I hate to do this, but I'm block-copying from another reply I made because I think it's relevant:
I've got no problem with partial credit in cases with clerical errors. I have a ton of problem when it's graded as correct when it isn't. There's a certain amount of discipline required to solve problems. If you're sloppy, you'll make simple errors, but the result is still wrong.
Calculation errors, process errors, logistics errors... they're all part of the real world. The teacher who doesn't mark the simple errors is doing two things - providing an oversight function that won't always be availble, and providing positive reinforcement that being sloppy is okay (in fact, it's being rewarded.) There's an indirect punishment applied to the students who do all the details, because they expended "unnecessary" effort to obtain the same reward as the sloppy kids. Supplying the positive punishment of a partial/full credit deduction restores the balance to where it should be.
Understanding the process is important, but all the book-learning in the world is completely useless if you can't apply it. If you have to hand-wave your way around every answer you come up with, how is that a good thing? I'm an employer, and there's no way in hell I'm going to assign someone to double check all of your work. I expect you to do your job, and do it correctly. If you job is to calculate the orbits of spacecraft, I expect you to be able to handle the calculations and get them right. Similarly, if you're scheduling trucks for deliveries at the loading dock, I expect you to have a certain skill set in logistics. In either case, if I'm getting coin-toss accuracy out of your work, you're not going to be working here very long. I don't care how well you understand the process, if you can't perform it properly and accurately, you're costing me money, and that makes you fired for non-performance of job duties.
I've got no problem with partial credit in cases with clerical errors. I have a ton of problem when it's graded as correct when it isn't. There's a certain amount of discipline required to solve problems. If you're sloppy, you'll make simple errors, but the result is still wrong.
Calculation errors, process errors, logistics errors... they're all part of the real world. The teacher who doesn't mark the simple errors is doing two things - providing an oversight function that won't always be availble, and providing positive reinforcement that being sloppy is okay (in fact, it's being rewarded.) There's an indirect punishment applied to the students who do all the details, because they expended "unnecessary" effort to obtain the same reward as the sloppy kids. Supplying the positive punishment of a partial/full credit deduction restores the balance to where it should be. I hate to say this, but many teachers are more concerned about lawsuits than teaching. That goes all the way up into the school administration too. I'm sure you're familiar with the term "promote them up and out." Schools are less likely to get sucked into a lawsuit if they just graduate everybody.
When you turn the kids loose into the real world where there is no one double checking everything they do, all your Mars probes end up somewhere near Jupiter.
This has the potential to turn into a huge rant, so I'll stop here.
"Never underestimate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of tapes hurtling down the highway." -- Tanenbaum, Andrew S. (1996). Computer Networks. New Jersey: Prentice-Hall, 83. ISBN 0-13-349945-6.
Damn, I just did the calculation today, and I can fit 124.55 TB of DVDs in the back of my Jeep without removing the seat. The 750GB and 1TB 3.5" hard drives make that number go up. Now I have to re-do the calculation using 4-layer and 10-layer HD DVD media? When will this madness end?
Unfortunately, hard drives in a RAID configuration are [for me] more desirable than the big pile o' polycarbonate discs if you actually intend to use the backup data. Sifting through piles of 100-disc spindles is no fun. And now that 1TB hard drives are a commodity item, 125TB doesn't seem all that large.
Funny, I have this conversation with my wife all the time. She's an elementary school teacher, and we regularly butt heads about how to deal with this. She's willing to grade a math problem as "correct" if the student demonstrated the correct process, but made a simple clerical error resulting in the wrong answer. She argues that the method is more important than a single result. Uh huhhh. So if I botch the balance in my checkbook, the bank will pat me on the head, say "that's okay," and front me the money I shouldn't have? I think not.
There aren't many "absolute truths" in this existence, but math is one of them. Your calculations are either "correct" or "not correct." "Almost correct" is someone being spineless. I'd much rather know that I botched a calculation so I can perform it correctly the next time, rather than exist in blissful ignorance. Telling me that I'm stooopid is a personal attack; telling me my calculation is incorrect is a statement of fact. Folks need to learn that the latter statement isn't necessarily a bad thing. You learn by making mistakes.
Many RV folks have decided to use solar power to supplement the gas/diesel gensets found in their rigs. There's a market supplying these folks. Kits for RVs and cabins exist already, and probably will do what you're asking. Size your equipment properly, and run directly off the batteries if you can - every voltage conversion is lossy. Here's a nice selection of RV and cabin setups, complete with prices.
Not to be a grammar nazi, but the cadence was off in too many places. Rather than just bitch about it, I'm submitting a revision for your consideration. I tried to stay true to the original intent. [sigh] The silly "characters per line" restriction is preventing me from posting, so I'm going to ramble here a bit to get the stats up. Yep, nothing relevant to read here, so just skip down a bit.
More crap for the "characters per line" restriction, dammit:
Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
MM
- - - block separator - - - bypassing Slashdot's "too few characters per line" restriction - - - I have good karma, why can't I post "skinny" text? - - -
Twas the night before Christmas,
As I clicked on my mouse,
Across some old floppies, I'd tried to degauss;
Windows kept hanging with Blue Screen Of Death,
While I cursed out Bill Gates... under my breath.
The missus was sleeping, with kids and newborn,
So I took the opportunity to surf for some porn.
I found a free website with many jpegs,
(So that's just exactly, how chickens lay eggs!)
When out down the hall I heard a loud noise,
I jumped out of my chair and put back the boys.
I figured the wife must be up and about,
If she caught me again, she'd toss my ass out.
I laced up my robe and thought of a story
About why I'm up and how to say "sorry."
I stuck out my head by the light of the john
(One of the kids must've left the light on)
I squinted and strained to see just what was what
When what hove into view but a giant red butt.
The first thing I thought was to reach for a bat
(Wait a minute - red suit, fur trim and he's fat!)
The Claus man is here with high-tech type stuff
The latest geek toys without all the fluff.
New cell phones! New sound cards! New controllers and games!
For Xbox! For Gamecube! For Playstation and MAMEs!
Wireless Routers! They're eleven-dot-G!
Zippy and quick, not slow like dot-B!
I pondered the gifts, and considered my needs,
Time seemed to slow down as I watched with my greed.
"All those wonderful toys" as the Joker did say,
"Where does he get them? Best Buy, Amazon and Ebay?"
And then, with a beeping, off went my pager,
(Some idiot at work with a question, I'll wager)
I fumbled to stop the beep-beeping sound,
But Santa had stopped and had now turned around.
His actions had set off the motion detector
And in minutes the cops would be in this sector
He dropped all the toys to make quick his escape
And flew 'cross the room li
My father made an insightful comment to me at the beginning of the PC era -
As the storage space increases, the applications will expand to use the available space. It's an arms race. You'll never have 'more than enough' storage.
I've found those words to ring true for a quarter century now. I just purchased a 300GB drive to use as a backup for my primary 300GB desktop machine. I'm struggling to create a coherent backup strategy for several machines and about a half-a-terabyte of information. I suppose in about 5 years I'll be bitching about the petabyte-NAS-array not being sufficient.
Looks like his two PS3s are still for sale, though at a substantial discount from the $1999 he was origianlly hoping for. I hope he enjoys playing with his two shiny PS3s, 'cause he's still horribly overpriced. The dude has completely missed the window of opportunity.
Amusingly, on the updated eBay page, he's removed the pics of his girlfriend, but retained the fish photo. Maybe he'll throw in some fresh fish filets:
Butthead eBay gouger : Hmmm, I'll make a quick buck by gouging some desperate fool
Butthead eBay gouger : please please PLEASE SOMEBODY BUY THESE DAMNED videogames!!! I don't want to get stuck with them. All my jock friends will make fun of me.
Interesting coincidence - I'm on day 10+ of a polyphasic sleep cycle. I learned this technique in college, and it's quite effective. You'll need to train yourself to make it work, and that may take some substantial effort. Like any skill, practice makes it work better. On the down side, there are repurcussions of adopting a non-circadian sleep cycle. You'll lose a sense of time - there isn't a clear demarcation between "days" anymore. Eating becomes an issue too. Your body has been trained to have 3 meals a day (nominally,) and the polyphasic cycle doesn't allow that to happen. You'll need to pay more attention to how and when you eat - more small meals is better. Expect constipation or diahre... dihar... the squirts for a few days while your body adjusts.
In the past 10 days, I've had less than 2 hours of continuous sleep per day. I aim for a 15-minute "power nap" every four hours, and then try to schedule a 2-hour REM session between 3am and 5am. Adherence to the nap schedule is essential.
Why would I do this to myself? Medical issues with the wife have forced me to adopt *all* of the domestic responsibilites as well as the day-job stuff. I've been dealt the choice between a pile of crap and a turd sandwich. The "warm fuzzy hugs ideal situation" option isn't on the table. I'm doing detailed engineering work, and my attention span and coherency are operating at 90+% of usual. The only thing I'm not capable of doing right now is the marathon 8-hour design session.
That said, I can't say I'm a big fan of the chemical solution. You can do this yourself without the need for Big Pharma's involvement.
Couldn't we just get one of the guys in the engineering drpartment to extend the Earth's magnetic shield out around the moon? I'm quite certain tht I've heard that idea proposed before...
In orbit, velocity and altitude are related. If you "speed up," your altitude increases; if you "slow down," your altitude decreases. That part is "math" and is not negotiable or subject to interpretation.
If you eject some mass (tools, trash, frozen excrement, etc) in the direction opposite to your current velocity vector, you'll speed up and increase altitude, and the reaction mass will slow down, taking a lower altitude. That eliminates most of the recontact issues, and is why NASA said what they did. It may not be immediately obvious, but throwing anything "at the earth" or in any direction other than the V- direction runs the risk of recontact. If you toss something overboard in a plane perpendicular to your velocity vector, you'll maximize the recontact probability - the reaction mass will come back at you every half-orbit.
If you eliminate the atmospheric drag and orbital perturbations, all mass ejections have a potential for recontact. Fortunately, we don't have "ideal" conditions, so we can use the atmospheric drag to our benefit (one of very few situations where it's actually a good thing) and make a system like this work. I'd much rather see the Trash Chucker 2000 used to eliminate the "waste" materials than to have to schedule an extra Progress or Shuttle mission just to go collect the garbage.
Just about every machinist I know considers the manufacture of a firearm to be one of the pinnacle tests of skill. Not only must you master the machining element, you must also comprehend the materials and the mechanics to an expert level. Consequently, there are typically discussions about firearms manufacture on the metalworking discussion forums. So if possession of a how-to manual for creating a firearm from scratch constitutes terrorist behavior... well, you might want to stock up on ammo.
The bottom line is that it's all about the intent. I own a hammer. If I intend to pound nails, there's no issue. It becomes a problem when I intend to pound heads. Possession alone isn't enough, even for potentially objectionable materials. When possession becomes the only criterion, I'd expect to see violence on a large scale.
And the blood in the house is from any number of remodeling/cooking/cleaning accidents.
Soooo... how many times have you tried to kill her?
On a more serious note, all women bleed on a pretty regular basis. Without knowing more about the details, I'd be inclined to say that finding blood in a house where a woman lives is pretty normal for us hyu-mons. Drops on the inside of the bathroom trashcan? Definitely. That pool of dried blood under the couch? Erm, maybe that's a bit odd.
Qualifications - one satellite on-orbit, one in a clean-room pending launch, one on STS-116, and another slated for launch in about 3 months. Designed and built by me. Honest. They're all designed for LEO, and none have propulsion systems.
That said, I have never had the luxury of being in a position to change a spacecraft's orbital plane. Moving to a higher orbit and making the change there is definitely the minimum-energy solution. However, I chose the less optimal solution in order to make the point - changing your orbital plane isn't nearly as simple as turning on the blinker and rotating the steering wheel a little. I'm pretty sure I included a disclaimer to that effect... sort of. I was crafting an answer for the Slashbot crowd. The sun was in my eyes. There were locusts. It's not my fault!
I doubt I'll get the opportunity to play with propulsion systems, too. The Gub'ment has placed restrictions on all the "fun" chemicals to the point that you need a LEUP to even think about building chemical motors. And in the context of the original discussion, I don't see anybody putting an ion/arcjet/PPT/etc low-thrust engine on the ISS and moving it a substantial amount in a reasonable time. The ISS is like any other vehicle - it's consumable (not an investment like the car dealers like to say) and needs to be replaced at the end of it's life.
So no, salvaging marooned satellites ain't my thing. Hell, the customer should be thankful that his crummy satellite got off this rock. Not in the "right" plane? Eh, suck it up, slacker. (of course, I never get to say things like that in front of the customer...)
Orbital plane shifts are not simple. Your velocity is a vector value, not a scalar one. Your orbital altitude is a function of your vector speed. Think back to whenever you studied vector-math... {cue dream-sequence ripple-distortion effect}
If I have a vector velocity in one direction, and I add another force vector perpendicular to the original, I've done two things: the resultant vector has a new direction; the resultant vector has a larger velocity than the original. So I managed to change both my orbital plane (a little) and my altitude (more than a little.) So now I need to slow down to put myself in the same altitude as I origially was. Basically, I need [2 * (launch energy) * sin(angle change)] Joules of energy to make an orbital plane change. If you try to change your plane by 90 degrees, it costs you 2x the launch-energy to do so. (Please pardon the simplifications... I'm not up to typing long equations here in ascii.)
That's just the on-orbit energy requirement. Don't forget you've got to ferry the necessary fuel to orbit so you can use it for plane changes. Also realize that I'm talking about delta-vector-velocity here. I don't care how you implement it - a big chemical rocket takes less time than an ion engine, but the energy required for a given delta-V is the same in both cases (measured at thrust output so we can ignore the efficiencies of either technique.) A large orbital plane change is probably the most expensive maneuver you can perform. Launching a new space station into a useful orbit is probably a more cost-effective solution. Really. And yes, IAARS.
Old Beetles (and Squarebacks and Fastbacks, if you can find them anymore) are surprisingly simple and effective vehicles. Many of the parts are stamped or welded stampings (don't *ever* let the hamfisted towtruck operator sling your old Beetle.) They're pretty simple to work on, though you should expect to hack yourself a couple of times on the engine air shroud. As an EV donor, it's probably a pretty good choice.
However, I've driven them on the New York Thruway in winter, and lemme tell ya, the things dart around something fierce at highway speeds in the slightest of crosswinds. Ballasting with lead batteries up front will definitely help keep the nose pointed where you requested. A friend of mine, who's an Aero professor at U of Texas, described the old Beetle as "one of the most abominable aerodynamic designs ever." He'd done wind tunnel testing to back up his statement. Hopefully I got the quote right.
I've given up asking the webpage if I can get FiOS. I live less than a mile from a Central Orifice in suburban MD. I used to work in the telecom industry before the bubble forced me to find new employment. A discussion with a fiber deployment tech indicated that Verizon was deploying FiOS into high-density-zoned areas only. Apparently some MBA did overly simplistic math and decided the best deployment locations were places filled with townhomes and apartments. Single family homes are zoned much lower density, and thus much lower potential customer base, right?
There's another barrier to deployment as well - the SLC hut/pedestal. There area a number of deployments to communities where Verizon has a T1 line (with SLC 96 Framing{tm}) run out to a pedestal near a community. They run analog POTS service from there, and back-haul a single T1 to the CO. Wiring ingress at the CO is a major problem most everywhere, so this is a good move, right? Yes, as long as you only want POTS service. As soon as you want ISDN (shudder) or DSL or *anything* that doesn't fit in in 64kbps, you're screwed. So if you've got one of the hybrid fiber/copper deployments, it's likely you'll never see DSL regadless of your distance from the CO. Pretty short-sighted of the telcos to do this - they claim to sell telecom services; you'd think they'd want to make it easier to upgrade to more bandwidth. Nobody wants *less* bandwidth.
Slashdot Mirror
Understanding the process is important, but all the book-learning in the world is completely useless if you can't apply it. If you have to hand-wave your way around every answer you come up with, how is that a good thing? I'm an employer, and there's no way in hell I'm going to assign someone to double check all of your work. I expect you to do your job, and do it correctly. If you job is to calculate the orbits of spacecraft, I expect you to be able to handle the calculations and get them right. Similarly, if you're scheduling trucks for deliveries at the loading dock, I expect you to have a certain skill set in logistics. In either case, if I'm getting coin-toss accuracy out of your work, you're not going to be working here very long. I don't care how well you understand the process, if you can't perform it properly and accurately, you're costing me money, and that makes you fired for non-performance of job duties.
I've got no problem with partial credit in cases with clerical errors. I have a ton of problem when it's graded as correct when it isn't. There's a certain amount of discipline required to solve problems. If you're sloppy, you'll make simple errors, but the result is still wrong.
... they're all part of the real world. The teacher who doesn't mark the simple errors is doing two things - providing an oversight function that won't always be availble, and providing positive reinforcement that being sloppy is okay (in fact, it's being rewarded.) There's an indirect punishment applied to the students who do all the details, because they expended "unnecessary" effort to obtain the same reward as the sloppy kids. Supplying the positive punishment of a partial/full credit deduction restores the balance to where it should be. I hate to say this, but many teachers are more concerned about lawsuits than teaching. That goes all the way up into the school administration too. I'm sure you're familiar with the term "promote them up and out." Schools are less likely to get sucked into a lawsuit if they just graduate everybody.
Calculation errors, process errors, logistics errors
When you turn the kids loose into the real world where there is no one double checking everything they do, all your Mars probes end up somewhere near Jupiter.
This has the potential to turn into a huge rant, so I'll stop here.
Damn, I just did the calculation today, and I can fit 124.55 TB of DVDs in the back of my Jeep without removing the seat. The 750GB and 1TB 3.5" hard drives make that number go up. Now I have to re-do the calculation using 4-layer and 10-layer HD DVD media? When will this madness end?
Unfortunately, hard drives in a RAID configuration are [for me] more desirable than the big pile o' polycarbonate discs if you actually intend to use the backup data. Sifting through piles of 100-disc spindles is no fun. And now that 1TB hard drives are a commodity item, 125TB doesn't seem all that large.
Funny, I have this conversation with my wife all the time. She's an elementary school teacher, and we regularly butt heads about how to deal with this. She's willing to grade a math problem as "correct" if the student demonstrated the correct process, but made a simple clerical error resulting in the wrong answer. She argues that the method is more important than a single result. Uh huhhh. So if I botch the balance in my checkbook, the bank will pat me on the head, say "that's okay," and front me the money I shouldn't have? I think not.
There aren't many "absolute truths" in this existence, but math is one of them. Your calculations are either "correct" or "not correct." "Almost correct" is someone being spineless. I'd much rather know that I botched a calculation so I can perform it correctly the next time, rather than exist in blissful ignorance. Telling me that I'm stooopid is a personal attack; telling me my calculation is incorrect is a statement of fact. Folks need to learn that the latter statement isn't necessarily a bad thing. You learn by making mistakes.
Particle Man, Particle Man,
Bought his Wii from a guy named Stan,
He plays a game, Particle wins,
Particle Man.
Triangle Man, Triangle Man,
Kicks Particle's ass playing Bomberman Land,
Same result while beta-testing Th3 Plan,
Triangle Man.
Note - Triangle Man always wins.
Man, I picked the wrong week to stop drinking
Many RV folks have decided to use solar power to supplement the gas/diesel gensets found in their rigs. There's a market supplying these folks. Kits for RVs and cabins exist already, and probably will do what you're asking. Size your equipment properly, and run directly off the batteries if you can - every voltage conversion is lossy. Here's a nice selection of RV and cabin setups, complete with prices.
A place with 2.4 million instances of "bunny in a ball gag." *shudder*
Not to be a grammar nazi, but the cadence was off in too many places. Rather than just bitch about it, I'm submitting a revision for your consideration. I tried to stay true to the original intent. [sigh] The silly "characters per line" restriction is preventing me from posting, so I'm going to ramble here a bit to get the stats up. Yep, nothing relevant to read here, so just skip down a bit.
More crap for the "characters per line" restriction, dammit: Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent a new nation, conceived in Liberty, and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal. Now we are engaged in a great civil war, testing whether that nation, or any nation, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure. We are met on a great battle-field of that war. We have come to dedicate a portion of that field, as a final resting place for those who here gave their lives that that nation might live. It is altogether fitting and proper that we should do this. But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate--we can not consecrate--we can not hallow--this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract. The world will little note, nor long remember what we say here, but it can never forget what they did here. It is for us the living, rather, to be dedicated here to the unfinished work which they who fought here have thus far so nobly advanced. It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us -- that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion -- that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain -- that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom -- and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.
MM
- - - block separator - - - bypassing Slashdot's "too few characters per line" restriction - - - I have good karma, why can't I post "skinny" text? - - -
Twas the night before Christmas,
As I clicked on my mouse,
Across some old floppies, I'd tried to degauss;
Windows kept hanging with Blue Screen Of Death,
While I cursed out Bill Gates
The missus was sleeping, with kids and newborn,
So I took the opportunity to surf for some porn.
I found a free website with many jpegs,
(So that's just exactly, how chickens lay eggs!)
When out down the hall I heard a loud noise,
I jumped out of my chair and put back the boys.
I figured the wife must be up and about,
If she caught me again, she'd toss my ass out.
I laced up my robe and thought of a story
About why I'm up and how to say "sorry."
I stuck out my head by the light of the john
(One of the kids must've left the light on)
I squinted and strained to see just what was what
When what hove into view but a giant red butt.
The first thing I thought was to reach for a bat
(Wait a minute - red suit, fur trim and he's fat!)
The Claus man is here with high-tech type stuff
The latest geek toys without all the fluff.
New cell phones! New sound cards! New controllers and games!
For Xbox! For Gamecube! For Playstation and MAMEs!
Wireless Routers! They're eleven-dot-G!
Zippy and quick, not slow like dot-B!
I pondered the gifts, and considered my needs,
Time seemed to slow down as I watched with my greed.
"All those wonderful toys" as the Joker did say,
"Where does he get them? Best Buy, Amazon and Ebay?"
And then, with a beeping, off went my pager,
(Some idiot at work with a question, I'll wager)
I fumbled to stop the beep-beeping sound,
But Santa had stopped and had now turned around.
His actions had set off the motion detector
And in minutes the cops would be in this sector
He dropped all the toys to make quick his escape
And flew 'cross the room li
Al Joshua? Like the ugly step-brother to Al Jazeera? Ohhh ... that's A.I. ... damned non-serif font ... gotta get the glasses cleaned again.
Doesn't make much sense to have the propagandist news agency get all upset because they migrated from Unix to Winders.
If I install a deep fryer in the back of my RV, will I have finally solved the Perpetual Motion issue? The french fries are just a tasty by-product.
I've found those words to ring true for a quarter century now. I just purchased a 300GB drive to use as a backup for my primary 300GB desktop machine. I'm struggling to create a coherent backup strategy for several machines and about a half-a-terabyte of information. I suppose in about 5 years I'll be bitching about the petabyte-NAS-array not being sufficient.
Looks like his two PS3s are still for sale, though at a substantial discount from the $1999 he was origianlly hoping for. I hope he enjoys playing with his two shiny PS3s, 'cause he's still horribly overpriced. The dude has completely missed the window of opportunity.
Amusingly, on the updated eBay page, he's removed the pics of his girlfriend, but retained the fish photo. Maybe he'll throw in some fresh fish filets:
Butthead eBay gouger : Hmmm, I'll make a quick buck by gouging some desperate fool
Butthead eBay gouger : please please PLEASE SOMEBODY BUY THESE DAMNED videogames!!! I don't want to get stuck with them. All my jock friends will make fun of me.
Interesting coincidence - I'm on day 10+ of a polyphasic sleep cycle. I learned this technique in college, and it's quite effective. You'll need to train yourself to make it work, and that may take some substantial effort. Like any skill, practice makes it work better. On the down side, there are repurcussions of adopting a non-circadian sleep cycle. You'll lose a sense of time - there isn't a clear demarcation between "days" anymore. Eating becomes an issue too. Your body has been trained to have 3 meals a day (nominally,) and the polyphasic cycle doesn't allow that to happen. You'll need to pay more attention to how and when you eat - more small meals is better. Expect constipation or diahre... dihar ... the squirts for a few days while your body adjusts.
In the past 10 days, I've had less than 2 hours of continuous sleep per day. I aim for a 15-minute "power nap" every four hours, and then try to schedule a 2-hour REM session between 3am and 5am. Adherence to the nap schedule is essential.
Why would I do this to myself? Medical issues with the wife have forced me to adopt *all* of the domestic responsibilites as well as the day-job stuff. I've been dealt the choice between a pile of crap and a turd sandwich. The "warm fuzzy hugs ideal situation" option isn't on the table. I'm doing detailed engineering work, and my attention span and coherency are operating at 90+% of usual. The only thing I'm not capable of doing right now is the marathon 8-hour design session.
That said, I can't say I'm a big fan of the chemical solution. You can do this yourself without the need for Big Pharma's involvement.
Couldn't we just get one of the guys in the engineering drpartment to extend the Earth's magnetic shield out around the moon? I'm quite certain tht I've heard that idea proposed before ...
In orbit, velocity and altitude are related. If you "speed up," your altitude increases; if you "slow down," your altitude decreases. That part is "math" and is not negotiable or subject to interpretation.
If you eject some mass (tools, trash, frozen excrement, etc) in the direction opposite to your current velocity vector, you'll speed up and increase altitude, and the reaction mass will slow down, taking a lower altitude. That eliminates most of the recontact issues, and is why NASA said what they did. It may not be immediately obvious, but throwing anything "at the earth" or in any direction other than the V- direction runs the risk of recontact. If you toss something overboard in a plane perpendicular to your velocity vector, you'll maximize the recontact probability - the reaction mass will come back at you every half-orbit.
If you eliminate the atmospheric drag and orbital perturbations, all mass ejections have a potential for recontact. Fortunately, we don't have "ideal" conditions, so we can use the atmospheric drag to our benefit (one of very few situations where it's actually a good thing) and make a system like this work. I'd much rather see the Trash Chucker 2000 used to eliminate the "waste" materials than to have to schedule an extra Progress or Shuttle mission just to go collect the garbage.
Just about every machinist I know considers the manufacture of a firearm to be one of the pinnacle tests of skill. Not only must you master the machining element, you must also comprehend the materials and the mechanics to an expert level. Consequently, there are typically discussions about firearms manufacture on the metalworking discussion forums. So if possession of a how-to manual for creating a firearm from scratch constitutes terrorist behavior ... well, you might want to stock up on ammo.
The bottom line is that it's all about the intent. I own a hammer. If I intend to pound nails, there's no issue. It becomes a problem when I intend to pound heads. Possession alone isn't enough, even for potentially objectionable materials. When possession becomes the only criterion, I'd expect to see violence on a large scale.
Okay class, this concludes today's example of Social Engineering.
{stands up} No, I am Paule Wilke
{sits back down}
On a more serious note, all women bleed on a pretty regular basis. Without knowing more about the details, I'd be inclined to say that finding blood in a house where a woman lives is pretty normal for us hyu-mons. Drops on the inside of the bathroom trashcan? Definitely. That pool of dried blood under the couch? Erm, maybe that's a bit odd.
Qualifications - one satellite on-orbit, one in a clean-room pending launch, one on STS-116, and another slated for launch in about 3 months. Designed and built by me. Honest. They're all designed for LEO, and none have propulsion systems.
... sort of. I was crafting an answer for the Slashbot crowd. The sun was in my eyes. There were locusts. It's not my fault!
...)
That said, I have never had the luxury of being in a position to change a spacecraft's orbital plane. Moving to a higher orbit and making the change there is definitely the minimum-energy solution. However, I chose the less optimal solution in order to make the point - changing your orbital plane isn't nearly as simple as turning on the blinker and rotating the steering wheel a little. I'm pretty sure I included a disclaimer to that effect
I doubt I'll get the opportunity to play with propulsion systems, too. The Gub'ment has placed restrictions on all the "fun" chemicals to the point that you need a LEUP to even think about building chemical motors. And in the context of the original discussion, I don't see anybody putting an ion/arcjet/PPT/etc low-thrust engine on the ISS and moving it a substantial amount in a reasonable time. The ISS is like any other vehicle - it's consumable (not an investment like the car dealers like to say) and needs to be replaced at the end of it's life.
So no, salvaging marooned satellites ain't my thing. Hell, the customer should be thankful that his crummy satellite got off this rock. Not in the "right" plane? Eh, suck it up, slacker. (of course, I never get to say things like that in front of the customer
Orbital plane shifts are not simple. Your velocity is a vector value, not a scalar one. Your orbital altitude is a function of your vector speed. Think back to whenever you studied vector-math ... {cue dream-sequence ripple-distortion effect}
... I'm not up to typing long equations here in ascii.)
If I have a vector velocity in one direction, and I add another force vector perpendicular to the original, I've done two things: the resultant vector has a new direction; the resultant vector has a larger velocity than the original. So I managed to change both my orbital plane (a little) and my altitude (more than a little.) So now I need to slow down to put myself in the same altitude as I origially was. Basically, I need [2 * (launch energy) * sin(angle change)] Joules of energy to make an orbital plane change. If you try to change your plane by 90 degrees, it costs you 2x the launch-energy to do so. (Please pardon the simplifications
That's just the on-orbit energy requirement. Don't forget you've got to ferry the necessary fuel to orbit so you can use it for plane changes. Also realize that I'm talking about delta-vector-velocity here. I don't care how you implement it - a big chemical rocket takes less time than an ion engine, but the energy required for a given delta-V is the same in both cases (measured at thrust output so we can ignore the efficiencies of either technique.) A large orbital plane change is probably the most expensive maneuver you can perform. Launching a new space station into a useful orbit is probably a more cost-effective solution. Really. And yes, IAARS.
Old Beetles (and Squarebacks and Fastbacks, if you can find them anymore) are surprisingly simple and effective vehicles. Many of the parts are stamped or welded stampings (don't *ever* let the hamfisted towtruck operator sling your old Beetle.) They're pretty simple to work on, though you should expect to hack yourself a couple of times on the engine air shroud. As an EV donor, it's probably a pretty good choice.
However, I've driven them on the New York Thruway in winter, and lemme tell ya, the things dart around something fierce at highway speeds in the slightest of crosswinds. Ballasting with lead batteries up front will definitely help keep the nose pointed where you requested. A friend of mine, who's an Aero professor at U of Texas, described the old Beetle as "one of the most abominable aerodynamic designs ever." He'd done wind tunnel testing to back up his statement. Hopefully I got the quote right.
Apparently you've not driven an old VW Beetle. Small? Yes. Aerodynamic? Not so much.
Fiber To The Home You Don't Live In.
I've given up asking the webpage if I can get FiOS. I live less than a mile from a Central Orifice in suburban MD. I used to work in the telecom industry before the bubble forced me to find new employment. A discussion with a fiber deployment tech indicated that Verizon was deploying FiOS into high-density-zoned areas only. Apparently some MBA did overly simplistic math and decided the best deployment locations were places filled with townhomes and apartments. Single family homes are zoned much lower density, and thus much lower potential customer base, right?
There's another barrier to deployment as well - the SLC hut/pedestal. There area a number of deployments to communities where Verizon has a T1 line (with SLC 96 Framing{tm}) run out to a pedestal near a community. They run analog POTS service from there, and back-haul a single T1 to the CO. Wiring ingress at the CO is a major problem most everywhere, so this is a good move, right? Yes, as long as you only want POTS service. As soon as you want ISDN (shudder) or DSL or *anything* that doesn't fit in in 64kbps, you're screwed. So if you've got one of the hybrid fiber/copper deployments, it's likely you'll never see DSL regadless of your distance from the CO. Pretty short-sighted of the telcos to do this - they claim to sell telecom services; you'd think they'd want to make it easier to upgrade to more bandwidth. Nobody wants *less* bandwidth.