Other than possibly looking for He-3 (for some reason, that factors in a bunch of hard SF stories),
He-3 + hydrogen fuses easier than hydrogen alone. Which is why it appeared in a lot of scifi once upon a time. It was thought to be "realistic" early fusion....
And ice on Luna is a wonderful source of reaction mass for a nerva-type drive. Especially since it is an order of magnitude or so easier to get to, say, L5 (or LEO) from Luna than from Earth.
Hell, it would be easier to get reaction mass from Mars to L5 (or LEO) than to get the same reaction mass from Earth....
IOW, yes, we still want bases on the Moon and probably Mars, even with a proper spaceship....
In the long term, it may be easier to get reaction mass from Saturn's rings than from Luna or Mars. I haven't even tried to run the numbers on that. But Saturn isn't an issue for a loooong time. The Moon and Mars are useful as a source of reaction mass for a long time before Saturn can be made useful....
There is a difference between "value" and "price".
What was falling was the PRICE of cryptocurrencies, not its value.
Now, arguably, since cryptocurrencies are, well, currency, the "price" and "value" are identical. Which would mean that the value fell along with the price.
Nonetheless, it is more accurate in general to use "price", especially when it's doubtful whether "value" applies....
a child born today has basically no chance of driving a car around the streets of Miami, Florida. In fact, there are children old enough to to know what Miami is, understand what's happening to it, who will never be able to drive its streets... (nor ride around in an Ubber or a Lyeft or whatever,) BUT, on the plus side, that child WILL be able to paddle in an ocean-going kayak, or sail a shallow-bottomed boat around in the ocean above what WAS Miami, and look down and see the foundations of all the houses and buildings that have mostly been washed away thanks to the pounding of the waves and surf, before they too are reclaimed.
So, basically, they're saying Miami will be completely submerged in 15 years or less???
Not a chance in hell...
Miami averages a couple meters above Sealevel. Oceans aren't going to rise three meters+ in 15 years. Not even with worst-case sealevel rise. Hell, we won't see that much sealevel rise this century, much less in the next 15 years (again, worst case).
If those plastic pieces are in the oceans, in the ground, etc. in the same magnitude (or worse), then the scale of the problem isn't being overstated by environmentalists.
Well...
8 billion tons of plastic, worst case (assuming all plastics ever made are now microplastic pieces in the oceans).
1.33 billion cubic kilometers of oceans.
So, absolute worst case is 6 tons of plastic per billion tons of ocean.
Alas, 0.006 ppm isn't nearly as scary as 8 billion tons made!!!
And that 0.006 ppm ignores that a significant fraction of that plastic is NOT in the oceans in microscopic chunks or otherwise....
This is, of course, irrelevant to nuclear power. Pu-239 is produced for use in nuclear weapons only. A standard reactor doesn't produce Pu-239 any more than a gasoline engine produces plastics as a side-effect.
I'm sorry but doesn't America have much more urgent things to take care of such as universal health care and drinkable public water in Flint rather than space exploration (sorry, I mean "Space Force").
Well...
Universal Healthcare is not strictly a Federal issue, what with the whole Constitution thing specifying that anything not specifically allowed to the Feds is a State matter. On the other hand, FDR pretty much threw that Constitutional issue out the window back in the 1930's, and got the Supremes of the day to go along with it by threatening to just add more Justices till he had the required majority. So I could go either way on it.
Water in Flint Michigan? Nope, not a Federal issue. You can't even use the Interstate Commerce clause to cover that, since it's purely a local matter. So talk to the government of Michigan if you want that dealt with.
All that aside, the Constitution does seem to give the Federal government the Power to do military things. Like this Space Force (warning: I've ignored all the news about the Space Force, but it looks like the sort of interservice rivalry that led to the Key West Accords).
So, while Universal Healthcare might be more important than the Space Force, the Space Force is something that can pass Constitutional muster easier than Universal Healthcare.
And what any of this has to do with India wanting to put men in space, I can't imagine.
As to India putting men in space, I am thinking that four years is too short a timeline, unless they're trying for something comparable to Mercury or Vostok. Which would be a waste of time and money. Stretch the timeline to ten years, and they can probably get their own space program going in a respectable sort of way....
Well if companies don't have zero women on their boards then there is no need to worry about this proposed law, is there?
Umm, no.
This proposed law will, in a few years, require basically 50:50 men/women on the board. Which might be pretty easy to manage if the Board chooses the new members, not so easy if the Board is elected by the stockholders....
No, cutting out the 8 reactors will basically destroy the ship. It will just be scraped.
The eight reactors have already been removed, according to TFS. So they're irrelevant to the question of how much more it's going to cost to scrap the Enterprise.
It's a huge ship. Biggest in the world when built. It's also full of all sorts of hazardous things (asbestos removal alone will be a nightmare). When you consider the lawsuits that will appear wherever they take the ship for final disposal, it'll be a miracle if they can scrap it at all, much less for a billion or two...
I can't audit that my vote was accurately counted, but an audit can be done globally.
Unless, of course, someone decides to replace a few (or a lot, of course) legitimate ballots with neatly printed versions with different votes....
Paper ballots have never been the panacea that some people seem to think they were. Which they'd know if they read enough history about voting shenanigans back in the days when paper ballots were the only option.
ShanghaiBilly is right - you can have a secret vote, or a verifiable vote, but having both is hard, if it's even possible (myself, I tend to believe it's not possible, but I tend to be paranoid about some things)....
Assuming enough people actually kept their piece of papers, you could make a manual recount by those.
Assuming EVERYONE actually kept their piece of paper, you mean? Otherwise, your "manual recount" is only going to be a partial recount, with no way of judging whether it had any real similarity to the original vote.
I just don't trust that our political figures have enough technical knowledge to choose software that is secure.
I don't trust our "political figures" to have enough technical knowledge about anything other than getting elected to do anything meaningful in office.
Which is why we have various departments, bureaus, and offices in government filled with technically knowledgeable individuals, each with his own field of expertise, to advise the politicians about technical matters of which they (the pols) know little or nothing.
Admittedly, the pols don't always listen to the technically knowledgeable individuals they employ for their expertise, but that applies to every field, not just remote voting.
IOW, if you trust them to handle things like Climate Change (A or otherwise), then you might as well trust them to handle voting (it's not like either existing voting systems or their pen & paper predecessors were ever 100% reliable)....
Its not even clear, states have to put the presidential election on a ballot.
Quite so. There is no requirement that there be an election for Pres/VP at State level. Electors are what are chosen at the State level, and there is no specific requirement as to how Electors are chosen.
Note that if the Electors worked as designed by the Founders, two of the Electors from each State would be chosen by the State governments (remember, originally, the Senators were representing their State, not the people of same) and the remainder by a separate election in each Congressional District.
Of course, as originally designed, it was possible to have Pres and VP be from different Parties, the winner of the Electoral College being Pres, and whomever (of whatever Party) came in second would be VP. That didn't last long though.
Sometimes I think it would've been better that way, sometimes not so much....
Pretty much the only book people would see in The West during the dark ages, was the bible.
If you weren't a priest then, the only books you'd see were the account books of your business. Yes, businesses kept account ledgers then. Some of the oldest writings we've found have been invoices...
Sorry, I didn't realize you guys were talking about building only the receiver. Sure, a skilled machinist could do that in 2 hours.
Quite so. It should be noted that all the other parts of a gun can be bought legally (with no license of any sort required, or proof of anything other than ability to pay for the parts), so once you've built the receiver, you can assemble the gun trivially.
Slashdot Mirror
He-3 + hydrogen fuses easier than hydrogen alone. Which is why it appeared in a lot of scifi once upon a time. It was thought to be "realistic" early fusion....
A nuke spacecraft still requires reaction mass.
And ice on Luna is a wonderful source of reaction mass for a nerva-type drive. Especially since it is an order of magnitude or so easier to get to, say, L5 (or LEO) from Luna than from Earth.
Hell, it would be easier to get reaction mass from Mars to L5 (or LEO) than to get the same reaction mass from Earth....
IOW, yes, we still want bases on the Moon and probably Mars, even with a proper spaceship....
In the long term, it may be easier to get reaction mass from Saturn's rings than from Luna or Mars. I haven't even tried to run the numbers on that. But Saturn isn't an issue for a loooong time. The Moon and Mars are useful as a source of reaction mass for a long time before Saturn can be made useful....
And paper ballots don't help prove that the box wasn't stuffed or votes changed or mis-counted either.
Unless, of course, the name of the voter is part of the paper ballot. Which just might have the effect of voter suppression....
There is a difference between "value" and "price".
What was falling was the PRICE of cryptocurrencies, not its value.
Now, arguably, since cryptocurrencies are, well, currency, the "price" and "value" are identical. Which would mean that the value fell along with the price.
Nonetheless, it is more accurate in general to use "price", especially when it's doubtful whether "value" applies....
So, basically, they're saying Miami will be completely submerged in 15 years or less???
Not a chance in hell...
Miami averages a couple meters above Sealevel. Oceans aren't going to rise three meters+ in 15 years. Not even with worst-case sealevel rise. Hell, we won't see that much sealevel rise this century, much less in the next 15 years (again, worst case).
Well...
8 billion tons of plastic, worst case (assuming all plastics ever made are now microplastic pieces in the oceans).
1.33 billion cubic kilometers of oceans.
So, absolute worst case is 6 tons of plastic per billion tons of ocean.
Alas, 0.006 ppm isn't nearly as scary as 8 billion tons made!!!
And that 0.006 ppm ignores that a significant fraction of that plastic is NOT in the oceans in microscopic chunks or otherwise....
This is, of course, irrelevant to nuclear power. Pu-239 is produced for use in nuclear weapons only. A standard reactor doesn't produce Pu-239 any more than a gasoline engine produces plastics as a side-effect.
Well...
Universal Healthcare is not strictly a Federal issue, what with the whole Constitution thing specifying that anything not specifically allowed to the Feds is a State matter. On the other hand, FDR pretty much threw that Constitutional issue out the window back in the 1930's, and got the Supremes of the day to go along with it by threatening to just add more Justices till he had the required majority. So I could go either way on it.
Water in Flint Michigan? Nope, not a Federal issue. You can't even use the Interstate Commerce clause to cover that, since it's purely a local matter. So talk to the government of Michigan if you want that dealt with.
All that aside, the Constitution does seem to give the Federal government the Power to do military things. Like this Space Force (warning: I've ignored all the news about the Space Force, but it looks like the sort of interservice rivalry that led to the Key West Accords).
So, while Universal Healthcare might be more important than the Space Force, the Space Force is something that can pass Constitutional muster easier than Universal Healthcare.
And what any of this has to do with India wanting to put men in space, I can't imagine.
As to India putting men in space, I am thinking that four years is too short a timeline, unless they're trying for something comparable to Mercury or Vostok. Which would be a waste of time and money. Stretch the timeline to ten years, and they can probably get their own space program going in a respectable sort of way....
Note the definition of "unemployment" is NOT "he/she has no job".
If you have stopped looking for a job, you are NOT "unemployed", according to the current definition of "unemployed".
Which means it would be quite trivial to have 12% of the people on Welfare and only 4% unemployed....
When I was growing, up?
I was grown up and going to college before the first PC saw the light of day.
I did share a comp with my wife after college, for a few years.
Umm, no.
This proposed law will, in a few years, require basically 50:50 men/women on the board. Which might be pretty easy to manage if the Board chooses the new members, not so easy if the Board is elected by the stockholders....
Bet that number would go up dramatically if the law required an "other" on every Board of Directors....
And nurses? Firefighters? Garbage collectors? Strippers? Elementary school teachers?
And...***insert long list of jobs where gender (sex?) discrimination is obvious because one sex or the other dominates***?
The eight reactors have already been removed, according to TFS. So they're irrelevant to the question of how much more it's going to cost to scrap the Enterprise.
It's a huge ship. Biggest in the world when built. It's also full of all sorts of hazardous things (asbestos removal alone will be a nightmare). When you consider the lawsuits that will appear wherever they take the ship for final disposal, it'll be a miracle if they can scrap it at all, much less for a billion or two...
And for all that, the murder rate in the USA is about half what it was 50 years ago....
Unless, of course, someone decides to replace a few (or a lot, of course) legitimate ballots with neatly printed versions with different votes....
Paper ballots have never been the panacea that some people seem to think they were. Which they'd know if they read enough history about voting shenanigans back in the days when paper ballots were the only option.
ShanghaiBilly is right - you can have a secret vote, or a verifiable vote, but having both is hard, if it's even possible (myself, I tend to believe it's not possible, but I tend to be paranoid about some things)....
Assuming EVERYONE actually kept their piece of paper, you mean? Otherwise, your "manual recount" is only going to be a partial recount, with no way of judging whether it had any real similarity to the original vote.
I don't trust our "political figures" to have enough technical knowledge about anything other than getting elected to do anything meaningful in office.
Which is why we have various departments, bureaus, and offices in government filled with technically knowledgeable individuals, each with his own field of expertise, to advise the politicians about technical matters of which they (the pols) know little or nothing.
Admittedly, the pols don't always listen to the technically knowledgeable individuals they employ for their expertise, but that applies to every field, not just remote voting.
IOW, if you trust them to handle things like Climate Change (A or otherwise), then you might as well trust them to handle voting (it's not like either existing voting systems or their pen & paper predecessors were ever 100% reliable)....
Somehow, I cannot get excited or upset that people with high-speed internet are losing sleep as a result....
Any more than it bothers me that many people in the USA have to make up their minds which car to use on any given day....
Quite so. There is no requirement that there be an election for Pres/VP at State level. Electors are what are chosen at the State level, and there is no specific requirement as to how Electors are chosen.
Note that if the Electors worked as designed by the Founders, two of the Electors from each State would be chosen by the State governments (remember, originally, the Senators were representing their State, not the people of same) and the remainder by a separate election in each Congressional District.
Of course, as originally designed, it was possible to have Pres and VP be from different Parties, the winner of the Electoral College being Pres, and whomever (of whatever Party) came in second would be VP. That didn't last long though.
Sometimes I think it would've been better that way, sometimes not so much....
If you weren't a priest then, the only books you'd see were the account books of your business. Yes, businesses kept account ledgers then. Some of the oldest writings we've found have been invoices...
Quite so. It should be noted that all the other parts of a gun can be bought legally (with no license of any sort required, or proof of anything other than ability to pay for the parts), so once you've built the receiver, you can assemble the gun trivially.
A CHICKEN??? Really?
Of course, 2/3 of the gun deaths are suicides, so it's not quite the same as cars....
Falsely. It's "falsely shout fire in a crowded theatre". The "falsely" is important.