The temperature of a gas giant has little meaning since it increases with depth. Since there is little to no "surface" there are just different temperatures at different altitudes.
For example, there is perfectly comfortable weather on Venus at a certain altitude, around 50 km... just not at the surface.
Mobile broadband speeds could hit a blistering 42Mb/sec
I guarantee there will be one of two contractual limitations:
1) "Unlimited" service forbids the downloading of any media files, use of any streaming applications, any online gaming purposes, any voip or video conference service, and has a cap of 100 megs per month which you'll reach in 2 seconds
-or-
2) "pay as you go data plan" only $150 for 100 megs per month which you'll also reach in two seconds.
Cell phone providers are a confuse-opoloy of crooks whom exist solely to screw over their contractually enslaved victims as much as possible before they switch to another provider, whom coincidentally also only exists to screw over their "customers". Nothing but pure distilled "marketing". I hope they all go out of business in the recession.
So they want to establish a connection (or lack of connection) between physics and the instruction book that we wrote to describe physics?
Good, but I've got a better comparison, they've established a connection between what you see happen in a game of football vs what is in the rule book for football.
In other words, they only want entertainment and/or reinforcement of previously held beliefs, rather than tuning in in order to actually learn something.
Why would anyone who wants to learn something, use a media that is either preaching to the choir or mindless infotainment?
It's a circular downward spiral not a simple unidirectional cause and effect.
"Dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra of human brain are selectively vulnerable and the number decline by aging at 5-10% per decade."
So, our 90% spare capacity means you and I are good for 90 to 180 years until we drop to the level of that kid, whereas that poor kid is good for uh... oops. Well, at least the kid is alive for now.
There's your problem - no Chinese guys are touching your Snap-On tools unless they're working in an American factory. Snap-On's one of the few companies who still make their tools in US and A.
Not true any more... just another company selling Chinese junk at American prices.
Seems to be down at this moment, but from the google cache of that page:
With an 86-year experience, Snap-on now focus on China. We set up a factory with well-trained engineers and workers in Kunshan, China. The world-class products produced are not only for China market, but for all the Asia Pacific Area. We also established a trading company, Snap-on Trading ( Shanghai) Co., Ltd. Our professional team can serve the customers throughout the country through a distribution network consisted of 6 Branch Offices and over 120 resellers.
Here's the factory address should you care to visit
SNAP-ON ASIA MANUFACTURING (KUNSHAN) CO., LTD ADD: 500 Tong Feng East Road, Kunshan, Jiangsu 215300, PRC TEL: 86-512-57708282 FAX: 86-512-57708383
Or how about this press release linked from the snap-on website?
Snap-on Announces First Quarter 2008 Results Reports EPS from continuing operations of $0.97 compared to $0.64 last year; Completes acquisition of 60% interest in Chinese hand tool manufacturer
"We are also very pleased to announce that Snap-on recently completed the acquisition of a 60% interest in Zhejiang Wanda Tools Co., Ltd., a hot-forged hand tool manufacturer in China," said Pinchuk. "This strategic joint venture builds on Snap-on's current presence in the region and complements the company's existing production capabilities in Kunshan, China. Our majority ownership of Wanda Tools, our first hand tool manufacturing facility in China, is expected to be a key contributor to our future state and is another important step in extending Snap-on's manufacturing capability and market coverage in emerging markets around the world."
Direct from manufacturer you're looking at $348.65 for the 20 piece and $610.80 for the 34 piece. I now believe there could be a 22 piece set that I couldn't find thats around $500 with shipping, as you claimed.
I knew they were outrageously expensive but I didn't expect $20 per socket level of expense. They better be made of solid silver for that price. For that kind of money I don't just expect a socket set, I expect the Chinese guy whom made it to fly out here and pull the wrench for me.
My first metal lathe was about $500. Somehow I think I get "more" out of that than I would out of a 34 piece socket set.
You're going o forehead smack in a minute, 'cause I know you know this.
The sun raises he temperature of the air, which raises the equilibrium vapor pressure. Since it categorically does not add vapor to he air, it effectively lowers the "relative humidity."
Or, in other units, it moves the temperature further away from the dew point, raising he energy cost to extract each mL of water: you have to lower he temperature that much further to have output.
Oh I know it, that was the point I was trying to make. A device that sucks water out of low relative humidity air would be incredibly useful in arid desert areas.
But this device does not do that.
It makes the most water in high humidity areas. And most high humidity areas are nearby water. And this device is the least efficient and most convoluted way I can imagine to purify that nearby water.
I read the journalist as claiming that if you take cold saturated swamp air and heat it up until the relative humidity drops low, that water has "disappeared" and can not be recovered. We both agree the absolute humidity is unchanged but the journalist doesn't get it. My whole point is that a USEFUL device would still be able to extract that water from low R.H. air regardless of its current temperature. The journalist perfectly missed the target that the device is at its most useless, right when it would otherwise be most useful. Or was paid to overlook that in an advertorial sense. Who knows.
I know that getting drinking water is often an issue for smaller boats which may not have room or power for desalination or reverse osmosis units.
From a systems analysis standpoint, the dehumidifier machine doesn't work. It would be far more efficient to install an electric fan on the stern of the boat pointed at the sails, so as to go faster, thus requiring less stored drinking water. Err, maybe that wouldn't work, how about installing a big windmill in front of the sail and hooking that up to an electric trolling motor.
Seriously though, a Katdyn 35 hand operated R.O. desalinator pump produces about as much water in 30 minutes of hand pumping as this "dehumidifier" produces in a day of using 300 watts.
Or if you prefer to save your hand and arm strength for other purposes (?) and use electricity to desalinate, a katadyn model 40E/12V draws only 4 amps at 12 volts and squirts out 1.5 gallons per hour. It only weighs 25 lbs and is about 7 by 17 by 15 inches. It's amazing that the off the shelf katdyn produces about 30 times as much water per day yet uses about a tenth the electricity of this "greenwash" dehumidifier product.
My dehumidifier in my basement also uses "the electricity of about three light bulbs". The article claimed "$0.3 per litre". Lets run the numbers.
"Three light bulbs" is journalistic code for 300 watts. My electricity costs about 8 cents per kWh. $0.3 per liter implies it uses 3.75 kWh per liter. At 300 watts, it takes 12.5 hours to generate a liter of water. Or rephrased, it could fill a 2 liter soda bottle in about a day.
However, my $200 Chinese dehumidifier purchased at home depot, using the same electricity, easily fills its multigallon bucket in a day, at least during summer months. To help any NASA scientists here, multiple gallons is quite a bit more than two liters.
So, why does this greenwashing gadget cost five times as much as my dehumidifier but only produces about half the output? Surely it can't be continuously dumping 150 watts of UV sterilization light. Maybe those are metric kilowatt-hours as opposed to imperial kilowatt-hours.
The last line is also funny "reduces it from mid-afternoon when a blazing sun dries the air." The only way to dry air is rain, snow, mixing with drier air, dew, and frost. I am a firm believer in the conservation of mass, In a closed system if you evaporate a gallon at midnight I think it will still be there at noon. So, where, pray tell, does the water in the air go when the sun strikes it? Into a cave like a vampire? Outer space? Surely the "blazing sun" isn't visible from underneath a thunderstorm. I think in their inept little journalist way they are trying to say the device becomes vastly less efficient as the relative humidity falls. That would be no big deal, except that where ever there is high humidity, there is probably open water, and its usually cheaper to filter and desalinate open water than to dehumidify it. There is a certain perfection in a device that only works where you don't need it and can't work where you would otherwise need it the most.
16e9 KWh * 1000 Wh/KWh / 100e6 households in US * 40% that have consoles / 100 watts per console draw gives me an average use of 640 hours per household per year.
That means absolutely every console in America gets about two hours of use each and every day. Or rephrased playing console games approaches a part time job. Seems unlikely high to me.
Another way to look at it, is if I'm too busy to play on the weekdays, all I have to do is play 14 hours straight on Saturday to meet my "quota". Fourteen hours. Every Saturday. All forty million households. Yeah, sure, like that is ever going to happen.
Also since my wii draws about a tenth the power of a x360 I guess I need to play ten times as much to compensate for the quota, or a mere twenty hours per day, each and every day, in each and every house that owns a wii.
One anecdotal example of more than that usage level, does not prove the usage level of all 40 million consoles.
Altitude is critical. Westford needles were between 3500 and 3800 km. ISS is around 350 km.
Check out the wikipedia for the barometric formula as seen below. The pressure drops exponentially with altitude so reentry delay should increase (very roughly) more than exponentially. Those things are going to up there pretty much forever.
I really have no idea what the Westford guys were thinking, boosting that high and then BSing everyone that they'll be down in 3 years. High tech redneck "Hold my beer and watch this", said the rocket scientists. Maybe it was some peacenik homemade ICBM shield, would have been kind of cool had they gotten away with it.
I recall a good sci fi story about this, two ships land on an alien space station, the media crew steals a bunch of artifacts and plans to run for it, so the scientist crew steals their fuel and shoves them off into space. The media crew's pilot isn't concerned because he knows they'll be back in another revolution but the media (and some of the scientists) panic because they think they station will drift off forever.
Eventually they'll deorbit and burn up, but probably not for a while. The tools were in a stable orbit when they were dropped and they weren't thrown very hard (just enough so they were out of reach by the time it was noticed). It takes quite a bit more delta-v than that to deorbit.
Air resistance will get it in a couple weeks at most.
Something the size and density of a space suit takes about six weeks to deorbit due to air resistance at the ISS altitude.
It's an interesting thing to consider, will the much smaller tool bag with its vastly inferior surface area to volume ratio compensate for the (probably) higher density of the tool bag? It is smaller, so it should deorbit much faster because it has much more surface are per volume thus more air drag. On the other hand, the metal tools in the bag are probably somewhat denser than an old space suit.
The ISS has about a pound of force from air resistance, roughly. The toolbag has probably a thousandth the surface area, but probably only a millionth the weight. So it'll probably deorbit about a thousand times faster than the ISS. I am guessing this guess is only accurate to maybe two orders of magnitude.
I'm heard that a hot air balloon (just the fabric canopy) would deorbit in about a revolution due to air resistance, whereas a steel I-beam, pointy end forward (good luck due to gravity gradient stabilization) would not deorbit for decades. That claim that I heard is probably off by even more orders of magnitude.
See link below about the suitsat launched from the station, pictures, how long it lasted, etc.
How about the experience we now have in getting stuff into space and keeping it there! This is not easy!!!
No, it is easy. Used commodity launchers/boosters to get the ISS up there, same as launch unmanned satellites. Just tossed up there like any other satellite. Did not develop any new launchers for the ISS. In fact we're getting rid of the primary launcher, the shuttle.
Now think that all these mistakes and successes will be directly used
No, that does not make money for contractors and no-invented-here is very popular in aerospace environments. Most certainly nothing will ever be re-used. The shuttle is not a saturn-V with wings, etc.
will be directly used when we go forward in exploring beyond our orbit with bigger stations and spacecraft carrying humans towards Mars and beyond
No need for another station. Classic politician move to get rid of a semi-popular project. Come up with a list of cool goals for a station, gradually cut them all to save money, then when it's time for version 2 ask "why, what did version 1 do for us anyway?". There are some pretty cool things that can be done with a space station. But that'll never happen on the ISS.
You must first crawl before you run? And so on.
It was a one time project. The designers were laid off in the 80s, the builders were laid off in the 90s, they're just pulling modules out of storage and boosting them today (slight exaggeration). If, today, we decided to do something new with the station, or to upgrade some component to a more evolved design, we'd have to start at the utter beginning and it would take at least 20 years. Of course they'll be deorbiting the station shortly after the shuttle program ends in two years, so why bother. As for crawl before you run, this is more like, put on a single one time demonstration of crawling (running was downsized to save money) and then quit. There is no future plan of bigger and brighter things.
If only the ISS were project managed correctly... A continuously developing experimental laboratory in space with continually expanding capabilities. Physical science labs full of people and electron microscopes and crystallography gear. A zoo and garden of growing things and the scientists to study them. A liquid fuel tank farm for spacecraft refueling. A warehouse of supplies for interplanetary trips. A building of (very) light industry. The worlds most amazing radio reception and transmission site. R+D labs for experimental geophysical research. A final assembly point for exotic non-atmospheric star-ships. A fully staffed experimental astronomical observatory where new concepts in UV and Xray telescopes are tried. An isolated lab in space to process return samples from other planets. A satellite repair shop to catch, fix, and release communications satellites. Probably a classified military observation post with literally cutting edge sigint and optical gear. A (tiny) research hospital with doctors and microscopes.
However, after the budget cuts what we got was an orbiting RV with a porta-potty.
How much technology advancement really has happened and what scientific goals have been accomplished ?
That was all cut to save money. Sadly I'm not kidding. There is a short list here of scientific modules launched. Plenty more were budget cut or just simply won't be launched. The original plan had a hotel load around 2 people, which was fine since there would be like two dozen folks up there (hotel load is how much it takes to keep the place running and human habitable, from navy and submarine terminology). The problem is the life support equipment and "space lifeboat" never was launched, crew endlessly downsized, etc. So, since it only holds about 3 people on a regular basis, and the hotel load is always larger than originally planned, there isn't much time to do anything other than be space janitors / space superintendents. If they could have a staff of 20 up there as originally intended then quite a bit could have been done, but thats not happening.
Part of the problem, as described below, is the only purpose of the shuttle, is to visit the station, and the only purpose of the station, is to be visited by the shuttle. So, since the station has already been downsized to the point of uselessness, and the shuttle is going away, guess what will happen to the station in just a few years?
Another part of the problem is the ISS was project managed as a one-time project or one-time stunt. Anyone who's ever spent time in a lab, in the military, or even in front of a computer, knows the original plan is obsolete as soon as it's written. Thats OK, invent a new plan. Except everything relating to ISS project management is a one time stunt. It's a permanent beta releast version 0.99 with no possibility of upgrade. There is no ability to do science if you can't iteratively experiment and try new ideas. And that's not how the ISS was project managed. Therefore it doesn't do science. It's a one time stunt and the stunt is about over.
Because reading a laptop screen sucks ass if you have to read for any length of time.
Ah I see it's time for the weekly slashdot ebook article again, filled with the same repetitive comments as last time.
Every ebook article has at least one person complain they could never look at a computer screen for more than a few minutes therefore they could never read using a computer. Supposedly, everyone on slashdot is either a gamer or a programmer or hacker or whatever. How are you other gamer/programmers doing it without a monitor? Are you guys ALL using braille readers or speech interfaces? If you are, then more power to you dude. But realizing thats probably about 1% of the readership, I laugh at the other 99%.
Required contents for each weekly slashdot ebook article:
One guy to complain he can't read anything on a computer screen (dude, you go to slashdot for the pictures, like our old pal goatse?)
Another guy to complain all his books have brightly colored pictures (see spot run, run spot run?)
Another guy can't read unless his ebook reader has a built in mp3 player / youtube video player / embedded firefox / etc, you know just like every paperback or hardcover book ever made.
Another guy, whom apparently bathes more than the sterotypical geek, will complain his ebook reader doesn't work so well in the bathtub. Oddly enough no one complains that they can't read paperbacks in the shower. I don't think I've taken a bath since the mid 1980s (before most slashdotters were born?), but don't worry I use my shower once or even twice a day and I never miss not being able to use a book. My advice is bathe with a member of the appropriate sex+species instead of a book, anyway.
Then the other guy complains that his ebook reader only holds a 20 hour charge and he hates it when the battery dies during a reading session (maybe he should nap after nineteen and a half hours of bedtime reading, or sleep somewhere within 100 feet of commercial AC power?)
Then someone else always brings up the "right to read" essay despite the fact that a real slashdotter would never buy a reader that doesn't work with some hack to read plain texts like gutenberg. I waited for that before buying my REB-1150 or whatever its model designation is. Works pretty well. It's a cool story, but everyone here knows it, k thx bye.
There's probably a few other sterotypical ebook comments that I've forgotten.
What's wrong with starting vocational and bootstrap up?
Grunt work minimum wage labor while getting a vocational "AS" degree in my field. Easy to pay for, easy classes, etc. The intern program means you get higher pay after only one year.
Finish AS degree and get a vocational level job, paying about 3x minimum wage
Then use that money plus corporate tuition reimbursement to go to community college
Complete about 1/2 of my degree and get a semi-professional job paying 2x my vocational job (starting to seriously roll in the bucks here)
Then use that money plus corporate tuition reimbursement to finish my degree at the fancy private college
Get a professional level job paying about 2x my semi-professional job.
Now I'm planning to use that money and corporate tuition reimbursement to get my masters, which will result in a similar increase in pay.
The experience gained along the way is priceless. Err, actually, since it got me about twice what the grads without industry experience got, I guess it does have an easily calculable value. Plus there's the weird experience of taking classes where you have a higher salary, nicer car, more experience and more interesting professional achievements than the adjunct professor teaching the class...
The guy got very pissy and wouldn't stop yelling at me about how his cousin graduated from a bad program, and how she made $80K, and how that's a lot of money. He wouldn't stop even after I attempted to end the conversation so we got into a fight.
Innumerate and immature and a (future) lawyer? If he's also illiterate and he'd make an ideal political candidate!
There are three advantages to air launch that apply in almost no situations
Err I forgot there is a fourth theoretical advantage which relates to failure modes. 99.999% of serious launch failures will result in a giant fireball, an aluminum lawn dart, or a square mile debris field, but for that tiny fraction of survivable disasters, the more complicated air launch system can always glide home at any stage of the flight. Vertical launch systems almost always have a region at low enough altitude where a failure can't be survived. However, it's hard to find a failure mode that is bad enough you'll have to glide home but is minor enough that the vehicle wouldn't be utterly destroyed before you can glide home.
Realistically you're far better off putting the engineering work of an air launch system into a more reliable and more redundant launch system. An example of this thought process is civilian jet aircraft, which put their engineering money into ultra reliable engines instead of parachutes.
By doing things like using useless wings to get up to altitude before launch thus requiring less propellant.
No, that doesn't work. The cheapest part of a spacecraft is its propellants, second cheapest is the propellant tanks, third cheapest is to buy or design a bigger engine at the start of the design process (kind of difficult later on in the development cycle). The most expensive part of a spacecraft is systems integration, and adding wings and horizontal flight is hard to integrate. The aerodynamics of ultra high speed wings is a huge pain, and simply isn't needed, so why bother.
You are probably not aware of the 666 rule... Not to keep you in suspense, mach 6 at 60,000 feet (thats 20 kilometers in the civilized world) is a whopping 6% of total orbital energy. An impossible speed at an impossible altitude provides practically no advantage over a simpler ballistic design with tanks that are about 1/20th bigger. Most people have the peculiar idea that a civilian airliner at cruise is "almost in orbit" and the slightest push is all that is needed for a 747 to reach the ISS, and that couldn't be further from the truth.
Making an airplane that flies at mach 6 and 60Kft is no laughing matter, and then making it also a spacecraft is simply unrealistic. On the other hand making the fuel tanks a bit larger is no big deal.
There are three advantages to air launch that apply in almost no situations. One is the obvious lack of ground support, don't need to license a "spaceport" just another airport, however the EPA, FAA, USAF, NORAD, BATF, etc are going to harass you just the same anyway so this is again another way to get a small advantage at a huge cost. I guess Rutan and friends thought it was worth it, but thats a regulation and political decision not a technological decision. The other advantage is for military purposes you can assume a large fleet of aircraft could simultaneously launch an even larger number of rocket vehicles from anywhere an airplane can fly, possibly at great surprise to the enemy, this is the nuclear tipped cruise missile idea applied to a suborbital ballistic trajectory, which isn't such a bad idea but never got much traction, at least in the USA. Maybe Rutan daydreamed of selling hundreds of his vehicles to the USAF for recon purposes or something. There is a third reason to airlaunch, if you're basically making a circus carnival ride as opposed to a real vehicle, then air launch makes the roller coaster ride even more spectacular.
Better check out the EROEI Energy returned on energy invested.
Seems to be a well known fact that each food calorie requires 10 calories worth of oil/natgas for transportation, heavy farm machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
It's unlikely this fungus converts much above 50% efficiency. After a few centuries of careful genetic engineering we can get some alcohol yeasts up to around 20%, so even 50% is kind of optimistic for this fungus.
Also it probably requires some processing, lets say again at 50% efficiency? Of course the only industrial processes I know that run that high are exotic binary cycle steam power plants. I would think 50% is optimistic for processing this fungus.
So, maybe, this is a way to turn 40 barrels of crude oil into 1 barrel of biodiesel? Why not burn the other 39 barrels directly instead of wasting them making one barrel of biodiesel?
Slashdot Mirror
It seems like most commenters have it right. Why replace a low effort, efficient device like a mouse with flailing arms and constant effort?
To make money switching to something that sucks, and then make more money switching back? This is not exactly a new business strategy.
The temperature of a gas giant has little meaning since it increases with depth.
Since there is little to no "surface" there are just different temperatures at different altitudes.
For example, there is perfectly comfortable weather on Venus at a certain altitude, around 50 km... just not at the surface.
Lemme fix that for you:
Woah, dude....
Woah, eh?
Mobile broadband speeds could hit a blistering 42Mb/sec
I guarantee there will be one of two contractual limitations:
1) "Unlimited" service forbids the downloading of any media files, use of any streaming applications, any online gaming purposes, any voip or video conference service, and has a cap of 100 megs per month which you'll reach in 2 seconds
-or-
2) "pay as you go data plan" only $150 for 100 megs per month which you'll also reach in two seconds.
Cell phone providers are a confuse-opoloy of crooks whom exist solely to screw over their contractually enslaved victims as much as possible before they switch to another provider, whom coincidentally also only exists to screw over their "customers". Nothing but pure distilled "marketing". I hope they all go out of business in the recession.
Other than that, yeah its great news.
So they want to establish a connection (or lack of connection) between physics and the instruction book that we wrote to describe physics?
Good, but I've got a better comparison, they've established a connection between what you see happen in a game of football vs what is in the rule book for football.
In other words, they only want entertainment and/or reinforcement of previously held beliefs, rather than tuning in in order to actually learn something.
Why would anyone who wants to learn something, use a media that is either preaching to the choir or mindless infotainment?
It's a circular downward spiral not a simple unidirectional cause and effect.
What about the kid that had brain cancer, and they removed like 90% of his brain, but he was just as smart, zero reduction in ability.
Surely that prooves, size does not equal processing power, like gates does not equals MIPS in cpus.
http://www.rasagiline.com/dopamine-neurons.html
"Dopamine neurons in the substantia nigra of human brain are selectively vulnerable and the number decline by aging at 5-10% per decade."
So, our 90% spare capacity means you and I are good for 90 to 180 years until we drop to the level of that kid, whereas that poor kid is good for uh... oops. Well, at least the kid is alive for now.
There's your problem - no Chinese guys are touching your Snap-On tools unless they're working in an American factory. Snap-On's one of the few companies who still make their tools in US and A.
Not true any more... just another company selling Chinese junk at American prices.
http://www.snapon.com.cn/snapon/en/index.htm
Seems to be down at this moment, but from the google cache of that page:
With an 86-year experience, Snap-on now focus on China. We set up a factory with well-trained engineers and workers in Kunshan, China. The world-class products produced are not only for China market, but for all the Asia Pacific Area. We also established a trading company, Snap-on Trading ( Shanghai) Co., Ltd. Our professional team can serve the customers throughout the country through a distribution network consisted of 6 Branch Offices and over 120 resellers.
Here's the factory address should you care to visit
SNAP-ON ASIA MANUFACTURING (KUNSHAN) CO., LTD
ADD: 500 Tong Feng East Road, Kunshan, Jiangsu 215300, PRC
TEL: 86-512-57708282
FAX: 86-512-57708383
Or how about this press release linked from the snap-on website?
http://phx.corporate-ir.net/phoenix.zhtml?c=90531&p=irol-newsArticle&ID=1133066&highlight=china
Snap-on Announces First Quarter 2008 Results
Reports EPS from continuing operations of $0.97 compared to $0.64 last year; Completes acquisition of 60% interest in Chinese hand tool manufacturer
"We are also very pleased to announce that Snap-on recently completed the acquisition of a 60% interest in Zhejiang Wanda Tools Co., Ltd., a hot-forged hand tool manufacturer in China," said Pinchuk. "This strategic joint venture builds on Snap-on's current presence in the region and complements the company's existing production capabilities in Kunshan, China. Our majority ownership of Wanda Tools, our first hand tool manufacturing facility in China, is expected to be a key contributor to our future state and is another important step in extending Snap-on's manufacturing capability and market coverage in emerging markets around the world."
A Snap-on 22 piece ratchet kit is over 500 bucks. Hell a tool box from them is over $300!
I didn't believe you so I checked.
http://buy1.snapon.com/catalog/tools.asp?tool=all&Group_ID=103&store=snapon-store
Direct from manufacturer you're looking at $348.65 for the 20 piece and $610.80 for the 34 piece. I now believe there could be a 22 piece set that I couldn't find thats around $500 with shipping, as you claimed.
I knew they were outrageously expensive but I didn't expect $20 per socket level of expense. They better be made of solid silver for that price. For that kind of money I don't just expect a socket set, I expect the Chinese guy whom made it to fly out here and pull the wrench for me.
My first metal lathe was about $500. Somehow I think I get "more" out of that than I would out of a 34 piece socket set.
You're going o forehead smack in a minute, 'cause I know you know this.
The sun raises he temperature of the air, which raises the equilibrium vapor pressure. Since it categorically does not add vapor to he air, it effectively lowers the "relative humidity."
Or, in other units, it moves the temperature further away from the dew point, raising he energy cost to extract each mL of water: you have to lower he temperature that much further to have output.
Oh I know it, that was the point I was trying to make. A device that sucks water out of low relative humidity air would be incredibly useful in arid desert areas.
But this device does not do that.
It makes the most water in high humidity areas. And most high humidity areas are nearby water. And this device is the least efficient and most convoluted way I can imagine to purify that nearby water.
I read the journalist as claiming that if you take cold saturated swamp air and heat it up until the relative humidity drops low, that water has "disappeared" and can not be recovered. We both agree the absolute humidity is unchanged but the journalist doesn't get it. My whole point is that a USEFUL device would still be able to extract that water from low R.H. air regardless of its current temperature. The journalist perfectly missed the target that the device is at its most useless, right when it would otherwise be most useful. Or was paid to overlook that in an advertorial sense. Who knows.
I know that getting drinking water is often an issue for smaller boats which may not have room or power for desalination or reverse osmosis units.
From a systems analysis standpoint, the dehumidifier machine doesn't work. It would be far more efficient to install an electric fan on the stern of the boat pointed at the sails, so as to go faster, thus requiring less stored drinking water. Err, maybe that wouldn't work, how about installing a big windmill in front of the sail and hooking that up to an electric trolling motor.
Seriously though, a Katdyn 35 hand operated R.O. desalinator pump produces about as much water in 30 minutes of hand pumping as this "dehumidifier" produces in a day of using 300 watts.
http://products.katadyn.com/brands-and-products/produkte/Survivor_34/Katadyn_Survivor_35_48.html
Or if you prefer to save your hand and arm strength for other purposes (?) and use electricity to desalinate, a katadyn model 40E/12V draws only 4 amps at 12 volts and squirts out 1.5 gallons per hour. It only weighs 25 lbs and is about 7 by 17 by 15 inches. It's amazing that the off the shelf katdyn produces about 30 times as much water per day yet uses about a tenth the electricity of this "greenwash" dehumidifier product.
http://products.katadyn.com/brands-and-products/produkte/Survivor_34/Katadyn_Survivor_35_48.html
I have no connection to katadyn other than happily owning a couple of their backpacking R.O. filters.
My dehumidifier in my basement also uses "the electricity of about three light bulbs". The article claimed "$0.3 per litre". Lets run the numbers.
"Three light bulbs" is journalistic code for 300 watts. My electricity costs about 8 cents per kWh. $0.3 per liter implies it uses 3.75 kWh per liter. At 300 watts, it takes 12.5 hours to generate a liter of water. Or rephrased, it could fill a 2 liter soda bottle in about a day.
However, my $200 Chinese dehumidifier purchased at home depot, using the same electricity, easily fills its multigallon bucket in a day, at least during summer months. To help any NASA scientists here, multiple gallons is quite a bit more than two liters.
So, why does this greenwashing gadget cost five times as much as my dehumidifier but only produces about half the output? Surely it can't be continuously dumping 150 watts of UV sterilization light. Maybe those are metric kilowatt-hours as opposed to imperial kilowatt-hours.
The last line is also funny "reduces it from mid-afternoon when a blazing sun dries the air." The only way to dry air is rain, snow, mixing with drier air, dew, and frost. I am a firm believer in the conservation of mass, In a closed system if you evaporate a gallon at midnight I think it will still be there at noon. So, where, pray tell, does the water in the air go when the sun strikes it? Into a cave like a vampire? Outer space? Surely the "blazing sun" isn't visible from underneath a thunderstorm. I think in their inept little journalist way they are trying to say the device becomes vastly less efficient as the relative humidity falls. That would be no big deal, except that where ever there is high humidity, there is probably open water, and its usually cheaper to filter and desalinate open water than to dehumidify it. There is a certain perfection in a device that only works where you don't need it and can't work where you would otherwise need it the most.
The math seems bogus
16e9 KWh * 1000 Wh/KWh / 100e6 households in US * 40% that have consoles / 100 watts per console draw gives me an average use of 640 hours per household per year.
That means absolutely every console in America gets about two hours of use each and every day. Or rephrased playing console games approaches a part time job. Seems unlikely high to me.
Another way to look at it, is if I'm too busy to play on the weekdays, all I have to do is play 14 hours straight on Saturday to meet my "quota". Fourteen hours. Every Saturday. All forty million households. Yeah, sure, like that is ever going to happen.
Also since my wii draws about a tenth the power of a x360 I guess I need to play ten times as much to compensate for the quota, or a mere twenty hours per day, each and every day, in each and every house that owns a wii.
One anecdotal example of more than that usage level, does not prove the usage level of all 40 million consoles.
Altitude is critical. Westford needles were between 3500 and 3800 km. ISS is around 350 km.
Check out the wikipedia for the barometric formula as seen below. The pressure drops exponentially with altitude so reentry delay should increase (very roughly) more than exponentially. Those things are going to up there pretty much forever.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barometric_formula
I really have no idea what the Westford guys were thinking, boosting that high and then BSing everyone that they'll be down in 3 years. High tech redneck "Hold my beer and watch this", said the rocket scientists. Maybe it was some peacenik homemade ICBM shield, would have been kind of cool had they gotten away with it.
I recall a good sci fi story about this, two ships land on an alien space station, the media crew steals a bunch of artifacts and plans to run for it, so the scientist crew steals their fuel and shoves them off into space. The media crew's pilot isn't concerned because he knows they'll be back in another revolution but the media (and some of the scientists) panic because they think they station will drift off forever.
Eventually they'll deorbit and burn up, but probably not for a while. The tools were in a stable orbit when they were dropped and they weren't thrown very hard (just enough so they were out of reach by the time it was noticed). It takes quite a bit more delta-v than that to deorbit.
Air resistance will get it in a couple weeks at most.
Something the size and density of a space suit takes about six weeks to deorbit due to air resistance at the ISS altitude.
It's an interesting thing to consider, will the much smaller tool bag with its vastly inferior surface area to volume ratio compensate for the (probably) higher density of the tool bag? It is smaller, so it should deorbit much faster because it has much more surface are per volume thus more air drag. On the other hand, the metal tools in the bag are probably somewhat denser than an old space suit.
The ISS has about a pound of force from air resistance, roughly. The toolbag has probably a thousandth the surface area, but probably only a millionth the weight. So it'll probably deorbit about a thousand times faster than the ISS. I am guessing this guess is only accurate to maybe two orders of magnitude.
I'm heard that a hot air balloon (just the fabric canopy) would deorbit in about a revolution due to air resistance, whereas a steel I-beam, pointy end forward (good luck due to gravity gradient stabilization) would not deorbit for decades. That claim that I heard is probably off by even more orders of magnitude.
See link below about the suitsat launched from the station, pictures, how long it lasted, etc.
http://www.amsat.org/amsat-new/articles/SuitSat/
How about the experience we now have in getting stuff into space and keeping it there! This is not easy!!!
No, it is easy. Used commodity launchers/boosters to get the ISS up there, same as launch unmanned satellites. Just tossed up there like any other satellite. Did not develop any new launchers for the ISS. In fact we're getting rid of the primary launcher, the shuttle.
Now think that all these mistakes and successes will be directly used
No, that does not make money for contractors and no-invented-here is very popular in aerospace environments. Most certainly nothing will ever be re-used. The shuttle is not a saturn-V with wings, etc.
will be directly used when we go forward in exploring beyond our orbit with bigger stations and spacecraft carrying humans towards Mars and beyond
No need for another station. Classic politician move to get rid of a semi-popular project. Come up with a list of cool goals for a station, gradually cut them all to save money, then when it's time for version 2 ask "why, what did version 1 do for us anyway?". There are some pretty cool things that can be done with a space station. But that'll never happen on the ISS.
You must first crawl before you run? And so on.
It was a one time project. The designers were laid off in the 80s, the builders were laid off in the 90s, they're just pulling modules out of storage and boosting them today (slight exaggeration). If, today, we decided to do something new with the station, or to upgrade some component to a more evolved design, we'd have to start at the utter beginning and it would take at least 20 years. Of course they'll be deorbiting the station shortly after the shuttle program ends in two years, so why bother. As for crawl before you run, this is more like, put on a single one time demonstration of crawling (running was downsized to save money) and then quit. There is no future plan of bigger and brighter things.
If only the ISS were project managed correctly... A continuously developing experimental laboratory in space with continually expanding capabilities. Physical science labs full of people and electron microscopes and crystallography gear. A zoo and garden of growing things and the scientists to study them. A liquid fuel tank farm for spacecraft refueling. A warehouse of supplies for interplanetary trips. A building of (very) light industry. The worlds most amazing radio reception and transmission site. R+D labs for experimental geophysical research. A final assembly point for exotic non-atmospheric star-ships. A fully staffed experimental astronomical observatory where new concepts in UV and Xray telescopes are tried. An isolated lab in space to process return samples from other planets. A satellite repair shop to catch, fix, and release communications satellites. Probably a classified military observation post with literally cutting edge sigint and optical gear. A (tiny) research hospital with doctors and microscopes.
However, after the budget cuts what we got was an orbiting RV with a porta-potty.
How much technology advancement really has happened and what scientific goals have been accomplished ?
That was all cut to save money. Sadly I'm not kidding. There is a short list here of scientific modules launched. Plenty more were budget cut or just simply won't be launched. The original plan had a hotel load around 2 people, which was fine since there would be like two dozen folks up there (hotel load is how much it takes to keep the place running and human habitable, from navy and submarine terminology). The problem is the life support equipment and "space lifeboat" never was launched, crew endlessly downsized, etc. So, since it only holds about 3 people on a regular basis, and the hotel load is always larger than originally planned, there isn't much time to do anything other than be space janitors / space superintendents. If they could have a staff of 20 up there as originally intended then quite a bit could have been done, but thats not happening.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Scientific_ISS_modules
Part of the problem, as described below, is the only purpose of the shuttle, is to visit the station, and the only purpose of the station, is to be visited by the shuttle. So, since the station has already been downsized to the point of uselessness, and the shuttle is going away, guess what will happen to the station in just a few years?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Space_Station#Future_of_the_ISS
Another part of the problem is the ISS was project managed as a one-time project or one-time stunt. Anyone who's ever spent time in a lab, in the military, or even in front of a computer, knows the original plan is obsolete as soon as it's written. Thats OK, invent a new plan. Except everything relating to ISS project management is a one time stunt. It's a permanent beta releast version 0.99 with no possibility of upgrade. There is no ability to do science if you can't iteratively experiment and try new ideas. And that's not how the ISS was project managed. Therefore it doesn't do science. It's a one time stunt and the stunt is about over.
Too bad, it could have been useful.
Because reading a laptop screen sucks ass if you have to read for any length of time.
Ah I see it's time for the weekly slashdot ebook article again, filled with the same repetitive comments as last time.
Every ebook article has at least one person complain they could never look at a computer screen for more than a few minutes therefore they could never read using a computer. Supposedly, everyone on slashdot is either a gamer or a programmer or hacker or whatever. How are you other gamer/programmers doing it without a monitor? Are you guys ALL using braille readers or speech interfaces? If you are, then more power to you dude. But realizing thats probably about 1% of the readership, I laugh at the other 99%.
Required contents for each weekly slashdot ebook article:
One guy to complain he can't read anything on a computer screen (dude, you go to slashdot for the pictures, like our old pal goatse?)
Another guy to complain all his books have brightly colored pictures (see spot run, run spot run?)
Another guy can't read unless his ebook reader has a built in mp3 player / youtube video player / embedded firefox / etc, you know just like every paperback or hardcover book ever made.
Another guy, whom apparently bathes more than the sterotypical geek, will complain his ebook reader doesn't work so well in the bathtub. Oddly enough no one complains that they can't read paperbacks in the shower. I don't think I've taken a bath since the mid 1980s (before most slashdotters were born?), but don't worry I use my shower once or even twice a day and I never miss not being able to use a book. My advice is bathe with a member of the appropriate sex+species instead of a book, anyway.
Then the other guy complains that his ebook reader only holds a 20 hour charge and he hates it when the battery dies during a reading session (maybe he should nap after nineteen and a half hours of bedtime reading, or sleep somewhere within 100 feet of commercial AC power?)
Then someone else always brings up the "right to read" essay despite the fact that a real slashdotter would never buy a reader that doesn't work with some hack to read plain texts like gutenberg. I waited for that before buying my REB-1150 or whatever its model designation is. Works pretty well. It's a cool story, but everyone here knows it, k thx bye.
There's probably a few other sterotypical ebook comments that I've forgotten.
What's wrong with starting vocational and bootstrap up?
Grunt work minimum wage labor while getting a vocational "AS" degree in my field. Easy to pay for, easy classes, etc. The intern program means you get higher pay after only one year.
Finish AS degree and get a vocational level job, paying about 3x minimum wage
Then use that money plus corporate tuition reimbursement to go to community college
Complete about 1/2 of my degree and get a semi-professional job paying 2x my vocational job (starting to seriously roll in the bucks here)
Then use that money plus corporate tuition reimbursement to finish my degree at the fancy private college
Get a professional level job paying about 2x my semi-professional job.
Now I'm planning to use that money and corporate tuition reimbursement to get my masters, which will result in a similar increase in pay.
The experience gained along the way is priceless. Err, actually, since it got me about twice what the grads without industry experience got, I guess it does have an easily calculable value. Plus there's the weird experience of taking classes where you have a higher salary, nicer car, more experience and more interesting professional achievements than the adjunct professor teaching the class...
The guy got very pissy and wouldn't stop yelling at me about how his cousin graduated from a bad program, and how she made $80K, and how that's a lot of money. He wouldn't stop even after I attempted to end the conversation so we got into a fight.
Innumerate and immature and a (future) lawyer? If he's also illiterate and he'd make an ideal political candidate!
There are three advantages to air launch that apply in almost no situations
Err I forgot there is a fourth theoretical advantage which relates to failure modes. 99.999% of serious launch failures will result in a giant fireball, an aluminum lawn dart, or a square mile debris field, but for that tiny fraction of survivable disasters, the more complicated air launch system can always glide home at any stage of the flight. Vertical launch systems almost always have a region at low enough altitude where a failure can't be survived. However, it's hard to find a failure mode that is bad enough you'll have to glide home but is minor enough that the vehicle wouldn't be utterly destroyed before you can glide home.
Realistically you're far better off putting the engineering work of an air launch system into a more reliable and more redundant launch system. An example of this thought process is civilian jet aircraft, which put their engineering money into ultra reliable engines instead of parachutes.
By doing things like using useless wings to get up to altitude before launch thus requiring less propellant.
No, that doesn't work. The cheapest part of a spacecraft is its propellants, second cheapest is the propellant tanks, third cheapest is to buy or design a bigger engine at the start of the design process (kind of difficult later on in the development cycle). The most expensive part of a spacecraft is systems integration, and adding wings and horizontal flight is hard to integrate. The aerodynamics of ultra high speed wings is a huge pain, and simply isn't needed, so why bother.
You are probably not aware of the 666 rule... Not to keep you in suspense, mach 6 at 60,000 feet (thats 20 kilometers in the civilized world) is a whopping 6% of total orbital energy. An impossible speed at an impossible altitude provides practically no advantage over a simpler ballistic design with tanks that are about 1/20th bigger. Most people have the peculiar idea that a civilian airliner at cruise is "almost in orbit" and the slightest push is all that is needed for a 747 to reach the ISS, and that couldn't be further from the truth.
Making an airplane that flies at mach 6 and 60Kft is no laughing matter, and then making it also a spacecraft is simply unrealistic. On the other hand making the fuel tanks a bit larger is no big deal.
There are three advantages to air launch that apply in almost no situations. One is the obvious lack of ground support, don't need to license a "spaceport" just another airport, however the EPA, FAA, USAF, NORAD, BATF, etc are going to harass you just the same anyway so this is again another way to get a small advantage at a huge cost. I guess Rutan and friends thought it was worth it, but thats a regulation and political decision not a technological decision. The other advantage is for military purposes you can assume a large fleet of aircraft could simultaneously launch an even larger number of rocket vehicles from anywhere an airplane can fly, possibly at great surprise to the enemy, this is the nuclear tipped cruise missile idea applied to a suborbital ballistic trajectory, which isn't such a bad idea but never got much traction, at least in the USA. Maybe Rutan daydreamed of selling hundreds of his vehicles to the USAF for recon purposes or something. There is a third reason to airlaunch, if you're basically making a circus carnival ride as opposed to a real vehicle, then air launch makes the roller coaster ride even more spectacular.
Out of curiosity, has there ever been an attempt to license in the visible portion of the spectrum?
FCC regulation stops at 300 GHz. Ask your nearest (well informed) ham radio operator.
It is a free for all above 300 GHz.
Water adsorption is so high from 100 GHz up to light that it doesn't matter.
Better check out the EROEI Energy returned on energy invested.
Seems to be a well known fact that each food calorie requires 10 calories worth of oil/natgas for transportation, heavy farm machinery, fertilizers, pesticides, etc.
It's unlikely this fungus converts much above 50% efficiency. After a few centuries of careful genetic engineering we can get some alcohol yeasts up to around 20%, so even 50% is kind of optimistic for this fungus.
Also it probably requires some processing, lets say again at 50% efficiency? Of course the only industrial processes I know that run that high are exotic binary cycle steam power plants. I would think 50% is optimistic for processing this fungus.
So, maybe, this is a way to turn 40 barrels of crude oil into 1 barrel of biodiesel? Why not burn the other 39 barrels directly instead of wasting them making one barrel of biodiesel?