Refueling... Even with the best drive, you don't want to carry all your fuel with you. A quick circling stop there could boost speed and pick up more fuel, not to mention much needed gravity vacation.
You're aware that it takes fuel to stop there, right?
And then it'll take the same amount of fuel you used when you left the Solar System to get back up to speed when you leave the Brown Dwarf, right?
And the same amount of fuel to stop when you get where you're going ultimately as it took to stop at the Brown Dwarf, right?
So, no net savings, unless you're going so slowly that even a trip to a nearby Brown Dwarf is a matter of thousands of years in flight.
Depending on the design of one's spacecraft, one could pick up particles that are in orbit of the brown dwarf to use for fuel or other raw materials, and one could use gravity as an assist to accelerate further toward one's destination.
If you're moving slowly enough that a gravity assist off a Brown Dwarf is worth doing, you're talking about interstellar voyages taking tens of thousands of years.
And if you're taking tens of thousand of years to get to Alphacent, you're doing it wrong. Better to just wait a century or so and use better drives.
"Thanks to half a century of pouring US arms stockpiles into Africa, the price of an assault rifle in Africa has for some time been cheaper than anyplace else on the planet."
Odd that the "US arms stockpiles" consist mostly of Soviet weapons (AK-47s and such)....
By what mechanism, exactly? Is it due to competition? For example, if costs increase, the insurance company could retain the same profit margin by just increasing premiums. Subscribers will either pay the higher premium or drop down to a lower-benefit plan. But if a competing health insurance company achieves lower cost (by paying less than $5,400/hour, for example), then subscribers may switch to the competition (which can provide the same benefit at a lower premium). Is that the mechanism?
Insurance rates, in general, are regulated at the State level. It's not always trivial to get the State Insurance Board (or whatever you call it in whatever State you live in) to approve a rate increase (though, in the end, they usually do).
"oh, it's not a two party dictatorship, anyone can run and become a candidate"
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, a man named Lincoln ran for President. He was the very first guy from his political Party to run for President. He won.
Needless to say, we didn't have just one political Party before 1860.
In the USA, a third Party has a lot of hurdles to overcome. The biggest, of course, is that, contrary to popular rumour, most everyone is in the middle, not in the lunatic fringes to both left and right.
Right now, the Dems are popular with the middle and the left.
The Repubs are popular with the middle and the right.
And the assorted third Parties are well out to either left or right, with almost no appeal to the middle.
As soon as a third Party understands the country well enough to position itself to be popular with about 40% of the country (as opposed to the 3% they aim to reach right now), there'll be a useful third Party.
Note, by the way, that neither the Greens nor the Libertarians make any real attempt to appeal to any part of the center, so they'll never be a viable third Party.
If you are designing bombers for delivering nuclear weapons today, you are talking stealth bombers like the B2 so you can launch a first strike. For non-stealth attacks, missiles are much cheaper.
Umm, no.
If you want to do a first strike, you use missiles. Missiles get to target in half an hour or so (or less, in the case of SLBMs). Planes take a long time to get to target, and therefore aren't really suitable for a first strike (the war could be over before the planes get to target when both sides have ICBMs).
Planes are for a retaliatory strike. And since they can be in the air before the missiles are even launched, they have a high survivability, unlike missiles in silos.
'The Pentagon budget includes funds to develop a new fleet of 12 nuclear-armed submarines with an estimated cost of $110 billion, according to the Congressional Budget Office.
A quick Google shows that those new submarines aren't going to be built within ten years, so the $110 Billion referred to above would not be counted toward that $700 billion figure over the next ten years that TFA mentioned.
Also planned is $55 billion for 100 new bombers
Oddly enough, this is also mostly out of the "next ten years" mentioned in TFA, though a higher percentage of the mentioned cost will come in the next ten years, since the new bomber is targetted for the mid-20's.
Note also that historically, new weapons programs are usually over budget and almost always later than expected. It's quite likely that the $155 billion mentioned for these two items might not spend more than $30 billion over the next decade ($3 billion per year, or a bit less than 0.1% of the annual budget.
On the other hand, the new bombers are described as "optionally manned". That sounds pretty cool, really.
A committee to do -what- exactly? It sounds like a "group of Good 'Ol Boys to handle whoever we suspect of this, without proof, without judicial oversight, in any manner we choose"...
Well, in general, when Congress forms a committee, it's for the purpose of investigating a problem and drafting appropriate legislation to fix the problem.
Which legislation is subject to the usual judicial oversight.
Now, if this were the Executive Branch, we'd be talking "without proof, without judicial oversight, in any manner we choose". No matter which Party the President is from....
The future of space research, exploration and exploitation belongs to China. This is because they have a government that can reliable implement long term plans.
As I recall from my childhood, the same thing was being said, with "USSR" replacing "China".
Alas, it turned out that the dictatorship of the proletariat was no more capable of long term planning than we were...
5%* tax on all purchases split 50/50 amongst the origin and destination states. In the case of national export, origin is considered destination (the origin state gets all taxes.) The company collecting taxes shall issue checks to respective states at the end of each quarter.
*arbitrary
Complex database solved.
And then next year, a State, county, or minicipality decides it needs a sales tax (in addition to what you describe above), and this all starts over.
You are asking Amazon, and any other online retailer, no matter how small, to keep up with 50 different tax codes.
More than 50.
Many counties have their own sales taxes, in addition to the State sales tax (I live in one), and some municipalities within those counties have their own sales taxes as well.
In the past 4 years I have had to replace exactly 2 CFL bulbs. I have been using them exclusively for 5 years.
Oddly enough, that's true for me as well. And one of the two I dropped while I was trying to screw it in (yes, manual dexterity was not to be found in my house that day).
In the case of SS I expect the money to be invested in ways that get slightly better than inflation, so yes, in pure dollar terms it should be reasonable to get 3 times back what you put in if you contribute over 40 or more years.
Alas, that's not actually how they do SS.
What they do is toss it into the General Fund and spend it.
However, to make it less clear that they're running a Ponzi scheme, they then put ZERO INTEREST T-Bills into a safe somewhere, and promise (cross their hearts and hope to die) that they'll redeem them when needed.
Net effect: No investment of the money of any kind. When the time comes to redeem the T-Bills, they'll raise taxes to pay for them (if there were no T-Bills, on the other hand, they'd raise taxes to pay the SS directly rather than pretending that there's a "social security trust fund" to draw upon.
China had no rep for a while in the 50s, and because of that the U.S. got approval for the Korean War (i.e. the UN action against North Korea). China learned its lesson and started sending representatives to the security council again.
Umm, no.
The USSR was occasionally boycotting the UN about then, in order to express their displeasure with it. During one of its boycotts, the UN approved a resolution calling for aid to South Korea to repel a "bandit invasion" from North Korea.
Since the USSR wasn't around to veto that particular proposition, they suddenly decided not to boycott the UN anymore.
Note, by the way, that at the time of the Korean War, China was a veto power in the UN (it still is), but was represented at the UN by the Republic of China (Taiwan).
Also, you can't order (for delivery) alcohol from the other states in the US unless the state has a reciprocity agreement with the state Alcoholic Beverage Commission or the brewery/winery/distillery has a National Distributor licensed with the State ABC. So for example, I can't order wine from Door County Winery (Door County, WI) or Thomas Tew Rum [newportstorm.com] from Newport Distillery in Newport, RI.
Can you say "alcohol taxes"? Sure you can. Which, by the by, is why you can't do mail-order booze.
Note also that you can buy booze in LA, carry it into TX to your house, and drink yourself shitfaced if you'd like. No, the police don't do checks at the border for booze in your car.
Note, by the way, that your link implies very strongly that it only refers to booze (and tobacco) brought in from outside the country or from Duty-Free shops. There is no hint at all that the police will be busting down your door if you go to OK or LA to buy some booze....
Just curious, by the by, how you feel about California's border controls (or don't you know that CA maintains border checkpoints along its borders with AZ, NV, OR to control import of certain plants to CA)?
An instant is more like a tenth of a second, not a millisecond. Obviously, there's two orders of magnitude, but in human terms both are extremely short intervals. To lose attention for a millisecond, your muscles have to move and return, both actions requiring something like 100 milliseconds (otherwise, interpretations in prestissimo would be impossible). So we end up with 201 milliseconds if you want to look at other place just for that interval.
Both 100 or 201 are a literal blink. But to continue with your example, let's use the shorter one, just for the sake of the argument. Your 3.35 centimeters turn into... 3 meters. So GP poster is still right.
GP poster used the word "millisecond". This certainly qualifies as "exaggeration for effect", but is still over the top.
While it's true that, in some circumstances, 100 ms is important, it's never true (as he asserts) that ONE ms is important.
and even today make it so that alcohol is the ONE product where the Federal government actually abdicated its exclusive right to control interstate commerce so as not to piss off the Fundamentalist Fucking Retard Southern Baptists by "allowing" northern booze to be shipped to their states.
Citation?
I've lived in a bout 20 of the 50 States at one time or another. None of them had laws prohibiting the importation of alcohol, though many restricted the SALE of alcohol, and all of them taxed alcohol.
It's not smart to take your eyes off the road.
Even for a single millisecond.
It should, perhaps, be noted that in one millisecond, your automobile will travel about 1.3 INCHES (assuming you're driving at 75 mph) (that's 33.5 mm and 121 km/hr for you metric types).
A traffic accident that comes within 1.3 inches of being a non-accident won't even ding the paint of your car, much less kill anyone.
Exaggeration for effect is all well and good, but sometimes it's so over the top that it has the opposite of the intended effect.
Slashdot Mirror
You're aware that it takes fuel to stop there, right?
And then it'll take the same amount of fuel you used when you left the Solar System to get back up to speed when you leave the Brown Dwarf, right?
And the same amount of fuel to stop when you get where you're going ultimately as it took to stop at the Brown Dwarf, right?
So, no net savings, unless you're going so slowly that even a trip to a nearby Brown Dwarf is a matter of thousands of years in flight.
And not much savings, even then.
If you're moving slowly enough that a gravity assist off a Brown Dwarf is worth doing, you're talking about interstellar voyages taking tens of thousands of years.
And if you're taking tens of thousand of years to get to Alphacent, you're doing it wrong. Better to just wait a century or so and use better drives.
Decentness? I'm guessing you mean descendents, but this one is so bizarre I can't be sure....
Odd that the "US arms stockpiles" consist mostly of Soviet weapons (AK-47s and such)....
Why does the word "Danegeld" come to mind when I read this?
Insurance rates, in general, are regulated at the State level. It's not always trivial to get the State Insurance Board (or whatever you call it in whatever State you live in) to approve a rate increase (though, in the end, they usually do).
Once upon a time, in a galaxy far, far away, a man named Lincoln ran for President. He was the very first guy from his political Party to run for President. He won.
Needless to say, we didn't have just one political Party before 1860.
In the USA, a third Party has a lot of hurdles to overcome. The biggest, of course, is that, contrary to popular rumour, most everyone is in the middle, not in the lunatic fringes to both left and right.
Right now, the Dems are popular with the middle and the left.
The Repubs are popular with the middle and the right.
And the assorted third Parties are well out to either left or right, with almost no appeal to the middle.
As soon as a third Party understands the country well enough to position itself to be popular with about 40% of the country (as opposed to the 3% they aim to reach right now), there'll be a useful third Party.
Note, by the way, that neither the Greens nor the Libertarians make any real attempt to appeal to any part of the center, so they'll never be a viable third Party.
Umm, no.
If you want to do a first strike, you use missiles. Missiles get to target in half an hour or so (or less, in the case of SLBMs). Planes take a long time to get to target, and therefore aren't really suitable for a first strike (the war could be over before the planes get to target when both sides have ICBMs).
Planes are for a retaliatory strike. And since they can be in the air before the missiles are even launched, they have a high survivability, unlike missiles in silos.
A quick Google shows that those new submarines aren't going to be built within ten years, so the $110 Billion referred to above would not be counted toward that $700 billion figure over the next ten years that TFA mentioned.
Oddly enough, this is also mostly out of the "next ten years" mentioned in TFA, though a higher percentage of the mentioned cost will come in the next ten years, since the new bomber is targetted for the mid-20's.
Note also that historically, new weapons programs are usually over budget and almost always later than expected. It's quite likely that the $155 billion mentioned for these two items might not spend more than $30 billion over the next decade ($3 billion per year, or a bit less than 0.1% of the annual budget.
On the other hand, the new bombers are described as "optionally manned". That sounds pretty cool, really.
Well, in general, when Congress forms a committee, it's for the purpose of investigating a problem and drafting appropriate legislation to fix the problem.
Which legislation is subject to the usual judicial oversight.
Now, if this were the Executive Branch, we'd be talking "without proof, without judicial oversight, in any manner we choose". No matter which Party the President is from....
As I recall from my childhood, the same thing was being said, with "USSR" replacing "China".
Alas, it turned out that the dictatorship of the proletariat was no more capable of long term planning than we were...
Crows also. Up to seven, as I recall.
After that, they're at the "many" stage....
Because Tamerlane and his troops went in and killed everyone but the peasonts.
What was left was a bunch of ignorant peasants who mostly fear the learning that was once prized in the Islamic world.
Well, no. Actually, there was as much argument about slavery at the Constitutional Convention as there was three quarters of a century later.
However, they also knew that if they didn't allow slavery, then the Constitution wasn't going to be approved by the States.
And then next year, a State, county, or minicipality decides it needs a sales tax (in addition to what you describe above), and this all starts over.
More than 50.
Many counties have their own sales taxes, in addition to the State sales tax (I live in one), and some municipalities within those counties have their own sales taxes as well.
Oddly enough, that's true for me as well. And one of the two I dropped while I was trying to screw it in (yes, manual dexterity was not to be found in my house that day).
Alas, that's not actually how they do SS.
What they do is toss it into the General Fund and spend it.
However, to make it less clear that they're running a Ponzi scheme, they then put ZERO INTEREST T-Bills into a safe somewhere, and promise (cross their hearts and hope to die) that they'll redeem them when needed.
Net effect: No investment of the money of any kind. When the time comes to redeem the T-Bills, they'll raise taxes to pay for them (if there were no T-Bills, on the other hand, they'd raise taxes to pay the SS directly rather than pretending that there's a "social security trust fund" to draw upon.
Hate to say this, but Assange isn't important enough for the US government to bother with, when all is said and done.
Umm, no.
The USSR was occasionally boycotting the UN about then, in order to express their displeasure with it. During one of its boycotts, the UN approved a resolution calling for aid to South Korea to repel a "bandit invasion" from North Korea.
Since the USSR wasn't around to veto that particular proposition, they suddenly decided not to boycott the UN anymore.
Note, by the way, that at the time of the Korean War, China was a veto power in the UN (it still is), but was represented at the UN by the Republic of China (Taiwan).
I forget - remind me how many people Fukushima has killed so far?
Can you say "alcohol taxes"? Sure you can. Which, by the by, is why you can't do mail-order booze.
Note also that you can buy booze in LA, carry it into TX to your house, and drink yourself shitfaced if you'd like. No, the police don't do checks at the border for booze in your car.
Note, by the way, that your link implies very strongly that it only refers to booze (and tobacco) brought in from outside the country or from Duty-Free shops. There is no hint at all that the police will be busting down your door if you go to OK or LA to buy some booze....
Just curious, by the by, how you feel about California's border controls (or don't you know that CA maintains border checkpoints along its borders with AZ, NV, OR to control import of certain plants to CA)?
GP poster used the word "millisecond". This certainly qualifies as "exaggeration for effect", but is still over the top.
While it's true that, in some circumstances, 100 ms is important, it's never true (as he asserts) that ONE ms is important.
Citation?
I've lived in a bout 20 of the 50 States at one time or another. None of them had laws prohibiting the importation of alcohol, though many restricted the SALE of alcohol, and all of them taxed alcohol.
It should, perhaps, be noted that in one millisecond, your automobile will travel about 1.3 INCHES (assuming you're driving at 75 mph) (that's 33.5 mm and 121 km/hr for you metric types).
A traffic accident that comes within 1.3 inches of being a non-accident won't even ding the paint of your car, much less kill anyone.
Exaggeration for effect is all well and good, but sometimes it's so over the top that it has the opposite of the intended effect.