Regrettably the AC idiots need to be dealt with. Leaving their illiterate posts unanswered implies that they have merit and they will sell that.
Of course I don't take them to heart. If I can distract them from the real engineers and called their lie I've done the little bit that I can do. It's little enough, but it's what I have.
The main asteroid belt is beyond Mars, but it's also the closest space that water ice can remain on a body after all these billions of years. Ceres is a gift. It is a fuel depot for interplanetary exploration. It is a potential habitat. It is a gateway to the stars. 200 quadrillion metric tons of water in a low-g environment close enough to the sun for solar cells to work. What more could you ask for? Somebody to exploit it for you? Just wait and they'll come along but they will charge market rates for the effort and then some margin.
Look up at the GP and see if it meets your idea of the science or the problem. If it does then you are equally guilty of overselling the issue because it is ridiculous to the absurd.
Anoxia, something to teach to our kids so that they at least know what they are going to die from
Really? 400 PPM and our kids are going to die of anoxia?
Making us struggling for water and gasping for air
This is why people laugh at Warmists. The Hyperbole is ridiculous. The Earth's climate was warmer before than now as little as 12,000 years ago. Before that it was mostly uninhabitable by humans for 100,000 years except for some equatorial regions because: ice.
There is something to this. If you have an approved mechanism for intuitively detecting bombs they you have probable cause to terminate a prospective bomber, and if your intuition is right more than half the time on average, you're a hero. Since some few are more accurate with intuition and some less, and the metrics are classified, you are free to open fire indiscriminately anywhere anywhen.
Um, no. That is not how we win the hearts and minds of the people. Since the goal isn't to develop a subject colony but to let the people develop their own governance and withdraw, it would be better if we were more moderate with our weapons so that the locals might be our friends after.
We ran out of batteries for the Wiimotes today so my kids are now watching YouTube, Netflix and Hulu on the Equiso I bought at Walmart for $79. It's an Android stick with dual core, Android 4.0, 1GB RAM, uSDHC. It's paired with a proper controller I bought on Amazon for $20 delivered. Sometimes I browse the Internet with it, for training films. It does YouTube, Netflix and Hulu just fine, and you can browse the Internet with it.
We have Samsung smart TVs and media centers and BluRay players of course that offer Netflix in some limited fashion. I'm a big Samsung fan. But this Android Stick PC offers way more of everything and we have control. It has all the apps I've ever bought on Google Play. I could pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, headhpone and mic and Citrix into my Office world if I wanted to. It has the full Internet - Flash even!
Frankly, Equiso sucked until I bought a proper controller for it on Amazon. Their controller was clever, creative, brilliant, and fucking useless. On one side it has media controls, and on the other a full keyboard with a G sensor so it senses which side is up. But it has echo issues on the keyboard that make the keyboard useless for entering passwords, and the optical connection leaves much to be desired. The thing itself is awesome but the controller link absolutely sucks. Fortunately there are third party controllers you can buy for it.
We have Roku and the Android controller app rocks. If you have a vast media library from "sources" then it rocks. I'm old school and not ready to try that path yet. Of course our Samsung stuff has Android apps for Android tablets and phones to control them, but the devices themselves are quite limited in intelligence relative to a proper Android stick. The Samsung Smart TV app marketplace is hilariously feeble.
The kids like some YouTube guy called "pewdiepie" who seems to be the modern George Carlin and I'm as uncomfortable with that as I suspect my parents were with George Carlin. Unlike my parents I appreciate this opening to engage.
Look, I get that you are an Evangelical or some other type of Luddite who would like to discourage space exploration. The "space nutter" thing was a dead giveaway. My puzzle isn't how to get to the stars, but why you think you're going to get anywhere talking to me of all people. All you're doing is encouraging me write a howto on the necessary path using readily available off-the-shelf technology. If your goal is to prevent this then you have not served it here. You would have done better to stay mute.
If your goal was to troll the howto out of me, then well done! Mission accomplished.
Until, that is, you get out to the Oort cloud where all the water is.
Ceres was the first asteroid discovered and is now classed as a "minor planet". It is a main belt asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. It has a diameter of about 1000 km, and is believed to have a mantle composed almost entirely of water ice that makes up one third of the body's mass. 200 quadrillion metric tons of water ice should be more than sufficient, as it's more than all the fresh water on Earth and ionizing that much water to plasma would take more energy than we have until fusion is worked out. For scale, these interplanetary cubesats would launch with 1.5 kg of water for propellant, or 1/1*10^20 of that. The water ice should be relatively pure as it was gravitically distilled during the formation of the body. Ceres may even have liquid water still. It is a main asteroid belt object near enough to the sun that solar energy is effective for solar water distillation and solar cells. It has an equatorial surface gravity of 0.03g, and an escape velocity of 500 m/s. On the surface it has a thin coat of iron and silicon rich minerals that would also be useful. It is believed to own 1/3rd the mass of the entire main asteroid belt, or just over 1% of the mass of the Moon, 0.01% the mass of the entire Oort cloud all in one convenient low gravity place close enough to the sun for solar cells to work. How much more water the Oort cloud has than Ceres is irrelevant if Ceres has more than we can use in a more convenient place.
In just over 18 months, February 2015, the NASA Dawn mission will arrive there and survey Ceres. NASA Dawn uses an ion engine also, and its delta-V is not very different from that proposed for these cubesats.
On the energy thing: Solar cells are perhaps misnamed because of their historical use. It turns out they convert energy quite well if you point a laser at them. Even better as the laser can be tuned to the maximum conversion frequency of the cell. As the energy of lasers don't diminish as much over distance as other methods it is quite possible to power the "solar cells" of distant craft by pointing lasers at them from closer to the sun where insolation is higher using solar cells as energy input. We think of lasers as a thing that has perfect collimation that makes them useless for powering solar cells but in fact at interplanetary distances past the utility of the sun's energy the beam will be larger than the craft. Our deep space craft need not run out of "solar" energy ever while we care to illuminate them with space-based lasers to the limit of their capacity, even to interstellar space. This is much preferable to carrying the energy with the craft even with nuclear fission fuels. Maybe one day we'll make a craft that goes out to the Oort cloud, eats a comet to refuel on its way to the stars. But that's in the distant future. For now the Oort cloud is off the table.
Because filters exist you can even still use communication lasers on a different frequency from your power lasers. Communication lasers don't suffer from physics as much as radio transmissions do, as long as you use space based relays in Earth orbit with radio ground comms. The Earth's atmosphere plays hob with communication lasers. You still have periods twice a year when you can't talk to the thing, and can't send it power. If you have power and comm relays on Ceres this drops to once in 800 years when both Earth and Ceres are conjoined.
Ionizing the water is part of the process of the engine converting it to plasma, so ordinary water is the input - not some special "ionized" water.
In short, if water works as an ion engine propellant then we've cracked the nut for Man's exploration of the solar system and the stars. Your issue about having to go out to the Oort cloud for water is, of course, ridiculous.
Once our robots start mining Ceres we will have more water on orbit than we know what to do with. Ceres has 200 quadrillion metric tons of the stuff in a convenient concentrated form and low g environment. More than all the fresh water on Earth. We might have to start worrying about free space being polluted with too much water. Argon and xenon might work better but the supply on orbit will always be rare. It would be nice if water works. That is why water is better than Xe: Eventually you might be able to top up here and there.
Exhaust velocity is 20,000 Km/hr and propellant is half the mass of the craft so it should be on the order of Dawn Mission's 10,000 KPH delta V. If it works at all. These ion engines can theoretically run on a wide variety of propellants like xenon, argon or iodine but since water is so common in space it would be nice if it were effective. Ultimately that means one might refuel in transit, or we might shoot fuel at one with a rail gun. Further out there is less solar energy for the solar cells but we can laser illuminate them. Radio is a problem because of power laws, but space to space laser comm fixes that, with satellite to ground radio relays.
One asteroid we know of has 200 quadrillion metric tons of the stuff. Is that both enough and close enough for you? Yes, the Pacific Ocean has more, but it is rather more inconveniently located at the bottom of a deep gravity well.
I have long felt that Microsoft executive work with ad creatives is so bad that by the time it is ready the creators' job has turned from "shine" to "how badly can I mess this up as a grudge and still get it approved? " The answer is of course so hilariously bad that as parody it is the fufillment creatives need.
This is the submit story button. It doesn't render properly on the/. page for IE users, nor for users on Microsoft's/8 IP block. This is a bug in the slashcode introduced during the Get The Facts campaign and it helps cut down on spam submissions. When you get home install a proper browser and click on it regularly, and suddenly slashdot articles will be more to your liking.
No. I put the words that way on purpose to be funny. The intent though is serious. If Terry Myerson can get proper Windows to anywhere near 3% of share of sales he will be my hero - and Steve Ballmer too for appointing him.
And if that happens then a new era in convenience, utility, security and innovation for desktop and laptop users all over the world. Much like happened in mobile. Microsoft won't participate in the benefits of this new era of course, but that's a given. We're going mobile and they aren't coming with us.
Being CEO of the dominant provider of technology performance is measured along many lines.
Did you make more money? At this Steve Ballmer has done well. This is the biggest thing.
Did you remove competitors from the field? At this Steve Ballmer has done well.
Did you get ahead of changes in the marketplace? At this he has done less well.
The rod to measure his success by isn't any of these things though.
An exceptional position implies exceptional expectations of an exceptional person. For over a decade he has had billions of dollars a month to do what he will. What could an exceptional person have achieved with those resources? Did he beat or even equal that? Did he come anywhere close?
If Terry Myerson can bring the Windows franchise near his level of success with Windows Phone I will consider him a hero, and Steve Ballmer as well. They will usher in a new era in convenience, utility, security and innovation for desktop and laptop users all over the world.
You should assume if you are using a computer, tablet or phone that many people are spying on everything you do and a great many more are trying to. They record everything that happens - including many details you don't understand, forever. Starting back in the 1980's at least. Maybe they should put a clear warning on the box instead of hiding it away in the various terms and eula.
Wrongo, moosebreath. The NSA mandate is omniscience. That includes the fat and dickless as much as the hot moms doing Tantric Yoga. It all must be recorded. Admin contractors though, they have a preference. That is why Bing integration gives live video stream context search. "Bing, find blonde women doing yoga."
I have Hulu Plus and Netflix. Every time Hulu starts this ad shit I am clutching for the remote. Fuck you, I paid already, I don't want your shit bad enough to both pay and have ads. The only reason I have hulu at all was the netflix 2 stream limit and they fixed that so hulu was already on the way out anyway. It would be nice if netflix had some more mature content but it isn't that hard to find that.
A lot of people give their lame games away. When you pay $60 for a lame game that is what a good friend does: give it to a friend who is in danger of making the same mistake to try. So the paid for copies circulate until they find somebody who likes it. The more lame a game is, the faster it circulates and the more people discover they should not waste their money on this lame game. That is the evolution that preventing game trading is about. The game maker thinks that is lost revenue. More people would buy lame games if they didn't know the game was lame. That is money they could have got for their lame game that nobody wants who has tried it. For some reason makers of lame games think this is stealing money they should have got and want technology to prevent it. Makers of lame movies and songs have the same point of view. They really don't understand why buyers of games, movies and songs don't want to help them with this goal.
The ads are a feature. Based on what the Kinect sees when you forget to turn it to the wall it will know whether to offer you medical services, viagra, penis enhancement pills, cheetos and hot pockets or flavored lube.
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Thanks.
Regrettably the AC idiots need to be dealt with. Leaving their illiterate posts unanswered implies that they have merit and they will sell that.
Of course I don't take them to heart. If I can distract them from the real engineers and called their lie I've done the little bit that I can do. It's little enough, but it's what I have.
The main asteroid belt is beyond Mars, but it's also the closest space that water ice can remain on a body after all these billions of years. Ceres is a gift. It is a fuel depot for interplanetary exploration. It is a potential habitat. It is a gateway to the stars. 200 quadrillion metric tons of water in a low-g environment close enough to the sun for solar cells to work. What more could you ask for? Somebody to exploit it for you? Just wait and they'll come along but they will charge market rates for the effort and then some margin.
Look up at the GP and see if it meets your idea of the science or the problem. If it does then you are equally guilty of overselling the issue because it is ridiculous to the absurd.
Anoxia, something to teach to our kids so that they at least know what they are going to die from
Really? 400 PPM and our kids are going to die of anoxia?
Making us struggling for water and gasping for air
Oh please.
When you're concerned about your foundry partner stealing your IP price is not an issue.
This is why people laugh at Warmists. The Hyperbole is ridiculous. The Earth's climate was warmer before than now as little as 12,000 years ago. Before that it was mostly uninhabitable by humans for 100,000 years except for some equatorial regions because: ice.
There is something to this. If you have an approved mechanism for intuitively detecting bombs they you have probable cause to terminate a prospective bomber, and if your intuition is right more than half the time on average, you're a hero. Since some few are more accurate with intuition and some less, and the metrics are classified, you are free to open fire indiscriminately anywhere anywhen.
Um, no. That is not how we win the hearts and minds of the people. Since the goal isn't to develop a subject colony but to let the people develop their own governance and withdraw, it would be better if we were more moderate with our weapons so that the locals might be our friends after.
We ran out of batteries for the Wiimotes today so my kids are now watching YouTube, Netflix and Hulu on the Equiso I bought at Walmart for $79. It's an Android stick with dual core, Android 4.0, 1GB RAM, uSDHC. It's paired with a proper controller I bought on Amazon for $20 delivered. Sometimes I browse the Internet with it, for training films. It does YouTube, Netflix and Hulu just fine, and you can browse the Internet with it.
We have Samsung smart TVs and media centers and BluRay players of course that offer Netflix in some limited fashion. I'm a big Samsung fan. But this Android Stick PC offers way more of everything and we have control. It has all the apps I've ever bought on Google Play. I could pair it with a Bluetooth keyboard, mouse, headhpone and mic and Citrix into my Office world if I wanted to. It has the full Internet - Flash even!
Frankly, Equiso sucked until I bought a proper controller for it on Amazon. Their controller was clever, creative, brilliant, and fucking useless. On one side it has media controls, and on the other a full keyboard with a G sensor so it senses which side is up. But it has echo issues on the keyboard that make the keyboard useless for entering passwords, and the optical connection leaves much to be desired. The thing itself is awesome but the controller link absolutely sucks. Fortunately there are third party controllers you can buy for it.
We have Roku and the Android controller app rocks. If you have a vast media library from "sources" then it rocks. I'm old school and not ready to try that path yet. Of course our Samsung stuff has Android apps for Android tablets and phones to control them, but the devices themselves are quite limited in intelligence relative to a proper Android stick. The Samsung Smart TV app marketplace is hilariously feeble.
The kids like some YouTube guy called "pewdiepie" who seems to be the modern George Carlin and I'm as uncomfortable with that as I suspect my parents were with George Carlin. Unlike my parents I appreciate this opening to engage.
Look, I get that you are an Evangelical or some other type of Luddite who would like to discourage space exploration. The "space nutter" thing was a dead giveaway. My puzzle isn't how to get to the stars, but why you think you're going to get anywhere talking to me of all people. All you're doing is encouraging me write a howto on the necessary path using readily available off-the-shelf technology. If your goal is to prevent this then you have not served it here. You would have done better to stay mute.
If your goal was to troll the howto out of me, then well done! Mission accomplished.
Until, that is, you get out to the Oort cloud where all the water is.
Ceres was the first asteroid discovered and is now classed as a "minor planet". It is a main belt asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. It has a diameter of about 1000 km, and is believed to have a mantle composed almost entirely of water ice that makes up one third of the body's mass. 200 quadrillion metric tons of water ice should be more than sufficient, as it's more than all the fresh water on Earth and ionizing that much water to plasma would take more energy than we have until fusion is worked out. For scale, these interplanetary cubesats would launch with 1.5 kg of water for propellant, or 1/1*10^20 of that. The water ice should be relatively pure as it was gravitically distilled during the formation of the body. Ceres may even have liquid water still. It is a main asteroid belt object near enough to the sun that solar energy is effective for solar water distillation and solar cells. It has an equatorial surface gravity of 0.03g, and an escape velocity of 500 m/s. On the surface it has a thin coat of iron and silicon rich minerals that would also be useful. It is believed to own 1/3rd the mass of the entire main asteroid belt, or just over 1% of the mass of the Moon, 0.01% the mass of the entire Oort cloud all in one convenient low gravity place close enough to the sun for solar cells to work. How much more water the Oort cloud has than Ceres is irrelevant if Ceres has more than we can use in a more convenient place.
In just over 18 months, February 2015, the NASA Dawn mission will arrive there and survey Ceres. NASA Dawn uses an ion engine also, and its delta-V is not very different from that proposed for these cubesats.
On the energy thing: Solar cells are perhaps misnamed because of their historical use. It turns out they convert energy quite well if you point a laser at them. Even better as the laser can be tuned to the maximum conversion frequency of the cell. As the energy of lasers don't diminish as much over distance as other methods it is quite possible to power the "solar cells" of distant craft by pointing lasers at them from closer to the sun where insolation is higher using solar cells as energy input. We think of lasers as a thing that has perfect collimation that makes them useless for powering solar cells but in fact at interplanetary distances past the utility of the sun's energy the beam will be larger than the craft. Our deep space craft need not run out of "solar" energy ever while we care to illuminate them with space-based lasers to the limit of their capacity, even to interstellar space. This is much preferable to carrying the energy with the craft even with nuclear fission fuels. Maybe one day we'll make a craft that goes out to the Oort cloud, eats a comet to refuel on its way to the stars. But that's in the distant future. For now the Oort cloud is off the table.
Because filters exist you can even still use communication lasers on a different frequency from your power lasers. Communication lasers don't suffer from physics as much as radio transmissions do, as long as you use space based relays in Earth orbit with radio ground comms. The Earth's atmosphere plays hob with communication lasers. You still have periods twice a year when you can't talk to the thing, and can't send it power. If you have power and comm relays on Ceres this drops to once in 800 years when both Earth and Ceres are conjoined.
Ionizing the water is part of the process of the engine converting it to plasma, so ordinary water is the input - not some special "ionized" water.
In short, if water works as an ion engine propellant then we've cracked the nut for Man's exploration of the solar system and the stars. Your issue about having to go out to the Oort cloud for water is, of course, ridiculous.
Once our robots start mining Ceres we will have more water on orbit than we know what to do with. Ceres has 200 quadrillion metric tons of the stuff in a convenient concentrated form and low g environment. More than all the fresh water on Earth. We might have to start worrying about free space being polluted with too much water. Argon and xenon might work better but the supply on orbit will always be rare. It would be nice if water works. That is why water is better than Xe: Eventually you might be able to top up here and there.
Exhaust velocity is 20,000 Km/hr and propellant is half the mass of the craft so it should be on the order of Dawn Mission's 10,000 KPH delta V. If it works at all. These ion engines can theoretically run on a wide variety of propellants like xenon, argon or iodine but since water is so common in space it would be nice if it were effective. Ultimately that means one might refuel in transit, or we might shoot fuel at one with a rail gun. Further out there is less solar energy for the solar cells but we can laser illuminate them. Radio is a problem because of power laws, but space to space laser comm fixes that, with satellite to ground radio relays.
One asteroid we know of has 200 quadrillion metric tons of the stuff. Is that both enough and close enough for you? Yes, the Pacific Ocean has more, but it is rather more inconveniently located at the bottom of a deep gravity well.
I have long felt that Microsoft executive work with ad creatives is so bad that by the time it is ready the creators' job has turned from "shine" to "how badly can I mess this up as a grudge and still get it approved? " The answer is of course so hilariously bad that as parody it is the fufillment creatives need.
This is the submit story button. It doesn't render properly on the /. page for IE users, nor for users on Microsoft's /8 IP block. This is a bug in the slashcode introduced during the Get The Facts campaign and it helps cut down on spam submissions. When you get home install a proper browser and click on it regularly, and suddenly slashdot articles will be more to your liking.
You will be glad to hear that Windows logo certification program in 2014 will include a webcam and microphone requirement.
No. I put the words that way on purpose to be funny. The intent though is serious. If Terry Myerson can get proper Windows to anywhere near 3% of share of sales he will be my hero - and Steve Ballmer too for appointing him.
And if that happens then a new era in convenience, utility, security and innovation for desktop and laptop users all over the world. Much like happened in mobile. Microsoft won't participate in the benefits of this new era of course, but that's a given. We're going mobile and they aren't coming with us.
Being CEO of the dominant provider of technology performance is measured along many lines.
The rod to measure his success by isn't any of these things though.
An exceptional position implies exceptional expectations of an exceptional person. For over a decade he has had billions of dollars a month to do what he will. What could an exceptional person have achieved with those resources? Did he beat or even equal that? Did he come anywhere close?
If Terry Myerson can bring the Windows franchise near his level of success with Windows Phone I will consider him a hero, and Steve Ballmer as well. They will usher in a new era in convenience, utility, security and innovation for desktop and laptop users all over the world.
You should assume if you are using a computer, tablet or phone that many people are spying on everything you do and a great many more are trying to. They record everything that happens - including many details you don't understand, forever. Starting back in the 1980's at least. Maybe they should put a clear warning on the box instead of hiding it away in the various terms and eula.
Ads for Bing, mostly.
Wrongo, moosebreath. The NSA mandate is omniscience. That includes the fat and dickless as much as the hot moms doing Tantric Yoga. It all must be recorded. Admin contractors though, they have a preference. That is why Bing integration gives live video stream context search. "Bing, find blonde women doing yoga."
Those are not netflix ads. They are part of the content.
I have Hulu Plus and Netflix. Every time Hulu starts this ad shit I am clutching for the remote. Fuck you, I paid already, I don't want your shit bad enough to both pay and have ads. The only reason I have hulu at all was the netflix 2 stream limit and they fixed that so hulu was already on the way out anyway. It would be nice if netflix had some more mature content but it isn't that hard to find that.
A lot of people give their lame games away. When you pay $60 for a lame game that is what a good friend does: give it to a friend who is in danger of making the same mistake to try. So the paid for copies circulate until they find somebody who likes it. The more lame a game is, the faster it circulates and the more people discover they should not waste their money on this lame game. That is the evolution that preventing game trading is about. The game maker thinks that is lost revenue. More people would buy lame games if they didn't know the game was lame. That is money they could have got for their lame game that nobody wants who has tried it. For some reason makers of lame games think this is stealing money they should have got and want technology to prevent it. Makers of lame movies and songs have the same point of view. They really don't understand why buyers of games, movies and songs don't want to help them with this goal.
The ads are a feature. Based on what the Kinect sees when you forget to turn it to the wall it will know whether to offer you medical services, viagra, penis enhancement pills, cheetos and hot pockets or flavored lube.