...not because they are who they are (MicroSoft, who has de facto dominace over the desktop, and thus are evil according to the tinfoil-crowd), but because no one should be allowed to get away with something as silly as this.
Its not even like the name MikeRoweSoft.com sounds that much like MicroSoft.com anyway, at least not to my ears. Possible the pronocication is different in MS HQ, but... this is plain silly. It would have been a different matter if Mike Rowe had called his website MikroSoft.com, but as he didn't I can't see that even MS's battalions of lawyers can believe they have a case.
In fact, it is in the US 'pressing national interest' not to break the treaty. Because if the US breaks it or discards it, the treshold for others, like Russia and China, to do likewise is severly redused.
Article IV
States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.
The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortification, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. The use of any equipment or facility necessary for peaceful exploration of the moon and other celestial bodies shall also not be prohibited.
Read the first paragrah again - the treaty forbids the deployment of nukes in space. If this treaty don't hold, what is to stop the Ruskis and the chinks to launch several satelites with huge nukes and have them in orbits putting them right over the US? Think EMP, virtually zero reaction time attacks and blackmail... do the US goverment want that to happen? I seriously don't think so. Despite all the stupid stuff politicans do all over the world, they are usually good at not putting themself in a situation where they are at the mercy of someone else.
When scientist first discovered that you could split some atoms under certain conditions, they didn't know what it could be used for... but today we know we can use it for a lot of things (including, sadly enought, weapons that can kill a city in a single instant).
Sometimes science has no other intended purpose than to push back the borders of ignorance, but the eventiall fallout from it is enourmous. Who would have thought that a few entusiasts playing with liquidfueled rockets in the 20's would - eventually and via a lot of backroads - lead to the invention of velcro?
Ask again in a few decades, I'm sure people will be surpriced by all the things we didn't realise you can use supersolids for.
While the 'big bad goverment' could - in theory - use a central database of micropayment to track your online movements. On the other hand, just consider how many online users there are out there. Even if you only consider the ones originating from the US, there is still a number to large to keep tracks on, so while the 'big bad goverment' could in theory use this to spy on everybody the amounth of data is just too large to be practical.
I believe, that if your scenario comes to pass, it will be used to see if anyone has payed online for illegal contents - like child-porn or bomb making manuals. And thats somethign they can do today as well, if you use your credit card to buy stuff of the web.
Keep your tinfoil hat off - micropayments arn't the tools of evil, and remember that someone else probaly are offering the stuff you want for free somewhere else on the 'net.
Mars is not out of reach with current technology. In fact, Mars has been in reach since the mid 60's, technologywise. The real problem is money.
Radiation might be a problem, but there are known ways around this. One could, as you suggest, go faster. Going faster does not imply nuclear propulsion in the style of SciFi or Orion, all you need is to is to keep accelereating all the time by using ion-engines. Even a constant acceleration of just 0.1G would cut a significant amount of the travelingtime, in addition to the other beneficial efects (like helping to reduse the loss of bonemass). When you get there you just have to break harder, but since Mars does have an atmosphere, aerobreaking can be utilised.
Yes, I know that making ionengines powerfull enought to give a manned spacecraft an acceleration of 0.1G is something we can't do today, or even this week. But we have mastered the tech to make ionengines, so it's just a question of development, rather than a question of inovation.
Re:OT: Did the USSR ever have a manned moon missio
on
Dreams of the Moon
·
· Score: 3, Informative
If this European system doesn't offer more accuracy then it should be scrapped. There is no point to it beyond pure egotism.
Actually, thats the sort of comment I would expect fom an AC, not a full fledged member. Okay.. the entire point - which, if the article is correct, stands in danger of beeing undermined - is to provide a system that isn't dependent on the US. You may or may not agree, but there are people all over the world who don't want to be reliant on the goodwill of the US military when it comes to navigation. If you're trying to land a fully loaded 767 on a runway in less than perfect visibility, it sucks if the US military suddenly scrambles the GPS in suppoert of the pre-empative invation taking place next door...
There already exists a russian nav-sat system up there, but it's accurancy is equall to very early GPS at it's best. It's certainly good enought to find your way with, and probaly good enought for a terroristbuilt cruisemissile, but for most other uses we uses GPS for today it's not good enought by far. So there is a need to have a second, indepentent constelation of nav-sats hanging overhead.
I can understand the logic behind the US 'request'. However, it makes a lot more sence if the nations behind the european system built a simular capability to mess up the signals as there is in the GPS today. Then the US could, via proper diplomatic channels, ask for the system to be taken down over spesifics areas. Independence is retained, the legal consumer gets two systems to choose from, and Bobs your uncle.
Because a more than a fair bit of the mac-users are semi-relgious about their OS of choice* and would rather walk on fire than to publicly admit that there is a problem with it?
Seriously thought, I strongly believe that the correct way to handle any exploit you find - no matter what OS or app - is to first contact the people who wrote the software. If they fail to fo somethign about it, then go tell the world, thus shaming them into doing something. And if they still wont fix it.. well, then it says somethign about their priorities, right?
*) Fair is fair; you'll find these kind of people among the users of Linux, FreeBDS, Windows and every other OS too.
Or how about URLs you have to spell differently than you spell the name of the company in question? Thats a pretty harebraided idea, but one very many* people online today. Take for instance norwegians (as I happen to be one myself). The norwegian alphabet consists of 29 letters, the old 26 from latin (a-z) as well as three I can't show you here on/. since the site for some bizarre reason don't support them**. Therefore we're forced to use 'ae', 'oe' and 'aa'*** instead, opening for plenty more misunderstandsings for _norwegian_ websites catering for the _norwegian_ public. And since I still have to discover any online tranlator that can translate norwegian into english, I dare say that the chance of any non-norwegian needing to type the URL is slim at best.
So frankly, you can have a big serving of STFU. If you don't see the point of this, you prolly will never use it anyway, or even notice. For those of us who actually care, this is pretty good news.
__*) I would - wihtout seeing any proof - guess that the majority of people online today does not speak english as their native tounge.
_**) Other US sites do...
***) For those interested, the ascii-codes are 230, 248 and 229 for small letters, and 198, 216 and 197 for capitals.
So last time you checked, thermal energy didn't work? Odd, I'm pretty sure I didn't turn that off...
Seriously, I can see two ways of doing this: Either you find some way of bringing the heat from the upper layers down to the colder ones and tap part of the energy as it radiates, or you bring up somethign cold from the deapth and tap part of the energy as it is warmed up. One system I saw described in a popular science magasine a few years back involded phasechanging wax from solid to liquid and back again.
Basicly, to 'sip' power from seawater is not significanlty different than making electricity with geothermal energy - it's just a bit harder to pack all the bits into a tiny topedoshaped hull.
This seems measuremade for 'dumb' drones that swim (or rather fly) around in the big blue ocean and collects data, but I wonder; could this technology be used for larger, manned crafts too? One possibility is a even more stealty military submarine* - possible with a more conventional propulsionsystem in adition to the ability to fly - but more civilian applications seems possible too. Perhaps giant cargovessels** and supertankers, pulling energy out of the seawater (RTFA) and cruising under the busy sealanes?
_*) Submarines are plenty stealty already...
**)The cargocarreing submarine is not a new idea, the germans launced Deutchland, and later the idea has resurfaced several itmes.
Trouble is, the earths biosphere is a very large and very, very complex thing. How can we know that accientially causing somethign to change in the deep sea won't affect the life in the higher layers of the sea, thus creating the possibility that we loose a major foodsource for humanity?
One suggestion I've heard that _could_ work is to deposit nucular waste at one of those places where one contineltal plate is sliding under another. A few hundred years,and the waste will be carried deep into the core of the earth.
Another workable idea would be to finally get of our asses and build a space-elevator (which would benefit us anyway) and use that to lift the wast first into orbit and then fling it into the sun.
Yeah, disposal is a problem.. but it's not like it wasn't just lying around to begin with.
Oh please.. that old, tired argument again. YES, uranium occurs in most rocks in concentrations of 2 to 4 parts per million and is as common in the earth's crust as tin, tungsten and molybdenum. HOWEVER, uranium in the natural state is a mix of two isotopes; 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% U-235. And guess what? U-238 is barely radioactive, with a halflife of about 4500 million years. U-235 on the other hand is way more radioactive, and thus the part they are interested in using for reactorcores.
Guess what? The enriched uranium they use in reactors contains in the region of 3% to 4% U-235 - making it litterary too hot to handle. Even 'spendt' reacorfuel contains more U-235 than ordinary oranium-ore, as well as more than a bit of Pu-239 and Pu-240 (the longer the fuel stays in the reacor, the more Pu-240). And Pu-239 and Pu-240 is two isotopes of an element better known as plutonium... granted, it's not weapongrade plutonium, but it's still something I wouldn't have scattered about.
Fact: There is little or no pollution from an operative reacor.
Fact: Spent fuelrods from reactors are a major enviromental problem.
Seriously thought, VoIP isn't a new thing. I myself use it frequently to talk to my fiancee in the US - as I've have broadband I don't pay any extra to call her, and as she don't pay for local calls* she don't have to pay anything either. The option - picking up my phone and dial her number - would cost me a staggering 9 cents a minute, as well as gobbling up her 'long distance minutes'** (I would have to use her mobile phone; as much as I like my motehr in law, I don't want her to be able to listen in, and as the phone is in the kitchen...). I'm happy to see that the US is taking up numberportability thought - somethign we've enjoyed for years now. The next step they are introdusing here seems to be the ability to take your number along even if you move from one end of the nation to the other.
_*) This is the one issue which I think the US telecomsystem is better than the norwegian one.
**) What kind of idiot decided that _you_ should pay when someone calls you? As long as y'all accepts that, you'll be getting screwed bigtime by your telcos.
A forthcoming copyright bill backed by key U.S. senators would place file swappers in prison for up to three years if they have a copy of even one prerelease movie in their shared folders.
So... if you keep a copy of a movie thats not yet released in a shared folder, you can be punished by up to three years in a pound-my-ass prison and a fine of up to $250K. So all you got to do is to move it out of your shared folder, and instead of swapping it over P2P simply burn out a few copies for your friends and family. Problem solved.
...wether he can claim ownership or not, but about wether NASA has access or not. It rather neatly bypassed the issue of wether or not a private induvidual can own stuff in space. It simply state that all (nation)states has the right to explore any celestial body with no discrimination and with free access.
I would suggest reading the rest of the treaty as well, as it's plenty interesting. I got a couple of other snippets you might actually like:
Article I, third paragraph: "There shall be freedom of scientific investigation in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and States shall facilitate and encourage international co-operation in such investigation."
Article II, entire article: "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
Now, while INAL, the language here is very clear. Space is open for anyone to explore, and no nationstate can make a claim on any celestial bodies (so you can't go around saying the moon belongs to the USA). No mention is made to the effect that private persons can or can not stake a claim on anything up there. But, if they can stake a claim and have it accepted as legal, they cannot ask for money to let a scientific probe land there - Article I, second paragraph, demands free access to all areas of celestial bodies for the purpose of exploration.
Interstingly enought, the treaty also allows one (ntion)state to inspect the 'stations, installations, equipment and space vehicles' of another (nation)state on the moon or any other celestial bodies, ref article XII: "All stations, installations, equipment and space vehicles on the moon and other celestial bodies shall be open to representatives of other States Parties to the Treaty on a basis of reciprocity. Such representatives shall give reasonable advance notice of a projected visit, in order that appropriate consultations may be held and that maximum precautions may betaken to assure safety and to avoid interference with normal operations in the facility to be visited."
Now, I'm getting curious - how do one 'establish a claim' on a piece of rock that's orbiting the sun? If it's just a cause of calling dids and grabbing what you can, I think I'ld like to claim ownership of Europa (no, not the continent, the ice covered rock thats up there). Not only can I charge NASA for parking there, but if they do find life, I can sue those organisms for not paying rent as well...
Seriously thought, someone should brief these fellows on the international agreements that relates to 'Principles Governing the Activities of States
in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including
the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies'. Pay particular attention to the second paragraph in article I, qouted in full; Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.
In short, if NASA or anyone else can land somewhere, they are free to do so. End of story.
...but small steps of steady progress doesn't mean entering the 'space race' and going straight for the moon...
And this differs from the US approach in what fashion?
Once Mercury had proven that the US could indeed send a man into orbit, JFK declared that the US would send people to the moon. Project Gemeni was actually a stop-gap - giving NASA a way better craft than Mercury to test differnt ways of doing things (long duration spaceflight, docking and undocking in space, spacewalks and so on) before the first Apollo capsules became operational. If you read up the history, you will find that Apollo Mk I was intended to do a lot of those things in earth orbit. Following the fire at the launchpad, in which the US lost three of her astronauts, the people in charge at NASA decided to fly no Mk Is, instead using only Apollo Mk II. One reason they could do that was because of the basic research done by the Gemini.
The chinese has two major advantages. Firstly, a lot of the theory about how to do all those kind of stuff is already public knowledge. Secondly, their spacecraft is based on the soviet Soyuz, which itself was designed to have a lunar capacity - so unlike the US which had to use three very different crafts in less then ten years, they can stick to one and gradually refine it.
So in every sence of the word, 'jumping onto the spacerace and heading straight for the moon' is a very incremental process.
While it is true that humanity as a whole has previous experince in landing on another rock in the solar system, the chinese do not. And it's more sensible to do it the first time in relative proximity to earth, where communications are nearly instantinious and home is just four days away, rahter than to go to Mars and hope everything works out just like they did in the simulator.
AFAIK, the chinese are plannin g a spacestation as well as a manned moonmission, and I got a hunch they won't stop there. So far all of their achivments can be dismissed as something other nations already has done - but as far as I can understand the mindset that drives the chinese spaceprograme (which appears to be close to the mindset that drove the early soviet and US spaceprogrames), they 'need' to do something spectaluar that no-one has done before.
A permanet moonbase might suit this criteria, or a manned mission to Mars... but they need to learn to walk before they can run.
Tried before? Uhm... you you care to back that statement up, preferable with links? Because, even thought some germans during the last big war messed with rocketproppeled planes, those wasn't meant to go anywhere near space, and the various winged programs (DynaSoar, Shuttle, Buran to name a few) that has been either close to flight or actually has flown have all been large, costly goverment programs.
AFAIK civilians has always dreamed of "cobbling together a rocketship in the backyard" and head up into space, but it's only the last few years that the technology needed has reached a pricepoint where it is possible for anyone but a goverment to afford to develop and build a manned spaceship (or even a suborbital one). Papaerprojects has floated around since before the dawn of the spaceage, but no one went into space on those. It looks like the X-prize and XCOR are the first programs that results in actuall hardware beeing built.
On the other hand, if you want a real affordable, private launch, you could try cobbling together a huge suger or sorbitol rocket, put a chair on it and see if you can't get hold of something like the MOOSE. Off course, you would need a suit too, but as the early suits where souped up versions of a standard flightsuit, a visit to the nearest military surplus store will solve that.
So there you have it... an simple, affordable launchsystem. Wonder why no one has done that... oh, safety. Right.
Slashdot Mirror
...not because they are who they are (MicroSoft, who has de facto dominace over the desktop, and thus are evil according to the tinfoil-crowd), but because no one should be allowed to get away with something as silly as this.
Its not even like the name MikeRoweSoft.com sounds that much like MicroSoft.com anyway, at least not to my ears. Possible the pronocication is different in MS HQ, but... this is plain silly. It would have been a different matter if Mike Rowe had called his website MikroSoft.com, but as he didn't I can't see that even MS's battalions of lawyers can believe they have a case.
In fact, it is in the US 'pressing national interest' not to break the treaty. Because if the US breaks it or discards it, the treshold for others, like Russia and China, to do likewise is severly redused.
Article IV
States Parties to the Treaty undertake not to place in orbit around the earth any objects carrying nuclear weapons or any other kinds of weapons of mass destruction, install such weapons on celestial bodies, or station such weapons in outer space in any other manner.
The moon and other celestial bodies shall be used by all States Parties to the Treaty exclusively for peaceful purposes. The establishment of military bases, installations and fortification, the testing of any type of weapons and the conduct of military manoeuvers on celestial bodies shall be forbidden. The use of military personnel for scientific research or for any other peaceful purposes shall not be prohibited. The use of any equipment or facility necessary for peaceful exploration of the moon and other celestial bodies shall also not be prohibited.
Read the first paragrah again - the treaty forbids the deployment of nukes in space. If this treaty don't hold, what is to stop the Ruskis and the chinks to launch several satelites with huge nukes and have them in orbits putting them right over the US? Think EMP, virtually zero reaction time attacks and blackmail... do the US goverment want that to happen? I seriously don't think so. Despite all the stupid stuff politicans do all over the world, they are usually good at not putting themself in a situation where they are at the mercy of someone else.
Would you mind terrible backing that up with some links please? It's not that I don't nececarely believe you, but it's the first time I heard it.
When scientist first discovered that you could split some atoms under certain conditions, they didn't know what it could be used for... but today we know we can use it for a lot of things (including, sadly enought, weapons that can kill a city in a single instant).
Sometimes science has no other intended purpose than to push back the borders of ignorance, but the eventiall fallout from it is enourmous. Who would have thought that a few entusiasts playing with liquidfueled rockets in the 20's would - eventually and via a lot of backroads - lead to the invention of velcro?
Ask again in a few decades, I'm sure people will be surpriced by all the things we didn't realise you can use supersolids for.
While the 'big bad goverment' could - in theory - use a central database of micropayment to track your online movements. On the other hand, just consider how many online users there are out there. Even if you only consider the ones originating from the US, there is still a number to large to keep tracks on, so while the 'big bad goverment' could in theory use this to spy on everybody the amounth of data is just too large to be practical.
I believe, that if your scenario comes to pass, it will be used to see if anyone has payed online for illegal contents - like child-porn or bomb making manuals. And thats somethign they can do today as well, if you use your credit card to buy stuff of the web.
Keep your tinfoil hat off - micropayments arn't the tools of evil, and remember that someone else probaly are offering the stuff you want for free somewhere else on the 'net.
Mars is not out of reach with current technology. In fact, Mars has been in reach since the mid 60's, technologywise. The real problem is money.
Radiation might be a problem, but there are known ways around this. One could, as you suggest, go faster. Going faster does not imply nuclear propulsion in the style of SciFi or Orion, all you need is to is to keep accelereating all the time by using ion-engines. Even a constant acceleration of just 0.1G would cut a significant amount of the travelingtime, in addition to the other beneficial efects (like helping to reduse the loss of bonemass). When you get there you just have to break harder, but since Mars does have an atmosphere, aerobreaking can be utilised.
Yes, I know that making ionengines powerfull enought to give a manned spacecraft an acceleration of 0.1G is something we can't do today, or even this week. But we have mastered the tech to make ionengines, so it's just a question of development, rather than a question of inovation.
Short answer; No
Long answer; Read this excelent artcle about the various soviet lunar programs.
If this European system doesn't offer more accuracy then it should be scrapped. There is no point to it beyond pure egotism.
Actually, thats the sort of comment I would expect fom an AC, not a full fledged member. Okay.. the entire point - which, if the article is correct, stands in danger of beeing undermined - is to provide a system that isn't dependent on the US. You may or may not agree, but there are people all over the world who don't want to be reliant on the goodwill of the US military when it comes to navigation. If you're trying to land a fully loaded 767 on a runway in less than perfect visibility, it sucks if the US military suddenly scrambles the GPS in suppoert of the pre-empative invation taking place next door...
There already exists a russian nav-sat system up there, but it's accurancy is equall to very early GPS at it's best. It's certainly good enought to find your way with, and probaly good enought for a terroristbuilt cruisemissile, but for most other uses we uses GPS for today it's not good enought by far. So there is a need to have a second, indepentent constelation of nav-sats hanging overhead.
I can understand the logic behind the US 'request'. However, it makes a lot more sence if the nations behind the european system built a simular capability to mess up the signals as there is in the GPS today. Then the US could, via proper diplomatic channels, ask for the system to be taken down over spesifics areas. Independence is retained, the legal consumer gets two systems to choose from, and Bobs your uncle.
Because a more than a fair bit of the mac-users are semi-relgious about their OS of choice* and would rather walk on fire than to publicly admit that there is a problem with it?
Seriously thought, I strongly believe that the correct way to handle any exploit you find - no matter what OS or app - is to first contact the people who wrote the software. If they fail to fo somethign about it, then go tell the world, thus shaming them into doing something. And if they still wont fix it.. well, then it says somethign about their priorities, right?
*) Fair is fair; you'll find these kind of people among the users of Linux, FreeBDS, Windows and every other OS too.
Or how about URLs you have to spell differently than you spell the name of the company in question? Thats a pretty harebraided idea, but one very many* people online today. Take for instance norwegians (as I happen to be one myself). The norwegian alphabet consists of 29 letters, the old 26 from latin (a-z) as well as three I can't show you here on /. since the site for some bizarre reason don't support them**. Therefore we're forced to use 'ae', 'oe' and 'aa'*** instead, opening for plenty more misunderstandsings for _norwegian_ websites catering for the _norwegian_ public. And since I still have to discover any online tranlator that can translate norwegian into english, I dare say that the chance of any non-norwegian needing to type the URL is slim at best.
So frankly, you can have a big serving of STFU. If you don't see the point of this, you prolly will never use it anyway, or even notice. For those of us who actually care, this is pretty good news.
__*) I would - wihtout seeing any proof - guess that the majority of people online today does not speak english as their native tounge.
_**) Other US sites do...
***) For those interested, the ascii-codes are 230, 248 and 229 for small letters, and 198, 216 and 197 for capitals.
I assume 'sip' is journalistspeak for 'thermal energy transfer'...
So last time you checked, thermal energy didn't work? Odd, I'm pretty sure I didn't turn that off...
Seriously, I can see two ways of doing this: Either you find some way of bringing the heat from the upper layers down to the colder ones and tap part of the energy as it radiates, or you bring up somethign cold from the deapth and tap part of the energy as it is warmed up. One system I saw described in a popular science magasine a few years back involded phasechanging wax from solid to liquid and back again.
Basicly, to 'sip' power from seawater is not significanlty different than making electricity with geothermal energy - it's just a bit harder to pack all the bits into a tiny topedoshaped hull.
This seems measuremade for 'dumb' drones that swim (or rather fly) around in the big blue ocean and collects data, but I wonder; could this technology be used for larger, manned crafts too? One possibility is a even more stealty military submarine* - possible with a more conventional propulsionsystem in adition to the ability to fly - but more civilian applications seems possible too. Perhaps giant cargovessels** and supertankers, pulling energy out of the seawater (RTFA) and cruising under the busy sealanes?
_*) Submarines are plenty stealty already...
**)The cargocarreing submarine is not a new idea, the germans launced Deutchland, and later the idea has resurfaced several itmes.
Trouble is, the earths biosphere is a very large and very, very complex thing. How can we know that accientially causing somethign to change in the deep sea won't affect the life in the higher layers of the sea, thus creating the possibility that we loose a major foodsource for humanity?
One suggestion I've heard that _could_ work is to deposit nucular waste at one of those places where one contineltal plate is sliding under another. A few hundred years,and the waste will be carried deep into the core of the earth.
Another workable idea would be to finally get of our asses and build a space-elevator (which would benefit us anyway) and use that to lift the wast first into orbit and then fling it into the sun.
Yeah, disposal is a problem.. but it's not like it wasn't just lying around to begin with.
Oh please.. that old, tired argument again. YES, uranium occurs in most rocks in concentrations of 2 to 4 parts per million and is as common in the earth's crust as tin, tungsten and molybdenum. HOWEVER, uranium in the natural state is a mix of two isotopes; 99.3% U-238 and 0.7% U-235. And guess what? U-238 is barely radioactive, with a halflife of about 4500 million years. U-235 on the other hand is way more radioactive, and thus the part they are interested in using for reactorcores.
Guess what? The enriched uranium they use in reactors contains in the region of 3% to 4% U-235 - making it litterary too hot to handle. Even 'spendt' reacorfuel contains more U-235 than ordinary oranium-ore, as well as more than a bit of Pu-239 and Pu-240 (the longer the fuel stays in the reacor, the more Pu-240). And Pu-239 and Pu-240 is two isotopes of an element better known as plutonium... granted, it's not weapongrade plutonium, but it's still something I wouldn't have scattered about.
Fact: There is little or no pollution from an operative reacor.
Fact: Spent fuelrods from reactors are a major enviromental problem.
You might find this and this webpage interesting.
Well, it doesn't matter. Will you go and tell your master that Arthur from the Court of Camelot is here?
Blue
If you can't beat them, sue them!
Seriously thought, VoIP isn't a new thing. I myself use it frequently to talk to my fiancee in the US - as I've have broadband I don't pay any extra to call her, and as she don't pay for local calls* she don't have to pay anything either. The option - picking up my phone and dial her number - would cost me a staggering 9 cents a minute, as well as gobbling up her 'long distance minutes'** (I would have to use her mobile phone; as much as I like my motehr in law, I don't want her to be able to listen in, and as the phone is in the kitchen...). I'm happy to see that the US is taking up numberportability thought - somethign we've enjoyed for years now. The next step they are introdusing here seems to be the ability to take your number along even if you move from one end of the nation to the other.
_*) This is the one issue which I think the US telecomsystem is better than the norwegian one.
**) What kind of idiot decided that _you_ should pay when someone calls you? As long as y'all accepts that, you'll be getting screwed bigtime by your telcos.
..if you read the article.
So... if you keep a copy of a movie thats not yet released in a shared folder, you can be punished by up to three years in a pound-my-ass prison and a fine of up to $250K. So all you got to do is to move it out of your shared folder, and instead of swapping it over P2P simply burn out a few copies for your friends and family. Problem solved.
...actually beeing there. Real Reality beats Virtual Reality nine times out of ten.
...wether he can claim ownership or not, but about wether NASA has access or not. It rather neatly bypassed the issue of wether or not a private induvidual can own stuff in space. It simply state that all (nation)states has the right to explore any celestial body with no discrimination and with free access.
I would suggest reading the rest of the treaty as well, as it's plenty interesting. I got a couple of other snippets you might actually like:
Article I, third paragraph: "There shall be freedom of scientific investigation in outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, and States shall facilitate and encourage international co-operation in such investigation."
Article II, entire article: "Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means."
Now, while INAL, the language here is very clear. Space is open for anyone to explore, and no nationstate can make a claim on any celestial bodies (so you can't go around saying the moon belongs to the USA). No mention is made to the effect that private persons can or can not stake a claim on anything up there. But, if they can stake a claim and have it accepted as legal, they cannot ask for money to let a scientific probe land there - Article I, second paragraph, demands free access to all areas of celestial bodies for the purpose of exploration.
Interstingly enought, the treaty also allows one (ntion)state to inspect the 'stations, installations, equipment and space vehicles' of another (nation)state on the moon or any other celestial bodies, ref article XII:
"All stations, installations, equipment and space vehicles on the moon and other celestial bodies shall be open to representatives of other States Parties to the Treaty on a basis of reciprocity. Such representatives shall give reasonable advance notice of a projected visit, in order that appropriate consultations may be held and that maximum precautions may betaken to assure safety and to avoid interference with normal operations in the facility to be visited."
Now, I'm getting curious - how do one 'establish a claim' on a piece of rock that's orbiting the sun? If it's just a cause of calling dids and grabbing what you can, I think I'ld like to claim ownership of Europa (no, not the continent, the ice covered rock thats up there). Not only can I charge NASA for parking there, but if they do find life, I can sue those organisms for not paying rent as well...
Seriously thought, someone should brief these fellows on the international agreements that relates to 'Principles Governing the Activities of States in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space, including the Moon and Other Celestial Bodies'. Pay particular attention to the second paragraph in article I, qouted in full;
Outer space, including the moon and other celestial bodies, shall be free for exploration and use by all States without discrimination of any kind, on a basis of equality and in accordance with international law, and there shall be free access to all areas of celestial bodies.
In short, if NASA or anyone else can land somewhere, they are free to do so. End of story.
And this differs from the US approach in what fashion?
Once Mercury had proven that the US could indeed send a man into orbit, JFK declared that the US would send people to the moon. Project Gemeni was actually a stop-gap - giving NASA a way better craft than Mercury to test differnt ways of doing things (long duration spaceflight, docking and undocking in space, spacewalks and so on) before the first Apollo capsules became operational. If you read up the history, you will find that Apollo Mk I was intended to do a lot of those things in earth orbit. Following the fire at the launchpad, in which the US lost three of her astronauts, the people in charge at NASA decided to fly no Mk Is, instead using only Apollo Mk II. One reason they could do that was because of the basic research done by the Gemini.
The chinese has two major advantages. Firstly, a lot of the theory about how to do all those kind of stuff is already public knowledge. Secondly, their spacecraft is based on the soviet Soyuz, which itself was designed to have a lunar capacity - so unlike the US which had to use three very different crafts in less then ten years, they can stick to one and gradually refine it.
So in every sence of the word, 'jumping onto the spacerace and heading straight for the moon' is a very incremental process.
While it is true that humanity as a whole has previous experince in landing on another rock in the solar system, the chinese do not. And it's more sensible to do it the first time in relative proximity to earth, where communications are nearly instantinious and home is just four days away, rahter than to go to Mars and hope everything works out just like they did in the simulator.
AFAIK, the chinese are plannin g a spacestation as well as a manned moonmission, and I got a hunch they won't stop there. So far all of their achivments can be dismissed as something other nations already has done - but as far as I can understand the mindset that drives the chinese spaceprograme (which appears to be close to the mindset that drove the early soviet and US spaceprogrames), they 'need' to do something spectaluar that no-one has done before.
A permanet moonbase might suit this criteria, or a manned mission to Mars... but they need to learn to walk before they can run.
Tried before? Uhm... you you care to back that statement up, preferable with links? Because, even thought some germans during the last big war messed with rocketproppeled planes, those wasn't meant to go anywhere near space, and the various winged programs (DynaSoar, Shuttle, Buran to name a few) that has been either close to flight or actually has flown have all been large, costly goverment programs.
AFAIK civilians has always dreamed of "cobbling together a rocketship in the backyard" and head up into space, but it's only the last few years that the technology needed has reached a pricepoint where it is possible for anyone but a goverment to afford to develop and build a manned spaceship (or even a suborbital one). Papaerprojects has floated around since before the dawn of the spaceage, but no one went into space on those. It looks like the X-prize and XCOR are the first programs that results in actuall hardware beeing built.
On the other hand, if you want a real affordable, private launch, you could try cobbling together a huge suger or sorbitol rocket, put a chair on it and see if you can't get hold of something like the MOOSE. Off course, you would need a suit too, but as the early suits where souped up versions of a standard flightsuit, a visit to the nearest military surplus store will solve that.
So there you have it... an simple, affordable launchsystem. Wonder why no one has done that... oh, safety. Right.