They have to because there's not enough energy to live like we live, and support 20 billion people, so the humans must live in the most "green" way possible - minimally.
Actually, the population of Earth in "Caves of Steel" was more like 8 billion than 20 billion. And there's not all that much evidence that an extra 25% population growth will be that much of an issue.
Also, it must be noted that the humans on Earth in the "Caves of Steel" weren't living in a "green" way - it's not really green to put everyone into honking huge buildings so that the rest of the world can be farmland (which is why they lived that way - the forests and wild country were GONE in that fictional future).
Exploration is very high-risk, and theres not a whole lot of guaranteed reward in term of monetary profit.
Given the Treaty forbidding anyone other than the UN from making any money from any body in space other than Earth, I rather imagine that there is no reward in terms of monetary profit whatsoever, and never will be.
The only way I can see to fix this would require a law or constitutional amendment, if necessary, to enable congress to assign budgetary funds, ideally multi-year, that are paid in advance and very difficult to change. At least a 2/3 or even a 3/4 vote should be necessary to remove or repeal.
Constitutional Amendment. Congress is only allowed one year budgets.
On the other hand, making NASA an entitlement would more or less get around the problem.
What differentiates between those ideas that it's okay to feel "entitled" to, versus those that lead to a "entitlement mentality"?
The one set is free, the other set involves taking my money and giving it to someone else.
If the "someone else" then gets the notion that he has a "right" to my money, problems come up.
Note, by the by, that few Americans are categorically opposed to a social safety net. The debate is usually over the size (and cost) of the net, not the presence or absence of a net.
Oddly enough, the standards for "communitarian" and "individualistic" that they used to sort the people would put the majority of the "right-wing nutjobs" into the "individualistic" group, and the majority of the rest of/. into the "communitarian" group.
Note, specifically, that religion, or lack of same, wasn't even a factor in deciding which group you're in.
There are a lot of cars that can't get past our overly zealous safety standards in the US. If there were, we could have inexpensive cars like the rest of the world.
And every time someone had a fenderbender, someone would have to go to the hospital.
I once saw a car going 80+ mph flip laterally and bounce off another car and a concrete barrier. The three occupants (who all looked like they were 60+) got out of the car without a scratch.
I would not bet that any of them would have survived, much less been unhurt, if they had had the same accident in some of these 3rd world autos.
Of course, dropping the safety standards of US autos to third world levels would give gainful employment to an army of lawyers, so I guess it could be considered an economic stimulus of sorts.
This is a simplification:
At a given altitude a stable circular orbit can exist only for one velocity.
Higher altitudes require a higher absolute velocity.
Lower altitudes require a lower absolute velocity.
Circular orbital speed is calculated as sqrt(rg), where r is radius of orbit, and g is local acceleration due to gravity. if R is defined as Earth's radius and G is Earth's surface gravity, then g = G(R/r)^2. Replacing this in the first equation gives orbital speed = sqrt(GR^2/r). Note that orbital speed decreases as r increases.
Note also that orbital velocity is mostly incorrect. It is true that the direction of motion is relevant, but the "velocity" of an object in any orbit is constantly changing direction (and magnitude in all non-circular orbits).
If you really want to be precise, use orbital elements instead of velocity.
Launch a couple satellites with solid state lasers. Heat up the side of the space junk facing earth and let the laser push it into the atmosphere.
Umm, if you turn a laser onto the side of the space junk facing Earth, the laser will push it away from Earth, not toward Earth.
If you want to make it hit atmosphere, you want to push the leading edge of the junk, which will drive it into a lower orbit, and eventually into atmosphere.
Note, by the way, that we have a Treaty forbidding the weaponization of space (hence FOBS), so this isn't really practical right now.
Is there really that much of an efficiency improvement doing this?
If their numbers are to be believed, yes. the duo gets better mileage than two solos.
It looks like the backend of both cars are removed, and they are joined together but-to-but.
Hmm, that's not so useful. Sounds like a non-trivial job to make the switch. Which means, for the most part, it won't ever get made. Seriously lessens the utility of the thing as a family car(s).
1. >129 mpg by design. I'll be interested in seeing whether it can actually reach that.
2. Seats three. Center seat is slightly forward, and it looks like the steering wheel is in the center. Which will make getting in and out a royal pain for the driver.
3. Nominally, it's 3.2 m long. When two of them are mated up, the combination is 4.8 m long. Where's the other 1.6 m going? Is the front of the second car going to fill up the rear of the lead car? Or does the combination look like the two cars are humping?
I'm not seeing any room in that design for crumple zones, roll bars, that sort of thing. Which makes me suspect it could never pass safety standards in the USA.
How in hell do you change the tires on this thing?
If they can get it past safety standards, and the price is reasonable, and it doesn't turn out to have the general quality of the Yugo, it might be a moderately useful vehicle for a family.
They're opposing any further delay for replacing an old, existing bridge. There is already an approved design for the new bridge, but some want to change the design to accommodate more HOV and public-transit lanes.
So, they're opposed to a redesign that will delay completion of the bridge by some unspecified amount. Given that a fair chunk of their workforce is going to be more or less inconvenienced by that construction, it makes sense for them to favour the quicker option.
The competitive Falcon 9 heavy (which will be one of the (if not the) biggest rockets outside the super-heavy stuff if/when it gets done) is still in development.
Note, for the record, that the Falcon 9 Heavy consists of a Falcon 9 plus two extra Falcon 9 first stages in parallel.
In other words, about 99% of Falcon 9 Heavy will be tested when the first Falcon 9 flies - all that'll be left is software and the physical disconnects between the three Falcon 9 first stages.
Not that software is necessarily a small thing....
I am assuming from this that he has looked over the design details of the Falcon, observed the results of the unit testing of the system, that sort of thing?
Otherwise, he's providing nothing more than his uninformed opinion. I can get those at Starbucks, and they're worth just as much as his....
Not necessarily. They didn't lie at all about the leak.
What they are accused of lying about is "they were not aware of any underground or buried pipes that carried radioactive materials.".
Now, given that juxtaposition (underground or buried pipes), and that the pipes in question were in a pipe tunnel (you know, the sort of place that people where walk along beside the pipes, looking at them, as opposed to underground or buried pipes like the water pipes into my house), it's just possible that the questioner meant one thing, and the answerer heard another.
Note also that the answerer was not an Entergy executive necessarily - TFA merely describes them as "Entergy representatives"
1) That's 2 million picocuries *per liter*. The average adult human drinks 2.4 liters of water *per day*.
2) The human body naturally contains about 0.1 microcuries. So yes, combining that with above, this amount would be significant if it were to contaminate drinking water.
2.4 liters per day at 2 picocuries per liter is 4.8 picocuries per day. Which is 0.0000048 microcuries.
Which means you'd add about 0.005% to your body's radioactivity levels. Per day.
The biological half life of tritium is about 9 days. Which means that your body would reach equilibrium with about 32 extra picocuries of tritium inside it. Beyond that point, the tritium would exit your body as fast as it's entering (given that you really do drink 2.4 liters per day, of course).
So, net effect of drinking this water directly out of the leak site - your natural radioactivity would increase by 0.032%.
You may find a 0.032% increase "significant", but somehow I just can't get excited about it.
Other than that, I can't think of anything that will go wrong with a productive exchange via Internet.
The keyword here being "productive".
I'm sure you have some way of guaranteeing that the exchange via Internet will be "productive", and not a lot of name-calling by both sides?
Note that what a Syrian might consider "productive" is likely to be quite different than what an Iranian would consider "productive", much less than an American would consider "productive".
And god help us all if the translation program has a few bugs - you say "Let's talk about the Peace March in Baghdad", he reads "May I fondle your left testicle?"....
You are forgetting the tax breaks the state of CA and the feds give you for going green. In the end a unit costs around $400k which cuts the time to 15 years.
So, basically, they can get an acceptable ROI as long as all the rest of us pay for half of their system for them? Sounds like a bargain....
Aiming for an island, even a big island, if you're off by a couple degrees you could miss by a hundred miles.
In order to miss by a hundred miles with a couple of degree course error, your trip has to be about 3000 miles long, rather than 200. To miss Crete from North Africa would require a sustained course error of about 30 degrees.
In addition, let's not forget the basic navigational techniques of the Polynesians (another Stone Age people who sailed great distances routinely).
The flights of birds can give you clues to the location of land from dozens to hundreds of miles away - some birds fly over water but sleep only on land - if they're flying in a particular direction late in the day, that's a pretty solid hint of land in that direction.
Wave patterns can also show you hints as to the directions of land too far away to see, but plenty close enough to reach.
Plus there's those mountains. Crete's highest peak is visible from about 100 nm. Makes it a lot easier to find when you can see it after you've completed half your voyage.
And finally, consider that there is a chain of islands from Turkey to Crete (as well as an alternate chain from Greece - and Crete's mountain peaks are barely visible from Greece) - if that chain were followed (as by successive waves of migration), the path would be from one island to the next visible island repeated till you hit Crete.
The famine was an obvious and inevitable consequence.
Now it is.
Note, for reference, that when Stalin did exactly the same thing in the '30s, he got the same result - famine and the deaths of rather more than 10,000,000 of his own people.
Which suggests that the Chinese government had more than enough information to predict that repeating Stalin's actions might, just possibly, cause the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese.
Slashdot Mirror
The rest of that quote is "Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote."
Actually, the population of Earth in "Caves of Steel" was more like 8 billion than 20 billion. And there's not all that much evidence that an extra 25% population growth will be that much of an issue.
Also, it must be noted that the humans on Earth in the "Caves of Steel" weren't living in a "green" way - it's not really green to put everyone into honking huge buildings so that the rest of the world can be farmland (which is why they lived that way - the forests and wild country were GONE in that fictional future).
Given the Treaty forbidding anyone other than the UN from making any money from any body in space other than Earth, I rather imagine that there is no reward in terms of monetary profit whatsoever, and never will be.
Constitutional Amendment. Congress is only allowed one year budgets.
On the other hand, making NASA an entitlement would more or less get around the problem.
The one set is free, the other set involves taking my money and giving it to someone else.
If the "someone else" then gets the notion that he has a "right" to my money, problems come up.
Note, by the by, that few Americans are categorically opposed to a social safety net. The debate is usually over the size (and cost) of the net, not the presence or absence of a net.
Oddly enough, the standards for "communitarian" and "individualistic" that they used to sort the people would put the majority of the "right-wing nutjobs" into the "individualistic" group, and the majority of the rest of /. into the "communitarian" group.
Note, specifically, that religion, or lack of same, wasn't even a factor in deciding which group you're in.
And every time someone had a fenderbender, someone would have to go to the hospital.
I once saw a car going 80+ mph flip laterally and bounce off another car and a concrete barrier. The three occupants (who all looked like they were 60+) got out of the car without a scratch.
I would not bet that any of them would have survived, much less been unhurt, if they had had the same accident in some of these 3rd world autos.
Of course, dropping the safety standards of US autos to third world levels would give gainful employment to an army of lawyers, so I guess it could be considered an economic stimulus of sorts.
Umm, no. Higher altitudes require LOWER speeds. Lower altitudes require HIGHER speeds.
Circular orbital speed is calculated as sqrt(rg), where r is radius of orbit, and g is local acceleration due to gravity. if R is defined as Earth's radius and G is Earth's surface gravity, then g = G(R/r)^2. Replacing this in the first equation gives orbital speed = sqrt(GR^2/r). Note that orbital speed decreases as r increases.
Note also that orbital velocity is mostly incorrect. It is true that the direction of motion is relevant, but the "velocity" of an object in any orbit is constantly changing direction (and magnitude in all non-circular orbits).
If you really want to be precise, use orbital elements instead of velocity.
Umm, if you turn a laser onto the side of the space junk facing Earth, the laser will push it away from Earth, not toward Earth.
If you want to make it hit atmosphere, you want to push the leading edge of the junk, which will drive it into a lower orbit, and eventually into atmosphere.
Note, by the way, that we have a Treaty forbidding the weaponization of space (hence FOBS), so this isn't really practical right now.
If their numbers are to be believed, yes. the duo gets better mileage than two solos.
Hmm, that's not so useful. Sounds like a non-trivial job to make the switch. Which means, for the most part, it won't ever get made. Seriously lessens the utility of the thing as a family car(s).
1. >129 mpg by design. I'll be interested in seeing whether it can actually reach that.
2. Seats three. Center seat is slightly forward, and it looks like the steering wheel is in the center. Which will make getting in and out a royal pain for the driver.
3. Nominally, it's 3.2 m long. When two of them are mated up, the combination is 4.8 m long. Where's the other 1.6 m going? Is the front of the second car going to fill up the rear of the lead car? Or does the combination look like the two cars are humping?
I'm not seeing any room in that design for crumple zones, roll bars, that sort of thing. Which makes me suspect it could never pass safety standards in the USA.
How in hell do you change the tires on this thing?
If they can get it past safety standards, and the price is reasonable, and it doesn't turn out to have the general quality of the Yugo, it might be a moderately useful vehicle for a family.
No.
It can do up to 20km per day with just the charge it can get from the solar panels. Its internal power source is a "conventional" hybrid.
No gas tank size is specified, so it's not clear just how far it can go without refueling.
So, they're opposed to a redesign that will delay completion of the bridge by some unspecified amount. Given that a fair chunk of their workforce is going to be more or less inconvenienced by that construction, it makes sense for them to favour the quicker option.
Note, for the record, that the Falcon 9 Heavy consists of a Falcon 9 plus two extra Falcon 9 first stages in parallel.
In other words, about 99% of Falcon 9 Heavy will be tested when the first Falcon 9 flies - all that'll be left is software and the physical disconnects between the three Falcon 9 first stages.
Not that software is necessarily a small thing....
I am assuming from this that he has looked over the design details of the Falcon, observed the results of the unit testing of the system, that sort of thing?
Otherwise, he's providing nothing more than his uninformed opinion. I can get those at Starbucks, and they're worth just as much as his....
/sighs
Because I had a brainfart somewhere between 2 microcuries and the keyboard....
Not necessarily. They didn't lie at all about the leak.
What they are accused of lying about is "they were not aware of any underground or buried pipes that carried radioactive materials.".
Now, given that juxtaposition (underground or buried pipes), and that the pipes in question were in a pipe tunnel (you know, the sort of place that people where walk along beside the pipes, looking at them, as opposed to underground or buried pipes like the water pipes into my house), it's just possible that the questioner meant one thing, and the answerer heard another.
Note also that the answerer was not an Entergy executive necessarily - TFA merely describes them as "Entergy representatives"
No, this leak was 2 microcuries per liter, not 2 millicuries per liter. Divide all of your effects by 1000.
2.4 liters per day at 2 picocuries per liter is 4.8 picocuries per day. Which is 0.0000048 microcuries.
Which means you'd add about 0.005% to your body's radioactivity levels. Per day.
The biological half life of tritium is about 9 days. Which means that your body would reach equilibrium with about 32 extra picocuries of tritium inside it. Beyond that point, the tritium would exit your body as fast as it's entering (given that you really do drink 2.4 liters per day, of course).
So, net effect of drinking this water directly out of the leak site - your natural radioactivity would increase by 0.032%.
You may find a 0.032% increase "significant", but somehow I just can't get excited about it.
1.5 million Ci, from the article you link to. Per reactor, of course.
The spill in the OP wasn't 2 Ci, it was 2 uCi (0.00002 Ci). So this reactor represents 750 billion times the radioactivity of the spill in question.
Note, for those who didn't follow the link, that two reactors were mentioned, not one.
The keyword here being "productive".
I'm sure you have some way of guaranteeing that the exchange via Internet will be "productive", and not a lot of name-calling by both sides?
Note that what a Syrian might consider "productive" is likely to be quite different than what an Iranian would consider "productive", much less than an American would consider "productive".
And god help us all if the translation program has a few bugs - you say "Let's talk about the Peace March in Baghdad", he reads "May I fondle your left testicle?"....
Excluding Solar, Nuclear, and Hydro, all power plants burn O2. If anything, this burns less of it.
So, basically, they can get an acceptable ROI as long as all the rest of us pay for half of their system for them? Sounds like a bargain....
In order to miss by a hundred miles with a couple of degree course error, your trip has to be about 3000 miles long, rather than 200. To miss Crete from North Africa would require a sustained course error of about 30 degrees.
In addition, let's not forget the basic navigational techniques of the Polynesians (another Stone Age people who sailed great distances routinely).
The flights of birds can give you clues to the location of land from dozens to hundreds of miles away - some birds fly over water but sleep only on land - if they're flying in a particular direction late in the day, that's a pretty solid hint of land in that direction.
Wave patterns can also show you hints as to the directions of land too far away to see, but plenty close enough to reach.
Plus there's those mountains. Crete's highest peak is visible from about 100 nm. Makes it a lot easier to find when you can see it after you've completed half your voyage.
And finally, consider that there is a chain of islands from Turkey to Crete (as well as an alternate chain from Greece - and Crete's mountain peaks are barely visible from Greece) - if that chain were followed (as by successive waves of migration), the path would be from one island to the next visible island repeated till you hit Crete.
Note, for reference, that when Stalin did exactly the same thing in the '30s, he got the same result - famine and the deaths of rather more than 10,000,000 of his own people.
Which suggests that the Chinese government had more than enough information to predict that repeating Stalin's actions might, just possibly, cause the deaths of tens of millions of Chinese.