Sure, human life isn't all that hangs in the balance, if for nothing else than since the dawn of humanity, girls have been crushing the souls of ardent admirers who've tried to do something more than yearn from afar.
And we risk our own money all the time by investing in new ventures. But... we risk our own money: failure means dropping down the socio-economic ladder, with all that entails.
It would also be a risky move if Cassini were just arriving at Saturn and hadn't done any of it's planned science yet (thus risking the loss of all the knowledge that we would have obtained). It might even rise to the level of "audaciously bold". But notadventurously courageous. (Although... if the scientist who suggested/designed and programmed this maneuver on a brand new probe would get fired if he botched it up, that would be daring!)
But this craft is going to die anyway. There's just zero risk in this situation.
What's the consequence of failure of failing to defeat the Pterodactyl? Nothing. Your avatar dies and instantly regenerates.
Thus, not a boldly daring act.
attacking the Unbeatable(?) Pterodactyl in mid-air is boldly daring within the context of the game.
That makes it a pseudo-boldly daring act, not an actual boldly daring act.
Now... if you were strapped to electrodes which gave you a long painful jolt every time you "died" in a video game, then attacking the Unbeatable Pterodactyl in mid-air would actually be boldly daring.
They've been controlling interplanetary probes using 335 year old formulae for 35 years.
Nothing about sitting in a comfy, air-conditioned shirt-sleeve room and programming maneuvers for a 20 year old craft which you've been flying around Saturn for 12 years is risky, audaciously bold, or adventurously courageous.
Now... if this were a manned expedition, that would be bold and daring!!! Why? Because that's actual risk.
Nothing you do -- even if it's important and the craft is really expensive -- is bold or daring when you are more than 746,000,000 miles from the action.
The constraints are usually more economic than technical.
Economics are Really Important. In order to build a 600 mile long vacuum tube that's not at constant grave risk of catastrophic instant collapse and killing everyone in all 600 miles (not from the crush but from the force of the in-rushing air), the tube would have to be *massively* over-built and *constantly* checked for structural integrity.
The major limitations of colonizing Mars appear to be mostly economic.
Hogwash. It's a dead planet. The only source of energy will be solar, and that will be 40% less than on Earth.
Science Fiction waves away the extraordinarily long tail of really heavy equipment and huge energy consumption required for high tech life, but real humans can't.
Current boring technology goes "slow" because insufficient engineering effort has gone into making it go faster.
Are you sure?
We already have people routinely flying at close to Mach 1 in pressurized tubes
Lots of little pressurized tubes where the differential air pressure is 7.5 psi (psi at 35,000 ft is 3.5 and the plane is pressurized to 11), and they're all distinct from one another. But hyperloop is about zooming people around in one 600 mile depressurized tube. (Remember that Myth Busters railroad tank car collapse?)
We already have operational trains that travel at over a third of the speed of sound
By that logic, Mach 3 shouldn't be that much harder than Mach 1.
in daily operation.
They're heavily subsidized, the tracks require constant maintenance and because of all the stops they rarely get up to full speed.
Why is it so preposterous to have a slightly more advanced train
Have you seen the prototypes? Most emphatically not "slightly more advanced train(s)".
which eliminates the major speed limitation (air resistance)
I think you're hand waving away killer technical problems.
Invariably there are cynics such as yourself nay-saying the whole thing but they're kind of sad people who get looked down on by the people actually working on making the future happen.
Flying cars exist. Mach 3 airplanes exist. Why aren't we flying our cars to the airport, and from there flying a Mach 3 airliner to Japan?
Because some things are only practical in the small scale, and damned expensive to boot.
That's not cynicism, it's reality. (Sending people to Mars is another example of this: a research station on Mars would be "just" a much more expensive version of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. But we haven't colonized Antarctica either, even though it's metric ass-loads more hospitable than Mars.)
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
You ignore that uber-important word "probably".
There's a Very Big Difference between electric cars and reusable rockets (which is "just" very, very hard) and:
1) Colonies (not research stations, but *colonies*) on a dead planet (there's a darned good reason why it's dead which gets 40% less sunlight than the Earth),
2) boring stable tunnels at high speed through geologically highly unstable ground, and
3) 600 mile long vacuum tubes that you want humans to whiz down at Mach 1.
He doesn't appear to be asking for our money to do the initial development so we'll just sit back and watch.
The problem is that he's got a mini version of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. He's got University students enthusiastically developing prototypes, when professors should be looking at this and saying, "bunk" for all sorts of sound engineering reasons.
I think causation is a mental crutch to help us navigate the world of patterns around us but should not be thought of "real."
You say this just after you wrote, "if you drink poison it will kill you instantly."
You are on to something though. I'd say, "we use 'weakly founded' assertions of causation as a crutch to help us navigate the world of patterns around us." IOW, we stereotype everything all the time, because we just can't individually analyze every person and every circumstance.
no launcher company has a stock from which they pull a rocket
Back in the 1960s, that's exactly what we did. (We and the Sovs made a lot of ICBMs, all of which were dual-use.)
NASA would go to Convair and say that they needed an Atlas for a specific mission. Convair would then go pick one out of inventory (they were taken out of ICBM service by 1965) or on the production line and tag it for use on a certain mission, then test to see that it still worked.
Nowadays, "customization" is on the order of "how many standard-design SRBs do you want strapped to the first stage, and which of a handful of standard-sized fairings do you want on top".
You could say, "see, you just admitted that they're customized", but I disagree with that definition of "customized".
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Sure, human life isn't all that hangs in the balance, if for nothing else than since the dawn of humanity, girls have been crushing the souls of ardent admirers who've tried to do something more than yearn from afar.
And we risk our own money all the time by investing in new ventures. But... we risk our own money: failure means dropping down the socio-economic ladder, with all that entails.
It would also be a risky move if Cassini were just arriving at Saturn and hadn't done any of it's planned science yet (thus risking the loss of all the knowledge that we would have obtained). It might even rise to the level of "audaciously bold". But not adventurously courageous. (Although... if the scientist who suggested/designed and programmed this maneuver on a brand new probe would get fired if he botched it up, that would be daring!)
But this craft is going to die anyway. There's just zero risk in this situation.
This can be a boldly daring act.
What's the consequence of failure of failing to defeat the Pterodactyl? Nothing. Your avatar dies and instantly regenerates.
Thus, not a boldly daring act.
attacking the Unbeatable(?) Pterodactyl in mid-air is boldly daring within the context of the game.
That makes it a pseudo-boldly daring act, not an actual boldly daring act.
Now... if you were strapped to electrodes which gave you a long painful jolt every time you "died" in a video game, then attacking the Unbeatable Pterodactyl in mid-air would actually be boldly daring.
They've been controlling interplanetary probes using 335 year old formulae for 35 years.
Nothing about sitting in a comfy, air-conditioned shirt-sleeve room and programming maneuvers for a 20 year old craft which you've been flying around Saturn for 12 years is risky, audaciously bold, or adventurously courageous.
Now... if this were a manned expedition, that would be bold and daring!!! Why? Because that's actual risk.
Nothing you do -- even if it's important and the craft is really expensive -- is bold or daring when you are more than 746,000,000 miles from the action.
Nothing.
WTF are these guys in their nice, air-conditioned office buildings doing that's so daring?
The constraints are usually more economic than technical.
Economics are Really Important. In order to build a 600 mile long vacuum tube that's not at constant grave risk of catastrophic instant collapse and killing everyone in all 600 miles (not from the crush but from the force of the in-rushing air), the tube would have to be *massively* over-built and *constantly* checked for structural integrity.
The major limitations of colonizing Mars appear to be mostly economic.
Hogwash. It's a dead planet. The only source of energy will be solar, and that will be 40% less than on Earth.
Science Fiction waves away the extraordinarily long tail of really heavy equipment and huge energy consumption required for high tech life, but real humans can't.
Current boring technology goes "slow" because insufficient engineering effort has gone into making it go faster.
Are you sure?
We already have people routinely flying at close to Mach 1 in pressurized tubes
Lots of little pressurized tubes where the differential air pressure is 7.5 psi (psi at 35,000 ft is 3.5 and the plane is pressurized to 11), and they're all distinct from one another. But hyperloop is about zooming people around in one 600 mile depressurized tube. (Remember that Myth Busters railroad tank car collapse?)
We already have operational trains that travel at over a third of the speed of sound
By that logic, Mach 3 shouldn't be that much harder than Mach 1.
in daily operation.
They're heavily subsidized, the tracks require constant maintenance and because of all the stops they rarely get up to full speed.
Why is it so preposterous to have a slightly more advanced train
Have you seen the prototypes? Most emphatically not "slightly more advanced train(s)".
which eliminates the major speed limitation (air resistance)
I think you're hand waving away killer technical problems.
Invariably there are cynics such as yourself nay-saying the whole thing but they're kind of sad people who get looked down on by the people actually working on making the future happen.
Flying cars exist. Mach 3 airplanes exist. Why aren't we flying our cars to the airport, and from there flying a Mach 3 airliner to Japan?
Because some things are only practical in the small scale, and damned expensive to boot.
That's not cynicism, it's reality. (Sending people to Mars is another example of this: a research station on Mars would be "just" a much more expensive version of Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station. But we haven't colonized Antarctica either, even though it's metric ass-loads more hospitable than Mars.)
"If an elderly but distinguished scientist says that something is possible, he is almost certainly right; but if he says that it is impossible, he is very probably wrong."
You ignore that uber-important word "probably".
There's a Very Big Difference between electric cars and reusable rockets (which is "just" very, very hard) and:
1) Colonies (not research stations, but *colonies*) on a dead planet (there's a darned good reason why it's dead which gets 40% less sunlight than the Earth),
2) boring stable tunnels at high speed through geologically highly unstable ground, and
3) 600 mile long vacuum tubes that you want humans to whiz down at Mach 1.
To me, Hyperloop looks like a mashup of the ...
Good point.
He doesn't appear to be asking for our money to do the initial development so we'll just sit back and watch.
The problem is that he's got a mini version of the Steve Jobs Reality Distortion Field. He's got University students enthusiastically developing prototypes, when professors should be looking at this and saying, "bunk" for all sorts of sound engineering reasons.
Space X are not in the situation of making a pile of identical rockets whether they want to or not
But that's the flaw in the traditional government-contract directed method of designing something.
Yes he says a lot of things and he backs a huge number of them up.
But then he says shit like hyperloop and super-speed tunnel boring and colonize Mars.
Launch, land, refurb, fuel, launch again.
That's the sticky wicket: how much refurb? (Too much and -- like the Shuttle -- it negates the benefits of reuse.)
Which is it? Did they take your awesome patented ideas or are the golf balls nothing more than under-performing over-hyped sales gimmicks?
Option #3: You stole our ideas but implemented them like crap.
(NB: I don't know nor care which is the truth.)
However, you left out if these balls actually are NOT violate all 11 Acushnet patents, what would happen?
That's irrelevant to my point (which is that -- surprise, surprise -- the article title is utter bullshit).
No, it doesn't. This is actual, physical "stuff" which has been invented, not gauzy ideas.
If these balls actually violate the 11 Acushnet patents (and they're in force), then it's right and good for Acushnet to ban Costco from selling them.
(And that's ignoring whether or not the claims of false advertising, which would mean that they wouldn't be nice in the first place.)
Editor, thy name is click-bait credulity.
causation exists only within the mental model
You try and stretch the concept too far, given that there obviously are proximate causes.
I thought they called themselves the ROK (making it ROKTC).
I think causation is a mental crutch to help us navigate the world of patterns around us but should not be thought of "real."
You say this just after you wrote, "if you drink poison it will kill you instantly."
You are on to something though. I'd say, "we use 'weakly founded' assertions of causation as a crutch to help us navigate the world of patterns around us." IOW, we stereotype everything all the time, because we just can't individually analyze every person and every circumstance.
Correlation or causation?
After all, education and prosperity are in that mix too.
Exactly. The whole purpose of "yellow light" is that it's a grace period.
Unless... how short are the yellow lights in Chicago? Maybe they should be longer.
1) The measure of "fitness for breeding" encompasses those who aren't fit for breeding.
2) "fitness for not breeding" is -- at best -- horrible grammar, and at worst makes no sense.
If a reading happens to be wrong or inaccurate, little harm is done.
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA.
Someone -- specifically you -- doesn't realize how complicated the human body is.
But then, why is sperm quality a major selection criteria?
Fitness for breeding, of course.
no launcher company has a stock from which they pull a rocket
Back in the 1960s, that's exactly what we did. (We and the Sovs made a lot of ICBMs, all of which were dual-use.)
NASA would go to Convair and say that they needed an Atlas for a specific mission. Convair would then go pick one out of inventory (they were taken out of ICBM service by 1965) or on the production line and tag it for use on a certain mission, then test to see that it still worked.
Nowadays, "customization" is on the order of "how many standard-design SRBs do you want strapped to the first stage, and which of a handful of standard-sized fairings do you want on top".
You could say, "see, you just admitted that they're customized", but I disagree with that definition of "customized".