It has been said before, but High Speed rail is not for going from New York to LA. It is not for going from the suburbs into the city either, you want light rail for that. Where is makes a lot of sense is between somewhat nearby large cities, such as on the east coast, the cities around Chicago or between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
It actually flies "sideways" though. The upper side of the two big wings always face the sun. The two smaller wings at the back are for aerodynamic stability.
While I'm here, there is more information at the ESAGOCEsites.
I am not so sure you could just buy a Bigelow Sundancer and stick it on. Space stations are quite complicated things. It would need at least power supply, a cooling system and good micro-meteorite protection. There might be problems with the air resistance force balance too. Much easier would be to modify one of the Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules for permanent use. They are already made to fit with the ISS.
That said, there are already I think seven big modules and a few more coming. Six people should be able to fit in there.
98.3% of registered users are inactive because they created an account edited something and forgot all about it. What percentage of registered Slashdot accounts are active?
About advertising, some people seem to thing of it as money for nothing. It's not, you are selling something. In Wikipedia's case its integrity.
The fundraiser seems to have met its goal, and if that is ever a problem there is some fat to cut from the foundation expenses before ads are necessary.
Soyuz cannot stay in orbit very long. Six months I think, but they are working on extending it. On top of than comes of the problems of relying on an other nation, and what to do if Soyuz has problems.
About NASA, remember that when they test a small thruster, it doesn't make the news. It seems only their failures and problems are deems newsworthy.
To be fair, the US government rule that works by government employees are not copyrighted has provided for a lot of free images used on Wikipedia. European governments, for example, are much more restrictive about copyrights.
Orbit required much higher speed than suborbital spaceflight. You don't just need to get high enough, you must also go fast enough to stay in orbit. The ISS for example is moving at 27,743 km/h
(17,239 mph). A modified jet with a rocket engine will just not have room for enough fuel, I think.
Specifically, the license is the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Noncommercial mean it is not entirely free, but it is still one of the more free cc licenses. Just saying that something is cc-licenses means almost nothing, there are cc licenses that give very little freedom.
I don't don't know why this was modded down. Better than all the comments above.
About your claim that articles get worse over time, I haven't seen many real cases of that. Some articles on important topics seem to stay in bad state indefinitely, but that's an other matter.
There is a major difference between earth and space exploration. On most places on earth, you could just dump a few hundred people with no training or equipment, and at least some of them will survive and find a way to live there. On Mars, you can't.
I'm sure a lot of people died colonizing America, but the place was basically livable. The first people we send to Mars will be stuck in there habitation module until we send them more equipment or bring them back. Only when we get to the point that we have such advanced industry on Mars that it can produce the kind of equipment you need on Mars (solar panels/nuclear reactors, water and air recycling, radiation shielding, mars suits), then it is really a colony. I hope we will get there, but the approach will be very different that earth colonization.
NASA already is contracting just about all spacecraft and components to private companies. The difficulty is setting goals that cannot be cheated around.
China has launched men into space since 2003 (again in 2005 and September this year). ESA's plans for it's own manned space launches are little more than concepts at this time and would require much more funding from the European governments unless they want to cut all the robotic missions. ESA does have it's own astronauts who ride on American or Russian launchers, and ESA built and owns parts of the ISS.
IXV that this article is about is a small testing platform, not a manned spacecraft.
Slashdot Mirror
It has been said before, but High Speed rail is not for going from New York to LA. It is not for going from the suburbs into the city either, you want light rail for that. Where is makes a lot of sense is between somewhat nearby large cities, such as on the east coast, the cities around Chicago or between San Francisco and Los Angeles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rockot
It's a rather small Russian rocket.
It actually flies "sideways" though. The upper side of the two big wings always face the sun. The two smaller wings at the back are for aerodynamic stability.
While I'm here, there is more information at the ESA GOCE sites.
Check out about:config and the settings that begin with places.frecency. You will probably have to google them to figure out what they do.
Unless it can be connected, say if he lists commander64_love@something.com on his Facebook profile.
Extra weight because the payload fairing failed to separate.
AP is a news wire service.
I would bet it also makes loading Firefox take longer and uses up RAM even when not using Java.
There was supposed to be a Centrifuge Accommodations Module, but it got canceled.
I am not so sure you could just buy a Bigelow Sundancer and stick it on. Space stations are quite complicated things. It would need at least power supply, a cooling system and good micro-meteorite protection. There might be problems with the air resistance force balance too. Much easier would be to modify one of the Multi-Purpose Logistics Modules for permanent use. They are already made to fit with the ISS.
That said, there are already I think seven big modules and a few more coming. Six people should be able to fit in there.
A 2 hour movie would probably not be used in Wikipedia itself but some other Wikimedia foundation project.
98.3% of registered users are inactive because they created an account edited something and forgot all about it. What percentage of registered Slashdot accounts are active?
About advertising, some people seem to thing of it as money for nothing. It's not, you are selling something. In Wikipedia's case its integrity.
The fundraiser seems to have met its goal, and if that is ever a problem there is some fat to cut from the foundation expenses before ads are necessary.
begging for money all the time isn't a business model.
Good then that Wikipedia is not a business.
If you do, it's your own fault for electing them.
Soyuz cannot stay in orbit very long. Six months I think, but they are working on extending it. On top of than comes of the problems of relying on an other nation, and what to do if Soyuz has problems.
About NASA, remember that when they test a small thruster, it doesn't make the news. It seems only their failures and problems are deems newsworthy.
To be fair, the US government rule that works by government employees are not copyrighted has provided for a lot of free images used on Wikipedia. European governments, for example, are much more restrictive about copyrights.
Orbit required much higher speed than suborbital spaceflight. You don't just need to get high enough, you must also go fast enough to stay in orbit. The ISS for example is moving at 27,743 km/h (17,239 mph). A modified jet with a rocket engine will just not have room for enough fuel, I think.
Why do you think Yahoo would go out of business? It may not be Slashdotters first choice, but a lot of people use Yahoo and are happy with it.
Specifically, the license is the Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License. Noncommercial mean it is not entirely free, but it is still one of the more free cc licenses. Just saying that something is cc-licenses means almost nothing, there are cc licenses that give very little freedom.
I don't don't know why this was modded down. Better than all the comments above.
About your claim that articles get worse over time, I haven't seen many real cases of that. Some articles on important topics seem to stay in bad state indefinitely, but that's an other matter.
...and heat pipes.
They are much more tech savvy than we,
With gadgets, yes, but not with computers. In my experience Japan lacks much of the "hacker-culture" of western countries.
ARM is very popular for embedded systems.
There is a major difference between earth and space exploration. On most places on earth, you could just dump a few hundred people with no training or equipment, and at least some of them will survive and find a way to live there. On Mars, you can't. I'm sure a lot of people died colonizing America, but the place was basically livable. The first people we send to Mars will be stuck in there habitation module until we send them more equipment or bring them back. Only when we get to the point that we have such advanced industry on Mars that it can produce the kind of equipment you need on Mars (solar panels/nuclear reactors, water and air recycling, radiation shielding, mars suits), then it is really a colony. I hope we will get there, but the approach will be very different that earth colonization.
NASA already is contracting just about all spacecraft and components to private companies. The difficulty is setting goals that cannot be cheated around.
China has launched men into space since 2003 (again in 2005 and September this year). ESA's plans for it's own manned space launches are little more than concepts at this time and would require much more funding from the European governments unless they want to cut all the robotic missions. ESA does have it's own astronauts who ride on American or Russian launchers, and ESA built and owns parts of the ISS.
IXV that this article is about is a small testing platform, not a manned spacecraft.