"Do you crazy americans never look back at the cold war and thing "oh, we were just paranoid fools""
Actually I look back at the Cold War and think: We Won! Thank God we were able to rid the world of an Evil empire and free its satellite nations. Yeah, Imagine that... I think of a government that slaughtered tens of millions of people and oppressed hundreds of millions to impose its will as "evil". I guess I'm just naïve for not seeing our slow and imperfect stumbling toward a freer and more decent world as morally equivalent to the Soviet Union's "noble" experiment in communism. I must have slept late the day during the Cold War when the United States killed everyone.
My lesson from the Cold War: "Better Dead than Red" might get you Dead, but if you are careful and patient enough it might get you None of the Above. "Better Red than Dead" gets you Red if you are lucky and Dead if you aren't. What lesson did you learn?
Ah, yes. Your brilliant detective work found me out. In fact, I am a PR flack for the nuclear power cosnpiracy and I have been posting to Slashdot for years to get good karma that I can then use to decieve the all-important Slashdot community about the "benifits" of atomic power... all to benifit my evil masters. Bwa-ha-ha-ha
Actually the irony is that I work in the oil business. I have no stock in any nuclear capable power companies. My opinions on the technical merits of atomic power come mostly from my old college Nuclear Engineering textbook which is (honest to God) autographed by none other than Ed Teller. Dr. Teller wasn't one of the authors, but who could pass up the opportunity to have him autograph their textbook.
The only reason I even posted this reply was just to brag about getting to meet a real Martian (as Dr. Teller jokingly claims to be).
Those links seem to have spaces in them that you have to remove to get them to work properly. One is right before "html" and the other is between "/" and "app". If you use them you'll see what I mean; my browser sticks "%20" where the offending space was.
To answer your last question first. I am not really a rocket scientist. I am doing some research on space propulsion, but it is beamed propulsion not rocket propulsion. Saying that you are a rocketless scientist just makes people look at you funny, though. Besides I am an engineer not a scientst. But I do have a fairly good understanding of rockets even though I am trying to make them obsolete.
If you have done a lot of classical physics, then you should know what impulse is. In engineering, whenever you see "specific" in front of an engineering term it means that value has been normalized by dividing it by some other important system variable. This technique allows easy comparison between otherwise different things. For example looking at the Fuel Consumption of an unknown engine doesn't tell you how efficient that engine is. What might be great for a drag racer would be terrible for a lawn mower. By dividing the fuel flow by the power of the engine, though, you get Specific Fuel Consumption; that tells you how much fuel the mystery engine is burning per horsepower produced. So you now have a variable that can give meaningful efficiency information regardless of how big the engine is; it works just as well for lawn mowers as for automobiles. The "specific" in Specific Impulse tells you that the impulse imparted to the rocket is normalized to the fuel consumed. So, as you would expect, Specific Impulse has units of Impulse divided by Mass and can be calculated from the impulse the rocket receives divided by the fuel burned in producing that impulse. In reality, it is usually determined by looking at the thrust of the engine (Force) divided by the rate of fuel consumption (Mass per unit time); it gives you the same answer and is easier to measure. Impulse has metric units of Newton*seconds, which should reduce to kg*m/s. Mass has units of kg. So specific impulse (impulse delivered / mass of fuel) should reduce to m/s... not s. And that makes sense because I previously mentioned that Metric loving European rocket scientists often prefer the use Exhaust Velocity rather than Specific Impulse as their figure of merit and that that was OK because they were basically doing the same thing. It is not surprising then that Isp and Ve would have the same units (if you really did Isp units correctly, which is not done).
I am certainly not saying G Dyson is stupid, but perhaps he is giving the "babies are brought by the stork" level of explanation. That is done surprisingly often in aerospace because sometimes the real explanation is both unimportant and very difficult to understand (it IS rocket science). Most school textbooks just tell the kids that the shape of the airfoil forces the air to faster over the top of the wing than the bottom and that makes it generate lift. A few will explain Bernoulli's equation. And most kids go home happy. Very few kids think to ask what is special about an airfoil that forces the air to go faster on the top so why bore the 9,999 others by trying to explain the Kutta condition. Instead, let the one curious one go get a degree in aeronautical engineering.
As for references, I went looking for them. At first I found NOTHING to support my derivation and I thought that perhaps it had been too long since I did any rocket calculations and that my memory was going bad. Finally I found the following two references that support my claim (and my perhaps not completely faulty memory):
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-440 4/ app-b8.htm (look down to the section on Specific Impulse)
and
http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/specific_impuls e. html
Fortunately one of them is from NASA, and despite some of their screw ups that I like to give them a hard time about they still have some people who know rocket science. I did find enough webpages that throw that darn gee-sub-cee in there that I am going to have to double check some things. I suspect that the people that are arguing for usin
No, shielding for launched radioactive waste has been developed that can withstand a "worst case" failure.
I believe (but I'll check on it tonight and correct things if I am wrong; I happen to have a paper on spacelaunch of nuclear materials at my apt.) that the "worst case" they considered was where the launcher fails catastrophically and then the falling container goes down a smokestack into a steel smelter. No, I am not kidding. I believe they also designed it to withstand: launcher blows up and container lands on a train track where it is hit by a large freight train.
Electric power utilities have already figured in the decommissioning costs in the cost to run the power plant. The term for such costs are "stranded costs", and I believe the accounting for them was actually pioneered by the nuclear power industry.
The radioactive material you refer to is not "highly radioactive", it is low level radioactive waste. They are not going to put whole used power plants (or old nuclear subs) into Yucca Mountain.
"When was the last time a coal powerplant had a catastrophic failure that endangered all who lived near it? "
Aug. 15, 1999. Myrna, Georgia (near Atlanta). At least that is the lastest one I know of.
I was almost killed in a coal boiler explosion in Tennessee in 1993, but that probably didn't "endanger" anyone outside the facility.
Most coal disasters are actually at the mines (methane or coal dust) not at the plants (coal dust or steam pressure). Of course, many people have their life expectancy reduced by polution from air and groundwater pollution that comes from using coal for power, but those deaths are spread out over distance and time so they seem less important.
For destructive potential to nearby residents it is hard to beat hydroelectric dams, though.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip14app.htm
http://www.msha.gov/S&HINFO/TECHRPT/FANDE/CDUSTE X. pdf
Well, the first step in reducing waste costs would probably need to be changing the law in the U.S. so that nuclear waste could be reprocessed. That would greatly reduce the mass of waste that needed to be disposed of. Burying the waste is probably the best way to deal with it (it will still be there when you realize that it is not waste at all and that you need to dig it up so you can use it to build flying cars or transporters or whatever).
I'm not sure that Yucca Mountain is a hidden cost. Don't nuclear power producers have to pay a fee to the gov't to fund the waste disposal (even though the gov't hasn't actually disposed of it yet)?
Even if Yucca Mountain isn't a hidden cost, certainly nuclear energy does have hidden costs of some sort, but before you write it off think about the hidden costs of producing that power with coal plants. Even if you assume that the greenhouse threat is hugely overstated, the reduction in air quality from emissions is still a large societal cost for non-nuclear options.
"No structure - geological or man-built can do that."
So you shoot it out of the solar system (delta v for that is actually smaller than dropping it into the sun). When you reprocess the waste to reduce its mass, you make it hot enough for use in RTG power sources that can run sensors and a transmitter. You wind up with a large number of space probes to explore near interstellar space and you get rid of the waste.
I would prefer fusion, but that hasn't been done yet. Next on my list would be space based solar power, but sadly that might take longer to be ready than fusion. The only answer that is right-here-right-now is nuclear fission. Done properly it will not only reduce carbon emissions it will even reduce the amount of radiation released into the environment (it seems counterintuitive, but a typical coal power plant will release more radioisotopes into the environment than a typical nuke plant on a per Megawatt of power produced basis).
People just have to get over their knee-jerk prejudices. Unfortunately it may be easier to solve the engineering & infrastructure problems with fusion or space solar power than it would be to get the newsmedia to engage in a sane discussion about the risks and benefits of nuclear fission. Too many of them got everything they know about nuclear power from watching China Syndrome.
"Specific impulse is measured in seconds no matter what system you use, imperial or metric."
Not true! In metric the unit of specific impulse (Isp) of a rocket is Newton*second/kilogram.
The real unit of specific impulse in Imperial is lb*s/lb where the pounds on top are pounds of force and the pounds on the bottom are pounds of mass. Pounds of force and pounds of mass are NOT the same thing and cannot really be canceled out because they are different units (if it helps think of it as lb*s/slug), but everyone cheats and cancels them out anyway because they sound similar. It may seem shocking that rocket scientists would do something so wrong, but I have only found one person (some anal retentive guy at JPL) in all of rocket science who regularly uses the real Imperial units of Isp.
You can only measure Isp in seconds if you use Imperial and cheat on the pound/pound cancellation but even otherwise metric loving European rocket scientists use the Imperial "seconds of Isp" convention. Metric rocket scientists prefer to use exhaust velocity (which basically measures the same thing) rather than Isp to characterize their rockets so they don't have to ruin the purity of their metricness.
I admit that exhaust velocity would SEEM to be the better way to go, but for some strange reason rockets seem to blow up more when you use it. The reliability of specific impulse measured rockets compared with exhaust velocity measured rockets may be due to the fact that exhaust velocity is an elegant term to use theoretically, but specific impulse its easier to measure experimentally on an engine test stand (divide the thrust by propellant mass flow to get Isp). Preference to specific impulse would suggest that the rocket calculations had been done by someone who has spent a lot of time experimenting. All other things being equal an engine that has been tested more will be more reliable. Whatever the reason, don't buy a rocket from a guy that insists on using Ve rather than Isp. I would make an exception for V2s.
"At least in my classes, engineers are still strongly inclined towards imperial units. "
As an American engineer I prefer Imperial units. The problem with metric is that all the conversion factors are 10.
If I do a "sanity check" on a metric calculation and find that it is about 10 times too big then I know I probably have a conversion error... somewhere. If I do a "sanity check" on an Imperial calculation and find it is a little over 10 times too big, then I immediately know to start by checking my inches to feet conversions. If it were about 3 times I would first check feet to yards; a little more than 5000 times suggests a problem in feet to miles. The odd conversion factors actually help me recognize and diagnose math errors. Of course, it used to be much harder to multiply by 5280 than it was to multiply by 1000 back when the metric systen was developed, but thanks to the invention of the calculator the difference in effort is now very minor.
And Imperial is obviously the system of units that God intended to be used for rocket science because it allows (with a little cheating) you to have specific impulse measured in Seconds.
The ONLY reason I can see to use Metric rather than Imperial is to get rid of that darn gee-sub-cee.
"The government cooperates, keeping oil prices low."
I'm in the oil business, and I can tell you that the gov't does NOT keep oil prices low. In fact, there is a cartel of gov'ts whose specific declared goal is to artificially inflate oil prices, and they do a very good job of it: OPEC. OPEC's stated target price for oil is between $22 and $28 per barrel and they do a good job of keeping it there right now. As Russia and China's production increases, and depending on what the new Iraq's attitude is toward OPEC, that situation might change. But without the deliberate efforts of several national gov'ts, the price of oil would almost certainly be below $20 per barrel.
The price of gasoline is artificially high above and beyond the effects of OPEC. Taxes on gasoline are much higher than on most all other consumer goods. Here in the U.S. about half the cost of gasoline is taxation. In Europe it is usually higher than this. Gas tax supposedly goes to pay for the cost of maintaining roads (which makes sense to me, since most of the gas is being used by motorists who are driving on those roads). I have heard arguments that the gas tax is artifically high to make up for deliberately low diesel tax (compared to the amount of road wear by gasoline vs. diesel powered vehicles) as a subsidy to the over-the-road trucking industry, but I don't know if I believe it.
The point is, that I don't know of any national government that is "cooperating" in keeping oil and gasoline prices low for the purpose of subsidising large passenger vehicles. I do know of several national governments that have a policy of keeping those prices artifically high.
I agree and disagree with you. I agree that the gov't can and should have speedlimits... on GOVERNMENT roads (and I think that the Fed. Gov't shouldn't mandate maximum speed limits on State or Local roads). If I build a road on my own property, I ought to be able to drive as fast as I want on it. Not many people want to build a racetrack or dragstrip in their wheat field, but I think it should be legal for those who do it.
Similarly, I stated that I thought persons competing for Gov't contracts (or getting subsidies, ect.) should be required to be an equal opportunity employer. I think that if some nut group up in Montana wants to have a "whites only" society, and they don't participate in any gov't programs or contracts, then that ought to be legal. I wouldn't think it right, but I would be ok with it being legal. Same for someone who wanted to set up a charity that only helped redheads. It ought to be ineligible for participation in gov't programs, but we shouldn't go and seize their assets and arrest their staff because they don't want to give their own money to people THEY think don't need or deserve it (though I would be suspicous that they were trying to tunnel into a bank). If I want to only give money to black panhandlers because I feel guilty about my Southern ancestors oppresing their ancestors, should I be arrested for it?
I think your correct in saying that your broad reaching "social contract" argument is based on a belief in social engineering. I assume you mean engineering others to do what you like, not in the belief that you should be engineered to behave like what the politburo thinks you should do. I would probably not go as far as your Libertarian friend, because I do believe that individual actions that have a signficant externality are legitimate targets for public regulation, on those specific externality issues. But, I think that such regulation and what constitutes a significant externality that would justify it have to be defined in a very limited way and non externality-specific regulation should be avoided or else we would wind up being no different than the Commies who tried to create a New Soviet Man to what they thought people should be.
Saying that because you use the public roads, you must obey traffic laws makes sense to me. Endangering other drivers would meet my definition of a significant externality, and the traffic laws specifically address that issue. Saying that because you use the public roads you cannot just hire someone to be your gardner or mechanic based on anything except gov't approved criteria does not make sense to me and seems to obviously be an excuse to attempt to make a New American Man.
If I want to be told how I should behave (and what I should think), I'll go to church. Gov't should stay on the other side of Jefferson's "Wall of Separation". Be careful of tearing down that wall to do social engineering; you never know when you'll find that the politicians who get put in charge of engineering YOU are from the "wrong" party.
"I suppose you think it's perfictly alright for a club keep out black people? or for a company not to hire mexicans? "
That depends on what the club or company does, but in almost all cases I'd say its not "perfectly alright". I would think it is bigoted.
It is also not legal.
But, I think it should be legal.
GASP! Yes, that's right, I think it should be legal for other people to do something that I think is morally wrong. I know that is a strange concept to some people, but I happen to think that if some lefthanded dentist without tonsils wants to set up a business, club, or other organization that only hires or serves or offers membership to other lefthanded dentists without tonsils... then I think he ought to be free to do that. I, on the otherhand, should also be free to not like (and not do business with) stupid bigots. But, as long as they don't infringe on someone else's rights*, they should be free to associate with, do business with, and snub whoever they want. I do think that making such non-equal opportunity organziations ineligble for gov't funding would be a good policy.
* Before anyone tries telling me that people have a Right to a certain job, or a Right to a certain house, or a Right to a car loan, or a Right to be a member of the Left-handed No-tonsil Destist Association, I think I should point out that I am niether a socialist nor a commie, so I don't think those are real Rights.
How will increasing taxes cause an economic rebound?
If Feingold gave a rat's behind about economic recovery, why doesn't she support a $100billion dollar SPENDING cut. Gov't debt decreases the money available to the rest of the economy by increasing interest rates; taxes reduce the money available to the rest of the economy by, well giving it to the gov't. The only way either of those would help grow the economy would be if Gov't was better at creating new wealth than the private sector. If you think that is true, then I suggest you take a look at what Sen. Byrd manages to get his pork money spent on.
Slashdot Mirror
"Do you crazy americans never look back at the cold war and thing "oh, we were just paranoid fools""
Actually I look back at the Cold War and think: We Won! Thank God we were able to rid the world of an Evil empire and free its satellite nations. Yeah, Imagine that... I think of a government that slaughtered tens of millions of people and oppressed hundreds of millions to impose its will as "evil". I guess I'm just naïve for not seeing our slow and imperfect stumbling toward a freer and more decent world as morally equivalent to the Soviet Union's "noble" experiment in communism. I must have slept late the day during the Cold War when the United States killed everyone.
My lesson from the Cold War: "Better Dead than Red" might get you Dead, but if you are careful and patient enough it might get you None of the Above. "Better Red than Dead" gets you Red if you are lucky and Dead if you aren't. What lesson did you learn?
Free as in "free to voice your opinion... as long is it is not a threat to The Party, in which case we'll kill you."
Ah, yes. Your brilliant detective work found me out. In fact, I am a PR flack for the nuclear power cosnpiracy and I have been posting to Slashdot for years to get good karma that I can then use to decieve the all-important Slashdot community about the "benifits" of atomic power... all to benifit my evil masters. Bwa-ha-ha-ha
Actually the irony is that I work in the oil business. I have no stock in any nuclear capable power companies. My opinions on the technical merits of atomic power come mostly from my old college Nuclear Engineering textbook which is (honest to God) autographed by none other than Ed Teller. Dr. Teller wasn't one of the authors, but who could pass up the opportunity to have him autograph their textbook.
The only reason I even posted this reply was just to brag about getting to meet a real Martian (as Dr. Teller jokingly claims to be).
Carnage and Culture or anything else from http://www.jerrypournelle.com/reviews/books.htm
She
The White Company
To Ride, Shoot Straight, and Speak the Truth
Any C.S. Forrester book
Any of Gerrold's The War on the Chtorr series (Ok, one Sci-Fi recommendation)
The Federalist Papers
Those links seem to have spaces in them that you have to remove to get them to work properly. One is right before "html" and the other is between "/" and "app". If you use them you'll see what I mean; my browser sticks "%20" where the offending space was.
To answer your last question first. I am not really a rocket scientist. I am doing some research on space propulsion, but it is beamed propulsion not rocket propulsion. Saying that you are a rocketless scientist just makes people look at you funny, though. Besides I am an engineer not a scientst. But I do have a fairly good understanding of rockets even though I am trying to make them obsolete.
If you have done a lot of classical physics, then you should know what impulse is. In engineering, whenever you see "specific" in front of an engineering term it means that value has been normalized by dividing it by some other important system variable. This technique allows easy comparison between otherwise different things. For example looking at the Fuel Consumption of an unknown engine doesn't tell you how efficient that engine is. What might be great for a drag racer would be terrible for a lawn mower. By dividing the fuel flow by the power of the engine, though, you get Specific Fuel Consumption; that tells you how much fuel the mystery engine is burning per horsepower produced. So you now have a variable that can give meaningful efficiency information regardless of how big the engine is; it works just as well for lawn mowers as for automobiles. The "specific" in Specific Impulse tells you that the impulse imparted to the rocket is normalized to the fuel consumed. So, as you would expect, Specific Impulse has units of Impulse divided by Mass and can be calculated from the impulse the rocket receives divided by the fuel burned in producing that impulse. In reality, it is usually determined by looking at the thrust of the engine (Force) divided by the rate of fuel consumption (Mass per unit time); it gives you the same answer and is easier to measure. Impulse has metric units of Newton*seconds, which should reduce to kg*m/s. Mass has units of kg. So specific impulse (impulse delivered / mass of fuel) should reduce to m/s... not s. And that makes sense because I previously mentioned that Metric loving European rocket scientists often prefer the use Exhaust Velocity rather than Specific Impulse as their figure of merit and that that was OK because they were basically doing the same thing. It is not surprising then that Isp and Ve would have the same units (if you really did Isp units correctly, which is not done).
I am certainly not saying G Dyson is stupid, but perhaps he is giving the "babies are brought by the stork" level of explanation. That is done surprisingly often in aerospace because sometimes the real explanation is both unimportant and very difficult to understand (it IS rocket science). Most school textbooks just tell the kids that the shape of the airfoil forces the air to faster over the top of the wing than the bottom and that makes it generate lift. A few will explain Bernoulli's equation. And most kids go home happy. Very few kids think to ask what is special about an airfoil that forces the air to go faster on the top so why bore the 9,999 others by trying to explain the Kutta condition. Instead, let the one curious one go get a degree in aeronautical engineering.
As for references, I went looking for them. At first I found NOTHING to support my derivation and I thought that perhaps it had been too long since I did any rocket calculations and that my memory was going bad. Finally I found the following two references that support my claim (and my perhaps not completely faulty memory):
http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/pao/History/SP-440 4/ app-b8.htm
(look down to the section on Specific Impulse)
and
http://yarchive.net/space/rocket/specific_impuls e. html
Fortunately one of them is from NASA, and despite some of their screw ups that I like to give them a hard time about they still have some people who know rocket science. I did find enough webpages that throw that darn gee-sub-cee in there that I am going to have to double check some things. I suspect that the people that are arguing for usin
"I'm astonished so many smart people in this group didn't get an obvious joke, mocking the administration."
Well, maybe it's not that we're stupid... maybe it's that your brother isn't that funny.
No, I was at Vanderbilt University in TN in '89. Chris Taylor is a common name, so I get that alot.
No, shielding for launched radioactive waste has been developed that can withstand a "worst case" failure.
I believe (but I'll check on it tonight and correct things if I am wrong; I happen to have a paper on spacelaunch of nuclear materials at my apt.) that the "worst case" they considered was where the launcher fails catastrophically and then the falling container goes down a smokestack into a steel smelter. No, I am not kidding. I believe they also designed it to withstand: launcher blows up and container lands on a train track where it is hit by a large freight train.
Electric power utilities have already figured in the decommissioning costs in the cost to run the power plant. The term for such costs are "stranded costs", and I believe the accounting for them was actually pioneered by the nuclear power industry.
The radioactive material you refer to is not "highly radioactive", it is low level radioactive waste. They are not going to put whole used power plants (or old nuclear subs) into Yucca Mountain.
"When was the last time a coal powerplant had a catastrophic failure that endangered all who lived near it? "
E X. pdf
T .p df
Aug. 15, 1999. Myrna, Georgia (near Atlanta). At least that is the lastest one I know of.
I was almost killed in a coal boiler explosion in Tennessee in 1993, but that probably didn't "endanger" anyone outside the facility.
Most coal disasters are actually at the mines (methane or coal dust) not at the plants (coal dust or steam pressure). Of course, many people have their life expectancy reduced by polution from air and groundwater pollution that comes from using coal for power, but those deaths are spread out over distance and time so they seem less important.
For destructive potential to nearby residents it is hard to beat hydroelectric dams, though.
http://www.uic.com.au/nip14app.htm
http://www.msha.gov/S&HINFO/TECHRPT/FANDE/CDUST
http://www.msha.gov/S&HINFO/TECHRPT/P&T/COALDUS
"what are the reasons for the continued ban?"
Because it would take an act of congress to change it. Why do you think "act of congress" means what it does?
google metal hydrides and hydrogen storage
Well, the first step in reducing waste costs would probably need to be changing the law in the U.S. so that nuclear waste could be reprocessed. That would greatly reduce the mass of waste that needed to be disposed of. Burying the waste is probably the best way to deal with it (it will still be there when you realize that it is not waste at all and that you need to dig it up so you can use it to build flying cars or transporters or whatever).
I'm not sure that Yucca Mountain is a hidden cost. Don't nuclear power producers have to pay a fee to the gov't to fund the waste disposal (even though the gov't hasn't actually disposed of it yet)?
Even if Yucca Mountain isn't a hidden cost, certainly nuclear energy does have hidden costs of some sort, but before you write it off think about the hidden costs of producing that power with coal plants. Even if you assume that the greenhouse threat is hugely overstated, the reduction in air quality from emissions is still a large societal cost for non-nuclear options.
"would take their heads out of their asses long enough to realize that wind turbines alone could provide enough energy to power the whole planet "
I'd like to see your calculations on this. What are the kw/person rate you are using? What efficiency are you using for the technologies?
"No structure - geological or man-built can do that."
So you shoot it out of the solar system (delta v for that is actually smaller than dropping it into the sun). When you reprocess the waste to reduce its mass, you make it hot enough for use in RTG power sources that can run sensors and a transmitter. You wind up with a large number of space probes to explore near interstellar space and you get rid of the waste.
Amen to that.
I would prefer fusion, but that hasn't been done yet. Next on my list would be space based solar power, but sadly that might take longer to be ready than fusion. The only answer that is right-here-right-now is nuclear fission. Done properly it will not only reduce carbon emissions it will even reduce the amount of radiation released into the environment (it seems counterintuitive, but a typical coal power plant will release more radioisotopes into the environment than a typical nuke plant on a per Megawatt of power produced basis).
People just have to get over their knee-jerk prejudices. Unfortunately it may be easier to solve the engineering & infrastructure problems with fusion or space solar power than it would be to get the newsmedia to engage in a sane discussion about the risks and benefits of nuclear fission. Too many of them got everything they know about nuclear power from watching China Syndrome.
"Specific impulse is measured in seconds no matter what system you use, imperial or metric."
Not true! In metric the unit of specific impulse (Isp) of a rocket is Newton*second/kilogram.
The real unit of specific impulse in Imperial is lb*s/lb where the pounds on top are pounds of force and the pounds on the bottom are pounds of mass. Pounds of force and pounds of mass are NOT the same thing and cannot really be canceled out because they are different units (if it helps think of it as lb*s/slug), but everyone cheats and cancels them out anyway because they sound similar. It may seem shocking that rocket scientists would do something so wrong, but I have only found one person (some anal retentive guy at JPL) in all of rocket science who regularly uses the real Imperial units of Isp.
You can only measure Isp in seconds if you use Imperial and cheat on the pound/pound cancellation but even otherwise metric loving European rocket scientists use the Imperial "seconds of Isp" convention. Metric rocket scientists prefer to use exhaust velocity (which basically measures the same thing) rather than Isp to characterize their rockets so they don't have to ruin the purity of their metricness.
I admit that exhaust velocity would SEEM to be the better way to go, but for some strange reason rockets seem to blow up more when you use it. The reliability of specific impulse measured rockets compared with exhaust velocity measured rockets may be due to the fact that exhaust velocity is an elegant term to use theoretically, but specific impulse its easier to measure experimentally on an engine test stand (divide the thrust by propellant mass flow to get Isp). Preference to specific impulse would suggest that the rocket calculations had been done by someone who has spent a lot of time experimenting. All other things being equal an engine that has been tested more will be more reliable. Whatever the reason, don't buy a rocket from a guy that insists on using Ve rather than Isp. I would make an exception for V2s.
"At least in my classes, engineers are still strongly inclined towards imperial units. "
As an American engineer I prefer Imperial units. The problem with metric is that all the conversion factors are 10.
If I do a "sanity check" on a metric calculation and find that it is about 10 times too big then I know I probably have a conversion error... somewhere. If I do a "sanity check" on an Imperial calculation and find it is a little over 10 times too big, then I immediately know to start by checking my inches to feet conversions. If it were about 3 times I would first check feet to yards; a little more than 5000 times suggests a problem in feet to miles. The odd conversion factors actually help me recognize and diagnose math errors. Of course, it used to be much harder to multiply by 5280 than it was to multiply by 1000 back when the metric systen was developed, but thanks to the invention of the calculator the difference in effort is now very minor.
And Imperial is obviously the system of units that God intended to be used for rocket science because it allows (with a little cheating) you to have specific impulse measured in Seconds.
The ONLY reason I can see to use Metric rather than Imperial is to get rid of that darn gee-sub-cee.
"how do we prevent terrorist from using this kind of stuff ?"
e tocid=309
Like this: http://www.aiaa.org/aerospace/articlenav.cfm?issu
"The government cooperates, keeping oil prices low."
I'm in the oil business, and I can tell you that the gov't does NOT keep oil prices low. In fact, there is a cartel of gov'ts whose specific declared goal is to artificially inflate oil prices, and they do a very good job of it: OPEC. OPEC's stated target price for oil is between $22 and $28 per barrel and they do a good job of keeping it there right now. As Russia and China's production increases, and depending on what the new Iraq's attitude is toward OPEC, that situation might change. But without the deliberate efforts of several national gov'ts, the price of oil would almost certainly be below $20 per barrel.
The price of gasoline is artificially high above and beyond the effects of OPEC. Taxes on gasoline are much higher than on most all other consumer goods. Here in the U.S. about half the cost of gasoline is taxation. In Europe it is usually higher than this. Gas tax supposedly goes to pay for the cost of maintaining roads (which makes sense to me, since most of the gas is being used by motorists who are driving on those roads). I have heard arguments that the gas tax is artifically high to make up for deliberately low diesel tax (compared to the amount of road wear by gasoline vs. diesel powered vehicles) as a subsidy to the over-the-road trucking industry, but I don't know if I believe it.
The point is, that I don't know of any national government that is "cooperating" in keeping oil and gasoline prices low for the purpose of subsidising large passenger vehicles. I do know of several national governments that have a policy of keeping those prices artifically high.
I agree and disagree with you. I agree that the gov't can and should have speedlimits... on GOVERNMENT roads (and I think that the Fed. Gov't shouldn't mandate maximum speed limits on State or Local roads). If I build a road on my own property, I ought to be able to drive as fast as I want on it. Not many people want to build a racetrack or dragstrip in their wheat field, but I think it should be legal for those who do it.
Similarly, I stated that I thought persons competing for Gov't contracts (or getting subsidies, ect.) should be required to be an equal opportunity employer. I think that if some nut group up in Montana wants to have a "whites only" society, and they don't participate in any gov't programs or contracts, then that ought to be legal. I wouldn't think it right, but I would be ok with it being legal. Same for someone who wanted to set up a charity that only helped redheads. It ought to be ineligible for participation in gov't programs, but we shouldn't go and seize their assets and arrest their staff because they don't want to give their own money to people THEY think don't need or deserve it (though I would be suspicous that they were trying to tunnel into a bank). If I want to only give money to black panhandlers because I feel guilty about my Southern ancestors oppresing their ancestors, should I be arrested for it?
I think your correct in saying that your broad reaching "social contract" argument is based on a belief in social engineering. I assume you mean engineering others to do what you like, not in the belief that you should be engineered to behave like what the politburo thinks you should do. I would probably not go as far as your Libertarian friend, because I do believe that individual actions that have a signficant externality are legitimate targets for public regulation, on those specific externality issues. But, I think that such regulation and what constitutes a significant externality that would justify it have to be defined in a very limited way and non externality-specific regulation should be avoided or else we would wind up being no different than the Commies who tried to create a New Soviet Man to what they thought people should be.
Saying that because you use the public roads, you must obey traffic laws makes sense to me. Endangering other drivers would meet my definition of a significant externality, and the traffic laws specifically address that issue. Saying that because you use the public roads you cannot just hire someone to be your gardner or mechanic based on anything except gov't approved criteria does not make sense to me and seems to obviously be an excuse to attempt to make a New American Man.
If I want to be told how I should behave (and what I should think), I'll go to church. Gov't should stay on the other side of Jefferson's "Wall of Separation". Be careful of tearing down that wall to do social engineering; you never know when you'll find that the politicians who get put in charge of engineering YOU are from the "wrong" party.
"I suppose you think it's perfictly alright for a club keep out black people? or for a company not to hire mexicans? "
That depends on what the club or company does, but in almost all cases I'd say its not "perfectly alright". I would think it is bigoted.
It is also not legal.
But, I think it should be legal.
GASP! Yes, that's right, I think it should be legal for other people to do something that I think is morally wrong. I know that is a strange concept to some people, but I happen to think that if some lefthanded dentist without tonsils wants to set up a business, club, or other organization that only hires or serves or offers membership to other lefthanded dentists without tonsils... then I think he ought to be free to do that. I, on the otherhand, should also be free to not like (and not do business with) stupid bigots. But, as long as they don't infringe on someone else's rights*, they should be free to associate with, do business with, and snub whoever they want. I do think that making such non-equal opportunity organziations ineligble for gov't funding would be a good policy.
* Before anyone tries telling me that people have a Right to a certain job, or a Right to a certain house, or a Right to a car loan, or a Right to be a member of the Left-handed No-tonsil Destist Association, I think I should point out that I am niether a socialist nor a commie, so I don't think those are real Rights.
Actually we crossed over to Tech Level 8 a couple of years ago.
How will increasing taxes cause an economic rebound?
If Feingold gave a rat's behind about economic recovery, why doesn't she support a $100billion dollar SPENDING cut. Gov't debt decreases the money available to the rest of the economy by increasing interest rates; taxes reduce the money available to the rest of the economy by, well giving it to the gov't. The only way either of those would help grow the economy would be if Gov't was better at creating new wealth than the private sector. If you think that is true, then I suggest you take a look at what Sen. Byrd manages to get his pork money spent on.