You need some hard-core freezing equipment to make ethanol popsicles though.
I can't be the only slashdotter who's frozen mixed drinks into icecubes. You know, so your jack -n- coke doesn't water down as the ice cubes melt. "Everyone knows" that fifty:fifty jack and coke will freeze in a residential deep freeze and possibly in a plain residential freezer, and fifty:fifty jack and coke is pretty strong, thats like jack with a slight coke flavoring. No liquor 80 proof and above can possibly freeze in a residential freezer. I believe the freezing point for diet coke is far higher than regular coke due to the sugar content. I don't know how corn syrup content vs sucrose content varies the mix.
Just pick any ole unit. It doesn't matter at a high enough temperature, to a low enough level of accuracy.
Its interesting that all temperature units are "about the same magnitude". In comparison to length units of meters vs lightyears. Or energy, like calories to BTUs to electron-volts, all of which need serious scientific notation to convert.
Oddly enough Joules are within a factor of about four of calories, just odd luck or what? Sidereal seconds being close to "regular seconds" is kind of numerological cheating. Other than those two, I struggle to find units of measurement that are as close to each other as temperature units are.
On the other hand, occasionally you have an extremely lightweight payload of human beings. Send them at very high acceleration on a much faster hyperbolic (far above escape velocity) transfer orbit.
The other option is the radiation protective scale height of the atmosphere isn't as much as you think. Forcing everyone into the hot tub during a solar flare is actually not as impractical as some might think. You're going to need all that water anyway, so building concentric hollow sphere tanks is not all that unrealistic.
Ridiculous example: If someone had gotten a patent for "circular apparatus that facilitates low friction locomotion" there might not have been much to do but wait out the 20 years.
How about a real, ridiculous example instead of a made up one? Putting medication into popsicles and feeding the popsicles to children. Until it expires on Dec 20 2013 we can't do this.
This is the second time I've posted this patent today...
When I was a little kid (let just say, back when OJ was famous for an entirely different reason than now) my mom had one of those tupperware sets to "make your own popsicles" and I occasionally took medication that way per pediatrician advice. Instead of putting plain kool-aid in and freezing them, you put something kids don't like, such as cough medicine, in, fill the balance with kool-aid, stir to mix, freeze... best made onesie-twosie to prevent accidental overdose. Now a days I would like a tupperware popsicle maker kit so as to add ethanol. Oh that patent-violating mother of mine...
So what exactly is the milestone? I'm used to milestones being a big logical-AND of finally successfully achieving a bunch of technical requirements. This seems to be a "marketing milestone"?
The concept of a "milestone" from hiking or whatever, is that according to the surveyors you've come exactly 5280 feet since the last milestone. Not "here is a pretty picture", or "we figured we'd generate some buzz by placing the milestone here".
As a side question to all you hikers from the civilized world, do you guys have "kilo-stones" or whatever? Seriously?
my understanding is that sailing is much like combat, long stretches of boredom punctuated by terror
Correction - "my understanding is that sailing is much like combat, long stretches of repetitive preventative maintenance punctuated by terror". Whenever you're not at the helm, of course.
I have researched this thoroughly, I've read the Pardey's books, etc. It might be a fun retirement plan for me in a couple decades. The original post seemed to just be a whim as opposed to a carefully researched plan. Fact is, for centuries mariners have kept themselves quite exhausted when out on the sea without trying to simultaneously run a full time tele-consulting business in a different timezone... Its roughly an order of magnitude of maintenance work over and above a suburban house. If my house roof leaks I'll be pissed but if my boat hull leaks I'll sink (more or less).
Its faintly amusing reading the Pardey's books from 40 years ago, explaining how with the near total absence of modern conveniences "the wife" pretty much gets stuck in the cabin the whole time doing cooking / laundry / cleaning. Perhaps, given the current lack of un-liberated women, the stereotypical single slashdot guy might be the perfect modern cruiser, since the lack of women whom would tolerate cruising would not affect a guy whom cannot get a woman under any conditions anyway.
How many party goers can you invite over? I think that would be a pretty cool place to hang out. Or, my friends and family would have to pay $20 for a museum ticket to hang out with me.
I'm assuming you have to sleep aboard the u-boat, which probably gets a bit toasty in the warm summer. Alternately you can re-enact scenes from "creation science" and sleep hiding from the dinosaurs.
The lack of shower facilities would probably not bother most slashdotters, but it would bother the museums other patrons. Then again, this is Chicago, they'd probably just think you're homeless.
Finally a month of eating the cafeteria food would probably resemble the "supersize me" movie.
I would probably prefer the Field Museum and/or the shedd aquarium. At least at the aquarium I could catch my own dinner.
The article poster, in addition to assuming he can telecommute, is assuming the only way to get :
Nautical Charts
Weather Maps
Travel Guide type info
Relevant Current International and Local News (Somali pirates, etc)
Emergency and Almost-Emergency assistance
Help locating repair parts for your boat
is over the internet for free or for a small fee. You could actually get most of what you need out of a ham radio license and the mobile maritime service net. But you'd have to "talk" to other people over the radio, which may or may not be acceptable.
Hmm, so your future employers can pay you a staggering amount of money to float your boat, or pay some 3rd worlder with practically zero cost of living to do the same job. Wonder how thats going to turn out.
Also the original poster seems to think you just put it on autopilot the whole time and "work on the real (computer) job". I don't think the original poster knows much about actual sailing. Unless he is so fabulously wealthy that he's planning on hiring a crew to do all the work for him.
Vaccine patches would be great, particularly if they made it look like a sticker
I hope it adsorbs quickly. If the sticker is generic or not their favorite character, they immediately peel it off their skin/clothes and throw it away, or if it is their favorite character they immediately peel it off and admire it.
which are second only to popsicles in the ability to placate an irritated youngster
So, put the medication inside the freaking popsicle. Hmm, thats a good idea, medicated popsicles. Wonder why those aren't commercially available? Oh yes, that was patented in 1995. Maybe in a few decades we'll be able to benefit from that idea, but not until then.
They are also incredibly bad-ass, but they still make kids cry.
Because they hurt like hell for a couple days. After all, you're being shot, admittedly with a small caliber liquid bullet.
The kid is crying because the kid saw other kids crying the day after their vaccination.
Its interesting that for me, needles only hurt while they're stabbing you, afterwards its unnoticeable, whereas my experience with jet injectors is that the injection itself hurts less than a playful punch, but a few minutes later the pain from tissue damage starts and it continues for about a day.
Maybe they've improved, but a diabetic that jet-injectored themselves a couple times a day would pretty much be in continuous agony.
Its would be VERY interesting to study jet injector anxiety vs needle anxiety. I don't like needles at all, not even so much because of the (slight) pain, but watching them methodically approach me and cut me up (on a very small scale). Sort of the extreme opposite reaction compared to those chicks whom like to cut themselves. On the other hand, in my experience, jet injectors hurt like unholy hell, so I'd much rather take the needle. Based on the theory that it's pain avoidance, I would predict that given wide distribution and wide public experience that eventually there would be more people with jet injector anxiety than needle anxiety. On the other hand, if its freaking out about having things stuck into your body, then jet injectors, despite the considerable pain, would win out.
Interestingly enough most people insist that it's based off the star trek hypospray machine, yet its actually the reverse, the hypospray is based off the jet injector.
It's been half a century and they're still not popular. Mainly because of cleaning issues, you still have cleaning/sterilization tasks but instead of cheap mass produced hypos you have a complicated machine. But secondarily, yes indeed they do hurt like unholy hell for a couple days. I got several vaccinations from jet injectors at reception station immediately before army basic training in the early 90s. "Tough Army Dudes" will put up with the pain but I can see how children would not tolerate it.
Also, from experience, its pretty brutal and a couple drops of "stuff" leaks back out the entrance hole. Admittedly its not a.45 caliber entrance wound here, its like the hole from a lancet. But I wonder what percentage injected leaks back out again.
that still implies you have only 100 something miles (or maybe less) to decelerate around 13000 mph. I don't know whether or not this would cause problems, but I'm guessing in order for that to happen, organs are going to get squished.
That's a very modest acceleration profile. Remember that they got up there and up to speed in less distance. Squished as in you'd notice you're accelerating not standing still, hardly squished like a bug under a hammer.
If they can actually get astronauts down from "space" with no vehicle, that is cool.
Even for well prepared folks, breathing on Mt Everest at 30Kft is kind of tough and remarkably fatal. So don't bail out of a burning tumbling ship till you're below 30 Kft.
If this dude survives, maybe that means you can bail out at 100Kft almost 3 times higher. No need to sit there and wait until you're below 10Kft while the ships on fire and out of control.
Aside from being a publicity stunt, that is Probably the gameplan, rather than re-entry surfing. Re-entry surfing would certainly be cool...
True, but it sure would be a bummer to successfully decelerate from mach25 and 100 miles to mach "something" and 100Kft and then discover the parachute won't unfurl properly or whatever.
Now if these identical twins were still children, raised in the same environment, then that would indeed be interesting.
Yeah that would be interesting, like winning the lotto unlikely interesting. My wife and I eat McDonalds breakfast, same stuff. One of us spends the next 12 hours on the can due to salmonella. Repeat for a lifetime of experiences at Taco Bell, street vendors, etc.
That's before considering we both dig up the garden but only one of us gets an infected scratch.
And we never seem to catch cold/flu whatever at the same exact time. One catches it from the other, but never in the same order.
Could you please source this one? I'm no biologist, but I'm fairly certain that most of the human mass, and cell count is still that of human.
I'm not a biologist but I own a microscope and know how to use it.
Mass, yes, we win. Count, possibly not. Very crude rule of thumb is prokaryote (bacteria and friends) cell diameter is "about" a tenth or less than that of eukaryotes (us, assuming you're not a sentient bacterium).
In a typical microscope bacteria at like dots compared to animal cells. I'm sure some goof can reply with the worlds biggest bacteria cell and the worlds tiniest animal cell, just to make it clear I'm talking about 99% of the respective cell types not all that have ever been studied.
A lot of the debate hinges on our digestive system, is a "donut hole" actually inside the donut itself? And then there's the goofs that may, or may not, define "our body" as including everything living on the surface of our skin. The royal "our" or royal "we"?
The problem with "Open Source" hardware, and any other tangible thing, is simply that for most hardware of any significance, a person would need a factory and expensive resources handy to go about trying to make it.
You are soooo obviously not a modern electronics entrepreneur. You rent all that stuff. Yes, over the internet. Just like I don't need my own personal silk screen offset printing press I just use cafepress and competitors.
There's about a dozen board houses where you upload a PCB file, and in a couple days they mail you ready to solder PCBs. Multi layer, exotic substrates, plating, solder mask, these guys do it all. Generally PCB manufacture is completely automated, about as much slow human touch as buying a book from amazon. This is not vapor ware or a nebulous student business plan, but a pretty big business. Most PCB houses are glad to do one offs for a price, although theres obvious quantity discounts.
If you will lower yourself to talking on the phone to a salesweasel, "most" board houses either have inhouse assemblers or a "special relationship" with a local assembler. You will need to talk extensively about assembly service, and FAX custom contract back and forth. Someone could probably make a killing in the business by "semi-automating" this process much like happened to ultra-small run PCB business over the last decade. The main problem with assemblers is their "JIT" sourcing of parts and their pre-soldering inspection of parts... um... has some stereotypical problems.
There are at least half a dozen businesses where you upload a certain CAD file and in a couple days you get all manner of metal front panels, cases, and just plain ole random metalwork. Again all automated, about as difficult as uploading a picture to cafepress or uploading a "gerber" file to a PCB house. Not as popular as PCB houses, but up and coming.
There would probably be a business opportunity for someone to set up an expediting service over the internet to coordinate all these guys. But trust me, at least for open source electronics devices, if you know how to use google its pretty much ask and ye shall receive (if ye have a thick enough wallet, of course).
I suppose people could develop test systems using FPGAs and then publish the design for what the dedicated hardware piece would look like though.
Well, in practice my Spartan3 FPGA experimenters board from a couple years ago cost approximately as much as a "really good keyboard" or about half the cost of a "reasonable tower chassis". Or somewhere between 1 and 2 months cablemodem service. You can treat the FPGA as a distinct PLCC or BGA that needs to be soldered to something you make, or treat the FPGA as the standard PCB breakout/demo board that all manufacturers sell (cheaply) to promote their devices. Standard slashdot car analogy is you can buy a V-8 engine and you figure out how to put it into a car, or you can buy a ready to be modded / tuned up Civic just like a normal person.
You have to realize the absolute minimum design of a FPGA board is pretty minimal, actually simpler than an arduino board. And the development software is free. If you're very handy with SMD you can assemble it yourself. Or, you can convince yourself that if you don't personally etch the board yourself that "you" didn't do it.
The most obvious, incredibly stereotypical counter example is the electronics kit building industry.
There's a whole subculture of people selling kits based on electronics magazine articles. Lots of radio kits based on QST articles. Phasing type SSB TX and RX, ATV TX and downconverters, various transverters...
Technically the magazine is copyrighted. However, I've also purchased and built completely, literally open hardware devices like a SBC6120 single board PDP-8 computer. And other things.
The folks running these operations typically do not retire wealthy, but they aren't starving either, far as I know.
As a historical note from an old timer, in an earlier era, maybe a decade or so ago, there was extremely heavy pimping of using open source software to do biological genetic processing "bioinformatics". By 2010, we'd all be doing genetic processing in our basement as our primary hobby. It was successful enough in its field, but not widespread to the masses.
The discrimination against nuclear is from the standard proprietary software licenses forbidding use of MS products for air traffic control, medical devices, nuclear. Probably building your own homemade ATC radar or your own automatic defibrillator is a bit beyond most amateurs, but hotwiring a web interface to a geiger counter is FAR more believable. So, if you're going to pick and choose words from MS license, may as well pick that. Also nuclear is the most stereotypical dual use technology I can think of, in that it seems "obvious" that you'd want to ban 3rd world nuclear bomb development by banning "all nuclear devices" yet it seems obvious to me that a completely harmless twitter interface to a geiger counter would be kind of cool. Well, kind of, anyway.
The reason why open source software works is that it is easy for people to contribute and it is essentially free to give someone a copy. That is not the case with hardware.
Are you ever going to be confused when you learn about FPGAs.
Presumably unless they're making it up as they go along, they could release all the blueprints right now. It's not like they have to keep it secret to prevent copies from the far east. Or do they?
As for preparing press kits now, well, "the press" aka/. is reporting on it now, so give us our kits.
And release early, and release often, seems to work in certain other intellectual pursuits.
Per the measurements given (18kg/(1m^2 * 1cm)) the vault's density is 1.8 grams per cubic centimeter. This is much less dense than aluminum (or steel or lead obviously) - anyone know what the vault is made from?
The density of extra glossy thick marketing material is about one and a half g/cc, I kid you not. (I'm talking about "junk mail" type paper thats almost but not quite cardboard slathered with glossy ink).
Obviously the device is made out of printed out power point presentations. I've heard NASA is pretty good at making power point presentations, if nothing else...
Its 8.something square feet which converts to about 1 +/- 1 square meter.
The odd part is, in this day and age, I can't find anything but two or three pics and some super-fluffy PR trash. I searched google for awhile looking for info, couldn't find any.
Fifteen years ago, when I was on the internet, I was pleased to see I could download multi-hundred page "press kits" for shuttle launches, full of all kinds of detail, diagrams, writeups of each experiment and team, measurements, diagrams and blueprints. I wondered what the future would be like, and daydreamed of what amounts to reading nasa blogs, live webcams, tens or hundreds of times the detail. Read actual contracts and semi-internal status reports, since "publishing" on the net is approximately free. Public having read only mailing list access, sort of like modern twitter feeds? Very optimistic view of the future.
Fifteen years later, what do I get? An extra shiny website with no more "press kits", two or three snapshots, and a handful of cutesy fluffy bunny BS for high school glee club. Just about the right level to try and interest middle school girls into a career in technology. Nothing at all for educated, adult, space fanatics. WTF? Where did it all go wrong?
presumably using the exact same input controlling the engine
That being the problem. Multiple inputs, not input. You need to fail the gas partially to wide open and the brakes completely off.
Or, you need to fail the engine computer, the ABS computer, and the logging computer simultaneously with the same problem.
The problem has to be completely unreproducible, and cannot be explained by subsequent testing or disassembly.
Finally per the graph in the article, the problem somehow occurs in direct proportion to television coverage and with a slight delay after the PR hatchet job. It takes a lot of magical thinking for those simple mechanical parts, simple electronic sensors, and multiple microcontrollers to watch CNN and the evening news and somehow understand they are supposed to fail shortly after the PR, but not before and not a long time after. The idea of, say, my brake calipers watching CNN behind my back and then taking action based on what they saw is kind of weird. I don't even have cable in my garage.
To assume its a real problem, takes 911 type of conspiracy theory. Not that either 911 or toyota acceleration are not possible, just lots of assumptions required.
Slashdot Mirror
You need some hard-core freezing equipment to make ethanol popsicles though.
I can't be the only slashdotter who's frozen mixed drinks into icecubes. You know, so your jack -n- coke doesn't water down as the ice cubes melt. "Everyone knows" that fifty:fifty jack and coke will freeze in a residential deep freeze and possibly in a plain residential freezer, and fifty:fifty jack and coke is pretty strong, thats like jack with a slight coke flavoring. No liquor 80 proof and above can possibly freeze in a residential freezer. I believe the freezing point for diet coke is far higher than regular coke due to the sugar content. I don't know how corn syrup content vs sucrose content varies the mix.
Just pick any ole unit. It doesn't matter at a high enough temperature, to a low enough level of accuracy.
Its interesting that all temperature units are "about the same magnitude". In comparison to length units of meters vs lightyears. Or energy, like calories to BTUs to electron-volts, all of which need serious scientific notation to convert.
Oddly enough Joules are within a factor of about four of calories, just odd luck or what? Sidereal seconds being close to "regular seconds" is kind of numerological cheating. Other than those two, I struggle to find units of measurement that are as close to each other as temperature units are.
Use the same giant freighter network for heavy bulk material and humans (admittedly overlap for some of us)
Ship the heavy non-living stuff via Hohmann transfer orbit or the incredibly slow ITN. Its incredibly heavy so at a low delta-V it'll take awhile.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohmann_transfer_orbit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interplanetary_Transport_Network
On the other hand, occasionally you have an extremely lightweight payload of human beings. Send them at very high acceleration on a much faster hyperbolic (far above escape velocity) transfer orbit.
The other option is the radiation protective scale height of the atmosphere isn't as much as you think. Forcing everyone into the hot tub during a solar flare is actually not as impractical as some might think. You're going to need all that water anyway, so building concentric hollow sphere tanks is not all that unrealistic.
Ridiculous example: If someone had gotten a patent for "circular apparatus that facilitates low friction locomotion" there might not have been much to do but wait out the 20 years.
How about a real, ridiculous example instead of a made up one? Putting medication into popsicles and feeding the popsicles to children. Until it expires on Dec 20 2013 we can't do this.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5431915/description.html
This is the second time I've posted this patent today...
When I was a little kid (let just say, back when OJ was famous for an entirely different reason than now) my mom had one of those tupperware sets to "make your own popsicles" and I occasionally took medication that way per pediatrician advice. Instead of putting plain kool-aid in and freezing them, you put something kids don't like, such as cough medicine, in, fill the balance with kool-aid, stir to mix, freeze... best made onesie-twosie to prevent accidental overdose. Now a days I would like a tupperware popsicle maker kit so as to add ethanol. Oh that patent-violating mother of mine...
has today reached its biggest milestone yet,
So what exactly is the milestone? I'm used to milestones being a big logical-AND of finally successfully achieving a bunch of technical requirements. This seems to be a "marketing milestone"?
The concept of a "milestone" from hiking or whatever, is that according to the surveyors you've come exactly 5280 feet since the last milestone. Not "here is a pretty picture", or "we figured we'd generate some buzz by placing the milestone here".
As a side question to all you hikers from the civilized world, do you guys have "kilo-stones" or whatever? Seriously?
my understanding is that sailing is much like combat, long stretches of boredom punctuated by terror
Correction - "my understanding is that sailing is much like combat, long stretches of repetitive preventative maintenance punctuated by terror". Whenever you're not at the helm, of course.
I have researched this thoroughly, I've read the Pardey's books, etc. It might be a fun retirement plan for me in a couple decades. The original post seemed to just be a whim as opposed to a carefully researched plan. Fact is, for centuries mariners have kept themselves quite exhausted when out on the sea without trying to simultaneously run a full time tele-consulting business in a different timezone... Its roughly an order of magnitude of maintenance work over and above a suburban house. If my house roof leaks I'll be pissed but if my boat hull leaks I'll sink (more or less).
Its faintly amusing reading the Pardey's books from 40 years ago, explaining how with the near total absence of modern conveniences "the wife" pretty much gets stuck in the cabin the whole time doing cooking / laundry / cleaning. Perhaps, given the current lack of un-liberated women, the stereotypical single slashdot guy might be the perfect modern cruiser, since the lack of women whom would tolerate cruising would not affect a guy whom cannot get a woman under any conditions anyway.
How many party goers can you invite over? I think that would be a pretty cool place to hang out. Or, my friends and family would have to pay $20 for a museum ticket to hang out with me.
I'm assuming you have to sleep aboard the u-boat, which probably gets a bit toasty in the warm summer. Alternately you can re-enact scenes from "creation science" and sleep hiding from the dinosaurs.
The lack of shower facilities would probably not bother most slashdotters, but it would bother the museums other patrons. Then again, this is Chicago, they'd probably just think you're homeless.
Finally a month of eating the cafeteria food would probably resemble the "supersize me" movie.
I would probably prefer the Field Museum and/or the shedd aquarium. At least at the aquarium I could catch my own dinner.
The article poster, in addition to assuming he can telecommute, is assuming the only way to get :
Nautical Charts
Weather Maps
Travel Guide type info
Relevant Current International and Local News (Somali pirates, etc)
Emergency and Almost-Emergency assistance
Help locating repair parts for your boat
is over the internet for free or for a small fee. You could actually get most of what you need out of a ham radio license and the mobile maritime service net. But you'd have to "talk" to other people over the radio, which may or may not be acceptable.
http://www.mmsn.org/
Hmm, so your future employers can pay you a staggering amount of money to float your boat, or pay some 3rd worlder with practically zero cost of living to do the same job. Wonder how thats going to turn out.
Also the original poster seems to think you just put it on autopilot the whole time and "work on the real (computer) job". I don't think the original poster knows much about actual sailing. Unless he is so fabulously wealthy that he's planning on hiring a crew to do all the work for him.
Vaccine patches would be great, particularly if they made it look like a sticker
I hope it adsorbs quickly. If the sticker is generic or not their favorite character, they immediately peel it off their skin/clothes and throw it away, or if it is their favorite character they immediately peel it off and admire it.
which are second only to popsicles in the ability to placate an irritated youngster
So, put the medication inside the freaking popsicle. Hmm, thats a good idea, medicated popsicles. Wonder why those aren't commercially available? Oh yes, that was patented in 1995. Maybe in a few decades we'll be able to benefit from that idea, but not until then.
http://www.patentstorm.us/patents/5431915/description.html
They are also incredibly bad-ass, but they still make kids cry.
Because they hurt like hell for a couple days. After all, you're being shot, admittedly with a small caliber liquid bullet.
The kid is crying because the kid saw other kids crying the day after their vaccination.
Its interesting that for me, needles only hurt while they're stabbing you, afterwards its unnoticeable, whereas my experience with jet injectors is that the injection itself hurts less than a playful punch, but a few minutes later the pain from tissue damage starts and it continues for about a day.
Maybe they've improved, but a diabetic that jet-injectored themselves a couple times a day would pretty much be in continuous agony.
Its would be VERY interesting to study jet injector anxiety vs needle anxiety. I don't like needles at all, not even so much because of the (slight) pain, but watching them methodically approach me and cut me up (on a very small scale). Sort of the extreme opposite reaction compared to those chicks whom like to cut themselves. On the other hand, in my experience, jet injectors hurt like unholy hell, so I'd much rather take the needle. Based on the theory that it's pain avoidance, I would predict that given wide distribution and wide public experience that eventually there would be more people with jet injector anxiety than needle anxiety. On the other hand, if its freaking out about having things stuck into your body, then jet injectors, despite the considerable pain, would win out.
Jet Injector
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jet_injector
Interestingly enough most people insist that it's based off the star trek hypospray machine, yet its actually the reverse, the hypospray is based off the jet injector.
It's been half a century and they're still not popular. Mainly because of cleaning issues, you still have cleaning/sterilization tasks but instead of cheap mass produced hypos you have a complicated machine. But secondarily, yes indeed they do hurt like unholy hell for a couple days. I got several vaccinations from jet injectors at reception station immediately before army basic training in the early 90s. "Tough Army Dudes" will put up with the pain but I can see how children would not tolerate it.
Also, from experience, its pretty brutal and a couple drops of "stuff" leaks back out the entrance hole. Admittedly its not a .45 caliber entrance wound here, its like the hole from a lancet. But I wonder what percentage injected leaks back out again.
that still implies you have only 100 something miles (or maybe less) to decelerate around 13000 mph. I don't know whether or not this would cause problems, but I'm guessing in order for that to happen, organs are going to get squished.
That's a very modest acceleration profile. Remember that they got up there and up to speed in less distance. Squished as in you'd notice you're accelerating not standing still, hardly squished like a bug under a hammer.
If they can actually get astronauts down from "space" with no vehicle, that is cool.
Even for well prepared folks, breathing on Mt Everest at 30Kft is kind of tough and remarkably fatal. So don't bail out of a burning tumbling ship till you're below 30 Kft.
If this dude survives, maybe that means you can bail out at 100Kft almost 3 times higher. No need to sit there and wait until you're below 10Kft while the ships on fire and out of control.
Aside from being a publicity stunt, that is Probably the gameplan, rather than re-entry surfing. Re-entry surfing would certainly be cool...
True, but it sure would be a bummer to successfully decelerate from mach25 and 100 miles to mach "something" and 100Kft and then discover the parachute won't unfurl properly or whatever.
Now if these identical twins were still children, raised in the same environment, then that would indeed be interesting.
Yeah that would be interesting, like winning the lotto unlikely interesting. My wife and I eat McDonalds breakfast, same stuff. One of us spends the next 12 hours on the can due to salmonella. Repeat for a lifetime of experiences at Taco Bell, street vendors, etc.
That's before considering we both dig up the garden but only one of us gets an infected scratch.
And we never seem to catch cold/flu whatever at the same exact time. One catches it from the other, but never in the same order.
Could you please source this one? I'm no biologist, but I'm fairly certain that most of the human mass, and cell count is still that of human.
I'm not a biologist but I own a microscope and know how to use it.
Mass, yes, we win. Count, possibly not. Very crude rule of thumb is prokaryote (bacteria and friends) cell diameter is "about" a tenth or less than that of eukaryotes (us, assuming you're not a sentient bacterium).
In a typical microscope bacteria at like dots compared to animal cells. I'm sure some goof can reply with the worlds biggest bacteria cell and the worlds tiniest animal cell, just to make it clear I'm talking about 99% of the respective cell types not all that have ever been studied.
A lot of the debate hinges on our digestive system, is a "donut hole" actually inside the donut itself? And then there's the goofs that may, or may not, define "our body" as including everything living on the surface of our skin. The royal "our" or royal "we"?
The problem with "Open Source" hardware, and any other tangible thing, is simply that for most hardware of any significance, a person would need a factory and expensive resources handy to go about trying to make it.
You are soooo obviously not a modern electronics entrepreneur. You rent all that stuff. Yes, over the internet. Just like I don't need my own personal silk screen offset printing press I just use cafepress and competitors.
There's about a dozen board houses where you upload a PCB file, and in a couple days they mail you ready to solder PCBs. Multi layer, exotic substrates, plating, solder mask, these guys do it all. Generally PCB manufacture is completely automated, about as much slow human touch as buying a book from amazon. This is not vapor ware or a nebulous student business plan, but a pretty big business. Most PCB houses are glad to do one offs for a price, although theres obvious quantity discounts.
If you will lower yourself to talking on the phone to a salesweasel, "most" board houses either have inhouse assemblers or a "special relationship" with a local assembler. You will need to talk extensively about assembly service, and FAX custom contract back and forth. Someone could probably make a killing in the business by "semi-automating" this process much like happened to ultra-small run PCB business over the last decade. The main problem with assemblers is their "JIT" sourcing of parts and their pre-soldering inspection of parts... um... has some stereotypical problems.
There are at least half a dozen businesses where you upload a certain CAD file and in a couple days you get all manner of metal front panels, cases, and just plain ole random metalwork. Again all automated, about as difficult as uploading a picture to cafepress or uploading a "gerber" file to a PCB house. Not as popular as PCB houses, but up and coming.
There would probably be a business opportunity for someone to set up an expediting service over the internet to coordinate all these guys. But trust me, at least for open source electronics devices, if you know how to use google its pretty much ask and ye shall receive (if ye have a thick enough wallet, of course).
I suppose people could develop test systems using FPGAs and then publish the design for what the dedicated hardware piece would look like though.
Well, in practice my Spartan3 FPGA experimenters board from a couple years ago cost approximately as much as a "really good keyboard" or about half the cost of a "reasonable tower chassis". Or somewhere between 1 and 2 months cablemodem service. You can treat the FPGA as a distinct PLCC or BGA that needs to be soldered to something you make, or treat the FPGA as the standard PCB breakout/demo board that all manufacturers sell (cheaply) to promote their devices. Standard slashdot car analogy is you can buy a V-8 engine and you figure out how to put it into a car, or you can buy a ready to be modded / tuned up Civic just like a normal person.
You have to realize the absolute minimum design of a FPGA board is pretty minimal, actually simpler than an arduino board. And the development software is free. If you're very handy with SMD you can assemble it yourself. Or, you can convince yourself that if you don't personally etch the board yourself that "you" didn't do it.
They are dreaming.
The most obvious, incredibly stereotypical counter example is the electronics kit building industry.
There's a whole subculture of people selling kits based on electronics magazine articles. Lots of radio kits based on QST articles. Phasing type SSB TX and RX, ATV TX and downconverters, various transverters...
Technically the magazine is copyrighted. However, I've also purchased and built completely, literally open hardware devices like a SBC6120 single board PDP-8 computer. And other things.
The folks running these operations typically do not retire wealthy, but they aren't starving either, far as I know.
As a historical note from an old timer, in an earlier era, maybe a decade or so ago, there was extremely heavy pimping of using open source software to do biological genetic processing "bioinformatics". By 2010, we'd all be doing genetic processing in our basement as our primary hobby. It was successful enough in its field, but not widespread to the masses.
The discrimination against nuclear is from the standard proprietary software licenses forbidding use of MS products for air traffic control, medical devices, nuclear. Probably building your own homemade ATC radar or your own automatic defibrillator is a bit beyond most amateurs, but hotwiring a web interface to a geiger counter is FAR more believable. So, if you're going to pick and choose words from MS license, may as well pick that. Also nuclear is the most stereotypical dual use technology I can think of, in that it seems "obvious" that you'd want to ban 3rd world nuclear bomb development by banning "all nuclear devices" yet it seems obvious to me that a completely harmless twitter interface to a geiger counter would be kind of cool. Well, kind of, anyway.
The reason why open source software works is that it is easy for people to contribute and it is essentially free to give someone a copy. That is not the case with hardware.
Are you ever going to be confused when you learn about FPGAs.
http://www.opencores.org/
Presumably unless they're making it up as they go along, they could release all the blueprints right now. It's not like they have to keep it secret to prevent copies from the far east. Or do they?
As for preparing press kits now, well, "the press" aka /. is reporting on it now, so give us our kits.
And release early, and release often, seems to work in certain other intellectual pursuits.
Per the measurements given (18kg/(1m^2 * 1cm)) the vault's density is 1.8 grams per cubic centimeter. This is much less dense than aluminum (or steel or lead obviously) - anyone know what the vault is made from?
The density of extra glossy thick marketing material is about one and a half g/cc, I kid you not. (I'm talking about "junk mail" type paper thats almost but not quite cardboard slathered with glossy ink).
Obviously the device is made out of printed out power point presentations. I've heard NASA is pretty good at making power point presentations, if nothing else...
Its 8.something square feet which converts to about 1 +/- 1 square meter.
The odd part is, in this day and age, I can't find anything but two or three pics and some super-fluffy PR trash. I searched google for awhile looking for info, couldn't find any.
Fifteen years ago, when I was on the internet, I was pleased to see I could download multi-hundred page "press kits" for shuttle launches, full of all kinds of detail, diagrams, writeups of each experiment and team, measurements, diagrams and blueprints. I wondered what the future would be like, and daydreamed of what amounts to reading nasa blogs, live webcams, tens or hundreds of times the detail. Read actual contracts and semi-internal status reports, since "publishing" on the net is approximately free. Public having read only mailing list access, sort of like modern twitter feeds? Very optimistic view of the future.
Fifteen years later, what do I get? An extra shiny website with no more "press kits", two or three snapshots, and a handful of cutesy fluffy bunny BS for high school glee club. Just about the right level to try and interest middle school girls into a career in technology. Nothing at all for educated, adult, space fanatics. WTF? Where did it all go wrong?
presumably using the exact same input controlling the engine
That being the problem. Multiple inputs, not input. You need to fail the gas partially to wide open and the brakes completely off.
Or, you need to fail the engine computer, the ABS computer, and the logging computer simultaneously with the same problem.
The problem has to be completely unreproducible, and cannot be explained by subsequent testing or disassembly.
Finally per the graph in the article, the problem somehow occurs in direct proportion to television coverage and with a slight delay after the PR hatchet job. It takes a lot of magical thinking for those simple mechanical parts, simple electronic sensors, and multiple microcontrollers to watch CNN and the evening news and somehow understand they are supposed to fail shortly after the PR, but not before and not a long time after. The idea of, say, my brake calipers watching CNN behind my back and then taking action based on what they saw is kind of weird. I don't even have cable in my garage.
To assume its a real problem, takes 911 type of conspiracy theory. Not that either 911 or toyota acceleration are not possible, just lots of assumptions required.