But anyway, not to belabour my point, but that was that an explosion should be no more powerful then that of a chemical rocket...
Dude, you say this like I didn't already know it. Haven't I proven I have a brain in my head at this point? Why can't you just say "oops, I was wrong".
For example, if the new fuel had a lower Isp, then more energy would be required, the explosion would be much larger, and your argument goes out the window.
Okay. I was however just using an order-of-magnitude approximation.
I hate to belabour the point, but it's not even the same order of magnitude. A typical trip to Mars (the Mars Direct at least) can be achieved with a delta-v of 4.5 km/s from low Earth orbit. With chemical rockets, you'd need propellant equal to 1.7 times the mass of the spacecraft, while this antimatter doohickey only needs propellant equal to 5% the mass of the spacecraft. It's not even close.
Yes, they are dimensionally compatible. But you made the claim that "when you give a ratio as, say, 10:1, this means ten parts out of eleven: you add both sides to give the total number of parts". That's what I'm responding to.
How do you explain a P/E ratio then? The sum "price + earnings" is meaningless. Same for the mass ratio of a rocket: the sum "dry mass + wet mass" is equally meaningless.
You'd expect that as any kind of rocket would need approximately the same total energy for a trip that an explosion, all the energy being released at once, would be similar in size.
That's false. Antimatter rockets have a dramatically larger specific impulse than chemical rockets, making them much more efficient. Therefore, antimatter rockets need much less total energy for the trip.
I imagine the antimatter explosion is as large as the chemical one only because the former detonates much more quickly, but I really have no idea.
What we're talking about here is dimensional analysis. The cost of positrons is not a ratio; it is a quantity. That quantity happens to be described by a unit called the "dollar / gram", and it happens to be 25 billion of those units. Why the division operator? Because if you make 4 grams for $100B, you compute the cost of the positrons by dividing the dollars by the grams.
Slashdot Mirror
We have here a textbook example of irony.
Thanks for taking the time to do this.
As for why they hyphenated it, I can't answer that one...
Isn't this big by a couple orders of magnitude? I've written an entire Java interpreter in 23,000 lines of C.
If they don't get that "this is a test" message after a few seconds, I bet that gets their heart pumping.
Yeah, good points. Sorry about that.
For example, if the new fuel had a lower Isp, then more energy would be required, the explosion would be much larger, and your argument goes out the window.
Sheesh.
Now I know I don't need to expend any more thought on your list because we obviously have very different taste in movies.
I'm willing to bet the "make them wait 45 minutes" test has no predictive value whatsoever.
Are you for real?
15 dollars
3 grams
-> 5 dollars/gram
I can explain it more slowly if you need some time to get caught up.
Though, now that you mention it, I do disagree with that too. I don't see any reason why I can't say the ratio of miles to gallons is 35:1.
Yes, they are dimensionally compatible. But you made the claim that "when you give a ratio as, say, 10:1, this means ten parts out of eleven: you add both sides to give the total number of parts". That's what I'm responding to.
How do you explain a P/E ratio then? The sum "price + earnings" is meaningless. Same for the mass ratio of a rocket: the sum "dry mass + wet mass" is equally meaningless.
I imagine the antimatter explosion is as large as the chemical one only because the former detonates much more quickly, but I really have no idea.
What we're talking about here is dimensional analysis. The cost of positrons is not a ratio; it is a quantity. That quantity happens to be described by a unit called the "dollar / gram", and it happens to be 25 billion of those units. Why the division operator? Because if you make 4 grams for $100B, you compute the cost of the positrons by dividing the dollars by the grams.
I'd like to believe you have found the Silver Bullet. Any examples of real complex systems you have developed with it?
This is the kind of comment that makes me wish there was a Score:6, Funny.
What part of that article is relevant to the topic of the new AMD processors?
Wow.
Oh yeah. It will get you blacklisted from Google because it is against their rules.