And while you're doing this, India will increase in population by about a billion people. Net effect: more pollution, fewer Europeans, fewer Americans.
rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Tne First Amendment doesn't have the qualifer, therefore it is slightly stronger.
Note that this is in theory. It is not necessarily true in practice, for either nation.
All I was aiming for was to point out that the 666 rule was drivel. If you're at mach 6 at 60k feet, there's a great deal more than a 6% increase in fuel requirement to make up for that.
And while the first stage may be a terrible place to innovate, it's also utterly necessary to innovate there. The only way to bring launch costs down dramatically (say, by an order of magnitude or two) is to make your first stage trivially reusable. You needn't even manage mach 6 at 60k feet. Mach 4 at 60k feet from a trivially reusable (as in - as reusable as an airliner) would help immensely.
Note, by the way, that the SR-71 achieved a sizable fraction of "mach 6 at 60k feet" with 70's technology (mach 3.5+ at 85k+ feet). The problem is more one of size than of performance - we're talking a vehicle that can carry a 300 ton vehicle as cargo....
Alternately, you could take the required second stage, and make the fuel tank at least 6% bigger and skip all this air breathing foolishness.
Running a few quick numbers, if you're going mach 6 at 60k feet, you'll need about another 6400 m/s deltaV to reach orbit. Which represents a mass ratio of about 4.2 using SME performance (and yes, if you're aiming for an SSTO you probably don't want to use LH2).
Starting stationary from the ground, you need a mass ratio of about 8.0. Rather larger than 6% bigger fuel tanks, eh?
Even a slow nice steady boost will get you to orbit without needing to hit escape velocity.
Hint: if you're in orbit, you never hit escape speed (not velocity - the only direction that matters is that you not be aimed at the ground - any other direction will mean that you escape from Earth's gravitational control).
That said, a normal rocket's boost is about the most fuel-efficient way to reach orbit. Slow and steady might get you there eventually, but at a vastly higher cost in fuel or reaction mass.
Except that we can measure the acceleration of the earth (rotation around the sun is obviously not a strait line, and easily measurable). So... yeah, you don't actually get the same results when you do the math for a point decoupled to the solar system and earth. No one outside of physics learns relativity, despite it being 100 year old science.
Try looking at General Relativity a bit more closely. Results are the same either way.
Some may learn "pigeon" relativity, but that's not really helpful.
Try learning the difference between "pigeon" and "pidgin", which is what you really meant above (I hope). It'll make people take you more seriously when discussing Relativistic physics.
Now if you take the Bible as the literal truth, as so many do, this is to be expected.
Or you could assume that using a stationary Earth as a frame of reference works just as well in Einsteinian physics as a non-stationary Earth. Just remember, you get the same results by assuming that YOU are the stationary center of the Universe as the reverse....
Saying that they're all a pile of crap is over-simplifying things. The point is, they are all logically consistent up to a point. That may be due to human error, it may be due to the fact that they are all linked by something we haven't yet found. But they ARE still logically inconsistent and until we find any mistakes or connections, they aren't "crap". Maybe unusable. Maybe unverifiable. Maybe impractical. But they are no worse than any other hypothesis at all.
If it's unverifiable, it's not a "hypothesis". It's philosophy.
And "no worse than any other hypothesis" doesn't turn "crap" into "gold".
Hawking generally doesn't simplify down that far
It's always possible that Hawking said one thing and the reporter wrote another.
That said, there's no evidence that gravity is at all meaningful until the Big Bang happened. So explaining "creation" as a result of "gravity" is a bit specious, since we're describing a cause that happened after the effect we're saying it caused.
Note that not even Hawking talks about the instant of the Big Bang (unless he's come up with something new) - he generally starts right after the Big Bang and moves forward from there. Or at least so I recall from "The Big Bang for Idiots" that he wrote....
Then go back several billion years to a time when the universe was nanoseconds old, and its entire mass and energy (and, confusing as it is, space) was crushed into something smaller than the head of a pin.
Of course, when the universe is several nanoseconds old, we're past talking about "creation", aren't we? By several nanoseconds, at least.
Ultimately, the other side of the singularity that is the Big Bang is unknowable. We can speculation all we like, and pretty much all the speculations are equally valid - they're all a pile of crap....
Note that Hawking was, most likely, talking about the galaxies, suns, planets, etc. when he said that God wasn't needed to make it happen. In that, he's correct, in that once the Big Bang happens, gravity pretty much requires the formation of planets, stars, galaxies, etc.
The world doesn't have an overpopulation problem. Some parts of the world do - Africa most of all, but also China, India, and some other parts of Asia. Europe doesn't have it (it has the opposite problem), and US and Canada - especially the latter - have plenty more room to expand, and, given the existing rates, plenty of time before it will become even a minor problem (and I suspect the birth rates will fall below sustainability point long before that, anyway).
Africa has below world average population density, fyi.
On the other hand, Asia is pretty much the place to be if you want to talk about lots or people per square mile.
Europe, by the way, has a population density rather above (about four times world average, or a bit more) world average with the exception of the Scandinavian peninsula.
Note that the birth rate is already below sustainability in the USA. Population growth for the last couple censuses has all come from immigration (legal and otherwise).
Ditto for Europe - population growth, excluding immigration from outside Europe, is negative.
If you do it right, you can take a lot of energy out using the moon. Like using Venus flybies to get to Jupiter. In general I think you can get a deltaV of good fraction of the orbital velocity.
Umm, I was assuming that the rock was falling at escape speed, which is about the minimum it's going to fall at if dropped from (essentially) infinity. If we were to drop it from the moon instead (which is about the minimum energy it can have after using the moon to slingshot it towards Earth), then we're talking about 99% of escape speed (it can't have any less than that, since that's how much it'll pick up from Earth's gravity well as it falls from the moon). So reduce 40000 megatons to only 39000 MT....
Trust me, 39 GT, 40 GT, not much difference at all when it's falling on you....
More or less, sure. Depending on the density, you could harpoon the asteroid with a retro-rocket and direct it back toward Earth for reentry. With low velocities, it could slam down in a desert area for safety. This would enable miners to excavate its resources with standard mining know-how that we have in place today.
Hmm, let's look at some numbers. In general, if it's coming in from outside our gravity well, it'll be hitting atmosphere at escape speed or a bit over. Or a whole lot over. But let's go with escape speed.
Let's assume we're talking a billion ton asteroid, just for round numbers.
So, escape speed, billion tons...impact energy is on the order of 40 gigatons of TNT.
It's the corrupt governments run for the benefit of the leader and his cronies only that should be expelled if they refuse to change (and they will refuse).
The only way to expel someone from the U.N. is by majority vote of the U.N. General Assembly. Since the majority of the governments in that body fit within the definition of "corrupt governments run for the benefit of the leader and his cronies", it's not terribly likely that your fantasy will come to pass.
The only real solution to the U.N. is to dissolve it and replace it with a new organization, by invitation only.
Unfortunately, the only real way to dissolve the U.N. would be for the USA to withdraw from it (and take with us the majority of the U.N. funding). And that's just not going to happen. C'mon, the USA just joined the UN Council on Human Rights (which we've carefully avoided till now, since letting a bunch of tin-pot dictators lecture us on human rights is a waste of everyone's time) - we're not about to withdraw from the U.N. this side of a Presidential Election, and probably (realistically, certainly) not then.
Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people in the USA and Europe (and Canada, too) who believe in the miraculous powers of the U.N. to solve the world's problems....
The UN will address the symptoms with food and aid, but will never address the problem of dictatorships and warlords that cause this poverty and corruption.
The U.N. doesn't have any way to deal with dictatorships and warlords, since most of them are members in good standing of the U.N. If you were to expel all the nations with disfunctional governments from the U.N., it would look a lot like NATO (plus Japan and India)...
As an American, I really wish the British Empire never dissolved.
So, basically you wish that the British were still around to do all the things you say rude things about the Americans doing? Or do you somehow imagine that the British ruled their Empire without fighting in third-world hellholes pretty regularly?
The Jedac (possibly spelt "Jeddack" or "Jedack", I don't recall) were Martian warriors in Edgar Rice Burroughs' Barsoom stories
Well, no.
Actually, on Barsoom, "jeddak" was a word more or less synonymous with "king", and had nothing at all to do with any fighting style. Or even with being a warrior - in general jeddaks were warriors, but there were exceptions.
Note that this doesn't mean that Jedi weren't based on Sufi mystics. But it's unlikely in the extreme that they drew any inspiration from Barsoom.
The raising/lowering taxes on the rich/poor is accurate if the total taxes required are equal. Unfortunately, we have a national debt that needs to be paid down and raising taxes are unavoidable. In that situation, raising taxes for everyone but the most destitute is unavoidable, but should be raised on a curve so as to minimize the pain as much as possible based on your ability to pay. I was just simplifying the concept.
It is NOT "simplifying the concept" when you state something that is false. Suggesting that if we elect Dems we will mostly see a lowering of tax rates is false, since the Dems have neither the ability to lower taxes, nor any interest in doing so. The best you can say about them is that they'd make a better effort to hide the extra taxes you'd be paying from you....
Somehow the republicans have managed to convince people that increasing taxes on the rich (over $250,000/yr) and lowering everyone else's taxes is the wrong thing to do.
If you ever bother to check, The Dems aren't proposing increasing taxes on the rich and lowering taxes on the poor, they're suggesting raising taxes on the rich and raising different taxes on the poor.
Or do you really think Social Security and Medicare are going to become solvent with just taxes on the rich?
I've had a geothermal heatpump for almost 10 years. My parents for even longer.
If my skill in solving those word-problems from elementary-school math has not diminished, you are at least 11 years old.
Your skill at solving word-problems from elementary-school math has diminished. The conclusion you should have reached is that he is less than ten years old.
ignore that we already used up more than half the oil, plutonium
Umm, plutonium is something we make. Out of U-238, mostly. And we certainly haven't used half the U-238 on the planet....
Also, am I correct in assuming that since you know we've used more than half the oil in the world that you know about ALL the oil supplies in the world, including the (i had thought) undiscovered ones? If so, got any advice on a good place to buy land with mineral rights?
That's the whole point of a strategic helium reserve--so that we have it when we really need it,
It should be noted that we established a strategic helium reserve to supply lift gas for the Navy's dirigibles. What, the Navy doesn't have any dirigibles anymore?
The only reason the strategic helium reserve wasn't ended back in the 40's is that government programs have a life of their own - they don't end just because we don't need them, they end when enough congresscritters realize we don't need them. Note the telephone surtax to support the Spanish-American War that was ended a few years back as an example....
Yes you would need a cooling circuit with big radiator fins. Gets better as you move away from the sun.
And bigger generators, since most of the power from a Navy nuke is used to spin the screw. And pumps to push warm water through a HUGE radiator till it cools just enough to be pumped back into a steam generator. Note that the radiator can't be allowed to freeze up, either, so you'll need some way of emptying it when you want to shut down the reactor.
And....
In other words, doable, but not anywhere near COTS.
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And while you're doing this, India will increase in population by about a billion people. Net effect: more pollution, fewer Europeans, fewer Americans.
From the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms:
rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society.
Tne First Amendment doesn't have the qualifer, therefore it is slightly stronger.
Note that this is in theory. It is not necessarily true in practice, for either nation.
All I was aiming for was to point out that the 666 rule was drivel. If you're at mach 6 at 60k feet, there's a great deal more than a 6% increase in fuel requirement to make up for that.
And while the first stage may be a terrible place to innovate, it's also utterly necessary to innovate there. The only way to bring launch costs down dramatically (say, by an order of magnitude or two) is to make your first stage trivially reusable. You needn't even manage mach 6 at 60k feet. Mach 4 at 60k feet from a trivially reusable (as in - as reusable as an airliner) would help immensely.
Note, by the way, that the SR-71 achieved a sizable fraction of "mach 6 at 60k feet" with 70's technology (mach 3.5+ at 85k+ feet). The problem is more one of size than of performance - we're talking a vehicle that can carry a 300 ton vehicle as cargo....
Running a few quick numbers, if you're going mach 6 at 60k feet, you'll need about another 6400 m/s deltaV to reach orbit. Which represents a mass ratio of about 4.2 using SME performance (and yes, if you're aiming for an SSTO you probably don't want to use LH2).
Starting stationary from the ground, you need a mass ratio of about 8.0. Rather larger than 6% bigger fuel tanks, eh?
Hint: if you're in orbit, you never hit escape speed (not velocity - the only direction that matters is that you not be aimed at the ground - any other direction will mean that you escape from Earth's gravitational control).
That said, a normal rocket's boost is about the most fuel-efficient way to reach orbit. Slow and steady might get you there eventually, but at a vastly higher cost in fuel or reaction mass.
Try looking at General Relativity a bit more closely. Results are the same either way.
Try learning the difference between "pigeon" and "pidgin", which is what you really meant above (I hope). It'll make people take you more seriously when discussing Relativistic physics.
Not looked at General Relativity much, I see...
Or you could assume that using a stationary Earth as a frame of reference works just as well in Einsteinian physics as a non-stationary Earth. Just remember, you get the same results by assuming that YOU are the stationary center of the Universe as the reverse....
/. seems to have a lot of creative spelling. But I think that this one wins first prize....
If it's unverifiable, it's not a "hypothesis". It's philosophy.
And "no worse than any other hypothesis" doesn't turn "crap" into "gold".
It's always possible that Hawking said one thing and the reporter wrote another.
That said, there's no evidence that gravity is at all meaningful until the Big Bang happened. So explaining "creation" as a result of "gravity" is a bit specious, since we're describing a cause that happened after the effect we're saying it caused.
Note that not even Hawking talks about the instant of the Big Bang (unless he's come up with something new) - he generally starts right after the Big Bang and moves forward from there. Or at least so I recall from "The Big Bang for Idiots" that he wrote....
Of course, when the universe is several nanoseconds old, we're past talking about "creation", aren't we? By several nanoseconds, at least.
Ultimately, the other side of the singularity that is the Big Bang is unknowable. We can speculation all we like, and pretty much all the speculations are equally valid - they're all a pile of crap....
Note that Hawking was, most likely, talking about the galaxies, suns, planets, etc. when he said that God wasn't needed to make it happen. In that, he's correct, in that once the Big Bang happens, gravity pretty much requires the formation of planets, stars, galaxies, etc.
Africa has below world average population density, fyi.
On the other hand, Asia is pretty much the place to be if you want to talk about lots or people per square mile.
Europe, by the way, has a population density rather above (about four times world average, or a bit more) world average with the exception of the Scandinavian peninsula.
Note that the birth rate is already below sustainability in the USA. Population growth for the last couple censuses has all come from immigration (legal and otherwise).
Ditto for Europe - population growth, excluding immigration from outside Europe, is negative.
Umm, I was assuming that the rock was falling at escape speed, which is about the minimum it's going to fall at if dropped from (essentially) infinity. If we were to drop it from the moon instead (which is about the minimum energy it can have after using the moon to slingshot it towards Earth), then we're talking about 99% of escape speed (it can't have any less than that, since that's how much it'll pick up from Earth's gravity well as it falls from the moon). So reduce 40000 megatons to only 39000 MT....
Trust me, 39 GT, 40 GT, not much difference at all when it's falling on you....
Hmm, let's look at some numbers. In general, if it's coming in from outside our gravity well, it'll be hitting atmosphere at escape speed or a bit over. Or a whole lot over. But let's go with escape speed.
Let's assume we're talking a billion ton asteroid, just for round numbers.
So, escape speed, billion tons...impact energy is on the order of 40 gigatons of TNT.
So, which desert area will we use for safety?
Likewise in people, plants, that sort of thing....
The only way to expel someone from the U.N. is by majority vote of the U.N. General Assembly. Since the majority of the governments in that body fit within the definition of "corrupt governments run for the benefit of the leader and his cronies", it's not terribly likely that your fantasy will come to pass.
The only real solution to the U.N. is to dissolve it and replace it with a new organization, by invitation only.
Unfortunately, the only real way to dissolve the U.N. would be for the USA to withdraw from it (and take with us the majority of the U.N. funding). And that's just not going to happen. C'mon, the USA just joined the UN Council on Human Rights (which we've carefully avoided till now, since letting a bunch of tin-pot dictators lecture us on human rights is a waste of everyone's time) - we're not about to withdraw from the U.N. this side of a Presidential Election, and probably (realistically, certainly) not then.
Unfortunately, there are still a lot of people in the USA and Europe (and Canada, too) who believe in the miraculous powers of the U.N. to solve the world's problems....
The U.N. doesn't have any way to deal with dictatorships and warlords, since most of them are members in good standing of the U.N. If you were to expel all the nations with disfunctional governments from the U.N., it would look a lot like NATO (plus Japan and India)...
So, basically you wish that the British were still around to do all the things you say rude things about the Americans doing? Or do you somehow imagine that the British ruled their Empire without fighting in third-world hellholes pretty regularly?
2500 hundreds is $250,000....
Well, no.
Actually, on Barsoom, "jeddak" was a word more or less synonymous with "king", and had nothing at all to do with any fighting style. Or even with being a warrior - in general jeddaks were warriors, but there were exceptions.
Note that this doesn't mean that Jedi weren't based on Sufi mystics. But it's unlikely in the extreme that they drew any inspiration from Barsoom.
It is NOT "simplifying the concept" when you state something that is false. Suggesting that if we elect Dems we will mostly see a lowering of tax rates is false, since the Dems have neither the ability to lower taxes, nor any interest in doing so. The best you can say about them is that they'd make a better effort to hide the extra taxes you'd be paying from you....
If you ever bother to check, The Dems aren't proposing increasing taxes on the rich and lowering taxes on the poor, they're suggesting raising taxes on the rich and raising different taxes on the poor.
Or do you really think Social Security and Medicare are going to become solvent with just taxes on the rich?
Your skill at solving word-problems from elementary-school math has diminished. The conclusion you should have reached is that he is less than ten years old.
Umm, plutonium is something we make. Out of U-238, mostly. And we certainly haven't used half the U-238 on the planet....
Also, am I correct in assuming that since you know we've used more than half the oil in the world that you know about ALL the oil supplies in the world, including the (i had thought) undiscovered ones? If so, got any advice on a good place to buy land with mineral rights?
It should be noted that we established a strategic helium reserve to supply lift gas for the Navy's dirigibles. What, the Navy doesn't have any dirigibles anymore?
The only reason the strategic helium reserve wasn't ended back in the 40's is that government programs have a life of their own - they don't end just because we don't need them, they end when enough congresscritters realize we don't need them. Note the telephone surtax to support the Spanish-American War that was ended a few years back as an example....
And bigger generators, since most of the power from a Navy nuke is used to spin the screw. And pumps to push warm water through a HUGE radiator till it cools just enough to be pumped back into a steam generator. Note that the radiator can't be allowed to freeze up, either, so you'll need some way of emptying it when you want to shut down the reactor.
And....
In other words, doable, but not anywhere near COTS.