We've been tolerating this kind of behavior since 9/11 out of fear. It's time to admit to ourselves that we overreacted to the events of 9/11 and allowed our government to trash our civil rights in the name of protecting us.
Get a tiny bit of perspective - things have been like this before the Conventions since the '68 DNC Riots. Or did you not notice the guy who was arrested in Denver for checking into a hotel just before the DNC with a couple rifles? No reason to believe he was doing anything wrong, other than having a rifle near a Democrat, but that's the way it goes.
Admittedly, the Secret Service types have to be especially sensitive to the possibility of someone trying to do in Obama. I don't think it'll happen, but that opinion changes from day to day....
What I don't agree most with the Bible is that it is the ultimate truth, that I just can't agree with. Too much death and sorrow and downright evil has been done in the name of the Church.
Oddly enough, if you add up all the human misery in history, the Church (which, oddly enough, is NOT the same as the Bible) is a minor part of the total. Since you're likely enough American, your historical education has been biased by ignoring the majority of human history. China, for instance, has had a generous helping of human misery to its credit - not because it's especially worse than anyplace else, but because it's BIGGER than anyplace else. Ditto India.
If you'd really like to indulge yourself in the history of human misery, I suggest you look at the two worst centuries in human history - the Black Plague Years (not caused by the Church, though you'd not know it to listen to people talking about the evils of the Church), and the Twentieth Century (Stalin's pogroms, Hitler's Final Solution, Mao's progroms, Pol Pot's pogroms, they go on without end - and none of the tied to religion, since the societies preforming these little miracles of population control were either nominally atheistic or effectively atheistic.
Oh, and if you want to look at an enlightened atheistic state for your light reading, may I suggest The Terror? When France decided it wanted to be atheistic, they dived in with both feet - even to the extent of loading up a barge with nuns, and sinking it....
Ok, first and foremost, we all have a conscience and when it comes to right and wrong, we should use 1) compassion and 2) fairness.
We have a conscience? I assume you can prove that? Somehow?
And why should we use "compassion and fairness"? Yes, it's very Judeo-Christian, but I have yet to see any sane argument that it was some objective Truth. Well, other than that inconvenient "Bible" thing.
Now, as far as rebelling against authority. You are reading much more than I'm writing.
No, I am not. Quoting your earlier "Assuming that a society's law is first and foremost, then comes the individual's power of choice" - if Society's law is first and foremost, rebellion is by definition wrong.
You just can't have people doing as they wish.
Why not?
If we are to evolve morally, we must rise above that.. right?.
If the phrase "evolve morally" has any objective meaning, then possibly. Note that there have been no discernable moral "improvements" since Muhammad. And I know that many people will disagree that Muhammad brought any moral improvements to humanity.
But that's not to say that everything in China is wrong.
Well, when you place "respect" and "freedom of choice" as your primary definers of right and wrong, China, which approves of neither idea terribly much, comes down squarely in the "wrong" category. Note that *I* don't place "respect" and "freedom of choice" as the primary definers of right and wrong, so my opinions of China may differ.
Is it wrong to steal?
I suppose you can prove that? If so, I point out that "fairness" pretty much implies taking things from some people to give to other people. Which could, by some, be considered "stealing".
On the other hand, stealing is a very successful biological niche, practiced by many species the world over. Including ours.
Should any member of a society be starving? no.
Should any member not have a place to live? no.
Why not? If so, what is defined as "a place to live"? For that matter, define "starving" - the current definition used by all those UN organizations combatting world hunger seems to be "missed a meal in the past month".
This is where we must define the basic rights of a human.
Yeah, this would be a good place to do that. Too bad you didn't bother. A caveat - first you should prove that humans HAVE basic rights.
We have the right of life, we have the right of choice and we have the right of respect.
Why? because it's fair
I'm not saying this is how things are, per say, I'm saying this is how we should aim things to be..
Why do we have the right to life? If we do, when does that right begin? End?
Why do we have the right of choice? Does this not contradict "You just can't have people doing as they wish."
Why do we have a right of respect?
Why does "fairness" matter?
I'm delighted that you agree with these aims, in general. With the exception of the primacy of the State, of course. I'm not all that happy about that idea. I should note that you agree with the Bible almost completely (the Bible doesn't agree with the primacy of the State, but does agree that rebelling against authority is a bad thing. Unless you win, of course).
So, if all your deep thoughts on the inherent wrongness of religion leads you to conclude that the basic tenets of Christianity (summarized in the Golden Rule) are pretty much the end of morality, why show such disdain for religion?
Note that you still haven't actually demonstrated (sans religion) that humans have "rights". I'm still waiting....
Right and wrong, in a very abstract sense, are those things that either advance or harm a society, respectively. What is perceived as an advance or harm will differ, sometimes greatly, from one society to the next.
Can't argue with this. Note that the definition of "advance or harm" might be problematic. One must then ask "what are the defining characteristics of a successful society?" Note that if stability is included in that definition, then China is, in general, more successful than anywhere else on Earth. If, on the other hand, individual freedom is considered important, China is one of the big dead-ends of human history.
Note also that "advance or harm" changes depending on time-scale. The American Revolution was a short-term disaster for the Colonies, but in the long term (at least to date) seems to have worked out for the best.
Let's go fundamental here... Respect is right, the power of choice is right
Why? What makes "respect" right? What makes the "power of choice" right? Why is China's society (which is not based on either "respect" (except for authority) and the "power of choice" (except by authority)) wrong? Why is the United States right? I won't quibble about whether either was intended by you, of course, but "respect" and "power of choice" are more common in the USA than in China, so equating those things with "right" implies that.
Assuming that a society's law is first and foremost,
So, you think that rebelling against authority is intrinsically wrong? Interesting. HINT: government is no more your friend that religion. The one, slight, advantage to retaining religion as a useful concept is that it provides a separate "source of all authority" - divided authority is better than undivided authority.
such as what are the real rights of a human being
Please demonstrate that humans have ANY real rights. I'll wait....
But does the northwest get hit by several volcanic eruptions a year that cause billions and billions in damages, that are repaired with taxpayers' money? Do the earthquakes regularly cause damage on the scale of Katrina or other hurrcanes?
If by regularly, you means once every forty years or so, then New Orleans gets hit by hurricanes "regularly". Or were you rather foolishly assuming that EVERY hurricane causes damage to New Orleans? Sorry, just isn't so.
Hurricanes follow paths that are not random, but might as well be, for practical purposes - you have to guess whether it'll be a problem while it's 1000 miles away, and react based on that guess. If you're right, you look farsighted and insightful. If you're wrong, most of your constituents think you're an idiot and kick your incompetent arse out of office first chance they get.
Note, by the way, that three days before Katrina hit New Orleans, it was projected to hit Pensacola. Note further that it didn't actually hit New Orleans - it veered at the last minute and hit Mississippi much harder. It's just that New Orleans was much more news-worthy than hearing that Pass Christian ("what the hell is Pass Christian???") had been hammered yet again.
The funniest thing I see about Gustav right now is that McCain and Obama have both made the entirely snesible decision to stay out of the emergency preparations way right now, and are being lauded for it. When Bush did the same thing three years ago, he was castigated for it....
When we starting truly understanding what is RIGHT and what is WRONG and we act accordingly, not because of any religious beliefs or fears, but because it just is, then we will have finally furthered our moral evolution, which is to act on things because they are, not for any other reasons or incentives. This, in my honest opinion, is how we get to evolve morally.
I'll bite. What is RIGHT and what is WRONG? Traditionally, for good or ill, we've used religion to define that sort of thing.
Accepting the principle that we don't need the crutch of religion, how would YOU suggest we determine ultimate questions of right and wrong? HINT: if your answers look like warmed-over justifications for Judeo-Christian morality, then you probably are letting your societal (read religious) biases blind you.
It's below sea level in one of the most hurricane prone places on earth.
Hurricane prone? Hmm, we had Katrina. Which actually hit Mississippi, not New Orleans. Then FORTY years earlier, we had Betsie.
Both caused massive flooding. You know, the kind that you get along the Mississippi River maybe one year in ten. Note that Katrina's flooding were caused by a failure of the levees due to an unusually large storm-surge, even for a storm that size.
Right now, the local governments are in panic-mode. Not because this storm is going to cause widespread devastatation (it will in Terrebone Parrish, at least), but because they're afraid people will think they didn't take Katrina seriously, if they don't run at least laps screaming about falling skies.
Aaron Broussard is in full panic, of course. I heard him babbling on the radio about "a 20 foot wall of water and toxic sludge" hitting us. Note that that's the verbiage used during Katrina, and didn't actually happen then.
While what you are saying might very well be the literal truth, it sounds pretty much exactly like the propaganda put out just after 1 September 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland.
It would be very easy to round up and sanitize all the AIDS patients: something like random saliva checks followed by a reversible chemical castration and a discrete implant/ankle bracelet. It could be done rather inconspicuously, combined with an employee urine test, during a breathalyzer traffic stop, or at a DMV photoshoot
Of course, we could treat it like any other VD - require the doctors to report incidents to Public Health officials, have the Public Health people get a list of sexual partners from the AIDS victim, backtrack till they make sure everyone involved is at least aware they have AIDS, and mandate treatment.
Alas, it's not politically correct to consider the most deadly form of VD in history VD. So, instead, we do nothing worthwhile to deal with the issue, and people keep right on being infected (and inevitably dying).
f these machines affected the outcome of the election, perhaps it is the American people (and the people of Iraq) who should be seeking punitive damages from Diebold.
Didn't RTFA, I see. The machines in question were delivered in the last year, and the only elections they've affected were purely local ones.
And they didn't even affect them, since the miscounts were noticed and corrected from the paper audit trail built into the system.
The Shuttle in particular has a failure rate of 1.6%, 2 out of 123 launches.
The other four deaths are from the two Soyus failures that resulted in casualties. Counting just those two launches as failures (there were two other launches that basically blew up on the pad, with no deaths), the Soyuz as a failure rate of 2%, 2 out of 99 launches. 4% if you count the failures on the pad, 10% if you count the six flights that failed to achieve docking with Salyut/Mir.
Zero for three isn't bad at all for a brand new rocket design. Zero for six wouldn't be bad, though I wouldn't be surprised if the investors bailed by that point.
It will be interesting. However, we've known for a long time that a nuclear reactor would be the best fuel source for a space vessel. Truth be told, it's probably safer to put a nuclear reactor in a spacecraft then in a submarine or aircraft carrier, and the Navy does that all of the time (and it would be more environmental... out in space, you wouldn't have the radioactivity in the oceans). Considering most sub reactors get >100 MW, 200 kW isn't a big deal, and you can power the ship off of it too.
Submarine reactors don't dump radioactivity into the oceans, either. The primary loop (the water moving from the reactor to the steam generators) is a closed loop. The secondary loop (the steam from the steam generators to the turbines to the condensers) is also a closed loop. The only seawater is the coolant for the condensers, which never comes in contact with the (non-radioactive) water of the secondary loop, which (non-radioactive) water never comes into contact with the (not terribly radioactive) water of the primary loop.
I agree that 200KW isn't that big a deal. What you're looking for is the highest power to mass ratio reactor you can manage. Which isn't necessarily the same as the size range for a submarine reactor, since there isn't an ocean out in space to dispose of the waste heat from the secondary loop. Getting rid of that waste heat would likely be the largest part of the mass of the reactor used to power a VASIMR.
Mercury and Gemini were both incident free with plenty of people sent to orbit.
Project Mercury: six manned launches, all successful. total men in orbit: four. (that's fewer than the Shuttle carries on one flight, by the by.
Project Gemini: ten manned launches, all successful. total men in orbit: sixteen different men - four went up twice.
Shuttle: 123 flights so far, two unsuccesful. total men in orbit: about 800 (I don't feel like checking each flight for actual crew count, so it's only "about")
For the Soyuz fans out there: 99 flights, four unsuccessful (defining unsuccessful as either not reaching orbit or crew dying on reentry) OR ten unsuccessful (defining unsuccessful as ay of the above or failing to complete design mission (usually a failure to dock with Salyut when that was intended mission)), total men in orbit: about 245 (some were launched on one flight, landed on another - I may have miscounted some in sorting those out).
Note that Shuttle had 14 dead in its 123 flights (about 1.6%), Soyuz had four dead on its 99 flights (about 0.8%), but on a per flight basis, Shuttle had a failure rate of about 1.6%, Soyuz about 4% (or 10%), depending on definition of "failure". Neither Gemini nor Mercury suffered any failures (by either definition) but between them they put about 2% of the men into orbit that Soyuz and Shuttle combined did.
Note further that Shuttle put into orbit more men than all other space programs combined. By a factor of three.
Actually, the House moved to Adjourn at the scheduled time- because what was being proposed wasn't actually pressing business
Really? Just read in the news that 10 (of 13) of the major budget bills haven't been passed yet. They're due in a month, as I recall.
If it's not pressing business to pass a budget on time, why was there so much howling when it was the Republicans not passing a budget bill on time when Clinton was President?
It was to the Senate Majority Leader and the head of the Senate Judiciary Committee, that happened to be Democrats.
Well...no. Actually, the anthrax thing happened at a time when the Senate was controlled by the Republicans, not the Democrats, so neither the Senate Majority Leader nor the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee were Democrats.
Perhaps you meant the Senate Minority Leader and the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee?
If your willing to wait a bit longer, we only need to send barley and acorns
MIght be more difficult than that - some types of whiskey (Jack Daniel's, for instance) require NEW oaken barrels. Some (scotch) require USED oaken barrels.
We wouldn't want to have to wait till JD opens a distillery on Mars to start distilling scotch whiskey there.
It is very telling that the Renaissance only began with the translation of the Bible into a common tongue, instead of being exclusively in Latin - that only priests could read.
Well, that would certainly be telling. If it were true.
During the so-called Dark Ages, Latin was the language of educated Christians, just as Arabic was the language of educated Muslims - all REAL scholarship was written in Latin or Arabic (Yah, yah, Hindus used another language for scholarship, but since we're talking "Dark Ages", we're talking Europe), depending on the source. Latin (or Arabic) was not exclusive to the priesthood - it was taught everywhere literacy was taught, as PART of literacy.
Note that a bit later, French filled a similar role - it was the Lingua Franca for any person who laid claim to education. Still later, English has taken up that role, which is perhaps why you didn't understand the relation between Latin and Education - you grew up speaking the modern equivalent of Latin.
but is amazingly silent on a Louisiana congresscritter who was caught on tape taking a bribe, then with marked bills in his freezer, during an FBI bribery sting?
I see you've been taken in by the press yet again. As any native of Louisiana can tell you, Bill Jefferson has just stated that he did NOT, in fact, take a bribe, but rather that he lied to the person "bribing" him - he had absolutely no intention of doing as they asked, in spite of the large payment. Therefore, it wasn't a bribe.
Note that he has yet to produce the "honourable" explanation that he promised his voters last year, but his defense (he's a liar, not someone who take bribes) just might work in court, since it's not illegal to lie.
Re:But what comes next?
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NASA Turns 50
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NASA has accomplished some trult amazing feats during the last 50 years, the pinnacle surely being the moon landing of Apollo 11, which I remember watching as an awe-struck 13 year old. But where does it go from here?
Interesting that you consider the pinnacle of NASA to be 11 years after its creation. Which implies that it's been going downhill for 39 years.
Note that I agree with this. NASA hasn't done a thing worthwhile since we gave up on the moon.
It took almost a week to get to the moon [wikipedia.org], and that was on a Saturn V rocket, a huge monster of a vehicle. Launched on July 16, 1969, Apollo 11 landed on July 20, when Armstrong and Aldrin became the first humans to land on the Moon, while Collins orbited above. That's a five day trip, without stopping for gas or potty breaks.
It took 76 hours from launch to lunar orbit.
24 hours later, the LM disconnected from the CM for the trip down (most of the 24 hours were system checks on the LM - ~19 hours).
About 2.5 hours later, Armstrong and Aldrin were down on the moon.
So, no, it wasn't a five day trip, just a trifle over four, including the day-long delay in lunar orbit before descent.
"leaves or was born in a HUGE piece of land home to billions of people of thousends of tribes and ethnicall traits and hundreds of different religions"
Well, it would mean that if Africa were home to billions. Sadly, Africa has only reached ONE billion within the last couple years, if they've reached it at all.
Oh, and how had you planned on handling the first class-action lawsuit against the makers of these cars after the first 250 car pileup?
Same way 250 car pileups are handled now - insurance.
Liability fears are certainly a short-term obstacle, and insurance premiums will reflect that, but I don't think anyone doubts that robo-cars can and eventually will be significantly safer than the average fallible/inattentive/elderly/drunk human driver - and insurance premiums will reflect that too.
So, who's paying for this insurance? Do you really propose to make people pay for insurance to cover a vehicle that they have no control over? I don't have a problem with the notion that I am responsible for MY driving mistakes. I have a lot of problems with the notion that I am responsible for mistakes caused by the software controlling my car.
I should also point out that class-action lawsuits are big business in the USA. And this one would be like the tobacco settlement - millions of members to the class, billions (or trillions) of dollars for the settlement. And 30% to the Lawyers. I can't think of many legal firms that wouldn't flood their office building with drool at the thought of a $300 billion legal fee for a class action suit.
Yes, a great deal less, and almost all private money. That's because we already replace all the cars with amazing rapidity. The average car is owned 5 years I think.
Five years. Say, $10,000 each. There are about 250,000,000 cars in the USA, so replace 50,000,000 per year. That's $500 billion per year.
Not counting infrastructure, development cost, replacement cost of the whiz-bang robocars, etc.
Assuming we can build them for $10,000 and still meet all those legal requirements. Or were you assuming these things weren't going to be required to meet Federal Safety Requirements?
And assuming that people will buy them, if you make them available. That's a pretty big assumption.
Seems to me that a trillion a year is just getting started on the cost of the switchover. Good luck with that.
Note, for what it's worth, that while the average car is owned five years by any one person, the average five year old car is just going to be traded in and sold to someone who will then run it for five to ten (or more years).
Oh, and how had you planned on handling the first class-action lawsuit against the makers of these cars after the first 250 car pileup? Or are you assuming that these vehicles are so perfect that there will never be such a problem? If the latter, I suggest you seriously consider getting out into the real world more often.
If I told you, "We could probably cure Alzheimers with a relatively modest engineering effort" would you ever write a post wondering if it was worth it?
Probably not. If you then added, "but it'll cost a trillion dollars to implement", then I'd start wondering if it was worth it.
Or do you really think replacing all automobiles in the USA alone will be done for less than that?
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Get a tiny bit of perspective - things have been like this before the Conventions since the '68 DNC Riots. Or did you not notice the guy who was arrested in Denver for checking into a hotel just before the DNC with a couple rifles? No reason to believe he was doing anything wrong, other than having a rifle near a Democrat, but that's the way it goes.
Admittedly, the Secret Service types have to be especially sensitive to the possibility of someone trying to do in Obama. I don't think it'll happen, but that opinion changes from day to day....
Oddly enough, if you add up all the human misery in history, the Church (which, oddly enough, is NOT the same as the Bible) is a minor part of the total. Since you're likely enough American, your historical education has been biased by ignoring the majority of human history. China, for instance, has had a generous helping of human misery to its credit - not because it's especially worse than anyplace else, but because it's BIGGER than anyplace else. Ditto India.
If you'd really like to indulge yourself in the history of human misery, I suggest you look at the two worst centuries in human history - the Black Plague Years (not caused by the Church, though you'd not know it to listen to people talking about the evils of the Church), and the Twentieth Century (Stalin's pogroms, Hitler's Final Solution, Mao's progroms, Pol Pot's pogroms, they go on without end - and none of the tied to religion, since the societies preforming these little miracles of population control were either nominally atheistic or effectively atheistic.
Oh, and if you want to look at an enlightened atheistic state for your light reading, may I suggest The Terror? When France decided it wanted to be atheistic, they dived in with both feet - even to the extent of loading up a barge with nuns, and sinking it....
We have a conscience? I assume you can prove that? Somehow?
And why should we use "compassion and fairness"? Yes, it's very Judeo-Christian, but I have yet to see any sane argument that it was some objective Truth. Well, other than that inconvenient "Bible" thing.
No, I am not. Quoting your earlier "Assuming that a society's law is first and foremost, then comes the individual's power of choice" - if Society's law is first and foremost, rebellion is by definition wrong.
Can't argue with this. Note that the definition of "advance or harm" might be problematic. One must then ask "what are the defining characteristics of a successful society?" Note that if stability is included in that definition, then China is, in general, more successful than anywhere else on Earth. If, on the other hand, individual freedom is considered important, China is one of the big dead-ends of human history.
Note also that "advance or harm" changes depending on time-scale. The American Revolution was a short-term disaster for the Colonies, but in the long term (at least to date) seems to have worked out for the best.
Why? What makes "respect" right? What makes the "power of choice" right? Why is China's society (which is not based on either "respect" (except for authority) and the "power of choice" (except by authority)) wrong? Why is the United States right? I won't quibble about whether either was intended by you, of course, but "respect" and "power of choice" are more common in the USA than in China, so equating those things with "right" implies that.
So, you think that rebelling against authority is intrinsically wrong? Interesting. HINT: government is no more your friend that religion. The one, slight, advantage to retaining religion as a useful concept is that it provides a separate "source of all authority" - divided authority is better than undivided authority.
Please demonstrate that humans have ANY real rights. I'll wait....
If by regularly, you means once every forty years or so, then New Orleans gets hit by hurricanes "regularly". Or were you rather foolishly assuming that EVERY hurricane causes damage to New Orleans? Sorry, just isn't so.
Hurricanes follow paths that are not random, but might as well be, for practical purposes - you have to guess whether it'll be a problem while it's 1000 miles away, and react based on that guess. If you're right, you look farsighted and insightful. If you're wrong, most of your constituents think you're an idiot and kick your incompetent arse out of office first chance they get.
Note, by the way, that three days before Katrina hit New Orleans, it was projected to hit Pensacola. Note further that it didn't actually hit New Orleans - it veered at the last minute and hit Mississippi much harder. It's just that New Orleans was much more news-worthy than hearing that Pass Christian ("what the hell is Pass Christian???") had been hammered yet again.
The funniest thing I see about Gustav right now is that McCain and Obama have both made the entirely snesible decision to stay out of the emergency preparations way right now, and are being lauded for it. When Bush did the same thing three years ago, he was castigated for it....
I'll bite. What is RIGHT and what is WRONG? Traditionally, for good or ill, we've used religion to define that sort of thing.
Accepting the principle that we don't need the crutch of religion, how would YOU suggest we determine ultimate questions of right and wrong? HINT: if your answers look like warmed-over justifications for Judeo-Christian morality, then you probably are letting your societal (read religious) biases blind you.
Hurricane prone? Hmm, we had Katrina. Which actually hit Mississippi, not New Orleans. Then FORTY years earlier, we had Betsie.
Both caused massive flooding. You know, the kind that you get along the Mississippi River maybe one year in ten. Note that Katrina's flooding were caused by a failure of the levees due to an unusually large storm-surge, even for a storm that size.
Right now, the local governments are in panic-mode. Not because this storm is going to cause widespread devastatation (it will in Terrebone Parrish, at least), but because they're afraid people will think they didn't take Katrina seriously, if they don't run at least laps screaming about falling skies.
Aaron Broussard is in full panic, of course. I heard him babbling on the radio about "a 20 foot wall of water and toxic sludge" hitting us. Note that that's the verbiage used during Katrina, and didn't actually happen then.
While what you are saying might very well be the literal truth, it sounds pretty much exactly like the propaganda put out just after 1 September 1939 to justify the invasion of Poland.
Of course, we could treat it like any other VD - require the doctors to report incidents to Public Health officials, have the Public Health people get a list of sexual partners from the AIDS victim, backtrack till they make sure everyone involved is at least aware they have AIDS, and mandate treatment.
Alas, it's not politically correct to consider the most deadly form of VD in history VD. So, instead, we do nothing worthwhile to deal with the issue, and people keep right on being infected (and inevitably dying).
Didn't RTFA, I see. The machines in question were delivered in the last year, and the only elections they've affected were purely local ones.
And they didn't even affect them, since the miscounts were noticed and corrected from the paper audit trail built into the system.
The other four deaths are from the two Soyus failures that resulted in casualties. Counting just those two launches as failures (there were two other launches that basically blew up on the pad, with no deaths), the Soyuz as a failure rate of 2%, 2 out of 99 launches. 4% if you count the failures on the pad, 10% if you count the six flights that failed to achieve docking with Salyut/Mir.
Zero for three isn't bad at all for a brand new rocket design. Zero for six wouldn't be bad, though I wouldn't be surprised if the investors bailed by that point.
Submarine reactors don't dump radioactivity into the oceans, either. The primary loop (the water moving from the reactor to the steam generators) is a closed loop. The secondary loop (the steam from the steam generators to the turbines to the condensers) is also a closed loop. The only seawater is the coolant for the condensers, which never comes in contact with the (non-radioactive) water of the secondary loop, which (non-radioactive) water never comes into contact with the (not terribly radioactive) water of the primary loop.
I agree that 200KW isn't that big a deal. What you're looking for is the highest power to mass ratio reactor you can manage. Which isn't necessarily the same as the size range for a submarine reactor, since there isn't an ocean out in space to dispose of the waste heat from the secondary loop. Getting rid of that waste heat would likely be the largest part of the mass of the reactor used to power a VASIMR.
Project Mercury: six manned launches, all successful. total men in orbit: four. (that's fewer than the Shuttle carries on one flight, by the by.
Project Gemini: ten manned launches, all successful. total men in orbit: sixteen different men - four went up twice.
Shuttle: 123 flights so far, two unsuccesful. total men in orbit: about 800 (I don't feel like checking each flight for actual crew count, so it's only "about")
For the Soyuz fans out there: 99 flights, four unsuccessful (defining unsuccessful as either not reaching orbit or crew dying on reentry) OR ten unsuccessful (defining unsuccessful as ay of the above or failing to complete design mission (usually a failure to dock with Salyut when that was intended mission)), total men in orbit: about 245 (some were launched on one flight, landed on another - I may have miscounted some in sorting those out).
Note that Shuttle had 14 dead in its 123 flights (about 1.6%), Soyuz had four dead on its 99 flights (about 0.8%), but on a per flight basis, Shuttle had a failure rate of about 1.6%, Soyuz about 4% (or 10%), depending on definition of "failure". Neither Gemini nor Mercury suffered any failures (by either definition) but between them they put about 2% of the men into orbit that Soyuz and Shuttle combined did.
Note further that Shuttle put into orbit more men than all other space programs combined. By a factor of three.
Really? Just read in the news that 10 (of 13) of the major budget bills haven't been passed yet. They're due in a month, as I recall.
If it's not pressing business to pass a budget on time, why was there so much howling when it was the Republicans not passing a budget bill on time when Clinton was President?
Well...no. Actually, the anthrax thing happened at a time when the Senate was controlled by the Republicans, not the Democrats, so neither the Senate Majority Leader nor the Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee were Democrats.
Perhaps you meant the Senate Minority Leader and the Ranking Democrat on the Senate Judiciary Committee?
MIght be more difficult than that - some types of whiskey (Jack Daniel's, for instance) require NEW oaken barrels. Some (scotch) require USED oaken barrels.
We wouldn't want to have to wait till JD opens a distillery on Mars to start distilling scotch whiskey there.
Well, that would certainly be telling. If it were true.
During the so-called Dark Ages, Latin was the language of educated Christians, just as Arabic was the language of educated Muslims - all REAL scholarship was written in Latin or Arabic (Yah, yah, Hindus used another language for scholarship, but since we're talking "Dark Ages", we're talking Europe), depending on the source. Latin (or Arabic) was not exclusive to the priesthood - it was taught everywhere literacy was taught, as PART of literacy.
Note that a bit later, French filled a similar role - it was the Lingua Franca for any person who laid claim to education. Still later, English has taken up that role, which is perhaps why you didn't understand the relation between Latin and Education - you grew up speaking the modern equivalent of Latin.
I see you've been taken in by the press yet again. As any native of Louisiana can tell you, Bill Jefferson has just stated that he did NOT, in fact, take a bribe, but rather that he lied to the person "bribing" him - he had absolutely no intention of doing as they asked, in spite of the large payment. Therefore, it wasn't a bribe.
Note that he has yet to produce the "honourable" explanation that he promised his voters last year, but his defense (he's a liar, not someone who take bribes) just might work in court, since it's not illegal to lie.
Interesting that you consider the pinnacle of NASA to be 11 years after its creation. Which implies that it's been going downhill for 39 years.
Note that I agree with this. NASA hasn't done a thing worthwhile since we gave up on the moon.
It took 76 hours from launch to lunar orbit.
24 hours later, the LM disconnected from the CM for the trip down (most of the 24 hours were system checks on the LM - ~19 hours).
About 2.5 hours later, Armstrong and Aldrin were down on the moon.
So, no, it wasn't a five day trip, just a trifle over four, including the day-long delay in lunar orbit before descent.
Well, it would mean that if Africa were home to billions. Sadly, Africa has only reached ONE billion within the last couple years, if they've reached it at all.
So, who's paying for this insurance? Do you really propose to make people pay for insurance to cover a vehicle that they have no control over? I don't have a problem with the notion that I am responsible for MY driving mistakes. I have a lot of problems with the notion that I am responsible for mistakes caused by the software controlling my car.
I should also point out that class-action lawsuits are big business in the USA. And this one would be like the tobacco settlement - millions of members to the class, billions (or trillions) of dollars for the settlement. And 30% to the Lawyers. I can't think of many legal firms that wouldn't flood their office building with drool at the thought of a $300 billion legal fee for a class action suit.
Five years. Say, $10,000 each. There are about 250,000,000 cars in the USA, so replace 50,000,000 per year. That's $500 billion per year.
Not counting infrastructure, development cost, replacement cost of the whiz-bang robocars, etc.
Assuming we can build them for $10,000 and still meet all those legal requirements. Or were you assuming these things weren't going to be required to meet Federal Safety Requirements?
And assuming that people will buy them, if you make them available. That's a pretty big assumption.
Seems to me that a trillion a year is just getting started on the cost of the switchover. Good luck with that.
Note, for what it's worth, that while the average car is owned five years by any one person, the average five year old car is just going to be traded in and sold to someone who will then run it for five to ten (or more years).
Oh, and how had you planned on handling the first class-action lawsuit against the makers of these cars after the first 250 car pileup? Or are you assuming that these vehicles are so perfect that there will never be such a problem? If the latter, I suggest you seriously consider getting out into the real world more often.
Probably not. If you then added, "but it'll cost a trillion dollars to implement", then I'd start wondering if it was worth it.
Or do you really think replacing all automobiles in the USA alone will be done for less than that?