Well, I think it's fine to profile on the basis of race, so that doesn't really go anywhere. I simply believe that the societal good of finding criminals outweighs respectful and minimal searches performed on the basis of race and other factors. And realistically, the cops aren't stopping 75 year old black grandmas.
This isn't profiling anyhow. As for the rest of it, if we were talking legal, rather than marketing (which is what this is really all about), than you'd have a point. In the end, can you really argue that the reason that they've pursued this line of thinking is not because of the preponderance of MEN among sexual predators? And I'm speaking about violent sexual predators; obviously stat. rape offenders don't have much relevance to this device.
Women constitute a very small proportion of the population of sexual predators. This is essentially a concealed weapon that allows someone to disable their target fairly discretely. I'm a man, a masculinist, whatever...but I see where they're coming from.
Yeah, I can't remember a day that has gone by where I didn't say to myself, man, I wish I lived in that democratic paradise of South Africa.
It must be hard for the South African border guards, keeping a vigilant watch on the western shores for the American boat people, drifting lazily across the ocean. Pity even more the American refugee, who's onlyseekingbetterlife for them and their families.
"Think about the power of bringing our library to little schools in the middle of Africa," Keller said. "Would it make a difference for those who now have their minds closed to the idea of democracy?"
I'm not sure I get the connection:
Mbutu: Hey, Kwasa, check out this copy of "The Horse Whisperer" on my Palm Pilot.
Kwasa: Incredible! We must hold free elections immediately!
Just like in so many fields, software advances have allowed things to be done that used to be done in hardware. I've just recently purchased a piece of music production software I just can't recommend enough, Reason. Remember the big synth / sampler combos that sounded (more or less) like an orchestra? That's all in software now.
Equally impressive is Steinberg's Cubasis. Cubasis has a lot of cross-over with Reason, but its main capability is doing actual audio recording (whereas Reaons's reason is digital sound generation). Both of these pieces of software are sub grand price.
Yeah, I realize that the shuttle couldn't make ISS orbit. I'm suggesting that it could have met a Soyuz module halfway. The orbital rendezvous would have been a bitch.
Well, there was no contingency plan. The Soyuz on the ISS has enough fuel for a complete deorbital burn; would that be enough to drop to LEO and the shuttle, and then reascend? I honestly don't know.
But I imagine if you abandon the idea of a deorbital burn on the shuttle and instead use the fuel to get to a higher orbit (and presumably mothball it until it could be repaired and refueled in orbit, if ever), it could have been accomplished.
I don't know if you could squeeze all seven astronauts into a three person capsule either. Maybe multiple trips would have been required. Can the shuttle and the Soyuz even dock? That might have required EVA's...in any event, I think that with all of those resources in orbit, something could have been worked out if NASA had committed to a solution.
This may all seem pointless, but it's not: at some point, we will encounter this situation again in some form. "Orbit to ISS" is not part of the any shuttle mission profile; perhaps it should be from now on.
All land is used for one purpose or another. Some land is "used" for wilderness, providing an aesthetic benefit. It is perfectly reasonable for it to be used for other things if society deems that the other uses provide greater benefit.
How exactly do we save 99% of the oil by riding the bus, anyhow? All this stuff is just killing time before fusion comes around, anyway.
Good catch with "extended lifetimes". But consider that the only energy that can be recaptured is the energy expended ringing the phone, and only that portion that doesn't need to connect with the user's ear. Probably not significant, unfortunately.
Ah...yeah, I think you're right. It would take a parabolic trajectory whose zenith intersected LEO. Sort of kills the satellite maintenance biz idea.
Maybe you could just strap on a mini-SRB to get it to LEO. I guess the problem at that point would be the de-orbital burn. Anyhow, this could be an interesting system depending on how flexible the system is.
Between the article and the qualifications of the X-Prize, we can cobble together what the minimum performance levels of this craft are:
From the XPrize site:
able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)
Returns safely to Earth (duh)
Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks
While the article notes a higher performance level:
a three-person single-stage fully reusable spaceship up to 112 miles (180 kilometers), giving those onboard some five minutes of microgravity. In addition, two-stage expendable boosters could be lobbed skyward from the aircraft, placing micro-satellite payloads of up to 80 pounds (36 kilograms) into low Earth orbit.
So we're talking about a total 700 pound payload including crew, capable of traveling to low earth orbit, where many satellites travel. I wonder if you exchanged a crewman and the microsattelite payload, you might have enough fuel to de-orbit with a satellite (though you'd have to have a bay large enough to take it).
If nothing else, I can see a satellite repair / refueling service come out of this in no time. Seems like the next step is to deploy a ferry to LEO that can truck the payload to GEO and beyond.
...any communication with the earth is going to take 5 minutes to get there and the response 5 minutes to get back. That means that for any problem that can't be solved in 10 minutes you're completely on your own.
Yup. No way around that...but this has been the rule rather than the exception for exploration. Certainly Lewis and Clark didn't have resupply or the brainpower of ground control to draw upon. This argues for a different approach than the Apollo missions; the craft and more importantly, the crew would have to be designed around this consideration.
..sickness...degeneration of muscles, bones and the heart caused by being weightless for long periods of time), nutrition...radiation and pyschological problems (think being couped up in a space the size of your living room with 5 people for a couple of years). Yes, most of these problems are solvable (especially if we develop a technology considerably faster than chemically fuelled rockets) but the fact is almost everything that a manned mission would achieve can be done for less money and risk by robots.
It is simply not true that everything that we could do on a Mars mission could be done by robots, largely because of the reason you cited earlier, the ten minute delay. If we wanted to pursue a telepresence exploration of the moon today, that might be practical, but the bottom line is that, to conduct meaningful exploration as opposed to simple experimentation on the surface, we will have to have a human brain making decisions and adjustments in real time. For example, robots cannot adapt tools to perform experiments that were not anticipated in the mission planning.
Furthermore, manned exploration forces a sort of bootstrapping that nothing else does. It forces us to solve problems that otherwise we would not, and therefore to pursue avenues of human exploration that robotic probes do not provoke. Robotic probes will continue to be (and increasingly so as AI advances) an important first step in space exploration, but our technology is simply too primitive for it to be the last step.
On reflection, I would say that you're right. And I suppose that whatever political conflicts arise are likely to be trumped by Russia's need for American dollars for the forseeable future.
This seems like a good roadmap for the cooperation: America as the venture capital, Russia (where needed) as the contractor.
I'm not sure whether relying on the Russians (who do have good assets: Soyuz and heavy lifting capability we don't have) or developing it ourselves. It's a matter of relying on a flaky supplier or doing it in-house. I don't like the idea of having other interests tied or being tied to other interests in this regard. If it were Great Britain, that's one thing, but Russia is and always has been too much of a wild card for these kinds of long term relationships.
Slashdot Mirror
Well, I think it's fine to profile on the basis of race, so that doesn't really go anywhere. I simply believe that the societal good of finding criminals outweighs respectful and minimal searches performed on the basis of race and other factors. And realistically, the cops aren't stopping 75 year old black grandmas.
This isn't profiling anyhow. As for the rest of it, if we were talking legal, rather than marketing (which is what this is really all about), than you'd have a point. In the end, can you really argue that the reason that they've pursued this line of thinking is not because of the preponderance of MEN among sexual predators? And I'm speaking about violent sexual predators; obviously stat. rape offenders don't have much relevance to this device.
Women constitute a very small proportion of the population of sexual predators. This is essentially a concealed weapon that allows someone to disable their target fairly discretely. I'm a man, a masculinist, whatever...but I see where they're coming from.
that some Slashdotters will become intimately familiar with this device.
Extremely convince illusions created by layering multiple levels of transparent screens. True 3D, though only so much parallax can be created.
Yeah, I can't remember a day that has gone by where I didn't say to myself, man, I wish I lived in that democratic paradise of South Africa.
It must be hard for the South African border guards, keeping a vigilant watch on the western shores for the American boat people, drifting lazily across the ocean. Pity even more the American refugee, who's only seeking better life for them and their families.
Sorry for the tone, but you had it coming.
But does this passage puzzle you a bit?
"Think about the power of bringing our library to little schools in the middle of Africa," Keller said. "Would it make a difference for those who now have their minds closed to the idea of democracy?"
I'm not sure I get the connection:
Mbutu: Hey, Kwasa, check out this copy of "The Horse Whisperer" on my Palm Pilot.
Kwasa: Incredible! We must hold free elections immediately!
I thought this was a story about Al Gore.
Does that new Matrix icon look like a blue mouth sticking it's tongue out at you?
Four words: decoy mobile home parks.
Just like in so many fields, software advances have allowed things to be done that used to be done in hardware. I've just recently purchased a piece of music production software I just can't recommend enough, Reason. Remember the big synth / sampler combos that sounded (more or less) like an orchestra? That's all in software now.
Equally impressive is Steinberg's Cubasis. Cubasis has a lot of cross-over with Reason, but its main capability is doing actual audio recording (whereas Reaons's reason is digital sound generation). Both of these pieces of software are sub grand price.
Share-wear?
Yeah, I realize that the shuttle couldn't make ISS orbit. I'm suggesting that it could have met a Soyuz module halfway. The orbital rendezvous would have been a bitch.
That should have been "Abort to ISS".
Well, there was no contingency plan. The Soyuz on the ISS has enough fuel for a complete deorbital burn; would that be enough to drop to LEO and the shuttle, and then reascend? I honestly don't know. But I imagine if you abandon the idea of a deorbital burn on the shuttle and instead use the fuel to get to a higher orbit (and presumably mothball it until it could be repaired and refueled in orbit, if ever), it could have been accomplished.
I don't know if you could squeeze all seven astronauts into a three person capsule either. Maybe multiple trips would have been required. Can the shuttle and the Soyuz even dock? That might have required EVA's...in any event, I think that with all of those resources in orbit, something could have been worked out if NASA had committed to a solution.
This may all seem pointless, but it's not: at some point, we will encounter this situation again in some form. "Orbit to ISS" is not part of the any shuttle mission profile; perhaps it should be from now on.
All land is used for one purpose or another. Some land is "used" for wilderness, providing an aesthetic benefit. It is perfectly reasonable for it to be used for other things if society deems that the other uses provide greater benefit.
How exactly do we save 99% of the oil by riding the bus, anyhow? All this stuff is just killing time before fusion comes around, anyway.
Ridiculous. BioDiesel would bid up the price for vegetables, and land for which it is not currently economically viable would be called into service.
The supply of vegetables is not fixed, just as the supply of oil is not fixed.
Good catch with "extended lifetimes". But consider that the only energy that can be recaptured is the energy expended ringing the phone, and only that portion that doesn't need to connect with the user's ear. Probably not significant, unfortunately.
Car engines. Enough said.
Well, it is achievable the altitude of Low Earth Orbit, but it is not achieving the flight profile of an orbit. 6 of one, half dozen of the other...
You are correct; the 5 minutes of microgravity come from the arc of the trajectory.
Well, the "5 min of micro gravity" implies that you're not in orbit, in which case you have microgravity until you de-orbit.
Having re-read this article, I'm strongly left with the impression that the craft cannot achieve orbit, at least in the standard configuration.
Ah...yeah, I think you're right. It would take a parabolic trajectory whose zenith intersected LEO. Sort of kills the satellite maintenance biz idea.
Maybe you could just strap on a mini-SRB to get it to LEO. I guess the problem at that point would be the de-orbital burn. Anyhow, this could be an interesting system depending on how flexible the system is.
From the XPrize site:
- able to carry three people to 100 kilometers (62.5 miles)
- Returns safely to Earth (duh)
- Repeats the launch with the same ship within 2 weeks
While the article notes a higher performance level:a three-person single-stage fully reusable spaceship up to 112 miles (180 kilometers), giving those onboard some five minutes of microgravity. In addition, two-stage expendable boosters could be lobbed skyward from the aircraft, placing micro-satellite payloads of up to 80 pounds (36 kilograms) into low Earth orbit.
So we're talking about a total 700 pound payload including crew, capable of traveling to low earth orbit, where many satellites travel. I wonder if you exchanged a crewman and the microsattelite payload, you might have enough fuel to de-orbit with a satellite (though you'd have to have a bay large enough to take it).
If nothing else, I can see a satellite repair / refueling service come out of this in no time. Seems like the next step is to deploy a ferry to LEO that can truck the payload to GEO and beyond.
Mmmmm...hypothetical donut...
A good roundup of some of the problems...
...any communication with the earth is going to take 5 minutes to get there and the response 5 minutes to get back. That means that for any problem that can't be solved in 10 minutes you're completely on your own.
..sickness...degeneration of muscles, bones and the heart caused by being weightless for long periods of time), nutrition...radiation and pyschological problems (think being couped up in a space the size of your living room with 5 people for a couple of years). Yes, most of these problems are solvable (especially if we develop a technology considerably faster than chemically fuelled rockets) but the fact is almost everything that a manned mission would achieve can be done for less money and risk by robots.
Yup. No way around that...but this has been the rule rather than the exception for exploration. Certainly Lewis and Clark didn't have resupply or the brainpower of ground control to draw upon. This argues for a different approach than the Apollo missions; the craft and more importantly, the crew would have to be designed around this consideration.
It is simply not true that everything that we could do on a Mars mission could be done by robots, largely because of the reason you cited earlier, the ten minute delay. If we wanted to pursue a telepresence exploration of the moon today, that might be practical, but the bottom line is that, to conduct meaningful exploration as opposed to simple experimentation on the surface, we will have to have a human brain making decisions and adjustments in real time. For example, robots cannot adapt tools to perform experiments that were not anticipated in the mission planning.
Furthermore, manned exploration forces a sort of bootstrapping that nothing else does. It forces us to solve problems that otherwise we would not, and therefore to pursue avenues of human exploration that robotic probes do not provoke. Robotic probes will continue to be (and increasingly so as AI advances) an important first step in space exploration, but our technology is simply too primitive for it to be the last step.
On reflection, I would say that you're right. And I suppose that whatever political conflicts arise are likely to be trumped by Russia's need for American dollars for the forseeable future.
This seems like a good roadmap for the cooperation: America as the venture capital, Russia (where needed) as the contractor.
I'm not sure whether relying on the Russians (who do have good assets: Soyuz and heavy lifting capability we don't have) or developing it ourselves. It's a matter of relying on a flaky supplier or doing it in-house. I don't like the idea of having other interests tied or being tied to other interests in this regard. If it were Great Britain, that's one thing, but Russia is and always has been too much of a wild card for these kinds of long term relationships.