I agree with you, and I guess Nasa does too, to judge by the picture in this article!
For a quick and dirty solution, how about an Apollo style capsule with a parasail on top, so its steerable (to a certain extent) but cheap. It could even use tiles, rather than an ablative heatshield, although a hard landing on those is probably not a good idea! (Ablative heatshield on the outside, tiles on the inside for emergencies? IANARS (rocket scientist!))
The Top 10 list
on
MIT Everyware
·
· Score: 5, Informative
Here's the Top 10 from the lists
Top 10 OpenCourseWare Nations*
Rank Nation Hits
1. Canada 3,886,197
2. Germany 3,576,071
3. Brazil 3,170,362
4. South Korea 3,254,259
5. France 3,012,102
6. Japan 3,095,913
7. United Kingdom 3,099,713
8. China 2,563,446
9. India 2,512,267
10. Australia 1,372,052
* Outside the U.S.
Includes nearly 600,000 hits from mainland China, where the government denied access to OpenCourseWare until February 2003, and nearly 2 million hits from Hong Kong.
Top 10 OpenCourseWare Classes
1. Philosophy 24.00: Problems of Philosophy
2. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 6.170: Laboratory in Software Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 6.071: Introduction to Electronics
4. Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences 12.409: Hands-On Astronomy: Observing Stars and Planets
5. Mathematics 18.06: Linear Algebra
6. Mathematics 18.013A: Calculus with Applications
7. Nuclear Engineering 22.00J: Introduction to Modeling and Simulation
8. Physics 8.02: Electricity and Magnetism
9. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 6.281J: Logistical and Transportation Planning Methods
10. Management 15.810: Introduction to Marketing
Nice to see that the 'Other Nations' are outside the US. And I'm glad its South (not North) Korea at No. 4, considering that Nuclear Engineering is at No. 7!
(In a hokey Scottish accent) "Ye cannot change the laws of fiction, Captain"
While we're talking about faking up explanations for the sound, how about magnetic induction in the hulls of other spaceships causing resonance?
Even when Hollywood does the "my car's just bumped a little bit, its going to explode" thing, the time delay of the sound of the explosion is ignored. Some things work better on TV / in the movies when they're not accurate. Although my presonal thought is that the sound is hot air escaping through holes in the plot...
Has anyone read Pattern Recognition by William Gibson. (Of course they have, what am I thinking!) There was an advertising concept in that where people were employed to just happen to mention that a certain product was good in casual conversation in public places. Seems that the advertisers could cash in on this: 'SMS a friend that this movie was good and win a free pass to the next... ' (insert movie that sucks).
Maybe the answer to this 'problem' (ie. people finding out that a movie is bad by seeing it) would be to make good movies? Hey, maybe they could do the same with CDs and people would start buying those again too...
Spot the secret MS MeSsage: Use(.)Net - the dot is silent.
Didn't you notice that, when you had to manually start windows from DOS, you had to type Win - its psychology, people.
Surely they could make it 'free' by including advertising eg. five free plays for an advert. I guess the music biz could also use the students as guinea pigs to find out what they like to listen to. To which the answer is almost certainly 'free stuff'...
On th other hand it could be a useful gyro for when your Segway starts to get unstable...
Would the result be a discovery or an invention?
on
Mutating Animations
·
· Score: 1
This sounds great, but you would then need a computer ten times as powerful to run the thing past all the patents etc. just in case it had evolved an idea somebody else had come up with!
How does the law apply to 'discoveries' versus 'inventions'?
I thought that too, but you'd also need them at the end, otherwise you're still at 9kph when you run out of walkway. My preference was for the Arthur C. Clarke version which, by the magic of writing, had no moving parts but could still whisk you along (I think liquid crystals were mentioned but its been a very long time since I read it). It may have been in 'Against the Fall of Night'
Perhaps the worry is space based defence systems? Suppose you launch an ICBM - I believe that after its thrust phase it is ballistic (ie. your target knows where its going). You could target it from satellites, or just drop junk in orbit for it to crash into. (Did someone say China and India are planning on extensive space programmes?) If you are in possession of Hypersonic bombers, simply launching them may not mean that you are actually going to use them (perhaps you have test flights etc.)
Mind you, if one of these crashes at hypersonic speed, there's a lot of kinetic energy wrapped up in it. Try not to live under the flightpath! Also, I believe that concorde wasn't allowed to fly supersonic over land, so maybe they're just for going after the Japanese whaling fleet...
Slashdot Mirror
For a quick and dirty solution, how about an Apollo style capsule with a parasail on top, so its steerable (to a certain extent) but cheap. It could even use tiles, rather than an ablative heatshield, although a hard landing on those is probably not a good idea! (Ablative heatshield on the outside, tiles on the inside for emergencies? IANARS (rocket scientist!))
Top 10 OpenCourseWare Nations*
Rank Nation Hits
1. Canada 3,886,197
2. Germany 3,576,071
3. Brazil 3,170,362
4. South Korea 3,254,259
5. France 3,012,102
6. Japan 3,095,913
7. United Kingdom 3,099,713
8. China 2,563,446
9. India 2,512,267
10. Australia 1,372,052
* Outside the U.S.
Includes nearly 600,000 hits from mainland China, where the government denied access to OpenCourseWare until February 2003, and nearly 2 million hits from Hong Kong.
Top 10 OpenCourseWare Classes
1. Philosophy 24.00: Problems of Philosophy
2. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 6.170: Laboratory in Software Engineering
3. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 6.071: Introduction to Electronics
4. Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences 12.409: Hands-On Astronomy: Observing Stars and Planets
5. Mathematics 18.06: Linear Algebra
6. Mathematics 18.013A: Calculus with Applications
7. Nuclear Engineering 22.00J: Introduction to Modeling and Simulation
8. Physics 8.02: Electricity and Magnetism
9. Electrical Engineering and Computer Science 6.281J: Logistical and Transportation Planning Methods
10. Management 15.810: Introduction to Marketing
Nice to see that the 'Other Nations' are outside the US. And I'm glad its South (not North) Korea at No. 4, considering that Nuclear Engineering is at No. 7!
Or, like in some short story read years ago (Arthur C. Clarke maybe?) the network has developed consciousness and is doing its own thing.
Nah, its the Spam company ...
Atoms are very small, does this mean that ethics and morality do not apply to atomic bombs?
While we're talking about faking up explanations for the sound, how about magnetic induction in the hulls of other spaceships causing resonance?
Even when Hollywood does the "my car's just bumped a little bit, its going to explode" thing, the time delay of the sound of the explosion is ignored. Some things work better on TV / in the movies when they're not accurate. Although my presonal thought is that the sound is hot air escaping through holes in the plot...
Maybe the answer to this 'problem' (ie. people finding out that a movie is bad by seeing it) would be to make good movies? Hey, maybe they could do the same with CDs and people would start buying those again too...
Surely its Dalmatianum.
Don't start a 'flame' war ...
M$ would like to hear that Linux is Finnish-ed!
Its because of aluminium poisoning. Sorry, aluminum.
Atually I'm replying to your sig - does that mean if everyone agrees that light speed shouldn't be a limit, we can all go faster than light?
Spot the secret MS MeSsage: Use(.)Net - the dot is silent.
Didn't you notice that, when you had to manually start windows from DOS, you had to type Win - its psychology, people.
Surely they could make it 'free' by including advertising eg. five free plays for an advert. I guess the music biz could also use the students as guinea pigs to find out what they like to listen to. To which the answer is almost certainly 'free stuff' ...
And I hear that the pilots have to train in re-boot camp...
On th other hand it could be a useful gyro for when your Segway starts to get unstable ...
How does the law apply to 'discoveries' versus 'inventions'?
By "... it should burn. Along with any Bill ... to do ... with technology" , am I right in assuming you include Mr. Gates?
Memo to self: Must call the Clone Arranger ...
You mean 4891?
Clarke wrote 'Against the Fall of Night' which had something similar.
I thought that too, but you'd also need them at the end, otherwise you're still at 9kph when you run out of walkway. My preference was for the Arthur C. Clarke version which, by the magic of writing, had no moving parts but could still whisk you along (I think liquid crystals were mentioned but its been a very long time since I read it). It may have been in 'Against the Fall of Night'
Why can't they all work together?
I wonder if you could use nanotubes and buckyballs to make very small peashooters?
Mind you, if one of these crashes at hypersonic speed, there's a lot of kinetic energy wrapped up in it. Try not to live under the flightpath! Also, I believe that concorde wasn't allowed to fly supersonic over land, so maybe they're just for going after the Japanese whaling fleet ...
Apart from when you divide by zero, then you're enemies are INFINITE!