You could always add one atom of plutonium onboard the ISS. According to most of the news reporters, that would be sufficient to eliminate all life on Earth.
any toxic material would be retrievable for proper disposal rather than polluting the ocean.
If you want to experiment with this idea, take a can of a non-toxic test material (paint), set it on fire, and drop it from the top of a skyscraper. Now, how easy would the cleanup for that be?
It might be interesting to have a pile of wreckage on the moon as a source for raw material. But what happens if it joins with an alien AI, which learns to speak english by reading damaged messages printed on the debree, starts calling itself V'ger, and then atomizing people to evolve into the next level?
The ISS was designed for low Earth orbit, so there are probably a lot of changes that would need to be made to be useful in a higher orbit.
LEO isn't as high a vacuum as a higher orbit would be. Cab the ISS handle it? In LEO, the ISS is protected from radiation by the Earths magnetic field. Will the shielding need to be improved? In LEO, supply runs are much cheaper than a higer orbit would be. Will changes need to be made to improve recycling to save money? How will the increased radiation affecy the solar panels?
But most iportantly: Is there anything that the ISS would be useful for in a higher orbit? If they feel it isn't useful in LEO and will thus deorbit it, why would it be useful in a higher orbit?
1. We have nothing that could boost it. We could hire the Chinese to load some rockets to boost it, maybe, but then what? 2. Once boosted, we have no way of reaching it. It would be like storing your beer in the top of a tree. You have beer, but it's not doing you any good. 3. We don't even have a way to reach the station on our own any more, and no plans on building anything to get there in the future. Maybe SpaceX will be able to reach it, but why should they bother unless someone pays them to? It's a business, and needs to make a profit. Since the US government isn't going to pay NASA to go there, why would they pay SpaceX to go there? 4. The ISS doesn't vote. Why pay for the ISS when you can pay Mexicans to illegally cross the borders and vote for you? Mexicans are a lot cheaper than scientists. You can even sell them cut-price guns to deal with any border patrol agents (fast-and-furious).
I mean, imagine you're an archaeologist from the year 3000 trying to figure out why this "pizza" stuff was so wildly popular in ancient New York. Suddenly the nutritional information on the back of a pepperoni wrapper is vitally important.
Sodium! They alowed sodium in food products! Barbarians!
Peparonni? Meat! Theay actually consumed living animals! Bloody Mindless Christians!
Cheese? Milk! Why don't they just smear dog crap on it?
They should have eaten what I had for lunch. Palmerized pseudo lichen, just like Mother used to make.
This is slashdot. The editors have better things to do than search for dups, fix typos, and check content. Don't know what they are, but it must be important.
But what happens if a tsunami hits it, ike it did in Japan? There it created a huge release of radiation! This tower is going to be bigger than those reactors! If a tasunami hits this thing, were all as good as dead.
I've been learning gooder science from the news media lately.
Since thiis thing operates using the sun. It is a well known fact that the sun has absolutely no effect on Global Warming, just search the net for relevant articles. Thus you shouldn't have any worries. If it used a man-made sun to power it, then you would be in serious trouble, because all this Global Warming stuff is ONLY caused by man.
The estimated cost to build the thing is $750M, and their estimated payback period is 11 years. That doesn't quite jive with the numbers I've come up with, and doesn't take into account net-present-value calculations, financing costs, operating expenses, etc. But, even so, you should certainly be able to pay for the thing over its many-decades-long lifetime.
This thing will be build as a sealed unit, like Colossus: The Forbin Project. What could possibly go wrong?
What kind of modeling has been done to determine the effects of pumping huge amounts of hot air into the upper atmosphere? How do they know it won't cause some kind of catastrophic thermal cascade that will instantly turn the planet to ash? They should, at least, plug this thing into one of the "Global Warming Is Caused By Man And Will Kill Us All" programs, and see what happens.Those programs have successfully calculated the global temperature for the next thousand years, so plugging this in shouldn't be too hard.
A one story house could be considered as one of the worlds tallest buildings, using a quote like this. It's not going to be anywhere near the top, but depending on how many buildings you include, it could be there. Maybe somewhere in the tallest 30,000,000 buildings.
In an era where every kid gets a participation trophy I'm mystified at the hate toward Pluto, what does it hurt if it gets socially promoted to planet grade?
For me, it was when he ralfed in my shoes. Slipping your feet into ground up bits of chipmunk is rather disquisting.
Their counter must be broken then. 95 to 98 to 2000 to 7 to 8. Are they using Intel chips, or do they go through so many versions that the counters reset?
Slashdot Mirror
You could always add one atom of plutonium onboard the ISS. According to most of the news reporters, that would be sufficient to eliminate all life on Earth.
any toxic material would be retrievable for proper disposal rather than polluting the ocean.
If you want to experiment with this idea, take a can of a non-toxic test material (paint), set it on fire, and drop it from the top of a skyscraper. Now, how easy would the cleanup for that be?
It might be interesting to have a pile of wreckage on the moon as a source for raw material. But what happens if it joins with an alien AI, which learns to speak english by reading damaged messages printed on the debree, starts calling itself V'ger, and then atomizing people to evolve into the next level?
The ISS was designed for low Earth orbit, so there are probably a lot of changes that would need to be made to be useful in a higher orbit.
LEO isn't as high a vacuum as a higher orbit would be. Cab the ISS handle it?
In LEO, the ISS is protected from radiation by the Earths magnetic field. Will the shielding need to be improved?
In LEO, supply runs are much cheaper than a higer orbit would be. Will changes need to be made to improve recycling to save money?
How will the increased radiation affecy the solar panels?
But most iportantly: Is there anything that the ISS would be useful for in a higher orbit? If they feel it isn't useful in LEO and will thus deorbit it, why would it be useful in a higher orbit?
1. We have nothing that could boost it. We could hire the Chinese to load some rockets to boost it, maybe, but then what?
2. Once boosted, we have no way of reaching it. It would be like storing your beer in the top of a tree. You have beer, but it's not doing you any good.
3. We don't even have a way to reach the station on our own any more, and no plans on building anything to get there in the future. Maybe SpaceX will be able to reach it, but why should they bother unless someone pays them to? It's a business, and needs to make a profit. Since the US government isn't going to pay NASA to go there, why would they pay SpaceX to go there?
4. The ISS doesn't vote. Why pay for the ISS when you can pay Mexicans to illegally cross the borders and vote for you? Mexicans are a lot cheaper than scientists. You can even sell them cut-price guns to deal with any border patrol agents (fast-and-furious).
I mean, imagine you're an archaeologist from the year 3000 trying to figure out why this "pizza" stuff was so wildly popular in ancient New York. Suddenly the nutritional information on the back of a pepperoni wrapper is vitally important.
Sodium! They alowed sodium in food products! Barbarians!
Peparonni? Meat! Theay actually consumed living animals! Bloody Mindless Christians!
Cheese? Milk! Why don't they just smear dog crap on it?
They should have eaten what I had for lunch. Palmerized pseudo lichen, just like Mother used to make.
Remember to have plenty of bug spray (for the locusts), French (for the frogs), and keep them away from water.
Is it unwomaned too?
Hooray for government run stuff!!! Right now 0.7% of our taxes go to NASA. Imagine what NASA could do if it was 70%!!!!
100x more administrators, 50% fewer scientists.
Wow, way to rip Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner a new one, since it's a direct quote from him that upsets you so much.
This is slashdot. The editors have better things to do than search for dups, fix typos, and check content. Don't know what they are, but it must be important.
But what happens if a tsunami hits it, ike it did in Japan? There it created a huge release of radiation! This tower is going to be bigger than those reactors! If a tasunami hits this thing, were all as good as dead.
I've been learning gooder science from the news media lately.
If the bacteria can handle these high temperatures, how are you ever going to cook the bacon made from it?
Since thiis thing operates using the sun. It is a well known fact that the sun has absolutely no effect on Global Warming, just search the net for relevant articles. Thus you shouldn't have any worries. If it used a man-made sun to power it, then you would be in serious trouble, because all this Global Warming stuff is ONLY caused by man.
The estimated cost to build the thing is $750M, and their estimated payback period is 11 years. That doesn't quite jive with the numbers I've come up with, and doesn't take into account net-present-value calculations, financing costs, operating expenses, etc. But, even so, you should certainly be able to pay for the thing over its many-decades-long lifetime.
This thing will be build as a sealed unit, like Colossus: The Forbin Project. What could possibly go wrong?
What kind of modeling has been done to determine the effects of pumping huge amounts of hot air into the upper atmosphere? How do they know it won't cause some kind of catastrophic thermal cascade that will instantly turn the planet to ash? They should, at least, plug this thing into one of the "Global Warming Is Caused By Man And Will Kill Us All" programs, and see what happens.Those programs have successfully calculated the global temperature for the next thousand years, so plugging this in shouldn't be too hard.
A one story house could be considered as one of the worlds tallest buildings, using a quote like this. It's not going to be anywhere near the top, but depending on how many buildings you include, it could be there. Maybe somewhere in the tallest 30,000,000 buildings.
Like "The Flintstones". They should be able to get 3 or 4 more out of that.
Scientists Study Impact of Wearing Medieval Armor
And, this being slashdor, I expected to see a story about global warming and the effect that armor had on it.
I believe that the knights were required to buy their own armor. And if you could afford that, you could probably afford a horse too.
If it's 1,000 meters HIGH, then how can it hold water?
These are not the jokes you are looking for. Move on.
In an era where every kid gets a participation trophy I'm mystified at the hate toward Pluto, what does it hurt if it gets socially promoted to planet grade?
For me, it was when he ralfed in my shoes. Slipping your feet into ground up bits of chipmunk is rather disquisting.
We need a good car analogy for the slowest of us.
Let's say you find a nest of angry wasps in your tree, and you swat them with your car. What do you expect to happen?
How did those letter blocks go again: Axe, Bat, Car, Dagger, ...
Their counter must be broken then. 95 to 98 to 2000 to 7 to 8. Are they using Intel chips, or do they go through so many versions that the counters reset?