It is my belief that when we ON PURPOSE start trying to tune the atmosphere is where the real problems will begin.
You are perhaps unaware that choosing an "acceptable" CO2 level, and trying to make that level the actual one (by, say, reducing emissions of CO2) is an attempt to "tune the atmosphere".
Or did you perhaps think that the amount of CO2 in the air the last ten thousand years is the "correct" amount, and the CO2 levels at other points in history (it's been both higher and lower than it is now) are somehow wrong?
Imagine the amount of food, water, O2 and energy that would have been required if they had sent humans instead of machines.
Since humans could have accomplished what took the rovers five years in a few days, imagine how much more science could have been done with humans on site for five years.
What truly boggles my mind is that people are impressed that a robot has done in five years what a man could do in a day or two.
This would be neat if true -- a garbage disposal sized obvject providing 40 days of cooking gas for 40 NIS, but just reading alerts every single "perpetual motion" bullshit detector in my head -- the 40% figure, the secret ingredients, etc.
Once upon a time, when studying the Bible, I came across the interesting detail that in the area and cultures then current "40" was a very special number. It was special in that its use did not, in fact, imply 40. It implied "an indeterminate but large amount". Of days, years, coins, whatever.
In other words, it was period for "metric buttload".
In that context, this looks even more like perpetual motion, since the designer seems to be trying to twig his target audience toward "large but indeterminate" for all the relevant figures provided.
Got a bunker you can't bust? Try some armor piercing shells, tipping the scales at a hefty 2700 pounds...
Or get a bunkerbuster bomb out of stores, and drop it on top. Again, nothing the battleship can do that can't be done by something else. Except sink battleships.
Note that with the Jersey in mothballs, it's effectively unavailable for any war that takes less than years. And we don't do so much of that anymore.
Yeah, Iraq has lasted years. But since Bush first said "mission accomplished", there has been nothing we'd want Jersey or her sisters for. Same with Afghanistan, even if she could fire so far.
The only thing we might want Jersey for in the future is a war on Korea. That might last long enough to get her back in service, and certainly would present a plenitude of targets. But, frankly, it wouldn't be worth the bother.
The definition I gave wasn't a formal one, it was a practical one.
Your definition of battlecruiser is one of the standard ones. But, when it comes right down to it, some "battlecruisers" were so labelled for different reasons. Around WW1, the Brits labelled a battleship a battlecruiser because she was capable of more than 24 knots. She (HMS Hood) was later sunk by the Bismark.
Using that particular definition (which the USA never used), the last eight battleships built in US yards were "battlecruisers".
Note, by the way, that another way that ships were "trimmed" to make "battlecruiser speed" was to eliminate one main turret. Six 15" guns in three turrets saved a lot of tonnage over eight in four, and allowed for faster ships without sacrificing armour.
Shore bombardment. There were four battleships (two US) at D-Day, and others at just about every major landing in the Pacific. That's why we keep the New Jersey around. There's something about exploding VWs in close formations of nine that nothing less than a nuke or FAE can compare with, and they can be used in places where nothing else is appropriate. And, with a range of 25 nautical miles, you don't have to be right on the coast to be in range.
Alas, the Jersey has been out of commission for 17 years or so. Along with her sisters.
Yeah, there was always something special about using a BB's guns for shore bombardment. But, fact of the matter is that you're better off with close air support from Marine Aviation than you are with the New Jersey providing fire support.
Neither the Repulse nor the Prince of Wales were battleships. They were both battlecruisers. That was a class of ship with a battleship's guns, engines and hull, but the armor of a heavy cruiser.
Repulse was a battlecruiser, but Prince of Wales was a battleship. The second King George V class battleship, in fact, and as new and modern as any in the world at the time. Unfortunately, Churchill felt the need to make a gesture, and expended her to make it.
Note also that there was an alternate definition of battlecruiser (the original one, in fact) that would have made the Iowa class BBs "battlecruisers". That particular definition was something with a battleship's guns and armour but a cruiser's speed and range. Note that HMS Hood met this definition of "battlecruiser", since she had armour and armament comparable to contemporary battleships, with speed comparable to contemporary cruisers.
The only thing the battleship had going for it was guns so big you couldn't put them on anything smaller.
Plus that armour. Mustn't forget the armour. You remember that part? The armour that survived a nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll. Nevada survived an aerial detonation at 615 yards, Arkansas at 620 yards, Nagata at 900 yards. Note that the first test bomb exploded about 600 yards from its aimpoint (it was intended to detonate directly over Nevada, which would have left it about the same distance from Arkansas as it actually exploded).
Note that Nagato, at just under 1000 yards from an explosion the size of the Nagasaki bomb suffered only minor damage.
Note further that any defense that can be applied to a smaller ship can be applied in larger numbers to a larger ship - carriers have more point defense systems than destroyers, and when the Iowa class battleships were last used, they had those same point defense systems installed, in still greater numbers. The reverse is not true - enough armour and compartmentation to survive a nuclear attack cannot be put on anything smaller than a battleship.
The REAL reason we don't build battleships anymore is there's NOTHING they can do that can't be done better by something else today.
Can't really argue with this. But, frankly, the only role battleships have EVER had was to sink the other fellow's battleships. Even before WW2 (or WW1 for that matter), battleships had no real role that couldn't be done by other ships (other than sink each other).
Note also that that argument has been used against the aircraft carrier pretty much since the first atom bomb went off. And similar arguments were used against them as far back as the '30s.
Consider that even in WW2, much less with modern armaments, aircraft carriers were sunk by relative handfuls of carrier planes (basically, each American carrier attacked a separate Japanese carrier in the first go), while battleships were surviving attacks by hundreds of carrier planes (five battleships, six heavy cruisers, plus escorts were attacked by around 1000 American planes - one battleship was sunk).
Note, finally, that the important part of the "battleship" concept isn't the big honking guns (they were the weapon of choice back when they were the only weapon available), it's the nearly invulnerable armour. Being nearly immune to damage by lesser ships is really kind of neat.
under the current contract SpaceX is charging a fixed price of $133 million per flight,
Under the current contract, SpaceX is selling about 10% of their payload for 12 flights for $133 million. Remember, they're only promising to deliver 20 tons over 12 flights, NOT the 240 tons they'll be pushing into space in those 12 flights.
These actually sound exactly like the kinds of things he'd go for. Slashing launch/supply costs, improving the domestic commercial space sector, not just shipping it all out to russia? I'm sure he'd see that as a win/win/win.
Slashing launch/supply costs? Did you look at these contracts? Between then, they're moving less in the way of supplies than a single shuttle flight could, for "only" $3.5 billion.
The development of the aircraft carrier had made those battleships obsolete. The aircraft carriers were much more effective in force projection. I believe that modern navies don't have anything bigger than a cruiser because they're just too much of an indefensible target for modern missiles, and that became true with the advent of the torpedo bomber.
This is conventional wisdom, and not entirely correct. Consider the efforts by Third Fleet to sink the Japanese battleships at Leyte Gulf. Which battleships had no aircover, and were outnumbered three to one by our CVs and CVLs alone, not even counting the air complements of the CVEs (another 400-500 planes). As I remember it, no more than one of the battleships was sunk exclusively by air attack from the sixteen carriers trying to sink it (that one may have been actually sunk by a submarine - it's hard to say what the source was, given that we don't have the hull to do a post-mortem on). And most of the battleships sailed through those attacks, either into the Taffies (where several hundred planes managed to sink none of the battleships) or into Seventh Fleet, where they were sunk by...battleships.
Historically, there is scant evidence that the aircraft carrier was capable of defeating battleships. Pearl Harbor hardly proves anything, as you have an active carrier force attacking battleships in harbor in peacetime routine (which means substantial parts of the crews not even aboard, much less prepared for attack.
Bismark was attacked from the air for many hours without being sunk, though the air attacks certainly made it possible for the surface forces to catch and sink Bismark the old-fashioned way (air attacks jammed Bismark's rudder so that she could no longer proceed in a straight line away from her pursuers.)
The only really evidence that carriers could beat battleships was the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse, which were done exclusively by aerial attack. But not from carriers, so even there the evidence is less than clear.
The REAL reason we don't build battleships anymore is that they're bloody expensive! Too much so to convince Congress (or any national government) to pay for one, much less the number that would be needed to be worthwhile.
Some say there's a good reason why the US aircraft carriers were out on manoeuvres and the battleships weren't.
Yeah, because the CV's got the crap assignments. Sunday, in peacetime, is usually a time to stand down and do shore leave. The BB's were in port standing down, taking shore leave, while the CV's were at sea doing the kind of thing that usually causes the sailors to grouse about missing their Sunday liberty.
Note also that Pearl Harbor had just become the base for Pacific Fleet a few months earlier - most of the carriers were stationed elsewhere still. For that matter, most of the BB's were stationed elsewhere - the seven at Pearl were just the largest single group in the Pacific, not our entire battleship strength.
Note finally that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a strategic cluster-fuck. They hit the things that least needed hitting (the ships), and largely ignored the targets that would have forced the Navy to relocate to San Diego (tank farms, repair facilities suitable for battleships/carriers, that sort of thing).
A friend of mine spend a few weeks, long ago, studying the characteristics of various US ICBMs to see if they were usable as orbital launch vehicles. It didn't take him long to learn that they weren't, partially because none of them had adequate delta-V.
For what it's worth, Mercury was launched atop Atlas (an ICBM), and Gemini was launched atop Titan II (another ICBM).
Sputnik was also launched atop an ICBM. And as far as I know, pretty much every Soviet launch vehicle except Proton was developed from that same ICBM, mostly by adding an improved upper stage.
There is no step four, just sign the billion dollar contracts and hope that they don't notice that they prototype is made out of cardboard before your private jet takes off.
That seems to be pretty much true for Orbital Systems, since their "launch vehicle" is in "the early stages of development".
SpaceX at least HAS a launch vehicle. Sitting on the pad (figuratively) at Canaveral for launch early next year. Whether it'll work is another question, of course, though all the components were basically tested with the Falcon 1 launches over the last couple years.
Your concerns would certainly be valid in the industrialized rich world, where people have lots of money to pay lawyers to sue medical companies. I kind of doubt that that's the case in a lot of countries in Africa. Poor people don't sue.
But rich American lawyers do "pro bono" work for poor Africans who might, just possibly, have a case against a colossally rich corporation that might choose to make these devices.
Or even against a moderately wealthy University that paid for the research.
"Anyone with money, for any reason or none" seems to be the motto of American lawyers, if not lawyers worldwide.
but your examples of the KGB or gestapo aren't agencies without oversight, they were directed from the top to serve the needs of those at the top
The Gestapo was run by Himmler, NOT Hitler. An important difference, since Himmler wasn't so solidly controlled as all that.
Likewise, the KGB was really under the control of the KGB Chairman/Director, not the Politburo.
An FBI with no oversight would have been a nightmare. As much so as either of the others. And dressing it up by saying they wouldn't be able to run the country is just being silly - give someone power to do as they'd like with no oversight, and they'll have power to run the country pretty much as fast as you can find a corrupt Director.
And history has shown that finding corrupt men who want to run things isn't hard at all.
In other words, I think that you missed the point.
Wouldn't it be better to have a independent fiefdom that investigates terrorist, civil rights groups, and the president, rather than a group under the thumb of the executive branch that investigates just terrorist and civil rights groups?
Yah, it's always better to have law-enforcement groups with no oversight. Better yet, place them in position to control pretty much the whole country. Then make the Director (Chief, whatever) unelected. Then we can rename it the Gestapo, or perhaps KGB, and we can skip all those boring little elections, and let the Director tell us what to do.
2)Cause little to no change at all at the cost of thousands of what will probably be taxpayer dollars.
That half inch figure he tossed off represents 6 trillion (with a T) tons of water. I don't think we're talking thousands of taxpayer dollars, even if the half inch thing were a one-off, as opposed to annually for 20-30 years.
So because people on the right like it, that reason alone makes everyone else dislike it? sounds like ideological jealousy (because they couldn't figure it out)
What's really sad is that supply-side economics (aka "Reagonomics") was used before Reagan to justify a massive tax cut. The name John F. Kennedy ring any bells?
maybe at least we can, on a state by state basis, convince the states that ec votes should be awarded proportional to popular vote
Well, I'm sure both major Parties are praying every night that the States that lean toward the other Party will do this.
Proportional awarding of electoral votes pretty much removes any influence a state has in the election process. If 40 states awarded proportionally, and one did it the way we do it now, the campaigning would all be over that one state. Because, when all is said and done, that States are pretty evenly divided between Republican and Democrat. So each State awarded proportionally might give you one Electoral vote up on your opponent. Texas gives you how many? California? You do the math.
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You are perhaps unaware that choosing an "acceptable" CO2 level, and trying to make that level the actual one (by, say, reducing emissions of CO2) is an attempt to "tune the atmosphere".
Or did you perhaps think that the amount of CO2 in the air the last ten thousand years is the "correct" amount, and the CO2 levels at other points in history (it's been both higher and lower than it is now) are somehow wrong?
Since humans could have accomplished what took the rovers five years in a few days, imagine how much more science could have been done with humans on site for five years.
What truly boggles my mind is that people are impressed that a robot has done in five years what a man could do in a day or two.
Which must be why the government forced banks that didn't want or need bailouts to take them. Or don't you remember that part?
Actually, those quotes seem to be extracted from the Hamas Charter.
Once upon a time, when studying the Bible, I came across the interesting detail that in the area and cultures then current "40" was a very special number. It was special in that its use did not, in fact, imply 40. It implied "an indeterminate but large amount". Of days, years, coins, whatever.
In other words, it was period for "metric buttload".
In that context, this looks even more like perpetual motion, since the designer seems to be trying to twig his target audience toward "large but indeterminate" for all the relevant figures provided.
Yeah, and Dell should switch to windmills too! After all, they have factories, and workers too, if not quite the right tools.
Changing the output of a factory that dramatically is harder than just building a new factory.
Paid for almost exclusively by gasoline taxes. Which is nominally what they're for, so things seem to work out nicely that way.
Or get a bunkerbuster bomb out of stores, and drop it on top. Again, nothing the battleship can do that can't be done by something else. Except sink battleships.
Note that with the Jersey in mothballs, it's effectively unavailable for any war that takes less than years. And we don't do so much of that anymore.
Yeah, Iraq has lasted years. But since Bush first said "mission accomplished", there has been nothing we'd want Jersey or her sisters for. Same with Afghanistan, even if she could fire so far.
The only thing we might want Jersey for in the future is a war on Korea. That might last long enough to get her back in service, and certainly would present a plenitude of targets. But, frankly, it wouldn't be worth the bother.
Your definition of battlecruiser is one of the standard ones. But, when it comes right down to it, some "battlecruisers" were so labelled for different reasons. Around WW1, the Brits labelled a battleship a battlecruiser because she was capable of more than 24 knots. She (HMS Hood) was later sunk by the Bismark.
Using that particular definition (which the USA never used), the last eight battleships built in US yards were "battlecruisers".
Note, by the way, that another way that ships were "trimmed" to make "battlecruiser speed" was to eliminate one main turret. Six 15" guns in three turrets saved a lot of tonnage over eight in four, and allowed for faster ships without sacrificing armour.
Alas, the Jersey has been out of commission for 17 years or so. Along with her sisters.
Yeah, there was always something special about using a BB's guns for shore bombardment. But, fact of the matter is that you're better off with close air support from Marine Aviation than you are with the New Jersey providing fire support.
Repulse was a battlecruiser, but Prince of Wales was a battleship. The second King George V class battleship, in fact, and as new and modern as any in the world at the time. Unfortunately, Churchill felt the need to make a gesture, and expended her to make it.
Note also that there was an alternate definition of battlecruiser (the original one, in fact) that would have made the Iowa class BBs "battlecruisers". That particular definition was something with a battleship's guns and armour but a cruiser's speed and range. Note that HMS Hood met this definition of "battlecruiser", since she had armour and armament comparable to contemporary battleships, with speed comparable to contemporary cruisers.
Plus that armour. Mustn't forget the armour. You remember that part? The armour that survived a nuclear explosion at Bikini Atoll. Nevada survived an aerial detonation at 615 yards, Arkansas at 620 yards, Nagata at 900 yards. Note that the first test bomb exploded about 600 yards from its aimpoint (it was intended to detonate directly over Nevada, which would have left it about the same distance from Arkansas as it actually exploded).
Note that Nagato, at just under 1000 yards from an explosion the size of the Nagasaki bomb suffered only minor damage.
Note further that any defense that can be applied to a smaller ship can be applied in larger numbers to a larger ship - carriers have more point defense systems than destroyers, and when the Iowa class battleships were last used, they had those same point defense systems installed, in still greater numbers. The reverse is not true - enough armour and compartmentation to survive a nuclear attack cannot be put on anything smaller than a battleship.
Can't really argue with this. But, frankly, the only role battleships have EVER had was to sink the other fellow's battleships. Even before WW2 (or WW1 for that matter), battleships had no real role that couldn't be done by other ships (other than sink each other).
Note also that that argument has been used against the aircraft carrier pretty much since the first atom bomb went off. And similar arguments were used against them as far back as the '30s.
Consider that even in WW2, much less with modern armaments, aircraft carriers were sunk by relative handfuls of carrier planes (basically, each American carrier attacked a separate Japanese carrier in the first go), while battleships were surviving attacks by hundreds of carrier planes (five battleships, six heavy cruisers, plus escorts were attacked by around 1000 American planes - one battleship was sunk).
Note, finally, that the important part of the "battleship" concept isn't the big honking guns (they were the weapon of choice back when they were the only weapon available), it's the nearly invulnerable armour. Being nearly immune to damage by lesser ships is really kind of neat.
Under the current contract, SpaceX is selling about 10% of their payload for 12 flights for $133 million. Remember, they're only promising to deliver 20 tons over 12 flights, NOT the 240 tons they'll be pushing into space in those 12 flights.
Slashing launch/supply costs? Did you look at these contracts? Between then, they're moving less in the way of supplies than a single shuttle flight could, for "only" $3.5 billion.
This is conventional wisdom, and not entirely correct. Consider the efforts by Third Fleet to sink the Japanese battleships at Leyte Gulf. Which battleships had no aircover, and were outnumbered three to one by our CVs and CVLs alone, not even counting the air complements of the CVEs (another 400-500 planes). As I remember it, no more than one of the battleships was sunk exclusively by air attack from the sixteen carriers trying to sink it (that one may have been actually sunk by a submarine - it's hard to say what the source was, given that we don't have the hull to do a post-mortem on). And most of the battleships sailed through those attacks, either into the Taffies (where several hundred planes managed to sink none of the battleships) or into Seventh Fleet, where they were sunk by...battleships.
Historically, there is scant evidence that the aircraft carrier was capable of defeating battleships. Pearl Harbor hardly proves anything, as you have an active carrier force attacking battleships in harbor in peacetime routine (which means substantial parts of the crews not even aboard, much less prepared for attack.
Bismark was attacked from the air for many hours without being sunk, though the air attacks certainly made it possible for the surface forces to catch and sink Bismark the old-fashioned way (air attacks jammed Bismark's rudder so that she could no longer proceed in a straight line away from her pursuers.)
The only really evidence that carriers could beat battleships was the sinking of Prince of Wales and Repulse, which were done exclusively by aerial attack. But not from carriers, so even there the evidence is less than clear.
The REAL reason we don't build battleships anymore is that they're bloody expensive! Too much so to convince Congress (or any national government) to pay for one, much less the number that would be needed to be worthwhile.
Yeah, because the CV's got the crap assignments. Sunday, in peacetime, is usually a time to stand down and do shore leave. The BB's were in port standing down, taking shore leave, while the CV's were at sea doing the kind of thing that usually causes the sailors to grouse about missing their Sunday liberty.
Note also that Pearl Harbor had just become the base for Pacific Fleet a few months earlier - most of the carriers were stationed elsewhere still. For that matter, most of the BB's were stationed elsewhere - the seven at Pearl were just the largest single group in the Pacific, not our entire battleship strength.
Note finally that the attack on Pearl Harbor was a strategic cluster-fuck. They hit the things that least needed hitting (the ships), and largely ignored the targets that would have forced the Navy to relocate to San Diego (tank farms, repair facilities suitable for battleships/carriers, that sort of thing).
For what it's worth, Mercury was launched atop Atlas (an ICBM), and Gemini was launched atop Titan II (another ICBM).
Sputnik was also launched atop an ICBM. And as far as I know, pretty much every Soviet launch vehicle except Proton was developed from that same ICBM, mostly by adding an improved upper stage.
That seems to be pretty much true for Orbital Systems, since their "launch vehicle" is in "the early stages of development".
SpaceX at least HAS a launch vehicle. Sitting on the pad (figuratively) at Canaveral for launch early next year. Whether it'll work is another question, of course, though all the components were basically tested with the Falcon 1 launches over the last couple years.
But rich American lawyers do "pro bono" work for poor Africans who might, just possibly, have a case against a colossally rich corporation that might choose to make these devices.
Or even against a moderately wealthy University that paid for the research.
"Anyone with money, for any reason or none" seems to be the motto of American lawyers, if not lawyers worldwide.
The Gestapo was run by Himmler, NOT Hitler. An important difference, since Himmler wasn't so solidly controlled as all that.
Likewise, the KGB was really under the control of the KGB Chairman/Director, not the Politburo.
An FBI with no oversight would have been a nightmare. As much so as either of the others. And dressing it up by saying they wouldn't be able to run the country is just being silly - give someone power to do as they'd like with no oversight, and they'll have power to run the country pretty much as fast as you can find a corrupt Director.
And history has shown that finding corrupt men who want to run things isn't hard at all.
In other words, I think that you missed the point.
Yah, it's always better to have law-enforcement groups with no oversight. Better yet, place them in position to control pretty much the whole country. Then make the Director (Chief, whatever) unelected. Then we can rename it the Gestapo, or perhaps KGB, and we can skip all those boring little elections, and let the Director tell us what to do.
That half inch figure he tossed off represents 6 trillion (with a T) tons of water. I don't think we're talking thousands of taxpayer dollars, even if the half inch thing were a one-off, as opposed to annually for 20-30 years.
What's really sad is that supply-side economics (aka "Reagonomics") was used before Reagan to justify a massive tax cut. The name John F. Kennedy ring any bells?
Odd that you should assign blame for a 1991 tax (when George Bush was President) to Ronald Reagan.
Well, I'm sure both major Parties are praying every night that the States that lean toward the other Party will do this.
Proportional awarding of electoral votes pretty much removes any influence a state has in the election process. If 40 states awarded proportionally, and one did it the way we do it now, the campaigning would all be over that one state. Because, when all is said and done, that States are pretty evenly divided between Republican and Democrat. So each State awarded proportionally might give you one Electoral vote up on your opponent. Texas gives you how many? California? You do the math.