Wow, great, don't get too close (until you need to)!
Best of luck, will be waiting for the rendezvous!
P.S. It's funny to think of something so sophisticated and one of a kind as a comet orbiter having a user manual. I guess everything has one; I'd like to see one for an aircraft carrier or, for that matter, planet earth.;)
Great! Thank you very much for answering my question! I knew something non-obvious was going on..
Uh, just in case you feel inclined to answer another question; I assume you won't be using the NAVCAMs for the final approach to the comet. What will you do? (Maybe you should just refer me to a good web article).
As an armchair astronomer, I'm as always, extremely impressed by stuff like this. I know the level of precision to pull this off is nothing more than astounding, involving very complex math, deep knowledge of astrophysics and out-of-this-world engineering.
Still I was wondering; why didn't they aim the flyby a little closer, say 100km and not 3500? I believe they had an earlier flyby which did just that at another asteroid so I assume they had the requisite level of precision. I know this might have required them to be off "course" by a few thousand kilometers but in a journey with hundreds of millions to go it would seem to be a detour requiring very little delta-v (and thus very little propellant). Wouldn't the instruments be able to get much better data from a much closer object? Or maybe the position of this asteroid wasn't precisely known, not only giving a (small) risk of collision but making observation via pre-programmed instruments with narrow fields of view impossible. If anyone has a clue, pray tell!
I live in Vietnam and the posts I read here are all sound very American. They DO NOT reflect reality in Vietnam (and probably the other developing countries where most of the world's population lives).
Here, ABSOLUTELY, utterly rampant piracy destroys/has destroyed their media industries. Every block has a fake DVD store where you can buy movies for $.60 US. No music artist plans on ANY profit from their CDs, they are for promotion only, no movie makes money after the first run. (Musicians make money from live acts).
Do they still make music and movies? Yes but their budgets are very low (typically $2-3K for a music video, $250K for a movie). Paid distribution is likewise unprofitable, in the entire country (86 Million) there are less than 100 screens (US: 300 Million, 35,000 screens). As for quality; when was the last time a Vietnamese film reached global distribution let alone worldwide success?
Unless you want your media to be compromised solely of low cost (low financial risk) productions; hi-end spectaculars (Ben-Hur, Avatar) will become a thing of the past. Piracy is just another form of "the tragedy of the commons" which was recognized by no less than Adam Smith.
In 2001 (the book) the Monolith was found at the center of a MASCON (mass concentration). I believe the Apollo space program needed maps of the moon's geoid because the moon is "lumpier" and considering the much lower orbits the command/service modules were in (no atmosphere remember) would cause significant deviations in their trajectory.
I mean, wow, hasn't restoring sight to the blind been one of the attributes of divine powers? I hope this advance which comes from the ingenuity and intelligence of MAN will help shake the faith of those who believe in such fairytales as the flying spaghetti monster et all. Maybe when we all have hoverboards, walking on water won't seem such a big deal as well.
I was going to post something to the effect that I agree with the parent post (energy requirements would be obscene) but there *might* be a way around this.
Put a not too big (optical experts please weigh in) lightweight mirror in geosync orbit. Aim a very very powerful visible light laser at it and Voila! Instant early warning system!
Of course you'd be making the energy requirements even more obscene but it should still be a lot cheaper than lifting a giga-watt (tera-watt?) class reactor and laser into high orbit. Since you're not trying to use this for missile defense, the pointing requirements should be a lot less. Maybe even a giant sphere like Echo-star 1 could be used or a giant disco ball!;)
In any case I don't think you'll get much more than a bright point of light in the sky (hopefully visible in daylight), but that might be enough. If the mirror is large enough and the beam tight enough you might not lose too much energy so it might be conceivably possibly practical. If you modulate the beam you could even send a message ("go to higher ground" or "earthquake, stay outdoors"). Too bad morse code isn't being used anymore.
Of course, if you had a couple of well placed reflectors in orbit, you could make it so that people would only need to "follow" the beacon (from the appropriate reflector) to safety. Sort of like the light of Bethlehem huh?
There was a story by Bradbury (sorry slow internet here don't want to look it up) where they had "picture" windows made of glass(?) with an extremely(!) high index of refraction. These windows had been left out in some scenic location (African savannah) and because the velocity of light was so slow through the glass, it would take years for the light to get through! Thus a "perfect" 3D display of whatever the window had been exposed to.
Sounds (extremely) farfetched but in "light" (ha ha) of the discovery of a method to slow down or even stop light (admittedly in a Bose-Einstein condescent in a near perfect vacuum just above absolute zero), it is not entirely fantasy. Not entirely.
Any particle physicists care to illuminate us on the reason why the LHC might make mini-blackholes but not "strangelets"? Is it because of the kind of particles used in the collisions? Or are strange flavoured particles currently not in favor these days?
Not that it makes much practical difference; if we were to be scrunched into a black hole (I know, I know it's not going to happen) or converted into strange matter we're just as dead. (In fact won't the conversion to strange matter happen at the speed of light whereas it'll take a while for a black hole to grow large enough to shred us?). Kinda sounds like the weapon used in "Ender's game" the "little doctor" (but it left over iron not strange matter).
(previously posted on Feb. 22) YouKill.com! - A way to outsource the Airforce's growing need for more UAV jockeys.
Announcing a new on-line game for all of you armchair warriors: YouKILL.com! With the U.S. Airforce now introducing new Predator drones with 10 cameras each and more and more battlefield "robots" (like BigDog) everyday, there is far too much sensory data for our overtaxed professional soldiers to process. So, now we allow YOU the average citizen to partake in this wonderful way to defend democracy and earn gaming points at the same time!
First stage SCOUT - after showing that you are a U.S. Citizen and 16 years of age (wink, wink), you (and 10 randomly selected other fellow citizen scouts) are assigned a real-time video feed STRAIGHT FROM THE SKIES OVER IRAN / I mean AFGHANISTAN. If a majority of you click on the button "Suspected Bad Guy" at the same time, the video feed is instantly passed on to the next level, TARGETING. When you've proven to our computers that you're a good scout by having a excellent record of detection and (as compared with your other teammates) a "low" number of false positives you'll be promoted! (Sorry, detecting hot babes don't count!)
Second stage TARGETING - Can you take out an insurgent at 3km without harming the orphanage next door? Here again, you (and 10 newly selected random fellow citizen targeters) will wait for "the perfect moment" to pick off the bad guys. In this level, you'll need to consider range, airspeed, armanent, cover and, of course, COLLATERAL DAMAGE. When a majority of you and your teammates think the time has come to fire, your feed will be instantly passed to the final stage: FIRING. If you, as measured by the our computers, are consistently picking the best time to shoot compared to your colleagues, we'll promote you to...
Final stege FIRING - Here's where the fun REALLY begins! Now, you'll be able to take out bad guys FOR REAL! Feel the excitement as you unleash high speed rockets tipped with explosives at the enemy! Not only will you get to keep your online footage of each kill but you'll receive a commemorative coffee mug! (Just don't get too trigger happy otherwise you might get a visit from some of our military lawyers.)
Not a U.S. Citizen? No problem, we have a bunch of other suppression activities... I mean games available. If you're British you can play YouCOP which takes advantage of England being the video surveillance capital of the world. Here you (and 10 other "Brits") watch for illegal activity and report it! For now, no weaponry involved. But don't worry about it!
Not a U.S., or British citizen? Care to remain anonymous? Through special arrangement with some other governments we also have a new gaming site: YouREPRESS! Here you can target Tibetans, punish the Palestinians or any other group that our clients want to suppress. All we need is your eyeballs and a good twitch reflex! Remember, points you earn in our games will be tradable for virtual items and maybe even induction into the armed forces of your choice!
We're NeoOCP - crowdsourcing for the benefits of Big Governments worldwide. (Not a big government but a big corporation instead? Don't worry, we'll be announcing new crowdsourced spy products for you too! Like our new YouDRM; we'll make it profitable for people to snitch!).
I don't know why they claim it is a "Gentle Giant". It's got a nuclear powered LASER used for remotely zapping targets of interest to determine their composition!
I mean, how would you like it if a giant robot dropped out of the sky and started shooting frikking laser beams at you!;)
Let's face it, we (mainly) have no one to blame but OURSELVES.
No I don't mean our politicians, or business leaders or anyone else but US.
What do expect of a population that doesn't believe in Evolution? Something that is THE unifying principle in Biology ("Without Evolution, nothing makes sense in Biology" look it up).
What do expect of a population who are willing to dismiss the counsel of thousands of dedicated scientists and researchers for a few armchair "climate experts" typically who have no experience in their field?
What do you expect of a population who willingly listen to (and follow) a political party that regularly denigrates the "intellectual elite"? As if scholarship and achievement are something to be sneered at.
You know, if this article was entitled "large scale farming moving to China" or "majority of theater productions produced in China" or "new ice hockey champions raised in China" it wouldn't have nearly the same impact. Why? Because, sorry to say, these things are LESS important than science and technology. The Wealth, Prosperity and POWER of our nation depend on this. Those anti-intellectual "tea partiers" who seek to return us back to the 1800s (1700s)? seem to forget that we are living in the 21st Century and the world is a much much more competitive and complex place.
In Vernor Vinge's fantastic book "A Fire Upon The Deep", he postulates the existence of "Zones" where variations in cosmic constants(?) allow increasingly sophisticated intelligences (and corresponding FTL travel). We (earth) live in the "Slow Zone" where only human level intelligence is possible.
Anyway these pictures, with their galactic scale structures showing Fractal like properties, reminds me of that!
By the way, the book really is awesome (Hugo and Nebula winner) just about the best SF I've read along with Stanislaw Lem's "Imaginary Magnitude". If you're a slashdot geek (and aren't we all?) you'll love his galactic Internet (he's a computer science professor). Oh, and he is credited with the idea of the "Singularity".
The best use for this would be to put one on the ISS (or other "nearby" manned spacecraft where speed of light time-lag is not too long).
That way, you'll have an emergency "surgeon" available in case of a medical emergency. Nowhere near as good as a real live doc but better than nothing.
I understand a few years ago, a female scientist had to be evacuated from the Antarctic base in the dead of the ANTARCTIC(!) winter because she had breast cancer. This could have prevented that (and eliminated the risk to the rescue crew. I think they had to keep the plane's engines on so that the skids wouldn't freeze to the ice).
Now what was the name of that "emergency medical program" on Star Trek?
(Anyway, I'm also impressed by the power shown by the GPUs. Its a good demonstration that some of the new technologies (CULA? CUDA?) that allow "regular" programmers to use this power actually will really speed up some things.)
In addition to the obvious strategic implications of China building these rail lines to link together its "virtual" Eurasian empire (by virtual I mean some of the governments, the "stans" are so corrupt or incompetent that the Chinese are soon going to be their puppetmasters. Just look at what's going on in Afghanistan, we fight and die they profit.), I wonder what other conditions the Chinese will put to the countries who will be connected.
For example, will India be allowed to be a part of it? Talk about cutting out the competition!
I don't know how far ahead the Chinese planning horizon is but if they *think* they have a lock down on all effective dissent for the foreseeable future they might be thinking many decades (centuries) ahead. Sounds grandiose but some companies like Toyota have 100 year plans (though I bet they didn't see these brake problems coming).
Never have I seen an article title more in need of the word "Alleged"
As in: Iran Hacks ALLEGED US Spy Sites
Like you are going to believe that "Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency" isn't going to make unsubstantiated claims? (I know double negative, but here it ain't wrong).
Yeah, I'm actually Asian American (with both parents being Asian). So while I might be (overly) nationalistic I don't think I'm being racist. And while I'm not living in China, I'm living in a country right next door.
By the way, since African Americans can say the "N" word without opprobrium, can I use the "C" word.;)
Slashdot Mirror
Wow, great, don't get too close (until you need to)!
Best of luck, will be waiting for the rendezvous!
P.S. It's funny to think of something so sophisticated and one of a kind as a comet orbiter having a user manual. I guess everything has one; I'd like to see one for an aircraft carrier or, for that matter, planet earth. ;)
Great! Thank you very much for answering my question! I knew something non-obvious was going on..
Uh, just in case you feel inclined to answer another question; I assume you won't be using the NAVCAMs for the final approach to the comet. What will you do? (Maybe you should just refer me to a good web article).
Thanks again.
As an armchair astronomer, I'm as always, extremely impressed by stuff like this. I know the level of precision to pull this off is nothing more than astounding, involving very complex math, deep knowledge of astrophysics and out-of-this-world engineering.
Still I was wondering; why didn't they aim the flyby a little closer, say 100km and not 3500? I believe they had an earlier flyby which did just that at another asteroid so I assume they had the requisite level of precision. I know this might have required them to be off "course" by a few thousand kilometers but in a journey with hundreds of millions to go it would seem to be a detour requiring very little delta-v (and thus very little propellant). Wouldn't the instruments be able to get much better data from a much closer object? Or maybe the position of this asteroid wasn't precisely known, not only giving a (small) risk of collision but making observation via pre-programmed instruments with narrow fields of view impossible. If anyone has a clue, pray tell!
I live in Vietnam and the posts I read here are all sound very American. They DO NOT reflect reality in Vietnam (and probably the other developing countries where most of the world's population lives).
Here, ABSOLUTELY, utterly rampant piracy destroys/has destroyed their media industries. Every block has a fake DVD store where you can buy movies for $.60 US. No music artist plans on ANY profit from their CDs, they are for promotion only, no movie makes money after the first run. (Musicians make money from live acts).
Do they still make music and movies? Yes but their budgets are very low (typically $2-3K for a music video, $250K for a movie). Paid distribution is likewise unprofitable, in the entire country (86 Million) there are less than 100 screens (US: 300 Million, 35,000 screens). As for quality; when was the last time a Vietnamese film reached global distribution let alone worldwide success?
Unless you want your media to be compromised solely of low cost (low financial risk) productions; hi-end spectaculars (Ben-Hur, Avatar) will become a thing of the past. Piracy is just another form of "the tragedy of the commons" which was recognized by no less than Adam Smith.
Hmm... I think you're right! I stand corrected.
In 2001 (the book) the Monolith was found at the center of a MASCON (mass concentration). I believe the Apollo space program needed maps of the moon's geoid because the moon is "lumpier" and considering the much lower orbits the command/service modules were in (no atmosphere remember) would cause significant deviations in their trajectory.
Yes "lumpier" is an official scientific term.
I mean, wow, hasn't restoring sight to the blind been one of the attributes of divine powers? I hope this advance which comes from the ingenuity and intelligence of MAN will help shake the faith of those who believe in such fairytales as the flying spaghetti monster et all. Maybe when we all have hoverboards, walking on water won't seem such a big deal as well.
Thanks, don't know the rules of video game competition!
So who would you rather have defending us when an asteroid with our name comes around, him or Bruce Willis?
I think he's probably got better eye-hand coordination and his stamina... did he get bathroom breaks?
* deliberately misspelled like the movie which I haven't seen yet, is it any good?
I was going to post something to the effect that I agree with the parent post (energy requirements would be obscene) but there *might* be a way around this.
Put a not too big (optical experts please weigh in) lightweight mirror in geosync orbit. Aim a very very powerful visible light laser at it and Voila! Instant early warning system!
Of course you'd be making the energy requirements even more obscene but it should still be a lot cheaper than lifting a giga-watt (tera-watt?) class reactor and laser into high orbit. Since you're not trying to use this for missile defense, the pointing requirements should be a lot less. Maybe even a giant sphere like Echo-star 1 could be used or a giant disco ball! ;)
In any case I don't think you'll get much more than a bright point of light in the sky (hopefully visible in daylight), but that might be enough. If the mirror is large enough and the beam tight enough you might not lose too much energy so it might be conceivably possibly practical. If you modulate the beam you could even send a message ("go to higher ground" or "earthquake, stay outdoors"). Too bad morse code isn't being used anymore.
Of course, if you had a couple of well placed reflectors in orbit, you could make it so that people would only need to "follow" the beacon (from the appropriate reflector) to safety. Sort of like the light of Bethlehem huh?
There was a story by Bradbury (sorry slow internet here don't want to look it up) where they had "picture" windows made of glass(?) with an extremely(!) high index of refraction. These windows had been left out in some scenic location (African savannah) and because the velocity of light was so slow through the glass, it would take years for the light to get through! Thus a "perfect" 3D display of whatever the window had been exposed to.
Sounds (extremely) farfetched but in "light" (ha ha) of the discovery of a method to slow down or even stop light (admittedly in a Bose-Einstein condescent in a near perfect vacuum just above absolute zero), it is not entirely fantasy. Not entirely.
Any particle physicists care to illuminate us on the reason why the LHC might make mini-blackholes but not "strangelets"? Is it because of the kind of particles used in the collisions? Or are strange flavoured particles currently not in favor these days?
Not that it makes much practical difference; if we were to be scrunched into a black hole (I know, I know it's not going to happen) or converted into strange matter we're just as dead. (In fact won't the conversion to strange matter happen at the speed of light whereas it'll take a while for a black hole to grow large enough to shred us?). Kinda sounds like the weapon used in "Ender's game" the "little doctor" (but it left over iron not strange matter).
(previously posted on Feb. 22) YouKill.com! - A way to outsource the Airforce's growing need for more UAV jockeys.
Announcing a new on-line game for all of you armchair warriors: YouKILL.com! With the U.S. Airforce now introducing new Predator drones with 10 cameras each and more and more battlefield "robots" (like BigDog) everyday, there is far too much sensory data for our overtaxed professional soldiers to process. So, now we allow YOU the average citizen to partake in this wonderful way to defend democracy and earn gaming points at the same time!
First stage SCOUT - after showing that you are a U.S. Citizen and 16 years of age (wink, wink), you (and 10 randomly selected other fellow citizen scouts) are assigned a real-time video feed STRAIGHT FROM THE SKIES OVER IRAN / I mean AFGHANISTAN. If a majority of you click on the button "Suspected Bad Guy" at the same time, the video feed is instantly passed on to the next level, TARGETING. When you've proven to our computers that you're a good scout by having a excellent record of detection and (as compared with your other teammates) a "low" number of false positives you'll be promoted! (Sorry, detecting hot babes don't count!)
Second stage TARGETING - Can you take out an insurgent at 3km without harming the orphanage next door? Here again, you (and 10 newly selected random fellow citizen targeters) will wait for "the perfect moment" to pick off the bad guys. In this level, you'll need to consider range, airspeed, armanent, cover and, of course, COLLATERAL DAMAGE. When a majority of you and your teammates think the time has come to fire, your feed will be instantly passed to the final stage: FIRING. If you, as measured by the our computers, are consistently picking the best time to shoot compared to your colleagues, we'll promote you to...
Final stege FIRING - Here's where the fun REALLY begins! Now, you'll be able to take out bad guys FOR REAL! Feel the excitement as you unleash high speed rockets tipped with explosives at the enemy! Not only will you get to keep your online footage of each kill but you'll receive a commemorative coffee mug! (Just don't get too trigger happy otherwise you might get a visit from some of our military lawyers.)
Not a U.S. Citizen? No problem, we have a bunch of other suppression activities... I mean games available. If you're British you can play YouCOP which takes advantage of England being the video surveillance capital of the world. Here you (and 10 other "Brits") watch for illegal activity and report it! For now, no weaponry involved. But don't worry about it!
Not a U.S., or British citizen? Care to remain anonymous? Through special arrangement with some other governments we also have a new gaming site: YouREPRESS! Here you can target Tibetans, punish the Palestinians or any other group that our clients want to suppress. All we need is your eyeballs and a good twitch reflex! Remember, points you earn in our games will be tradable for virtual items and maybe even induction into the armed forces of your choice!
We're NeoOCP - crowdsourcing for the benefits of Big Governments worldwide. (Not a big government but a big corporation instead? Don't worry, we'll be announcing new crowdsourced spy products for you too! Like our new YouDRM; we'll make it profitable for people to snitch!).
I don't know why they claim it is a "Gentle Giant". It's got a nuclear powered LASER used for remotely zapping targets of interest to determine their composition!
I mean, how would you like it if a giant robot dropped out of the sky and started shooting frikking laser beams at you! ;)
Let's face it, we (mainly) have no one to blame but OURSELVES.
No I don't mean our politicians, or business leaders or anyone else but US.
What do expect of a population that doesn't believe in Evolution? Something that is THE unifying principle in Biology ("Without Evolution, nothing makes sense in Biology" look it up).
What do expect of a population who are willing to dismiss the counsel of thousands of dedicated scientists and researchers for a few armchair "climate experts" typically who have no experience in their field?
What do you expect of a population who willingly listen to (and follow) a political party that regularly denigrates the "intellectual elite"? As if scholarship and achievement are something to be sneered at.
You know, if this article was entitled "large scale farming moving to China" or "majority of theater productions produced in China" or "new ice hockey champions raised in China" it wouldn't have nearly the same impact. Why? Because, sorry to say, these things are LESS important than science and technology. The Wealth, Prosperity and POWER of our nation depend on this. Those anti-intellectual "tea partiers" who seek to return us back to the 1800s (1700s)? seem to forget that we are living in the 21st Century and the world is a much much more competitive and complex place.
In Vernor Vinge's fantastic book "A Fire Upon The Deep", he postulates the existence of "Zones" where variations in cosmic constants(?) allow increasingly sophisticated intelligences (and corresponding FTL travel). We (earth) live in the "Slow Zone" where only human level intelligence is possible.
Anyway these pictures, with their galactic scale structures showing Fractal like properties, reminds me of that!
By the way, the book really is awesome (Hugo and Nebula winner) just about the best SF I've read along with Stanislaw Lem's "Imaginary Magnitude". If you're a slashdot geek (and aren't we all?) you'll love his galactic Internet (he's a computer science professor). Oh, and he is credited with the idea of the "Singularity".
(ducks)
... is DOOMED. Radical Islam will take over the world!
Maybe the Amish can save us. Or we should be very happy that women don't play as many video games.
The best use for this would be to put one on the ISS (or other "nearby" manned spacecraft where speed of light time-lag is not too long).
That way, you'll have an emergency "surgeon" available in case of a medical emergency. Nowhere near as good as a real live doc but better than nothing.
I understand a few years ago, a female scientist had to be evacuated from the Antarctic base in the dead of the ANTARCTIC(!) winter because she had breast cancer. This could have prevented that (and eliminated the risk to the rescue crew. I think they had to keep the plane's engines on so that the skids wouldn't freeze to the ice).
Now what was the name of that "emergency medical program" on Star Trek?
I think we all know what they really mean. ;)
(Anyway, I'm also impressed by the power shown by the GPUs. Its a good demonstration that some of the new technologies (CULA? CUDA?) that allow "regular" programmers to use this power actually will really speed up some things.)
... instead of "all roads lead to Rome."
In addition to the obvious strategic implications of China building these rail lines to link together its "virtual" Eurasian empire (by virtual I mean some of the governments, the "stans" are so corrupt or incompetent that the Chinese are soon going to be their puppetmasters. Just look at what's going on in Afghanistan, we fight and die they profit.), I wonder what other conditions the Chinese will put to the countries who will be connected.
For example, will India be allowed to be a part of it? Talk about cutting out the competition!
I don't know how far ahead the Chinese planning horizon is but if they *think* they have a lock down on all effective dissent for the foreseeable future they might be thinking many decades (centuries) ahead. Sounds grandiose but some companies like Toyota have 100 year plans (though I bet they didn't see these brake problems coming).
... because we all know what counts for journalism in that part of the world: Iran hacks US Spy Sites http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/03/15/147201/Iran-Hacks-US-Spy-Sites.
Never have I seen an article title more in need of the word "Alleged"
As in: Iran Hacks ALLEGED US Spy Sites
Like you are going to believe that "Iran's semi-official Fars News Agency" isn't going to make unsubstantiated claims? (I know double negative, but here it ain't wrong).
I mean look at how his nose "morphed" over the years! I think some of the shapes it went through weren't even human, not according to this software.
Yeah, I'm actually Asian American (with both parents being Asian). So while I might be (overly) nationalistic I don't think I'm being racist. And while I'm not living in China, I'm living in a country right next door.
By the way, since African Americans can say the "N" word without opprobrium, can I use the "C" word. ;)