God, I made a stupid mistake. That obviously makes me an idiot. Ummm, ya. OK. Whatever. I sure wish I could type on public forums without ever making errors as you can Mr. AC.
I don't recall the exact statistic, but insurance companies have compiled similar statistics. It's something like for each additional passenger, the risk of an accident becomes 10% more likely (so that if it was previously a 0.01% chance it is now 0.011% or if you had 4 passengers it would now be 0.014%).
The reason I mentioned you would have to calculate all those other forces before considering GR is because they have orders-of-magnitude more effect on the satellite's trajectory than GR, so it would be silly and a waste of time to consider GR and not the others. That also sounds like the problem had some unrealistic assumptions about acceleration. First, the acceleration from Jupiter isn't continuous (even using Newtonian physics), it's proportional to the distance between the objects. Second, it's plain silly to ignore the gravitational force from the sun while en route to Jupiter since it will be the main force (like 99.999%) until the satellite is within Jupiter's field of influence (about 10 Jupiter diameter away if I recall correctly). Also, an instantaneous burn is much easier to calculate than a continuous burn because it then doesn't require integration of differential equations (assuming the problem was to have any semblance to reality). There's also the question of what type of trajectory the vehicle was on to reach Jupiter. With a instantaneous burn, you're on the same trajectory all the way there (either an arbitrary hyperbolic or an elliptic). With a continuous burn the trajectory changes constantly as you keep adding energy to the system (not easy to consider on a pen-and-paper test!).
I think the error is server-side, not client side so there isn't a need for a distributable patch. (On a side note, it seems they use the Live service to patch Live often enough.)
I have taken a course on orbital mechanics (in addition to a couple years of physics) and was never required to use General Relativity for solving an orbital-mechanics type problem. While it can be considered by advanced software like STK, it would never be for just a back-of-the-envelope calculation. For that level of precision you would first have to consider the perturbing forces of solar radiation, 3rd body forces (which I believe has been proven to be impossible to solve for explicitely--numerical methods must be used), black-body radiation pressure generated by the spacecraft, etc. In other words, you either need infinite time or a (fairly complex) computer program.
The hard part of the problem you were given was the continous burn since that makes a simple problem that can be solved explicitely into a numerical-methods problem that is pretty involved if you don't have a programmable calculator. I don't recall ever being given that question (it's pretty unrealistic too since, to date, there has only been one spacecraft that has used a continous-burn engine). Unless this was a take-home test (in which event kudos to you for solving such a difficult problem which a general Physics course usually wouldn't go that in depth) or your memory is a bit foggy--or you wasted your effort on such a trivial peturbance of its orbit.
One related question would be: if cell phone conversations are unsafe, why does having a conversation with fellow passengers (presumably) not impact safety?
Who said they aren't a factor in safety? According to this (and I've heard this before on NPR I believe) other occupants are a major cause of accidents (according to this statistic 10.9% as opposed to 1.5% for cell phone use). Adjusting the radio or other things on the dash account for 11.4% of accidents. So really, cell phone use isn't as dangerous as common perception percieves it. I knew a guy in high school who crashed 3 times within 2 years while talking to other occupants in his car while driving (he wasn't drunk, just a bad driver). An aunt of mine had a roll over accident 10 years ago or so when looking behind her to tell her kids to shut up (everyone had seat belts on so fortunately no one was hurt).
Sorry about that aweful first sentence, I forgot to proof-read that part. What I really meant to say is that improvements have really improved the advances in advanced automobile engine super technology or something:).
While the effenciencies of turbine engines have certainly increased, it pales in comparison the improvements of advances in automobile technological advances, which have improved immensions while simultaneously increasing effency, etc. Piston-engine technology is about as static as one can imagine for the last 40 years. They still weigh as much as ever, are roughly as effecient as ever, polute as much as ever, etc.
Personal aircraft have certainly seen good use of new materials and construction techniques over the last 20 years, but commercial airlines are only recently making significant progress implementing composite materials (I believe the only composites in the old 747s where the floor boards--preventing stewesses from wearing high-heel shoes--and overhead bins). The 747 (designed back in the 60s) has a remarkably efficient aeronautical design which, taking into account engine upgrades over the years, has only recently been surpassed by planes with airfoils that stretch the drag bucket closer to mach.
Unlikely. Consider this: if air travel were instantaneous -- runway to runway -- your travel time will still be many hours. Ground transport to/from airport, check-in, baggage handling, security, aircraft taxi -- a significant proportion of travel time. Travelling faster than Mach 0.8 in the atmosphere takes a huge amount of energy (civilian supersonic travel is unlikely to come back). Escaping the atmosphere will require hugely more....
Off of the top of my head I can think of solutions to many of the problems you reported:
Baggage check-in (and the added weight): The baggage could be sent on another, standard, plane. This would allow for the sub-orbital plane to take off with only the passangers being screened ahead of time. The baggage would still be screaned, of course, just at a later time or perhaps while they are in the process of taking off. Once they get to where they're going, the baggage could be delivered to their hotel by taxi or courier--covered by the ticket price. This would allow for more people to fly on the sub-orbital flight, more than offsetting the cost incurred by having to have the baggage delivered seperately. And since suicide bombers are out there, I don't think there's really a safety issue here of flying luggage without the owner on board the flight.
Fuel requirements: Using something other than a rocket to get above most of the atmosphere (like Burt Rutan's design) greatly reduces the amount of rocket fuel needed for such a flight. If a material is ever invented to contain a large, evacuated space and still be fairly light (big if of course), it would be possible to get to this altitude potentially quickly and almost for free. I also don't believe civilian super-sonic flight is coming back (at least not in the 30000-50000ft elevation range, at higher altitudes it still may be possible using a ramjet), unless some increadible advance occurs in airfoil design to mitigate the drag caused by the shock waves.
Life support isn't really an issue. All commercial jets already have life support, the only additional 3 things that need to be done are to store additional oxygen on board, ensure that the cabin is air tight to a pressure differential of about.8 atmospheres (not that hard, really) and have enough battery power to last during the space portion of the flight.
So, best case scenario, a person going from New York City to Tokyo would:
Go to a subway station with his/her luggage - 15 min (this is best case, remember).
Take the subway to JFK - 20 min.
Walk from subway to terminal - 15 min.
Check in and deliver luggage - 2 min. I'm assuming it's like 1st class check-in which is usually pretty quick
Proceed to gate. Since they won't have any luggage, they should be able to get through screening in less than 10 min. so I'll say this will take 20 min.
To add to your list, I've seen them in Colorado and Utah as well. I can't recall seeing them in California, but I don't think it would matter there anyway since the people there seem to ignore any existing traffic laws (such as using turn signals for passing or turning for that matter--are they all broken over there?--speeding, tailgaiting, etc.).
Unfortunately the only drivers that see them are the irritated driver behind the driver who is drag racing with a semi at 55 mph in a 65 zone.
I'll let that slide if the semi is passing another semi going 40-45mph but NOT if the other one is going 54mph (well, I'll let that slide too I guess, but it certainly annoys the hell out of me). That can happen from time to time climbing the mountains and hills here in Colorado. Other drivers seem to get pretty ticked off though.
LOL, I never realized that before, thanks. It's supposed to stand for Colorado State Patrol but I guess ASS is easier to remember:). Here's a link with more info. Do a search for 277 on the page and you'll see what I'm talking about.
If you have a cell phone you should have called the cops. Seriously. In Colorado (at least in the Denver area) *277 would get you a direct connection to the reckless driving office of the state highway patrol. I'm sure there are similar numbers in other states (don't want to resort to 911 if you don't have to).
BTW, to use this technique correctly you need to GRADUALLY decrease your speed, not immediately. That way they'll usually pass you without getting overly aggrevated (assuming they don't get the hint). Also, you probably shouldn't go below the speed limit (esp. if you're on a two-lane road with an especially dense person following you).
Try doing a similar test with commercial airplanes. You'll probably be less than impressed by the progress made in the past 40 years. I'm hoping the next 40 years will be more interesting with sub-orbital flight finally entering the picture.
I did exactly that on a recent road trip. Some guy behind me was driving with one of those cardboard covers across the windshield with a sunglasses image. It baffled me at first how a guy could be driving on the interstate without being able to see ahead but then I noticed two eyes peering over the sun screen. Either he or I where begging for a Darwin Award for that one...
You can't tell how intelligent a person is from the way one speaks. Not every bright guy out there can give good public speaches or interviews (in fact some rather average people can give decent speaches, take a look at Bush Jr. for instance).
If you look at what Ted Turner has accomplished it is clear that he has had great foresight and instinct in the past and had the gumption to carry out his plans.
BTW, he isn't running a company any more (well not THE company anyway...).
Granted you have to pay for an Amex (not blue card, but all others), but at least then you get points and still have to pay off the balance. So long as you use your Amex regularly you will get enough points for it to pay for itself and get the added bonus of getting a year-end statement breaking up your purchases by category and other standard Amex benefits (always being able to return purchases for 2 months, etc.).
I carry two cards in my wallet, an Amex for wherever it is accepted and a Visa debit card for everywhere else.
Charlie Rose is going to have a 1-hr interview with Ted Turner tonight, hopefully this subject will come up during the course of the interview (11pm local time on PBS usually). You also might like to check out this book written by a former exec at CNN--Bonnie Anderson (her interview from the other night). This is what she had to say about abstaining from watching the news on TV:
You know, I had one person tell me on a talk show, "You know, I just quit watching news," and I'm thinking, "That's really--that's a shame." Pick up the phone. E-mail, pick up the phone, call the network or call the news station and say, "I disagree." If only one person does it, it's not gonna make a difference. I pick up the phone constantly and call my local stations and say, "Why on earth did you just do that?" But if you do get a lot of people who are complaining, who say, "This is not the quality of news we need"--if it becomes a movement and if people realize that it's patriotic to speak out this way--this is true patriotism. Let's demand something that our Constitution protects for us. Let's demand it. And so pick up the phone, write letters, you know, write e-mails, and just say, "We want news that is far more directed towards everybody in this country and that's honest and truly fair."
I think it may have been a good idea to nip this in the bud
That can be said about many things. Many things could continue along a path to the point where the public suffers. To me, this seems like a razor/razor-blade issue where the manufacturer makes a relatively cheap razor and profits on the sales of blades for its razor (which has been around for over 80 years I believe). If Microsoft can't enforce copy protection for its games on the XBox then it would lose control over what may be played on it, (partly) removing its profit vehicle. This wouldn't kill the XBox though, they would simply have to increase the initial cost of the XBox to compensate for this. Either way, you'll more than likely pay the same.
Now, if they made the XBox into a general purpose PC then you would certainly have a legitimate gripe as it would then have many uses rather than the single one it currently has. As it stands, Microsoft does NOT have a monopoly on consoles, just its own console so this isn't harming competition in any way (as they are all using the same profit model).
Just the threat worked for me as a child, although I think I might have been spanked once. I guess it depends on the child and parent (although my aunt--a social worker--would STRONGLY disagree with me). Heck, they spanked kids at the elementary school I went to 15 years ago with paddles (don't know if they still do).
Pretty soon, you roll over enough, there's no more room to roll over, because all of your rights are gone.
Please! Try to be a little less melodramatic next time if you want someone to take you seriously.
Not being able to mod proprietary hardware designed for the sole purpose of playing proprietary games (and clearly advertised as such) is a world away from true risks to your freedom. Come back when you have a legitimate gripe (such as not being able to run home-built software on a PC).
Of course, if your kid is over 5 then he/she would probably learn pretty quick not to ruin CDs if you never replaced them, or only replaced them at Christmas/B-day w/o buying any new games in addition.
Slashdot Mirror
God, I made a stupid mistake. That obviously makes me an idiot. Ummm, ya. OK. Whatever. I sure wish I could type on public forums without ever making errors as you can Mr. AC.
So are they the good guys are the bad guys?
They ought to make the suits look blue or pink or put one of those Walmart smiley faces on them :P.
n.
I don't recall the exact statistic, but insurance companies have compiled similar statistics. It's something like for each additional passenger, the risk of an accident becomes 10% more likely (so that if it was previously a 0.01% chance it is now 0.011% or if you had 4 passengers it would now be 0.014%).
The reason I mentioned you would have to calculate all those other forces before considering GR is because they have orders-of-magnitude more effect on the satellite's trajectory than GR, so it would be silly and a waste of time to consider GR and not the others. That also sounds like the problem had some unrealistic assumptions about acceleration. First, the acceleration from Jupiter isn't continuous (even using Newtonian physics), it's proportional to the distance between the objects. Second, it's plain silly to ignore the gravitational force from the sun while en route to Jupiter since it will be the main force (like 99.999%) until the satellite is within Jupiter's field of influence (about 10 Jupiter diameter away if I recall correctly). Also, an instantaneous burn is much easier to calculate than a continuous burn because it then doesn't require integration of differential equations (assuming the problem was to have any semblance to reality). There's also the question of what type of trajectory the vehicle was on to reach Jupiter. With a instantaneous burn, you're on the same trajectory all the way there (either an arbitrary hyperbolic or an elliptic). With a continuous burn the trajectory changes constantly as you keep adding energy to the system (not easy to consider on a pen-and-paper test!).
I think the error is server-side, not client side so there isn't a need for a distributable patch. (On a side note, it seems they use the Live service to patch Live often enough.)
The hard part of the problem you were given was the continous burn since that makes a simple problem that can be solved explicitely into a numerical-methods problem that is pretty involved if you don't have a programmable calculator. I don't recall ever being given that question (it's pretty unrealistic too since, to date, there has only been one spacecraft that has used a continous-burn engine). Unless this was a take-home test (in which event kudos to you for solving such a difficult problem which a general Physics course usually wouldn't go that in depth) or your memory is a bit foggy--or you wasted your effort on such a trivial peturbance of its orbit.
Who said they aren't a factor in safety? According to this (and I've heard this before on NPR I believe) other occupants are a major cause of accidents (according to this statistic 10.9% as opposed to 1.5% for cell phone use). Adjusting the radio or other things on the dash account for 11.4% of accidents. So really, cell phone use isn't as dangerous as common perception percieves it. I knew a guy in high school who crashed 3 times within 2 years while talking to other occupants in his car while driving (he wasn't drunk, just a bad driver). An aunt of mine had a roll over accident 10 years ago or so when looking behind her to tell her kids to shut up (everyone had seat belts on so fortunately no one was hurt).
Sorry about that aweful first sentence, I forgot to proof-read that part. What I really meant to say is that improvements have really improved the advances in advanced automobile engine super technology or something :).
Personal aircraft have certainly seen good use of new materials and construction techniques over the last 20 years, but commercial airlines are only recently making significant progress implementing composite materials (I believe the only composites in the old 747s where the floor boards--preventing stewesses from wearing high-heel shoes--and overhead bins). The 747 (designed back in the 60s) has a remarkably efficient aeronautical design which, taking into account engine upgrades over the years, has only recently been surpassed by planes with airfoils that stretch the drag bucket closer to mach.
Unlikely. Consider this: if air travel were instantaneous -- runway to runway -- your travel time will still be many hours. Ground transport to/from airport, check-in, baggage handling, security, aircraft taxi -- a significant proportion of travel time. Travelling faster than Mach 0.8 in the atmosphere takes a huge amount of energy (civilian supersonic travel is unlikely to come back). Escaping the atmosphere will require hugely more. ...
Off of the top of my head I can think of solutions to many of the problems you reported:
So, best case scenario, a person going from New York City to Tokyo would:
Unfortunately the only drivers that see them are the irritated driver behind the driver who is drag racing with a semi at 55 mph in a 65 zone.
I'll let that slide if the semi is passing another semi going 40-45mph but NOT if the other one is going 54mph (well, I'll let that slide too I guess, but it certainly annoys the hell out of me). That can happen from time to time climbing the mountains and hills here in Colorado. Other drivers seem to get pretty ticked off though.
LOL, I never realized that before, thanks. It's supposed to stand for Colorado State Patrol but I guess ASS is easier to remember :). Here's a link with more info. Do a search for 277 on the page and you'll see what I'm talking about.
froogles -google
It wouldn't have been so hard in the first place before google went public with their own Froogles service.
BTW, to use this technique correctly you need to GRADUALLY decrease your speed, not immediately. That way they'll usually pass you without getting overly aggrevated (assuming they don't get the hint). Also, you probably shouldn't go below the speed limit (esp. if you're on a two-lane road with an especially dense person following you).
Try doing a similar test with commercial airplanes. You'll probably be less than impressed by the progress made in the past 40 years. I'm hoping the next 40 years will be more interesting with sub-orbital flight finally entering the picture.
I did exactly that on a recent road trip. Some guy behind me was driving with one of those cardboard covers across the windshield with a sunglasses image. It baffled me at first how a guy could be driving on the interstate without being able to see ahead but then I noticed two eyes peering over the sun screen. Either he or I where begging for a Darwin Award for that one...
If you look at what Ted Turner has accomplished it is clear that he has had great foresight and instinct in the past and had the gumption to carry out his plans.
BTW, he isn't running a company any more (well not THE company anyway...).
I carry two cards in my wallet, an Amex for wherever it is accepted and a Visa debit card for everywhere else.
How about it? Let's slashdot bad news agencies!
That can be said about many things. Many things could continue along a path to the point where the public suffers. To me, this seems like a razor/razor-blade issue where the manufacturer makes a relatively cheap razor and profits on the sales of blades for its razor (which has been around for over 80 years I believe). If Microsoft can't enforce copy protection for its games on the XBox then it would lose control over what may be played on it, (partly) removing its profit vehicle. This wouldn't kill the XBox though, they would simply have to increase the initial cost of the XBox to compensate for this. Either way, you'll more than likely pay the same.
Now, if they made the XBox into a general purpose PC then you would certainly have a legitimate gripe as it would then have many uses rather than the single one it currently has. As it stands, Microsoft does NOT have a monopoly on consoles, just its own console so this isn't harming competition in any way (as they are all using the same profit model).
Just the threat worked for me as a child, although I think I might have been spanked once. I guess it depends on the child and parent (although my aunt--a social worker--would STRONGLY disagree with me). Heck, they spanked kids at the elementary school I went to 15 years ago with paddles (don't know if they still do).
That's true. I guess you need to either a) hide/lock up your stash or b) threaten corporal punishment :-P.
Please! Try to be a little less melodramatic next time if you want someone to take you seriously.
Not being able to mod proprietary hardware designed for the sole purpose of playing proprietary games (and clearly advertised as such) is a world away from true risks to your freedom. Come back when you have a legitimate gripe (such as not being able to run home-built software on a PC).
Of course, if your kid is over 5 then he/she would probably learn pretty quick not to ruin CDs if you never replaced them, or only replaced them at Christmas/B-day w/o buying any new games in addition.
My boss is training right now. He's expecting to pay about $5000 for training and license.