The speed of light is also by definition the fastest information can travel if that information is carried by light. If the information is carried by some other method, such as sound waves, then the speed of sound is the fastest it can travel. Remember, we can't even measure around 90 percent of the mass and energy in this universe yet. I would be very surprised if we don't eventually find something faster than light, at which point that will be your new speed limit.
Ah. Got it. The part of your post that says, "force projected across the globe is able to provide relief for disaster stricken people" seemed to be central to your argument. That's a $1,000,000,000,000 expense.
I grew up in Michigan. It never gets as cold here in the winter or as hot in the summer as Michigan, the spring is beautiful without melting snowbanks creating lakes of mud, and we actually have FEWER days without seeing the sun here than we did there. I do miss autumn once in a while, which is beautiful in Michigan, but since generally the snow there starts in October I am quite content to do without it.
I've lived in Seattle since 1996 (and 5 years in the '80s) and getting interviews as a techie here has ALWAYS sucked. At times I've had over 200 resumes out and gotten two or three interviews out of it. The OP's experience is not atypical.
Is this a new Internet meme, that spending a trillion dollars a year on the military is a good thing because it can assist to some tiny degree in disaster relief? This is the third or fourth time I've seen that foolishness paraded around in the last couple of weeks. Realize that for the price the US spends on its military they could just give every person on the planet $140, which for many of those people would double their yearly income.
So a physician or nurse should just go ahead and help the CIA torture some poor goat herder in Gitmo, because they're not 'uniquely clever' and someone else could do it? Sorry, doesn't fly.
If I don't feel something is ethical I won't do it. I don't care if the guy at the next desk over can do it or not, that has no bearing on my decision at all. **I** won't do it because I feel it's wrong.
Good if they had, since now you're likely to see the death toll among the nefarious rise as well. They don't normally become thieves or terrorists because they got bored being rocket scientists.
The Shrub administration kept Senator Kennedy on the no-fly list for years because of a minor 1970s IRA terrorist with a similar name. IIRC, it wasn't until several months after the guy in Ireland was shown to be dead that they finally removed the name from the list.
You obviously have never spent any time in jail, and really obviously have never been in a non-US jail. And you've never followed an international extradition proceeding either, have you? Your "remarkably quick" proceeding rarely happens in less then two weeks, and if the arresting country has any issue at all with any recent US policy it can be stretched out for months.
I've been involved in a lot of database projects over the years, only two of them were Oracle. Both were multi-year, multi-million dollar fiascoes, and both have been trashed and replaced (with SQL Server and Informix) at the first opportunity.
I live in Seattle. If the hill that my house is on were in the Midwest they'd put a ski resort on it. I finally had to give up biking to work because with my asthma I couldn't handle the damn hill home.
Disagree, they've changed the fucking keyboard layout and I will hate them forever for that. As a touch typist since 1977, and a computer keyboard touch typist since 1992, it irritates the crap out of me that they've swapped the left Function and Control key, moved F1 where Escape should be, and put Escape where you need to actually take your hands off the keyboard to reach it. Then the Delete/Home/etc cluster is messed up too. The worst part of it all is that there is absolutely no reason for it, so I work on this Lenovo fucked up layout and then go home and have to re-adjust to my normal keyboard on my laptop at home. Absolutely unforgivable as far as I'm concerned.
Why do you think this particular suite of instruments was selected for Chang'e? It's in part so that they can get to that point, at which point they'll be well ahead of anyone else who might think seriously about colonization. Again, this is an evolutionary step. They're not as interested in making headlines as they are at making useful measurements. Stop thinking in terms of the next news cycle or the next election cycle, and take a long-range view.
So do you think they should have to reinvent the airfoil if they want to build an airplane? Of course they're using pre-existing technology, they're not as stupid as the Pentagon. Just look at that darling of the techno-libertarians, SpaceX. They're using Soviet rocket engines and NASA-developed materials and Japanese-developed communications.
You rarely find libertarians of any type "bootstrapping themselves" anywhere. Mostly they like to live in places where they can rely on the infrastructure the rest of us pay for while complaining that the government can't do anything right. Perhaps most importantly, in space the libertarian fantasy fails absolutely. Everyone has to work together or everyone dies.
No one said that it was going to be easier to colonize space, pretty much everyone clearly says that it's going to be more difficult. **BUT**, once you've done it you know how to do it pretty much everywhere. A colony near Alice Springs is going to be constructed in a completely different manner than one near Point Barrow, but one built in Lunar orbit isn't going to differ dramatically from one in the asteroid belt. On-planet your access to resources are limited to what you can purchase from others and you can only expand to the point where you impinge on neighbors, in space your resources are infinite and there is no limit on your expansion.
And yes, "because Space" is a large part of the argument. Because it really **IS** the ultimate frontier and the ultimate adventure.
You can't do either one of those things without a whole frack of a lot more data than we currently have about, well, anywhere. Ask a builder if they would consider pouring a foundation when their only information about the job site is a few photos and maybe a single scoop of surface soil. This is a rover that can actually get answers as to whether a base can be built on a specific site, whether the chemical composition of the regolith is amenable to making it into concrete or glassification, whether the surface is stable enough to support a drilling platform, etc. Sure, it's evolutionary. They'd be foolish to commit their very limited budget to a splashy photo op that might fail because they haven't done adequate site preparation.
Savuporo specified "the non-defense discretionary spending slice". NASA doesn't have "man-rated stuff" any more, and the Pentagon never has (not that this would make them hesitate a moment at stuffing some poor grunt into a nose cone). "and with their money" isn't really correct. They had to please the Pentagram in order to get the congresscritters like Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter to approve any money at all for the Shuttle. Thus you ended up with a craft designed by lawyers and generals, not rocket scientists.
It's pretty much impossible NOT to do something new on the Moon. All the astronauts combined, both with and without rovers, explored an area smaller than Central Park in New York. Do you think that a geologist, no matter how competent, supplied only with a scoop and a rock hammer would think that he had adequately explored even Manhattan Island?
there are only any economies of scale to LEO now because of NASA - FTFY
SpaceX has made what, five commercial flights? Using technologies and equipment developed by NASA and Roscosmos at that. SpaceX is doing interesting things, but let's not get ridiculous.
Doesn't need to be government, and that would end up being public before long anyway. I think the mega-banks are far more likely (assuming that's what is actually happening). They already launder over a trillion dollars just through the US banking system every year, 21 billion spread around half a dozen banks wouldn't be a big deal especially if it gave them another revenue source.
Slashdot Mirror
The speed of light is also by definition the fastest information can travel if that information is carried by light. If the information is carried by some other method, such as sound waves, then the speed of sound is the fastest it can travel. Remember, we can't even measure around 90 percent of the mass and energy in this universe yet. I would be very surprised if we don't eventually find something faster than light, at which point that will be your new speed limit.
Ah. Got it. The part of your post that says, "force projected across the globe is able to provide relief for disaster stricken people" seemed to be central to your argument. That's a $1,000,000,000,000 expense.
I grew up in Michigan. It never gets as cold here in the winter or as hot in the summer as Michigan, the spring is beautiful without melting snowbanks creating lakes of mud, and we actually have FEWER days without seeing the sun here than we did there. I do miss autumn once in a while, which is beautiful in Michigan, but since generally the snow there starts in October I am quite content to do without it.
I've lived in Seattle since 1996 (and 5 years in the '80s) and getting interviews as a techie here has ALWAYS sucked. At times I've had over 200 resumes out and gotten two or three interviews out of it. The OP's experience is not atypical.
Straw men? Where? I don't think that phrase means what you think that it means.
Is this a new Internet meme, that spending a trillion dollars a year on the military is a good thing because it can assist to some tiny degree in disaster relief? This is the third or fourth time I've seen that foolishness paraded around in the last couple of weeks. Realize that for the price the US spends on its military they could just give every person on the planet $140, which for many of those people would double their yearly income.
So a physician or nurse should just go ahead and help the CIA torture some poor goat herder in Gitmo, because they're not 'uniquely clever' and someone else could do it? Sorry, doesn't fly.
If I don't feel something is ethical I won't do it. I don't care if the guy at the next desk over can do it or not, that has no bearing on my decision at all. **I** won't do it because I feel it's wrong.
Good if they had, since now you're likely to see the death toll among the nefarious rise as well. They don't normally become thieves or terrorists because they got bored being rocket scientists.
Nonsense. If they've had one kid and died it's of considerably less negative impact on human evolution than if they had four kids and died.
The Shrub administration kept Senator Kennedy on the no-fly list for years because of a minor 1970s IRA terrorist with a similar name. IIRC, it wasn't until several months after the guy in Ireland was shown to be dead that they finally removed the name from the list.
Slightly traumatic
You obviously have never spent any time in jail, and really obviously have never been in a non-US jail. And you've never followed an international extradition proceeding either, have you? Your "remarkably quick" proceeding rarely happens in less then two weeks, and if the arresting country has any issue at all with any recent US policy it can be stretched out for months.
Slightly traumatic my ass.
You're a bit behind the times. This has been going on for over a decade now.
I've been involved in a lot of database projects over the years, only two of them were Oracle. Both were multi-year, multi-million dollar fiascoes, and both have been trashed and replaced (with SQL Server and Informix) at the first opportunity.
I live in Seattle. If the hill that my house is on were in the Midwest they'd put a ski resort on it. I finally had to give up biking to work because with my asthma I couldn't handle the damn hill home.
Disagree, they've changed the fucking keyboard layout and I will hate them forever for that. As a touch typist since 1977, and a computer keyboard touch typist since 1992, it irritates the crap out of me that they've swapped the left Function and Control key, moved F1 where Escape should be, and put Escape where you need to actually take your hands off the keyboard to reach it. Then the Delete/Home/etc cluster is messed up too. The worst part of it all is that there is absolutely no reason for it, so I work on this Lenovo fucked up layout and then go home and have to re-adjust to my normal keyboard on my laptop at home. Absolutely unforgivable as far as I'm concerned.
Why do you think this particular suite of instruments was selected for Chang'e? It's in part so that they can get to that point, at which point they'll be well ahead of anyone else who might think seriously about colonization. Again, this is an evolutionary step. They're not as interested in making headlines as they are at making useful measurements. Stop thinking in terms of the next news cycle or the next election cycle, and take a long-range view.
No, US newspapers still have Sports and Celebrity sections.
So do you think they should have to reinvent the airfoil if they want to build an airplane? Of course they're using pre-existing technology, they're not as stupid as the Pentagon. Just look at that darling of the techno-libertarians, SpaceX. They're using Soviet rocket engines and NASA-developed materials and Japanese-developed communications.
You rarely find libertarians of any type "bootstrapping themselves" anywhere. Mostly they like to live in places where they can rely on the infrastructure the rest of us pay for while complaining that the government can't do anything right. Perhaps most importantly, in space the libertarian fantasy fails absolutely. Everyone has to work together or everyone dies.
No one said that it was going to be easier to colonize space, pretty much everyone clearly says that it's going to be more difficult. **BUT**, once you've done it you know how to do it pretty much everywhere. A colony near Alice Springs is going to be constructed in a completely different manner than one near Point Barrow, but one built in Lunar orbit isn't going to differ dramatically from one in the asteroid belt. On-planet your access to resources are limited to what you can purchase from others and you can only expand to the point where you impinge on neighbors, in space your resources are infinite and there is no limit on your expansion.
And yes, "because Space" is a large part of the argument. Because it really **IS** the ultimate frontier and the ultimate adventure.
You can't do either one of those things without a whole frack of a lot more data than we currently have about, well, anywhere. Ask a builder if they would consider pouring a foundation when their only information about the job site is a few photos and maybe a single scoop of surface soil. This is a rover that can actually get answers as to whether a base can be built on a specific site, whether the chemical composition of the regolith is amenable to making it into concrete or glassification, whether the surface is stable enough to support a drilling platform, etc. Sure, it's evolutionary. They'd be foolish to commit their very limited budget to a splashy photo op that might fail because they haven't done adequate site preparation.
Savuporo specified "the non-defense discretionary spending slice". NASA doesn't have "man-rated stuff" any more, and the Pentagon never has (not that this would make them hesitate a moment at stuffing some poor grunt into a nose cone). "and with their money" isn't really correct. They had to please the Pentagram in order to get the congresscritters like Arlen "Magic Bullet" Specter to approve any money at all for the Shuttle. Thus you ended up with a craft designed by lawyers and generals, not rocket scientists.
It's pretty much impossible NOT to do something new on the Moon. All the astronauts combined, both with and without rovers, explored an area smaller than Central Park in New York. Do you think that a geologist, no matter how competent, supplied only with a scoop and a rock hammer would think that he had adequately explored even Manhattan Island?
there are only any economies of scale to LEO now because of NASA - FTFY
SpaceX has made what, five commercial flights? Using technologies and equipment developed by NASA and Roscosmos at that. SpaceX is doing interesting things, but let's not get ridiculous.
Doesn't need to be government, and that would end up being public before long anyway. I think the mega-banks are far more likely (assuming that's what is actually happening). They already launder over a trillion dollars just through the US banking system every year, 21 billion spread around half a dozen banks wouldn't be a big deal especially if it gave them another revenue source.
This is reminding me more and more of the tulip bulb bubble all the time.