The shuttle doesn't carry enough fuel to do plane transfer maneuvers (that's the main reason why timing is important when launching), and even if it did, it would take a hell of a lot of maneuvering to do a full orbital
realignment - which would probably cost more in fuel alone than those $100k.
This is only partly true. The impetus she could have given the toolbag, even deliberately, is no more than whatever her arm can generate. A Major League Pitcher can manage maybe 100 mph (45 m/s) with a baseball, much less with a backpack sized toolbox.
I doubt this woman could have come close to that by accident. Which means maybe a few meters per second velocity differential at the beginning. Which the Shuttle could quite easily have matched.
Letting it go for a while gives it time to move around its new orbit enough that the Shuttle would require multiple burns to match orbits (not because the initial impetus was high, but because you need to change to an orbit that reaches the toolbag's new orbital position and velocity when the toolbag gets to there). Which makes it prohibitive.
This, of course, ignoring the fact that it's mostly silly to try to recover a toolbag in a situation like that, unless it's clearly going to smack into the ISS or Shuttle in an orbit or three....
Was pretty dumb. Which is why I used "brain-dump" to describe it. None of the other answers looked quite right, and I turned the higher faculties off and assumed they used "debt" where they meant "deficit". My bad.
32/33. Braindumped on the balanced budget question - deficit is zero if taxes and spending are equal, not debt. Rest of it was a cakewalk. Could have answered every one of the history questions by the time I was 12, and the rest by the time I was 14.
It's probably too early to tell what this means for Internet regulation, but at least there's a > 0 chance that the next committee chair will understand something about the Net."
While this is certainly true, his failure of reelection has nothing whatsoever to do with any committee chairmanship, since the Democrats control the committee chairmanships in both House and Senate, and they weren't going to pick a Republican no matter what the result of the Alaska Senatorial race.
you are accelerating at exactly the rate to cancel out the force of gravity and the net force on you is zero.
So, if the force of gravity is acting on you, and nothing else is, then you have no force applied to you? You expand my view of the ridiculous....
Hint: if the force of gravity is acting upon you, the force applied to you is NON-ZERO.
Note that the wikipedia article has, at best, a limited understanding of the difference between weightlessness and freefall. Which are not, contrary to their assertion, synonyms.
If there was a net force on the ISS, then it would not remain in a steady orbit!
I take it you don't count gravity as a "force" where you come from?
Without gravity applying a "force" to the ISS, it would move in what is commonly known as a "straight line".
Which would not allow for a steady orbit. Steady orbits are generally described by "ellipses", not "straight lines".
Perhaps what you are struggling toward is the notion that a "net force" must be one that perturbs an orbit? If so, then you're mistaken about the notion of a "net force". The ISS is in "freefall". It is NOT weightless, it is NOT operating free of the usual forces that operate on everything else in the universe, such as gravity.
You'd know this, if you'd bother with a simple thought experiment - when the ISS is over Florida it is moving in a certain direction. When it is over India, it is moving in pretty much the opposite direction. How can it change direction of motion without a "net force" acting upon it? Answer: well, according to Newton, it can't.
Umm, no. In freefall, your weight is still defined by F= mA. And you still have a mass (m), and are still under acceleration (A). So you still have a weight.
The fact that the space station is is accelerating at the same rate you are (and thus giving you the illusion of weightlessness) is irrelevant to the question of your "weight" in space.
Note that weight does not actually imply that a scale designed to work on the ground will indicate some non-zero value when you stand on it.
There is this thing called the Equivalence Principle, that is one of the axioms of Einsteinian Gravity. It says, among other things, that a body in freefall has no net force acting upon it, and therefore has zero weight.
Well, no.
If there were no net force acting on the ISS, it would not orbit the Earth. Gravity at its altitude is still around 90% of surface gravity, so it still weighs about 90% of what it would weigh on the ground.
but perhaps we can move past the vocal minority and allow the market to sort this one out.
Such an interesting phrase, in a discussion of net neutrality.
Note that it applies just as well to net neutrality as it does to smut on TV. Or do you really think the people screaming about net neutrality are anything other than a vocal minority? Hint: most people neither know nor care about net neutrality.
I understand that there has been much productive fallout of near-earth-orbit space research. But near-earth space has been in the hands of private industry since Telstar.
And we'd not have gotten as far as Telstar without NASA. I'd be perfectly happy if private industry took the lead in developing the solar system.
Since they won't, having the government do it is a close second.
When you do space research, you don't get any utility added to the economy.
Who said anything about research? I'm all for exploitation of space.
Ignoring that, however, one must point out that in the 1940's hurricanes could make landfall without anyone being aware of their existence prior to landfall. Doesn't happen so much now.
Or there's that whole ozone hole thing. Which was discovered by a satellite. No benefit to society to knowing about (and thus being able to fix a problem)? I think not.
Or GPS systems. Or commsats. Or...
The space program has paid for itself many times over, if only by giving us enough information to prevent disasters. Consider Katrina, and the effect it would have had if there had been no evacuation from the Gulf Coast (evacuation of New Orleans requires 2.5 days, and can't be done at all in the 24 hours before a major storm hits), which is the situation that we'd have had before the space program.
If the cause of population drop is resource starvation, there are probably local equilibrium ranges that can be reached on the way down.
If.
There are a lot of reasons the population might drop. Resource starvation isn't a major one, really, since equilibrium tends to be reached as you approach saturation use of your resources. There are, of course, exceptions for non-renewable resources, but there aren't so many non-renewables as one might think. Especially given a whole solar system to exploit.
When a drunken driver runs over a few dozen people before finally smashing his car and himself into a wall, we don't say that "it worked" and that we therefore do not need any laws against drunk driving as such, or regulation to enforce them.
True enough. We also don't make the families of the victims pay for the drunk's funeral, and then pay extra to take care of the drunk's wife and children.
Probably. But it's by no means certain. A Recession requires two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. We haven't even had one yet. Though this last quarter will probably have net negative economic growth, after they get around to closing out the quarter and analyzing it.
So somewhere along about March, we may be in a recession. But not quite yet.
Shouldn't we concentrate on putting the country back on its feet now, and leave space flight for another generation?
Why are space flight and putting the country back on its feet mutually exclusive? The Dems favour government spending to jumpstart the economy during a downturn. Well, NASA qualifies as government spending, and spending on NASA will jumpstart the economy just as well as bailing out the automakers (which the Dems desperately want to do, mostly because the unions tell them they desperately want to do this).
So, let's compromise - $25 billion for the automakers (the autoworkers unions actually), and $25 billion for NASA. Then everyone is happy, since we have $50 billion worth of government spending to jumpstart the economy, and NASA has enough budget to do something worthwhile.
Yeah, and the Romans thought the Empire would last a thousand years.
If one includes the Eastern Roman Empire (arguably more Greek than Roman), then they were quite correct - the Empire lasted until at least 1204, rather longer than 1000 years.
so complete extinction would become less and less likely as the population drops.
Carried to an absurd extreme, this suggests that we are least likely to go extinct if there is only one human living.
Note also that this principle would tend to suggest that all the animals on the Endangered Species List are LEAST likely to go extinct, because their populations are lowest. Which, in turn, suggests that the cockroach is in more danger of extinction than even humans, much less the endangered animals.
Given a quick look at reality, I suggest that you rethink your theory a bit.
Just because a tithe isn't mandatory or mandated doesn't mean it isn't expected of you.
Just because it's expected of you doesn't mean that you have a moral obligation to provide it. I've known some people who tithed (a real tithe - 10%), but not too many. I've sat on the budget committees of a couple of congregations, and the budgets that they dealt with were nowhere near a tithe (based on the number of members of the congregation)....
I should have been clearer. I was talking about divine inspiration, not dictation.
Even divine inspiration isn't normally attributed to the Gospels. They are (theoretically) recountings of the life of Jesus of Nazareth as known by people who were present at the time.
Note that the actual ages of the various Gospels make it likely that some of them were not based on eyewitness accounts, though the earliest two might very well have been written by eyewitnesses. Or not, of course.
Interesting point. However, when we make judgments about how people write, are we not unfairly judging the person to be lacking of intelligence? The circumstances with which they write may not be known to us, to presuppose their intelligence based upon word choice, or grammar mistakes, or unfortunate command of the English language, is inherently wrong, there is at best a tenuous correlation between intelligence and mastery of grammar. One does not have to have perfect command of the English language to be intelligent,
True enough. I should have used the word "ignorant" instead of "stupid". Or perhaps "uneducated".
That said, if we assume a native speaker of English (the use of euphemisms alone is usually enough to recognize a native speaker), then it's pretty fair to say that someone with only a tenuous grasp of grammar and/or spelling fits the definition of "semiliterate". Look the word up if you doubt me.
Note further that many, if not most, slashdotters more or less automatically assume they're quite a bit brighter than the average person.
And that quite a few slashdotters have no more than a weak grip on grammar, punctuation and spelling. And yes, I can usually tell the difference between typos and misspellings - it's not too hard, if you know where the keys on a keyboard are to figure out the common miskeys. Using (for instance) "there" when you mean "their" isn't one of those common miskeys.
Note that in the case in question, the writer had obviously heard a euphemism, but never seen it written, or heard it spoken by someone using "standard" pronunciation (almost noone uses standard pronunciation, we all have regional accents that vary to a greater or lesser degree). He attempted to spell the phrase as he'd understood it, and guessed wrong. Happens all the time. Oddly enough, it happens less to people who read a lot than to people who only read when forced to.
Slashdot Mirror
The Falcon 9 is 54.9 meters tall. The first stage is a bit more than half that height, so call it 30 meters.
This is only partly true. The impetus she could have given the toolbag, even deliberately, is no more than whatever her arm can generate. A Major League Pitcher can manage maybe 100 mph (45 m/s) with a baseball, much less with a backpack sized toolbox.
I doubt this woman could have come close to that by accident. Which means maybe a few meters per second velocity differential at the beginning. Which the Shuttle could quite easily have matched.
Letting it go for a while gives it time to move around its new orbit enough that the Shuttle would require multiple burns to match orbits (not because the initial impetus was high, but because you need to change to an orbit that reaches the toolbag's new orbital position and velocity when the toolbag gets to there). Which makes it prohibitive.
This, of course, ignoring the fact that it's mostly silly to try to recover a toolbag in a situation like that, unless it's clearly going to smack into the ISS or Shuttle in an orbit or three....
Was pretty dumb. Which is why I used "brain-dump" to describe it. None of the other answers looked quite right, and I turned the higher faculties off and assumed they used "debt" where they meant "deficit". My bad.
32/33. Braindumped on the balanced budget question - deficit is zero if taxes and spending are equal, not debt. Rest of it was a cakewalk. Could have answered every one of the history questions by the time I was 12, and the rest by the time I was 14.
Oh? Don't I recall correctly that syphilis came back to Europe after the explorers "fraternized" with the local women?
While this is certainly true, his failure of reelection has nothing whatsoever to do with any committee chairmanship, since the Democrats control the committee chairmanships in both House and Senate, and they weren't going to pick a Republican no matter what the result of the Alaska Senatorial race.
So, if the force of gravity is acting on you, and nothing else is, then you have no force applied to you? You expand my view of the ridiculous....
Hint: if the force of gravity is acting upon you, the force applied to you is NON-ZERO.
Note that the wikipedia article has, at best, a limited understanding of the difference between weightlessness and freefall. Which are not, contrary to their assertion, synonyms.
I take it you don't count gravity as a "force" where you come from?
Without gravity applying a "force" to the ISS, it would move in what is commonly known as a "straight line".
Which would not allow for a steady orbit. Steady orbits are generally described by "ellipses", not "straight lines".
Perhaps what you are struggling toward is the notion that a "net force" must be one that perturbs an orbit? If so, then you're mistaken about the notion of a "net force". The ISS is in "freefall". It is NOT weightless, it is NOT operating free of the usual forces that operate on everything else in the universe, such as gravity.
You'd know this, if you'd bother with a simple thought experiment - when the ISS is over Florida it is moving in a certain direction. When it is over India, it is moving in pretty much the opposite direction. How can it change direction of motion without a "net force" acting upon it? Answer: well, according to Newton, it can't.
Umm, no. In freefall, your weight is still defined by F= mA. And you still have a mass (m), and are still under acceleration (A). So you still have a weight.
The fact that the space station is is accelerating at the same rate you are (and thus giving you the illusion of weightlessness) is irrelevant to the question of your "weight" in space.
Note that weight does not actually imply that a scale designed to work on the ground will indicate some non-zero value when you stand on it.
Well, no.
If there were no net force acting on the ISS, it would not orbit the Earth. Gravity at its altitude is still around 90% of surface gravity, so it still weighs about 90% of what it would weigh on the ground.
Such an interesting phrase, in a discussion of net neutrality.
Note that it applies just as well to net neutrality as it does to smut on TV. Or do you really think the people screaming about net neutrality are anything other than a vocal minority? Hint: most people neither know nor care about net neutrality.
Phalanx doesn't use 7.62 NATO. It uses a 20mm cannon, not a minigun.
And we'd not have gotten as far as Telstar without NASA. I'd be perfectly happy if private industry took the lead in developing the solar system.
Since they won't, having the government do it is a close second.
Google it. The second item listed when I googled Euripides' Electra was the complete text.
Who said anything about research? I'm all for exploitation of space.
Ignoring that, however, one must point out that in the 1940's hurricanes could make landfall without anyone being aware of their existence prior to landfall. Doesn't happen so much now.
Or there's that whole ozone hole thing. Which was discovered by a satellite. No benefit to society to knowing about (and thus being able to fix a problem)? I think not.
Or GPS systems. Or commsats. Or...
The space program has paid for itself many times over, if only by giving us enough information to prevent disasters. Consider Katrina, and the effect it would have had if there had been no evacuation from the Gulf Coast (evacuation of New Orleans requires 2.5 days, and can't be done at all in the 24 hours before a major storm hits), which is the situation that we'd have had before the space program.
If.
There are a lot of reasons the population might drop. Resource starvation isn't a major one, really, since equilibrium tends to be reached as you approach saturation use of your resources. There are, of course, exceptions for non-renewable resources, but there aren't so many non-renewables as one might think. Especially given a whole solar system to exploit.
True enough. We also don't make the families of the victims pay for the drunk's funeral, and then pay extra to take care of the drunk's wife and children.
In theory, there's no difference between theory and practice. In practice, there is.
Probably. But it's by no means certain. A Recession requires two consecutive quarters of negative economic growth. We haven't even had one yet. Though this last quarter will probably have net negative economic growth, after they get around to closing out the quarter and analyzing it.
So somewhere along about March, we may be in a recession. But not quite yet.
Why are space flight and putting the country back on its feet mutually exclusive? The Dems favour government spending to jumpstart the economy during a downturn. Well, NASA qualifies as government spending, and spending on NASA will jumpstart the economy just as well as bailing out the automakers (which the Dems desperately want to do, mostly because the unions tell them they desperately want to do this).
So, let's compromise - $25 billion for the automakers (the autoworkers unions actually), and $25 billion for NASA. Then everyone is happy, since we have $50 billion worth of government spending to jumpstart the economy, and NASA has enough budget to do something worthwhile.
If one includes the Eastern Roman Empire (arguably more Greek than Roman), then they were quite correct - the Empire lasted until at least 1204, rather longer than 1000 years.
Carried to an absurd extreme, this suggests that we are least likely to go extinct if there is only one human living.
Note also that this principle would tend to suggest that all the animals on the Endangered Species List are LEAST likely to go extinct, because their populations are lowest. Which, in turn, suggests that the cockroach is in more danger of extinction than even humans, much less the endangered animals.
Given a quick look at reality, I suggest that you rethink your theory a bit.
Just because it's expected of you doesn't mean that you have a moral obligation to provide it. I've known some people who tithed (a real tithe - 10%), but not too many. I've sat on the budget committees of a couple of congregations, and the budgets that they dealt with were nowhere near a tithe (based on the number of members of the congregation)....
Even divine inspiration isn't normally attributed to the Gospels. They are (theoretically) recountings of the life of Jesus of Nazareth as known by people who were present at the time.
Note that the actual ages of the various Gospels make it likely that some of them were not based on eyewitness accounts, though the earliest two might very well have been written by eyewitnesses. Or not, of course.
True enough. I should have used the word "ignorant" instead of "stupid". Or perhaps "uneducated".
That said, if we assume a native speaker of English (the use of euphemisms alone is usually enough to recognize a native speaker), then it's pretty fair to say that someone with only a tenuous grasp of grammar and/or spelling fits the definition of "semiliterate". Look the word up if you doubt me.
Note further that many, if not most, slashdotters more or less automatically assume they're quite a bit brighter than the average person.
And that quite a few slashdotters have no more than a weak grip on grammar, punctuation and spelling. And yes, I can usually tell the difference between typos and misspellings - it's not too hard, if you know where the keys on a keyboard are to figure out the common miskeys. Using (for instance) "there" when you mean "their" isn't one of those common miskeys.
Note that in the case in question, the writer had obviously heard a euphemism, but never seen it written, or heard it spoken by someone using "standard" pronunciation (almost noone uses standard pronunciation, we all have regional accents that vary to a greater or lesser degree). He attempted to spell the phrase as he'd understood it, and guessed wrong. Happens all the time. Oddly enough, it happens less to people who read a lot than to people who only read when forced to.