More like curing cancer would put the charities out of business. It's like the March of Dimes. They're goal was to wipe out Polio. When that happen, they didn't exactly fold the tents and go home.
So... you mean it's like the opposite of the March of Dimes.
Yeah, robots do great science, but they're not going to inspire a hell of a lot of people.
I've been far more inspired by what the Cassini probe has seen, or the Hubble Space Telescope has seen, or the Mars rovers has seen, than anything the manned space program has done in 40 years, or could do in the next 20. Nor would I be inspired at all by repeating what we did 40 years ago, just to prove we could.
On the plus side, this will finally provide a way for Bob to prove to Alice's satisfaction that he isn't with Eve, and Alice will be able to demonstrate the same about Mallory. Bliss through superior quantum physics!
Yes as they let out a simultaneously blissful sigh of relief that Bob doesn't suspect that Eve is with Alice, and Alice doesn't suspect that Mal is with Bob.
With SpaceShip One, they actually flew into some definition of "space" on three occasions. So the Virgin Galactic vehicle program has a few successful flights to its record.
You don't really think Armadillo is going to be taking paying customers up until they've done the same, do you?
We are presently making a blunder by retiring the Space Shuttle while we hope that these private suppliers get somewhere quickly.
The shuttle is being retired in any case. Without private corporations stepping up to the plate it'll be even longer before we have manned launch capability again if we're relying on Constellation.
And I have to admit, long before Obama took office or this current kerfuffle took place, I was much more impressed with Aldrin's vision for space.
Buzz wants to develop technology that will allow us to have a more permanent presence in space. He wants us to go to Mars in order to establish a permanent presence there, not just make bootprints on the ground and leave, and this goes doubly for the moon. He wants more people to be able to go into space.
Armstrong and Cernan both seem fixated on trying to regain our lost glory by repeating what we did to gain that glory in the first place, which is futile.
It's a little sad that astronauts have not been back to the moon, compared to the dreams of the future that Armstrong and everyone else must have had back then. I don't think that regret and nostalgia should direct our space exploration priorities.
Humans in space? Colonies on other worlds? Ending the cosmic equivalent of having all of our eggs in one basket? We're one natural disaster away from complete annhilation of our race. I'd kinda like to have at least a few people offworld just in case.
And we still would be if all we did was build a giant rocket that could, at best, send a handful of people to the moon or eventually Mars.
The technologies the new plan is set to develop much more directly tackle the issue of humans surviving -- not just visiting long enough to plant a flag, but actually surviving -- than Constellation does. Constellation does absolutely nothing but let us put more boot prints on the moon. Yay. When we finally decide to send astronauts to Mars, there should already be robotically assembled habitats and a factory processing ice for oxygen and fuel waiting for them. We should have everything in place so the astronauts can stay on Mars for a year, or even more. It should be the foundation for a permanent settlement on Mars.
If you're serious about this "eggs in one basket" problem, and are serious about humans permanently occupying other planets, then you should be all for the new NASA plan like Buzz Aldrin is. He wants a permanent base on Mars, not a boot-and-flag mission.
Manned missions for their own sake, or to try to recapture lost glory by repeating what we've already done, is just wankery.
All this talk of "Unmanned missions are just as good!" is pretty unconvincing when reports come back that the latest rover mission may be failing because it's stuck on a 3 inch rock and can't wiggle it's way off . ..
Yeah, only 6 years of nearly continuous operation on a budget that is comparable to a manned Low Earth Orbit mission, and vastly less than any manned mission to Mars would be, and where even the stuck rover can still perform useful science, surely shows how unconvincing the argument for robotic missions is.
If someone landed on the moon and found no evidence, it would mean that either a) they were looking in the wrong spot or b) somebody beat them to it without anyone knowing and stole the evidence that has already been seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and other countries' observations, or c) something even weirder happened to the landing sites, possibly involving aliens, wormholes, and time paradoxes.
Seriously. The idea that there is no direct evidence of the moon landings and we can't be sure they happened until more people land on it is re-tard-ed.
Okay, while I don't give a rats ass about karma, 'karma whore' is at least connected to reality. But 'power hungry'? WTF? Dude, if bad masturbation jokes were a way to acquire power, I'd be Emperor of the Galaxy. But they ain't and I'm not so again WTF?
one grad student using DNA to make self-assembling circuits could produce more logic circuits in one day than the global silicon chip industry can create in an entire month!
"By the end of summer" really, in valve time, means "at some point next year". Its great, it'll happen, but I wouldn't hold your breat.
At first I was going to mention that they don't say summer of what year, but then I realized that they aren't necessarily referring to any specific summer at all.
"By the end of the existence of summer" really gives them a lot of time to get it done! I doubt any of us will be checking by then.
Maybe the monoliths' message to us wasn't saying "don't you dare land on Europa", maybe it was more Yoda-like, where they're saying "don't attempt to land on Europa, either do it or don't."
Um, they demonstrated a fission device. Ignore NK statements; seismographic stations around the world confirmed it. Nuclear explosions have distinct signatures that make it impossible to either conceal or bluff a test.
You may be thinking of a previous claim of fission device testing which seismographic stations confirmed was just a big conventional explosion.
BTW, the actual nuclear blast was quite small, around half a kT, meaning either they had mastered the challenging process of making very small fission devices on their first go, or they screwed up a conventional-sized weapon and it only partially fissioned.
"You see, that is why you do not ask the Moon!" "Listen, I took a chance, all right? We asked the Moon, I didn't know he was an alabaster retard, did I?"
I was going to call them parasites, but after reading about the website that sells pubic lice, I decided I didn't want to compare the BSA to such a relatively reputable and useful business endeavor.
A whole branch of my family was fathered by ball lightning!
I've never heard of that before, but I gotta admit that "ball lightning" is a much more exciting euphemism than "baby batter". I'm going to have to start using that.
I'm pretty sure it's your whole family that was fathered by it, though.
We know the Holy Grail is to have a Grand Unified Theory of the four forces. To date, three have been combined with gravity being the lone holdout.
Actually, the three forces we've unified are electricity, magnetism (as electromagnetism) and then the weak force into the "electroweak". The Strong force has yet to be unified.
Since GR came along to describe gravity not as force but as geometry, the desire to unify it has been lessened. Not that that people don't want to. But surely unifying the electroweak and strong forces comes before speculating that gravity doesn't exist unto itself and is just an aspect of the "electroweakstrong" force.
Is there a reason why gravity can't be a force unto itself but rather, the result of the other three forces? By that I mean, since the Strong and Weak forces hold things together, is there some reason they can't be creating gravity with their forces weakening the further out you go, similar to how radio waves get weaker as they propagate outwards.
*shrug* Sure. Propose a mechanism by which it could happen, see if your hypothesis makes any testable predictions, and we go from there.
Just fyi, though... The strong and weak forces both drop off at a rate much faster than the approximately inverse-square relationship of gravity. Both are really only relevant at distances on the order of the size of atomic nuclei. This is why neutrinos (and the favored dark matter candidates which are similar) are so hard to detect, because they only interact via the weak force. There's also the problem that the strong force only operates on color, which quite a few mass-full particles don't have.
But if you can think of some way that these interactions produce the long-reaching effects of gravity, more power to you!
Even though this experiment is an attempt to detect gravitational waves, since we haven't found any to date, could the above be a different explanation for why we haven't found any (yet)?
I honestly don't know how, but really, I'm not sure what the above is supposed to imply. Why wouldn't there be gravity waves in this case? The electroweak and strong forces fluctuate in a cyclical fashion, so wouldn't any effect created by those forces have the same potential?
Anyway, I wouldn't take the non-discovery of gravity waves as a huge mystery that must be solved quite yet. They're just really hard to detect, as even some of the biggest hypothetical sources produce very tiny waves with extremely long periods. LISA hasn't been launched (or even funded T_T) yet, and the longest period of gravity wave it will be able to detect is 10 seconds.
Slashdot Mirror
Speculation is fine - but it isn't news.
Well, they're speculating that it is. :)
Similar in that they both speak to the same subject.
An orthogonal example would neither support nor refute the premise, it would just be irrelevant.
An example of something that is the opposite of the premise refutes that premise.
So, yeah, it was a great example for proving himself wrong.
4.45 OSPs/fortnight.
easily approximated by looking at your fingers
Note: Precision of the approximation may be greater for shop teachers.
Good point. Don't the moderators of this website do even the most basic fact checking any more?
Haha! Do they do fact checking "any more"! Oh, ha ha ha, that's a good one.
I knew about the comedic possibilities inherent in the words "probably" and "again", but I had overlooked "anymore".
More like curing cancer would put the charities out of business. It's like the March of Dimes. They're goal was to wipe out Polio. When that happen, they didn't exactly fold the tents and go home.
So... you mean it's like the opposite of the March of Dimes.
Great example.
Yeah, robots do great science, but they're not going to inspire a hell of a lot of people.
I've been far more inspired by what the Cassini probe has seen, or the Hubble Space Telescope has seen, or the Mars rovers has seen, than anything the manned space program has done in 40 years, or could do in the next 20. Nor would I be inspired at all by repeating what we did 40 years ago, just to prove we could.
On the plus side, this will finally provide a way for Bob to prove to Alice's satisfaction that he isn't with Eve, and Alice will be able to demonstrate the same about Mallory. Bliss through superior quantum physics!
Yes as they let out a simultaneously blissful sigh of relief that Bob doesn't suspect that Eve is with Alice, and Alice doesn't suspect that Mal is with Bob.
With SpaceShip One, they actually flew into some definition of "space" on three occasions. So the Virgin Galactic vehicle program has a few successful flights to its record.
You don't really think Armadillo is going to be taking paying customers up until they've done the same, do you?
We are presently making a blunder by retiring the Space Shuttle while we hope that these private suppliers get somewhere quickly.
The shuttle is being retired in any case. Without private corporations stepping up to the plate it'll be even longer before we have manned launch capability again if we're relying on Constellation.
And I have to admit, long before Obama took office or this current kerfuffle took place, I was much more impressed with Aldrin's vision for space.
Buzz wants to develop technology that will allow us to have a more permanent presence in space. He wants us to go to Mars in order to establish a permanent presence there, not just make bootprints on the ground and leave, and this goes doubly for the moon. He wants more people to be able to go into space.
Armstrong and Cernan both seem fixated on trying to regain our lost glory by repeating what we did to gain that glory in the first place, which is futile.
It's a little sad that astronauts have not been back to the moon, compared to the dreams of the future that Armstrong and everyone else must have had back then. I don't think that regret and nostalgia should direct our space exploration priorities.
Humans in space? Colonies on other worlds? Ending the cosmic equivalent of having all of our eggs in one basket? We're one natural disaster away from complete annhilation of our race. I'd kinda like to have at least a few people offworld just in case.
And we still would be if all we did was build a giant rocket that could, at best, send a handful of people to the moon or eventually Mars.
The technologies the new plan is set to develop much more directly tackle the issue of humans surviving -- not just visiting long enough to plant a flag, but actually surviving -- than Constellation does. Constellation does absolutely nothing but let us put more boot prints on the moon. Yay. When we finally decide to send astronauts to Mars, there should already be robotically assembled habitats and a factory processing ice for oxygen and fuel waiting for them. We should have everything in place so the astronauts can stay on Mars for a year, or even more. It should be the foundation for a permanent settlement on Mars.
If you're serious about this "eggs in one basket" problem, and are serious about humans permanently occupying other planets, then you should be all for the new NASA plan like Buzz Aldrin is. He wants a permanent base on Mars, not a boot-and-flag mission.
Manned missions for their own sake, or to try to recapture lost glory by repeating what we've already done, is just wankery.
All this talk of "Unmanned missions are just as good!" is pretty unconvincing when reports come back that the latest rover mission may be failing because it's stuck on a 3 inch rock and can't wiggle it's way off . . .
Yeah, only 6 years of nearly continuous operation on a budget that is comparable to a manned Low Earth Orbit mission, and vastly less than any manned mission to Mars would be, and where even the stuck rover can still perform useful science, surely shows how unconvincing the argument for robotic missions is.
If someone landed on the moon and found no evidence, it would mean that either
a) they were looking in the wrong spot or
b) somebody beat them to it without anyone knowing and stole the evidence that has already been seen by the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and other countries' observations, or
c) something even weirder happened to the landing sites, possibly involving aliens, wormholes, and time paradoxes.
Seriously. The idea that there is no direct evidence of the moon landings and we can't be sure they happened until more people land on it is re-tard-ed.
Yeah, that they do.
Okay, while I don't give a rats ass about karma, 'karma whore' is at least connected to reality. But 'power hungry'? WTF? Dude, if bad masturbation jokes were a way to acquire power, I'd be Emperor of the Galaxy. But they ain't and I'm not so again WTF?
one grad student using DNA to make self-assembling circuits could produce more logic circuits in one day than the global silicon chip industry can create in an entire month!
The jokes just write themselves.
"By the end of summer" really, in valve time, means "at some point next year". Its great, it'll happen, but I wouldn't hold your breat.
At first I was going to mention that they don't say summer of what year, but then I realized that they aren't necessarily referring to any specific summer at all.
"By the end of the existence of summer" really gives them a lot of time to get it done! I doubt any of us will be checking by then.
Except Europa. Attempt no landing there.
I just had a thought.
Maybe the monoliths' message to us wasn't saying "don't you dare land on Europa", maybe it was more Yoda-like, where they're saying "don't attempt to land on Europa, either do it or don't."
Um, they demonstrated a fission device. Ignore NK statements; seismographic stations around the world confirmed it. Nuclear explosions have distinct signatures that make it impossible to either conceal or bluff a test.
You may be thinking of a previous claim of fission device testing which seismographic stations confirmed was just a big conventional explosion.
BTW, the actual nuclear blast was quite small, around half a kT, meaning either they had mastered the challenging process of making very small fission devices on their first go, or they screwed up a conventional-sized weapon and it only partially fissioned.
This side of Saturn's orbit.
"You see, that is why you do not ask the Moon!"
"Listen, I took a chance, all right? We asked the Moon, I didn't know he was an alabaster retard, did I?"
In fact, there's only one thing I can think of that they do have in common.
Virility-destroying products?
No kidding.
I was going to call them parasites, but after reading about the website that sells pubic lice, I decided I didn't want to compare the BSA to such a relatively reputable and useful business endeavor.
A whole branch of my family was fathered by ball lightning!
I've never heard of that before, but I gotta admit that "ball lightning" is a much more exciting euphemism than "baby batter". I'm going to have to start using that.
I'm pretty sure it's your whole family that was fathered by it, though.
Penumbra is pants-wetting scary.
I don't understand.
I've seen little kids pee their pants pretty often, and never once have I been scared.
We know the Holy Grail is to have a Grand Unified Theory of the four forces. To date, three have been combined with gravity being the lone holdout.
Actually, the three forces we've unified are electricity, magnetism (as electromagnetism) and then the weak force into the "electroweak". The Strong force has yet to be unified.
Since GR came along to describe gravity not as force but as geometry, the desire to unify it has been lessened. Not that that people don't want to. But surely unifying the electroweak and strong forces comes before speculating that gravity doesn't exist unto itself and is just an aspect of the "electroweakstrong" force.
Is there a reason why gravity can't be a force unto itself but rather, the result of the other three forces? By that I mean, since the Strong and Weak forces hold things together, is there some reason they can't be creating gravity with their forces weakening the further out you go, similar to how radio waves get weaker as they propagate outwards.
*shrug* Sure. Propose a mechanism by which it could happen, see if your hypothesis makes any testable predictions, and we go from there.
Just fyi, though... The strong and weak forces both drop off at a rate much faster than the approximately inverse-square relationship of gravity. Both are really only relevant at distances on the order of the size of atomic nuclei. This is why neutrinos (and the favored dark matter candidates which are similar) are so hard to detect, because they only interact via the weak force. There's also the problem that the strong force only operates on color, which quite a few mass-full particles don't have.
But if you can think of some way that these interactions produce the long-reaching effects of gravity, more power to you!
Even though this experiment is an attempt to detect gravitational waves, since we haven't found any to date, could the above be a different explanation for why we haven't found any (yet)?
I honestly don't know how, but really, I'm not sure what the above is supposed to imply. Why wouldn't there be gravity waves in this case? The electroweak and strong forces fluctuate in a cyclical fashion, so wouldn't any effect created by those forces have the same potential?
Anyway, I wouldn't take the non-discovery of gravity waves as a huge mystery that must be solved quite yet. They're just really hard to detect, as even some of the biggest hypothetical sources produce very tiny waves with extremely long periods. LISA hasn't been launched (or even funded T_T) yet, and the longest period of gravity wave it will be able to detect is 10 seconds.
The Russians tried that, but they would keep getting lured into their own trap as soon as they set it!