I'm glad this got posted.. now hopefully some enterprising company will hire these guys. It looks like they did a real good job of something pretty hard, skunkworks style.
If I was an employer I'd wanna have them working for me.
A lot of my non-technical friends have recently become wise to the 'Fox.
And I quote "My internet explorer just stopped working about a month ago.. it wasnt worth the trouble, and those damn popup windows are annoying too.."
I think average Joe is starting to understand. (Incidentially, one of my friend's names is Joe)
This screams ePaper to me.. like those things they told us 8 years ago that we'd have by now to read the daily newspaper...
I really do love the excellent contrast.. I think I have a lot of trouble reading things on computer screens for extended periods because of it, but that display looks absolutely delcious to my eyes.
Also, before anyone asks.. I have read the article and the parts about the water-based rad shields and the 5 layer micrometeorite shields.
For the meteorites: The problem is that those shields can fail, and when they do, I'd rather that the paint embed itself in hull of steel than a easily puncturable hull of some organic chemistry polymer (sorry, I'm a chemist).
For the radiation: User-installable water based rad shields? Lets just hope we dont "forget" to install them, hmm ? Plus, the weight of the water must add significantly to the overall weight cost, I hope they're factoring that in. It takes a good amount of water to shield you from cosmic radiation I think (feel free to correct me here, but last time i knew, water wasnt the greatest gamma rad stopper). Also, there is of course, the initial radiation expsosure while they're installing the shields. And lets hope those water bags dont leak, too.
I dont tend to like to trust my life to something I see dissolve nearly instantly every day in a drop of acetone, thats all I suppose.
Private enterprise also is less concerned with saftey.
The same beauracracy that keeps many small problems buired, also delays projects until they are relatively sure that it's not going to kill someone. The same cant be said for private entities. Witness for example, the Vioxx/Celebrex problem in the pharm. field.
Does the idea of inflatable modules make anyone else nervous ?
I dunno about you, but I'd really like the walls around me that contain my breathing air and keep me warm and from exploding into the void of space made of something nice and hard... like reinforced steel. Maby it's some sort of expandable material over a hard superstructure, but then there are some other issues:
The article mentions:
"lightweight but extremely strong and long-lived inflatable "soft goods" to form modules made of proprietary advanced aerospace materials"
Maby i'm just a traditionalist holding back the frontier, but man, that sounds like a bubble just waiting to be punctured by one of those little paint chips zipping around the earth at a million miles an hour (from old missions, etc). Support structure or no, if you puncture that balloon it vents, and I'm inside, and i will NOT be a happy camper.
Also, I'm wondering what kind of radiation protection these things provide. These materials sound "thin and lightweight" which is what they want for good launch weight, but thin often means poor radiation blocking ability.
My opinion ? Keep the crew in something nice and solid.. keep supplies in these inflato-things, and make sure they can be quickly locked down from the rest of the ship/station/whatever.
Seeing as these things tend to be a while outwards in the ocean, where the waves arent really that high yet, I'd guess that they would (I could be dead wrong here).
Now would their support systems survive and still allow them to produce effective power? That, I'm no so sure about.
7 percent is a lot. That's a whole boatload of energy you're talking about that doesnt come from fossil fuels and lets us use oil for important things.. like deriving ether for my chemistry experiments.
I cant wait for someone to start a silly flame war about nuclear waste.
To head it off at the pass: Nuclear power: it came from the ground, we're extracting energy from it, and we put it back in the ground. Fundamentally, that's the same as oil. Except, with oil we put the excess into the air we breathe. Now which is better?
Do people know of any serious downsides to wave energy ?
I hear that you cant put it in densly populated water ways, as it really impeeds boats moving (at least the surface variety, are there deep buried kinds, too ?).
If anyone could comment on the negatives of this, it'd be nice to see the other side. For instance, wind power is usually cited as an eyesore, and solar as having problems w/ where you are located (same w/ wind to some extent).
You should be careful about wanting all information about you to be copyrighted. I think there are lots of legitamite uses to store people's names and phone numbers and potentially other pieces of information.
I mean, take for example, the following hypothetical situation. You meet someone at a conference, you put down their contact info in your palm pilot so you can talk buisness/collaborate/etc at some later time. You've just violated copyright law? What you say ? they gave you permission. Well that's all well and good, but what if they didnt ? What if you just happened to somehow get hold of a buisness card of a speaker without actually meeting them ?
I mean, this sort of thing could kill interpersonal communication for fear of someone suing you just for saying hi. Hell, some people might just make a buisness out of it. And dont say that's silly, witness the slimebag that is SCO.
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Just do what google does: encourage their silly hobbies for a set period of time during their work responsibilties.
I'm glad this got posted.. now hopefully some enterprising company will hire these guys. It looks like they did a real good job of something pretty hard, skunkworks style.
If I was an employer I'd wanna have them working for me.
But since when is "tons of photos" equal to 9 ?
A lot of my non-technical friends have recently become wise to the 'Fox.
And I quote "My internet explorer just stopped working about a month ago.. it wasnt worth the trouble, and those damn popup windows are annoying too.."
I think average Joe is starting to understand. (Incidentially, one of my friend's names is Joe)
This screams ePaper to me.. like those things they told us 8 years ago that we'd have by now to read the daily newspaper...
I really do love the excellent contrast.. I think I have a lot of trouble reading things on computer screens for extended periods because of it, but that display looks absolutely delcious to my eyes.
The bearing , or the wall ?
I have no doubt it can work. I'm just saying i'm not sure i'd step in it.
Also, before anyone asks.. I have read the article and the parts about the water-based rad shields and the 5 layer micrometeorite shields.
For the meteorites: The problem is that those shields can fail, and when they do, I'd rather that the paint embed itself in hull of steel than a easily puncturable hull of some organic chemistry polymer (sorry, I'm a chemist).
For the radiation: User-installable water based rad shields? Lets just hope we dont "forget" to install them, hmm ? Plus, the weight of the water must add significantly to the overall weight cost, I hope they're factoring that in. It takes a good amount of water to shield you from cosmic radiation I think (feel free to correct me here, but last time i knew, water wasnt the greatest gamma rad stopper). Also, there is of course, the initial radiation expsosure while they're installing the shields. And lets hope those water bags dont leak, too.
I dont tend to like to trust my life to something I see dissolve nearly instantly every day in a drop of acetone, thats all I suppose.
Private enterprise also is less concerned with saftey.
The same beauracracy that keeps many small problems buired, also delays projects until they are relatively sure that it's not going to kill someone. The same cant be said for private entities. Witness for example, the Vioxx/Celebrex problem in the pharm. field.
Does the idea of inflatable modules make anyone else nervous ?
I dunno about you, but I'd really like the walls around me that contain my breathing air and keep me warm and from exploding into the void of space made of something nice and hard... like reinforced steel. Maby it's some sort of expandable material over a hard superstructure, but then there are some other issues:
The article mentions:
"lightweight but extremely strong and long-lived inflatable "soft goods" to form modules made of proprietary advanced aerospace materials"
Maby i'm just a traditionalist holding back the frontier, but man, that sounds like a bubble just waiting to be punctured by one of those little paint chips zipping around the earth at a million miles an hour (from old missions, etc). Support structure or no, if you puncture that balloon it vents, and I'm inside, and i will NOT be a happy camper.
Also, I'm wondering what kind of radiation protection these things provide. These materials sound "thin and lightweight" which is what they want for good launch weight, but thin often means poor radiation blocking ability.
My opinion ? Keep the crew in something nice and solid.. keep supplies in these inflato-things, and make sure they can be quickly locked down from the rest of the ship/station/whatever.
I'll believe it when I see it....
Not to say it cant be done.. but 2010 ? Gotta love the marketing departments.. oh wait, no.. they put impossible demands on us...
Gotta say, as someone in theater.. those lights are really quite expensive, but they collapse very nicely and provide excellent wash lighting.
He cant really expect that it'd be kept private from the outside world can he ? Too many people can see it.
I mean that sort of setup is just begging for trouble.
Many employees get fired for this sort of candid thing...
I suppose seeing as he's the president that that would be sorta difficult.
Does anyone see the board coming down on him?
Nah, the CIA likes to keep their info to themselves.. they're pretty greedy w/ regards to their info and other gov. agencies.
The way the story read at first sounded like it was the NSA reading all internet traffic..
if it's some sort of government central aggregation DB for the various agencies, I dont see why we should have a problem with it.
Wasnt even thinking about the pun actually..
I say we put em back into the caverns that we created by pumping oil out of the ground.
That cant be that bad, right ? It's way the hell below the water table.
Yes... except.. what has kept them from freezing for millions of years and will continue to DO so ?
Oh right, that huge nuclear fusion reaction in the sky that we call the sun.. most of our energy comes from there in one form or another.
how bout solar? It's just energy that'd be going to space anyhow.. that looks like a free lunch.
mmm... lunch..
Seeing as these things tend to be a while outwards in the ocean, where the waves arent really that high yet, I'd guess that they would (I could be dead wrong here).
Now would their support systems survive and still allow them to produce effective power? That, I'm no so sure about.
7 percent is a lot. That's a whole boatload of energy you're talking about that doesnt come from fossil fuels and lets us use oil for important things.. like deriving ether for my chemistry experiments.
I cant wait for someone to start a silly flame war about nuclear waste.
To head it off at the pass: Nuclear power: it came from the ground, we're extracting energy from it, and we put it back in the ground. Fundamentally, that's the same as oil. Except, with oil we put the excess into the air we breathe. Now which is better?
Do people know of any serious downsides to wave energy ?
I hear that you cant put it in densly populated water ways, as it really impeeds boats moving (at least the surface variety, are there deep buried kinds, too ?).
If anyone could comment on the negatives of this, it'd be nice to see the other side. For instance, wind power is usually cited as an eyesore, and solar as having problems w/ where you are located (same w/ wind to some extent).
You should be careful about wanting all information about you to be copyrighted. I think there are lots of legitamite uses to store people's names and phone numbers and potentially other pieces of information.
I mean, take for example, the following hypothetical situation. You meet someone at a conference, you put down their contact info in your palm pilot so you can talk buisness/collaborate/etc at some later time. You've just violated copyright law? What you say ? they gave you permission. Well that's all well and good, but what if they didnt ? What if you just happened to somehow get hold of a buisness card of a speaker without actually meeting them ?
I mean, this sort of thing could kill interpersonal communication for fear of someone suing you just for saying hi. Hell, some people might just make a buisness out of it. And dont say that's silly, witness the slimebag that is SCO.