That's right. been a while since I've looked into it. Energy practicality depends on how solar panels are looking in that time frame. ( Perhaps 50-100 years for testing prototype systems if we're lucky by my reckoning. ) If construction of a suitable window is possible, just direct sunlight concentration by a mirror array. My thinking was the target is contained, floating in the middle, kept in place by several possible methods, and first outgassed by heating it up. Then Mond process forms the liquid witch will hopefully float in a pool held together by surface tension and kept in place by directed gas flow, and then the CO is thermally separated via probes where the nickel deposits on the end. I think there is a similar vapor deposition method for Iron pentacarbonyl. Then, hopefully, you're left with the remains that can be handled in other manner.
Or you just have a slowly rotating processing plant to simulate gravity.
Anyway, that's was my first pass through via gedankenexperiment.
And how do you propose to do that in a zero G environment? All those processes here on Earth depend on gravity. If you try to "chop" or "hammer" something in space, it doesn't work given Newton's laws of motions . Melting ore on Earth specifically requires separation of impurities to "float" to the top of the smelt based on densities. Casting requires pouring melt into a cast using gravity, etc.
As far as chopping up, there are multiple ways it might be done. Centrifugal force or held in place by blowers as incarcerating said asteroid inside a structure would probably be a requirement, although they might just attach a hard point to place such digging equipment on the item to be worked into smaller bits itself. Still, most ideas go more towards the smelting process which the leading proponent is the Mond process where using heated carbon dioxide can turn nickel and iron (IIRC) into gasses at various temperatures that can be collected at points by heating or cooling said gas leaning the much reduced core of other elements to be dealt with. Other processes for non-iron/nickel asteroids, of course, but ice once could just be heated and outgassed in a similar fashion. Its more complicated than that, but that'll give you an idea of where to start if you are interesting in investigating the possible technologies for mining asteroids in space.
The largest ship has a displacement (weight empty) of 100,000 tons. I'll ignore buildings since TFA is talking about machines. Current launch costs to LEO bottom out at about $4000/kg, though it could drop to $2000/kg in the near future (have to see if Falcon Heavy's costs hold up).
So getting enough materials into LEO to duplicate the largest machine currently built would cost (100,000 tons)*(1000 kg/ton)*($4000/kg) = $400 billion. Never mind the cost of fabrication and assembly.
By my impression, when they mean largest machine, they are talking dimensionally rather than mass. They are talking about building a cube out of truss that is 5 kilometers to a side. Even adding diagonal crossbeams for support, it might only be a fraction of the mass of that ship.
Apart from anything else, being surrounded by the obligatory bunch of neckbearded hipster millennials who all think they're "alternative" yet all look, dress, speak, think and act exactly the same, and all march lock-step according to extreme peecee liberal brainwashing, would drive me nuts.
Like most older generations, you misconstrue what "alternative" means. They don't mean alternative to each other, they mean alternative to you. They've seen what you are like, what you have done with the world, and have decided, collectively as a group, it was all a mistake and needs to be changed.
Checking into it, because there is a large meme from Onion about "only country it ever happens in", it seems that Sweden and Norway are both much more dangerous per capita than the US for school shootings, Germany was about equal with the US before this week's shooting, and Canada, France, and some Baltic states also have some incidents. This is tracking since 2000.
you do realize that this is because there was not supposed to be a standing army. We didnt have a standing army until after WWI. It is entirely unconstitutional.
I don't think it's unconstitutional, but you can see evidence that it wasn't desired as funding for a national army is limited by the constitution to two years, while it is not for the navy.
As a fellow European coming from Finland that has more guns than the UK per capita (we have a large rural population and a lot of stuff that's hunted) I'm gonna try to be the guy to see both sides here.
You're correct in that, with no guns there's almost no school shootings. We've had 2 in the whole of 2000s (with a total of 18 dead including the 2 perps) and we have to my knowledge the most guns per capita of the western nations after the US.
Wow. If that's correct, then Finland is 6 times worse than the US per capita for school shootings.
I think there is an idea for a start-up. Autonomous campers which just drive around all night or find cheap parking someplace. Your camper could drive up to 4 hours away from work while you slept and get you back in time for work.
If your a direct consumer related business, like a branch of a bank, or even a sport stadium, I get why you want your location to be "in the thick of it," but why do tech companies insist on building their work places in super expensive cities? How much money could these companies save by building in a nearby suburb where their employees could actually afford to live?
First, I think the point is that these cities are super expensive because these businesses are here. This isn't downtown SF after all, these are/were the subrubs and if they weren't hiring people, there wouldn't be this huge demand for property. Second, the businesses have to go someplace the skilled workers they are trying to hire actually want to live. I bet if Amazon's second HQ got put in Boise, Idaho, they'd have a pretty hard time staffing it with the people they want. Third, if things are the way they normally are, these business HQs are within 15 miles of the CEO's house.
Well, you are also a two income household where the study is indicating a single income household. So, given a spouse that makes as much money, they'd be looking at 11-16%. Your 6% is good. I doubt others near you have an equally great deal as that is typically far below the historical average, and I'm guessing you got a really good deal or are living below your means (lower than other people of similar pay anyway). Actually, the deals for the high tech workers isn't bad and is near past historical (middle class) averages where housing now (and has been for decades) the largest household expense as the past largest (33-50%), food, has dropped drastically along with clothing.
And then there's absolute waste. It takes an act of congress for the military to buy almost anything, literally. So, instead of buying, they lease. The leases cost far more. Sometimes far, far more.
In my experience working for the government, most government bloat is caused by all the rules and regulations put in place to try and prevent bloat.
It's Coke's manufacturing process really a secret or even particularly innovative? They are far from the only big beverage manufacturer, and much of the technology is made by industrial process experts rather than developed in-house.
I think the issue is that due to the dual ownership of the Chinese Coke company, anything new that Coke does to become more efficient is instantly also taught to their competition, whereas, I doubt that this is reciprocal. Certainly not if the Chinese company takes all Coke knows, and all they know, and come over here and start a company in this market.
I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth.
Actually, with all the cell phones and computers online and acting as the vast majority of clocks, I don't even notice DST anymore as they all switch automatically. The only way I can tell anymore is when my clock on my stove either changes to be the same as my cellphone or not.
It's a matter of priorities. Keeping the ISS afloat means we don't have money for other projects, like the moon or Mars.
I doubt that. If we were going to go to Mars we'd need the ISS for research yet to be done. In the very least and probably in addition to, we'd need another space station in higher orbit in less protected space. However, from what I've read the ISS is being decommissioned because it is wearing out and upkeep is becoming more expensive. The gaskets and seals will be past their expected lifetimes by time it is decommissioned and other parts are also wearing out. The costs of trying to repair it would be greater than sending up a new one.
Dine At Home
=========
Go to local local liquor store to get decently priced wine
Eat at home
It costs a lot less, doesn't take as long...
I can tell you're not the cook in the house, nor probably clean afterwards. First you have to plan the menu, make a list, then fight traffic to buy the food and alcohol, possibly at different stores. Sure, that might have been done earlier and stuff is in the pantry, but it still had to be done. Prep and cook all the food. Then you can eat. Clean all dishes, cookware, and appliances. Main reason people go out is so they won't have to cook and clean, as it often can take longer than going out even including traffic. And if you want something nice, it might usually cost about half, but sometimes cost about as much as you don't buy in bulk from a restaurant supplier and specialty items cost money. Alcohol does cost less, but to have an actual bar capable of producing a variety of cocktails is a major investment.
Uh, American control over the world is a *bad* thing. Just ask Iraq.
Not disagreeing with that. If anything, recent history has taught us that stability tends to be better than trying to fix things, at least though revolution or war.
There is no getting around time dialation, simply crossing the Milky Way takes 100k years, another 100k to get back. After a few tens of trips the universe will have doubled in age, we would have collided with andromeda and other galaxies long ago and the universe would be old. Simply moving through space, even at light speed, is far too slow to ever get us more than a small handful of nearby systems, each being essentially cut off from the rest of the universe.
Right, time dilation. 100k for Earth, but only 24 for the people who do the traveling. Our rate of expansion will be limited by the ship's subjective time, not that of Earth.
Zombies was never really a fear. The story for almost all zombie movies or books is not man versus zombie, but rather man versus nature as zombies were just a natural disaster that could be shot in the head for action. Still, the real conflict in such stories is man versus man as the natural disaster causes society to break down and situations that could probably be solved through cooperation spell disaster as people turn selfish and fail to uphold societal standards. Nobody ever really feared zombies, but rather the other humans that had survived.
Moreover, the shuttle was an expensive dead end (the Buran more of a dead end). Consider steam warships: the first one was the USS Demogorgon, and nothing developed from it. The British later built steam warships and those sparked a design revolution.
Interesting with the ship analogy (although being/., it should be cars). The one that has been going on in my head is that once SapceX successfully landed it's first stage back on Earth, all other rockets were made obsolete, just like when the HMS Dreadnaught made all other battleships obsolete. Now, everybody else is just playing catchup. Once SpaeX has their man rating and the BFR, they'll be the leader in space launches for all fields and if they come out on schedule, before anybody else (ULA/Blue Origin or SLS) is even has demonstrated they can compete with what SpaceX is already doing.
Slashdot Mirror
That's right. been a while since I've looked into it. Energy practicality depends on how solar panels are looking in that time frame. ( Perhaps 50-100 years for testing prototype systems if we're lucky by my reckoning. ) If construction of a suitable window is possible, just direct sunlight concentration by a mirror array. My thinking was the target is contained, floating in the middle, kept in place by several possible methods, and first outgassed by heating it up. Then Mond process forms the liquid witch will hopefully float in a pool held together by surface tension and kept in place by directed gas flow, and then the CO is thermally separated via probes where the nickel deposits on the end. I think there is a similar vapor deposition method for Iron pentacarbonyl. Then, hopefully, you're left with the remains that can be handled in other manner.
Or you just have a slowly rotating processing plant to simulate gravity.
Anyway, that's was my first pass through via gedankenexperiment.
And how do you propose to do that in a zero G environment? All those processes here on Earth depend on gravity. If you try to "chop" or "hammer" something in space, it doesn't work given Newton's laws of motions . Melting ore on Earth specifically requires separation of impurities to "float" to the top of the smelt based on densities. Casting requires pouring melt into a cast using gravity, etc.
As far as chopping up, there are multiple ways it might be done. Centrifugal force or held in place by blowers as incarcerating said asteroid inside a structure would probably be a requirement, although they might just attach a hard point to place such digging equipment on the item to be worked into smaller bits itself. Still, most ideas go more towards the smelting process which the leading proponent is the Mond process where using heated carbon dioxide can turn nickel and iron (IIRC) into gasses at various temperatures that can be collected at points by heating or cooling said gas leaning the much reduced core of other elements to be dealt with. Other processes for non-iron/nickel asteroids, of course, but ice once could just be heated and outgassed in a similar fashion. Its more complicated than that, but that'll give you an idea of where to start if you are interesting in investigating the possible technologies for mining asteroids in space.
The largest ship has a displacement (weight empty) of 100,000 tons. I'll ignore buildings since TFA is talking about machines. Current launch costs to LEO bottom out at about $4000/kg, though it could drop to $2000/kg in the near future (have to see if Falcon Heavy's costs hold up). So getting enough materials into LEO to duplicate the largest machine currently built would cost (100,000 tons)*(1000 kg/ton)*($4000/kg) = $400 billion. Never mind the cost of fabrication and assembly.
By my impression, when they mean largest machine, they are talking dimensionally rather than mass. They are talking about building a cube out of truss that is 5 kilometers to a side. Even adding diagonal crossbeams for support, it might only be a fraction of the mass of that ship.
> what you have done with the world
Don;t blame me. I didn't do anything with it.
And like every generation tells the one before, "Your failure to do anything is why it is crap."
Apart from anything else, being surrounded by the obligatory bunch of neckbearded hipster millennials who all think they're "alternative" yet all look, dress, speak, think and act exactly the same, and all march lock-step according to extreme peecee liberal brainwashing, would drive me nuts.
Like most older generations, you misconstrue what "alternative" means. They don't mean alternative to each other, they mean alternative to you. They've seen what you are like, what you have done with the world, and have decided, collectively as a group, it was all a mistake and needs to be changed.
People conflate unique features of Japanese culture with the essential, very Western political battle going on in Tokyo.
While this is true, the authoritarian rule of Japan was well underway long before even the 20th century, and had won long before the 20's or 30's.
Just make a normal building and then require all employees wear AR headsets that turn your plain old building into an architectural masterpiece.
Just make it an empty warehouse and do everything in VR.
Checking into it, because there is a large meme from Onion about "only country it ever happens in", it seems that Sweden and Norway are both much more dangerous per capita than the US for school shootings, Germany was about equal with the US before this week's shooting, and Canada, France, and some Baltic states also have some incidents. This is tracking since 2000.
you do realize that this is because there was not supposed to be a standing army. We didnt have a standing army until after WWI. It is entirely unconstitutional.
I don't think it's unconstitutional, but you can see evidence that it wasn't desired as funding for a national army is limited by the constitution to two years, while it is not for the navy.
As a fellow European coming from Finland that has more guns than the UK per capita (we have a large rural population and a lot of stuff that's hunted) I'm gonna try to be the guy to see both sides here.
You're correct in that, with no guns there's almost no school shootings. We've had 2 in the whole of 2000s (with a total of 18 dead including the 2 perps) and we have to my knowledge the most guns per capita of the western nations after the US.
Wow. If that's correct, then Finland is 6 times worse than the US per capita for school shootings.
I think there is an idea for a start-up. Autonomous campers which just drive around all night or find cheap parking someplace. Your camper could drive up to 4 hours away from work while you slept and get you back in time for work.
I've read that issue of Judge Dread!
If your a direct consumer related business, like a branch of a bank, or even a sport stadium, I get why you want your location to be "in the thick of it," but why do tech companies insist on building their work places in super expensive cities? How much money could these companies save by building in a nearby suburb where their employees could actually afford to live?
First, I think the point is that these cities are super expensive because these businesses are here. This isn't downtown SF after all, these are/were the subrubs and if they weren't hiring people, there wouldn't be this huge demand for property. Second, the businesses have to go someplace the skilled workers they are trying to hire actually want to live. I bet if Amazon's second HQ got put in Boise, Idaho, they'd have a pretty hard time staffing it with the people they want. Third, if things are the way they normally are, these business HQs are within 15 miles of the CEO's house.
Well, you are also a two income household where the study is indicating a single income household. So, given a spouse that makes as much money, they'd be looking at 11-16%. Your 6% is good. I doubt others near you have an equally great deal as that is typically far below the historical average, and I'm guessing you got a really good deal or are living below your means (lower than other people of similar pay anyway). Actually, the deals for the high tech workers isn't bad and is near past historical (middle class) averages where housing now (and has been for decades) the largest household expense as the past largest (33-50%), food, has dropped drastically along with clothing.
And then there's absolute waste. It takes an act of congress for the military to buy almost anything, literally. So, instead of buying, they lease. The leases cost far more. Sometimes far, far more.
In my experience working for the government, most government bloat is caused by all the rules and regulations put in place to try and prevent bloat.
The Indian's have had nukes for over a decade. Be more worried about ISIS.
Does Civ VI have ISIS?
It's Coke's manufacturing process really a secret or even particularly innovative? They are far from the only big beverage manufacturer, and much of the technology is made by industrial process experts rather than developed in-house.
I think the issue is that due to the dual ownership of the Chinese Coke company, anything new that Coke does to become more efficient is instantly also taught to their competition, whereas, I doubt that this is reciprocal. Certainly not if the Chinese company takes all Coke knows, and all they know, and come over here and start a company in this market.
I don't think anyone minds Daylight Saving Time itself. What they mind is the needless switching back and forth.
Actually, with all the cell phones and computers online and acting as the vast majority of clocks, I don't even notice DST anymore as they all switch automatically. The only way I can tell anymore is when my clock on my stove either changes to be the same as my cellphone or not.
It's a matter of priorities. Keeping the ISS afloat means we don't have money for other projects, like the moon or Mars.
I doubt that. If we were going to go to Mars we'd need the ISS for research yet to be done. In the very least and probably in addition to, we'd need another space station in higher orbit in less protected space. However, from what I've read the ISS is being decommissioned because it is wearing out and upkeep is becoming more expensive. The gaskets and seals will be past their expected lifetimes by time it is decommissioned and other parts are also wearing out. The costs of trying to repair it would be greater than sending up a new one.
Dine At Home
=========
Go to local local liquor store to get decently priced wine
Eat at home
It costs a lot less, doesn't take as long...
I can tell you're not the cook in the house, nor probably clean afterwards. First you have to plan the menu, make a list, then fight traffic to buy the food and alcohol, possibly at different stores. Sure, that might have been done earlier and stuff is in the pantry, but it still had to be done. Prep and cook all the food. Then you can eat. Clean all dishes, cookware, and appliances. Main reason people go out is so they won't have to cook and clean, as it often can take longer than going out even including traffic. And if you want something nice, it might usually cost about half, but sometimes cost about as much as you don't buy in bulk from a restaurant supplier and specialty items cost money. Alcohol does cost less, but to have an actual bar capable of producing a variety of cocktails is a major investment.
Uh, American control over the world is a *bad* thing. Just ask Iraq.
Not disagreeing with that. If anything, recent history has taught us that stability tends to be better than trying to fix things, at least though revolution or war.
There is no getting around time dialation, simply crossing the Milky Way takes 100k years, another 100k to get back. After a few tens of trips the universe will have doubled in age, we would have collided with andromeda and other galaxies long ago and the universe would be old. Simply moving through space, even at light speed, is far too slow to ever get us more than a small handful of nearby systems, each being essentially cut off from the rest of the universe.
Right, time dilation. 100k for Earth, but only 24 for the people who do the traveling. Our rate of expansion will be limited by the ship's subjective time, not that of Earth.
Where did all the zombies go?
Zombies was never really a fear. The story for almost all zombie movies or books is not man versus zombie, but rather man versus nature as zombies were just a natural disaster that could be shot in the head for action. Still, the real conflict in such stories is man versus man as the natural disaster causes society to break down and situations that could probably be solved through cooperation spell disaster as people turn selfish and fail to uphold societal standards. Nobody ever really feared zombies, but rather the other humans that had survived.
I would imagine that they would be able to pretty accurately calculate this ahead of time...
In theory, practice and theory are the same; in practice, they are not.
Not sure I'd call that sort of burn successful, but if the goal was "get way far from earth uncontrollably", I guess that works.
I would imagine that the goal would be full burn for all of the fuel so they'd have an idea of what max performance would be.
Moreover, the shuttle was an expensive dead end (the Buran more of a dead end). Consider steam warships: the first one was the USS Demogorgon, and nothing developed from it. The British later built steam warships and those sparked a design revolution.
Interesting with the ship analogy (although being /., it should be cars). The one that has been going on in my head is that once SapceX successfully landed it's first stage back on Earth, all other rockets were made obsolete, just like when the HMS Dreadnaught made all other battleships obsolete. Now, everybody else is just playing catchup. Once SpaeX has their man rating and the BFR, they'll be the leader in space launches for all fields and if they come out on schedule, before anybody else (ULA/Blue Origin or SLS) is even has demonstrated they can compete with what SpaceX is already doing.