A. Unlikely. Quick Googling shows gas turbines (I know at least some power in the US is produced via them, and they are convenient to compare beacuse they are oil based as are current cars) operate at up to 60% efficiency to produce electricity. I'll use this is a rough estimation as the efficiency A modern car engine is about 25% efficient. This means the metal production, Hydrogen production, and Hydrogen combustion/fuel cell must total 25/60 ~ 40% efficiency. This is highly unlikely. So, unless cost of electricity goes down drastically (unlikely) or the cost of petroleum based fuels goes up drastically (likely) this system will be too expensive.
B. TFA explains how they plan to deal with the waste. It will be collected and recycled. Mg and Al are found in their oxide form in nature (if they weren't they wouldn't be useful fuels), so you are going to have to be refining some oxide into a metal, I don't think using the spent fuel shouldn't be any harder.
C. TFA explains what the magic catalyst is. The metal is heated to high temperatures to promote the reaction (possibly because water heated to high temperatures breaks down, or possibly just beacuse H20 + X -> X2O3 + H2 proceeds at a higher rate at higher temperatures).
I am not familiar with the various costs of power generation systems, but I can see a potential big problem in your estimates. If the lifetime cost/power output is approximately equal in today's costs, but one system requires a more than double up front cost than the other, then the one with the larger upfront cost is actually less efficient. Why? Because money not spent right now is money earned (or saved). Power companies can take smaller loans to create these installations (or invest the surplus they have by paying less now). I don't know the actual numbers, but I imagine power plants operate for several decades. If that's the case, this difference is singificant.
Can it split the rendering load between your GPU and your CPU if your GPU is capable of some of these features? I couldn't find an answer on their website.
The man with the money usually is the man with real control. I can't say I have any real knowledge of the specific case of executive producers, but I would imagine that wether the creative team likes it or not, creative control ends up in the hands of the producer. I think this explains how some production companies (like Fox Searchlight Pictures, IMO) can consistently create good movies just by doing the "business" end of making movies well.
According to DARPA's press release, "the Walrus aircraft will be a heavier-than-air vehicle and will generate lift through a combination of aerodynamics, thrust vectoring and gas buoyancy generation and management."
You and everyone else who suggested comparmentation as a reason why it won't be so vulnerable probably didn't RTFA. Depending on how much of the lift really is the aerodynamics, a single deflated compartment may very well destroy its lifting capacity.
Regardless, all of us are idiots for thinking that the military didn't consider such an obvious problem before starting a multi-million dollar project. They are surely aware of the problem and I imagine a very large part of this early project is to determine exactly how survivable this thing could be.
What may come as a surprise is that most Creationists and IDists agree that there is speciation and adaptation. It's evident that animals adapt. What is more the crux of conflict is whether species can adapt to become an entirely new and different specie.
Speciation - The evolutionary formation of new biological species, usually by the division of a single species into two or more genetically distinct ones.
It is very frustrating how people get fixated on the wrong things when something bad happens. As far as I know, debris falling from a spacecraft have caused 1 accident ever (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). That's out of hundreds of previous accidents. Though I'm sure the designs main goal was not to eliminate this problem, it annoys me how they try to sell it on that point.
Exactly. And this crap about hydrogen energy is even stupider in this article because ethanol would serve precisely the same use, only as a storage medium to get energy from powerplants to cars and other portable things.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't understand why anyone uses OS X, Linux with KDE or Gnome, or Windows XP nowadays. Those are just forks of the original GUI concept. Now the Xerox Alto computer, that was a concept and its the only thing I trust to last.
A 12" screen at 3 feet is equal in apparent size to a 2" screen from 6". Personally, my 2" screen cell phone does not look terribly impressive from 6".
Of course, resolution matters, but if they can fit a higher resolution in this tiny display, why not put it on a cell phone?
A small correction on your thing about nanotubes: the limiting factor in current nanotube composites is not the weakness of inter-nanotube bonds, but the fact that nanotube composites do not even use these weak bonds well enough. Spinning fibers of dense, aligned nanotubes is very difficult.
Of course, longer nanotubes would help, as you suggest, but I'm saying that even current nanotube production techniques could theoretically produce some extremely high tensile strength fibers (they can already claim the highest toughness).
Yes, you are right about it being only 45% more (Very stupid mistake on my part...). I think you suck at using a mouse if you can only get 64x64 per second. And I am totally aware that a high resolution mouse outputs a crapload more than a few dozen bits/s, I was just finding some simple estimate for how much of the signal you can make useful.
Here is an extremely quick, and extremely dirty analysis of how much data each method can input.
Ignoring simulatneous key presses (trust me, the number will be enormous even without them), the average workplace typer can achieve 50 wpm (http://www.testedok.com/typingtest.html). At 5 characters per word (same site), that comes to 250 characters per minute, or 4.17 per second. With a set of characters including the alphabet (26), punctuation (11), numbers (10), we have
(26+11+10)^4.17 = 9,389,621 distinct inputs possible per second
The mouse input question is significantly more difficult. One possible approximation of data input is clicking on distinct points on the screen. Just by playing around with a mouse, I believe I can hit any point on a 250x250 grid on the screen each second. I can mark that point with, say, 1 of 3 distinct button presses.
(250*250*3)^1 = 187,500
Keyboard wins by 50 times, apparently.
One can pretty quickly see, though, that no human can possibly generate this much data. Typing words at that rate is using no where near the complete set of possible data, and I can't imagine any useful situation where a person could be click ing on one of 187,500 points every second...
Fortunately there are newer, less expensive methods for delivering payloads into LEO and with this vehicle it will be possible to perform much of what NASA proposed doing with the ISS with a fraction of the cost.
Exactly what newer methods? What is "this vehicle"? The White Knight? The White Knight is a conventional air craft that goes no where near LEO. Perhaps you are talking about the X-37? While it is testing new, cheaper space travel technologies, I don't see how it can do what the ISS can do, namely, extended experiments in space. Get your facts straight.
Funny thing is, chances are, this sophomoric senior (lame, i know..) long ago forgot about the incident and is, as we speak, having sex with more beautiful women then you will ever have a chance with, notwithstanding your immensely greater intellectual capabilities.
That's ridiculous. A much more stereotypical response in the US would be for NASA to pay the family 200% of the value of what they lost, and the scrupulous family would still insist on suing for additional millions for the "emotional damage" resultant from the loss of their goldfish. The subsequent increase in insurance costs would push commercialization of space back a decade or two.
When all 4 of the 5-rated comments (That's with a +1 modifier for insightful and interesting) are "Funny" and are just making fun of the content of the article, you can tell no one really cares. Wow, he uses satellite internet, and what do you know, satellite internet actually does what its supposed to by working outside of places where you can get other types of access. He uses Skype, that's also amazing.
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A. Unlikely. Quick Googling shows gas turbines (I know at least some power in the US is produced via them, and they are convenient to compare beacuse they are oil based as are current cars) operate at up to 60% efficiency to produce electricity. I'll use this is a rough estimation as the efficiency A modern car engine is about 25% efficient. This means the metal production, Hydrogen production, and Hydrogen combustion/fuel cell must total 25/60 ~ 40% efficiency. This is highly unlikely. So, unless cost of electricity goes down drastically (unlikely) or the cost of petroleum based fuels goes up drastically (likely) this system will be too expensive.
B. TFA explains how they plan to deal with the waste. It will be collected and recycled. Mg and Al are found in their oxide form in nature (if they weren't they wouldn't be useful fuels), so you are going to have to be refining some oxide into a metal, I don't think using the spent fuel shouldn't be any harder.
C. TFA explains what the magic catalyst is. The metal is heated to high temperatures to promote the reaction (possibly because water heated to high temperatures breaks down, or possibly just beacuse H20 + X -> X2O3 + H2 proceeds at a higher rate at higher temperatures).
I am not familiar with the various costs of power generation systems, but I can see a potential big problem in your estimates. If the lifetime cost/power output is approximately equal in today's costs, but one system requires a more than double up front cost than the other, then the one with the larger upfront cost is actually less efficient. Why? Because money not spent right now is money earned (or saved). Power companies can take smaller loans to create these installations (or invest the surplus they have by paying less now). I don't know the actual numbers, but I imagine power plants operate for several decades. If that's the case, this difference is singificant.
Can it split the rendering load between your GPU and your CPU if your GPU is capable of some of these features? I couldn't find an answer on their website.
The man with the money usually is the man with real control. I can't say I have any real knowledge of the specific case of executive producers, but I would imagine that wether the creative team likes it or not, creative control ends up in the hands of the producer. I think this explains how some production companies (like Fox Searchlight Pictures, IMO) can consistently create good movies just by doing the "business" end of making movies well.
Actually, I would expect that language to be Perl.
You and everyone else who suggested comparmentation as a reason why it won't be so vulnerable probably didn't RTFA. Depending on how much of the lift really is the aerodynamics, a single deflated compartment may very well destroy its lifting capacity.
Regardless, all of us are idiots for thinking that the military didn't consider such an obvious problem before starting a multi-million dollar project. They are surely aware of the problem and I imagine a very large part of this early project is to determine exactly how survivable this thing could be.
Ironically, you are currently rated "Funny", probably because of that last sentence.
No. Haven't you heard, in the chip world, smaller is better.
Oops, wrong link from Google. This is what you want: http://www.firefoxie.net/
How's this skin?
Speciation - The evolutionary formation of new biological species, usually by the division of a single species into two or more genetically distinct ones.
It is very frustrating how people get fixated on the wrong things when something bad happens. As far as I know, debris falling from a spacecraft have caused 1 accident ever (someone please correct me if I'm wrong). That's out of hundreds of previous accidents. Though I'm sure the designs main goal was not to eliminate this problem, it annoys me how they try to sell it on that point.
Fully rewritten and building on the work of Windows Server 2003? How did they manage that?
HP IsDead!
Yeah, I went to read about that on wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_GUI), but I didn't think it was nearly as well known as the Alto.
Exactly. And this crap about hydrogen energy is even stupider in this article because ethanol would serve precisely the same use, only as a storage medium to get energy from powerplants to cars and other portable things.
Yeah, I know what you mean. I don't understand why anyone uses OS X, Linux with KDE or Gnome, or Windows XP nowadays. Those are just forks of the original GUI concept. Now the Xerox Alto computer, that was a concept and its the only thing I trust to last.
A 12" screen at 3 feet is equal in apparent size to a 2" screen from 6". Personally, my 2" screen cell phone does not look terribly impressive from 6".
Of course, resolution matters, but if they can fit a higher resolution in this tiny display, why not put it on a cell phone?
A small correction on your thing about nanotubes: the limiting factor in current nanotube composites is not the weakness of inter-nanotube bonds, but the fact that nanotube composites do not even use these weak bonds well enough. Spinning fibers of dense, aligned nanotubes is very difficult.
Of course, longer nanotubes would help, as you suggest, but I'm saying that even current nanotube production techniques could theoretically produce some extremely high tensile strength fibers (they can already claim the highest toughness).
Yes, you are right about it being only 45% more (Very stupid mistake on my part...). I think you suck at using a mouse if you can only get 64x64 per second. And I am totally aware that a high resolution mouse outputs a crapload more than a few dozen bits/s, I was just finding some simple estimate for how much of the signal you can make useful.
Here is an extremely quick, and extremely dirty analysis of how much data each method can input.
Ignoring simulatneous key presses (trust me, the number will be enormous even without them), the average workplace typer can achieve 50 wpm (http://www.testedok.com/typingtest.html). At 5 characters per word (same site), that comes to 250 characters per minute, or 4.17 per second. With a set of characters including the alphabet (26), punctuation (11), numbers (10), we have
(26+11+10)^4.17 = 9,389,621 distinct inputs possible per second
The mouse input question is significantly more difficult. One possible approximation of data input is clicking on distinct points on the screen. Just by playing around with a mouse, I believe I can hit any point on a 250x250 grid on the screen each second. I can mark that point with, say, 1 of 3 distinct button presses.
(250*250*3)^1 = 187,500
Keyboard wins by 50 times, apparently.
One can pretty quickly see, though, that no human can possibly generate this much data. Typing words at that rate is using no where near the complete set of possible data, and I can't imagine any useful situation where a person could be click ing on one of 187,500 points every second...
Funny thing is, chances are, this sophomoric senior (lame, i know..) long ago forgot about the incident and is, as we speak, having sex with more beautiful women then you will ever have a chance with, notwithstanding your immensely greater intellectual capabilities.
That's ridiculous. A much more stereotypical response in the US would be for NASA to pay the family 200% of the value of what they lost, and the scrupulous family would still insist on suing for additional millions for the "emotional damage" resultant from the loss of their goldfish. The subsequent increase in insurance costs would push commercialization of space back a decade or two.
When all 4 of the 5-rated comments (That's with a +1 modifier for insightful and interesting) are "Funny" and are just making fun of the content of the article, you can tell no one really cares. Wow, he uses satellite internet, and what do you know, satellite internet actually does what its supposed to by working outside of places where you can get other types of access. He uses Skype, that's also amazing.