You don't seriously think your employer doesn't take that into account when deciding wage issues, do you? That additional social security would either be used to pay you more, or pay someone else more. The money does not magically appear.
Well, we actually have pretty good sheilds - they are made of air! The shock out in front of the spacecraft is isanely high (50,000 C or more). The spacecraft is protected by a buffer region of air that is heated by the shock region. The reason the leading surfaces have to be round is so that this buffer zone can form - the larger the radius of curvature, the larger the buffer. If we had a way to prevent the air from contacting the ship, the ship wouldn't slow down and deorbit - and you could use wings at any rate.
It might be possible to make some kind of magnetic field in front of the spaceship, strike a current through the plasma sheath and repell the plasma - but I doubt it would help much. Really, it is pretty hard to beat the Apollo style approach - a round bottom with a heat sheild!
What is interesting is that in both LOV so far, the crew bulkhead survived most of the flight (all the way down for challenger). So you don't necesarilly need an ejection system - just a parachute on the crew compartment. The vessel come apart by itself.
Something like this has been proposed many times. The real difficulty is in getting the mist to be evenly distributed. Remember, this isn't a gentle breeze blowing by - it is a mach 25 wind! Getting a water mist to stay where you want it under those conditions is very hard. The best approaches seem to be a porous skin, but even then the pores will clog - and TLV quickly follows.
On the other hand, ablative coating automatically provide more insulation where more is needed - it automatically spreads the load. Solids are much nicer in this regard.
BTW, the real problem with a space plane is in the aerodynamics. To avoid superheating on reentry (compared to which the space shuttle would be freezing during renetry), all leading surfaces must be big round things. That's why the shuttle looks so un-sexy compared to fighter jets. The wings leading edges cannot be sharp - no known material would survive at 50,000 C. By making the leading edges round, they lower the temperature baring within range of Carbon-Carbon - but that makes the wing have a terrible L/D ratio. In addition, instead of a nice sleek body which could be lightweight, you now have a ponderous blob which must be reinforced at every point.
Taking aerodynamics into consideration, the best design is really like a sphere. The closer you are to a sphere, the better. Apollo took a cone and made a good aproximation of a sphere. The shuttle takes an airplane and makes a bad approximation of a sphere. Lifting body designs look a lot more like a sphere, but soon we probably will know if they are close enough to a sphere.
...half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely...
This has nothing to do with the first amendment, this has to do with perception. I actually agree - newspapers should not be allowed to published known falsehoods, for example.
...the government can restrict any indecent material...
As you point out, the government does restrict this. Child porn is illegal. Again, the kids are correct, and this is probably a good thing.
...embrace First Amendment freedoms...
In other words, once you tell them the answers that you want to hear, they can recite them to you. Now that does sound like the high school I remember...
This "research" is so skewed it is amazing it was published. Everyone knows that this is not correct! How many kids do you know personally? How many of them do not know the First Amendment? The discrepancy is not because you know special people - it is because high school students are very good at telling people what they want to hear! Why are some people so bent on proving that the government is out to get them?
Of course, having people like that is good, because it provides balance and uncovers problems occasionally. But too much of this in the news is why people do not believe global warming...
This is not a recent strategy... in marketing you commonly look at your strengths and weaknesses - and then see how you are perceived by your customers. If your customers already know your strengths, your marketing strategy is to convince them that your weaknesses are also strong.
It just sounds silly to those who know. But it does work in most cases...
By the way, you really do not seem to understand the interdepencies of the world economy. It is really worth the effort to unravel and understand the interconnections - it helps explain a lot. If you get really good at it, you can start to predict the official and unofficial reaction of each country. France is the easiest to predict, followed by Russia. Really, try making predictions about how various countries will react to a situation you read about in the news. Compare that prediction with reality. Where you were wrong, find out why... the countries really do follow logical patterns, once you see what their motivations are.
Just some starters: France wants the US to fail. Rusia wants aid from the US, and stability. Etc.
The really hard ones to predict are unstable countries, such as Iraq and Iran. What do you predict there?
Well, lets just say our viewpoints differ. I believe you are totally wrong on all points, you believe I am totally wrong on all points. It is hard to argue with someone who believes that humanity should suffer to avoid Earth's (a lifeless object) suffering. I'm sure your viewpoint is consistant, but it is irreconcilable with mine.
Fortunately, you do not get to make decisions for me. And while I do have the power to make decisions for you, I do not take that power lightly.
BTW, how do you know that you do not know me? You might... you probably curse my name every night!;-}
So you are against killing humans for personal gain (by the way, this is simplified - there exist conditions under which you would probably kill a human for gain, such as to save a childs life, etc.). Are you against killing an animal for gain? At what point are you no longer against killing an animal (to go back to my previous example, you would probably kill a rat to save a child).
OK, now the hard questions that this research raises: At what point would you kill an almost human, part animal? At what point would you kill an almost animal, part human? Everyone that asks these questions will have different answers.
In a democracy, how we decide these difficult points is through consesus - or when that is not possible majority rule. What we apparently believe as a society is that doing this is wrong, but not wrong enough to be forbidden. But you cannot do this research using money payed at least in part by those who think it is wrong.
Especially in medicine, I don't think it makes sense to destroy research because of the source. Every new drug is put through trials, and some of those trial lead to pain and suffering. Every doctor in the US has desecrated bodies in order to learn to save others. In a triage situation, you ignore the screaming babies and save a young child, and let the mother die.
All medical knowlege comes from pain and suffering. Really, I think we are stuck just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
You are 100% correct, unfortunately. There is no way to know for sure. I look to similar events in the past to predict the future on both points (shakey at best). You look at current trends to do the same (also shakey at best). I wish there was a way to predict which one would be a better predicter.
People are starving around the world. And you're worried...
Well, now you seem to have left logical discussion and gone to emotional tactics. Sorry, this doesn't wash - if we take away all the money from the US, the world is left in a far worse state. True, the US does not currently supply the entire world with free food. (By the way, this is mainly because of local politics - the US charities have both the resources and will to end world hunger, but not to do it while under fire.) But the US does supply a significant percentage of the world with food, shelter, etc. (Not the government, though they do some, but the "white collars" you are taking money from.) If you ruin the US economy, the entire world suffers.
We even have historical proof of this! Look at what happened to the world economy after the US stock crash! How many regimes were destabilized? How many economies collapsed? How many died? Is the Kyoto accord really worth that?
The entire world is intricately interconnected. You cannot sacrifice your arm to save your leg. You need to save both.
Please examine the facts of the tax situation in the US here. It is a pretty good resource without politics. If I may quote "The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned 64 percent of the nation's income and paid more than four out every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (83.9 percent) in 2002."
The top 1% of the rich pay 33% of the taxes! (And that is after all the loopholes they could find!)
No matter how you look at it, the rich are paying for this country. Everybody seems to think that this is fine. I think the real problem is that what people don't realize is that "he who pays the bills decides the priorities."
I think the rich pay too much, and therefore have way too much power!
Please examine the facts of the tax situation in the US here. It is a pretty good resource without politics. If I may quote "The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned 64 percent of the nation's income and paid more than four out every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (83.9 percent) in 2002."
The top 1% of the rich pay 33% of the taxes! (And that is after all the loopholes they could find!)
No matter how you look at it, the rich are paying for this country. Everybody seems to think that this is fine. I think the real problem is that what people don't realize is that "he who pays the bills decides the priorities."
I think the rich pay too much, and therefore have way too much power!
I hadn't thought of that - although at this point do we really know where the energy is going? (As in, do we know the energy of the ejected nuetrons, or just that there were nuetrons ejected?)
Either way, I think this is one of the most exciting areas of science at the moment.
They do have ties to big oil. And they do send money their way - but it is not to get money for themselves. It is to get power - the power to accomplish whatever they think will get them into the history books. I stand by what I said.
I also disagree with your idea that this would negatively effect the "oil barons", as you put it. Owners (shareholders, primarily retirement accounts in this day and age) of oil companies would see a dramatic increase in value as the Kyoto accords create an articificial scarcity. Do you really think that the oil companies will sit back and say, "hey, look - our costs increased. Thanks OK, I don't have to retire so soon anyway?" No, they will pass that cost on, plus a percentage for profit. That is normal business practice - everyone does it. If you don't beleive that, then I wish I was dishonest enough to sell you a bridge -or in this case, I guess some stock!;-}
Um, my other post wandered off topic, but in short I believe that a fast move to change our energy base would hurt too much. To look at this mathematically:
We don't even know that global warming will be bad. If you look at the past, when the planet was warmer the entire planet was like the topics! More heat meant more water in the air, and more circulation of that air. It lead to much of the planet being the same temperature, rather than having hot spots (sort of like how hot water freezes faster than old water). There is historical information about climate that is being ignored, and instead scientists are using projections... I'm afraid I really need to know what the difference is between now and then, and why they think the change will be bad.
To alter your analogy, instead of requiring a seatbelt it would be requiring everyone to walk.
Mainly because of the damage to the economy that would be caused. Consider what rising oil prices have done to the economy: the recovery stalled, more businesses went bankrupt, more lost jobs, etc. The Kyoto treaty will have pretty much the same effect, except that it will be more pronounced. We may not recover in this decade!
That is why I think it is a bad idea. That is what I mean by trusting our leaders and not our scientists. The scientists are saying, "Look out, bad stuff coming! We need to do X!" The leaders are saying, "Hmmm, you could be right about that. But X will destroy lives anyway, so lets quietly transfer resources to nuclear power instead."
The real problem is that it would be political suicide for a politician to endorse that (but if you look, that is what they are doing - in addition to subsidising windmills and solar). Thats why you cannot judge a politician by what he says, only by what he does. He says what he thinks he has to, and hopefully does what he feels is right anyway.
Another thing to remember - politicians at extremely high levels are no longer motivated by money. Money is more easily made at lower levels (less risk of getting caught). At the highest levels, they are motivated by "their place in history." For the most part, the decisions will reflect that.
I'm sorry, this is just totally wrong. Please look at the facts here. If I may quote "The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned 64 percent of the nation's income and paid more than four out every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (83.9 percent) in 2002."
The real poor pay no taxes at all, and still get a refund (its called EIC or earned income credit). The middle class (about the middle 50%) pay 16% of the total taxes. The rich (the top 25%) pay 83.9% of all taxes.
Sales tax stuff - we were talking about Federal Taxes, but anyway, state and city taxes are spent on roads, police, libraries, etc. They typically do not have enough money to "give it to the rich". The money that they "give to the rich" comes from the federal government, by means of highway improvement grants, airport projects, etc. And even then, at most the poorest people are paying 8-10%. The rich pay up to 40%. (I do agree that the whole capital gains tax laws should be thrown out - why do I pay more taxes than John Kerry, when he made millions?)
On your second point, the poor do get more back than they put in, it is called EIC for earned income credit. I know because not too long ago I qualified for it (injury and all that).
Slashdot Mirror
You don't seriously think your employer doesn't take that into account when deciding wage issues, do you? That additional social security would either be used to pay you more, or pay someone else more. The money does not magically appear.
Well, we actually have pretty good sheilds - they are made of air! The shock out in front of the spacecraft is isanely high (50,000 C or more). The spacecraft is protected by a buffer region of air that is heated by the shock region. The reason the leading surfaces have to be round is so that this buffer zone can form - the larger the radius of curvature, the larger the buffer. If we had a way to prevent the air from contacting the ship, the ship wouldn't slow down and deorbit - and you could use wings at any rate.
It might be possible to make some kind of magnetic field in front of the spaceship, strike a current through the plasma sheath and repell the plasma - but I doubt it would help much. Really, it is pretty hard to beat the Apollo style approach - a round bottom with a heat sheild!
All true - so why don't we launch from the top of moana loa volcano in Hawaii?
I guess even rocket guys have to draw the line at destroying those beautiful mountains...
What is interesting is that in both LOV so far, the crew bulkhead survived most of the flight (all the way down for challenger). So you don't necesarilly need an ejection system - just a parachute on the crew compartment. The vessel come apart by itself.
Something like this has been proposed many times. The real difficulty is in getting the mist to be evenly distributed. Remember, this isn't a gentle breeze blowing by - it is a mach 25 wind! Getting a water mist to stay where you want it under those conditions is very hard. The best approaches seem to be a porous skin, but even then the pores will clog - and TLV quickly follows.
On the other hand, ablative coating automatically provide more insulation where more is needed - it automatically spreads the load. Solids are much nicer in this regard.
BTW, the real problem with a space plane is in the aerodynamics. To avoid superheating on reentry (compared to which the space shuttle would be freezing during renetry), all leading surfaces must be big round things. That's why the shuttle looks so un-sexy compared to fighter jets. The wings leading edges cannot be sharp - no known material would survive at 50,000 C. By making the leading edges round, they lower the temperature baring within range of Carbon-Carbon - but that makes the wing have a terrible L/D ratio. In addition, instead of a nice sleek body which could be lightweight, you now have a ponderous blob which must be reinforced at every point.
Taking aerodynamics into consideration, the best design is really like a sphere. The closer you are to a sphere, the better. Apollo took a cone and made a good aproximation of a sphere. The shuttle takes an airplane and makes a bad approximation of a sphere. Lifting body designs look a lot more like a sphere, but soon we probably will know if they are close enough to a sphere.
No, no... you are forgetting the fact that Clinton is the source of all evil, and so is retroactively at fault for all these issues...
It should be obvious! The NEOCONS ARE Clinton's fault!
...half of the students said newspapers should be allowed to publish freely...
...the government can restrict any indecent material...
...embrace First Amendment freedoms...
This has nothing to do with the first amendment, this has to do with perception. I actually agree - newspapers should not be allowed to published known falsehoods, for example.
As you point out, the government does restrict this. Child porn is illegal. Again, the kids are correct, and this is probably a good thing.
In other words, once you tell them the answers that you want to hear, they can recite them to you. Now that does sound like the high school I remember...
This "research" is so skewed it is amazing it was published. Everyone knows that this is not correct! How many kids do you know personally? How many of them do not know the First Amendment? The discrepancy is not because you know special people - it is because high school students are very good at telling people what they want to hear! Why are some people so bent on proving that the government is out to get them?
Of course, having people like that is good, because it provides balance and uncovers problems occasionally. But too much of this in the news is why people do not believe global warming...
This is not a recent strategy... in marketing you commonly look at your strengths and weaknesses - and then see how you are perceived by your customers. If your customers already know your strengths, your marketing strategy is to convince them that your weaknesses are also strong.
It just sounds silly to those who know. But it does work in most cases...
By the way, you really do not seem to understand the interdepencies of the world economy. It is really worth the effort to unravel and understand the interconnections - it helps explain a lot. If you get really good at it, you can start to predict the official and unofficial reaction of each country. France is the easiest to predict, followed by Russia. Really, try making predictions about how various countries will react to a situation you read about in the news. Compare that prediction with reality. Where you were wrong, find out why... the countries really do follow logical patterns, once you see what their motivations are.
Just some starters: France wants the US to fail. Rusia wants aid from the US, and stability. Etc.
The really hard ones to predict are unstable countries, such as Iraq and Iran. What do you predict there?
Well, lets just say our viewpoints differ. I believe you are totally wrong on all points, you believe I am totally wrong on all points. It is hard to argue with someone who believes that humanity should suffer to avoid Earth's (a lifeless object) suffering. I'm sure your viewpoint is consistant, but it is irreconcilable with mine.
;-}
Fortunately, you do not get to make decisions for me. And while I do have the power to make decisions for you, I do not take that power lightly.
BTW, how do you know that you do not know me? You might... you probably curse my name every night!
So you are against killing humans for personal gain (by the way, this is simplified - there exist conditions under which you would probably kill a human for gain, such as to save a childs life, etc.). Are you against killing an animal for gain? At what point are you no longer against killing an animal (to go back to my previous example, you would probably kill a rat to save a child).
OK, now the hard questions that this research raises: At what point would you kill an almost human, part animal? At what point would you kill an almost animal, part human? Everyone that asks these questions will have different answers.
In a democracy, how we decide these difficult points is through consesus - or when that is not possible majority rule. What we apparently believe as a society is that doing this is wrong, but not wrong enough to be forbidden. But you cannot do this research using money payed at least in part by those who think it is wrong.
A complex issue at best...
Especially in medicine, I don't think it makes sense to destroy research because of the source. Every new drug is put through trials, and some of those trial lead to pain and suffering. Every doctor in the US has desecrated bodies in order to learn to save others. In a triage situation, you ignore the screaming babies and save a young child, and let the mother die.
All medical knowlege comes from pain and suffering. Really, I think we are stuck just trying to make the best of a bad situation.
You are 100% correct, unfortunately. There is no way to know for sure. I look to similar events in the past to predict the future on both points (shakey at best). You look at current trends to do the same (also shakey at best). I wish there was a way to predict which one would be a better predicter.
People are starving around the world. And you're worried...
Well, now you seem to have left logical discussion and gone to emotional tactics. Sorry, this doesn't wash - if we take away all the money from the US, the world is left in a far worse state. True, the US does not currently supply the entire world with free food. (By the way, this is mainly because of local politics - the US charities have both the resources and will to end world hunger, but not to do it while under fire.) But the US does supply a significant percentage of the world with food, shelter, etc. (Not the government, though they do some, but the "white collars" you are taking money from.) If you ruin the US economy, the entire world suffers.
We even have historical proof of this! Look at what happened to the world economy after the US stock crash! How many regimes were destabilized? How many economies collapsed? How many died? Is the Kyoto accord really worth that?
The entire world is intricately interconnected. You cannot sacrifice your arm to save your leg. You need to save both.
Please examine the facts of the tax situation in the US here. It is a pretty good resource without politics. If I may quote "The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned 64 percent of the nation's income and paid more than four out every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (83.9 percent) in 2002." The top 1% of the rich pay 33% of the taxes! (And that is after all the loopholes they could find!)
No matter how you look at it, the rich are paying for this country. Everybody seems to think that this is fine. I think the real problem is that what people don't realize is that "he who pays the bills decides the priorities."
I think the rich pay too much, and therefore have way too much power!
Think about it...
Please examine the facts of the tax situation in the US here. It is a pretty good resource without politics. If I may quote "The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned 64 percent of the nation's income and paid more than four out every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (83.9 percent) in 2002." The top 1% of the rich pay 33% of the taxes! (And that is after all the loopholes they could find!)
No matter how you look at it, the rich are paying for this country. Everybody seems to think that this is fine. I think the real problem is that what people don't realize is that "he who pays the bills decides the priorities."
I think the rich pay too much, and therefore have way too much power!
Think about it...
I hadn't thought of that - although at this point do we really know where the energy is going? (As in, do we know the energy of the ejected nuetrons, or just that there were nuetrons ejected?)
Either way, I think this is one of the most exciting areas of science at the moment.
They do have ties to big oil. And they do send money their way - but it is not to get money for themselves. It is to get power - the power to accomplish whatever they think will get them into the history books. I stand by what I said.
;-}
I also disagree with your idea that this would negatively effect the "oil barons", as you put it. Owners (shareholders, primarily retirement accounts in this day and age) of oil companies would see a dramatic increase in value as the Kyoto accords create an articificial scarcity. Do you really think that the oil companies will sit back and say, "hey, look - our costs increased. Thanks OK, I don't have to retire so soon anyway?" No, they will pass that cost on, plus a percentage for profit. That is normal business practice - everyone does it. If you don't beleive that, then I wish I was dishonest enough to sell you a bridge -or in this case, I guess some stock!
Um, my other post wandered off topic, but in short I believe that a fast move to change our energy base would hurt too much. To look at this mathematically:
Badness(GlobalWarming)*Probability(GlobalWarming) < Badness(EnergyChange)
We don't even know that global warming will be bad. If you look at the past, when the planet was warmer the entire planet was like the topics! More heat meant more water in the air, and more circulation of that air. It lead to much of the planet being the same temperature, rather than having hot spots (sort of like how hot water freezes faster than old water). There is historical information about climate that is being ignored, and instead scientists are using projections... I'm afraid I really need to know what the difference is between now and then, and why they think the change will be bad.
To alter your analogy, instead of requiring a seatbelt it would be requiring everyone to walk.
Mainly because of the damage to the economy that would be caused. Consider what rising oil prices have done to the economy: the recovery stalled, more businesses went bankrupt, more lost jobs, etc. The Kyoto treaty will have pretty much the same effect, except that it will be more pronounced. We may not recover in this decade!
That is why I think it is a bad idea. That is what I mean by trusting our leaders and not our scientists. The scientists are saying, "Look out, bad stuff coming! We need to do X!" The leaders are saying, "Hmmm, you could be right about that. But X will destroy lives anyway, so lets quietly transfer resources to nuclear power instead."
The real problem is that it would be political suicide for a politician to endorse that (but if you look, that is what they are doing - in addition to subsidising windmills and solar). Thats why you cannot judge a politician by what he says, only by what he does. He says what he thinks he has to, and hopefully does what he feels is right anyway.
Another thing to remember - politicians at extremely high levels are no longer motivated by money. Money is more easily made at lower levels (less risk of getting caught). At the highest levels, they are motivated by "their place in history." For the most part, the decisions will reflect that.
I'm sorry, this is just totally wrong. Please look at the facts here. If I may quote "The top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers earned 64 percent of the nation's income and paid more than four out every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (83.9 percent) in 2002."
The real poor pay no taxes at all, and still get a refund (its called EIC or earned income credit). The middle class (about the middle 50%) pay 16% of the total taxes. The rich (the top 25%) pay 83.9% of all taxes.
Really, you are totally wrong!
Sales tax stuff - we were talking about Federal Taxes, but anyway, state and city taxes are spent on roads, police, libraries, etc. They typically do not have enough money to "give it to the rich". The money that they "give to the rich" comes from the federal government, by means of highway improvement grants, airport projects, etc. And even then, at most the poorest people are paying 8-10%. The rich pay up to 40%. (I do agree that the whole capital gains tax laws should be thrown out - why do I pay more taxes than John Kerry, when he made millions?)
On your second point, the poor do get more back than they put in, it is called EIC for earned income credit. I know because not too long ago I qualified for it (injury and all that).
OK, so you need a temporary phone - where is your driving need to destroy it afterwards? Maybe you should see someone about that ;-}