will be in a roughly circular orbit at LEO, the average speed will be a little less than 8 km/sec or 28,800 km/h. Your estimate of roughly 27 km/sec - 36 km/sec seems much too high to come from the relatively low delta-v of someone hitting a golf ball from the space station. The orbit would end up being highly elliptical...how much energy will it take to cause a delta-v of 19-28 km/sec to a golf ball? I don't have my reference materials handy, but I'd guesstimate it's quite a bit more than a human can provide.
Price is based on supply and demand in a scarce system. The music available on itunes can not really be considered a scarce system, so this is really just price fixing to achieve a maximum price/demand ratio.
Because men voted for the best president since Ronald Reagan instead of the sleazy "looks and sounds good but in reality is dumber than a doornail" opponent? Sounds like you're one of the bottom few this study mentioned.
Slave the laser to the pilot's helmet (like the Russian AA-11 Archer), write some image recognition code to distinguish the missile from the sky and include an IR detector as well. In addition, tie the system to the AWACS, E-2C, Aegis, etc...data networks.
Finally, give the pilot a switch or button to enable the laser.
F-16's can carry large bombs and fuel tanks, I'm pretty sure it can handle something like this. The hard part is the bulk, the weight isn't too much of an issue.
Probably a similar phenomenon to adding air blowers on wings. By blowing air out of the top of the wings and into air flowing over them you can have the flow stay attached on the wing much, much longer. This reduces the cross-sectional area of the turbulence and greatly reduces the induced drag.
I suspect that both methods work by adding kinetic energy to the flow, but IANAAE.
Experience for safely landing objects on other places
Refinement of near Earth orbital mechanics (better Jn term values, more precise perturbation observations, etc...)
International co-operation for maintaining ~24/7 contact with spacecraft
Moonrocks for analysis
A sense of accomplishment and pride for most of the country (except, perhaps, people like you?)
Defeat of communism in a game where we were considered the underdogs
The Vehicle Assembly building down at Cape Canaveral
Popularization of velcro
Astronaut Ice Cream
Large infusions of cash for programs researching strong, light materials (composites)
Rapid development of semiconductor technology (ok, that's kind of bogus, who uses semiconductors anyway?!)
And more.
High returns can signify something more than numerous physical objects. Technological advancements, scientific advancements, improvements of morale, and the causation of wide-spread adoption of advancing technology should always be included in the cost-benefit analysis of the space program.
The movement of money greases not only our economy, but advances science and technology as well...in other words, capital investment in a company may appear like a bad idea to stockholders in the short term as you're spending a lot of money and not generating any product. But without capital investment, growth would be difficult/impossible for any company. Money spent in any space program should be considered analogous to capital investment.
So you want us to start a war and then allow our side to get slaughtered? What if it's a war of intervention where some country (say...Kosovo) is experiencing genocide of one ethnicity by another?
So we should go there, try to stop it, and since we initiated the violence between us and them, we should allow thousands of troops to die?! Wow...
FUD? FUD!! Vietnam was a politically lost war. Where are your tens of thousands of protestors? Iraq is making progress towards autonomy and (maybe) democracy. Maybe it's slow, maybe there are a few steps back every so often, but there is still progress. Last I checked, that does not really fit the definition of "losing". YMMV.
Not necessarily. The type of thing you are referring to is generally known as 'moral numbing'. Using robots themselves do not debase or marginalize the lives of those killed automatically. This would occur only if the operators of the robots came to see war as simply a video game, and fought with little care for what they were doing.
So long as individual soldiers in our military understand the significance of taking the lives of other people, the moral basis of just war will not be undermined. Or in terms of Kantian ethics, enemy combatants will not simply be mere means.
This is only the first actual land deployment of armed robots. UAV's (ie, predators) have had (and used) the capability to fire air-to-ground missiles for a long time.
Insightful?! I didn't see him smiling when troops went to Iraq...in what way was he happy about it (actual concrete, solid-evidence proof please, in link form to primary sources)? In what way is this post insightful?
Whether or not the Dalai Lama is reasonable, Natural Law theory says that by by trying to kill you, the other guy is forfeiting his natural right to live, and thus it is morally justifiable for you to kill him (but you don't have to if you don't want to).
Utilitarianism would probably also agree that trying to shoot the other guy would be ok. Kant, however, would probably not, since your intention would be to kill or wound the guy.
As for Divine Command Theory? I don't know, go read the bible or something to see what God would say.
After reading the article, I think it's geared more towards the officers learning how to react to situations in environments that are tough to simulate in the real world rather than grunts learning how to not get killed. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. I'd say at least one step above a video game.
This is an application developed specifically for the military. The military must remain trained, and it is far easier (and cheaper) to do it in simulation rather than try and do it in real life.
Just because our military ensures it is well-trained does NOT mean our country is focused on war. The purpose of our military is to protect US (assuming you are an American citizen). Would you want an untrained police force fighting crime? An untrained fire department fighting fires? An untrained surgeon operating on you? I know I wouldn't. I also wouldn't want an untrained military trying to defend me. It would be suicide for them and useless for us.
If you can think up a better way to train our war forces using scenarios other than war, I'm all ears. Unless and until we no longer have a need for a military, we had better keep it trained as well as we can.
been a part of marine nav for years...kinda. Special buoys called RACON bouys emit morse-coded pulses when they detect incoming radar signatures so on your screen you'll see fairly thick dots and dashes. Really makes finding where you are in strange places fairly easy.
The storm surge is a problem though. Last year at the Naval Academy, when hurrican Isabelle came through, the real killer for the campus was storm surge. The water level rose something like 8 feet or more, much higher than had been expected. The water flooded and destroyed all of the chemistry labs (destroying 10 years of work in one case). All of the wind tunnels were destroyed, as were many of the other expensive toys needed for the engineering majors. Many students had to go to off campus laboratories to finish their degree.
The wind, on the other hand, knocked off a few tree branches, maybe blew out some windows, and in general made a mess that was cleaned up in an afternoon of work. More than a year later, we're still dealing with storm surge repairs.
I won't pretend to know how storm surges work, how big they get in relation to hurricane location, or things like that. But I have seen a shuttle launch, and I know that the launch complex is pretty much at sea level. There will be some damage to the facility...whether it's just a matter of sweeping the stranded sea-beasties off the launch pad or the total loss of the VAB, only time will tell.
Treat essays the same way. There are badly written pieces of music (*cough* Berlioz! *cough*) and there a well-written pieces of music (see anything by Dvorak). Likewise, an essay can be written badly or well. Try and make an essay engaging, thoughtful, and with substance and you will do well. Treat it as something where the only thing that matters is diction, spelling, and grammar, and you won't do as well.
I always tried to entertain the reader (and I'd make references to things I referenced in previous essays in the class...easter eggs, if you will). Sure sometimes I'd miss the mark and get a B, but whether that happened or not, I still pretty much enjoyed the experience, chortling to myself over the little jokes and twisted logic I'd put in it.
Don't get me wrong, I complained as loud as anyone about having them assigned, but I made the best of a bad situation.
Re:a hack to fix a broken system
on
Cheating Made Easy
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
To paraphrase the great Tom Lehrer: Schooling is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
IAAPEUSC (I am a publically educated US citizen)
I didn't really have a problem with my public education. It taught me to think critically and along the way I learned some pretty neat stuff. If people want to slide through without putting any effort in, they shouldn't be suprised they aren't getting anything out of it. Education is a two-way street, you can't just sit around and have a teacher tell you how to think for yourself, you need to practice it as well. Hence they assign homework, papers, etc... People who cheat are really just cheating themselves and not the system.
For the most part, I've seen that there is a separation later in life, that those who sat around doing nothing, learning nothing, tend to be overshadowed by those who put forth an effort.
Really, the system here in the US isn't so bad as everyone makes it. It's kind of geared toward the lowest common denominator, but there are plenty of opportunities to get ahead. The failure (IMHO) lies in the parents. If kids aren't participating in school (by participating I don't necessarily mean answering questions in classrooms, rather I mean learning to learn, or learning to think), I tend to believe that that means the parents haven't given the kids the right priorities.
Naturally, the case could be made that perhaps parents aren't raising their kids right for fear of repercussions (legal or social) of actively telling their kids what they should and should not do. I think that would be a much more valid complaint than the more popular "our public education system sucks!"
whoa, whoa, whoa, stop right now before you continue to disseminate unfounded fears about nuclear power! First of all, there is nothing wrong with a plant going critical. In fact, if a plant isn't critical, then something's wrong because it's not making any power. There are 3 important terms to know:
Sub Critical - on average, less than one neutron is gained for every neutron causing fission (ie, neutron flux, or # of neutrons in core) is decreasing -> fewer fissions -> less heat being produced)
Critical - on average, exactly one neutron is being gained for every neutron causing fission (reactor is mainting current thermal output - GOOD THING TO DO)
Super Critical - On average, more than one neutron is being gained...yadda yadda yadda (thermal output is rising).
All modern reactors in the US would, given no human intervention, ultimately end in a shut down state, with the core below the Point of Adding Heat (POAH). There's no need to worry about one causing a nuclear explosion either...Civilian plants use fuel that is very, VERY slightly enriched. In order to cause an explosion you need to compress the U-238 (used in all of our plants, other countries also use Pu) so that the atoms are close enough together to allow neutrons to cause fission without losing too many (to put it simply). Critical mass...something that can't be achieved on any civilian powerplant. Nor on a Navy one either.
So what could terrorists do? First of all, killing all the workers wouldn't do anything (besides make lots of people angry). The core is protected by a heavy-duty radiation shield (the dome thing most people think of), so they'd have to get a pretty big bomb right next to it to even cause a little damage. If they attack the actual turbine generators, they could cause very cool looking plasma-balls, but those would only cause localized damage and not release any radiation. If they took control of the plant, it's possible they might find some way to release contaminants into the environment, but after TMI (three-mile island, the largest fake scare to cause mass hysteria in the nuclear industry...) doing that became much more difficult. Instead of depending on smart controllers controlling stupid machines, we use smart machines to make sure controllers don't do something stupid. If you're worried about them causing another Chernobyl, in the US at least, don't worry...I won't say it can't happen, but the chances of it coming about is exceedingly small.
So what's the upshot of all this? I'd be more afraid of them going in space and causing the moon to hit the US than any terrorist using a nuclear plant to kill people. Those in our subs and ships are somewhat more dangerous, but if any terrorist can get to the controls of those (and actually do anything once they get there) then we've pretty much lost already.
On the other hand, I hope more people think like you do so property values near nukes'll drop and I can get some cheap property near San Onofre (close to San Diego)!
Slashdot Mirror
bzzzzt wrong!
F-22 is mainly an Air to Air platform, the F-35 is mainly an Air to Ground platform. It's much faster with its supercruise capability, and *likely* includes other cool gadgets that no one will know about for a few more years. Why should we, the US, risk valuable pilots by attacking enemy planes using similar generation planes. The next generation planes (F-22, F-35) represent a huge step forward in technology, and thus will keep our losses to a minimum.
FYI, the F-35 will cost about half of what the F-22 does...and that's still not cheap. But the technology on both is simply astounding.
Considering the ball will be in a roughly circular orbit at LEO, the average speed will be a little less than 8 km/sec or 28,800 km/h. Your estimate of roughly 27 km/sec - 36 km/sec seems much too high to come from the relatively low delta-v of someone hitting a golf ball from the space station. The orbit would end up being highly elliptical...how much energy will it take to cause a delta-v of 19-28 km/sec to a golf ball? I don't have my reference materials handy, but I'd guesstimate it's quite a bit more than a human can provide.
Price is based on supply and demand in a scarce system. The music available on itunes can not really be considered a scarce system, so this is really just price fixing to achieve a maximum price/demand ratio.
Because men voted for the best president since Ronald Reagan instead of the sleazy "looks and sounds good but in reality is dumber than a doornail" opponent? Sounds like you're one of the bottom few this study mentioned.
Slave the laser to the pilot's helmet (like the Russian AA-11 Archer), write some image recognition code to distinguish the missile from the sky and include an IR detector as well. In addition, tie the system to the AWACS, E-2C, Aegis, etc...data networks.
Finally, give the pilot a switch or button to enable the laser.
F-16's can carry large bombs and fuel tanks, I'm pretty sure it can handle something like this. The hard part is the bulk, the weight isn't too much of an issue.
Probably a similar phenomenon to adding air blowers on wings. By blowing air out of the top of the wings and into air flowing over them you can have the flow stay attached on the wing much, much longer. This reduces the cross-sectional area of the turbulence and greatly reduces the induced drag.
I suspect that both methods work by adding kinetic energy to the flow, but IANAAE.
So by your logic West Point is thus NOT a top military academy.
I couldn't agree more. Go Navy, Beat Army!
The know-how to dock spacecraft
Experience for safely landing objects on other places
Refinement of near Earth orbital mechanics (better Jn term values, more precise perturbation observations, etc...)
International co-operation for maintaining ~24/7 contact with spacecraft
Moonrocks for analysis
A sense of accomplishment and pride for most of the country (except, perhaps, people like you?)
Defeat of communism in a game where we were considered the underdogs
The Vehicle Assembly building down at Cape Canaveral
Popularization of velcro
Astronaut Ice Cream
Large infusions of cash for programs researching strong, light materials (composites)
Rapid development of semiconductor technology (ok, that's kind of bogus, who uses semiconductors anyway?!)
And more.
High returns can signify something more than numerous physical objects. Technological advancements, scientific advancements, improvements of morale, and the causation of wide-spread adoption of advancing technology should always be included in the cost-benefit analysis of the space program.
The movement of money greases not only our economy, but advances science and technology as well...in other words, capital investment in a company may appear like a bad idea to stockholders in the short term as you're spending a lot of money and not generating any product. But without capital investment, growth would be difficult/impossible for any company. Money spent in any space program should be considered analogous to capital investment.
So you want us to start a war and then allow our side to get slaughtered? What if it's a war of intervention where some country (say...Kosovo) is experiencing genocide of one ethnicity by another?
So we should go there, try to stop it, and since we initiated the violence between us and them, we should allow thousands of troops to die?! Wow...
FUD? FUD!! Vietnam was a politically lost war. Where are your tens of thousands of protestors? Iraq is making progress towards autonomy and (maybe) democracy. Maybe it's slow, maybe there are a few steps back every so often, but there is still progress. Last I checked, that does not really fit the definition of "losing". YMMV.
Not necessarily. The type of thing you are referring to is generally known as 'moral numbing'. Using robots themselves do not debase or marginalize the lives of those killed automatically. This would occur only if the operators of the robots came to see war as simply a video game, and fought with little care for what they were doing.
So long as individual soldiers in our military understand the significance of taking the lives of other people, the moral basis of just war will not be undermined. Or in terms of Kantian ethics, enemy combatants will not simply be mere means.
This is only the first actual land deployment of armed robots. UAV's (ie, predators) have had (and used) the capability to fire air-to-ground missiles for a long time.
Insightful?! I didn't see him smiling when troops went to Iraq...in what way was he happy about it (actual concrete, solid-evidence proof please, in link form to primary sources)? In what way is this post insightful?
Whether or not the Dalai Lama is reasonable, Natural Law theory says that by by trying to kill you, the other guy is forfeiting his natural right to live, and thus it is morally justifiable for you to kill him (but you don't have to if you don't want to).
Utilitarianism would probably also agree that trying to shoot the other guy would be ok. Kant, however, would probably not, since your intention would be to kill or wound the guy.
As for Divine Command Theory? I don't know, go read the bible or something to see what God would say.
After reading the article, I think it's geared more towards the officers learning how to react to situations in environments that are tough to simulate in the real world rather than grunts learning how to not get killed. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. I'd say at least one step above a video game.
This is an application developed specifically for the military. The military must remain trained, and it is far easier (and cheaper) to do it in simulation rather than try and do it in real life.
Just because our military ensures it is well-trained does NOT mean our country is focused on war. The purpose of our military is to protect US (assuming you are an American citizen). Would you want an untrained police force fighting crime? An untrained fire department fighting fires? An untrained surgeon operating on you? I know I wouldn't. I also wouldn't want an untrained military trying to defend me. It would be suicide for them and useless for us.
If you can think up a better way to train our war forces using scenarios other than war, I'm all ears. Unless and until we no longer have a need for a military, we had better keep it trained as well as we can.
been a part of marine nav for years...kinda. Special buoys called RACON bouys emit morse-coded pulses when they detect incoming radar signatures so on your screen you'll see fairly thick dots and dashes. Really makes finding where you are in strange places fairly easy.
In sailing there is a very well known race called the America's Cup. It doesn't seem to stop other countries from competing (and winning).
The storm surge is a problem though. Last year at the Naval Academy, when hurrican Isabelle came through, the real killer for the campus was storm surge. The water level rose something like 8 feet or more, much higher than had been expected. The water flooded and destroyed all of the chemistry labs (destroying 10 years of work in one case). All of the wind tunnels were destroyed, as were many of the other expensive toys needed for the engineering majors. Many students had to go to off campus laboratories to finish their degree.
The wind, on the other hand, knocked off a few tree branches, maybe blew out some windows, and in general made a mess that was cleaned up in an afternoon of work. More than a year later, we're still dealing with storm surge repairs.
I won't pretend to know how storm surges work, how big they get in relation to hurricane location, or things like that. But I have seen a shuttle launch, and I know that the launch complex is pretty much at sea level. There will be some damage to the facility...whether it's just a matter of sweeping the stranded sea-beasties off the launch pad or the total loss of the VAB, only time will tell.
Yes, Bermuda
Treat essays the same way. There are badly written pieces of music (*cough* Berlioz! *cough*) and there a well-written pieces of music (see anything by Dvorak). Likewise, an essay can be written badly or well. Try and make an essay engaging, thoughtful, and with substance and you will do well. Treat it as something where the only thing that matters is diction, spelling, and grammar, and you won't do as well.
I always tried to entertain the reader (and I'd make references to things I referenced in previous essays in the class...easter eggs, if you will). Sure sometimes I'd miss the mark and get a B, but whether that happened or not, I still pretty much enjoyed the experience, chortling to myself over the little jokes and twisted logic I'd put in it.
Don't get me wrong, I complained as loud as anyone about having them assigned, but I made the best of a bad situation.
To paraphrase the great Tom Lehrer: Schooling is like a sewer: what you get out of it depends on what you put into it.
IAAPEUSC (I am a publically educated US citizen)
I didn't really have a problem with my public education. It taught me to think critically and along the way I learned some pretty neat stuff. If people want to slide through without putting any effort in, they shouldn't be suprised they aren't getting anything out of it. Education is a two-way street, you can't just sit around and have a teacher tell you how to think for yourself, you need to practice it as well. Hence they assign homework, papers, etc... People who cheat are really just cheating themselves and not the system.
For the most part, I've seen that there is a separation later in life, that those who sat around doing nothing, learning nothing, tend to be overshadowed by those who put forth an effort.
Really, the system here in the US isn't so bad as everyone makes it. It's kind of geared toward the lowest common denominator, but there are plenty of opportunities to get ahead. The failure (IMHO) lies in the parents. If kids aren't participating in school (by participating I don't necessarily mean answering questions in classrooms, rather I mean learning to learn, or learning to think), I tend to believe that that means the parents haven't given the kids the right priorities.
Naturally, the case could be made that perhaps parents aren't raising their kids right for fear of repercussions (legal or social) of actively telling their kids what they should and should not do. I think that would be a much more valid complaint than the more popular "our public education system sucks!"
who said anything about them being deleted again? The article states they were archived in an orderly fashion when he got the comp.
whoa, whoa, whoa, stop right now before you continue to disseminate unfounded fears about nuclear power! First of all, there is nothing wrong with a plant going critical. In fact, if a plant isn't critical, then something's wrong because it's not making any power. There are 3 important terms to know:
Sub Critical - on average, less than one neutron is gained for every neutron causing fission (ie, neutron flux, or # of neutrons in core) is decreasing -> fewer fissions -> less heat being produced)
Critical - on average, exactly one neutron is being gained for every neutron causing fission (reactor is mainting current thermal output - GOOD THING TO DO)
Super Critical - On average, more than one neutron is being gained...yadda yadda yadda (thermal output is rising).
All modern reactors in the US would, given no human intervention, ultimately end in a shut down state, with the core below the Point of Adding Heat (POAH). There's no need to worry about one causing a nuclear explosion either...Civilian plants use fuel that is very, VERY slightly enriched. In order to cause an explosion you need to compress the U-238 (used in all of our plants, other countries also use Pu) so that the atoms are close enough together to allow neutrons to cause fission without losing too many (to put it simply). Critical mass...something that can't be achieved on any civilian powerplant. Nor on a Navy one either.
So what could terrorists do? First of all, killing all the workers wouldn't do anything (besides make lots of people angry). The core is protected by a heavy-duty radiation shield (the dome thing most people think of), so they'd have to get a pretty big bomb right next to it to even cause a little damage. If they attack the actual turbine generators, they could cause very cool looking plasma-balls, but those would only cause localized damage and not release any radiation. If they took control of the plant, it's possible they might find some way to release contaminants into the environment, but after TMI (three-mile island, the largest fake scare to cause mass hysteria in the nuclear industry...) doing that became much more difficult. Instead of depending on smart controllers controlling stupid machines, we use smart machines to make sure controllers don't do something stupid. If you're worried about them causing another Chernobyl, in the US at least, don't worry...I won't say it can't happen, but the chances of it coming about is exceedingly small.
So what's the upshot of all this? I'd be more afraid of them going in space and causing the moon to hit the US than any terrorist using a nuclear plant to kill people. Those in our subs and ships are somewhat more dangerous, but if any terrorist can get to the controls of those (and actually do anything once they get there) then we've pretty much lost already.
On the other hand, I hope more people think like you do so property values near nukes'll drop and I can get some cheap property near San Onofre (close to San Diego)!
by an earlier post.