Oddly enough, I decided last week it was time to stop using Verizon, with much the same results - lower monthly bill, and more than adequate performance.
And now I find that Verizon was planning on spying on me (more than it already does)...buh-bye, V.
Funny how successful it is... but it couldn't be recovered.
This was a TEST, in case it's not terribly clear.
Specifically, it was a test of the rocket's ability to fly back from a launch, and hover over the ocean (the previous attempt to do this, without the landing legs, spun out of control).
It was hoped that the rocket could be recovered, so they could evaluate the condition of the rocket after reentry.
The design test - reentry plus hover over the ocean - worked just fine. Hence the test was successful.
The bonus part - recover the first stage - failed because of stormy seas. They couldn't reach the rocket before it sank.
Note that the design intention for the F9R is that it do the rocket thing, then brake to a landing and land on a pad back at the launch complex.
It is likely that they'll repeat this test at least once more (mostly because they're scheduled to do another launch next month, and aren't going to change the launch profile at this late date), then try to land the thing on the ground on later launches.
Note also that after they've worked out the problems with landing the first stage, they plan to start working on recovering the second stage (which will be REALLY interesting, since it'll essentially have the flight profile of a FOBS (Fractional Orbit Bombardment System), and might make several Space Defense Commands wet themselves.)
Nah, we can transmit down from the sat using a different part of the spectrum that the atmosphere is more transparent to.
As to the ground-based receptors - you can, for instance, block microwaves with a mesh that is mostly transparent to visible light. Which means a microwave receptor can be mostly transparent to visible light. Which allows you to use the land under the receptor (if you put it, say, ten feet off the ground) in pretty much any way you desire - grow wheat, corn, cows, etc.
What's going to make collecting energy on the ground from a satellite more efficient than collecting it from the sun?
Without speaking to the economic feasibility of the idea in general, the advantages over a groundside installation are three-fold (or maybe 2.5-fold):
1) There's more solar radiation up there, since the atmosphere doesn't block it.
2) The sun doesn't set on the orbital installation nearly so often as on a ground station. A ground station has to deal with darkness half the time (more in winter, less in summer, of course), plus lessened efficiency early and late in the day, when the panels aren't aligned with the Sun. An orbital installation lose a few hours of daylight every six months at the equinox, and can remain aligned properly with the Sun at all times for maximum efficiency).
3) It takes up less of your limited real-estate to put the solar collector in orbit. Yes, you need a large area receiver on the ground, but, given microwave transmission from orbit, the area UNDER the receiver is still useful for farming, parks, that sort of thing (hell, people could live there safely, but the anti-solar-satellite whackjobs that WILL appear if someone tries this will scream to high heaven about the incredible dangers).
We are doomed to have a significant population decline as people become wealthy enough that they don't need umpteen kids to care for them in their declining years.
And don't forget that if you give a woman a chance at a decent job outside the home, most will take it. And women who work outside the home tend to have fewer children.
Plus there's the whole safe, easy birth control thing.
And did you know that the population of the USA is already declining when immigration (legal and otherwise) is excluded? As is most of western Europe?
Whenever a leader of a nation decides that rolling out the guns is the correct cause of action, they automatically lose whatever credibility their stated cause might have had
Hmm, FDR lost all credibility in December of 1941, eh? Interesting theory, that.
And no, it's not like the USA had to join in WW2 just because the Japanese attacked us. We could have quietly ignored the provocation, and let the Axis win....
Why is there so much about tesla anyways this is a product designed for the 0.0001%.
You have too many zeroes there - as of this past December, there were 25k+ Teslas on the road worldwide, which would make the Tesla "a product designed for the 0.001%".
Note that 20k+ Teslas have been sold in the US, making the Tesla "a product designed for the 0.01%"...
Note also that the Model T, in its first year, sold only 239 vehicles. Which would have made the Model T Ford "a product designed for the 0.0001%"....
About every country in the world has been conquered at least once in their history. (In the U.S. and Canada, the occupation has not ended yet, the mainly white, protestant conquerors are still there).
I'm curious, which countries were invaded by the "mainly white, protestant conquerors"? Certainly not the US, which didn't even exist till centuries after the "white protestant conquerors" arrived. Or Canada, likewise.
If we need them (and have dug them all up), we can't mine them from the ground, but we can mine them from the landfills and buildings, like some are doing with copper now.
It should be noted that as recently as WW2, Italy was "mining" the slag heaps from Roman-era iron mines. It had more iron in it than any remaining, easily accessible ore bodies in Italy.
(lead's not cheap to shoot into orbit, let alone Mars)
GIven the infrastructure, lunar regolith would be relatively much cheaper to get to LEO (deltaV required to reach LEO from the lunar surface is considerably less than half that required to reach LEO from the ground.
And lunar regolith is quite usable as radiation shielding. Hell, you can use it as reaction mass for a mass-driver to push off to Mars orbit.
So, how to explain the "we followed the vehicle for five minutes, and saw no signs of impaired driving"?
Other than the tip, they had NO evidence that the driver was impaired, and they never even bothered to check that the "he ran me off the road" actually happened (which would have generated a police report, including the identifying information on the tipster).
The number of false reports to 911 is vanishingly small, and there is very reasonable to believe the tipster was telling the truth.
Citation?
And what reasonable belief did they have that the tipster was telling the truth? It's not like the cops saw the guy weaving down the road (they followed him for five minutes without observing any sign of impaired driving). Nor is there any evidence they went to the "crime scene" and saw the tipster's car in the ditch (which would have effectively made the report NON-anonymous, since they'd have had to get the tipster's personal information to fill out the police report on the accident).
Justice Thomas might actually summon up enough courage and mental faculties to frame a cogent question in the next hearing.
Or maybe he'll continue believing it's the lawyers' job to provide the evidence, not the judges', and that just listening to their arguments is sufficient.
For Christ's sakes, this guy ran the woman off the road, was under the influence, and on slashdot - she is the bad guy.
I gather that you have evidence that this woman was run off the road by this guy?
Other than her 911 call, I mean.
Did the police go to the site of the incident? Not that I've read anywhere.
Did the police take her statement officially? Again, I've not seen anything hint that they de-anonymized (is that a word? If not, it should be) her by actually talking to her or anything.
From all I've read, she called 911, reported something that got the police to hunting for the vehicle (which they found 18 miles from the purported incident), the police checked him for drunken driving, found he wasn't, then searched his car for drugs, found he was carrying a lot of weed.
They got a call, including plate number and location, that a car had run someone off the road.
What they did not have was any evidence that someone was actually run off the road.
Nor did they have any evidence that the driver of the suspect vehicle was in any way impaired (they followed him for five minutes without seeing any erratic driving).
For all we know, the "anonymous caller" could have been his ex trying to get him in trouble, or a member of a rival drug gang trying to get his payload confiscated....
Don't get me wrong, surviving a 2 meter drop is pretty good compared to most consumer products these days. Still.. I would expect much much better from a $5600 tablet marketed to the military. It should at least survive a couple of stories!
If the user falls a couple of stories, he's dead and doesn't need the tablet anymore.
If the user DROPS the tablet off a building, and it falls a couple of stories, you really don't want the bad guys to be recovering a usable tablet before you can run downstairs and locate the thing.
The milstd seems to be designed so the tablet will survive the sort of things that happen in combat that are recoverable for the user (if you come under fire, diving to the ground is likely to break any civilian tablet when you land on it), but not survive the sort of thing where the user has no real chance to recover the tablet....
Honestly I'm really not sure how somebody like her gets appointed there to begin with.
She's Hispanic, and a Woman. That's two checkboxes in the diversity list.
Admittedly, it would be better if her father were Black, and she were a Lesbian - that would be FOUR checkboxes. But I guess they couldn't find someone that qualified for the job....
For those who don't get the joke, a very long time ago, there was some pulp literature (the Destroyer series) that made fun of the then-current martial arts fad. The secretary to the boss in the stories was, in fact (well, in fiction), a half-black, half-hispanic, lesbian woman, chosen because she filled ALL of their minority quotas with only a single hire.
Slashdot Mirror
Oddly enough, I decided last week it was time to stop using Verizon, with much the same results - lower monthly bill, and more than adequate performance.
And now I find that Verizon was planning on spying on me (more than it already does)...buh-bye, V.
This was a TEST, in case it's not terribly clear.
Specifically, it was a test of the rocket's ability to fly back from a launch, and hover over the ocean (the previous attempt to do this, without the landing legs, spun out of control).
It was hoped that the rocket could be recovered, so they could evaluate the condition of the rocket after reentry.
The design test - reentry plus hover over the ocean - worked just fine. Hence the test was successful.
The bonus part - recover the first stage - failed because of stormy seas. They couldn't reach the rocket before it sank.
Note that the design intention for the F9R is that it do the rocket thing, then brake to a landing and land on a pad back at the launch complex.
It is likely that they'll repeat this test at least once more (mostly because they're scheduled to do another launch next month, and aren't going to change the launch profile at this late date), then try to land the thing on the ground on later launches.
Note also that after they've worked out the problems with landing the first stage, they plan to start working on recovering the second stage (which will be REALLY interesting, since it'll essentially have the flight profile of a FOBS (Fractional Orbit Bombardment System), and might make several Space Defense Commands wet themselves.)
And yet the Shuttle program was shutdown with a 98+% reliability rating - two failures in 135 launches.
Which is why we've been hitching a ride with the Russians on the much more reliable Soyuz, which has had only two failures in 120 launches....
Nah, we can transmit down from the sat using a different part of the spectrum that the atmosphere is more transparent to.
As to the ground-based receptors - you can, for instance, block microwaves with a mesh that is mostly transparent to visible light. Which means a microwave receptor can be mostly transparent to visible light. Which allows you to use the land under the receptor (if you put it, say, ten feet off the ground) in pretty much any way you desire - grow wheat, corn, cows, etc.
Without speaking to the economic feasibility of the idea in general, the advantages over a groundside installation are three-fold (or maybe 2.5-fold):
1) There's more solar radiation up there, since the atmosphere doesn't block it.
2) The sun doesn't set on the orbital installation nearly so often as on a ground station. A ground station has to deal with darkness half the time (more in winter, less in summer, of course), plus lessened efficiency early and late in the day, when the panels aren't aligned with the Sun. An orbital installation lose a few hours of daylight every six months at the equinox, and can remain aligned properly with the Sun at all times for maximum efficiency).
3) It takes up less of your limited real-estate to put the solar collector in orbit. Yes, you need a large area receiver on the ground, but, given microwave transmission from orbit, the area UNDER the receiver is still useful for farming, parks, that sort of thing (hell, people could live there safely, but the anti-solar-satellite whackjobs that WILL appear if someone tries this will scream to high heaven about the incredible dangers).
We are doomed to have a significant population decline as people become wealthy enough that they don't need umpteen kids to care for them in their declining years.
And don't forget that if you give a woman a chance at a decent job outside the home, most will take it. And women who work outside the home tend to have fewer children.
Plus there's the whole safe, easy birth control thing.
And did you know that the population of the USA is already declining when immigration (legal and otherwise) is excluded? As is most of western Europe?
A society wealthy enough to afford "super-longevity" would be wealthy enough that their problem is not overpopulation but UNDERpopulation.
Even without "super-longevity" we're already looking at a declining world population within the century.
Hmm, FDR lost all credibility in December of 1941, eh? Interesting theory, that.
And no, it's not like the USA had to join in WW2 just because the Japanese attacked us. We could have quietly ignored the provocation, and let the Axis win....
No, I am NOT favorite movies.
That aside, I don't use FB. So there wasn't any data for that site to mine.
You have too many zeroes there - as of this past December, there were 25k+ Teslas on the road worldwide, which would make the Tesla "a product designed for the 0.001%".
Note that 20k+ Teslas have been sold in the US, making the Tesla "a product designed for the 0.01%"...
Note also that the Model T, in its first year, sold only 239 vehicles. Which would have made the Model T Ford "a product designed for the 0.0001%"....
No, but it IS why noone has a unicycle with two wheels.
"The Fed" is slang for the Federal Reserve Bank. As in "the Fed raised interest rates today".
"The Feds" (note the 's') is slang for the Federal Government. Which has power to regulate Interstate Commerce.
And yes, they have the power, but not the obligation - if they choose to ignore the issue, not much anyone can do about it.
Note that the population projections ALREADY see the population beginning to decline later this century.
I take it, then, that YOU plan to have no kids? If so, we thank you for removing your genes from the gene pool.
If not, why not? If you believe that basically 85% of us should not have kids, what puts YOU in the 15%?
Well, 85 is not 12.5% of 800 either, so there!
I'm curious, which countries were invaded by the "mainly white, protestant conquerors"? Certainly not the US, which didn't even exist till centuries after the "white protestant conquerors" arrived. Or Canada, likewise.
Am I correct in assuming that you do not believe that YOU are part of the 5-6 billion that should be eliminated?
It should be noted that as recently as WW2, Italy was "mining" the slag heaps from Roman-era iron mines. It had more iron in it than any remaining, easily accessible ore bodies in Italy.
GIven the infrastructure, lunar regolith would be relatively much cheaper to get to LEO (deltaV required to reach LEO from the lunar surface is considerably less than half that required to reach LEO from the ground.
And lunar regolith is quite usable as radiation shielding. Hell, you can use it as reaction mass for a mass-driver to push off to Mars orbit.
So, how to explain the "we followed the vehicle for five minutes, and saw no signs of impaired driving"?
Other than the tip, they had NO evidence that the driver was impaired, and they never even bothered to check that the "he ran me off the road" actually happened (which would have generated a police report, including the identifying information on the tipster).
Citation?
And what reasonable belief did they have that the tipster was telling the truth? It's not like the cops saw the guy weaving down the road (they followed him for five minutes without observing any sign of impaired driving). Nor is there any evidence they went to the "crime scene" and saw the tipster's car in the ditch (which would have effectively made the report NON-anonymous, since they'd have had to get the tipster's personal information to fill out the police report on the accident).
Or maybe he'll continue believing it's the lawyers' job to provide the evidence, not the judges', and that just listening to their arguments is sufficient.
I gather that you have evidence that this woman was run off the road by this guy?
Other than her 911 call, I mean.
Did the police go to the site of the incident? Not that I've read anywhere.
Did the police take her statement officially? Again, I've not seen anything hint that they de-anonymized (is that a word? If not, it should be) her by actually talking to her or anything.
From all I've read, she called 911, reported something that got the police to hunting for the vehicle (which they found 18 miles from the purported incident), the police checked him for drunken driving, found he wasn't, then searched his car for drugs, found he was carrying a lot of weed.
They got a call, including plate number and location, that a car had run someone off the road.
What they did not have was any evidence that someone was actually run off the road.
Nor did they have any evidence that the driver of the suspect vehicle was in any way impaired (they followed him for five minutes without seeing any erratic driving).
For all we know, the "anonymous caller" could have been his ex trying to get him in trouble, or a member of a rival drug gang trying to get his payload confiscated....
If the user falls a couple of stories, he's dead and doesn't need the tablet anymore.
If the user DROPS the tablet off a building, and it falls a couple of stories, you really don't want the bad guys to be recovering a usable tablet before you can run downstairs and locate the thing.
The milstd seems to be designed so the tablet will survive the sort of things that happen in combat that are recoverable for the user (if you come under fire, diving to the ground is likely to break any civilian tablet when you land on it), but not survive the sort of thing where the user has no real chance to recover the tablet....
She's Hispanic, and a Woman. That's two checkboxes in the diversity list.
Admittedly, it would be better if her father were Black, and she were a Lesbian - that would be FOUR checkboxes. But I guess they couldn't find someone that qualified for the job....
For those who don't get the joke, a very long time ago, there was some pulp literature (the Destroyer series) that made fun of the then-current martial arts fad. The secretary to the boss in the stories was, in fact (well, in fiction), a half-black, half-hispanic, lesbian woman, chosen because she filled ALL of their minority quotas with only a single hire.