This is an incredibly pro-space piece of news out of the Obama team, but what gets the focus is the potential termination of the boondoggle Ares program.
This article is far more interesting due to the last paragraph:
"Obama's NASA transition team also appears to be interested in a number of specific projects that have more or less languished in recent years. Among those projects are: the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a mothballed Earth-observing satellite formerly known as Triana; agency efforts to catalog asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth; and the harnessing of space-based solar power for use on Earth."
The article also alludes to a potential expansion of the COTS commercial space program, potential uses for EELV launchers, etc.
If the Obama team is serious about these projects (especially space solar power) it would mean a revolution in space funding and a committment to space development that would make Ares pale in comparison. SSP would mean a real orbital infrastructure that would enable a huge number of possibilities, such as real lunar bases and mars missions, not plant a flag crap which is where Ares is headed.
The real possibility here would be a scrapping of parts of Ares in favor of Direct 2.0 or EELV based programs for lunar and mars missions. X-33 will not happen IMHO, due to COTS-based ISS crew rotation capability being much cheaper to develop.
. ..will kill these web-based hosted apps eventually. These apps are too important to a business to have them break every time the mobile salesman decides to download Hotbar. . .
The obnoxious part of this idea, to me, is that it seems to ignore the problem of creating a program, or control panel, that would be able to determine what is of interest to a particular person at a particular time and what is not. This problem is unlikely to be be solved by smart filters and summarizing programs anytime soon, because what is interesting to a person is very much dependent on that person's state of mind at the moment. What may be interesting and diverting news while you're sipping your morning coffee would be an annoying distraction when you are on a conference call, or trying to work out a difficult problem. Unless we had software that could model a particular person, as a whole and taking into account all inputs _and_ their mental state at the time of those inputs, such "personal agents" could be worse problems than the ones they would solve, removing perhaps critical information while letting extraneous irritating information through. It seems to me that this would be a nontrivial problem to solve, and the idea that it would be solved for something as seemingly trivial as information overload, when there are much easier non-technical ways to overcome that burden, (e.g. turn off your IM when you're busy, etc.) is a case of sloppy thinking, in my opinion.
Viable for what, exactly? At 130kg max payload, I can't think of much that this would do for the manned program. . . looks like a theater reconnaisance sat launcher for the Air Force to me. If you want plane based systems, what's wrong with the Space Ship One project?
You are absolutely correct. A very high temperature something does not necessarily have a lot of heat. The heat that is transferred by an object, or a volume of a fluid, depends on the amount of force that the particles in that substance will exert on particles that they come in contact with, and the amount of loss of energy to radiating photons. Even if we ignore ratiating heat transfer, I figured a field such that the previous poster was describing, covering the server room door with enough force to hold back one atmosphere of pressure (to say nothing of PHB's!) would be giving off a large amount of heat by it's very nature. The article describes the field acting by having a plasma confined within an electromagnetic field, with a high enough temperature that when errant air molecules come in contact with ions screaming along at 15,000 Kelvins, they're *smacked* back in the direction that they came from. this would impart a lot of force on the air molecule, speed it up and increase its temperature. Now, if you're pumping enough energy into this plasma to keep enough of these collisions going on all at once to hold back an atmosphere pressure of gas over an entire doorway (approx. 44,452.8 pounds of pressure) that would, in my armchair analysis, be enough to transfer a significant amount of heat into the room.
But then again, maybe it would only impart as much as a door:-)
No, that's bullshit because the door molecules are very low energy and the plasma ions are very high energy. More energy transfer = more entropy = more heat.
Why do you assume that the consolidation of currencies is the next logical step from moving currencies off of commodity standards like gold? I see no relation here. Just because some European countries decided to merge their currencies does not make it the next big thing, or necessarily a good thing. As others have pointed out in this discussion, each modern currency is controlled by the actions and policies of a central bank with the power to control the supply of money, intrest rates, etc. With multiple currencies, an individual has the choice of keeping their 'money' in whichever currency that they believe to have the best chance of holding its value, and that will be most advantageous or convenient for them when exchanging their money for goods and services. a universal currency would tie individuals to the policies of one decision-making body which would have total control over their currency, without any choice (other than to move their money into other types of assets, such as stocks, commodities, real estate, etc.) Why would this be a good thing? Why would you want to give any one group of people that much power?
Slashdot Mirror
This is an incredibly pro-space piece of news out of the Obama team, but what gets the focus is the potential termination of the boondoggle Ares program.
This article is far more interesting due to the last paragraph:
"Obama's NASA transition team also appears to be interested in a number of specific projects that have more or less languished in recent years. Among those projects are: the Deep Space Climate Observatory, a mothballed Earth-observing satellite formerly known as Triana; agency efforts to catalog asteroids and comets that could threaten Earth; and the harnessing of space-based solar power for use on Earth."
The article also alludes to a potential expansion of the COTS commercial space program, potential uses for EELV launchers, etc.
If the Obama team is serious about these projects (especially space solar power) it would mean a revolution in space funding and a committment to space development that would make Ares pale in comparison. SSP would mean a real orbital infrastructure that would enable a huge number of possibilities, such as real lunar bases and mars missions, not plant a flag crap which is where Ares is headed.
The real possibility here would be a scrapping of parts of Ares in favor of Direct 2.0 or EELV based programs for lunar and mars missions. X-33 will not happen IMHO, due to COTS-based ISS crew rotation capability being much cheaper to develop.
VASIMR gets us there (NEP or SEP). Water shields the crew.
But I laughed out loud at the shot of the bridge with two Symbol M2000 barcode scanners prominently displayed on top of the console.
Somebody in props on that film is being overpaid.
Whew! I was beginning to believe that I was the only one thinking that. . .
The original post should read "Compute Cluster", not "Complete Cluster"
. . .will kill these web-based hosted apps eventually. These apps are too important to a business to have them break every time the mobile salesman decides to download Hotbar. . .
The obnoxious part of this idea, to me, is that it seems to ignore the problem of creating a program, or control panel, that would be able to determine what is of interest to a particular person at a particular time and what is not. This problem is unlikely to be be solved by smart filters and summarizing programs anytime soon, because what is interesting to a person is very much dependent on that person's state of mind at the moment. What may be interesting and diverting news while you're sipping your morning coffee would be an annoying distraction when you are on a conference call, or trying to work out a difficult problem. Unless we had software that could model a particular person, as a whole and taking into account all inputs _and_ their mental state at the time of those inputs, such "personal agents" could be worse problems than the ones they would solve, removing perhaps critical information while letting extraneous irritating information through. It seems to me that this would be a nontrivial problem to solve, and the idea that it would be solved for something as seemingly trivial as information overload, when there are much easier non-technical ways to overcome that burden, (e.g. turn off your IM when you're busy, etc.) is a case of sloppy thinking, in my opinion.
Is available from IHS Global here for $50.
The standard you seek is EIA RS-310-C: CABINETS, RACKS, PANELS, AND ASSOCIATED EQUIPMENT.
Viable for what, exactly? At 130kg max payload, I can't think of much that this would do for the manned program. . . looks like a theater reconnaisance sat launcher for the Air Force to me. If you want plane based systems, what's wrong with the Space Ship One project?
You are absolutely correct. A very high temperature something does not necessarily have a lot of heat. The heat that is transferred by an object, or a volume of a fluid, depends on the amount of force that the particles in that substance will exert on particles that they come in contact with, and the amount of loss of energy to radiating photons. Even if we ignore ratiating heat transfer, I figured a field such that the previous poster was describing, covering the server room door with enough force to hold back one atmosphere of pressure (to say nothing of PHB's!) would be giving off a large amount of heat by it's very nature. The article describes the field acting by having a plasma confined within an electromagnetic field, with a high enough temperature that when errant air molecules come in contact with ions screaming along at 15,000 Kelvins, they're *smacked* back in the direction that they came from. this would impart a lot of force on the air molecule, speed it up and increase its temperature. Now, if you're pumping enough energy into this plasma to keep enough of these collisions going on all at once to hold back an atmosphere pressure of gas over an entire doorway (approx. 44,452.8 pounds of pressure) that would, in my armchair analysis, be enough to transfer a significant amount of heat into the room.
:-)
But then again, maybe it would only impart as much as a door
No, that's bullshit because the door molecules are very low energy and the plasma ions are very high energy. More energy transfer = more entropy = more heat.
Just what I need in my server room. Another heat source at 15,000 Kelvin. . .
Why do you assume that the consolidation of currencies is the next logical step from moving currencies off of commodity standards like gold? I see no relation here. Just because some European countries decided to merge their currencies does not make it the next big thing, or necessarily a good thing. As others have pointed out in this discussion, each modern currency is controlled by the actions and policies of a central bank with the power to control the supply of money, intrest rates, etc. With multiple currencies, an individual has the choice of keeping their 'money' in whichever currency that they believe to have the best chance of holding its value, and that will be most advantageous or convenient for them when exchanging their money for goods and services. a universal currency would tie individuals to the policies of one decision-making body which would have total control over their currency, without any choice (other than to move their money into other types of assets, such as stocks, commodities, real estate, etc.) Why would this be a good thing? Why would you want to give any one group of people that much power?