I think you are going a little bit far to claim that a point which is a matter of much dispute, with well-educated participants on both sides, is "basic economics". It's excessive to tell someone who does not support Bush's fiscal policies to "go back to school".
Certainly the government spent less under Clinton than under Bush. The fact that Bush prefers to finance the government via debt instead of taxes shouldn't fool anyone into thinking that his tax cuts represent fiscal restraint.
Lots of people in this thread are complaining about the Shuttle, which isn't relevant at all. I suppose because you use the SSME in your comparison, everyone acts like you are demanding that Rutan build a Shuttle, and that gets them going on about how the Shuttle's problems are all caused by NASA, etc.
Perhaps you should refer to some smaller modern cargo launchers? The Delta IV, for instance, includes a brand-spanking-new lower stage, and it still costs plenty to launch. Though the LOX/LH2 lower stage makes for really beautiful launch photos which are almost worth the $150 million.
The article ignored the boosters because it isn't about the Shuttle.
There's a feeling around Slashdot that orbital launches aren't really very hard, that you could get to orbit with a simple vehicle, and the reason NASA has budget and safety problems is (alternately) that they are too careful or that they are not careful enough.
As for the boosters -- the boosters are simple because first-stage efficiency doesn't matter all that much. Upper-stage efficiency cascades down through the entire system, making it larger and more failure-prone. If we replaced the SSME and ET with a simple (and very heavy) solid rocket, we'd probably need a Saturn V to lift it 20km.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Second_stage_of _a_Delta_IV_Medium_rocket.jpg is a picture of the second stage of a Delta IV, which is a reasonably modern rocket that lifts a much smaller cargo into orbit than the Shuttle. This is a cargo rocket, not certified or intended for manned use, and not reusable. It's not a simple engine, either, though it is much simpler than an SSME.
It's easy to suggest that rockets should be simple. Both government and large private corporations have put tremendous amounts of engineering work into building simpler rockets. It's not easy to do, and while other Slashdot posts claim that Rutan has some kind of engine breakthrough that he's keeping a secret, there's no reason to believe that.
If you think the change over dots are distracting, you should start looking for the cap codes, also known as "crap codes". These are patterns of dots splashed right across the middle of the frame. They are a completely useless anti-piracy measure.
Windows XP does not use the 9x codebase. It implements certain 9x functions on top of NT, but not with 9x code. There is no gradual transition between DOS/9x and NT. You are either running NT or you are not; the difference between the two is as large as the difference between MacOS 9 and OS X.
The solid fuel boosters provide lots of thrust, but they fire for a shorter period of time and provide basically none of the orbital velocity. The SSMEs do all the real work of getting into orbit.
Yes, but the chemical energy's contribution to the total mass of a lithium-ion battery, or fat for that matter, is negligible. Most of the energy in a battery is in the nuclear bonds, not the chemical bonds. Chemical reactions break only the chemical bonds.
That's why the E=mc^2 thing is irrelevant for chemical batteries. The chemical potential energy is not a function of the mass.
E=mc^2 doesn't have much to do with it, unless you are going to try to convert matter into energy (as is done, in some applications, so it's not a dumb idea). When you store energy chemically, it's not in the form of matter at all.
When you extract energy from your lithium-ion battery, the mass remains the same.
Sorry, but this argument doesn't hold a lot of water. Fat, for instance, has an energy density of 38 kilojoules per gram, whereas lithium-ion has a density of 0.72 kilojoules per gram. Fat, while flammable, is far less dangerous than lithium-ion.
Lots of materials have a high energy density and are still very safe and stable. The problem, of course, is that extracting electrical energy from them is not incredibly easy to do. However, we should not say that high energy density is inherently unsafe.
I don't know if it would solve any actual problems, but you have to admit that a giant air-conditioned retractable indoor launch pad building would be sort of cool.
c squared is not a speed. If c is in m/s then c squared will be in m^2/s^2. Multiplying by a mass in kilograms gives us an energy unit of kilogram square meters per second per second.
Note that a newton, the unit of force, is a kilogram-meter per second per second. The Joule, the unit of energy, is a newton-meter, or a kilogram square meter per second per second.
Laugh... I think you should spend your time on people with MINOR misconceptions about space, not people who think the solution to all our woes is to make everything heavier.
I wonder what kind of cost per kilogram we could get out of a rocket the size of the Sears Tower? We could call it "Project: Spectacular Failure".
Duh, we will convert energy to matter. The energy will come from the sun, and it will be harvested by our Dyson sphere. Once we've finished building it, we'll send it back in time so that we can collect enough energy to build it.
By the way, I've owned a CVT car for three and a half years. Don't know if you've driven one but it's a nifty experience. Once you learn what to expect from the transmission computer you can get a lot of control of the car's torque just through careful manipulation of the throttle.
I don't think I'll buy a non-CVT car again, so I'm looking forward to them being standard. The kind of driving I do makes manual sort of impractical, and conventional automatic can be very annoying.
I should say though that, at least from my understanding, CVT will never be quite as efficient as a manual when it comes to highway mileage. The pulley design makes slippage sort of inherent, and although for city mileage that's allieviated by the engine being kept at the most efficient RPM, for highway mileage that doesn't help as much. Still more efficient than a regular automatic, though.
Streaming only makes sense when you want to set up an audio STATION. When you are streaming, you need to have content running all the time. I suppose you could just stream your current show over and over, but that would be lame.
A podcast is what you do when you want to distribute a radio SHOW. You have maybe an hour of content a week, maybe less. You record it and people listen to it when they want.
Re:Podcasting is right up there with blog...
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Podcasting
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But that's a stupid statement. Podcasting is never streamed, and it's not just an audio file online -- a podcast is episodic in nature.
Really, do people even bother to learn the meanings of the words they criticize?
I don't know how it happens, but when I heard the phrase misused on NPR's "All Things Considered", I officially gave up.
By the way, it's spelled "descend". Also, your second sentence is a comma splice; in this case your comma could be replaced with a semicolon or a period. You also need a question mark after "how the hell does that happen", not a period.
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The iPod mini has never been flash, period, end of story, never will be. The iPod shuffle was the only flash iPod before the iPod nano.
People get confused about this because the microdrive in the mini speaks the CompactFlash protocol, but it is a spinning platter disk all the same.
I think you are going a little bit far to claim that a point which is a matter of much dispute, with well-educated participants on both sides, is "basic economics". It's excessive to tell someone who does not support Bush's fiscal policies to "go back to school".
Certainly the government spent less under Clinton than under Bush. The fact that Bush prefers to finance the government via debt instead of taxes shouldn't fool anyone into thinking that his tax cuts represent fiscal restraint.
I suggest "Protocol Seven"
Lots of people in this thread are complaining about the Shuttle, which isn't relevant at all. I suppose because you use the SSME in your comparison, everyone acts like you are demanding that Rutan build a Shuttle, and that gets them going on about how the Shuttle's problems are all caused by NASA, etc.
Perhaps you should refer to some smaller modern cargo launchers? The Delta IV, for instance, includes a brand-spanking-new lower stage, and it still costs plenty to launch. Though the LOX/LH2 lower stage makes for really beautiful launch photos which are almost worth the $150 million.
The article ignored the boosters because it isn't about the Shuttle.
f _a_Delta_IV_Medium_rocket.jpg is a picture of the second stage of a Delta IV, which is a reasonably modern rocket that lifts a much smaller cargo into orbit than the Shuttle. This is a cargo rocket, not certified or intended for manned use, and not reusable. It's not a simple engine, either, though it is much simpler than an SSME.
There's a feeling around Slashdot that orbital launches aren't really very hard, that you could get to orbit with a simple vehicle, and the reason NASA has budget and safety problems is (alternately) that they are too careful or that they are not careful enough.
As for the boosters -- the boosters are simple because first-stage efficiency doesn't matter all that much. Upper-stage efficiency cascades down through the entire system, making it larger and more failure-prone. If we replaced the SSME and ET with a simple (and very heavy) solid rocket, we'd probably need a Saturn V to lift it 20km.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Second_stage_o
It's easy to suggest that rockets should be simple. Both government and large private corporations have put tremendous amounts of engineering work into building simpler rockets. It's not easy to do, and while other Slashdot posts claim that Rutan has some kind of engine breakthrough that he's keeping a secret, there's no reason to believe that.
If you think the change over dots are distracting, you should start looking for the cap codes, also known as "crap codes". These are patterns of dots splashed right across the middle of the frame. They are a completely useless anti-piracy measure.
Windows XP does not use the 9x codebase. It implements certain 9x functions on top of NT, but not with 9x code. There is no gradual transition between DOS/9x and NT. You are either running NT or you are not; the difference between the two is as large as the difference between MacOS 9 and OS X.
The solid fuel boosters provide lots of thrust, but they fire for a shorter period of time and provide basically none of the orbital velocity. The SSMEs do all the real work of getting into orbit.
Yes, but the chemical energy's contribution to the total mass of a lithium-ion battery, or fat for that matter, is negligible. Most of the energy in a battery is in the nuclear bonds, not the chemical bonds. Chemical reactions break only the chemical bonds.
That's why the E=mc^2 thing is irrelevant for chemical batteries. The chemical potential energy is not a function of the mass.
E=mc^2 doesn't have much to do with it, unless you are going to try to convert matter into energy (as is done, in some applications, so it's not a dumb idea). When you store energy chemically, it's not in the form of matter at all.
When you extract energy from your lithium-ion battery, the mass remains the same.
Sorry, but this argument doesn't hold a lot of water. Fat, for instance, has an energy density of 38 kilojoules per gram, whereas lithium-ion has a density of 0.72 kilojoules per gram. Fat, while flammable, is far less dangerous than lithium-ion.
Lots of materials have a high energy density and are still very safe and stable. The problem, of course, is that extracting electrical energy from them is not incredibly easy to do. However, we should not say that high energy density is inherently unsafe.
I don't know if it would solve any actual problems, but you have to admit that a giant air-conditioned retractable indoor launch pad building would be sort of cool.
c squared is not a speed. If c is in m/s then c squared will be in m^2/s^2. Multiplying by a mass in kilograms gives us an energy unit of kilogram square meters per second per second.
Note that a newton, the unit of force, is a kilogram-meter per second per second. The Joule, the unit of energy, is a newton-meter, or a kilogram square meter per second per second.
Floats? Have you never heard of quantum mechanics? Duh!
What if the extinction of some species causes that "cure" species to evolve to fill the niche?
Let's stop the ecological guessing games.
"I see you're trying to make a playlist. Would you like me to get jiggy with it?"
Laugh... I think you should spend your time on people with MINOR misconceptions about space, not people who think the solution to all our woes is to make everything heavier.
I wonder what kind of cost per kilogram we could get out of a rocket the size of the Sears Tower? We could call it "Project: Spectacular Failure".
...you insensitive clod!
Duh, we will convert energy to matter. The energy will come from the sun, and it will be harvested by our Dyson sphere. Once we've finished building it, we'll send it back in time so that we can collect enough energy to build it.
0.64% is 8% of 8%. Though it's actually only 7.3% of 8.71%. Hope that clears things up.
Maybe. Engineers figure out a lot of things, but it's hard for me to see how you'd eliminate slippage in a belt drive.
By the way, I've owned a CVT car for three and a half years. Don't know if you've driven one but it's a nifty experience. Once you learn what to expect from the transmission computer you can get a lot of control of the car's torque just through careful manipulation of the throttle.
I don't think I'll buy a non-CVT car again, so I'm looking forward to them being standard. The kind of driving I do makes manual sort of impractical, and conventional automatic can be very annoying.
I should say though that, at least from my understanding, CVT will never be quite as efficient as a manual when it comes to highway mileage. The pulley design makes slippage sort of inherent, and although for city mileage that's allieviated by the engine being kept at the most efficient RPM, for highway mileage that doesn't help as much. Still more efficient than a regular automatic, though.
Streaming only makes sense when you want to set up an audio STATION. When you are streaming, you need to have content running all the time. I suppose you could just stream your current show over and over, but that would be lame.
A podcast is what you do when you want to distribute a radio SHOW. You have maybe an hour of content a week, maybe less. You record it and people listen to it when they want.
But that's a stupid statement. Podcasting is never streamed, and it's not just an audio file online -- a podcast is episodic in nature.
Really, do people even bother to learn the meanings of the words they criticize?
I don't know how it happens, but when I heard the phrase misused on NPR's "All Things Considered", I officially gave up.
By the way, it's spelled "descend". Also, your second sentence is a comma splice; in this case your comma could be replaced with a semicolon or a period. You also need a question mark after "how the hell does that happen", not a period.