Put the comm dishes on the Moon someplace. I'd recommend a set of 3, equally spaced around the equator of the Moon, thus, it'll always have 1 dish at least looking in the right direction.
Second thought, a heavy comm laser setup, also Moon-based.
Maybe I'm not getting it, but ion thrusters still need reaction mass, don't they? If these sats are under thrust for 90 days every 2 & a half years, eventually they'll run dry. From what I understand about the orbital parameters, they won't be cheap (in delta-vee) to reach for refueling, either. Now, we have a helluva time just scheduling a Hubble repair mission. How much more pain in the ass is a MarsComm sat refueling mission going to be? Or are they to be throwaways & replaced when they fall out of position, bone dry?
Stock trading is meaningless for day to day operations of a company? So this economic downturn we are in had nothing to do with trading? Companies have no trouble getting enough capital to engage in day to day operations? No layoffs?
Unless the company is selling new shares or bonds, the company isn't getting the money, the original investors are. Once a share is sold, the company doesn't own it anymore.
Whatever else our new strategy entails, "no civilian casualties" needs to be the cornerstone, or we're never going to win.
Agreed. Every civilian casualty can be counted as a martyr and used as propaganda to get more combattants into the fray. We need to minimalise martyrdom to win.
The Afghan government does not have very much legitimacy among the people. Society in that part of the world is heavily based on tribal politics. The Taliban has an entire parallel government setup. That parallel government more or less runs the country outside of Kabul.
That's pretty much been the situation in Afghanistan since recorded history began. Under Taliban rule, the Taliban basically ruled Kabul, and outside the city limits, it was no man's land. The Taliban didn't give up bin Laden because they couldn't, he was 400 miles away in disputed territory and the Taliban didn't have the military to pull that off. There's a considerable difference between can't and won't. What the war did was create enough martyrs to put the Taliban in a stronger position than ever before.
As bad as police spy drones are for civil liberties, don't compare them to the military drones until you start arming them.
I'd count on it, as cops tend to be bullet-shy when chasing down those 'heavily armed suspects'. Why should cops take bullets when easily replaceable drones and robots can with no loss of 'significant' life, i.e., 'highly and expensively trained' cops?
A little two factor authentication would be nice to see in American banks. Passwords just aren't adequate any more.
Per TFA, the banks in the two cases mentioned in the summary used two factor authentication. The hackers' malware delayed their access, and the hackers used a VPN tunnel to access the bank through the compromised computer.
Sounds like an argument for keeping Government small and limited in the powers it can exercise. Otherwise Government starts to intrude into the marketplace and instead of a free market we wind up with monopolies backed by the power of the state.
Hmm...now if only we could come up with a document, that would enumerate the limited powers of said small and limited government.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I coulda swore I heard of such a document someplace. From what I understand, though, that particular contract is in disuse at the moment, with no signs of revitilization, mostly due to corporate lobbying...
... my congratulations to Ray. It's not every day that somebody has the courage to descend into the belly of The Beast and beard them in their own den.
Ray is one of those 2% of lawyers that the other 98% make things bad for.
Fusion power has been "adecade away" for 30 years. Stop counting on it.
I stopped counting on fusion power to 'save our collective asses' 20 years ago.
Moreover, nuclear waste cannot be broken down, you have to wait an eon or two for it to transmute into something else (aka wait 3 half-lives or more). Of course, it could be recycled in breeder or CANDU reactors, but I digress.
Or thorium fission reactors which tend to be MUCH 'greener' than plutonium reactors, plus no nasty weapons grade fissile materials left over at the end of the cycle.
Why not build on the concept of the space elevator and "elevate" this stuff into
orbit on a trajectory into the sun? Seriously - why leave it on earth at all?
The technology seems to be developing to make something like this plausible.
Never know what might be useful down the line. There are projects right now to 'mine' the methane in landfills for use in energy production.
Once upon a time in the 70's I worked in a factory that had high lead concentrations. Per OSHA requirements, we were provided (and PAID FOR USING) shower facilities, recieved company-supplied work clothing and safety gear, AND had regular tests for lead poisoning. Those who got poisoned were kept on the payroll and reassigned 'make-work' in areas where no significant lead was to be found, such as, mowing the lawn with mowers powered by unleaded gas and propane, running the shredder, manning the tool crib, etc, at NO loss in wages or hours. What makes you think OSHA wouldn't mandate and monitor superfund sites in a similar manner?
Some of these places could never be truly cleaned up. You'd essentially have to ship the top 500 feet of soil and rock of the entire areas to China or India, but even that's just moving the problem away from the USA.
Why clean them up either? At least this policy abandons the idea that every bit of land should be returned to some sort of pristine state.
Problem is, the Earth Firsters want everything put back into 'pristine shape'. This really isn't feasible in any manner. From the way they talk, seems as though they consider humanity a disease that needs wiping out. Leave it up to them, there'd be maybe 5,000 humans running around naked and toolless, subsisting on carrion & berries while their prefered animal populations took over the Earth.
All except them, of course. They won't give up a technic lifestyle, they need it to pump out their propaganda.
It's not newsworthy that a restraining order was violated. It's newsworthy that law enforcement are looking at the violation regardless of the communication channel. It's one more step towards realizing we don't need to create new laws with "e-this, or cyber-that" to have them apply to Internet traffic.
So now cyberpatting a girl's ass in a chatroom is gonna make us into sexual predators. Isn't that lovely?
What I haven't seen talked about as much here is the idea that this thing should be built on a really tall mountain so the projectile doesn't have to go as far or fight so much wind resistance before the rocket motor ignites.
The Altoplano in Peru sounds good to me. Course, I'd prefer a laser launching system over a gun, but that's just me...
if you could point to the evidence of the nuclear and biological weapons programs, thatd be just great. and no. aluminium tubes dont count.
Funny that. From what I've heard, those aluminum tubes were worthless as components of a uranium seperater but almost blueprint for a next-gen SCUD that would, if you set up within inches of Iraq's western border and had a good easterly wind, could possibly land payloads inside Israel.
I never said it couldn't be done - I said I think it can't be done economically.
OK, the gun itself would run about half a billion, about what a Shuttle flight comes in at. Say the capsuals cost another half billion to develop. Manufacturing costs of the capsuals isn't development cost; we're bound to figure out how to make them cheaper, say, a million per. Amortize the cost of the gun & capsual development over 10,000 launches (hey, you got the hardware here, might as well use it). That brings the development costs down to $100,000 per launch. The more capsuals you send up, the cheaper the development costs get. Those 10,000 launches put 4500 metric tons into orbit relatively cheaply, the equivilent of 180 Shuttle launches @ 90 billion for the lot. Every 60 capsuals equals the payload of 1 Shuttle. Haven't seen the math on power costs yet, but I doubt those capsuals will take more than 5 million per to launch. Figuring at 5 mil/launch, that 4500 tons cost 50 billion. Less than half of what the Shuttle would cost us. That breaks down to about $11.2k/kilo, about $6000/pound. Dirt cheap by today's standard, at 5 million per for launch costs. And somehow I think it'll be less than that if they fully roll this out.
Thing is, a circularisation burn is trivial once you get going in the right direction at more or less the right speed.
This system would be ok for bulk cargo that doesn't break apart under high gees. Somebody was calculating it'd induce something on the order of 1600 gees, which would pulp and paste a biological payload. That's fine, if you want goo delivered to orbit. But we're going to have to figure out how to get people into orbit cheaper than chemical rockets (spam in a can). An ablative laser launch system might work. Power it with a solar powersat maybe...
Slashdot Mirror
Put the comm dishes on the Moon someplace. I'd recommend a set of 3, equally spaced around the equator of the Moon, thus, it'll always have 1 dish at least looking in the right direction.
Second thought, a heavy comm laser setup, also Moon-based.
Maybe I'm not getting it, but ion thrusters still need reaction mass, don't they? If these sats are under thrust for 90 days every 2 & a half years, eventually they'll run dry. From what I understand about the orbital parameters, they won't be cheap (in delta-vee) to reach for refueling, either. Now, we have a helluva time just scheduling a Hubble repair mission. How much more pain in the ass is a MarsComm sat refueling mission going to be? Or are they to be throwaways & replaced when they fall out of position, bone dry?
Unless the company is selling new shares or bonds, the company isn't getting the money, the original investors are. Once a share is sold, the company doesn't own it anymore.
To readily identify the next generation of 'Nintendo warriors' for the draft?
Agreed. Every civilian casualty can be counted as a martyr and used as propaganda to get more combattants into the fray. We need to minimalise martyrdom to win.
That's pretty much been the situation in Afghanistan since recorded history began. Under Taliban rule, the Taliban basically ruled Kabul, and outside the city limits, it was no man's land. The Taliban didn't give up bin Laden because they couldn't, he was 400 miles away in disputed territory and the Taliban didn't have the military to pull that off. There's a considerable difference between can't and won't. What the war did was create enough martyrs to put the Taliban in a stronger position than ever before.
I'd count on it, as cops tend to be bullet-shy when chasing down those 'heavily armed suspects'. Why should cops take bullets when easily replaceable drones and robots can with no loss of 'significant' life, i.e., 'highly and expensively trained' cops?
Per TFA, the banks in the two cases mentioned in the summary used two factor authentication. The hackers' malware delayed their access, and the hackers used a VPN tunnel to access the bank through the compromised computer.
Ol' RAH sure had a way of adding a new dimension to the expression "Go fuck yourself", didn't he?
There was a tv show with something to that effect.
Maybe I'm getting old, but I coulda swore I heard of such a document someplace. From what I understand, though, that particular contract is in disuse at the moment, with no signs of revitilization, mostly due to corporate lobbying...
Ray is one of those 2% of lawyers that the other 98% make things bad for.
How much local resistance is the owner getting to his project?
He was gifted that Nobel prize for looking like he was trying to do something. In the politics game, appearance is everything.
I stopped counting on fusion power to 'save our collective asses' 20 years ago.
Or thorium fission reactors which tend to be MUCH 'greener' than plutonium reactors, plus no nasty weapons grade fissile materials left over at the end of the cycle.
Never know what might be useful down the line. There are projects right now to 'mine' the methane in landfills for use in energy production.
Once upon a time in the 70's I worked in a factory that had high lead concentrations. Per OSHA requirements, we were provided (and PAID FOR USING) shower facilities, recieved company-supplied work clothing and safety gear, AND had regular tests for lead poisoning. Those who got poisoned were kept on the payroll and reassigned 'make-work' in areas where no significant lead was to be found, such as, mowing the lawn with mowers powered by unleaded gas and propane, running the shredder, manning the tool crib, etc, at NO loss in wages or hours. What makes you think OSHA wouldn't mandate and monitor superfund sites in a similar manner?
Problem is, the Earth Firsters want everything put back into 'pristine shape'. This really isn't feasible in any manner. From the way they talk, seems as though they consider humanity a disease that needs wiping out. Leave it up to them, there'd be maybe 5,000 humans running around naked and toolless, subsisting on carrion & berries while their prefered animal populations took over the Earth.
All except them, of course. They won't give up a technic lifestyle, they need it to pump out their propaganda.
So now cyberpatting a girl's ass in a chatroom is gonna make us into sexual predators. Isn't that lovely?
The Altoplano in Peru sounds good to me. Course, I'd prefer a laser launching system over a gun, but that's just me...
Funny that. From what I've heard, those aluminum tubes were worthless as components of a uranium seperater but almost blueprint for a next-gen SCUD that would, if you set up within inches of Iraq's western border and had a good easterly wind, could possibly land payloads inside Israel.
Naw. Too cruel and unusual. Use Congressional lobbyists and RIAA lawyers.
OK, the gun itself would run about half a billion, about what a Shuttle flight comes in at. Say the capsuals cost another half billion to develop. Manufacturing costs of the capsuals isn't development cost; we're bound to figure out how to make them cheaper, say, a million per. Amortize the cost of the gun & capsual development over 10,000 launches (hey, you got the hardware here, might as well use it). That brings the development costs down to $100,000 per launch. The more capsuals you send up, the cheaper the development costs get. Those 10,000 launches put 4500 metric tons into orbit relatively cheaply, the equivilent of 180 Shuttle launches @ 90 billion for the lot. Every 60 capsuals equals the payload of 1 Shuttle. Haven't seen the math on power costs yet, but I doubt those capsuals will take more than 5 million per to launch. Figuring at 5 mil/launch, that 4500 tons cost 50 billion. Less than half of what the Shuttle would cost us. That breaks down to about $11.2k/kilo, about $6000/pound. Dirt cheap by today's standard, at 5 million per for launch costs. And somehow I think it'll be less than that if they fully roll this out.
This system would be ok for bulk cargo that doesn't break apart under high gees. Somebody was calculating it'd induce something on the order of 1600 gees, which would pulp and paste a biological payload. That's fine, if you want goo delivered to orbit. But we're going to have to figure out how to get people into orbit cheaper than chemical rockets (spam in a can). An ablative laser launch system might work. Power it with a solar powersat maybe...