Because they broke up and killed their crew one time in sixty
Yeah, we wanted something more reliable, like the Soyuz, which only killed the crew twice in 120 flights, and failed its mission only nine other times in 120 flights.
Unlike the Shuttle, which killed its crew twice in 135 missions, and failed its mission no other times in 135 missions....
Last launch was also a test of the recoverable first stage. No landing legs last time, though. First stage came down, but when it began hover, it spun out of control.
SpaceX theorized that if it had had the landing legs to stabilize it, it wouldn't have augured in, so they're repeating the test with landing legs. It's still going to dump into the ocean, but hopefully it'll hover properly before they dump it.
If things go well this time, next launch should be the recover the first stage on land test. Which ought lower the already ridiculously low SpaceX launch prices by a factor of five or so....
It's all just a matter of what we choose to call things and how we choose to categorize things. Lumping things into categories based on similar characteristics is helpful for a number of reasons.
And you're telling me this why? Why didn't you also explain that water was wet?
If you go back and look at the history of when and why Ceres (and Vista, and Pallas, etc.) was demoted from planetary status, you'll see all sorts of similarities. The continued discovery of Kupier bodies shows Pluto was part of a larger community, just like Ceres.
And, horror of horrors, when we discovered Neptune, we realized it was part of a larger community (of planets). Note that the Kuiper Belt is pretty much as arbitrary as the Asteroid Belt - they're both a region of space with stuff in them. Just like Jupiter's orbit (Jupiter, an indeterminate number of moons, Trojan asteroids, etc), or Earth's.
What folk mean when they say defining things such that you keep Pluto in and leave Ceres out is that they're looking for a consistent pattern of categorization and nomenclature which minimizes changes. It's simply easier to drop the ninth to to squeeze back in a fifth, sixth, seventh and eighth.
And here I thought science was about discovering new things, not about minimizing change. My bad..
And what's wrong with e-cigs? All the nicotine, none of the carcinogens. Sounds like a winner to me (from the pov of someone who has never smoked, and doesn't actually know anyone who still smokes)
Landing on the moon and taking off again adds 4km/s delta-v to the energy cost of going to Mars.
On the other hand, refueling on the moon with fuel manufactured on the moon reduces the payload you need to boost off Earth considerably.
Plus launching from lunar orbit into Mars transfer orbit is less efficient than launching from LEO directly into MTO, due to Oberth inefficiencies.
Launch from lunar orbit into a transition orbit that goes down to LEO, make a burn at perigee that puts you into an Earth-Mars transition orbit.
This requires slightly more delta-V than going directly from LEO, but, again, if the reaction mass comes from the moon, instead of Earth, the savings can be considerable.
Yes, this does require some industrial infrastructure on the moon, which will require moving a lot of mass from Earth to the moon. This is a bad thing only if your idea about Mars missions is similar to the Apollo program - go to Mars, take a few pictures, go home, never go back.
You also have a chance of a thermonuclear detonation in a populated area.
No, you don't.
First, "thermonuclear" means FUSION, not fission.
Second, there is ZERO possibility of even a nuclear fission detonation from a nuclear reactor, since it takes considerably more than 95% enriched uranium to make a boom, and nuclear reactors use ~20% enriched uranium.
So, no, there is no chance of any kind of nuclear explosion from a nuclear power plant, whether it's in a populated area or not.
Nuclear waste will escape. why ? because it has billion years of time, will structurally degrade, and there is no known material to contain it.
No known material to contain it??
It should be noted that most of the ionizing radiation emitted by your nuclear waste can be blocked by wrapping the nuclear waste in old newspapers (yes, both alpha and beta can be blocked with a sheet of paper, or a few feet of open air).
It should also be noted that the only radioactives that will last billions of years are things like U-238 (half life in the billions of years), which is so faintly radioactive that you'd never notice the radiation effects of it if a ton or so of it stored under your bed....
Yep sorry, my fault, usual figures from the nuke industry is in the million of years.
No, usual figures from the ANTI-nuke hysterics is in the millions of years.
But don't think HLW will be inoffensive after waiting 20 million years. Yes, most of the activity will be gone, but It'll still be deadly.
I'm assuming that by HLW you mean Pu-239 (which isn't really very high level - not like, say, Strontium-90).
On that basis, if you started with a mass of HLW the size of the planet (~6E24 kg), you'll be down to rather less than 1/4 of a nanogram of the stuff after three million years.
If the ENTIRE UNIVERSE were made of Pu-239, you'd have one ATOM of the stuff left after only SIX million years.
On the other hand, if we were talking reasonable amounts (no more than one million tons), it'll be decayed to less than one microgram in about a million years.
On the gripping hand, if we were talking about REAL HLW (the kind that emits enough radiation to actually be, you know, dangerous) we're not talking things with a 24KY halflife. We're rather more concerned with things with a century halflife or less.
For a 100 year halflife, your mass-of-the-planet wastes would be down into the milligram range in 10 KY. For a million tons of the stuff, it's down to less than a microgram in 5KY years.
And for really radioactive stuff (like, say Strontium-90), well, it'll be gone in a couple centuries.
Well, after you piss off half of the world with your covert ops, pulling strings in the background, supporting criminal organizations etc., you're pretty much committed to a path of "how to deal with people who're smiling at me if I don't know whether the thing they're holding behind their back is a knife".
And then there was 1941, when we didn't do any of those things, and still found ourselves in a shooting war.
Personally, I'm wondering when we're going to find ourselves in Yet Another European War, what with Putin doing his Sudetenland thing with Ukraine and all....
The 1967 Outer Space Treaty makes this legally impossible, and common sense shows that it could never (or, at least, not for a good long while) be enforced.
If they put a base there, and noone else can even go there, then they pretty much de facto own the moon.
It's not, after all, like anyone can do anything to stop them from doing whatever they like up there - noone else can even get to LEO reliably***.
***: the Chinese can get up there (once every couple years or so). And SpaceX Dragon is going to be undergoing man-rating tests later this year (proving that the escape mechanism works, among other things) and next year so that it can be man-rated. Once that happens, NASA won't be dependent on the Russians, they'll be dependent on SpaceX....
okay, coffee, or lack of it, has left me pretty messed up a time or three in my life. Was hoping to find out there was yet another way of speaking in the country, but alas, it was just lack of caffeine....;-)
It is fairly obvious from the remainder of the post that the author is American. It looks like he/she/it was trying to say "hack in and steal data", but generally when words are mispelled, they're mispelled based on similar sounds. So what dialect has "steal" and "skill" sounding alike?
Seriously curious, since I thought that I knew most major dialects, and don't recall one that would pronounce the "ea" in "steal" like the "i" in "skill".
The interesting thing about a bayonet on a flintlock is that it increased reloading time so that you found that you had no time to reload.
Even more interesting is that smoothbores have such short effective ranges that you won't even start shooting till the other fellow is just a bayonet charge away.
Alas, the minie ball allowed fast reloading of rifled weapons (historically, they were used on percussion weapons, but that was because the idea didn't come along until after the percussion cap - no reason minie balls can't be used on a flintlock. or a wheellock or matchlock, for that matter).
With minie balls and flintlocks, five shots a minute is not impossible (the record is some French dude who could reliably fire twelve times a minute), and three shots a minute is trivial.
And platoon firing (look it up - Wellington used it) means pretty much continuous fire on the lads trying to use their bayonets (and thereby slowing their own rate of fire).
the passengers have a vested interest in not distracting the driver. and in general, they don't. and they also tend to be looking around, and are likely to alert the driver when they notice a pedestrian in front of the car, or the car is drifting onto the shoulder or into the car in the next lane.
So, the driver can't pay attention to the road while talking, but a passenger beside or behind him has no trouble at all paying attention to the road while talking?
In my experience, the passengers pay even less attention to the road than the driver, since they're not the ones behind the wheel....
Not to mention someone capable of swinging a sword and lopping the heads off marauders intent on dragging off the young women and torching the village.
Blackpowder is easy to make if you know how, and flintlocks likewise. Hell, percussion caps aren't hard to make, really. Which means that swinging swords probably won't be necessary.
Note that the assumption that nothing will be left of the old civilization is probably a bad one. There probably won't be any large power plants, but a car's alternator hooked up to a waterwheel should be able to provide at least minimal electricity for things like lights in an operating room or keeping a computer running for records access/storage.
but my point is that all of us are winners of one such lottery.:-)
Alas, no.
The Birthright Lotteries in question were a literal lottery held annually to allow someone to have a child.
Everyone in the world was authorized to have one child.
Then, special people were authorized more than one (geniuses, that sort of thing).
And rich people were allowed to buy extra birthrights (the theory being that getting rich was a skill - note that taxation in place pretty much prevented inherited wealth).
And finally, if there were not enough children being born to replace losses in any particular year, there was the Birthright Lottery - winners got a license to have a child.
The odds of winning were on the orders of millions to one against. All of Teela's ancestors for the last six generations were winners of the Birthright Lottery. And she was lucky. Alas for the people who chose to send her to the Ringoworld, her luck did NOT extend to the people near her - odd things happened that were good for HER - if they were good for nearby people, cool, if not, tough....
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So, you're willing to have a radio chip that you don't control inside your phone so long as you can control it?
Yeah, we wanted something more reliable, like the Soyuz, which only killed the crew twice in 120 flights, and failed its mission only nine other times in 120 flights.
Unlike the Shuttle, which killed its crew twice in 135 missions, and failed its mission no other times in 135 missions....
Last launch was also a test of the recoverable first stage. No landing legs last time, though. First stage came down, but when it began hover, it spun out of control.
SpaceX theorized that if it had had the landing legs to stabilize it, it wouldn't have augured in, so they're repeating the test with landing legs. It's still going to dump into the ocean, but hopefully it'll hover properly before they dump it.
If things go well this time, next launch should be the recover the first stage on land test. Which ought lower the already ridiculously low SpaceX launch prices by a factor of five or so....
Won't argue with that.
And you're telling me this why? Why didn't you also explain that water was wet?
And, horror of horrors, when we discovered Neptune, we realized it was part of a larger community (of planets). Note that the Kuiper Belt is pretty much as arbitrary as the Asteroid Belt - they're both a region of space with stuff in them. Just like Jupiter's orbit (Jupiter, an indeterminate number of moons, Trojan asteroids, etc), or Earth's.
And here I thought science was about discovering new things, not about minimizing change. My bad..
And what's wrong with e-cigs? All the nicotine, none of the carcinogens. Sounds like a winner to me (from the pov of someone who has never smoked, and doesn't actually know anyone who still smokes)
On the other hand, refueling on the moon with fuel manufactured on the moon reduces the payload you need to boost off Earth considerably.
Launch from lunar orbit into a transition orbit that goes down to LEO, make a burn at perigee that puts you into an Earth-Mars transition orbit.
This requires slightly more delta-V than going directly from LEO, but, again, if the reaction mass comes from the moon, instead of Earth, the savings can be considerable.
Yes, this does require some industrial infrastructure on the moon, which will require moving a lot of mass from Earth to the moon. This is a bad thing only if your idea about Mars missions is similar to the Apollo program - go to Mars, take a few pictures, go home, never go back.
Why would we want to rule out Eris/Sedna/Makemake/Haumea/Ceres/etc?
I, for one, am not wedded to nine planets. Or eight. Or fourteen, for that matter....
The same reason they listen to the anti-nuke hysterics?
No, you don't.
First, "thermonuclear" means FUSION, not fission.
Second, there is ZERO possibility of even a nuclear fission detonation from a nuclear reactor, since it takes considerably more than 95% enriched uranium to make a boom, and nuclear reactors use ~20% enriched uranium.
So, no, there is no chance of any kind of nuclear explosion from a nuclear power plant, whether it's in a populated area or not.
No known material to contain it??
It should be noted that most of the ionizing radiation emitted by your nuclear waste can be blocked by wrapping the nuclear waste in old newspapers (yes, both alpha and beta can be blocked with a sheet of paper, or a few feet of open air).
It should also be noted that the only radioactives that will last billions of years are things like U-238 (half life in the billions of years), which is so faintly radioactive that you'd never notice the radiation effects of it if a ton or so of it stored under your bed....
No, usual figures from the ANTI-nuke hysterics is in the millions of years.
I'm assuming that by HLW you mean Pu-239 (which isn't really very high level - not like, say, Strontium-90).
On that basis, if you started with a mass of HLW the size of the planet (~6E24 kg), you'll be down to rather less than 1/4 of a nanogram of the stuff after three million years.
If the ENTIRE UNIVERSE were made of Pu-239, you'd have one ATOM of the stuff left after only SIX million years.
On the other hand, if we were talking reasonable amounts (no more than one million tons), it'll be decayed to less than one microgram in about a million years.
On the gripping hand, if we were talking about REAL HLW (the kind that emits enough radiation to actually be, you know, dangerous) we're not talking things with a 24KY halflife. We're rather more concerned with things with a century halflife or less.
For a 100 year halflife, your mass-of-the-planet wastes would be down into the milligram range in 10 KY. For a million tons of the stuff, it's down to less than a microgram in 5KY years.
And for really radioactive stuff (like, say Strontium-90), well, it'll be gone in a couple centuries.
And then there was 1941, when we didn't do any of those things, and still found ourselves in a shooting war.
Personally, I'm wondering when we're going to find ourselves in Yet Another European War, what with Putin doing his Sudetenland thing with Ukraine and all....
If they put a base there, and noone else can even go there, then they pretty much de facto own the moon.
It's not, after all, like anyone can do anything to stop them from doing whatever they like up there - noone else can even get to LEO reliably***.
***: the Chinese can get up there (once every couple years or so). And SpaceX Dragon is going to be undergoing man-rating tests later this year (proving that the escape mechanism works, among other things) and next year so that it can be man-rated. Once that happens, NASA won't be dependent on the Russians, they'll be dependent on SpaceX....
Ditto. There's a nuke plant within 15 miles of my home also.
okay, coffee, or lack of it, has left me pretty messed up a time or three in my life. Was hoping to find out there was yet another way of speaking in the country, but alas, it was just lack of caffeine....;-)
Okay, I have to ask...
It is fairly obvious from the remainder of the post that the author is American. It looks like he/she/it was trying to say "hack in and steal data", but generally when words are mispelled, they're mispelled based on similar sounds. So what dialect has "steal" and "skill" sounding alike?
Seriously curious, since I thought that I knew most major dialects, and don't recall one that would pronounce the "ea" in "steal" like the "i" in "skill".
The interesting thing about a bayonet on a flintlock is that it increased reloading time so that you found that you had no time to reload.
Even more interesting is that smoothbores have such short effective ranges that you won't even start shooting till the other fellow is just a bayonet charge away.
Alas, the minie ball allowed fast reloading of rifled weapons (historically, they were used on percussion weapons, but that was because the idea didn't come along until after the percussion cap - no reason minie balls can't be used on a flintlock. or a wheellock or matchlock, for that matter).
With minie balls and flintlocks, five shots a minute is not impossible (the record is some French dude who could reliably fire twelve times a minute), and three shots a minute is trivial.
And platoon firing (look it up - Wellington used it) means pretty much continuous fire on the lads trying to use their bayonets (and thereby slowing their own rate of fire).
So, the driver can't pay attention to the road while talking, but a passenger beside or behind him has no trouble at all paying attention to the road while talking?
In my experience, the passengers pay even less attention to the road than the driver, since they're not the ones behind the wheel....
Blackpowder is easy to make if you know how, and flintlocks likewise. Hell, percussion caps aren't hard to make, really. Which means that swinging swords probably won't be necessary.
Note that the assumption that nothing will be left of the old civilization is probably a bad one. There probably won't be any large power plants, but a car's alternator hooked up to a waterwheel should be able to provide at least minimal electricity for things like lights in an operating room or keeping a computer running for records access/storage.
You should actually read your link.
If you INTEND to make a profit, it's a business. Even if you don't actually make a profit.
Only time my flue was ever spread quickly was when the hurricane pushed my chimney over.
Or did you mean "flu"?
If you can't spell "you're", you're an idiot. An illiterate idiot....
Alas, no.
The Birthright Lotteries in question were a literal lottery held annually to allow someone to have a child.
Everyone in the world was authorized to have one child.
Then, special people were authorized more than one (geniuses, that sort of thing).
And rich people were allowed to buy extra birthrights (the theory being that getting rich was a skill - note that taxation in place pretty much prevented inherited wealth).
And finally, if there were not enough children being born to replace losses in any particular year, there was the Birthright Lottery - winners got a license to have a child.
The odds of winning were on the orders of millions to one against. All of Teela's ancestors for the last six generations were winners of the Birthright Lottery. And she was lucky. Alas for the people who chose to send her to the Ringoworld, her luck did NOT extend to the people near her - odd things happened that were good for HER - if they were good for nearby people, cool, if not, tough....
Unless they've slowed the presses down while I wasn't looking, more like two days worth....
Nah, if you know your stuff, it takes quite small amount of explosives properly placed to bring down something like those towers.