Actually, the statistical significance of their result was pretty good. From the research paper:
Therefore, the effect of fertility status (testing whether a woman's score was above chance) was estimated at the average of days prior to menstrual onset (roughly a mid-luteal phase day of the cycle) and at the day of ovulation. Scores were above chance, F(1, 27) = 7.06, p = 0.013 (mean = 59.5%; SEM = 5%).
As far as psych experiments go, p=0.013 is pretty good.
It's quite a pity too, because it looks like it'd be a lot of fun to develop for. I imagine that the restriction may be due more to Cingular than Apple itself -- hopefully there's still some way that people could manage to persuade them to change this.
It's kind of tricky. For example, he couldn't say "thousands" unless it was 3000 or more. Also, he'd want to say something which he'd be sure wouldn't be obsolete by the time it was published, so he could be leaning towards understatement.
In any case, my point is that if the PS3 is in stock at hundreds of Gamestops, they aren't "selling as many as they can make" and are at least on the cusp of satisfying customer demand. On the other hand, I have yet to hear of a Wii shipment anywhere lasting more than a day, most being gone within an hour or two. You can also take a look at the eBay prices to get an idea of what the demand/supply ratio for each is like.
Actually, there was a whole dot-com phenomena of putting "i" in front of things too. iDefense Labs is the one that springs immediately to mind as a survivor from that era.
Another example which slashdotters might be more familiar with is iRobot (creator of the Roomba vacuum robot), which was founded back in 1990, a full 11 years before the iPod.
Daniel A. DeMatteo, vice chairman and COO of GameStop, late last week said PS3s are available at "hundreds of the company's 3,700 outlets," according to the New York Times. The Wii, on the other hand, is still hard to come by.
"We got some [Wiis] in yesterday in really limited supply, and they virtually disappeared," DeMatteo said, according to the NYT.
The impression I get is that the failure modes are worse for a controlled landing, but for a "normal" landing a parachute can only slow you down to some minimum velocity, while a powered landing can touch down at an arbitrarily small velocity. This is particularly critical if you want to fly your craft on a daily basis, like Blue Origin probably wants to do.
Also important for a repeated-flight company like Blue Origin is that a powered landing can touch down at a particular location, while a parachute landing would require some sort of transportation back to the launch site using a truck or helicopter. For a vehicle as big as the New Shephard, I don't think that will be easy to load and transport.
I could be wrong, but I also suspect that it can be tricky to properly and safely load a parachute of that size.
Of all of the possible uses of Nuclear power, using it to power a rocket out of the atmosphere is perhaps the last one I'd want to see actually implemented. It is hard to think of a better way of spreading radioactive particles all over a huge landscape, not to mention what happens when you crash.
I'm sure it'd be trivial compared to the spread of radioactive particles from coal power plants.
Powered ascent and descent results in a craft that is 4 times more massive than one that would reach the same altitude but land using a ballistic reentry and a parachute. You would not see Burt Rutan embrace an inefficient design like that.
Keep in mind that cost-effectiveness is the goal, not efficiency. Many slashdotters seem to get the two confused with each other. Considering that your main cost is paying employees, which method results in fewer employees to pay? If you use a ballistic landing it tends to be a much harder landing, so you have to spend more on quality control to ensure that your craft is still structurally ok after each landing.
That said, it looks like the Blue Origin craft will actually use powered descent primarily, with parachute descent as a fail-safe.
285 ft today, commercial sub orbital space in three years time. That doesn't sound like a deliberate pace, it sounds a bit rushed to me.
As another commenter mentioned, taking off and landing (which they've just demonstrated) are the most difficult parts of a launch. Additionally, SpaceShipOne went from starting full development in 2001, to their first test flight in 2003, to their first suborbital flight in 2004.
Her dream, as a young girl in the Phillipines, was to come to America and make enough money to support a family and drive a Mercedes--which she accomplished.
Out of curiosity, was your girlfriend's mom a nurse, or did she perhaps start out as one? I ask because my own mom, my aunt, and several other immigrant Filipinos I know of are nurses, and it seems to be a regular pattern.
Over coming the alcohol sensor is a simple matter of putting on a pair of gloves. Any drunk who is sober enough to get his key in the ignition is also going to be sober enough to know he can defeat his car with a pair of gloves.
I think part of the problem is that people don't always quite realize that they're too drunk to drive. Having the car refuse to start and, say, tell you "You're drunk!" could help clue them in.
I'm a pretty libertarian fellow, but I'm surprisingly actually in favor of this sort of technology (as long as it isn't obligated by the government?). After all, drunk driving is responsible for quite a bit of death and destruction: In the US, in the year 2003 alone, there were 17,000 deaths caused by drunk driving and over a half-million injuries. Reducing drunk driving deaths would certainly help a lot more than the police's funding-based obsession over speeding tickets.
That said, I'm much more in favor of the system which prevents car startup, than the system which interferes with car operation once the vehicle is in motion. I guess I'd be interested in the latter system if it gave an obvious warning a few minutes prior, and then turned down the max speed very slowly (over a period of minutes).
But from I understand the goal is for it to be Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO)
Actually, Blue Origin hasn't stated anything along those lines yet. The only thing they've officially described is that they're planning on operating a suborbital craft (the "New Shephard") which will be twice as large as the current prototype. Of course, it's possible that they might later try scaling it up even more (and probably switching to a different propellant) to try to go for orbit, but that's a long ways away.
While cost is an important factor, that isn't entirely the point. Consider, the more fuel you have to carry through to landing, the more mass you have. And the more mass you have, the more fuel you need to get into orbit in the first place. It's a waste. Wouldn't you rather send more people or cargo?
Ultimately for a venture like Blue Origin, what matters is the cost per person sent up. If you use, say, wings or parachutes regularly they might be able to squeeze on a few extra people, but how would that effect their overall costs and the rate at which they're able to launch each craft?
Hell, IMHO, a paraschute landing makes more sense than a powered vertical landing...
I think the problem with a parachute landing is that it's somewhat more likely to cause damage to the craft. Moreover, landing with a hard jolt could result in problems which could be hard to detect.
In any case, if I understand correctly, Blue Origin is actually using powered landing with parachute landing as a backup:
On the way down, there are two possible scenarios: Either the spacecraft would land with the crew capsule still attached to the engines - or the propulsion module would break away and land on its own, with the crew capsule floating back down to Earth beneath parachutes or a similar drag system.
If there were an emergency - either detected by the onboard computer or by controllers monitoring the flight from the ground - the crew capsule would separate and parachute to safety.
More fuel means more weight which means more energy to take off and to land. This would seem to make space flight more expensive not less expensive.
Keep in mind that fuel (especially something like the hydrogen peroxide they're using) is absurdly cheap compared to everything else. Most of the money on launch ventures goes to paying employees, so you want to do everything possible to reduce how many support personnel you have. Fuel is probably on the order of 1% of your total costs.
Just look at the number of people that have already made reservations for flights on Virgin Galactic.
You might want to read one of the links off of Wikipedia - note: clicking 'Yes, I'd sign up and fork over $200,000' on an anonymous web-based poll on a mailing list somewhat unsurprisingly does not equate to a "reservation".
I was actually referring to the people who've already put down money for a reservation.
Seriously though - how much bigger is this vehicle going to get? The photos of it on the flatbed truck are awe inspiring...yet I can't imagine how much of that must simply be for fuel.
The Environmental Impact Statement they were required to publish last year describing their suborbital vehicle says that the "stacked vehicle would have a roughly conical shape with a base diameter of approximately 7 meters (22 feet) and a height of approximately 15 meters (50 feet)."
Judging from the photograph with the guy standing next to the rocket, the current test article seems to be maybe 6-7 meters tall, so I guess the final thing will be more than twice as tall.
"We're working, patiently and step-by-step" Trans: "This is gonna be super safe. Trust us. Just don't expect miracles."
Where do you get the idea that they're promising something "super safe"? All I got from that is that they're trying to warn people that they're trying not to rush things.
"to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go" Trans: "And as soon as we can find a market and get the launch costs to the break-even point..."
Huh? They've already have a market. Just look at the number of people that have already made reservations for flights on Virgin Galactic.
"Accomplishing this mission will take a long time, and we're working on it methodically." Trans: "Anyone who wants to pony up some funds will be welcomed, but it will still take a while."
The company is being funded out-of-pocket by (multi-billionaire) Jeff Bezos, and I'm fairly certain he wants to keep financial control over it for at least the near future. It's his baby, pretty much. I really don't think they're begging for funding.
I'm sure Iran is not exactly a bastion of free expression, but I've seen plenty of Iranian people who have been interviewed on camera criticizing the Iranian government and calling them all a bunch of idiots. Then there was the recent case of Iranian students jeering the President, burning a picture of him, and throwing fireworks (http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1 462_2043334,00.html). That's not the sort of thing you do if you are terrified of your government.
Slashdot Mirror
Actually, the statistical significance of their result was pretty good. From the research paper:
Therefore, the effect of fertility status (testing whether a woman's score was above chance) was estimated at the average of days prior to menstrual onset (roughly a mid-luteal phase day of the cycle) and at the day of ovulation. Scores were above chance, F(1, 27) = 7.06, p = 0.013 (mean = 59.5%; SEM = 5%).
As far as psych experiments go, p=0.013 is pretty good.
I'd happily rush out to buy one to replace my Treo, except for one major problem: You won't be able to install your own software on it.
It's quite a pity too, because it looks like it'd be a lot of fun to develop for. I imagine that the restriction may be due more to Cingular than Apple itself -- hopefully there's still some way that people could manage to persuade them to change this.
It's kind of tricky. For example, he couldn't say "thousands" unless it was 3000 or more. Also, he'd want to say something which he'd be sure wouldn't be obsolete by the time it was published, so he could be leaning towards understatement.
In any case, my point is that if the PS3 is in stock at hundreds of Gamestops, they aren't "selling as many as they can make" and are at least on the cusp of satisfying customer demand. On the other hand, I have yet to hear of a Wii shipment anywhere lasting more than a day, most being gone within an hour or two. You can also take a look at the eBay prices to get an idea of what the demand/supply ratio for each is like.
Actually, there was a whole dot-com phenomena of putting "i" in front of things too. iDefense Labs is the one that springs immediately to mind as a survivor from that era.
Another example which slashdotters might be more familiar with is iRobot (creator of the Roomba vacuum robot), which was founded back in 1990, a full 11 years before the iPod.
From http://www.gamespot.com/news/6163878.html
Daniel A. DeMatteo, vice chairman and COO of GameStop, late last week said PS3s are available at "hundreds of the company's 3,700 outlets," according to the New York Times. The Wii, on the other hand, is still hard to come by.
"We got some [Wiis] in yesterday in really limited supply, and they virtually disappeared," DeMatteo said, according to the NYT.
The impression I get is that the failure modes are worse for a controlled landing, but for a "normal" landing a parachute can only slow you down to some minimum velocity, while a powered landing can touch down at an arbitrarily small velocity. This is particularly critical if you want to fly your craft on a daily basis, like Blue Origin probably wants to do.
Also important for a repeated-flight company like Blue Origin is that a powered landing can touch down at a particular location, while a parachute landing would require some sort of transportation back to the launch site using a truck or helicopter. For a vehicle as big as the New Shephard, I don't think that will be easy to load and transport.
I could be wrong, but I also suspect that it can be tricky to properly and safely load a parachute of that size.
Of all of the possible uses of Nuclear power, using it to power a rocket out of the atmosphere is perhaps the last one I'd want to see actually implemented. It is hard to think of a better way of spreading radioactive particles all over a huge landscape, not to mention what happens when you crash.
/ colmain.html
I'm sure it'd be trivial compared to the spread of radioactive particles from coal power plants.
http://www.ornl.gov/info/ornlreview/rev26-34/text
Powered ascent and descent results in a craft that is 4 times more massive than one that would reach the same altitude but land using a ballistic reentry and a parachute. You would not see Burt Rutan embrace an inefficient design like that.
Keep in mind that cost-effectiveness is the goal, not efficiency. Many slashdotters seem to get the two confused with each other. Considering that your main cost is paying employees, which method results in fewer employees to pay? If you use a ballistic landing it tends to be a much harder landing, so you have to spend more on quality control to ensure that your craft is still structurally ok after each landing.
That said, it looks like the Blue Origin craft will actually use powered descent primarily, with parachute descent as a fail-safe.
285 ft today, commercial sub orbital space in three years time. That doesn't sound like a deliberate pace, it sounds a bit rushed to me.
As another commenter mentioned, taking off and landing (which they've just demonstrated) are the most difficult parts of a launch. Additionally, SpaceShipOne went from starting full development in 2001, to their first test flight in 2003, to their first suborbital flight in 2004.
Hahahahahah. WOW. Yes, she's a nurse, and she now manages a hospital.
;)
Heh, I knew it.
Her dream, as a young girl in the Phillipines, was to come to America and make enough money to support a family and drive a Mercedes--which she accomplished.
Out of curiosity, was your girlfriend's mom a nurse, or did she perhaps start out as one? I ask because my own mom, my aunt, and several other immigrant Filipinos I know of are nurses, and it seems to be a regular pattern.
Over coming the alcohol sensor is a simple matter of putting on a pair of gloves. Any drunk who is sober enough to get his key in the ignition is also going to be sober enough to know he can defeat his car with a pair of gloves.
I think part of the problem is that people don't always quite realize that they're too drunk to drive. Having the car refuse to start and, say, tell you "You're drunk!" could help clue them in.
Driving while celled has yet to attract any major attention, and so of course Toyota is going after the big target.
If by "big target" you mean the one that kills the most people on the road, then you're right.
I'm a pretty libertarian fellow, but I'm surprisingly actually in favor of this sort of technology (as long as it isn't obligated by the government?). After all, drunk driving is responsible for quite a bit of death and destruction: In the US, in the year 2003 alone, there were 17,000 deaths caused by drunk driving and over a half-million injuries. Reducing drunk driving deaths would certainly help a lot more than the police's funding-based obsession over speeding tickets.
That said, I'm much more in favor of the system which prevents car startup, than the system which interferes with car operation once the vehicle is in motion. I guess I'd be interested in the latter system if it gave an obvious warning a few minutes prior, and then turned down the max speed very slowly (over a period of minutes).
But from I understand the goal is for it to be Single Stage To Orbit (SSTO)
Actually, Blue Origin hasn't stated anything along those lines yet. The only thing they've officially described is that they're planning on operating a suborbital craft (the "New Shephard") which will be twice as large as the current prototype. Of course, it's possible that they might later try scaling it up even more (and probably switching to a different propellant) to try to go for orbit, but that's a long ways away.
While cost is an important factor, that isn't entirely the point. Consider, the more fuel you have to carry through to landing, the more mass you have. And the more mass you have, the more fuel you need to get into orbit in the first place. It's a waste. Wouldn't you rather send more people or cargo?
/ 669.aspx
Ultimately for a venture like Blue Origin, what matters is the cost per person sent up. If you use, say, wings or parachutes regularly they might be able to squeeze on a few extra people, but how would that effect their overall costs and the rate at which they're able to launch each craft?
Hell, IMHO, a paraschute landing makes more sense than a powered vertical landing...
I think the problem with a parachute landing is that it's somewhat more likely to cause damage to the craft. Moreover, landing with a hard jolt could result in problems which could be hard to detect.
In any case, if I understand correctly, Blue Origin is actually using powered landing with parachute landing as a backup:
http://cosmiclog.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2006/06/24
On the way down, there are two possible scenarios: Either the spacecraft would land with the crew capsule still attached to the engines - or the propulsion module would break away and land on its own, with the crew capsule floating back down to Earth beneath parachutes or a similar drag system.
If there were an emergency - either detected by the onboard computer or by controllers monitoring the flight from the ground - the crew capsule would separate and parachute to safety.
More fuel means more weight which means more energy to take off and to land. This would seem to make space flight more expensive not less expensive.
Keep in mind that fuel (especially something like the hydrogen peroxide they're using) is absurdly cheap compared to everything else. Most of the money on launch ventures goes to paying employees, so you want to do everything possible to reduce how many support personnel you have. Fuel is probably on the order of 1% of your total costs.
Just look at the number of people that have already made reservations for flights on Virgin Galactic.
You might want to read one of the links off of Wikipedia - note: clicking 'Yes, I'd sign up and fork over $200,000' on an anonymous web-based poll on a mailing list somewhat unsurprisingly does not equate to a "reservation".
I was actually referring to the people who've already put down money for a reservation.
It says it was "successful" but all I see is a bunch of pictures of the thing sitting on the ground.
I take it you didn't watch the video?
Seriously though - how much bigger is this vehicle going to get? The photos of it on the flatbed truck are awe inspiring...yet I can't imagine how much of that must simply be for fuel.
The Environmental Impact Statement they were required to publish last year describing their suborbital vehicle says that the "stacked vehicle would have a roughly conical shape with a base diameter of approximately 7 meters (22 feet) and a height of approximately 15 meters (50 feet)."
Judging from the photograph with the guy standing next to the rocket, the current test article seems to be maybe 6-7 meters tall, so I guess the final thing will be more than twice as tall.
We want burning flames and heat haze not condensation and frost.
It's not condensation and frost -- it's steam. As another commenter mentioned, the rocket uses H2O2 as propellant.
2 H2O2 => O2 + 2 H2O
Yup. In fact, many of the engineers who worked on the DC-X are now at Blue Origin.
"We're working, patiently and step-by-step"
Trans: "This is gonna be super safe. Trust us. Just don't expect miracles."
Where do you get the idea that they're promising something "super safe"? All I got from that is that they're trying to warn people that they're trying not to rush things.
"to lower the cost of spaceflight so that many people can afford to go"
Trans: "And as soon as we can find a market and get the launch costs to the break-even point..."
Huh? They've already have a market. Just look at the number of people that have already made reservations for flights on Virgin Galactic.
"Accomplishing this mission will take a long time, and we're working on it methodically."
Trans: "Anyone who wants to pony up some funds will be welcomed, but it will still take a while."
The company is being funded out-of-pocket by (multi-billionaire) Jeff Bezos, and I'm fairly certain he wants to keep financial control over it for at least the near future. It's his baby, pretty much. I really don't think they're begging for funding.
Already done:
0 431075627
http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=258164541
I'm sure Iran is not exactly a bastion of free expression, but I've seen plenty of Iranian people who have been interviewed on camera criticizing the Iranian government and calling them all a bunch of idiots. Then there was the recent case of Iranian students jeering the President, burning a picture of him, and throwing fireworks (http://www.news24.com/News24/World/News/0,,2-10-1 462_2043334,00.html). That's not the sort of thing you do if you are terrified of your government.
Are these by chance the same students who have now gone into hiding in fear for their lives?