this paper is about proving existence. It's a physical test, it doesn't have to explain why it works.
Sorry, perhaps I wasn't too clear. I meant that the EM-drive setup (what generates the claimed thrust) wasn't properly explained and that it is probably like the testing setup anyway (i.e., too complex and intrincate to be reproduced/properly understood by anyone other than those with actual access to these installations).
That results don't have to make sense
In fact, they do have to make sense. Making sense is what differentiates science (common sense, logic, properly-understood phenomena, etc.) and other "fields" like magic, blind-trust-based ideas, luck, I-repeat-what-cannot-understand-because-it-sounds-cool or similar. Our current understanding might certainly be wrong, but after so many years and having confirmed/dismissed so many things, the most logical proceeding is assuming that something looking like a complete nonsense is a complete nonsense. More specifically, the most logical interpretation of bad-looking results generated under a highly-restricted and unclear setup with no justification other than "I don't understand it" is that they are wrong.
... are more or less the same ones than before (= very unclear setup, situation very unlikely to represent the claimed break of the conservation laws, highly restricted conditions not telling much, etc.).
Summary of my impressions after quickly reading this paper:
- The actual methodology generating the thrust isn't clearly explained, 95% of this paper is about the testing conditions (measurements, sources of error, assumptions, etc.). Although I assume that detailed explanations on this front might drive to a level of clarity similar to the one of the tests, as explained in the next point.
- Complex testing setup which is very difficult to be adequately understood from outside. It seems that only people with actual experience under these specific conditions (and, ideally, with physical access to an equivalent setup) are in a position to critically analyse these tests and be specific about the (very likely IMO) source(s) of error.
- Even by ignoring the two aforementioned points, plainly believing that everything is fine and just analysing the results, there are various issues which are somehow against the reliability of this experiment and related out-of-proportion assumptions. Examples in fig. 9: a maximum displacement below 0.005 micrometres (extrapolating such a top performance to interstellar travels is sensible?!); assuming that the error in the measurements remain constant under different conditions (?!); testing just 3 different scenarios (40, 60, 80 W) and getting counter-intuitive results (30/40 = 0.75; 106/60 = 1.76; 76/80 = 0.95; 60 W delivering the best performance?!). Fig. 19 is even more descriptive by showing a tremendous variability of the measurements; in the best-performing 60 W scenario, they vary from 130 to 45 micronewtons!! With only a few cases being similar enough (85 and 92); out of all the about 20 cases, there are only a few which are identical under the given conditions.
Although I didn't like the outcome of this election, and in fact felt quite sick inside for a while, I have come to accept it and I've decided to try to nurture some hope that things won't be as bad as I thought they would be.
Almost any error can be good if it allows you to learn from it. In any case, I do expect some medium-term problems for everyone. There might be some recession and the kind of weird-but-not-too-influential outputs which Trump is likely to provoke; equivalent situations might also occur in other countries (the poorer the country, the more problematic). Not exactly the end of the world, but certainly not good news.
What?! Nobody, under absolutely any circumstance, has ever dared to insult me in such a hurtful way!!! Sweet talking?! You have seriously hurt my feelings! LOL.
Germany and Sweden
Using these countries as an example of anything bad (have you ever been there? Or have you hugely misinterpreted isolated incidents you saw on TV?) tells me that our positions are way too different.
Your words don't represent the western civilisation. Your words only represent the ignorant and short-sighted ideas of someone who has never seen/done much. You might be even just repeating what others said before you. Ironically, you are likely to have been enjoying privileges during your whole life and haven't ever had the kind of problems you are afraid of. You think that everyone else wants what you have and that they don't know how to get it (or are too lazy or uneducated or poor or similar).
The reality is that your intransigent behaviour is precisely what increases the chances of your blind fears to actually materialise. Violence, hate, lack of understanding, intolerance, lack of opportunities, prejudices, short-sightedness or similar are the kind of things which provoke the appearance of what you don't want. Your just-in-case, unmotivatedly aggressive behaviour towards those different than you is likely to provoke their aggressive reactions. Do you want to feel safe, to be happy and to minimise the chances of anything bad happening to you and your beloved ones? Make an effort to understand and to be understood. Accept yourself and others and don't believe in generic magical solutions or bad guys. Remember that everyone else wants the same for themselves. The complexity of the world scares you? The world doesn't need your fear and you don't want to feel it, why keep doing it? If you cannot deal with something, just don't do it; nobody has requested your fear. Focus on your local community and the people you deal with on a daily basis. Just feeling hate or fear or frustration isn't an acceptable behaviour; not caring about what you don't want to understand would be 1000 times better. Stop thinking that what works for you, works for anyone else (or just deal with people thinking like you, if you prefer). Stop believing that everyone wants what you have (or replace fear with proudness and happiness about having a so-interesting-to-everyone-else life and fully enjoy it). Why do you think that sharing your fears will be helpful to anyone? Scared people tend to make really bad decisions. Also never forget that each single action has a reaction; better make sure that you know what you are doing before affecting others or plainly don't do anything. In summary: live and let live.
This is all what has happened with this device: stories, rumours, expectations, etc. and everything under very restricted (and highly doubtful) conditions.
research to happen in that direction
If there is even the slightest reasonable doubt that a so relevant part of our knowledge is faulty (or, at least, doesn't work in certain scenario), lots of people would try to confirm/dismiss this issue. Honestly, I don't see such a thing happening here, but who knows for sure?
I don't think so. This is just non-validated, rumour-like "news" and their conclusions are, at least, unreliable. But even in the unlikely case of actually working, existing physics should be able to explain it.
A scenario where it works (reliably, reproducibly and undoubtedly) without our current knowledge being able to explain why is, at this point, so improbable that can safely be considered impossible.
object "moving" at the speed of light (the photon). Is it still moving?
I think that your question summaries perfectly the main contribution of certain theories (and people) to science: why just focusing on providing an efficient framework to understand reality when you can come up with a fantastic world full of made-up problems?
IMO, my original comment and the previous paragraph are more than enough to understand my position and why I don't want to continue a conversation on these lines.
No. As per our current knowledge, there is no way to justify that something is moving unless a force was applied at some point in the direction of the movement. In space without friction, the most logical way to accomplish such a goal is via reaction (i.e., force backwards).
The bipartition energy/momentum seems to be the consequence of a not-perfect answer to a very complex reality which has been built over many years by many people across different fields. Both magnitudes (and what they imply, like the conservation laws) are mathematical representations of the overall valid phenomenon "movement can only be transmitted".
Technically speaking, no. Mass is mass and energy is energy. The T-shirt-based truth "mass is energy" is just an over-simplification (of the already-over-simplifying tools we use to understand our surrounding reality), to highlight that static mass is also associated to energy (only understandable within dynamic conditions) via the tremendous amount of interactions at the microscopic level. So, it basically means that a macroscopic mass is the aggregation of innumerable microscopic masses under dynamic conditions (= with energy) and, consequently, is associated with energy even in absence of movement.
If you're throwing photons out the back that you are creating then you are ejecting mass.
In order to apply the "mass is energy" idea to photons, they should be formed by other constituent parts (under dynamic conditions). In any case, photons are always moving (= have energy), so the applicability of the aforementioned idea to them is wrong for various reasons.
This isn't true. Newton laws have always worked under the conditions they were expected to work. They represent a macroscopic restricted model which can only work under very specific conditions (i.e., ideal conditions). The application of so generic ideas to more complex situations (e.g., real-life scenario or microscopic conditions) requires bringing further issues into consideration, what doesn't mean that they don't hold. For example: F = m*a works always, but can rarely be applied directly and correction factors are almost always required.
Relativity is one example
Relativity consisted in applying a new approach to deal with space/time (Lorentz Transformation) to the existing classical mechanics (Newton Laws among them). This theory only introduced a new calculation methodology to deal with different scenarios than the ones analysed until that moment. You can say many things about this theory (I can say myself quite a few ones), but it doesn't break Newton Laws; it is merely complementing classical mechanics under very specific virtually-never-happening conditions. Basically, this whole theory is just a correction factor which only becomes significant in very specific scenarios.
I stand corrected and do apologise for the generalisation (even positive generalisations aren't that good); for me, a properly-understanding-prone person, the aforementioned behaviour is quite logical.
By default, I do always try to adequately understand others by disregarding irrelevant side issues. But some bad past experiences have taught me that being over-understanding isn't the ideal proceeding when dealing with certain people, because they tend to misinterpret such a behaviour as a validation of their actions. On the other hand, being very clear about evident issues (e.g., I know that you are wrong and expect you to take responsibility for what you did) seems an excellent proceeding to avoid these problems.
What you describe is a quite standard behaviour among reasonable people and, presumably, scientists are reasonable. But one thing is being tolerant and understanding with a poorly-communicated sensible idea (or even with a not-that-sensible idea built over deep knowledge or perhaps just good faith or hard work); and a completely different story is being tolerant with a complete nonsense generated from a poor understanding (and, even worse, egoism and shortsightness).
NASA is very grateful for what SpaceX and people like Elon Musk can bring: fresh air and popular support to a field which is starting to find difficulties to justify their huge budgets. The recent Elon's claims have put them in a very delicate situation; they are a scientific and objective-correctness-driven organisation which cannot agree with impossible fantasies, but they also want all the associated support.
I have personally been very tolerant and understanding with people who throw a pure nonsense, want to be heard and, when all the results are wrong, don't want to take responsibility (or blame anything else). BTW, these people tend to misunderstand the word "empathy" as "I can do/say anything. Until proven wrong, I expect my opinion to be considered and to be part of all the important decisions. Once proven wrong, I expect my actions to be forgiven and forgotten because I didn’t know what I was doing or I was angry or I thought whatever, etc.", whose better definition would be "spoiled kid"; empathy means putting yourself in others’ shoes and, in that case, I would feel really ashamed, would expect to bear all the responsibility on my shoulders and would feel even bothered by anyone trying to unfairly reduce the impact of my actions. Note that these people tend to buy their way in and seem to be actually required, but this is only an illusion (precisely created by others like them). Engineering, science, objective-correctness should be exclusively managed by knowledgeable people; and big idea and money individuals should focus on what they are good at (enjoying their money and making more). If everyone focused on their specific field and, for anything outside it, relied on "I will let the experts there take care of everything, because I want to get a proper result", the world would be a much better place.
In summary, I don't think that NASA (or any other knowledge-prone organisation) should be tolerant or request some understanding for what doesn't make any sense. If NASA failed at anything, nobody (much less that kind of people; always asking for understanding, never delivering it) would be tolerant with them. If NASA started making shoes and they did a terrible job, everyone would merciless and rightfully attack them.
So, why do you read Slashdot? The Apple News? The Hillary News?
Not sure what I like the most of your comment: the underlying fanaticism of seriously thinking that only people like you can rightfully be in the places you are, that others have to behave according to your expectations and/or justify themselves to you (note that I have only met two types of persons with a behaviour on these lines: spoiled/extremely-clueless/never-saw-or-did-anything-relevant kids and invasive/disrespectful/in-denial living-in-the-middle-of-nowhere rednecks; not trying to offend you, just being informative); or associating my participation in Slashdot (or anywhere else) with liking Apple (or anything else).
FYI, I visit Slashdot to read appealing-to-me opinions (= not yours) about interesting news; even the news themselves are most of the times somehow irrelevant to me (mainly lately) and just represent the initial trigger of funny/interesting/etc. comments and conversations. Eventually, I might contribute with some realistic facts to dreamy nonsense like manned trips to Mars, quantum computing or upcoming nuclear fusion. I have nothing to do with Apple; I haven't ever owned an Apple device and I am not fan of tech toys or coolness-driven stuff (from Apple or any other brand); I am a pragmatic guy for whom trendy/cool-looking/similar stuff has no value; additionally, I am not a blind follower of anything/anyone (e.g., a specific brand, sport team or celebrity), but a casuistic and always-ready-to-motivatedly-change-my-mind enjoyer. I don't like politics, am not American and don't care about Hillary or the elections there; although I think that Trump being president would be bad news for everyone.
No idea who you are or what are your motivations to continue this (after a comment, which you should have understood as “let's stop seeing each other; it’s not you, it’s me”), but I will try it one last time by being a bit clearer: I don’t want to continue this conversation. Please, stop bothering me.
I disagree with too many parts of your post and that's why I will better not continue with this discussion, because it will most likely not reach anywhere.
In any case, note that this issue is quite irrelevant to me. IMO, it isn’t more than wrong assumptions over lies over disproportionate extrapolations over nonsensical general ideas over unrealistic expectations, etc. (= manned trip to Mars and all what it entails). Thus, even in case of considering that our positions were close enough to have a fruitful conversation, I might have made the same decision.
is very unlikely to ever happen. No matter how young you are, your health, your money, your contacts, your knowledge, how strongly you wish you were there, etc. A manned trip to Mars isn't realistic and the chances of it happening within the next many years are virtually zero.
As I see it, your only chance to accomplish your goal would involve being very wealthy (on the lines of Elon Musk), completely sure that you want it no matter what and willing to lose everything to get there. In that scenario, perhaps, a (very specific) human being might reach Mars and presumably die there. But even in case that such extremely unlikely conditions hold, the question would remain: why? To do what nobody did before? This has no value. Doing something relevant to someone which nobody did before, on the other hand, does have a value (not the case with a suicide 1-person-no-return trip to Mars).
IMO, only the ultimate act of hedonism from someone with not too clear ideas might allow such a trip to happen. And even then, I am sure that person would soon regret the decision (a beyond-imaginable-tough reality will be very cruel with a dreamy individual used to the maximum comfort). On the other hand, it is your life and expectations (and/or money; Elon, is it you?), so completely up to you.
Neither robots. A mining robot is a fantastic dream very far away from our current technological reality.
The closest things we have are huge tunnelling machines (as shown in a post above), which are basically big/heavy tools requiring lots of people and resources to be built, operated, fixed, etc. To not mention that the way in which they work/their dimensions are completely incompatible with the fact of being in Mars and the needs there (= not precisely building a tunnel under well-defined conditions).
No magic then? Just videos, escalating abstract ideas and luck (-> from your nick)? It seems easy. Logically, some minor engineering issues might still have to be addressed, but nothing too important as far as the really difficult part of seeing the global picture is almost done.
Are you planning to go to Mars with the first ships (Elon will certainly deliver, but perhaps a bit later than planned)? Or do you prefer to play much safer and wait a couple of years until the whole process will be perfectioned and Mars completely terraformed? Or are you perhaps planning to remain on Earth and give some support to the brave heroes in charge of the most demanding parts (hopes, dreams, videos and global pictures)?
I am not sure what you are talking about, but there is no problem in using conversion factors to convert from pound-force (lbf) to any other force unit (newton, kilogram-force, etc.). Note that the fact of belonging to different systems (i.e., metric vs. non-metric) is precisely what makes a conversion required. You might also convert (via simple conversion factor too) between two mass units like kilogram and pound (lb or lbm).
In one of my comments above, I am posting a link to the conversion-factor part of a library I developed where the different units are classified by type. All the units belonging to the same type can be converted among them (the factors are calculated with respect to the reference unit for the given type, whose value is always 1).
Apologies for being a bit pedantic, but kilogram-force isn't metric (better: SI, which is the current version of the metric system) despite kilogram being the mass unit. The SI unit of force is newton.
could I suppose redefine the pound if Earth's gravitational field changed that would have to be an affirmative action - it would not automatically change because the reference value is a chosen one, not a natural one
A change might also be provoked by an improvement in the precision of our technology (very unlikely to happen) or an agreement on a different value. These situations have happened relatively often by also affecting some inter-related units (e.g., the new AU value affected other units like parsec). If such a modification occurred, the pound-force definition would certainly be updated.
For purposes of defining the pound (force) we are talking about the rate of acceleration due to gravity under a standard (nominal earth's surface) gravitational field
A force is defined as a function of mass (any) and acceleration (any). The force unit in metric units is defined according to such generic ideas; that's why one newton equals kg*m/s2 (i.e., mass unit * acceleration unit). On the other hand, the English-system-based units are defined according to a different approach: each of them individually. The newton can always be divided into its constituent units; the pound-force cannot, because it has no constituent units. To convert pound-force to newtons (or to other force units; or to relate it to the corresponding mass unit, if you prefer), it was decided to rely on the constant acceleration of gravity. That's why pound-force depends on gravity (understood as the commonly-accepted constant) and its definition would have to be updated in case of changing such a constant.
In any case, note that the whole point of my comment was highlighting that the original statement "depends on gravity" was right; at least, as I understood it: a reference to the used-everywhere constant acceleration of gravity. Your comment interprets the word "gravity" in a way which, in my opinion, neither was that AC's intention nor is a usual interpretation. I do use gravity as synonym to 9.8... m/s2, commonly-accepted-as-acceleration-of-gravity constant and most of people get my intention right.
Slashdot Mirror
this paper is about proving existence. It's a physical test, it doesn't have to explain why it works.
Sorry, perhaps I wasn't too clear. I meant that the EM-drive setup (what generates the claimed thrust) wasn't properly explained and that it is probably like the testing setup anyway (i.e., too complex and intrincate to be reproduced/properly understood by anyone other than those with actual access to these installations).
That results don't have to make sense
In fact, they do have to make sense. Making sense is what differentiates science (common sense, logic, properly-understood phenomena, etc.) and other "fields" like magic, blind-trust-based ideas, luck, I-repeat-what-cannot-understand-because-it-sounds-cool or similar.
Our current understanding might certainly be wrong, but after so many years and having confirmed/dismissed so many things, the most logical proceeding is assuming that something looking like a complete nonsense is a complete nonsense. More specifically, the most logical interpretation of bad-looking results generated under a highly-restricted and unclear setup with no justification other than "I don't understand it" is that they are wrong.
... are more or less the same ones than before (= very unclear setup, situation very unlikely to represent the claimed break of the conservation laws, highly restricted conditions not telling much, etc.).
Summary of my impressions after quickly reading this paper:
- The actual methodology generating the thrust isn't clearly explained, 95% of this paper is about the testing conditions (measurements, sources of error, assumptions, etc.). Although I assume that detailed explanations on this front might drive to a level of clarity similar to the one of the tests, as explained in the next point.
- Complex testing setup which is very difficult to be adequately understood from outside. It seems that only people with actual experience under these specific conditions (and, ideally, with physical access to an equivalent setup) are in a position to critically analyse these tests and be specific about the (very likely IMO) source(s) of error.
- Even by ignoring the two aforementioned points, plainly believing that everything is fine and just analysing the results, there are various issues which are somehow against the reliability of this experiment and related out-of-proportion assumptions. Examples in fig. 9: a maximum displacement below 0.005 micrometres (extrapolating such a top performance to interstellar travels is sensible?!); assuming that the error in the measurements remain constant under different conditions (?!); testing just 3 different scenarios (40, 60, 80 W) and getting counter-intuitive results (30/40 = 0.75; 106/60 = 1.76; 76/80 = 0.95; 60 W delivering the best performance?!).
Fig. 19 is even more descriptive by showing a tremendous variability of the measurements; in the best-performing 60 W scenario, they vary from 130 to 45 micronewtons!! With only a few cases being similar enough (85 and 92); out of all the about 20 cases, there are only a few which are identical under the given conditions.
Although I didn't like the outcome of this election, and in fact felt quite sick inside for a while, I have come to accept it and I've decided to try to nurture some hope that things won't be as bad as I thought they would be.
Almost any error can be good if it allows you to learn from it. In any case, I do expect some medium-term problems for everyone. There might be some recession and the kind of weird-but-not-too-influential outputs which Trump is likely to provoke; equivalent situations might also occur in other countries (the poorer the country, the more problematic). Not exactly the end of the world, but certainly not good news.
sweet talking snake
What?! Nobody, under absolutely any circumstance, has ever dared to insult me in such a hurtful way!!! Sweet talking?! You have seriously hurt my feelings! LOL.
Germany and Sweden
Using these countries as an example of anything bad (have you ever been there? Or have you hugely misinterpreted isolated incidents you saw on TV?) tells me that our positions are way too different.
Your words don't represent the western civilisation. Your words only represent the ignorant and short-sighted ideas of someone who has never seen/done much. You might be even just repeating what others said before you. Ironically, you are likely to have been enjoying privileges during your whole life and haven't ever had the kind of problems you are afraid of. You think that everyone else wants what you have and that they don't know how to get it (or are too lazy or uneducated or poor or similar).
The reality is that your intransigent behaviour is precisely what increases the chances of your blind fears to actually materialise. Violence, hate, lack of understanding, intolerance, lack of opportunities, prejudices, short-sightedness or similar are the kind of things which provoke the appearance of what you don't want. Your just-in-case, unmotivatedly aggressive behaviour towards those different than you is likely to provoke their aggressive reactions. Do you want to feel safe, to be happy and to minimise the chances of anything bad happening to you and your beloved ones? Make an effort to understand and to be understood. Accept yourself and others and don't believe in generic magical solutions or bad guys. Remember that everyone else wants the same for themselves. The complexity of the world scares you? The world doesn't need your fear and you don't want to feel it, why keep doing it? If you cannot deal with something, just don't do it; nobody has requested your fear. Focus on your local community and the people you deal with on a daily basis. Just feeling hate or fear or frustration isn't an acceptable behaviour; not caring about what you don't want to understand would be 1000 times better. Stop thinking that what works for you, works for anyone else (or just deal with people thinking like you, if you prefer). Stop believing that everyone wants what you have (or replace fear with proudness and happiness about having a so-interesting-to-everyone-else life and fully enjoy it). Why do you think that sharing your fears will be helpful to anyone? Scared people tend to make really bad decisions. Also never forget that each single action has a reaction; better make sure that you know what you are doing before affecting others or plainly don't do anything. In summary: live and let live.
I recall reading stories about this
This is all what has happened with this device: stories, rumours, expectations, etc. and everything under very restricted (and highly doubtful) conditions.
research to happen in that direction
If there is even the slightest reasonable doubt that a so relevant part of our knowledge is faulty (or, at least, doesn't work in certain scenario), lots of people would try to confirm/dismiss this issue. Honestly, I don't see such a thing happening here, but who knows for sure?
I don't think so. This is just non-validated, rumour-like "news" and their conclusions are, at least, unreliable. But even in the unlikely case of actually working, existing physics should be able to explain it.
A scenario where it works (reliably, reproducibly and undoubtedly) without our current knowledge being able to explain why is, at this point, so improbable that can safely be considered impossible.
I meant "summarises".
object "moving" at the speed of light (the photon). Is it still moving?
I think that your question summaries perfectly the main contribution of certain theories (and people) to science: why just focusing on providing an efficient framework to understand reality when you can come up with a fantastic world full of made-up problems?
IMO, my original comment and the previous paragraph are more than enough to understand my position and why I don't want to continue a conversation on these lines.
No. As per our current knowledge, there is no way to justify that something is moving unless a force was applied at some point in the direction of the movement. In space without friction, the most logical way to accomplish such a goal is via reaction (i.e., force backwards).
The bipartition energy/momentum seems to be the consequence of a not-perfect answer to a very complex reality which has been built over many years by many people across different fields. Both magnitudes (and what they imply, like the conservation laws) are mathematical representations of the overall valid phenomenon "movement can only be transmitted".
Mass is energy
Technically speaking, no. Mass is mass and energy is energy. The T-shirt-based truth "mass is energy" is just an over-simplification (of the already-over-simplifying tools we use to understand our surrounding reality), to highlight that static mass is also associated to energy (only understandable within dynamic conditions) via the tremendous amount of interactions at the microscopic level. So, it basically means that a macroscopic mass is the aggregation of innumerable microscopic masses under dynamic conditions (= with energy) and, consequently, is associated with energy even in absence of movement.
If you're throwing photons out the back that you are creating then you are ejecting mass.
In order to apply the "mass is energy" idea to photons, they should be formed by other constituent parts (under dynamic conditions). In any case, photons are always moving (= have energy), so the applicability of the aforementioned idea to them is wrong for various reasons.
many situations where newtons laws don't hold up
This isn't true. Newton laws have always worked under the conditions they were expected to work. They represent a macroscopic restricted model which can only work under very specific conditions (i.e., ideal conditions). The application of so generic ideas to more complex situations (e.g., real-life scenario or microscopic conditions) requires bringing further issues into consideration, what doesn't mean that they don't hold. For example: F = m*a works always, but can rarely be applied directly and correction factors are almost always required.
Relativity is one example
Relativity consisted in applying a new approach to deal with space/time (Lorentz Transformation) to the existing classical mechanics (Newton Laws among them). This theory only introduced a new calculation methodology to deal with different scenarios than the ones analysed until that moment. You can say many things about this theory (I can say myself quite a few ones), but it doesn't break Newton Laws; it is merely complementing classical mechanics under very specific virtually-never-happening conditions. Basically, this whole theory is just a correction factor which only becomes significant in very specific scenarios.
I stand corrected and do apologise for the generalisation (even positive generalisations aren't that good); for me, a properly-understanding-prone person, the aforementioned behaviour is quite logical.
By default, I do always try to adequately understand others by disregarding irrelevant side issues. But some bad past experiences have taught me that being over-understanding isn't the ideal proceeding when dealing with certain people, because they tend to misinterpret such a behaviour as a validation of their actions. On the other hand, being very clear about evident issues (e.g., I know that you are wrong and expect you to take responsibility for what you did) seems an excellent proceeding to avoid these problems.
What you describe is a quite standard behaviour among reasonable people and, presumably, scientists are reasonable. But one thing is being tolerant and understanding with a poorly-communicated sensible idea (or even with a not-that-sensible idea built over deep knowledge or perhaps just good faith or hard work); and a completely different story is being tolerant with a complete nonsense generated from a poor understanding (and, even worse, egoism and shortsightness).
NASA is very grateful for what SpaceX and people like Elon Musk can bring: fresh air and popular support to a field which is starting to find difficulties to justify their huge budgets. The recent Elon's claims have put them in a very delicate situation; they are a scientific and objective-correctness-driven organisation which cannot agree with impossible fantasies, but they also want all the associated support.
I have personally been very tolerant and understanding with people who throw a pure nonsense, want to be heard and, when all the results are wrong, don't want to take responsibility (or blame anything else). BTW, these people tend to misunderstand the word "empathy" as "I can do/say anything. Until proven wrong, I expect my opinion to be considered and to be part of all the important decisions. Once proven wrong, I expect my actions to be forgiven and forgotten because I didn’t know what I was doing or I was angry or I thought whatever, etc.", whose better definition would be "spoiled kid"; empathy means putting yourself in others’ shoes and, in that case, I would feel really ashamed, would expect to bear all the responsibility on my shoulders and would feel even bothered by anyone trying to unfairly reduce the impact of my actions. Note that these people tend to buy their way in and seem to be actually required, but this is only an illusion (precisely created by others like them). Engineering, science, objective-correctness should be exclusively managed by knowledgeable people; and big idea and money individuals should focus on what they are good at (enjoying their money and making more). If everyone focused on their specific field and, for anything outside it, relied on "I will let the experts there take care of everything, because I want to get a proper result", the world would be a much better place.
In summary, I don't think that NASA (or any other knowledge-prone organisation) should be tolerant or request some understanding for what doesn't make any sense. If NASA failed at anything, nobody (much less that kind of people; always asking for understanding, never delivering it) would be tolerant with them. If NASA started making shoes and they did a terrible job, everyone would merciless and rightfully attack them.
So, why do you read Slashdot? The Apple News? The Hillary News?
Not sure what I like the most of your comment: the underlying fanaticism of seriously thinking that only people like you can rightfully be in the places you are, that others have to behave according to your expectations and/or justify themselves to you (note that I have only met two types of persons with a behaviour on these lines: spoiled/extremely-clueless/never-saw-or-did-anything-relevant kids and invasive/disrespectful/in-denial living-in-the-middle-of-nowhere rednecks; not trying to offend you, just being informative); or associating my participation in Slashdot (or anywhere else) with liking Apple (or anything else).
FYI, I visit Slashdot to read appealing-to-me opinions (= not yours) about interesting news; even the news themselves are most of the times somehow irrelevant to me (mainly lately) and just represent the initial trigger of funny/interesting/etc. comments and conversations. Eventually, I might contribute with some realistic facts to dreamy nonsense like manned trips to Mars, quantum computing or upcoming nuclear fusion. I have nothing to do with Apple; I haven't ever owned an Apple device and I am not fan of tech toys or coolness-driven stuff (from Apple or any other brand); I am a pragmatic guy for whom trendy/cool-looking/similar stuff has no value; additionally, I am not a blind follower of anything/anyone (e.g., a specific brand, sport team or celebrity), but a casuistic and always-ready-to-motivatedly-change-my-mind enjoyer. I don't like politics, am not American and don't care about Hillary or the elections there; although I think that Trump being president would be bad news for everyone.
No idea who you are or what are your motivations to continue this (after a comment, which you should have understood as “let's stop seeing each other; it’s not you, it’s me”), but I will try it one last time by being a bit clearer: I don’t want to continue this conversation. Please, stop bothering me.
I disagree with too many parts of your post and that's why I will better not continue with this discussion, because it will most likely not reach anywhere.
In any case, note that this issue is quite irrelevant to me. IMO, it isn’t more than wrong assumptions over lies over disproportionate extrapolations over nonsensical general ideas over unrealistic expectations, etc. (= manned trip to Mars and all what it entails). Thus, even in case of considering that our positions were close enough to have a fruitful conversation, I might have made the same decision.
no sarcasm here
I am sorry to read that because your
First chance I got
is very unlikely to ever happen. No matter how young you are, your health, your money, your contacts, your knowledge, how strongly you wish you were there, etc. A manned trip to Mars isn't realistic and the chances of it happening within the next many years are virtually zero.
As I see it, your only chance to accomplish your goal would involve being very wealthy (on the lines of Elon Musk), completely sure that you want it no matter what and willing to lose everything to get there. In that scenario, perhaps, a (very specific) human being might reach Mars and presumably die there. But even in case that such extremely unlikely conditions hold, the question would remain: why? To do what nobody did before? This has no value. Doing something relevant to someone which nobody did before, on the other hand, does have a value (not the case with a suicide 1-person-no-return trip to Mars).
IMO, only the ultimate act of hedonism from someone with not too clear ideas might allow such a trip to happen. And even then, I am sure that person would soon regret the decision (a beyond-imaginable-tough reality will be very cruel with a dreamy individual used to the maximum comfort). On the other hand, it is your life and expectations (and/or money; Elon, is it you?), so completely up to you.
sure as hell won't have any humans
Neither robots. A mining robot is a fantastic dream very far away from our current technological reality.
The closest things we have are huge tunnelling machines (as shown in a post above), which are basically big/heavy tools requiring lots of people and resources to be built, operated, fixed, etc. To not mention that the way in which they work/their dimensions are completely incompatible with the fact of being in Mars and the needs there (= not precisely building a tunnel under well-defined conditions).
No magic then? Just videos, escalating abstract ideas and luck (-> from your nick)? It seems easy. Logically, some minor engineering issues might still have to be addressed, but nothing too important as far as the really difficult part of seeing the global picture is almost done.
Are you planning to go to Mars with the first ships (Elon will certainly deliver, but perhaps a bit later than planned)? Or do you prefer to play much safer and wait a couple of years until the whole process will be perfectioned and Mars completely terraformed? Or are you perhaps planning to remain on Earth and give some support to the brave heroes in charge of the most demanding parts (hopes, dreams, videos and global pictures)?
Sarcasm content of this post: 100%.
Apparently, I wrote this post too soon, because it didn't become news until some hours later.
At least, this is what they said in their Twitter account.
I am not sure what you are talking about, but there is no problem in using conversion factors to convert from pound-force (lbf) to any other force unit (newton, kilogram-force, etc.). Note that the fact of belonging to different systems (i.e., metric vs. non-metric) is precisely what makes a conversion required. You might also convert (via simple conversion factor too) between two mass units like kilogram and pound (lb or lbm).
In one of my comments above, I am posting a link to the conversion-factor part of a library I developed where the different units are classified by type. All the units belonging to the same type can be converted among them (the factors are calculated with respect to the reference unit for the given type, whose value is always 1).
Apologies for being a bit pedantic, but kilogram-force isn't metric (better: SI, which is the current version of the metric system) despite kilogram being the mass unit. The SI unit of force is newton.
could I suppose redefine the pound if Earth's gravitational field changed that would have to be an affirmative action - it would not automatically change because the reference value is a chosen one, not a natural one
A change might also be provoked by an improvement in the precision of our technology (very unlikely to happen) or an agreement on a different value. These situations have happened relatively often by also affecting some inter-related units (e.g., the new AU value affected other units like parsec). If such a modification occurred, the pound-force definition would certainly be updated.
For purposes of defining the pound (force) we are talking about the rate of acceleration due to gravity under a standard (nominal earth's surface) gravitational field
A force is defined as a function of mass (any) and acceleration (any). The force unit in metric units is defined according to such generic ideas; that's why one newton equals kg*m/s2 (i.e., mass unit * acceleration unit). On the other hand, the English-system-based units are defined according to a different approach: each of them individually. The newton can always be divided into its constituent units; the pound-force cannot, because it has no constituent units. To convert pound-force to newtons (or to other force units; or to relate it to the corresponding mass unit, if you prefer), it was decided to rely on the constant acceleration of gravity. That's why pound-force depends on gravity (understood as the commonly-accepted constant) and its definition would have to be updated in case of changing such a constant.
In any case, note that the whole point of my comment was highlighting that the original statement "depends on gravity" was right; at least, as I understood it: a reference to the used-everywhere constant acceleration of gravity. Your comment interprets the word "gravity" in a way which, in my opinion, neither was that AC's intention nor is a usual interpretation. I do use gravity as synonym to 9.8... m/s2, commonly-accepted-as-acceleration-of-gravity constant and most of people get my intention right.