Close but not quite. Lighting was one of the most expensive household utilities. Back in the 1700s it cost significant money to make and transport candles everywhere. Today lighting is basically an after thought on the home expense charts.
That said, it would actually make more sense to leave it at EST rather than DST. On DST we're home earlier in the evening and thus usually will run the AC unit more, increasing energy usage.
In a future world where a majority of thermostats adjust based on household occupancy and time of day, it will cost 'more' to be on DST than not. On EST it could wait until the sun is lower before cooling down the house for people arriving home from work.
Yep, I've remoted into my XP/7 machines from my Android:) A bit of an issue to deal with the resolution change and not exactly slight changes in how touch screen tries to mimic a mouse, but over all pretty easy and worked first time.
TeamViewer can be simply 'run' when needed so it's never even installed. My parents will turn it on and call me when they need remote support. If the system is hosed so much they can't run an application, remote software isn't going to help much.
Well to be fair, if you're Pro 'X' and anti-'people against X', you're still pretty much fully pro 'X'. And around here, that's more than beyond a reasonable doubt to convict and string you up on your.NET horse your rode in on!;-)
Nukes are not going to work. We don't have anything big enough to deflect something that is KILOMETERS across.
And when we're talking about the survival of the human race, I'll take 'sub optimal' but 100% functional thanks. If you call the simplest, easiest and most cost effective solution 'sub optimal' that is...
most real world cases mean the asteroid is tumbling in all 3 axes making anything that requires contact with the asteroid will be severely problematic.
The 'connection point' still has the problem of not being stable enough to support the mass of the asteroid being diverted; i.e. weakest link. Most of these things are piles of dust and rocks loosely held together, you can't put a tether on it and pull, it would just pull off with any amount of pressure. Hence my understanding of your 'net' idea means we need to drape something over the object and pull in the ends of the draped material. It's a *really* big net, bigger than anything we've built previously. If it's draped over the surface it will wrap itself up eventually.
But to your 'most real world cases'; if we find a planet killer coming without years of warning, we aren't going to be able to do anything about it anyway. The less time you have the more force you have to impart over that lesser time. Even trying to put up pusher rockets is going to take months to get into position. Plus it's wildly more complicated and prone to failure.
Simplicity is the only way to do this reliably; since it can't possibly fail or we die. And yes it means lots of lead time. Better to fund finding those asteroids now before they become 2 months out.
A volkswagen sized asteroid burns up in the atmosphere. The object that created meteor crater was 50 METERS across.
Civilization killers are bigger yet. The dinosaur one was 10 km in diameter.
Yes we need to find these things years in advance.
Fortunately asteroids are mostly going in the same direction we are and are fairly close by which makes it likely we'll have significant warning. Take Apophis, we know it will come very very very close in 2029 and again in 2036. That's over a decade away and that one is just a few hundred yards wide.
Comets on the other hand are real threats because we only get notice of them a few months in advance and they are coming in at right angles (generallishly). And since they are coming from the edge of the solar system...there's no way to get something out to them quick enough.
But asteroids we will almost always have plenty of warning. And since we don't have to deflect it much, it's extremely feasible to do this. Let gravity do the work for us. All we need to do is slow it down so that it's an hour 'late' for it's crossing of our path and the problem is fixed. Or divert it a fraction of a percent of a degree. When done multiple years in advance...it has big enough effects to solve the problem.
I suppose in reality both options take the same amount of energy technically speaking.
Perhaps my take isn't explained properly and that what I'm actually saying is that the gravity method is much simpler to implement than a net that is 4 square miles or a rocket on a tumbling object without necessarily a stable platform on which to put the rocket.
Likewise the net option doesn't work if the asteroid is tumbling since it would just wind up the net and now your 'pulling' rocket is right against the surface.
If you aimed your rockets directly at the asteroid, yes you're correct. And yes that would be stupid and counterproductive.
you aim your rockets at a diagonal, so that you get some vertical thrust to counteract the gravitational pull of the asteroid and some horizontal thrust which is counteracted by the opposing rocket.
It's very similar to how Curiousity's 'backpack' of rockets worked. They couldn't fire straight down because it would kick up too much dust and cover the rover...not to mention fry it as they lowered it. So they aimed them out at some angle so the blast wasn't near the lowered rover but was still providing enough vertical thrust to support it during the lowering operation.
setting down on the far side and pushing would work much better.
So rather than use physics in your favor by slowly gravitationally altering it over time, you'd rather work AGAINST physics by trying to push it? Do you realize how much more energy that would require?
The gravity tractor idea is exceptionally sound physics, as is blowing something up, as is pushing something with rockets. Two solve the problem but one costs significantly less...the third just creates lots of new 'hopefully' smaller problems - but there's no guarantee of that.
And then if the thing is tumbling, you can only push at certain times since it has to be aligned properly...if you can find a stable platform on the asteroid that can adequately resist your rockets force...
When we landed men on the moon, the gravitational forces between earth and the moon were altered
Yes they were. Only for a few days total, and get this, at an absolute fraction of the effect the earth has on it. Hence it didn't actually do anything. Also, the men compared to the moon are much much much much much smaller than the satellite will be to the asteroid; even a civilization killer. If something the size of the moon is going to hit us, we are well and truly fscked:)
The asteroid on the other hand, you do need months if not years of hovering because it's a small effect. The difference is there isn't anything else acting on the asteroid of significance. The Sun does somewhat but since gravity falls off exponentially with distance(I'm totally guessing but it's something like this I think), the closer satellite will exert a statistically significant force on the asteroid compared to the Sun.
And, you don't have to do much at all. Just a few miles per hour difference over a few years starts to mean the asteroid won't be the earths path at the time the earth passes by. We don't have to send the thing out at a right angle, just retard it enough that it passes through the same point an hour later or something like that. The earth passes by and there's no collision, yet both objects are still relatively on their same orbints.
How much babysitting would a much bigger reactor need?
No more than the automated machinery that is currently used in coal plants can already provide. The industrial revolution isn't exactly new, this is just a refinement of an existing tech.
Slashdot Mirror
Close but not quite. Lighting was one of the most expensive household utilities. Back in the 1700s it cost significant money to make and transport candles everywhere. Today lighting is basically an after thought on the home expense charts.
That said, it would actually make more sense to leave it at EST rather than DST. On DST we're home earlier in the evening and thus usually will run the AC unit more, increasing energy usage.
In a future world where a majority of thermostats adjust based on household occupancy and time of day, it will cost 'more' to be on DST than not. On EST it could wait until the sun is lower before cooling down the house for people arriving home from work.
Indeed, but there's literally about zero effort to just not fall back. This is low hanging fruit on the pain-in-the-ass fruit tree.
WHOOOSH!
period.
See? You aren't utilizing your connection enough. A semi-colon followed by incoherent rambling would have been more 'productive'.
Hell they show the childhood movies of me the damned tub. I'm pretty much over being embarrassed by them...lol
Yeah she told me. Have the shotgun wounds healed yet?
Win 7 with the 'Classic' theme is pretty close to the XP interface...that should give her the look and feel she's comfortable with.
:)
As others have said, remote control software is your friend. TeamViewer is what I use and is rock solid, apparently LogMeIn.com is good too
Yeah, I jokingly suggested getting something in trade for my tech support and Mom helpfully reminded me of who funded my college ;-)
Yep, I've remoted into my XP/7 machines from my Android :) A bit of an issue to deal with the resolution change and not exactly slight changes in how touch screen tries to mimic a mouse, but over all pretty easy and worked first time.
TeamViewer can be simply 'run' when needed so it's never even installed. My parents will turn it on and call me when they need remote support. If the system is hosed so much they can't run an application, remote software isn't going to help much.
Well to be fair, if you're Pro 'X' and anti-'people against X', you're still pretty much fully pro 'X'. And around here, that's more than beyond a reasonable doubt to convict and string you up on your .NET horse your rode in on! ;-)
Nukes are not going to work. We don't have anything big enough to deflect something that is KILOMETERS across.
And when we're talking about the survival of the human race, I'll take 'sub optimal' but 100% functional thanks. If you call the simplest, easiest and most cost effective solution 'sub optimal' that is...
most real world cases mean the asteroid is tumbling in all 3 axes making anything that requires contact with the asteroid will be severely problematic.
The 'connection point' still has the problem of not being stable enough to support the mass of the asteroid being diverted; i.e. weakest link. Most of these things are piles of dust and rocks loosely held together, you can't put a tether on it and pull, it would just pull off with any amount of pressure. Hence my understanding of your 'net' idea means we need to drape something over the object and pull in the ends of the draped material. It's a *really* big net, bigger than anything we've built previously. If it's draped over the surface it will wrap itself up eventually.
But to your 'most real world cases'; if we find a planet killer coming without years of warning, we aren't going to be able to do anything about it anyway. The less time you have the more force you have to impart over that lesser time. Even trying to put up pusher rockets is going to take months to get into position. Plus it's wildly more complicated and prone to failure.
Simplicity is the only way to do this reliably; since it can't possibly fail or we die. And yes it means lots of lead time. Better to fund finding those asteroids now before they become 2 months out.
A volkswagen sized asteroid burns up in the atmosphere. The object that created meteor crater was 50 METERS across.
Civilization killers are bigger yet. The dinosaur one was 10 km in diameter.
Yes we need to find these things years in advance.
Fortunately asteroids are mostly going in the same direction we are and are fairly close by which makes it likely we'll have significant warning. Take Apophis, we know it will come very very very close in 2029 and again in 2036. That's over a decade away and that one is just a few hundred yards wide.
Comets on the other hand are real threats because we only get notice of them a few months in advance and they are coming in at right angles (generallishly). And since they are coming from the edge of the solar system...there's no way to get something out to them quick enough.
But asteroids we will almost always have plenty of warning. And since we don't have to deflect it much, it's extremely feasible to do this. Let gravity do the work for us. All we need to do is slow it down so that it's an hour 'late' for it's crossing of our path and the problem is fixed. Or divert it a fraction of a percent of a degree. When done multiple years in advance...it has big enough effects to solve the problem.
The OP was talking about the geologic processes for turning Dino's into oil. For our time scales that isn't a practical solution.
Your points, pro and con, are certainly valid, but represent a different process than I believe the OP was talking about.
I suppose in reality both options take the same amount of energy technically speaking.
Perhaps my take isn't explained properly and that what I'm actually saying is that the gravity method is much simpler to implement than a net that is 4 square miles or a rocket on a tumbling object without necessarily a stable platform on which to put the rocket.
Likewise the net option doesn't work if the asteroid is tumbling since it would just wind up the net and now your 'pulling' rocket is right against the surface.
Oil, being a product of life, *is* renewable, but only in geological time frames.
So for practical purposes, it isn't.
If you aimed your rockets directly at the asteroid, yes you're correct. And yes that would be stupid and counterproductive.
you aim your rockets at a diagonal, so that you get some vertical thrust to counteract the gravitational pull of the asteroid and some horizontal thrust which is counteracted by the opposing rocket.
It's very similar to how Curiousity's 'backpack' of rockets worked. They couldn't fire straight down because it would kick up too much dust and cover the rover...not to mention fry it as they lowered it. So they aimed them out at some angle so the blast wasn't near the lowered rover but was still providing enough vertical thrust to support it during the lowering operation.
We're the fucking TITS at bombs
Looks up at the Sun exploding with the force of a bajillion bombs...figures we aren't all that great really...
1 planet killer is bad. 15 continent killers is still just as bad.
setting down on the far side and pushing would work much better.
So rather than use physics in your favor by slowly gravitationally altering it over time, you'd rather work AGAINST physics by trying to push it? Do you realize how much more energy that would require?
The gravity tractor idea is exceptionally sound physics, as is blowing something up, as is pushing something with rockets. Two solve the problem but one costs significantly less...the third just creates lots of new 'hopefully' smaller problems - but there's no guarantee of that.
And then if the thing is tumbling, you can only push at certain times since it has to be aligned properly...if you can find a stable platform on the asteroid that can adequately resist your rockets force...
When we landed men on the moon, the gravitational forces between earth and the moon were altered
Yes they were. Only for a few days total, and get this, at an absolute fraction of the effect the earth has on it. Hence it didn't actually do anything. Also, the men compared to the moon are much much much much much smaller than the satellite will be to the asteroid; even a civilization killer. If something the size of the moon is going to hit us, we are well and truly fscked :)
The asteroid on the other hand, you do need months if not years of hovering because it's a small effect. The difference is there isn't anything else acting on the asteroid of significance. The Sun does somewhat but since gravity falls off exponentially with distance(I'm totally guessing but it's something like this I think), the closer satellite will exert a statistically significant force on the asteroid compared to the Sun.
And, you don't have to do much at all. Just a few miles per hour difference over a few years starts to mean the asteroid won't be the earths path at the time the earth passes by. We don't have to send the thing out at a right angle, just retard it enough that it passes through the same point an hour later or something like that. The earth passes by and there's no collision, yet both objects are still relatively on their same orbints.
How much babysitting would a much bigger reactor need?
No more than the automated machinery that is currently used in coal plants can already provide. The industrial revolution isn't exactly new, this is just a refinement of an existing tech.
The problem is with Fracking, we've now CRACKED everything and so putting CO2 down there means it has lots of new cracks to find it's way out...
Except that stuff from down there DOES make it's way up. Nature has a funny way of moving things from high pressure areas to low pressure ones.
Better to put the CO2 into a stable form rather than just 'another place'.