The Pirs module has two docking ports which can accomodate either a Soyuz (3-person emergency lifeboat) or the Progress (unmanned resupply ship), so if there were 2 Soyuz docked to the ISS, then it would be impossible to resupply the ISS (except with the shuttle and that would be bloody expensive).
The only problem with letting the private sector into the manned space flight business is that it will then become nothing more than a commercial profit-making enterprise. And as soon as profits become a priority, I can't help thinking that safety, training, etc is going to go down the drain.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that it shouldn't happen in the future en mass, and I am in favour of the Russians leasing a seat on the Soyuz to qualified people for non-commercial gain.
Yeh, of course it was Russia that cancelled the module which would have allowed 6 astronauts to be up there conducting experiments 24/7... which was one of the main reasons to build a low orbit space station.
but, more importantly, do you really want to remember everything that you've ever done. It would be just like that annoying bastard who deliberately stays sober while everyone else drinks themselves stupid just so they can tell everyone what they did the next morning.
Spam hasn't killed usenet, email, or the internet in general, but it sure has changed the way we do things.
Very good point. The funny thing is that up until about 3 years ago, I still had access to the email address I used to use posting to usenet at least 8 years ago. I haven't used it for many years, but the amount of spam that received was unbelievable, and all the recent spam as well. So someone was continually digging that address up from somewhere. I've learnt from that!
I have to admit, that the whole problem with usenet spam is one of the reasons why I don't use it very often now. And I certainly wouldn't post under an email address that I valued!
Am I the only person who doesn't receive spam? OK, that's a little bit of a lie, but by and large, I reckon less than 2% of my email is real spam. It's not like I don't get any email - I receive probably 60-100 emails per day over about 3 different accounts, including several mailing lists.
I think the secret with spam is to stop spreading your email address around the internet. I object to having to provide my email address to forms to register for every damn website (eg. download.com) - I always give a false address if I can. If I can't, I will very seriously reconsider whether I need access to that site (I usually don't). I have an email account that is used solely for the purpose of registering for websites or what have you. Whenever I stick my email address into any form on the web I always check to see whether there is a checkbox that lets me opt out (or in) any mailing lists. The only sites I don't mind signing up for are those that I am genuinely interested in receiving future correspondence from, but they are few and far between.
I also have an email address that is used solely for usenet - this one receives by far the most spam.
Another interesting thing that people may not be aware of is that the default setting for hotmail accounts allows your email address and personal information to be shared. Go to options->personal profile and have a look at the check boxes at the bottom. This never used to be the default setting until the service switched over to.net about a year ago (I think???), and then these settings were added and enabled for everyone so if you didn't notice it, it will still be enabled.
But why is light at night automatically considered wasted? I would guess that a significant proportion of this light would come from home lighting (internal) and also car headlights which surely can't be considered wasted light? And is street lighting really a waste? Not only does it provide better driving conditions, but it also provides some measure of security.
I'm sure there is lots of light that doesn't need to be turned on at night (office buildings) and is wasted, and I imagine it probably correlates quite well with city size, but it's not all wasted.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the same image as this (click image for full-res) which doesn't purport to show the 'wasted' light but is being used to study urbanisation?
not trolling - just had that awesome image on my desktop for ages and recognised it straight away!
And what a beautiful part of the world that is - Buchaille Etive Mor has to be one of my favourite mountains in the world. My own ancestry is from Clan Ross in Tain (just north of Inverness).
What I was referring to was specifically the technology to put a human on Mars and the safely bring them home without any long term adverse effects on the person.
I would agree that the technology to send a person to Mars and return them exists, but there are very big questions about exposing a human to very low gravity for such lengths of time and the effects this would have on the human body. For example, the degradation of bone density over long periods of time is a big problem. Consider that a Mars mission would last about 600 days minimum (short stay trajectory), and the longest single stay is space so far is a little over 400 days, and there are only a handful of people who have been in space for long periods of time. This is the 'technology' to which I was referring, possibly not very well in hindsight!
I have read The Case for Mars and would also recommend it to anyone interested (as I definitely am).
I was kinda hoping to see a moonbase and manned Mars mission and first steps to expanding on into the solar system in my lifetime.
I'm not going to start argueing the technical details because others clearly know a shitload more than me about that. BUT, there is one thing that I think a lot of people are forgetting (or are not aware of?) when they talk about a manned mission to mars, or a moon base for that matter. We may have the technology (and it will only improve with time), but one of the biggest obstacles to these sorts of missions is the human element. After all, the thing we all want to see is a human standing on Mars.
And that is one of the things that the ISS is allowing us to do - spend extended periods of time working in very low gravity and working out things like bone density loss. Even now, the longest stay in low gravity (by russian cosmonauts) is still less than half what would be required for a 'short stay' mission to mars (about 600 days round trip), and much less than the long stay trajectory (about 900+ days). And you also have to consider the psychological stresses and implications of spending that length of time cooped up with the same people, and away from earth.
and whatever the driving force is behind planetary expansion is at that time (if it happens at all), I won't be here to see it...
Don't lose heart - as long as people dream about it there is always a chance!
Re:Sixties are overrated
on
Redirecting NASA
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
I don't mean to flame, but isn't it true that nothing much happened in the 60s from a scientific perspective.
JFK's original motivation for going to the moon may have been purely as a result of the Cold War with the Russians at the time, but if you read about the people involved in the Apollo program at the time, they most certainly were motivated by the challenge of going to the moon. And many of the scientists who were deciding what the astronauts would do while they were on the moon were motivated purely by science.
Isn't the problem with space (and science more generally) that "the people" just don't care about it, but rather like watching spectacles and human drama (the chalenger crash, Apollo 13).
I think you hit the nail right on the head there. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon (and moon conspiracy theorists can just take the right exit here - I don't want to hear your bleating) the whole world watched. It was, and still is, considered to be the most memorable moment in history.
But by Apollo 13, the public were already bored by the whole spectacle. Apollo 15-17 were practically unwatched by the general public. Even the events of Apollo 13 weren't enough to fire the public interest in Apollo 14.
And the Challenger disaster was the same - as much as the entire space program was in the media after it happened, within one or two mission it again became a forgotten entity.
The BBC are doing a poll at the moment on the Greatest ever Britain. Last time I looked the front runner was Diana (former Princess), while Sir Isaac Newton languished at number 9 or 10. Says it all really.
Absolutely correct - a complete step sideways, with no forward motion at all. Where is the daring? The exploration? The pushing of boundaries? The capturing of public imagination? These are the sorts of feelings that (space) exploration should evoke.
I have been saying for ages that the this will never change while we live in the current age of cost-effectiveness and results(=profit)-now-not-tomorrow.
Go and read about the voyages of people like Shackleton (go see the IMAX film!), Mallory, Scott, Cook, Columbus - these expeditions captured the public imagination and were quite daring for their time.
No matter what some might think, we don't have the technology right now to put a man on Mars (and bring him - or her - home). It's not just 'a bit further than the moon', there is a lot more involved. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and develop that technology.
I find it a sad statement on today's world that NASA is not allowed to have a vision.
Extra heat from the CPU can add an extra ~5% to the cost of electricity required to run an air conditioner.
[I'm a mechanical engineer and have done some airconditioning design work]
Actually, computers can have a significant effect on air-conditioning services of buildings, particularly large computer labs which are in constant use (ie. computers are pumping out heat continually). I would not be at all surprised to find out that the running cost of airconditioning for a building would increase as a result of significantly more computers (or, as in this case, the computers pumping out significantly more heat).
sorry I was so unclear, but I saw the doco quite some time ago. I'm not an expert on ancient egypt or the pyramids (far from it in fact, as you may have guessed from my post!) and I probably got the theory wrong.
The point I was trying to make was that in the show I saw (I really wish I could remember it, but even googling doesn't ring any bells) very few facts were presented. I have an open mind so to me, as someone who knows nothing of ancient egypt and as a scientist/researcher myself, I want to know the facts and evidence and how this leads to a certain conclusion. I also want to know why it is that conclusion X is a better explanation than conclusion Y. But the show that I saw presented very little evidence and, to me anyway, did not prove the conclusions. As a result, I thought that the conclusions were simply what someone thought being presented as absolute fact.
And this, unfortunately, happens far more often than it should. If something does not prove absolutely a conclusion, then don't try and present it as such. There is a difference between proving and supporting a hypothesis.
I remember seeing a show recently on the people who built the Pyramids (sorry, don't remember the name of the show). When you got right down to it, the entire show was trying to back the hypothesis or pet theory of some egyptologist that the workers were not slaves. The actual facts and evidence presented was not an awful lot, but what was theorised on the basis of this evidence was also presented as fact.
One of the best documentaries I have seen that didn't do this (again on the egyptians) was a multi-part doco on great egyptians. I forget the name of the presenter (he was an american), but he gave what I thought was a completely unbiased view of the situation. He was quite prepared to say "this is what we think it means..." rather than "this is what it does mean..." or to back up all his facts with evidence "we know this because..."
I wonder how much of this is down to the presenters themselves? For example, David Attenborough always seems to be more than ready to acknowledge that other people are the experts and that he is just the presenter, even though it is obvious he is very knowledgeable on the subject himself. But then again, he isn't pushing some pet theory and trying to get research funding - he seems to be more interested in getting others excited about the natural world.
Just ask yourself what you need, then check the price; OR ask yourself how much money you're spending for it then find the best quality for this price, but PLEASE don't mix the buying strategies.
No, you see, I don't need a portable computer at all. In fact, when it really comes down to it, I don't even really need a computer (for personal use that is).
But I do want a computer, and the one I want the most would be the nice, shiny 1GHz powerbook.
My point was not to complain about the high prices, but simply to say how much I would like one of these macs.
Slashdot Mirror
In short, no :)
The Pirs module has two docking ports which can accomodate either a Soyuz (3-person emergency lifeboat) or the Progress (unmanned resupply ship), so if there were 2 Soyuz docked to the ISS, then it would be impossible to resupply the ISS (except with the shuttle and that would be bloody expensive).
Here is some good information
The only problem with letting the private sector into the manned space flight business is that it will then become nothing more than a commercial profit-making enterprise. And as soon as profits become a priority, I can't help thinking that safety, training, etc is going to go down the drain.
Don't get me wrong - I'm not saying that it shouldn't happen in the future en mass, and I am in favour of the Russians leasing a seat on the Soyuz to qualified people for non-commercial gain.
Yeh, of course it was Russia that cancelled the module which would have allowed 6 astronauts to be up there conducting experiments 24/7 ... which was one of the main reasons to build a low orbit space station.
I'll only get tired of it if they keep bringing them back from space.
... "whoops - that one's too steep!"
Or they could use them to test re-entry angles
but, more importantly, do you really want to remember everything that you've ever done. It would be just like that annoying bastard who deliberately stays sober while everyone else drinks themselves stupid just so they can tell everyone what they did the next morning.
From slashdot last week:
The Economics of Spam
or direct link to the article:
Spam Queen
the article itself is a very interesting read, and shows just how few replies/orders are needed to make a profit from spam. Scary stuff.
Spam hasn't killed usenet, email, or the internet in general, but it sure has changed the way we do things.
Very good point. The funny thing is that up until about 3 years ago, I still had access to the email address I used to use posting to usenet at least 8 years ago. I haven't used it for many years, but the amount of spam that received was unbelievable, and all the recent spam as well. So someone was continually digging that address up from somewhere. I've learnt from that!
I have to admit, that the whole problem with usenet spam is one of the reasons why I don't use it very often now. And I certainly wouldn't post under an email address that I valued!
Am I the only person who doesn't receive spam? OK, that's a little bit of a lie, but by and large, I reckon less than 2% of my email is real spam. It's not like I don't get any email - I receive probably 60-100 emails per day over about 3 different accounts, including several mailing lists.
.net about a year ago (I think???), and then these settings were added and enabled for everyone so if you didn't notice it, it will still be enabled.
I think the secret with spam is to stop spreading your email address around the internet. I object to having to provide my email address to forms to register for every damn website (eg. download.com) - I always give a false address if I can. If I can't, I will very seriously reconsider whether I need access to that site (I usually don't). I have an email account that is used solely for the purpose of registering for websites or what have you. Whenever I stick my email address into any form on the web I always check to see whether there is a checkbox that lets me opt out (or in) any mailing lists. The only sites I don't mind signing up for are those that I am genuinely interested in receiving future correspondence from, but they are few and far between.
I also have an email address that is used solely for usenet - this one receives by far the most spam.
Another interesting thing that people may not be aware of is that the default setting for hotmail accounts allows your email address and personal information to be shared. Go to options->personal profile and have a look at the check boxes at the bottom. This never used to be the default setting until the service switched over to
80%? you're lucky! I would guess that the cloud cover here is about 100%. I say guess because the pea soup fog has limited visibility to about 15m.
...
Oh well, better luck in 2099 maybe
But why is light at night automatically considered wasted? I would guess that a significant proportion of this light would come from home lighting (internal) and also car headlights which surely can't be considered wasted light? And is street lighting really a waste? Not only does it provide better driving conditions, but it also provides some measure of security.
I'm sure there is lots of light that doesn't need to be turned on at night (office buildings) and is wasted, and I imagine it probably correlates quite well with city size, but it's not all wasted.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't that the same image as this (click image for full-res) which doesn't purport to show the 'wasted' light but is being used to study urbanisation?
not trolling - just had that awesome image on my desktop for ages and recognised it straight away!
Clan MacDonald at Glencoe
And what a beautiful part of the world that is - Buchaille Etive Mor has to be one of my favourite mountains in the world. My own ancestry is from Clan Ross in Tain (just north of Inverness).
says anything which remotely offends us
or in any way implies that they might be english!
The actual quote you're thinking of is:
"An intellectual snob is someone who can listen to the William Tell Overture and not think of The Lone Ranger." -- Dan Rather
I don't even know what the lone f$#$ing ranger is!
Oh you poor, deprived bastard. Showing my age now, but what the hell...
"Hi ho Silver. Away!"
What I was referring to was specifically the technology to put a human on Mars and the safely bring them home without any long term adverse effects on the person.
I would agree that the technology to send a person to Mars and return them exists, but there are very big questions about exposing a human to very low gravity for such lengths of time and the effects this would have on the human body. For example, the degradation of bone density over long periods of time is a big problem. Consider that a Mars mission would last about 600 days minimum (short stay trajectory), and the longest single stay is space so far is a little over 400 days, and there are only a handful of people who have been in space for long periods of time. This is the 'technology' to which I was referring, possibly not very well in hindsight!
I have read The Case for Mars and would also recommend it to anyone interested (as I definitely am).
woohoo! The man with the coolest name in the whole of history. And an engineer to boot. Now if only he was an Australian ... :)
I was kinda hoping to see a moonbase and manned Mars mission and first steps to expanding on into the solar system in my lifetime.
I'm not going to start argueing the technical details because others clearly know a shitload more than me about that. BUT, there is one thing that I think a lot of people are forgetting (or are not aware of?) when they talk about a manned mission to mars, or a moon base for that matter. We may have the technology (and it will only improve with time), but one of the biggest obstacles to these sorts of missions is the human element. After all, the thing we all want to see is a human standing on Mars.
And that is one of the things that the ISS is allowing us to do - spend extended periods of time working in very low gravity and working out things like bone density loss. Even now, the longest stay in low gravity (by russian cosmonauts) is still less than half what would be required for a 'short stay' mission to mars (about 600 days round trip), and much less than the long stay trajectory (about 900+ days). And you also have to consider the psychological stresses and implications of spending that length of time cooped up with the same people, and away from earth.
and whatever the driving force is behind planetary expansion is at that time (if it happens at all), I won't be here to see it...
Don't lose heart - as long as people dream about it there is always a chance!
I don't mean to flame, but isn't it true that nothing much happened in the 60s from a scientific perspective.
JFK's original motivation for going to the moon may have been purely as a result of the Cold War with the Russians at the time, but if you read about the people involved in the Apollo program at the time, they most certainly were motivated by the challenge of going to the moon. And many of the scientists who were deciding what the astronauts would do while they were on the moon were motivated purely by science.
Isn't the problem with space (and science more generally) that "the people" just don't care about it, but rather like watching spectacles and human drama (the chalenger crash, Apollo 13).
I think you hit the nail right on the head there. When Apollo 11 landed on the moon (and moon conspiracy theorists can just take the right exit here - I don't want to hear your bleating) the whole world watched. It was, and still is, considered to be the most memorable moment in history.
But by Apollo 13, the public were already bored by the whole spectacle. Apollo 15-17 were practically unwatched by the general public. Even the events of Apollo 13 weren't enough to fire the public interest in Apollo 14.
And the Challenger disaster was the same - as much as the entire space program was in the media after it happened, within one or two mission it again became a forgotten entity.
The BBC are doing a poll at the moment on the Greatest ever Britain. Last time I looked the front runner was Diana (former Princess), while Sir Isaac Newton languished at number 9 or 10. Says it all really.
Absolutely correct - a complete step sideways, with no forward motion at all. Where is the daring? The exploration? The pushing of boundaries? The capturing of public imagination? These are the sorts of feelings that (space) exploration should evoke.
I have been saying for ages that the this will never change while we live in the current age of cost-effectiveness and results(=profit)-now-not-tomorrow.
Go and read about the voyages of people like Shackleton (go see the IMAX film!), Mallory, Scott, Cook, Columbus - these expeditions captured the public imagination and were quite daring for their time.
No matter what some might think, we don't have the technology right now to put a man on Mars (and bring him - or her - home). It's not just 'a bit further than the moon', there is a lot more involved. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't try and develop that technology.
I find it a sad statement on today's world that NASA is not allowed to have a vision.
yes, but imagine that the company has 100 machines that are doing this (not at all unusual for a computing lab or a semi-large business).
And there's also the extra running costs of the aircon (machines are now producing heat 24/7).
It all starts to add up once you multiply the effect over 100s or even 1000s of computers.
Extra heat from the CPU can add an extra ~5% to the cost of electricity required to run an air conditioner.
[I'm a mechanical engineer and have done some airconditioning design work]
Actually, computers can have a significant effect on air-conditioning services of buildings, particularly large computer labs which are in constant use (ie. computers are pumping out heat continually). I would not be at all surprised to find out that the running cost of airconditioning for a building would increase as a result of significantly more computers (or, as in this case, the computers pumping out significantly more heat).
sorry I was so unclear, but I saw the doco quite some time ago. I'm not an expert on ancient egypt or the pyramids (far from it in fact, as you may have guessed from my post!) and I probably got the theory wrong.
The point I was trying to make was that in the show I saw (I really wish I could remember it, but even googling doesn't ring any bells) very few facts were presented. I have an open mind so to me, as someone who knows nothing of ancient egypt and as a scientist/researcher myself, I want to know the facts and evidence and how this leads to a certain conclusion. I also want to know why it is that conclusion X is a better explanation than conclusion Y. But the show that I saw presented very little evidence and, to me anyway, did not prove the conclusions. As a result, I thought that the conclusions were simply what someone thought being presented as absolute fact.
And this, unfortunately, happens far more often than it should. If something does not prove absolutely a conclusion, then don't try and present it as such. There is a difference between proving and supporting a hypothesis.
I completely agree with this.
..." rather than "this is what it does mean ..." or to back up all his facts with evidence "we know this because ..."
I remember seeing a show recently on the people who built the Pyramids (sorry, don't remember the name of the show). When you got right down to it, the entire show was trying to back the hypothesis or pet theory of some egyptologist that the workers were not slaves. The actual facts and evidence presented was not an awful lot, but what was theorised on the basis of this evidence was also presented as fact.
One of the best documentaries I have seen that didn't do this (again on the egyptians) was a multi-part doco on great egyptians. I forget the name of the presenter (he was an american), but he gave what I thought was a completely unbiased view of the situation. He was quite prepared to say "this is what we think it means
I wonder how much of this is down to the presenters themselves? For example, David Attenborough always seems to be more than ready to acknowledge that other people are the experts and that he is just the presenter, even though it is obvious he is very knowledgeable on the subject himself. But then again, he isn't pushing some pet theory and trying to get research funding - he seems to be more interested in getting others excited about the natural world.
Just ask yourself what you need, then check the price; OR ask yourself how much money you're spending for it then find the best quality for this price, but PLEASE don't mix the buying strategies.
No, you see, I don't need a portable computer at all. In fact, when it really comes down to it, I don't even really need a computer (for personal use that is).
But I do want a computer, and the one I want the most would be the nice, shiny 1GHz powerbook.
My point was not to complain about the high prices, but simply to say how much I would like one of these macs.
I just did the maths for the top-of-the-range powerbook and it's even worse; almost 25% cheaper.
Powerbook 'Fastest'
US = $2999
UK = £2449 (~US$3900)
[prices from Apple online store]
yeh, not to mention that the bottom of the range laptop costs $999 in the US and £849 in the UK (more than US$1300).