At the other end of the spectrum of transfer orbits are Brachistochrone trajectories. When the propulsion system becomes powerful enough to produce delta Vs higher than about 10 km/sec, you can treat the planets as being essentially stationary, that is, they will not move appreciably in the short time required for transit.
The obvious science-fiction reference is Isaac Asimov's "A Feeling of Power." It describes a far future where pocket calculators are so ubiquitous that mankind has forgotten the how to do simple arithmetic.
A more amusing instance was in the role-playing game GURPS:Lensman. This game was based on E.E."Doc" Smith's 1950's series written in those days before the invention of the transistor. The Lensman are the next step in human evolution (created by the benevolent alien race on Arisia), and among other things can do advanced mathematics in their heads.
The author of the game had to retcon why the futuristic universe of the Lensman had no pocket calculators, personal computers, the internet, or any electronics better than vacuum tubes.
His retcon was ingenious. He noted that the Arisians were trying to force humans to evolved to the next level. The Arisians could foresee that computer technology would derail this effort. Calculators would atrophy mathematical ability, spell-checkers would become a crutch, that sort of thing. Even worse would be the logical advancement of computer technology into some kind of cyberspace brain-computer interface.
So the Arisians arranged matters so that William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain never met, and subtly influenced Shockley to invent the Ultrawave vacuum tube instead of the transistor.
Apparently the ID people didn't think is was science either. From the judge's ruling:
Dramatic evidence of ID's religious nature and aspirations is found in what is referred to as the "Wedge Document." The Wedge Document, developed by the Discovery Institute's Center for Renewal of Science and Culture (hereinafter "CRSC"), represents from an institutional standpoint, the IDM's goals and objectives, much as writings from the Institute for Creation Research did for the earlier creation-science movement, as discussed in McLean. (11:26-28 (Forrest)); McLean, 529 F. Supp. at 1255.
The Wedge Document states in its "Five Year Strategic Plan Summary" that the IDM's goal is to replace science as currently practiced with "theistic and Christian science." (P-140 at 6).
As posited in the Wedge Document, the IDM's "Governing Goals" are to "defeat scientific materialism and its destructive moral, cultural, and political legacies" and "to replace materialistic explanations with the theistic understanding that nature and human beings are created by God." Id. at 4. The CSRC expressly announces, in the Wedge Document, a program of Christian apologetics to promote ID. A careful review of the Wedge Document's goals and language throughout the document reveals cultural and religious goals, as opposed to scientific ones.
The ID people were attempting to eliminate science altogether.
I am of the opinion that if an objective test for this is ever developed, the politicians currently in power will pass legislation suppressing the test, since there is a high probability that said politicans will be revealed as psychopaths.
If you wish to calculate one's own pork chop plots, and one has access to a Windows machine, go to Jaqar and download their freeware utility Swing-by Calculator. It generates the datafile, the plot can be visualized with MS Excel, Matlab or Mathcad
So why, WHY are we launching people into space with a program older than I am? And of all things, if we're really so keen on going to Mars, why should this of all things be our jumping off point?
The planners at NASA do not want to use the Shuttle as their jumping off point. They want to scrap it.
However, this would mean breaking several treaties the US has made with Europe and Japan. They paid a lot of money to NASA in exchange for a stake in the International Space Station and have received nothing in return. They have spent millions on their lab modules for the Space Station, and those modules are rusting away in a warehouse somewhere because the Shuttle is the only thing big enough to lift them into orbit.
If the shuttle was scrapped, the US would have zero chance of convincing any other nation to colaborate on any new scientific project.
This was touched upon in James Blish's SF novel And All The Stars A Stage(1971). A method of determining the gender of one's child leads to a matriarchy, as men become a glut on the market.
For the Age of Woman had indeed followed almost directly upon the Age of Power, though nobody had accurately foreseen it at the time. The relevant technique was called sperm electrophoresis, a ridiculously simple trick to perform in glassware - and the pharmaceutical manufacturers had quickly come up with a medium, an anion or cation exchange gel, which made it equally easy to perform in situ. Its purpose was sex determination of the child at conception.
By hindsight, Jom thought gloomily, it ought to have been realized that the first several generations to have the trick made available to them would respond by "starting with a boy." That preference had already existed, and indeed was so primitive that it might possibly be instinctual. The result, in any event, was the world of today, heavily overburdened with males, most of them useless - at least in the sense that neither the economy nor the society could find places for most of them.
Being a man, Jom was inclined to think that the real death blow had been struck by the release of Selektrojel to the populace as an over-the-counter or non prescription item. Possibly if its use bad been restricted to couples psychiatrically certified to need a baby of a given sex - like, say, a couple to whom unaided nature had given only a string of five daughters, or, no, better make it nine... But that would not have worked either. The demand for the stuff had been far too great. Like alcohol, the trade in it could be regulated more or less effectively but it could never be restricted in any meaningful sense.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke came up with something like this in his 1958 story A Slight Case of Sunstroke". At a soccer game held near the equator, fans were supplied with a mirror under their seats. If the referee made a dishonest call, the fans would use the mirrors to vaporize him.
I appologize. When I submitted this to Slashdot, I had links to both your thread and Jans Carton's setup. For whatever reason they removed your link from my submission.
I added a comment downstream with a link to your thread, but it hasn't been modded up enough.
The trouble is that most projectors require a minmum distance of five feet between the lens and the screen. If the projector was on the floor, the tabletop would have to be five feet off the ground. And of course the closer the projector is to the tabletop, the smaller the image, which is the exact opposite of what you want.
I suppose one could have the projector in the tabletop, bouncing the beam off a mirror on the floor, but now things are getting complicated.
I like Bigelow as well. Some have compared him to
Delos D. Harriman from the Robert Heinlein classic THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON.
According to the Popular Science article, Bigelow wanted to develop space from the time he was a young man. He studied business in college with the specific goal of earning enough money to fund space expansion.
For a similar vision of a viable business plane for space, read The Rocket Company
As a matter of fact, the Europeans are expecting the US to hold up its end of the bargain. They spent millions of dollars on the ESA lab module for the ISS, and due to the grounding of the Shuttle fleet, it is on the ground gathering cobwebs. What is really angering the ESA is NASA toying with the idea of breaking their contract by permanently grounding the Shuttle fleet and never lofting the lab.
Without the Russian's heavy lift capacity for re-supply, the ISS would have to be abandoned, which entails a large risk that the station would undergo a catastrophic failure. NASA would actually like to pay the Russians and have the funds to do so. Unfortunately, there is a slight obstacle in the form of the Iran non-Proliferation Agreement of 2000.
Agreed. One can hope the script writers will be encouraged to go the alternate history route by the presence of the electric car fireplug-chargers, the dirigiables, and the weird teaball-on-a-straw tobacco smoking gizmos.
What I find interesting is how the Triton combines two great concepts in nuclear thermal propulsion, the LANTR afterburner and the Bimodal power concept.
Slashdot Mirror
I have some excerpts from The Killing Star here.
Hohmann transfers are used because feeble chemical propulsion cannot produce the delta V required for a quicker transfer orbit.
Atomic Rockets
At the other end of the spectrum of transfer orbits are Brachistochrone trajectories. When the propulsion system becomes powerful enough to produce delta Vs higher than about 10 km/sec, you can treat the planets as being essentially stationary, that is, they will not move appreciably in the short time required for transit.
The obvious science-fiction reference is Isaac Asimov's "A Feeling of Power." It describes a far future where pocket calculators are so ubiquitous that mankind has forgotten the how to do simple arithmetic.
A more amusing instance was in the role-playing game GURPS:Lensman. This game was based on E.E."Doc" Smith's 1950's series written in those days before the invention of the transistor. The Lensman are the next step in human evolution (created by the benevolent alien race on Arisia), and among other things can do advanced mathematics in their heads.
The author of the game had to retcon why the futuristic universe of the Lensman had no pocket calculators, personal computers, the internet, or any electronics better than vacuum tubes.
His retcon was ingenious. He noted that the Arisians were trying to force humans to evolved to the next level. The Arisians could foresee that computer technology would derail this effort. Calculators would atrophy mathematical ability, spell-checkers would become a crutch, that sort of thing. Even worse would be the logical advancement of computer technology into some kind of cyberspace brain-computer interface.
So the Arisians arranged matters so that William Shockley, John Bardeen and Walter Brattain never met, and subtly influenced Shockley to invent the Ultrawave vacuum tube instead of the transistor.
Alas, the Airborne Laser Project is in danger of being canceled. The reprieve is contingent on meeting a very tight schedule.
ABL testing pushed backABL demoted to "technology demonstration"
ABL in danger of cancellation
ABL given conditional reprieve
Actually, it looks more like one of those energy critters from Gregory Benford's "Galactic Center" novels.
Apparently the ID people didn't think is was science either. From the judge's ruling:
The ID people were attempting to eliminate science altogether.On the other tentacle, some researchers have found certain brain abnormalities that seem associated with the psychopathic syndrome.
USC Study Finds Faulty Wiring In PsychopathsI am of the opinion that if an objective test for this is ever developed, the politicians currently in power will pass legislation suppressing the test, since there is a high probability that said politicans will be revealed as psychopaths.
If you wish to calculate one's own pork chop plots, and one has access to a Windows machine, go to Jaqar and download their freeware utility Swing-by Calculator. It generates the datafile, the plot can be visualized with MS Excel, Matlab or Mathcad
I draw nomograms, which are sort of like a static slide rule hard-wired to solve one particular equation.
So why, WHY are we launching people into space with a program older than I am? And of all things, if we're really so keen on going to Mars, why should this of all things be our jumping off point?
The planners at NASA do not want to use the Shuttle as their jumping off point. They want to scrap it.
However, this would mean breaking several treaties the US has made with Europe and Japan. They paid a lot of money to NASA in exchange for a stake in the International Space Station and have received nothing in return. They have spent millions on their lab modules for the Space Station, and those modules are rusting away in a warehouse somewhere because the Shuttle is the only thing big enough to lift them into orbit.
If the shuttle was scrapped, the US would have zero chance of convincing any other nation to colaborate on any new scientific project.
Such a space suit is depicted in the online comic strip Freefall. (use the "previous" and "next" buttons to see more details.
This was touched upon in James Blish's SF novel And All The Stars A Stage (1971). A method of determining the gender of one's child leads to a matriarchy, as men become a glut on the market.
For the Age of Woman had indeed followed almost directly upon the Age of Power, though nobody had accurately foreseen it at the time. The relevant technique was called sperm electrophoresis, a ridiculously simple trick to perform in glassware - and the pharmaceutical manufacturers had quickly come up with a medium, an anion or cation exchange gel, which made it equally easy to perform in situ. Its purpose was sex determination of the child at conception.
By hindsight, Jom thought gloomily, it ought to have been realized that the first several generations to have the trick made available to them would respond by "starting with a boy." That preference had already existed, and indeed was so primitive that it might possibly be instinctual. The result, in any event, was the world of today, heavily overburdened with males, most of them useless - at least in the sense that neither the economy nor the society could find places for most of them.
Being a man, Jom was inclined to think that the real death blow had been struck by the release of Selektrojel to the populace as an over-the-counter or non prescription item. Possibly if its use bad been restricted to couples psychiatrically certified to need a baby of a given sex - like, say, a couple to whom unaided nature had given only a string of five daughters, or, no, better make it nine ... But that would not have worked either. The demand for the stuff had been far too great. Like alcohol, the trade in it could be regulated more or less effectively but it could never be restricted in any meaningful sense.
Sir Arthur C. Clarke came up with something like this in his 1958 story A Slight Case of Sunstroke" . At a soccer game held near the equator, fans were supplied with a mirror under their seats. If the referee made a dishonest call, the fans would use the mirrors to vaporize him.
You might not need the blinking LEDs. Remember Audiopad? It used plastic shapes that the computer could see somehow.
Slashdot Article
Wired News Article
I appologize. When I submitted this to Slashdot, I had links to both your thread and Jans Carton's setup. For whatever reason they removed your link from my submission.
I added a comment downstream with a link to your thread, but it hasn't been modded up enough.
The trouble is that most projectors require a minmum distance of five feet between the lens and the screen. If the projector was on the floor, the tabletop would have to be five feet off the ground. And of course the closer the projector is to the tabletop, the smaller the image, which is the exact opposite of what you want.
I suppose one could have the projector in the tabletop, bouncing the beam off a mirror on the floor, but now things are getting complicated.
There are more details here and here
Yes. According to Riane Eisler, this is because the US has a "blade" culture and Europe has a "Chalice" culture.
I like Bigelow as well. Some have compared him to Delos D. Harriman from the Robert Heinlein classic THE MAN WHO SOLD THE MOON.
According to the Popular Science article, Bigelow wanted to develop space from the time he was a young man. He studied business in college with the specific goal of earning enough money to fund space expansion.
For a similar vision of a viable business plane for space, read The Rocket Company
It also reminds me of the Zeroids, those spherical robots from the old SF puppet show Terrahawks.
As a matter of fact, the Europeans are expecting the US to hold up its end of the bargain. They spent millions of dollars on the ESA lab module for the ISS, and due to the grounding of the Shuttle fleet, it is on the ground gathering cobwebs. What is really angering the ESA is NASA toying with the idea of breaking their contract by permanently grounding the Shuttle fleet and never lofting the lab.
Without the Russian's heavy lift capacity for re-supply, the ISS would have to be abandoned, which entails a large risk that the station would undergo a catastrophic failure. NASA would actually like to pay the Russians and have the funds to do so. Unfortunately, there is a slight obstacle in the form of the Iran non-Proliferation Agreement of 2000.
Agreed. One can hope the script writers will be encouraged to go the alternate history route by the presence of the electric car fireplug-chargers, the dirigiables, and the weird teaball-on-a-straw tobacco smoking gizmos.
What I find interesting is how the Triton combines two great concepts in nuclear thermal propulsion, the LANTR afterburner and the Bimodal power concept.
Amusingly enough, something like this was predicted by SF author E.E."Doc" Smith back in 1931.
Yes, the Estes "Camroc" took a shot at apogee. The "Cineroc" took a movie.