Oops I forgot to add that what use would the CIA/NSA/DoD have for a very low latency high bandwidth pipe? Methinks it's for remotely piloted aerial drones (and the upcoming telepresence robot army)!
Just like in the 70s when the CIA used Howard Hughes' Glomar Challenger to try to raise a sunken Russian nuclear sub (they said they were getting Maganese nodules from the ocean floor).
If not this is another reason why China is going to inherit the earth. (We're putting money towards non-productive uses for society as a whole, never mind what the Hedge fund owners make).
Just like in the 70s(?) they convinced the world that Howard Hughes' Glomar Challenger was meant to extract maganese nodules from the ocean floor when actually it was to raise a Russian nuclear sub.
So what use could the CIA/NSA/DoD have for a very low latency/high bandwidth pipe? Methinks they want to reduce the latency of their aerial drones and soon-to-be revealed robot army.
Either that or this is another reason why China will inherit the earth.
Your racist comment is belied by the fact that in THIS VERY SAME ARTICLE the presiding judge is presumably Chinese himself but sought to impose the maximum(?) penalty.
It could be that he is not Chinese (maybe Korean or another nationality) but with the name Gerald BRUCE Lee given to him by hopefully well meaning parents, I think it is more than likely he is of Chinese extraction.
... I mean, being named Gerald BRUCE Lee by his parents must have exposed him to quite a bit of mocking as a kid!
Oh, well maybe it toughened him up (isn't that the premise of the song "A boy named Sue"?). Anyway, as a judge maybe he can take it out on some of his former tormentors!
By the way, I'm Asian-American (if you haven't guessed by my slashdot name).
in his novel "Against the Fall of Night", talked about this with a whole stadium of spectators. It also was made to seem that each of them thought they were in the best seats in the house and seated next to their friends.
In a place far away I read his book "Out of Control" (which I thoroughly enjoyed).
In the book was a description of some little glass spheres which had tiny shrimp and algae and (sometimes) snails permanently sealed within; in fact a complete ecosystem! In fact they were called "EcoSpheres".
After trying unsuccessfully to find them (the Internet didn't have good search engines then, it was THAT long ago), I just got up and called him (I think I tracked him down at Wired). He was gracious enough to tell me where he got his.
Thanks Kelly!
P.S. Mine thrived for years until a heavy book obliterated it. Perhaps NASA should be looking out for giant books headed our way.
While everything you said is true about the vast improvements in sanitation, public health etc. you're missing two points.
1) Some of these improvements may have made our environment TOO CLEAN, we are not exposing ourselves to enough natural pathogens to challenge our immune systems and build up resistance. I've heard that one possible reason why the incidence of asthma has soared in the developing world is because children no longer play so much in dirt and get exposed to the bacteria there. Then, their immune systems become hyperactive. (I also seem to remember an article in Sci-Am about how Polio paradoxically became widely spread due to the clean drinking water or something. Hence the pictures of all those kids in "Iron Lungs" before the development of a vaccine).
2) If the scientists who sequenced the genome put it on the Internet (or if it stolen), that could be enough to build a good biological weapon. Now that Craig Venter has demonstrated the ability of creating life FROM SCRATCH isn't it feasible to create a new bacterium from the code downloaded from the Internet? Perhaps with some changes to make it more "effective"? It is no longer enough to physically sequester the pathogens in a secure location as the U.S. and Russia have done with smallpox, now just the data itself could lead to a virulent agent. (Or, knowing what to look for, it is probably much easier for a third party to duplicate these scientists' research). Perhaps, in the future, scientists who resurrect or create such dangerous micro-organisms will be required to create, as part of their work, complementary anti-bodies or iRNA sequences or something so that we would have a running start in preparing a biological defense if things got loose.
No I don't mean did they put one of these on the moon (and certainly not mars, I don't think any of their landers made it).
No, I mean didn't they have a bunch of high powered satellites in earth orbit that used reactors (NOT just RTGs, they wouldn't produce enough power). I believe they were radar satellites that scanned the oceans looking for American carrier groups to kill. (The U.S. really has a HUGE advantage in its many bases and allies worldwide, this is something that required the soviets to create satellites like this. It is an advantage that will also take the Chinese a very long time, if ever, to match). In fact didn't one of their satellites COSMOS I think it was, crash in Canada spewing plutonium all over the place and costing millions to clean up?
That said, if the design is sound (the spacecraft malfunctioned not the reactor right?), wouldn't it be easy to adapt their zero-gee design to work on the moo or mars? Should actually be easier, gravity will let convection work and (on mars) the thin atmosphere will help the purely radiative cooling.
Has one of these that figures somewhat prominently in the plot. It is, however, something a bit more robust than an "UAV", it is described as a "FedEx launcher" that sends a sub-orbital(!) package launched by a electro-magnetic railgun(?).
I guess it's the direct descendant of that DARPA hypersonic craft (that crashed at Mach 22). Anyway, it's when you absolutely positively need it... anywhere in the world in the next hour! (hopefully there will be other old-timers here who'll remember that jingle).
Anyway, strongly recommend the book (Rainbow's End). Vernor Vinge as many of you know is a computer scientist who coined the term "Singularity" (or was it Virtual Reality?). Anyway, the book is a really good read "with one foot set in the near future" and is speculatively realistic with great technical details. Of course, his really great novel is "A Fire Upon The Deep" but I digress.
Maybe if the average beer drinker knew that his brew was made possible by a rare yeast found in an obscure gall plant found in Patagonia he'd be more supportive of conservation efforts!
Then again he'd probably just change the channel from the Discovery channel to ESPN.
Actually, as long as they're doing this, does anyone know if the volunteers get a copy of the sequence? Even for The forseeable future, a full sequencing of your DNA would cost thousands(?) of dollars. Might be worth it! (I wonder if I qualify).
I also wonder if they're trying to obtain the DNA of some very smart people, dead or alive. For example the DNA from Einstein's brain which is preserved somewhere or perhaps Feynman (if they can find any samples, maybe on his bongo drums). My personal favorite would be the indian mathematician who coming from an Indian village around 1900, taught himself math from books and sent a letter (I think) to the chair of mathematics at Oxford who immediately had him come to England (where he died from the bad food! ducks.)
Anyway, sounds like someone could make a comedy out of this; there's a mix up and a supposed genius is introduced to the world (sort of like the Peter Seller's film where he plays "Chauncey Gardner", sorry forget the name of the film).
No, I'm serious! Make the gesture like a question mark (maybe without the little "." so as to not confuse the system). It would seem to be very easy to implement and everyone would instantly recognize it! If you want it could bring up a multipurpose "question box" which could do a number of things (like help or spelling) in addition to "find".
Too bad a said this out on a public forum. Now I (assume) I can't patent it. Well at least the Guess Jeans company hasn't trademarked it!
I'm assuming you're right about the conversion error, I just plucked the 8000kg figure off the first web site that I got off Google (I'm the submitter). Still 8000 LBS. is a lot more than the Chinese probe's 10 kgs.
As far as the energy calculations go, using a (large) gravitational body to change the velocity (speed AND direction) allows the transfer of momentum (energy) from Jupiter to and from the spacecraft. By causing the spacecraft to "lose" its forward momentum relative to the sun, Jupiter can rob it of energy (and consequently Jupiter is sped up a tiny amount). However because it's lost its forward momentum, the spacecraft will now fall towards the sun in a direct line that will (hopefully) intersect the path of the asteroid.
If the asteroid was at rest relative to the sun then the spacecraft would hit it with" only" the force derived from its fall from Jupiter orbit (still quite a lot). But the asteroid is most certainly not at rest, it's a Near Earth Object and thus has an orbit roughly similar to that of the earth. Like the earth, it is traveling through space at about 66,000mph (relative to the sun). So even if the spacecraft gained no speed from its hundreds of millions of kilometers fall from Jupiter's orbit to Earth space the spacecraft would still hit it at a velocity of 66,000 mph (remember it's had all its forward momentum cancelled). Or rather the asteroid will hit the spacecraft at this speed (depending on your frame of reference). Either way, the asteroid's orbit is going to be changed. Thats why I'm sure if the retrograde Chinese 10 kg probe could knock it off course, a spacecraft the size of Juno, could do so also (assuming they hit with a similar amount of time in advance of going through the keyhole).
You are right of course about the long trajectory taking the probe out to Jupiter and then falling back. In fact the space probe I mentioned, Juno, is not even on a direct trajectory, I understand it will first loop back to use the Earth for a gravity assist. Still, this is something we could do NOW, not only does the technology exist but we could probably have Juno execute this mission NOW. If we were willing to abandon the science goals of examining Jupiter, it would be easy to reprogram Juno to sling around Jupiter and dive bomb Apophis. Juno has way more than enough fuel to carry out its mission (it is designed to go into close orbit around Jupiter, talk about a big insertion burn!) and its super radiation hardened instrumentation could survive any close approach to Jupiter. (The heavy titanium armor of course makes it into an even better impactor). Even the fact that it uses solar panels is a plus because, as it falls back towards the inner solar system it would be well supplied with power.
I am not seriously proposing redirecting this mission (I don't want to be lynched by the mission scientists!) although it may be worth looking at seeing if after the mission there is some way using its residual fuel and the Gallilean satellites for gravity assist it could escape Jupiter orbit and be sent on this solar suicide mission. (Remember it doesn't have to hit Apophis at any particular place in its orbit, a good whack from any direction, years in advance, should be enough to make Apophis miss the tiny keyhole). I just want to point out how feasible this idea is IF we deem Apophis to really be a threat. On the other hand using a solar sail seems much iffier. Not withstanding the long development times, it would probably be the first time a mission like this would be tried. Gravity assists, on the other hand have been done by NASA for DECADES starting with Pioneer 10 and 11 in the seventies. I lost track long ago of all the missions that used it/are using it. Finally, although gravity assist trajectories are inherently time consuming, any forseeable solar sail technology is likely to be even more so. Remember that accelerations are going to measured in the thousandths of a G and to get the solar sail into a retrograde orbit is going to require the spacecr
... in gravity assists (which as I pointed out in my submission) could make the mission much cheaper and less risky.
Since they don't have any experience with gravity assists and (no-one) has any real experience with solar sails, I figure they just picked the one that sounded more sexy. If they actually had a long track record of deep space missions (they've only gotten to the moon whereas the U.S. is on its way to PLUTO), they wouldn't go this route. So I think the inflection point is still a ways off.
In my submission I actually had some more speculation:
"Then again, if you were able to very accurately control the asteroid impactor, not only could you control IF the asteroid was going to go through the keyhole but WHERE it was going to go through. Then you could determine where, on earth, the asteroid was going to eventually going to hit."
Say on an unfriendly nation (that was preferably on another continent).
But then again they didn't like my submission on how you could convert the promising pan-viral "cure" (MIT Tech review) that doesn't kill the virus directly but rather the cells it infects into a biological weapon of universal power.
By the way, the Jupiter slingshot idea has been proposed to send a probe on a (one-way) trip to the sun. A variant of this idea was used to send the Ulysses spacecraft into a sun polar orbit. It allowed them to use a Delta launch vehicle instead of a Saturn V.
While the market in the long-run does follow "Data", as a famous Economic Nobel Laureate said "in the long-run we're all dead".
The long-run is, of course, made up of lots and lots of short runs. On a time-scale of days/hours/minutes/seconds (even micro-seconds now) the market looks brownian, or fractal, or like noise. As any serious trader knows it is emotions not logic that drive it in the (very) short-run. (Excepting purely quantitative imbalance corrections, sorry I forget the term).
Consequently this result looks very interesting. If it really proves to be statistically significant, one can expect more and more traders using these sorts of algorithms. Perhaps real-time aggregate data like this WILL prove to be very valuable. As a previous poster mentioned, maybe this is Twitter's "Killer App". With more and more real-time social networks coming into play, what other sources of data might be useful? What will happen to the market if a substantial portion of trades is driven by sentiment driven algorithms? Will it become wildly unstable (like when some computer trading programs run amuck?). Or will it become very smooth with short-run sentiment merging seamlessly into long-run data?
I wonder if this hedge fund is still open to new investors?
Sending NASA back to the drawing boards to develop breakthrough technologies for deep space exploration is what it should do, let private enterprise do what has already been proven. Breaking the power of the aero-industrial complex with their legions of lobbyists and congressmen in their pockets took guts to do. This is a giant leap in the right direction.
Ironic that people (used to?) claim that Obama was a socialist. Sure he spent taxpayer money to save the auto industry. Now it is being paid back although admittedly projections are that the government will lose 1.5 Billion upfront. Still, considering how many Millions of jobs were directly and indirectly (suppliers, communities) saved, that $1.5 Billion was well spent. And that's not even considering the taxes these now highly profitable enterprises (record sales and growth) are returning to the treasury and will be doing so (hopefully) for many years to come.
I know I shouldn't be RTFA but I couldn't read it. Slashdotted already?
I just wanted to know if these "upgrades" is done by changing the micro-codes. Or are there some FPGAs in the chips? Just curious, very obviously I'm not a chip designer!
Also, does this mean that someone (who REALLY knows what they're doing), could upgrade a "cheap" chip into something more expensive? Or add new features/try new designs or instructions? Isn't there some "hardware" encoded security aspects to these chips that might become vulnerable (like DRM)?
It looks like it's a weapons delivery system capable of avoiding terminal ballistic missile defenses. A MARV (MAneuverable Reentry Vehicle).
I thought we (the U.S.) were the only ones with a (semi)-robust missile defense system (well I guess the Isrealis also). I guess DARPA's just planning ahead for the day when the Chinese decide to redress the strategic balance by spending their Trillions on a good BMD. Also I'm thinking it must be so expensive that the only kind of warhead that's worth placing on board is nuclear. But then again maybe there are VERY specific soft targets which you absolutely positively have to kill in an hour (because that's all you know they'll be in that location for). Then a "conventional" warhead could do (or at 13,000MPH just a bunch of tungsten rods "Rods from God" would do. Think of it as an intercontinental sniper rifle with bullets that can swerve around defenses. Good for "decapitating" an enemy, (I guess a lot of threats we face would go away if we could take out just the top few people/person: are you listening Kim Jong-Il? Qaddafi? S&P ratings board?).
Or maybe (as another poster mentioned on a previous slashdot forum), it's a (Chinese) carrier killer. In that case, the speed and maneuverability would be needed to avoid the presumably very intense defenses around the high value target. Unless we were willing to use nukes (which would open the door to nuclear retaliatory attacks) this would be the only way to take out such a target. That's assuming that our hunter killer subs couldn't get through their escorts and ASW.
I was kinda hoping DARPA was working on a (much) faster version of the Wave-rider hypersonic aircraft. Oh well, guess even they can't beat the laws of physics (and our lack of a good propulsion system).
Even "cooler" would be a laser that could be quickly lofted into space and would zap a target on the earth below. Unfortunately, "Real Genius" notwithstanding we don't have any lasers compact enough to be launched in anything short of a Saturn V (I don't think Dr. Teller's nuke pumped X-Ray laser was ever shown to work). That pesky outer space treaty prohibits us from placing weapons in space so we can't just have laser satellites floating around picking off people we don't like I guess.
Sorry but if you dig deep into the article (and even look into DARPA's slides and animations) you'll see it doesnt have any engines except for four small RCS (reaction control thrusters) on the rear (you'll need to view the animations). The mission profile also shows this with the only course/speed changes coming from the aero surfaces and thrusters. As much as I'd like to believe that DARPA's leapfrogged the current state of the art, there is no propulsion system (and certainly not scramjet/ramjet, no air intakes or external combustion surfaces like NASA's waverider.)
Slashdot Mirror
Oops I forgot to add that what use would the CIA/NSA/DoD have for a very low latency high bandwidth pipe? Methinks it's for remotely piloted aerial drones (and the upcoming telepresence robot army)!
Just like in the 70s when the CIA used Howard Hughes' Glomar Challenger to try to raise a sunken Russian nuclear sub (they said they were getting Maganese nodules from the ocean floor).
If not this is another reason why China is going to inherit the earth. (We're putting money towards non-productive uses for society as a whole, never mind what the Hedge fund owners make).
Just like in the 70s(?) they convinced the world that Howard Hughes' Glomar Challenger was meant to extract maganese nodules from the ocean floor when actually it was to raise a Russian nuclear sub.
So what use could the CIA/NSA/DoD have for a very low latency/high bandwidth pipe? Methinks they want to reduce the latency of their aerial drones and soon-to-be revealed robot army.
Either that or this is another reason why China will inherit the earth.
Your racist comment is belied by the fact that in THIS VERY SAME ARTICLE the presiding judge is presumably Chinese himself but sought to impose the maximum(?) penalty.
It could be that he is not Chinese (maybe Korean or another nationality) but with the name Gerald BRUCE Lee given to him by hopefully well meaning parents, I think it is more than likely he is of Chinese extraction.
... I mean, being named Gerald BRUCE Lee by his parents must have exposed him to quite a bit of mocking as a kid!
Oh, well maybe it toughened him up (isn't that the premise of the song "A boy named Sue"?). Anyway, as a judge maybe he can take it out on some of his former tormentors!
By the way, I'm Asian-American (if you haven't guessed by my slashdot name).
While Capitalism has many flaws perhaps it can be likened to Democracy as in:
"Democracy is the least worst form of Government" - Winston Churchill
Perhaps Capitalism is the "least worst form" of Economic Systems?
in his novel "Against the Fall of Night", talked about this with a whole stadium of spectators. It also was made to seem that each of them thought they were in the best seats in the house and seated next to their friends.
I think this story was published in the 50s.
In a place far away I read his book "Out of Control" (which I thoroughly enjoyed).
In the book was a description of some little glass spheres which had tiny shrimp and algae and (sometimes) snails permanently sealed within; in fact a complete ecosystem! In fact they were called "EcoSpheres".
After trying unsuccessfully to find them (the Internet didn't have good search engines then, it was THAT long ago), I just got up and called him (I think I tracked him down at Wired). He was gracious enough to tell me where he got his.
Thanks Kelly!
P.S. Mine thrived for years until a heavy book obliterated it. Perhaps NASA should be looking out for giant books headed our way.
Thanks, I'm not a biologist. Probably read too much science fiction though!
While everything you said is true about the vast improvements in sanitation, public health etc. you're missing two points.
1) Some of these improvements may have made our environment TOO CLEAN, we are not exposing ourselves to enough natural pathogens to challenge our immune systems and build up resistance. I've heard that one possible reason why the incidence of asthma has soared in the developing world is because children no longer play so much in dirt and get exposed to the bacteria there. Then, their immune systems become hyperactive. (I also seem to remember an article in Sci-Am about how Polio paradoxically became widely spread due to the clean drinking water or something. Hence the pictures of all those kids in "Iron Lungs" before the development of a vaccine).
2) If the scientists who sequenced the genome put it on the Internet (or if it stolen), that could be enough to build a good biological weapon. Now that Craig Venter has demonstrated the ability of creating life FROM SCRATCH isn't it feasible to create a new bacterium from the code downloaded from the Internet? Perhaps with some changes to make it more "effective"? It is no longer enough to physically sequester the pathogens in a secure location as the U.S. and Russia have done with smallpox, now just the data itself could lead to a virulent agent. (Or, knowing what to look for, it is probably much easier for a third party to duplicate these scientists' research). Perhaps, in the future, scientists who resurrect or create such dangerous micro-organisms will be required to create, as part of their work, complementary anti-bodies or iRNA sequences or something so that we would have a running start in preparing a biological defense if things got loose.
No I don't mean did they put one of these on the moon (and certainly not mars, I don't think any of their landers made it).
No, I mean didn't they have a bunch of high powered satellites in earth orbit that used reactors (NOT just RTGs, they wouldn't produce enough power). I believe they were radar satellites that scanned the oceans looking for American carrier groups to kill. (The U.S. really has a HUGE advantage in its many bases and allies worldwide, this is something that required the soviets to create satellites like this. It is an advantage that will also take the Chinese a very long time, if ever, to match). In fact didn't one of their satellites COSMOS I think it was, crash in Canada spewing plutonium all over the place and costing millions to clean up?
That said, if the design is sound (the spacecraft malfunctioned not the reactor right?), wouldn't it be easy to adapt their zero-gee design to work on the moo or mars? Should actually be easier, gravity will let convection work and (on mars) the thin atmosphere will help the purely radiative cooling.
Has one of these that figures somewhat prominently in the plot. It is, however, something a bit more robust than an "UAV", it is described as a "FedEx launcher" that sends a sub-orbital(!) package launched by a electro-magnetic railgun(?).
I guess it's the direct descendant of that DARPA hypersonic craft (that crashed at Mach 22). Anyway, it's when you absolutely positively need it ... anywhere in the world in the next hour! (hopefully there will be other old-timers here who'll remember that jingle).
Anyway, strongly recommend the book (Rainbow's End). Vernor Vinge as many of you know is a computer scientist who coined the term "Singularity" (or was it Virtual Reality?). Anyway, the book is a really good read "with one foot set in the near future" and is speculatively realistic with great technical details. Of course, his really great novel is "A Fire Upon The Deep" but I digress.
Sorry to these religiously opposed to the iPhone but it doesn't come with any crapware.
Unless you consider iOS ITSELF to be crapware but I think most people (as indicated by the highest approval ratings in the industry) would disagree.
Maybe if the average beer drinker knew that his brew was made possible by a rare yeast found in an obscure gall plant found in Patagonia he'd be more supportive of conservation efforts!
Then again he'd probably just change the channel from the Discovery channel to ESPN.
I mean isn't this where this is headed?
Actually, as long as they're doing this, does anyone know if the volunteers get a copy of the sequence? Even for The forseeable future, a full sequencing of your DNA would cost thousands(?) of dollars. Might be worth it! (I wonder if I qualify).
I also wonder if they're trying to obtain the DNA of some very smart people, dead or alive. For example the DNA from Einstein's brain which is preserved somewhere or perhaps Feynman (if they can find any samples, maybe on his bongo drums). My personal favorite would be the indian mathematician who coming from an Indian village around 1900, taught himself math from books and sent a letter (I think) to the chair of mathematics at Oxford who immediately had him come to England (where he died from the bad food! ducks.)
Anyway, sounds like someone could make a comedy out of this; there's a mix up and a supposed genius is introduced to the world (sort of like the Peter Seller's film where he plays "Chauncey Gardner", sorry forget the name of the film).
No, I'm serious! Make the gesture like a question mark (maybe without the little "." so as to not confuse the system). It would seem to be very easy to implement and everyone would instantly recognize it! If you want it could bring up a multipurpose "question box" which could do a number of things (like help or spelling) in addition to "find".
Too bad a said this out on a public forum. Now I (assume) I can't patent it. Well at least the Guess Jeans company hasn't trademarked it!
(it's a COMMAND + F on a Mac!)
I'm assuming you're right about the conversion error, I just plucked the 8000kg figure off the first web site that I got off Google (I'm the submitter). Still 8000 LBS. is a lot more than the Chinese probe's 10 kgs.
As far as the energy calculations go, using a (large) gravitational body to change the velocity (speed AND direction) allows the transfer of momentum (energy) from Jupiter to and from the spacecraft. By causing the spacecraft to "lose" its forward momentum relative to the sun, Jupiter can rob it of energy (and consequently Jupiter is sped up a tiny amount). However because it's lost its forward momentum, the spacecraft will now fall towards the sun in a direct line that will (hopefully) intersect the path of the asteroid.
If the asteroid was at rest relative to the sun then the spacecraft would hit it with" only" the force derived from its fall from Jupiter orbit (still quite a lot). But the asteroid is most certainly not at rest, it's a Near Earth Object and thus has an orbit roughly similar to that of the earth. Like the earth, it is traveling through space at about 66,000mph (relative to the sun). So even if the spacecraft gained no speed from its hundreds of millions of kilometers fall from Jupiter's orbit to Earth space the spacecraft would still hit it at a velocity of 66,000 mph (remember it's had all its forward momentum cancelled). Or rather the asteroid will hit the spacecraft at this speed (depending on your frame of reference). Either way, the asteroid's orbit is going to be changed. Thats why I'm sure if the retrograde Chinese 10 kg probe could knock it off course, a spacecraft the size of Juno, could do so also (assuming they hit with a similar amount of time in advance of going through the keyhole).
You are right of course about the long trajectory taking the probe out to Jupiter and then falling back. In fact the space probe I mentioned, Juno, is not even on a direct trajectory, I understand it will first loop back to use the Earth for a gravity assist. Still, this is something we could do NOW, not only does the technology exist but we could probably have Juno execute this mission NOW. If we were willing to abandon the science goals of examining Jupiter, it would be easy to reprogram Juno to sling around Jupiter and dive bomb Apophis. Juno has way more than enough fuel to carry out its mission (it is designed to go into close orbit around Jupiter, talk about a big insertion burn!) and its super radiation hardened instrumentation could survive any close approach to Jupiter. (The heavy titanium armor of course makes it into an even better impactor). Even the fact that it uses solar panels is a plus because, as it falls back towards the inner solar system it would be well supplied with power.
I am not seriously proposing redirecting this mission (I don't want to be lynched by the mission scientists!) although it may be worth looking at seeing if after the mission there is some way using its residual fuel and the Gallilean satellites for gravity assist it could escape Jupiter orbit and be sent on this solar suicide mission. (Remember it doesn't have to hit Apophis at any particular place in its orbit, a good whack from any direction, years in advance, should be enough to make Apophis miss the tiny keyhole). I just want to point out how feasible this idea is IF we deem Apophis to really be a threat. On the other hand using a solar sail seems much iffier. Not withstanding the long development times, it would probably be the first time a mission like this would be tried. Gravity assists, on the other hand have been done by NASA for DECADES starting with Pioneer 10 and 11 in the seventies. I lost track long ago of all the missions that used it/are using it. Finally, although gravity assist trajectories are inherently time consuming, any forseeable solar sail technology is likely to be even more so. Remember that accelerations are going to measured in the thousandths of a G and to get the solar sail into a retrograde orbit is going to require the spacecr
... in gravity assists (which as I pointed out in my submission) could make the mission much cheaper and less risky.
Since they don't have any experience with gravity assists and (no-one) has any real experience with solar sails, I figure they just picked the one that sounded more sexy. If they actually had a long track record of deep space missions (they've only gotten to the moon whereas the U.S. is on its way to PLUTO), they wouldn't go this route. So I think the inflection point is still a ways off.
In my submission I actually had some more speculation:
"Then again, if you were able to very accurately control the asteroid impactor, not only could you control IF the asteroid was going to go through the keyhole but WHERE it was going to go through. Then you could determine where, on earth, the asteroid was going to eventually going to hit."
Say on an unfriendly nation (that was preferably on another continent).
But then again they didn't like my submission on how you could convert the promising pan-viral "cure" (MIT Tech review) that doesn't kill the virus directly but rather the cells it infects into a biological weapon of universal power.
By the way, the Jupiter slingshot idea has been proposed to send a probe on a (one-way) trip to the sun. A variant of this idea was used to send the Ulysses spacecraft into a sun polar orbit. It allowed them to use a Delta launch vehicle instead of a Saturn V.
While the market in the long-run does follow "Data", as a famous Economic Nobel Laureate said "in the long-run we're all dead".
The long-run is, of course, made up of lots and lots of short runs. On a time-scale of days/hours/minutes/seconds (even micro-seconds now) the market looks brownian, or fractal, or like noise. As any serious trader knows it is emotions not logic that drive it in the (very) short-run. (Excepting purely quantitative imbalance corrections, sorry I forget the term).
Consequently this result looks very interesting. If it really proves to be statistically significant, one can expect more and more traders using these sorts of algorithms. Perhaps real-time aggregate data like this WILL prove to be very valuable. As a previous poster mentioned, maybe this is Twitter's "Killer App". With more and more real-time social networks coming into play, what other sources of data might be useful? What will happen to the market if a substantial portion of trades is driven by sentiment driven algorithms? Will it become wildly unstable (like when some computer trading programs run amuck?). Or will it become very smooth with short-run sentiment merging seamlessly into long-run data?
I wonder if this hedge fund is still open to new investors?
Sending NASA back to the drawing boards to develop breakthrough technologies for deep space exploration is what it should do, let private enterprise do what has already been proven. Breaking the power of the aero-industrial complex with their legions of lobbyists and congressmen in their pockets took guts to do. This is a giant leap in the right direction.
Ironic that people (used to?) claim that Obama was a socialist. Sure he spent taxpayer money to save the auto industry. Now it is being paid back although admittedly projections are that the government will lose 1.5 Billion upfront. Still, considering how many Millions of jobs were directly and indirectly (suppliers, communities) saved, that $1.5 Billion was well spent. And that's not even considering the taxes these now highly profitable enterprises (record sales and growth) are returning to the treasury and will be doing so (hopefully) for many years to come.
I know I shouldn't be RTFA but I couldn't read it. Slashdotted already?
I just wanted to know if these "upgrades" is done by changing the micro-codes. Or are there some FPGAs in the chips? Just curious, very obviously I'm not a chip designer!
Also, does this mean that someone (who REALLY knows what they're doing), could upgrade a "cheap" chip into something more expensive? Or add new features/try new designs or instructions? Isn't there some "hardware" encoded security aspects to these chips that might become vulnerable (like DRM)?
It looks like it's a weapons delivery system capable of avoiding terminal ballistic missile defenses. A MARV (MAneuverable Reentry Vehicle).
I thought we (the U.S.) were the only ones with a (semi)-robust missile defense system (well I guess the Isrealis also). I guess DARPA's just planning ahead for the day when the Chinese decide to redress the strategic balance by spending their Trillions on a good BMD. Also I'm thinking it must be so expensive that the only kind of warhead that's worth placing on board is nuclear. But then again maybe there are VERY specific soft targets which you absolutely positively have to kill in an hour (because that's all you know they'll be in that location for). Then a "conventional" warhead could do (or at 13,000MPH just a bunch of tungsten rods "Rods from God" would do. Think of it as an intercontinental sniper rifle with bullets that can swerve around defenses. Good for "decapitating" an enemy, (I guess a lot of threats we face would go away if we could take out just the top few people/person: are you listening Kim Jong-Il? Qaddafi? S&P ratings board?).
Or maybe (as another poster mentioned on a previous slashdot forum), it's a (Chinese) carrier killer. In that case, the speed and maneuverability would be needed to avoid the presumably very intense defenses around the high value target. Unless we were willing to use nukes (which would open the door to nuclear retaliatory attacks) this would be the only way to take out such a target. That's assuming that our hunter killer subs couldn't get through their escorts and ASW.
I was kinda hoping DARPA was working on a (much) faster version of the Wave-rider hypersonic aircraft. Oh well, guess even they can't beat the laws of physics (and our lack of a good propulsion system).
Even "cooler" would be a laser that could be quickly lofted into space and would zap a target on the earth below. Unfortunately, "Real Genius" notwithstanding we don't have any lasers compact enough to be launched in anything short of a Saturn V (I don't think Dr. Teller's nuke pumped X-Ray laser was ever shown to work). That pesky outer space treaty prohibits us from placing weapons in space so we can't just have laser satellites floating around picking off people we don't like I guess.
Sorry but if you dig deep into the article (and even look into DARPA's slides and animations) you'll see it doesnt have any engines except for four small RCS (reaction control thrusters) on the rear (you'll need to view the animations). The mission profile also shows this with the only course/speed changes coming from the aero surfaces and thrusters. As much as I'd like to believe that DARPA's leapfrogged the current state of the art, there is no propulsion system (and certainly not scramjet/ramjet, no air intakes or external combustion surfaces like NASA's waverider.)