Ok, this is a fairly complex idea and they only way to clearly get my point across is with a good simulation or a lot of math but if you look at what would happen an object released 5,000KM above the earth orbiting once a day it's going to crash into the earth. Now if you cut the cable at the right time you could keep 1000's of KM of it in orbit but 5,000+ KM is a lot of stuff to have fall from the sky. So yes LEO is the lowest you can have something in stable orbit but the are still huge amounts of the cable above LEO that would still fall down.
As to dammage this is based on the idea of how thick the cable is. I asume it's not worth building unless you can send a 20 tun ship up the cable. Based on the fact that going say 100KM/hour which would be vary fast for something doing a vetical climb. It would take 20+ days to get to orbit and your vary limited on how many things you can send up at the same time it self limiting to around 3 at a time so a cable that can lift 3 ships that are 20tun's each can't do much better by lifting 5 smaller ships at the same time. If you work out the math on how thick a carbon nano tube system that can lift a 20 tun ship need to be you find it's not the thin strand most people seem to think at the 15,000KM mark. (Try the math it's funky but doable.) To keep it simple find out how thick a 1000KM strand needs to be to lift 20 tuns and then add the weight of that strand to find out how thick the next 1000KM needs to be. The higher up you go the less the weight a 1kg block has because your geting closer to orbital velocity but it's not that big a deal untill you get fairly high up the strand.
Rember to find velocity it's Pi * ( 6 378.1 kilometers + altidude) ^ 2 / 24 hours. So the velosity becomes 1/16 of 24,000km/h at 10,594 KM which is way to low to orbit. As a simple test to see if something can end up in an orbit around the earth see if it has the energy be stay in LEO. Clearly this is a lower bound as something with an altitdue above LEO that would just have the energy to orbit at LEO would need to have a very elliptical orbit that passed below LEO inorder to orbit the earth (which you can't do).
Your still missing my point take those same points.
A, B, C, D, E...
If you standing at A then B is moving at 1/3c away from you C is moving 2/3c and D is moving 3/3c and E is moving 4/3c.
But by moving to point B: then B is moving at 0/3c away from you C is moving 1/3 C and D is moving 2/3c and E is moving 4/3c.
Yes it takes time to move from one point to the other but unless the rate of expantion is increasing you should be able to get there. Now if your saying point's by the time you get to point B then point C will be going 2/3c from point B and 4/3c from point A that's one thing but I have not read that the rate of expantion is increasing.
You can build your cable out of anything as long as it gets wider as you go up.
I had not heard about the ribbon idea. It seems like you can gain a lot by doing it that way. You still to build something that can be climbed but a ribbon could get wider without getting thicker or thicker with out getting wider. Hmm, I think that could really work out best in a composite design where it's more or less a cable in the atmosphere to cut down on wind resistance and then goes to a ribbon in space. I had assumed you would move to some sort of lattice so that you would need to cut 2 or more cables in the same segment before your system would fail but even here using ribbons might be worth it. I still think send up segments as soon as one of them fails is necessary for something like this to work long term.
Anyway, a lot of your cable is above LEO it's not going fast enough to go into orbit if the cable is cut. What your forgetting is the cable below GEOsinc is going well below orbital velocity just think every part of your cable is orbiting every 24 hours it would need to orbiting much faster to stay in LEO. GEOsinc orbit is 36,000 km the lower your orbit the faster you need to be going and the shorter your orbit so while your not going all that much faster in LEO you do a lot of orbit's vary quickly. Basically, if you cut your cable at GEOsinc then you're going to have 30,000+ miles of cable falling. Now some of it will be going close to 24,000MPH relative to the ground but much of it will be practically stationary relative to the ground. What I have no idea about is how a flexible cable that is that strong is going to react when it's cut. I think it end up wrapping around a large section of the earth and the tail section would burn up on reentry but I don't know how much of those 30,000+ miles is going to burn up fall. Think the cable would either break from the stresses involved in or be ripped out of the ground but I know large sections are not going to burn up on reentry.
As to the launcher idea it's really only for bulk cargo it would be most useful for sending bulk goods into orbit for manufacturing. You could send CPU's and O2 tanks but I don't think your going to want to send satellites on that ride. Yea it would be huge but the R&D should not be all that bad as your not doing anything that's all that new just on a large scale. I expect the hardest part would be to keep your barrel a strait vacuum when storms show up. Then again if its' self-assembling then you might just take it down in bad weather.
I like the elegance of having a cable that you climb to get to orbit hell you get to steel rotational energy from the earth so it's almost a free ride but I don't expect it within my lifetime. I think most large-scale problems are much harder than we envision them but I expect the research into this area is well worth it even if it's not built for 1000's of years.
IANAP but it alwase seemed to me that if space where expanding at a nearly constant rate then let's say you start out with 10 points 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 on a line and each point is moving away from the points next to it at say 1/3c then if your sanding on point 1 you can see point's 2, 3 and 4 but never 5 however you could move from point 1 to point 2. Now at point 2 you could see point's 1,2,3,4,5 but nothing past 5. So by moving from one to 2 then 3, and reaching 4 you can then reach point 5. -JMK
On one hand you could build the thing out of steel if you had enough steel on the other hand carbon naonotubes would be much better than steel so it's more reasonable to use them than steel but my understanding is they would not stand the stresses involved in such a cable.
Take the day night thing first of you need to put it on or near the equator so it's going to go though 2 heating / cooling cycles every day. At 6 AM / PM the cable is going to receive the most sun light and at 12 noon it's going to get basically nothing and at 12 midnight it's also going to be basically nothing. (Yea at 11:30AM it's in sunlight but not direct sunlihgt. Like it would at 6AM and 6PM.) Second you have to deal with tidal forces yea there not extreme but over those distances it's really going to add up to more than you might think. The problem is if it get's longer then the end is going to end up further from Geosync orbit so the stress on the line is goign to increase.
As to the whole burning up on re entry well that depends in part on how thick the thing is but also on the velocity of the segment that's falling while I expect that stuff close to Geosync orbit would burn up there is a lot that is not going to have all that much velocity so it's not going to get enough heat to burn up. I don't really know how safe this would be but I expect 50 miles of cable that's say 1m thick and has the density of graphite would easily crush most things it would land on. On the other hand it might not be that bad but it's still a risk that would at the vary least needs to be looked into. As in building a lot of one inch cables might be a lot safer than building a few 1ft cables.
As to the catapult yea idea, it's my variant on the idea of a land-based cannon that can send stuff into orbit. I had been thinking of how you could send someone into orbit out of a gun that's long enough so the acceleration would not kill you and while apparently humans can survive well over 20 g's it does cause damage and it's not pleasant. Anyway, I think minimal thrust on the payload might be the way to go but your going to need to dock with them anyway so sending rockets and a complex control system up every trip just to fine tune your orbit when you can have a ship move them into an orbit you like and just send up a little fuel every once and a while seems like a better idea. Once we start getting stuff to orbit at around a 100$ a KG building complex control system for each of those bullets is going to start adding to the cost fast.
The idea is these mirrors are cheep and on hand. Which means that he can just add more until the focal area say the size of a pie plate gets as hot as he wants to. Yea if you wanted to make something that could say cut steel then it would be much easer with parabolic mirrors but this gets about as hot as a stovetop so it will still burn paper and plastic just fine.
Space elevators START AS free floating constructions.
The problem with your idea is if they're free floating then there not stable. You would start off with a Huge object in geosync orbit and take a tiny tether and drop it down to earth. The whole time your keeping it in a stable orbit with large rockets / ion jet's. After the tether is there you put it under a tiny amount of tension by moving the object just past the orbit where your structure would be free floating. Keeping that tension at all times you add more wires until you have a stable structure under tension. Now it's the tension that let's you climb the wire without pulling it out of orbit.
However, the basic idea of building a space elevator is sketchy unless we find something which is significantly stronger than carbon nonotubes that can be made in orbit cheaply it's probably not worth doing. Moving people into orbit with rockets at under 200k per person is possible if we start sending say 50,000+ people into orbit every year. We would need to build something that's about as maintainable as a modern 747 and designed around moving just people (no cargo) into orbit. As to moving cargo to orbit a simple rail gun mounted inside of a large lighter than air building that raised above 99% the atmosphere is doable, and not all that much more complex than a hydrogen filled dirigible. You would need a system to catch things in orbit or have your bullets act as rockets but it's still a lot easer and safer in the event of failure than a space elevator. (Think of what happens if your cable is cut at 1000 miles above the earth. The top of the segment you cut has a lot of angular momentum so it's not going to fall strait down but rather rap it's self around a large part of the earth. The rest of the system is going to fly into space. Where a building that's more or less lighter than air could be built out of segments that would reassemble in the even of a failure.)
PS: Think of what happens to a space elevator as it goes from day to night if it gets say 1/10 of 1% longer it would become unstable.
Are you saying that increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has no effect on global temperatures?
Now if you answer yes to that then clearly by dumping tons of C02 we are having some sort of an effect. If on the other hand you say no well sorry clearly your mistaken.
Yes at one point most of the surface was covered by magma and between then and now the world has been wormer and cooler than it is now. But, the question is not will we end all live by raising the temperature a few degrease but how many more blizzards, hurricanes and draughts are we going to cause. Unlike to cockroach human civilization is much less tolerant to changes in our environment. Just look at the potato famine and see how horrible the loss of a single crop to an area can be.
I think the problem has less to do with computers being overused rather they seemed to be applied to the wrong problems. From what I have seen they work best when doing interactive work instead of the standard lecture format. It may be useful to have the class notes available on a message board for students who miss a day of class but the is little value in having someone take notes with a computer.
If I where to use a computer in classes I would:
Lock down the computer so teachers can control what there students are doing. AKA you can only run Maple and only Maple in math class.
Use custom programs to get the most important ideas across. AKA to teach market forces setup a virtual market where each student maintains there own store using a variety of prices and a mix of short and long term investments to try and attract customers while competing with there classmates.
Limit computers use to situations where they add value. AKA There is no reason for students to use a laptop when discussing literature.
I think we are 20 years from seeing computers add much value to classrooms but they can clearly be useful as long as we keep them from distracting students.
Just wondering where you are with this. I had been asumeing you where using C but looking at a snipit of ASM code I realy don't know what to say. If your going to look at this as a hobbie then feel free to deal with this as down and dirty as you want to. I was trying to point out a type of optomisation that might be usefull but if your going so far as to use ASM code I think your on the right path.
First off look at iter.org http://www.iter.org/challenge_table.htm has some info on what there plaining on doing.
A 1500 MW fusion plant that required 1800 MW to run ?
No they where going to make a plant that generated 1500MW that requiered less than 1200MW to run but we are going going to make something that takes 1100MW to run and could make 1100MW if they desided to hook it up that way. (It's a test system so it's not going to be on long enough for them to think it's worth it to build something for 1100MW of energy and would not be all that reliable. The power distribution system could not handle that much power going on and off at random.
The ETA for ITER is 2015 right now and they have yet to pick a site to build the thing so it's still 10 years to build a working system. But I am talking full cost's from now untill we have a working system that's producing energy we are selling to the public.
In 1988:
"The design particularly of the tokamak was then elaborated in some detail (see figure). Estimates were made of the performance capacity of ancillary equipment, and the dimensions and characteristics of the buildings. Safety analysis was carried out, and a preliminary estimate of costs was derived. The last indicated that ITER would cost $4.9B to construct: $1.7B for the tokamak, $1.4B for tokamak auxiliaries, $0.8B for buildings and plant auxiliaries, $0.3B for transport and assembly, with a reserve of $0.7B for cost contingencies. A further $0.8B would be needed for 2900 pmy (professional man-years) estimated to be needed for the construction, with a team of 300 professionals, and a further $0.3B would be needed for R&D during construction. The necessary design and R&D, to be carried out during the EDA, was also elaborated and costed. Design costs both for a central team of up to 180 professionals, and in the Parties home teams, was estimated in total at 1200 pmy ($0.25B). Technology R&D both for basic technology and for specific engineering (prototypes, etc.) was estimated to cost $0.75B."
So far we have yet to start building this. We ended up picking a smaller less usefull design that only hit break even as in the energy to start it up produced a lot of heat which made a lot of steam which would produce just enough electristy to keep the thing running. But, that's because they rejected any plain that would generate more energy than it took to run the place. The basic problem is they kept asking could it be usefull if it where smaller / cheeper and the scientists kept saying yes untill there building something that's 30% cheeper and 5% as usefull.
I don't know about anyone else but I have done this in the past year. Granted I spend 99% of my time in JAVA there are still a few systems based on this stuff. I am just pointing this out because in 15 years someone is going to be coding in VB and saying well I wish I had a manual to tell me WTF this does o well time to guess what should go here...
Solar cells work they produce way more energy over their lifetime than it takes to make them. But there are other methods of generating energy from solar power that are much cheaper. One simple method is to use a solar collector to heat water then either use that water directly to say heat a house or use it to generate electricity. Another is to have a tracking solar collector to magnify the amount of light hitting your solar cell thus giving you 10x the energy from that solar cell over it's life time with the cost of some cheep plastic lenses.
As to fusion it's really only 30-50 billion$ away from production use. We are just not putting that much money into research. In 2000 there was a plan to create a 1500MW fusion power plant by 2020 but it was scraped to cost's. We could easily make a fusion power plant the only real problem is lack of funding. It would take about 5 billion a year for 20 years, which is really a tiny fraction of our GDP, but hey 20 years is way to long for most people to think about.
PS: There is still some hope on this one look into ITER which is one of those you want one in Japan and you want one if France... I say fine let's build two and stop #^$&ing around.
Actually, I wouldn't have any problem with that. The more powerful architectures we get reduced into a commodity the better we're off.
Ubiquitous software that requires enormous storage and ever increasing CPU/memory-bandwidth? That's a good thing!
So poorly written software helps you out if you don't use that software! It might even be a great idea to tell everyone they need to buy hardware that's way beyond what they really need to drive down prices. Then again I think most/.'s are doing that already. O well I guess it's never too late to join the great/. Conspiracy.
Hmm, I can see it 10 years from now...
"Yes, you could use MS Word 2015 on a system with a measly 2TB of ram, but it really does work much better when you have 4TB. Then again that's only if your satisfied with such a puny system."
Ok if was realy 64000 options then the code would be huge anyway. Don't forget your realy only adding a wrapper around existing code so what your doing is adding some constant K times the amound of code your already dealing with.
Let's say your code looks like this now:
Loop1 {loop2{
If (A) {
if (B) { }
else { } } else { if (B) { }
else {
} }
Than all you do is cut and past the conditionals above the loop and add one function for each {... } case.
Now self moding code works best when you have the more complex vertion of this aka.
If (A) {
then some code
the if B
then some more code } else {
then some code
the if B
then some more code }
Where you would need to replecate the same code in more than one fuction.
It all realy comes down to what the code base looks like now and how fast you need it to become. If you need to use self moding code for space reasons that's one thing but a lot of these type of things are handeld by a good optomising compiler. AKA you could write
int A = 27; For (int B = 1; B 10; B++) {
int C = 10 * A + B;
Fark(C * (30 + 9)); }
and it might compile into the same code as
int A = 27; int C; for (int B = 1; B 10; B ++
C = 270 + B;
Fark(C *39); }
I have seen code generation work realy well in a case where the same few conditionals showed up in the same function several times aka
if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC else
ShowNonPPC... if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC else
ShowNonPPC...
I was more trying to point out that you can avoid the cost of all those if statements and clean up your code without going to self modifying code, which can easly turn into a huge mess.
PS: Don't forget using inline functions can save a lot of time even if they produce more code.
Ok if was realy 64000 options then the code would be huge anyway. Don't forget your realy only adding a wrapper around existing code so what your doing is adding some constant K times the amound of code your already dealing with.
Let's say your code looks like this now:
Loop1 {loop2{
If (A) {
if (B) {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
else
if (B) {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
}
Than all you do is cut and past the conditionals above the loop and add one function for each {... } case.
Now self moding code works best when you have the more complex vertion of this aka.
If (A) {
then some code
the if B
then some more code
}
else
{
then some code
the if B
then some more code
}
Where you would need to replecate the same code in more than one fuction.
It all realy comes down to what the code base looks like now and how fast you need it to become. If you need to use self moding code for space reasons that's one thing but a lot of these type of things are handeld by a good optomising compiler. AKA you could write
int A = 27;
For (int B = 1; B 10; B++)
{
int C = 10 * A + B;
Fark(C * (30 + 9));
}
and it might compile into the same code as
int A = 27;
int C;
for (int B = 1; B 10; B ++
C = 270 + B;
Fark(C *39);
}
I have seen code generation work realy well in a case where the same few conditionals showed up in the same function several times aka
if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC
else
ShowNonPPC...
if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC
else
ShowNonPPC...
I was more trying to point out that you can avoid the cost of all those if statements and clean up your code without going to self modifying code, which can easly turn into a huge mess.
PS: Don't forget using inline functions can save a lot of time even if they produce more code.
Ok if was realy 64000 options then the code would be huge anyway. Don't forget your realy only adding a wrapper around existing code so what your doing is adding some constant K times the amound of code your already dealing with.
Let's say your code looks like this now:
Loop1 {loop2{
If (A) {
if (B) {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
else
if (B) {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) {... }
else [...]
}
}
Than all you do is cut and past the conditionals above the loop and add one function for each {... } case.
Now self moding code works best when you have the more complex vertion of this aka.
If (A) {...
if (B){...
if (C) {...} else {...}......
}else
{...
if (C) {...} else {...}...
}...
}
Where you would need to replecate the same code in more than one fuction.
It all realy comes down to what the code base looks like now and how fast you need it to become. If you need to use self moding code for space reasons that's one thing but a lot of these type of things are handeld by a good optomising compiler. AKA you could write
int A = 27;
For (int B = 1; B 10; B++)
{
int C = 10 * A + B;
Fark(C * (30 + 9));
}
and it might compile into the same code as
int A = 27;
int C;
for (int B = 1; B 10; B ++
C = 270 + B;
Fark(C *39);
}
PS: Don't forget using inline functions can save a lot of time even if they produce more code.
while (... for (.. functionptr(pointer, data, size);
Sorry, it's been a while sence I looked at C code like this but it works and can work great both as a speed optimisation and to clean up your code some. If you use a lot of conditionals thouought a function that evovled with a lot of extra clutter. It's not quite as fast as 100% custome code because your using a function but it's worth taking a look at if there are a lot of conditionals inside your loops.
The science fiction works author's intent is verifiable and the author hjimselfs admits and claims it to be fiction.
This is not true for the other books.
So things are Science fiction and not religious texts because we know the authors' intent was to produce fiction. Hmm, that sounds about right I think the authors knowingly created fiction, but because I don't know that I should treat them as holy works. Ok, I get it now and while I still think it's stupid at least it makes sense...
I think your separating stocks and land far too much. You buy both because you expect the net earnings over time will be worth it. The big difference is people let you mortgage land at vary low rates say 5% which let's you use the difference between rate of appreciation in land value and the interest rate you pay to make money. That and the net use you can make out of land by renting it out vs. dividends. Over time many people make lots of money doing this but people still make far more money though stocks. I know of people making close to 30% ROI though buying land but they have a lot more risks than most stock buyers.
Land tends to be over valued because you can get a cheep loan to buy it. The problem is that's dependent on people working so if a large plant shuts down it's going to cause a regional crash in property values. Yea the net US land market might not have crashed but there are many areas that have seen a much larger drop in value than the NASDAQ over the last 5 years.
PS: Look at the change in land values in Silicon Valley before and after the what does this tell you about how much the price of land is dependent on speculation.
It would cost less money to build a working fusion reactor than it would take to send a 6-man team to mars for 6 months. Now which of those do you think would help long-term space exploration more?
Here is the basic idea a fusion reactor produces 1,000,000X the energy per unit mass than a chemical rocket does so your ship needs little fuel mass to keep it going and going and going. It's also vary vary safe to build and transport so you build one ship in orbit using one of these and you can basically get to turn on the ION drive and leave it that way for years thus getting 100's or thousands of to mars from orbit cheaply. After all why build a ship that can go there once when you can build one that can make the trip twice a year every year for 20 years.
Yes I wan to get off this rock but we need to be really to do that by first building cheep craft to get to orbit and then build ships than can move us around the solar system cheaply. Until that point going to mars is little more than a publicity stunt that teaches us little and is so costly we will not repeat it for 50 years.
I know it's sad but my first thought was Grok = to drink (literal) but it also means to know as in "I know the location is 5 miles from here."
Anyway, I always like the idea that to Grok meant to comprehend the totality of an object idea or situation such that you make it part of yourself. Thus when you eat / Grok someone after there death you symbolize not just your comprehension of who they where but you also add some part of what they where to who you are.
PS: Anyway, I can't recall if the destruction aspect is literal or if it means you remove that which separates you from the object.
Security is not a hard problem. It does add to both the cost and complexity of a system though. The problem is most people avoid the issue or try and make some sort of wrapper around there software that makes it secure. Mostly it's people not separating the data that is moving though the system from the system it's self which leads to security problems. When you treat every interaction a system has with the outside world as a hostile transaction you can make vary secure software. But, few people really want to build secure systems, mostly its just get it out the door fast which is why you keep seeing companies with there pants down.
As to your idea that some bugs are to expensive to fix well that's like saying well we made the bridge. It come in early and under budget, granted it would fall down if anyone ever tried to use it but hay that's not our problem. Yes, you can build a system that's not secure at lower cost, but if a bank get's hacked because they where using your software then clearly you did not do your job.
PS: Yea, sorry that came off as a rant it just pisses me off that people accept that there systems can and will be hacked but hey so does everyone else's so it's ok.
Hmm, I always found high CHA to be a vary useful stat. I mean with random encounter tables it's nice to be able to avoid fights. It's also useful when dealing with NPC's like town guards where you want info and can't just kill them.
Then again it depends on the DM. I found people started to try and min / max with me until I started changing things up. Most people had to go from getting lost in the woods one day to tracking down a band of con artists the next to get over the need for "great" stat's. A few nights with little to no combat where they guy with 18/85 STR is feeling useless because he only knows how to swing heavy things tends to make people grow out of the whole MIN / MAX mentality.
After a while I found people started to try and cover the widest range of skills as a group they could. I mean it's much more fun to have a warrior who wants to role play buying a new weapon because, as a blacksmith, he feels he should know something about how much work it takes to make a quality pike vs. a long sword vs someone who is jus wants to kill everything so he can get as much EXP he can as fast as he can. Hell, one of the most memorable nights revolved around a short-lived bard who would only eat things he knew how to cook.
Then again most D&D people I knew in HS were either drama queens or stuck on fart jokes so I can see how they can get stuck in the whole Min-Max camp.
As a young person I see most medical research as a huge money sink with little overall benefit. If we had spent 10% of the money we spend on medical research over the last 30 years on fustian research we would have real working reactors in production TODAY. Thus cutting down on the amount of air born pollutants and increasing the quality of life for everyone on the globe.
I am all for researching protean folding and keeping plagues at bay but if you look at total medical spending on the average person over there lifetime most of it occurs when there is little real benefit. Something like half of all prescription drugs used in this country are providing no noticeable benefit. Most supplements do little more than provide expensive piss but basic research has provided worlds of benefit. I am all for hip replacement surgery but where is the need for every person dieing from old age to rack up huge medical bills before they die? An Alzheimer's cure would prevent immense suffering, but we have to look at that in the context of other things we can do to help humanity out.
PS: I am pointing out why spending huge amounts of money on medical research is self-limiting. If we had spend all our money in the 1800's on medicine we would not have computers today which is why it's good to pursue more than one avenue of research.
PPS: I can't tell if your agreeing with the idea That's fine, but I think we should be concentrating more on medical science, and stem cell research. or mocking it.
Slashdot Mirror
Ok, this is a fairly complex idea and they only way to clearly get my point across is with a good simulation or a lot of math but if you look at what would happen an object released 5,000KM above the earth orbiting once a day it's going to crash into the earth. Now if you cut the cable at the right time you could keep 1000's of KM of it in orbit but 5,000+ KM is a lot of stuff to have fall from the sky. So yes LEO is the lowest you can have something in stable orbit but the are still huge amounts of the cable above LEO that would still fall down.
As to dammage this is based on the idea of how thick the cable is. I asume it's not worth building unless you can send a 20 tun ship up the cable. Based on the fact that going say 100KM/hour which would be vary fast for something doing a vetical climb. It would take 20+ days to get to orbit and your vary limited on how many things you can send up at the same time it self limiting to around 3 at a time so a cable that can lift 3 ships that are 20tun's each can't do much better by lifting 5 smaller ships at the same time. If you work out the math on how thick a carbon nano tube system that can lift a 20 tun ship need to be you find it's not the thin strand most people seem to think at the 15,000KM mark. (Try the math it's funky but doable.) To keep it simple find out how thick a 1000KM strand needs to be to lift 20 tuns and then add the weight of that strand to find out how thick the next 1000KM needs to be. The higher up you go the less the weight a 1kg block has because your geting closer to orbital velocity but it's not that big a deal untill you get fairly high up the strand.
Rember to find velocity it's Pi * ( 6 378.1 kilometers + altidude) ^ 2 / 24 hours. So the velosity becomes 1/16 of 24,000km/h at 10,594 KM which is way to low to orbit. As a simple test to see if something can end up in an orbit around the earth see if it has the energy be stay in LEO. Clearly this is a lower bound as something with an altitdue above LEO that would just have the energy to orbit at LEO would need to have a very elliptical orbit that passed below LEO inorder to orbit the earth (which you can't do).
Your still missing my point take those same points.
...
A, B, C, D, E
If you standing at A then B is moving at 1/3c away from you C is moving 2/3c and D is moving 3/3c and E is moving 4/3c.
But by moving to point B: then B is moving at 0/3c away from you C is moving 1/3 C and D is moving 2/3c and E is moving 4/3c.
Yes it takes time to move from one point to the other but unless the rate of expantion is increasing you should be able to get there. Now if your saying point's by the time you get to point B then point C will be going 2/3c from point B and 4/3c from point A that's one thing but I have not read that the rate of expantion is increasing.
You can build your cable out of anything as long as it gets wider as you go up.
I had not heard about the ribbon idea. It seems like you can gain a lot by doing it that way. You still to build something that can be climbed but a ribbon could get wider without getting thicker or thicker with out getting wider. Hmm, I think that could really work out best in a composite design where it's more or less a cable in the atmosphere to cut down on wind resistance and then goes to a ribbon in space. I had assumed you would move to some sort of lattice so that you would need to cut 2 or more cables in the same segment before your system would fail but even here using ribbons might be worth it. I still think send up segments as soon as one of them fails is necessary for something like this to work long term.
Anyway, a lot of your cable is above LEO it's not going fast enough to go into orbit if the cable is cut. What your forgetting is the cable below GEOsinc is going well below orbital velocity just think every part of your cable is orbiting every 24 hours it would need to orbiting much faster to stay in LEO. GEOsinc orbit is 36,000 km the lower your orbit the faster you need to be going and the shorter your orbit so while your not going all that much faster in LEO you do a lot of orbit's vary quickly. Basically, if you cut your cable at GEOsinc then you're going to have 30,000+ miles of cable falling. Now some of it will be going close to 24,000MPH relative to the ground but much of it will be practically stationary relative to the ground. What I have no idea about is how a flexible cable that is that strong is going to react when it's cut. I think it end up wrapping around a large section of the earth and the tail section would burn up on reentry but I don't know how much of those 30,000+ miles is going to burn up fall. Think the cable would either break from the stresses involved in or be ripped out of the ground but I know large sections are not going to burn up on reentry.
As to the launcher idea it's really only for bulk cargo it would be most useful for sending bulk goods into orbit for manufacturing. You could send CPU's and O2 tanks but I don't think your going to want to send satellites on that ride. Yea it would be huge but the R&D should not be all that bad as your not doing anything that's all that new just on a large scale. I expect the hardest part would be to keep your barrel a strait vacuum when storms show up. Then again if its' self-assembling then you might just take it down in bad weather.
I like the elegance of having a cable that you climb to get to orbit hell you get to steel rotational energy from the earth so it's almost a free ride but I don't expect it within my lifetime. I think most large-scale problems are much harder than we envision them but I expect the research into this area is well worth it even if it's not built for 1000's of years.
IANAP but it alwase seemed to me that if space where expanding at a nearly constant rate then let's say you start out with 10 points 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10 on a line and each point is moving away from the points next to it at say 1/3c then if your sanding on point 1 you can see point's 2, 3 and 4 but never 5 however you could move from point 1 to point 2. Now at point 2 you could see point's 1,2,3,4,5 but nothing past 5. So by moving from one to 2 then 3, and reaching 4 you can then reach point 5.
-JMK
On one hand you could build the thing out of steel if you had enough steel on the other hand carbon naonotubes would be much better than steel so it's more reasonable to use them than steel but my understanding is they would not stand the stresses involved in such a cable.
Take the day night thing first of you need to put it on or near the equator so it's going to go though 2 heating / cooling cycles every day. At 6 AM / PM the cable is going to receive the most sun light and at 12 noon it's going to get basically nothing and at 12 midnight it's also going to be basically nothing. (Yea at 11:30AM it's in sunlight but not direct sunlihgt. Like it would at 6AM and 6PM.) Second you have to deal with tidal forces yea there not extreme but over those distances it's really going to add up to more than you might think. The problem is if it get's longer then the end is going to end up further from Geosync orbit so the stress on the line is goign to increase.
As to the whole burning up on re entry well that depends in part on how thick the thing is but also on the velocity of the segment that's falling while I expect that stuff close to Geosync orbit would burn up there is a lot that is not going to have all that much velocity so it's not going to get enough heat to burn up. I don't really know how safe this would be but I expect 50 miles of cable that's say 1m thick and has the density of graphite would easily crush most things it would land on. On the other hand it might not be that bad but it's still a risk that would at the vary least needs to be looked into. As in building a lot of one inch cables might be a lot safer than building a few 1ft cables.
As to the catapult yea idea, it's my variant on the idea of a land-based cannon that can send stuff into orbit. I had been thinking of how you could send someone into orbit out of a gun that's long enough so the acceleration would not kill you and while apparently humans can survive well over 20 g's it does cause damage and it's not pleasant. Anyway, I think minimal thrust on the payload might be the way to go but your going to need to dock with them anyway so sending rockets and a complex control system up every trip just to fine tune your orbit when you can have a ship move them into an orbit you like and just send up a little fuel every once and a while seems like a better idea. Once we start getting stuff to orbit at around a 100$ a KG building complex control system for each of those bullets is going to start adding to the cost fast.
The idea is these mirrors are cheep and on hand. Which means that he can just add more until the focal area say the size of a pie plate gets as hot as he wants to. Yea if you wanted to make something that could say cut steel then it would be much easer with parabolic mirrors but this gets about as hot as a stovetop so it will still burn paper and plastic just fine.
Space elevators ARE free floating constructions.
Ok your close but still not there.
Space elevators START AS free floating constructions.
The problem with your idea is if they're free floating then there not stable. You would start off with a Huge object in geosync orbit and take a tiny tether and drop it down to earth. The whole time your keeping it in a stable orbit with large rockets / ion jet's. After the tether is there you put it under a tiny amount of tension by moving the object just past the orbit where your structure would be free floating. Keeping that tension at all times you add more wires until you have a stable structure under tension. Now it's the tension that let's you climb the wire without pulling it out of orbit.
However, the basic idea of building a space elevator is sketchy unless we find something which is significantly stronger than carbon nonotubes that can be made in orbit cheaply it's probably not worth doing. Moving people into orbit with rockets at under 200k per person is possible if we start sending say 50,000+ people into orbit every year. We would need to build something that's about as maintainable as a modern 747 and designed around moving just people (no cargo) into orbit. As to moving cargo to orbit a simple rail gun mounted inside of a large lighter than air building that raised above 99% the atmosphere is doable, and not all that much more complex than a hydrogen filled dirigible. You would need a system to catch things in orbit or have your bullets act as rockets but it's still a lot easer and safer in the event of failure than a space elevator. (Think of what happens if your cable is cut at 1000 miles above the earth. The top of the segment you cut has a lot of angular momentum so it's not going to fall strait down but rather rap it's self around a large part of the earth. The rest of the system is going to fly into space. Where a building that's more or less lighter than air could be built out of segments that would reassemble in the even of a failure.)
PS: Think of what happens to a space elevator as it goes from day to night if it gets say 1/10 of 1% longer it would become unstable.
Are you saying that increasing the carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has no effect on global temperatures?
Now if you answer yes to that then clearly by dumping tons of C02 we are having some sort of an effect. If on the other hand you say no well sorry clearly your mistaken.
Yes at one point most of the surface was covered by magma and between then and now the world has been wormer and cooler than it is now. But, the question is not will we end all live by raising the temperature a few degrease but how many more blizzards, hurricanes and draughts are we going to cause. Unlike to cockroach human civilization is much less tolerant to changes in our environment. Just look at the potato famine and see how horrible the loss of a single crop to an area can be.
I think the problem has less to do with computers being overused rather they seemed to be applied to the wrong problems. From what I have seen they work best when doing interactive work instead of the standard lecture format. It may be useful to have the class notes available on a message board for students who miss a day of class but the is little value in having someone take notes with a computer.
If I where to use a computer in classes I would:
Lock down the computer so teachers can control what there students are doing. AKA you can only run Maple and only Maple in math class.
Use custom programs to get the most important ideas across. AKA to teach market forces setup a virtual market where each student maintains there own store using a variety of prices and a mix of short and long term investments to try and attract customers while competing with there classmates.
Limit computers use to situations where they add value. AKA There is no reason for students to use a laptop when discussing literature.
I think we are 20 years from seeing computers add much value to classrooms but they can clearly be useful as long as we keep them from distracting students.
Just wondering where you are with this. I had been asumeing you where using C but looking at a snipit of ASM code I realy don't know what to say. If your going to look at this as a hobbie then feel free to deal with this as down and dirty as you want to. I was trying to point out a type of optomisation that might be usefull but if your going so far as to use ASM code I think your on the right path.
First off look at iter.org http://www.iter.org/challenge_table.htm has some info on what there plaining on doing.
A 1500 MW fusion plant that required 1800 MW to run ?
No they where going to make a plant that generated 1500MW that requiered less than 1200MW to run but we are going going to make something that takes 1100MW to run and could make 1100MW if they desided to hook it up that way. (It's a test system so it's not going to be on long enough for them to think it's worth it to build something for 1100MW of energy and would not be all that reliable. The power distribution system could not handle that much power going on and off at random.
The ETA for ITER is 2015 right now and they have yet to pick a site to build the thing so it's still 10 years to build a working system. But I am talking full cost's from now untill we have a working system that's producing energy we are selling to the public.
In 1988:
"The design particularly of the tokamak was then elaborated in some detail (see figure). Estimates were made of the performance capacity of ancillary equipment, and the dimensions and characteristics of the buildings. Safety analysis was carried out, and a preliminary estimate of costs was derived. The last indicated that ITER would cost $4.9B to construct: $1.7B for the tokamak, $1.4B for tokamak auxiliaries, $0.8B for buildings and plant auxiliaries, $0.3B for transport and assembly, with a reserve of $0.7B for cost contingencies. A further $0.8B would be needed for 2900 pmy (professional man-years) estimated to be needed for the construction, with a team of 300 professionals, and a further $0.3B would be needed for R&D during construction. The necessary design and R&D, to be carried out during the EDA, was also elaborated and costed. Design costs both for a central team of up to 180 professionals, and in the Parties home teams, was estimated in total at 1200 pmy ($0.25B). Technology R&D both for basic technology and for specific engineering (prototypes, etc.) was estimated to cost $0.75B."
So far we have yet to start building this. We ended up picking a smaller less usefull design that only hit break even as in the energy to start it up produced a lot of heat which made a lot of steam which would produce just enough electristy to keep the thing running. But, that's because they rejected any plain that would generate more energy than it took to run the place. The basic problem is they kept asking could it be usefull if it where smaller / cheeper and the scientists kept saying yes untill there building something that's 30% cheeper and 5% as usefull.
Do you write Object Pascal with the Mac toolbox?
I don't know about anyone else but I have done this in the past year. Granted I spend 99% of my time in JAVA there are still a few systems based on this stuff. I am just pointing this out because in 15 years someone is going to be coding in VB and saying well I wish I had a manual to tell me WTF this does o well time to guess what should go here...
Solar cells work they produce way more energy over their lifetime than it takes to make them. But there are other methods of generating energy from solar power that are much cheaper. One simple method is to use a solar collector to heat water then either use that water directly to say heat a house or use it to generate electricity. Another is to have a tracking solar collector to magnify the amount of light hitting your solar cell thus giving you 10x the energy from that solar cell over it's life time with the cost of some cheep plastic lenses.
As to fusion it's really only 30-50 billion$ away from production use. We are just not putting that much money into research. In 2000 there was a plan to create a 1500MW fusion power plant by 2020 but it was scraped to cost's. We could easily make a fusion power plant the only real problem is lack of funding. It would take about 5 billion a year for 20 years, which is really a tiny fraction of our GDP, but hey 20 years is way to long for most people to think about.
PS: There is still some hope on this one look into ITER which is one of those you want one in Japan and you want one if France... I say fine let's build two and stop #^$&ing around.
Actually, I wouldn't have any problem with that. The more powerful architectures we get reduced into a commodity the better we're off.
/.'s are doing that already. O well I guess it's never too late to join the great /. Conspiracy.
Ubiquitous software that requires enormous storage and ever increasing CPU/memory-bandwidth? That's a good thing!
So poorly written software helps you out if you don't use that software! It might even be a great idea to tell everyone they need to buy hardware that's way beyond what they really need to drive down prices. Then again I think most
Hmm, I can see it 10 years from now...
"Yes, you could use MS Word 2015 on a system with a measly 2TB of ram, but it really does work much better when you have 4TB. Then again that's only if your satisfied with such a puny system."
3rd times the charm...
... } case.
... ...
Ok if was realy 64000 options then the code would be huge anyway. Don't forget your realy only adding a wrapper around existing code so what your doing is adding some constant K times the amound of code your already dealing with.
Let's say your code looks like this now:
Loop1 {loop2{
If (A) {
if (B) { }
else { }
} else {
if (B) { }
else {
}
}
Than all you do is cut and past the conditionals above the loop and add one function for each {
Now self moding code works best when you have the more complex vertion of this aka.
If (A) {
then some code
the if B
then some more code
}
else
{
then some code
the if B
then some more code
}
Where you would need to replecate the same code in more than one fuction.
It all realy comes down to what the code base looks like now and how fast you need it to become. If you need to use self moding code for space reasons that's one thing but a lot of these type of things are handeld by a good optomising compiler. AKA you could write
int A = 27;
For (int B = 1; B 10; B++)
{
int C = 10 * A + B;
Fark(C * (30 + 9));
}
and it might compile into the same code as
int A = 27;
int C;
for (int B = 1; B 10; B ++
C = 270 + B;
Fark(C *39);
}
I have seen code generation work realy well in a case where the same few conditionals showed up in the same function several times aka
if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC
else
ShowNonPPC
if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC
else
ShowNonPPC
I was more trying to point out that you can avoid the cost of all those if statements and clean up your code without going to self modifying code, which can easly turn into a huge mess.
PS: Don't forget using inline functions can save a lot of time even if they produce more code.
Ok if was realy 64000 options then the code would be huge anyway. Don't forget your realy only adding a wrapper around existing code so what your doing is adding some constant K times the amound of code your already dealing with. Let's say your code looks like this now: Loop1 {loop2{ If (A) { if (B) { if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
else
if (B) {
if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
}
Than all you do is cut and past the conditionals above the loop and add one function for each { ... } case.
Now self moding code works best when you have the more complex vertion of this aka.
If (A) {
then some code
the if B
then some more code
}
else
{
then some code
the if B
then some more code
}
Where you would need to replecate the same code in more than one fuction.
It all realy comes down to what the code base looks like now and how fast you need it to become. If you need to use self moding code for space reasons that's one thing but a lot of these type of things are handeld by a good optomising compiler. AKA you could write
int A = 27;
For (int B = 1; B 10; B++)
{
int C = 10 * A + B;
Fark(C * (30 + 9));
}
and it might compile into the same code as
int A = 27;
int C;
for (int B = 1; B 10; B ++
C = 270 + B;
Fark(C *39);
}
I have seen code generation work realy well in a case where the same few conditionals showed up in the same function several times aka
if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC
else
ShowNonPPC ...
if ( PPC cpu)
ShowPPC
else
ShowNonPPC ...
I was more trying to point out that you can avoid the cost of all those if statements and clean up your code without going to self modifying code, which can easly turn into a huge mess.
PS: Don't forget using inline functions can save a lot of time even if they produce more code.
Ok if was realy 64000 options then the code would be huge anyway. Don't forget your realy only adding a wrapper around existing code so what your doing is adding some constant K times the amound of code your already dealing with. Let's say your code looks like this now: Loop1 {loop2{ If (A) { if (B) { if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
else
if (B) {
if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
else {
if (C) { ... }
else [...]
}
}
Than all you do is cut and past the conditionals above the loop and add one function for each { ... } case.
Now self moding code works best when you have the more complex vertion of this aka.
If (A) { ...
if (B){ ...
if (C) {...} else {...} ... ...
}else
{ ...
if (C) {...} else {...} ...
} ...
}
Where you would need to replecate the same code in more than one fuction.
It all realy comes down to what the code base looks like now and how fast you need it to become. If you need to use self moding code for space reasons that's one thing but a lot of these type of things are handeld by a good optomising compiler. AKA you could write
int A = 27;
For (int B = 1; B 10; B++)
{
int C = 10 * A + B;
Fark(C * (30 + 9));
}
and it might compile into the same code as
int A = 27;
int C;
for (int B = 1; B 10; B ++
C = 270 + B;
Fark(C *39);
}
PS: Don't forget using inline functions can save a lot of time even if they produce more code.
I don't realy have time to look at it right now but if I rember correctly you can do something like this.
if(a & 1){
functionptr = &fucnctionA1;
}
if(a & 2){
functionptr = &fucnctionA2;
}
...
while (...
for (..
functionptr(pointer, data, size);
Sorry, it's been a while sence I looked at C code like this but it works and can work great both as a speed optimisation and to clean up your code some. If you use a lot of conditionals thouought a function that evovled with a lot of extra clutter. It's not quite as fast as 100% custome code because your using a function but it's worth taking a look at if there are a lot of conditionals inside your loops.
The science fiction works author's intent is verifiable and the author hjimselfs admits and claims it to be fiction.
This is not true for the other books.
So things are Science fiction and not religious texts because we know the authors' intent was to produce fiction. Hmm, that sounds about right I think the authors knowingly created fiction, but because I don't know that I should treat them as holy works. Ok, I get it now and while I still think it's stupid at least it makes sense...
Sort of.
I think your separating stocks and land far too much. You buy both because you expect the net earnings over time will be worth it. The big difference is people let you mortgage land at vary low rates say 5% which let's you use the difference between rate of appreciation in land value and the interest rate you pay to make money. That and the net use you can make out of land by renting it out vs. dividends. Over time many people make lots of money doing this but people still make far more money though stocks. I know of people making close to 30% ROI though buying land but they have a lot more risks than most stock buyers.
Land tends to be over valued because you can get a cheep loan to buy it. The problem is that's dependent on people working so if a large plant shuts down it's going to cause a regional crash in property values. Yea the net US land market might not have crashed but there are many areas that have seen a much larger drop in value than the NASDAQ over the last 5 years.
PS: Look at the change in land values in Silicon Valley before and after the what does this tell you about how much the price of land is dependent on speculation.
It would cost less money to build a working fusion reactor than it would take to send a 6-man team to mars for 6 months. Now which of those do you think would help long-term space exploration more?
Here is the basic idea a fusion reactor produces 1,000,000X the energy per unit mass than a chemical rocket does so your ship needs little fuel mass to keep it going and going and going. It's also vary vary safe to build and transport so you build one ship in orbit using one of these and you can basically get to turn on the ION drive and leave it that way for years thus getting 100's or thousands of to mars from orbit cheaply. After all why build a ship that can go there once when you can build one that can make the trip twice a year every year for 20 years.
Yes I wan to get off this rock but we need to be really to do that by first building cheep craft to get to orbit and then build ships than can move us around the solar system cheaply. Until that point going to mars is little more than a publicity stunt that teaches us little and is so costly we will not repeat it for 50 years.
I know it's sad but my first thought was Grok = to drink (literal) but it also means to know as in "I know the location is 5 miles from here."
Anyway, I always like the idea that to Grok meant to comprehend the totality of an object idea or situation such that you make it part of yourself. Thus when you eat / Grok someone after there death you symbolize not just your comprehension of who they where but you also add some part of what they where to who you are.
PS: Anyway, I can't recall if the destruction aspect is literal or if it means you remove that which separates you from the object.
Can you really make a secure system?
Yes.
Security is not a hard problem. It does add to both the cost and complexity of a system though. The problem is most people avoid the issue or try and make some sort of wrapper around there software that makes it secure. Mostly it's people not separating the data that is moving though the system from the system it's self which leads to security problems. When you treat every interaction a system has with the outside world as a hostile transaction you can make vary secure software. But, few people really want to build secure systems, mostly its just get it out the door fast which is why you keep seeing companies with there pants down.
As to your idea that some bugs are to expensive to fix well that's like saying well we made the bridge. It come in early and under budget, granted it would fall down if anyone ever tried to use it but hay that's not our problem. Yes, you can build a system that's not secure at lower cost, but if a bank get's hacked because they where using your software then clearly you did not do your job.
PS: Yea, sorry that came off as a rant it just pisses me off that people accept that there systems can and will be hacked but hey so does everyone else's so it's ok.
Hmm, I always found high CHA to be a vary useful stat. I mean with random encounter tables it's nice to be able to avoid fights. It's also useful when dealing with NPC's like town guards where you want info and can't just kill them.
Then again it depends on the DM. I found people started to try and min / max with me until I started changing things up. Most people had to go from getting lost in the woods one day to tracking down a band of con artists the next to get over the need for "great" stat's. A few nights with little to no combat where they guy with 18/85 STR is feeling useless because he only knows how to swing heavy things tends to make people grow out of the whole MIN / MAX mentality.
After a while I found people started to try and cover the widest range of skills as a group they could. I mean it's much more fun to have a warrior who wants to role play buying a new weapon because, as a blacksmith, he feels he should know something about how much work it takes to make a quality pike vs. a long sword vs someone who is jus wants to kill everything so he can get as much EXP he can as fast as he can. Hell, one of the most memorable nights revolved around a short-lived bard who would only eat things he knew how to cook.
Then again most D&D people I knew in HS were either drama queens or stuck on fart jokes so I can see how they can get stuck in the whole Min-Max camp.
As a young person I see most medical research as a huge money sink with little overall benefit. If we had spent 10% of the money we spend on medical research over the last 30 years on fustian research we would have real working reactors in production TODAY. Thus cutting down on the amount of air born pollutants and increasing the quality of life for everyone on the globe.
I am all for researching protean folding and keeping plagues at bay but if you look at total medical spending on the average person over there lifetime most of it occurs when there is little real benefit. Something like half of all prescription drugs used in this country are providing no noticeable benefit. Most supplements do little more than provide expensive piss but basic research has provided worlds of benefit. I am all for hip replacement surgery but where is the need for every person dieing from old age to rack up huge medical bills before they die? An Alzheimer's cure would prevent immense suffering, but we have to look at that in the context of other things we can do to help humanity out.
PS: I am pointing out why spending huge amounts of money on medical research is self-limiting. If we had spend all our money in the 1800's on medicine we would not have computers today which is why it's good to pursue more than one avenue of research.
PPS: I can't tell if your agreeing with the idea That's fine, but I think we should be concentrating more on medical science, and stem cell research. or mocking it.