"Samples collected in 1969 by Neil Armstrong during the first lunar landing showed that helium-3 concentrations in lunar soil are at least 13 parts per billion (ppb) by weight. Levels may range from 20 to 30 ppb in undisturbed soils.
Quantities as small as 20 ppb may seem too trivial to consider. But at a projected value of $40,000 per ounce, 220 pounds of helium-3 would be worth about $141 million.
Because the concentration of helium-3 is extremely low, it would be necessary to process large amounts of rock and soil to isolate the material. Digging a patch of lunar surface roughly three-quarters of a square mile to a depth of about 9 ft. should yield about 220 pounds of helium-3--enough to power a city the size of Dallas or Detroit for a year.
Although considerable lunar soil would have to be processed, the mining costs would not be high by terrestrial standards. Automated machines, perhaps like those shown in the illustrations on the lead page, might perform the work. Extracting the isotope would not be particularly difficult."
>you mean the one with eight quarters of growth, the best job numbers in 20 years
In India you mean.
I'm a Systems Engineer with a masters degree -and I've been unable to find work for 2 years. I know dozens of professionals that have just given up looking.
yada, yada, yada. What a load of crap.
It's an employment thing!
Scientists are no better than pork barrol politicians when it comes to being funded special interests. They all want THEIR pet projects funded -all others are expendable.
Most of them have earthbound mentalities and wouldn't go into space personally if you put a gun to their heads.
Most just don't see the whole 'manned exploration' thing at all. They never have! What they DO see, is that it costs alot. And if it were eliminated, more money would be free to dole out to the whitehairs sitting safely in their labs.
Sorry to sound like a cynic -but I believe the whole 'exploration' Bush proposal to be disingenuous from the start.
He knows good and well that the House and Senate are not going to support it in any way, shape or form. Especially in the current economic climate.
But this allows the shuttle to be grounded and manned space program to be dismantled on the sly without taking the direct political heat.
The bizarre canceling of the Hubble servicing mission it telling. Because of 'safety concerns?' Oh, please.
Servicing the Hubble is too risky -so, like, we're going to go set up less risky bases on the moon and Mars instead?!? Yeh, riiight....
Sorry folks, the shuttle will be grounded after our space station commitment is over. The Bush initiative won't be funded. The result: Bush can say it wasn't his fault, the shuttle will be canceled (a shuttle follow-on won't be funded either, btw) -and the responsibility for supporting the remaining years of the space station will be shoved onto the Russians.
It's sad -but I fear the days of manned space flight are drawing to an end.
Ars has updated R-max results:
http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/TOP500_list_f or_CPU.html
A quote of interest:
"Along with topping 10-TFlops R-max, the Virginia Tech cluster has now topped 2-MFlops/dollar, which shows that using an Apple G5 dual in clusters gives you four times the Flops per dollar as a 2.4-GHz Xeon
and 2-1/2 times the Flops per dollar as a 1.4 GHz Opteron. And 6 times the Flops per dollar as the Madison (Itanium 2). Just like Varadarajan said, "Itaniums are too expensive, Opterons are too weak."
Here are some other great statistics for Mac folk:
In clusters, as indicated by Linpack (this caveat is always assumed), Mac 2-GHz G5s beat all other chips in the critical score of GFlops/cpu at the chip's top frequency (exceptions: NEC's Earth chip and Cray's X-1). So the G5 beats (in this order):
Itanium 2 (Madison),
Xeon,
Power4,
Sparc,
Alpha,
Opteron,
Power3."...Current results:
http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/TOP500_list_f or_CPU.html
Great Job, VT!!
I've read through most of the streams on this topic over at Ars, here and Geek â"most of it consisting of shrill whining over Intelâ(TM)s compiler not being used. Iâ(TM)ve looked at all the views, read the study -and from what Iâ(TM)ve CAREFULLY read, the testing methodology was fair.
I feel those shouting the loudest -scanned, rather than read the report.
Typical of the 'outrage': http://news.com.com/2100-1042_3-102063 1.html
"It wasn't really a fair test," said Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds, who said that the Dell machines are capable of producing scores 30 percent to 40 percent higher than those produced under Apple's methodology [using the Intel compiler]...â
-Well DUH! I guess we then should have expected Intel to trot out a hand-coded/Spec optimized version of their compiler for the G5 too! Idiocy.
âoe...In response, an Apple representative said it wanted to compare hardware performance, so it made sense to use the same compiler on the Mac and the Dell. The SPEC benchmark tests measure the performance of the hardware and the compiler. âoe
-Lets get real here! NOT normalizing the compilers on each systems is nutso â"even to me (which isnâ(TM)t saying much.)
âoe...Joswiak said that the Power Mac settings were representative of how the final machines will ship, even though a few settings did differ from the way current prototypes are configured. As for the Intel-based PCs, he noted that some of the settings that have been criticized were chosen because they actually improved the performance.â
DUH again! Even I saw that! Hey people, the methodology rationale was even explained in the study! Read it!
The bottom line of most of the PC-lumpenproletariat out there seem to be: âoehey dude, ya needed to use the Intel compiler because the Specmarks are, like, soo-ooo much higher on the Dell. As for the G5, use whatever â"it sucks anyway.â
Another big moan out there was that the Dellâ(TM)s Hyperthreading was turned off. They donâ(TM)t seem to realize is (according to DELL) is that, re SpecMark, this was to Dellâ(TM)s advantage!!!! http://www.dell.com/us/en/esg/topic s/power_ps3q02- khalid.htm
(...As was the fact that the Dellâ(TM)s were packing 512 MB more RAM than the G5! (Which NOONE seemes to have noticed. btw.)...declarative boobs.
âoe...Peter Glaskowsky, editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report,... also noted that Intel's chips perform disproportionately well on SPEC's tests because Intel has optimized its compiler for such tests.â
Damn right they do! To put it mildly. Iâ(TM)ve read scads of articles on the various, ahem, Spec-specific âoptimizationsâ(TM) theyâ(TM)ve built into their compiler. Great too if youâ(TM)re comparing one Intel product against another â"but other than that, itâ(TM)s just marketing fluff, IHMO.
"...Jobs on Monday also showed demonstrations in which the new Power Macs outperformed the Dell by greater than 2-to-1 ratios on several programs...Reynolds says he has no reason to contest those claims. âoe...the application benchmarks look quite credible," Reynolds said.
Those usage tests may also be more important than synthetic benchmarks, he said. "The SPEC benchmarks aren't that relevant anymore. People now are looking for things like multimedia (performance) and content management."
Agreed. I also think there is just too much marketing driven Spec-chicanery going on out there for them to be considered meaningful benchmarks -if they ever were.
Anyway, the telling of the tale will be on actual boxed applications. And although I may be surprised, I would place big bets (right now) that the G5 system -especially running Altivec-aware, 64bit recompiled applications, -will run (multiple) circles around the best MP PC versions that are out there (right now.)
But Intel and AMDâ(TM)s caldrons are busy bubbling â"and the landscape may change radically by October (doesnâ(TM)t Intel typically intro their new stuff in September and March?).
Even so, it will be interesting to see the price point any new uber-systems come in at. Right now, (unless you, brrrr...., 'roll your own'), theyâ(TM)re priced in the workstation stratosphere.
Slashdot Mirror
"Samples collected in 1969 by Neil Armstrong during the first lunar landing showed that helium-3 concentrations in lunar soil are at least 13 parts per billion (ppb) by weight. Levels may range from 20 to 30 ppb in undisturbed soils.
a ce/2004 /10/mining_moon/index4.phtml
Quantities as small as 20 ppb may seem too trivial to consider. But at a projected value of $40,000 per ounce, 220 pounds of helium-3 would be worth about $141 million.
Because the concentration of helium-3 is extremely low, it would be necessary to process large amounts of rock and soil to isolate the material. Digging a patch of lunar surface roughly three-quarters of a square mile to a depth of about 9 ft. should yield about 220 pounds of helium-3--enough to power a city the size of Dallas or Detroit for a year.
Although considerable lunar soil would have to be processed, the mining costs would not be high by terrestrial standards. Automated machines, perhaps like those shown in the illustrations on the lead page, might perform the work. Extracting the isotope would not be particularly difficult."
here. read this:
http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/sp
>you mean the one with eight quarters of growth, the best job numbers in 20 years In India you mean. I'm a Systems Engineer with a masters degree -and I've been unable to find work for 2 years. I know dozens of professionals that have just given up looking.
yada, yada, yada. What a load of crap. It's an employment thing! Scientists are no better than pork barrol politicians when it comes to being funded special interests. They all want THEIR pet projects funded -all others are expendable. Most of them have earthbound mentalities and wouldn't go into space personally if you put a gun to their heads. Most just don't see the whole 'manned exploration' thing at all. They never have! What they DO see, is that it costs alot. And if it were eliminated, more money would be free to dole out to the whitehairs sitting safely in their labs.
Sorry to sound like a cynic -but I believe the whole 'exploration' Bush proposal to be disingenuous from the start.
He knows good and well that the House and Senate are not going to support it in any way, shape or form. Especially in the current economic climate.
But this allows the shuttle to be grounded and manned space program to be dismantled on the sly without taking the direct political heat.
The bizarre canceling of the Hubble servicing mission it telling. Because of 'safety concerns?' Oh, please.
Servicing the Hubble is too risky -so, like, we're going to go set up less risky bases on the moon and Mars instead?!? Yeh, riiight....
Sorry folks, the shuttle will be grounded after our space station commitment is over. The Bush initiative won't be funded.
The result: Bush can say it wasn't his fault, the shuttle will be canceled (a shuttle follow-on won't be funded either, btw) -and the responsibility for supporting the remaining years of the space station will be shoved onto the Russians.
It's sad -but I fear the days of manned space flight are drawing to an end.
Ars has updated R-max results: http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/TOP500_list_f or_CPU.html
A quote of interest:
"Along with topping 10-TFlops R-max, the Virginia Tech cluster has now topped 2-MFlops/dollar, which shows that using an Apple G5 dual in clusters gives you four times the Flops per dollar as a 2.4-GHz Xeon
and 2-1/2 times the Flops per dollar as a 1.4 GHz Opteron. And 6 times the Flops per dollar as the Madison (Itanium 2). Just like Varadarajan said, "Itaniums are too expensive, Opterons are too weak."
Here are some other great statistics for Mac folk:
In clusters, as indicated by Linpack (this caveat is always assumed), Mac 2-GHz G5s beat all other chips in the critical score of GFlops/cpu at the chip's top frequency (exceptions: NEC's Earth chip and Cray's X-1). So the G5 beats (in this order):
Itanium 2 (Madison),
Xeon,
Power4,
Sparc,
Alpha,
Opteron,
Power3." ...Current results:
http://www.bayarea.net/~kins/AboutMe/TOP500_list_f or_CPU.html
Great Job, VT!!
I've read through most of the streams on this topic over at Ars, here and Geek â"most of it consisting of shrill whining over Intelâ(TM)s compiler not being used. Iâ(TM)ve looked at all the views, read the study -and from what Iâ(TM)ve CAREFULLY read, the testing methodology was fair.
3 1.html
c s/power_ps3q02- khalid.htm
...declarative boobs.
... also noted that Intel's chips perform disproportionately well on SPEC's tests because Intel has optimized its compiler for such tests.â
I feel those shouting the loudest -scanned, rather than read the report.
Typical of the 'outrage':
http://news.com.com/2100-1042_3-10206
"It wasn't really a fair test," said Gartner analyst Martin Reynolds, who said that the Dell machines are capable of producing scores 30 percent to 40 percent higher than those produced under Apple's methodology [using the Intel compiler]...â
-Well DUH! I guess we then should have expected Intel to trot out a hand-coded/Spec optimized version of their compiler for the G5 too! Idiocy.
âoe...In response, an Apple representative said it wanted to compare hardware performance, so it made sense to use the same compiler on the Mac and the Dell. The SPEC benchmark tests measure the performance of the hardware and the compiler. âoe
-Lets get real here! NOT normalizing the compilers on each systems is nutso â"even to me (which isnâ(TM)t saying much.)
âoe...Joswiak said that the Power Mac settings were representative of how the final machines will ship, even though a few settings did differ from the way current prototypes are configured. As for the Intel-based PCs, he noted that some of the settings that have been criticized were chosen because they actually improved the performance.â
DUH again! Even I saw that! Hey people, the methodology rationale was even explained in the study! Read it!
The bottom line of most of the PC-lumpenproletariat out there seem to be: âoehey dude, ya needed to use the Intel compiler because the Specmarks are, like, soo-ooo much higher on the Dell. As for the G5, use whatever â"it sucks anyway.â
Another big moan out there was that the Dellâ(TM)s Hyperthreading was turned off. They donâ(TM)t seem to realize is (according to DELL) is that, re SpecMark, this was to Dellâ(TM)s advantage!!!!
http://www.dell.com/us/en/esg/topi
(...As was the fact that the Dellâ(TM)s were packing 512 MB more RAM than the G5! (Which NOONE seemes to have noticed. btw.)
âoe...Peter Glaskowsky, editor-in-chief of Microprocessor Report,
Damn right they do! To put it mildly.
Iâ(TM)ve read scads of articles on the various, ahem, Spec-specific âoptimizationsâ(TM) theyâ(TM)ve built into their compiler. Great too if youâ(TM)re comparing one Intel product against another â"but other than that, itâ(TM)s just marketing fluff, IHMO.
"...Jobs on Monday also showed demonstrations in which the new Power Macs outperformed the Dell by greater than 2-to-1 ratios on several programs...Reynolds says he has no reason to contest those claims. âoe...the application benchmarks look quite credible," Reynolds said.
Those usage tests may also be more important than synthetic benchmarks, he said. "The SPEC benchmarks aren't that relevant anymore. People now are looking for things like multimedia (performance) and content management."
Agreed. I also think there is just too much marketing driven Spec-chicanery going on out there for them to be considered meaningful benchmarks -if they ever were.
Anyway, the telling of the tale will be on actual boxed applications.
And although I may be surprised, I would place big bets (right now) that the G5 system -especially running Altivec-aware, 64bit recompiled applications, -will run (multiple) circles around the best MP PC versions that are out there (right now.)
But Intel and AMDâ(TM)s caldrons are busy bubbling â"and the landscape may change radically by October (doesnâ(TM)t Intel typically intro their new stuff in September and March?).
Even so, it will be interesting to see the price point any new uber-systems come in at. Right now, (unless you, brrrr...., 'roll your own'), theyâ(TM)re priced in the workstation stratosphere.