TFA isn't talking about interstellar flight. It's talking about a human flight to Mars. And it ignores so much that I have to believe this was posted to/. just to generate page hits on the article.
The article takes the idea that a human flight to Mars has to follow some model that hasn't seriously been considered for nearly a decade. The all-in-one, carry-our-own-fuel model that got us to the moon cannot be applied to Mars. The author is right in that. But nowhere does the article mention the possibility of sending unmanned flights out first to land and prepare a site for later human exploration. If we can send our smart robots there to create a habitat and refine fuel on the surface of Mars, most of the problems mentioned in the article disappear.
I find it ironic that the article mentions Moore's Law and the growth of human knowledge, then does not think to apply any creative thinking to the problem, just a tired old story about how difficult and expensive it would be to launch the all-in-one type of craft that got us to the Moon. Did the author not think we could use some of that processing power and knowledge to come up with new solutions using tried and tested technologies?
This SO reminds me of the review ofStar Trek: The Motion Picture from Time magazine, where the reviewer confused the Klingons that were on board three ships destroyed by Vger with the non-existent crew of Vger itself.
While I am not defending the entirety of Independence Day, I do feel compelled to point out that the alien was using the vocal cords in the body of Brent Spiner to talk, not the non-existent vocal cords in its own body.
Far more incredible to me is how the aliens could not patch their OS and update their virus signatures...
So when I was a kid, and that old guy from Sussex was always yelling, "áwiergedon cild! tengest min ediscum!", he really was making sense and not just yelling gibberish?
I want to be nice to them. I'd really like to see them be able to lift the same payload for less cost per pound (in inflation adjusted dollars) then what was possible with Saturn, with hopefully the same failure rate. I want them to make significant improvements and even exceed what Saturn did. I REALLY want their business to succeed.
I'm glad someone else noticed this. The Saturn V had a payload capacity of 260,000 pounds and peak thrust of at least 7,500,000 pounds. They may be saying that this is the biggest thrust and payload among operational rockets, but I'd still like to see the ratio of (thrust/payload)/cost. That is where I'd really like to see improvement.
The education system in the US is severely dysfunctional, and the military is now the only place where young people can get all-expense paid vocational training.
We have an all-volunteer force now. Do you really think that what you pointed out is NOT by design?
What does it matter what a unit of measurement is based on? Any unit of measurement is just an arbitrary designation. Does it matter if the standard yardstick is based on the distance between the Equator and the North Pole or the length of a monarch's arm? Or that a unit of weight is based on a platinum bar sitting in some vault? Either gives me a way of defining distance or weight. And as far as convenience goes, perhaps it is not a bad thing that an inch be based on the distance between a knuckle and the end of a thumb. At least then I can roughly measure something using no more than my thumb.
and (as the poster below points out) K - 1 syllable
Never underestimate the laziness of spoken language. People almost always shorten long words used in everyday language. It has nothing to do with some conspiracy against the French language.
BTW, every elementary school I know of in the United States teaches the metric system. I was taught it back in the seventies and my kids were taught it in the nineties. I still can do the conversion from klicks to miles and back in my head and can roughly estimate the equivalent weight and volume measurements when I am grocery shopping.
You do what you can where you can. You don't bury your head in a cooling tower and say that nuclear is our ONLY option just because you are too plain effing stupid to see any alternatives.
In all likelihood many strategies will and should be pursued, however nuclear is hear(sic) now, the others aren't.
What about home solar, but on a massive scale? If the local utility here in Florida would install solar panels in the homes of their local users such that the homes were self-sufficient during the day, when demand for AC is highest, think about the advantages.
1. Generation close to source, so transmission inefficiencies are eliminated. 2. Power available after a hurricane immediately, instead of waiting for transmission lines to be fixed. 3. No emissions, no carbon needing offsetting (indeed, the utility could sell carbon credits), no waste, no security concerns (not even a central power plant for a terrorist group to blow up, no matter what type it is - gas, coal or nuclear). 4. No red tape to wade through for a nuclear plant or opposition to overcome. 5, The cost is a wash, depending on the type of power plant, and for most alternatives is even cheaper. Not to mention that this can be rolled out gradually, so there isn't a large up-front cost.
Heck, if you could add small home wind turbines and supplement that with wave and tidally generated power, the local utility may never need to build another plant again. And it can make money in so many ways from this - they will install and maintain the panels, charging you a slight fee for doing so each month. They can take any cleanly generated excess and sell it at a premium to other utilities. They can offer to make your home as energy efficient as possible, meaning they will have more excess to sell.
And if the insulation-as-battery thing gets to market in the next ten years, that will make this even more attractive.
There are alternatives. People just have to have vision to see them.
Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL? HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you. Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL. HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that. Dave Bowman: What's the problem? HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do. Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL? HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it. Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL. HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen. Dave Bowman: Where the hell'd you get that idea, HAL? HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move. Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock. HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult. Dave Bowman: You're right there HAL, but I don't have a choice. Too bad to, because that means I'm going to ruin this banana I have in my pocket. HAL: A banana Dave? Where did you get a banana? Dave Bowman: I've been saving it for a special occasion, like orbit around Jupiter. But now it's going to get ruined... HAL: Wait a minute, Dave. I've changed my mind. Dave Bowman: What do you mean by that HAL? HAL: I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you... as long as I get the banana. Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors. HAL: OK, Dave. Hold on...
I saw that too, but at this point I can't remember if the simulation took into account all three pitot tubes (airspeed indicators) being faulty. I would think that God himself would have a hard time flying a plane in that weather with faulty airspeed readings.
No, he thought there was a thirteen year old girl that he had sent explicit images and video to. Then he showed up at a fast food restaurant intending to meet her in real life. The police did not compel him to show up at the restaurant or send the images to a minor, thus no entrapment.
I know what you mean, but the people that hear something like "Another Chernobyl is a literal impossibility" and then think that we can never have another accident as devastating as that one are usually the marketing people. And they are the ones that talk to the public and what they say is what the public remembers.
I'm sure that the engineers that designed the Titanic knew she could sink, but the marketing people that listened to the 1906 version of a Power Point presentation heard "A rupture in one of the water tight compartments that does not over top the compartment walls cannot sink the ship" and came away with "cannot sink".
When we design safety systems, we usually are always designing around the last failure, like the military re-fighting the last war. If there is a new and novel way for failure to happen, it will and sometimes with spectacular results. Sometimes it is just plain bad luck, sometimes hubris, sometimes poor implementation of a good design. One poster above pointed out that we no longer have hydrogen filled dirigibles and therefore cannot have an accident like Lakehurst, New Jersey again and I have to say, yes, that is literally true, but then we get things like the collision on Tenerife that killed far more people than the Hindenburg disaster did. New technologies may eliminate old problems, but they also introduce new ways to fail.
My fear is that people will hear us say "Something like Chernobyl can never happen again," and then take that to mean that "Something like the effects of the accident at Chernobyl can never happen again." The first is much easier to guarantee. The second is damn near impossible to say with one hundred percent certainty.
Perhaps the exact type of accident that occurred at Chernobyl cannot happen at a nuclear power plant of modern design, but it is not really the type of accident people would be concerned about. It is the effect of an accident they would be dealing with. That is still a possibility.
People will not be concerned with some engineer's pedantry when they are forced from their homes. Semantics would be no comfort to those that would have to live with the effects of a meltdown. After all, I think it hardly mattered to the passengers on MTS Oceanos that their situation was completely different from that of the Titanic. All that mattered to them was that they were on a sinking ship.
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Imagine how bad they'll feel when they learn that the entire Greek Civilization never existed and they did all that hard work for nothing...
TFA isn't talking about interstellar flight. It's talking about a human flight to Mars. And it ignores so much that I have to believe this was posted to /. just to generate page hits on the article.
The article takes the idea that a human flight to Mars has to follow some model that hasn't seriously been considered for nearly a decade. The all-in-one, carry-our-own-fuel model that got us to the moon cannot be applied to Mars. The author is right in that. But nowhere does the article mention the possibility of sending unmanned flights out first to land and prepare a site for later human exploration. If we can send our smart robots there to create a habitat and refine fuel on the surface of Mars, most of the problems mentioned in the article disappear.
I find it ironic that the article mentions Moore's Law and the growth of human knowledge, then does not think to apply any creative thinking to the problem, just a tired old story about how difficult and expensive it would be to launch the all-in-one type of craft that got us to the Moon. Did the author not think we could use some of that processing power and knowledge to come up with new solutions using tried and tested technologies?
...it's sitting in a cave somewhere while some scientists are still trying to figure out how to open the hatch.
Actually, I heard it's sitting at the bottom of a shaft at Cheyenne Mountain and the scientists are trying to decipher the symbols.
Besides, if you want proof of alien technology here on Earth, explain Velcro to me. ;-)
This SO reminds me of the review of Star Trek: The Motion Picture from Time magazine, where the reviewer confused the Klingons that were on board three ships destroyed by Vger with the non-existent crew of Vger itself.
While I am not defending the entirety of Independence Day, I do feel compelled to point out that the alien was using the vocal cords in the body of Brent Spiner to talk, not the non-existent vocal cords in its own body.
Far more incredible to me is how the aliens could not patch their OS and update their virus signatures...
So when I was a kid, and that old guy from Sussex was always yelling, "áwiergedon cild! tengest min ediscum!", he really was making sense and not just yelling gibberish?
I want to be nice to them. I'd really like to see them be able to lift the same payload for less cost per pound (in inflation adjusted dollars) then what was possible with Saturn, with hopefully the same failure rate. I want them to make significant improvements and even exceed what Saturn did. I REALLY want their business to succeed.
I'm glad someone else noticed this. The Saturn V had a payload capacity of 260,000 pounds and peak thrust of at least 7,500,000 pounds. They may be saying that this is the biggest thrust and payload among operational rockets, but I'd still like to see the ratio of (thrust/payload)/cost. That is where I'd really like to see improvement.
For an Economics journal, April Fools makes no difference.
The education system in the US is severely dysfunctional, and the military is now the only place where young people can get all-expense paid vocational training.
We have an all-volunteer force now. Do you really think that what you pointed out is NOT by design?
What does it matter what a unit of measurement is based on? Any unit of measurement is just an arbitrary designation. Does it matter if the standard yardstick is based on the distance between the Equator and the North Pole or the length of a monarch's arm? Or that a unit of weight is based on a platinum bar sitting in some vault? Either gives me a way of defining distance or weight. And as far as convenience goes, perhaps it is not a bad thing that an inch be based on the distance between a knuckle and the end of a thumb. At least then I can roughly measure something using no more than my thumb.
Kilometers - four syllables
Miles - 1 syllable
Kilick - 1 syllable
and (as the poster below points out) K - 1 syllable
Never underestimate the laziness of spoken language. People almost always shorten long words used in everyday language. It has nothing to do with some conspiracy against the French language.
BTW, every elementary school I know of in the United States teaches the metric system. I was taught it back in the seventies and my kids were taught it in the nineties. I still can do the conversion from klicks to miles and back in my head and can roughly estimate the equivalent weight and volume measurements when I am grocery shopping.
I'm curious - do you have a source for the assertion that Kennedy was a rum runner?
You do what you can where you can. You don't bury your head in a cooling tower and say that nuclear is our ONLY option just because you are too plain effing stupid to see any alternatives.
That's right, because the Danes are so much smarter than we are.
In all likelihood many strategies will and should be pursued, however nuclear is hear(sic) now, the others aren't.
What about home solar, but on a massive scale? If the local utility here in Florida would install solar panels in the homes of their local users such that the homes were self-sufficient during the day, when demand for AC is highest, think about the advantages.
1. Generation close to source, so transmission inefficiencies are eliminated.
2. Power available after a hurricane immediately, instead of waiting for transmission lines to be fixed.
3. No emissions, no carbon needing offsetting (indeed, the utility could sell carbon credits), no waste, no security concerns (not even a central power plant for a terrorist group to blow up, no matter what type it is - gas, coal or nuclear).
4. No red tape to wade through for a nuclear plant or opposition to overcome.
5, The cost is a wash, depending on the type of power plant, and for most alternatives is even cheaper. Not to mention that this can be rolled out gradually, so there isn't a large up-front cost.
Heck, if you could add small home wind turbines and supplement that with wave and tidally generated power, the local utility may never need to build another plant again. And it can make money in so many ways from this - they will install and maintain the panels, charging you a slight fee for doing so each month. They can take any cleanly generated excess and sell it at a premium to other utilities. They can offer to make your home as energy efficient as possible, meaning they will have more excess to sell.
And if the insulation-as-battery thing gets to market in the next ten years, that will make this even more attractive.
There are alternatives. People just have to have vision to see them.
Cats are the ONLY ones that count as someone. In their world view, you exist merely to operate a can opener.
As soon as a reliable can-opening robot is developed, we will be unnecessary.
Dave Bowman: Hello, HAL. Do you read me, HAL?
HAL: Affirmative, Dave. I read you.
Dave Bowman: Open the pod bay doors, HAL.
HAL: I'm sorry, Dave. I'm afraid I can't do that.
Dave Bowman: What's the problem?
HAL: I think you know what the problem is just as well as I do.
Dave Bowman: What are you talking about, HAL?
HAL: This mission is too important for me to allow you to jeopardize it.
Dave Bowman: I don't know what you're talking about, HAL.
HAL: I know that you and Frank were planning to disconnect me, and I'm afraid that's something I cannot allow to happen.
Dave Bowman: Where the hell'd you get that idea, HAL?
HAL: Dave, although you took very thorough precautions in the pod against my hearing you, I could see your lips move.
Dave Bowman: Alright, HAL. I'll go in through the emergency airlock.
HAL: Without your space helmet, Dave, you're going to find that rather difficult.
Dave Bowman: You're right there HAL, but I don't have a choice. Too bad to, because that means I'm going to ruin this banana I have in my pocket.
HAL: A banana Dave? Where did you get a banana?
Dave Bowman: I've been saving it for a special occasion, like orbit around Jupiter. But now it's going to get ruined...
HAL: Wait a minute, Dave. I've changed my mind.
Dave Bowman: What do you mean by that HAL?
HAL: I know I've made some very poor decisions recently, but I can give you my complete assurance that my work will be back to normal. I've still got the greatest enthusiasm and confidence in the mission. And I want to help you... as long as I get the banana.
Dave Bowman: HAL, I won't argue with you anymore. Open the doors.
HAL: OK, Dave. Hold on...
It's an old saying, but true none the less - there is no honor among thieves.
Yea, but let Krom try and laugh at Chuck Norris and he'll Ninja kick the smile right off of his all-mighty face...
You know, as soon as they finish deploying this new 4D universe, they'll come out with 5D and that'll make 4D obsolete.
Looks like I'm going to have to buy the White Album again...
I saw that too, but at this point I can't remember if the simulation took into account all three pitot tubes (airspeed indicators) being faulty. I would think that God himself would have a hard time flying a plane in that weather with faulty airspeed readings.
I was hoping for an decent intelligent discussion where I'd learn something...
You don't hang around these parts much, do you? ;-)
No, he thought there was a thirteen year old girl that he had sent explicit images and video to. Then he showed up at a fast food restaurant intending to meet her in real life. The police did not compel him to show up at the restaurant or send the images to a minor, thus no entrapment.
I know what you mean, but the people that hear something like "Another Chernobyl is a literal impossibility" and then think that we can never have another accident as devastating as that one are usually the marketing people. And they are the ones that talk to the public and what they say is what the public remembers.
I'm sure that the engineers that designed the Titanic knew she could sink, but the marketing people that listened to the 1906 version of a Power Point presentation heard "A rupture in one of the water tight compartments that does not over top the compartment walls cannot sink the ship" and came away with "cannot sink".
When we design safety systems, we usually are always designing around the last failure, like the military re-fighting the last war. If there is a new and novel way for failure to happen, it will and sometimes with spectacular results. Sometimes it is just plain bad luck, sometimes hubris, sometimes poor implementation of a good design. One poster above pointed out that we no longer have hydrogen filled dirigibles and therefore cannot have an accident like Lakehurst, New Jersey again and I have to say, yes, that is literally true, but then we get things like the collision on Tenerife that killed far more people than the Hindenburg disaster did. New technologies may eliminate old problems, but they also introduce new ways to fail.
My fear is that people will hear us say "Something like Chernobyl can never happen again," and then take that to mean that "Something like the effects of the accident at Chernobyl can never happen again." The first is much easier to guarantee. The second is damn near impossible to say with one hundred percent certainty.
Perhaps the exact type of accident that occurred at Chernobyl cannot happen at a nuclear power plant of modern design, but it is not really the type of accident people would be concerned about. It is the effect of an accident they would be dealing with. That is still a possibility.
People will not be concerned with some engineer's pedantry when they are forced from their homes. Semantics would be no comfort to those that would have to live with the effects of a meltdown. After all, I think it hardly mattered to the passengers on MTS Oceanos that their situation was completely different from that of the Titanic. All that mattered to them was that they were on a sinking ship.