In an alternate universe, Microsoft didn't buy Bungie, and the iMacs became the ultimate game platforms. I will never forgive Microsoft for perhaps the smartest move they ever made. It was, to quote Cutler Beckett from POTC III, "just good business.":(
"There is nothing 'out there' that is worth the cost of going. Forget that motivation. Does that mean we shouldn't go? No, but it means we've passed the Point of No Return on Investment!"
For example: Mining the asteroids for Unobtanium. To mine the Unobtanium, you need to lift the mining equipment to the asteroid. Bring or get the energy to mine it. Load it and de-orbit it from the Belt to Earth AND THEN STOP IT. You can work some cool tricks (slingshots, balutes, solar sails, whatnot) but the energy remains the same. The amount of energy to get something there and back is IMMENSE. You will NEVER recoup that money spent on energy and structure by selling what you bring back. Remember the payload of rocks from Apollo.
The only thing up there that MIGHT pay for itself is an energy source, like Dilithium. Nothing else is worth it.
Find another motivation. Today's XKCD might help, or it might explain why it WON'T work.
You decide... and decide you must. If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice;-)
I have programmed on TRS-80s and 8088 w/8087s. Compiled C and Read & Go BASIC.
But now I'm programming python on an 8-core Xeon. When I'm writing a stored procedure or a nested loop of two recordsets, I ***STILL*** catch myself thinking about how slowly those instructions would take on a slower machine. "Do you know how LONG that looping will take?... oh. 0.000006 seconds. heh heh. I catch myself "subvocalizing" the loops, and I shy away from something "so resource intensive" and look for another, more efficient solution.
Yes, it's great to learn how a computer does what it does, but if you miss the simple solution because your mind is "read and go"-ing, then you hobble yourself.
The only place which would be "constantly" in the umbra from the Sun would be the L2 LaGrange point, opposite the sun. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Lagrange_points2.svg The Sun-staring SOHO uses the opposite L1 to stay OUT of the umbra. However, it's roughly a million miles from earth. So, let's just say no and build another one.
Any other place that you "park it" will end up revolving into view of the Sun. Sorry. I didn't design this system.
The Mac is not a typewriter not only lays down guidelines, but explains the logic behind them, such as why punctuation should be hung, why there should not be two spaces after periods, why text set in all caps should be avoided.
Ikaros is not in an "orbit". It is in a (nearly) constant-thrust trajectory which drops inward from earth toward Venus. As a windsurfer, you can easily imagine a windboard being towed by a jetski at 10 knots. With the wind from your left, you cut loose, catch the breeze, bear left and accelerate to 20 knots, whipping around another jetski passing at 18 knots. But then, you sail by and surf down the coast, leaving the jet skis behind. That is what IKAROS is doing. It has no way to apply the 'brakes' to stop or orbitally insert into Venus. The parents analogy was misinformation. You can't thrust TOWARD the sun any more than a hot air balloon can set a sail and move upwind.
A sailboat can travel against the wind because the force which is perpendicular to the wind is pushing the KEEL/daggerboard with an angle of attack against the WATER! The keel is a wing which generates 'lift' upwind. If you want to test this, pull up the daggerboard and the boat will slip sideways against the wind. Without the keel and the water, the boat will not progress into the wind.
If you angle the sail of the spacecraft, you will get a reduced thrust away from the sun, and a force in the horizontal direction (perpendicular to the radius vector). Canting the sail will bump the s/c side to side, and will reduce the thrust, but you can ONLY reduce thrust to Zero! You can't go negative. No braking thrust. ONLY if you "luff" the sail, parallel to the solar wind, will the thrust drop to zero, but then you are coasting UP the gravity well. By that time, you are probably past escape velocity, and will not be seen again. And remember, you didn't remove the initial orbital velocity of Earth, so you 'climb' is really a slowly-increasing spiral. At that distance, adding 10% to your velocity is escape velocity (at earth radius, V0 * sqrt(2)... 41% increase is escape, less farther out.)
disclosure: I'm a degreed aerospace engineer and accomplished sailor.
causes vaporization, the force applied to the object can be larger than from the energy of the beam alone.
Only if the vaporized material is "nozzled" in a single direction. If it just goes everywhere, you get no net change in momentum. AND... if it move "a little" then the beam won't be hitting it. Try sending a bowling ball down an alley by hitting it with a BB gun.
Also, in another post, I stated a "rule of thumb", that a rifle in orbit can't fire a bullet fast enough to de-orbit. Your vaporization won't change the velocity enough to notice, orbitally speaking.
Parent is a degreed Aerospace engineer. You are correct about the delta-V. Google "specific impulse" and realize why it takes a 365 foot rocket to lift a volkswagen. That is... why the propellant to payload ratio is so freaking high! (Technical term)
Regarding the radiometer: The answer is 'yes, but...' You would have to hit the object with enough "photon momentum" to change the velocity, literally, delta the v. The losses of distance, surface area reduce your killer beam to a few photons pretty fast. And it's SURE not worth the cost.
Magnitudes are your enemy here. If you shot a.308 rifle out the "back" of the ISS (retrograde to velocity), the bullet probably wouldn't de-orbit. That's a lot of delta-v! If you shot it straight down (down the radius vector), it would loop around you and come back DOWN at you 1 orbit later and at the same velocity it left!
To accomplish this, you would need a vast array of laser brooms. The percentage of objects which travel through your cone of opportunity are a minuscule proportion. You can't cover 180 degrees (the part you can see) of the sky because the distance to the target at the horizon is several hundred km through thermal layers.
The inverse of that minuscule proportion is the number of brooms you'd need.
Forget the energy needed and environmental impact of blasting a terawatt (ok, then... how big?) laser into space. You hit a Vulcan in the eye with that an they will be pissed!
It takes the same delta-v to de-orbit any two masses in the same orbit. Paint chip or Star Destroyer. Thrust requirements follow Newton, not Roddenberry.
Whatever energy you have to apply to an object must be applied to the object. It's 100km away at 7km per second. Good luck.
The delta-v to get close enough to where you can apply delta-v (bump a paint chip) adds up. If you could hit it with a beam from 100km away, that would be great, but delivering delta-v at 100km is problematic.
Almost nothing is magnetic, so forget that. We don't have a tractor beam, and Yarkovsky Effect is insignificant on these tiny pieces. A maser/laser doesn't deliver momentum very well. Heat does nothing.
Blobs of Aerogel in a counter-directional/retrograde orbit could sweep up the small stuff, but the volume that needs to be swept is like mopping a basketball court with a cotton swab.
Solve the "how do you apply force at a distance" issue and yer halfway there.
It's a self-UN-fulfilling prophecy... just like when computer makers began rounding up to 667MHz processors. Apparently, 66Mhz, 266MHz, 466MHz needed to be rounded down, but they had to round up 666.
At first, I balked at the lack of Blu-Ray. But what place would this have next to my 55" screen? I already have:
HDTV with DVR
Blu-Ray which runs with my universal remote (TV is aware)
Home Theater sound
USB input to put a bunch of still pictures into a huge frame
A couch and a coffee table.
What am I lacking? ***The INTERNET!!!***
I could get an iPad, but what if I want to search real estate listings or sort through my iPhoto library with my wife between innings and both see well? I could bring in my laptop, but where do I put it when I'm not using it? I'm tired of the stuff I do (internet and computer) being the visitor in the living room. This could solve that.
Unless Apple tries to put HDTV/DVR into a tiny box, the Blu-Ray is redundant. Rather than have a dongle to get my TV into a computer, let's do it the other way around. The Mac Mini is the Internet Dongle.
Who here has a monster TV and doesn't have the Blu-Ray already? Hands... Anyone?
A huge solar flare is predicted to fry the Earth. Astronauts must go to the Sun to drop a talking bomb (Freddy) at the right time so the flare will point somewhere else...
...Statements of Privacy Policy do. When a site gives explicit guidelines, to which you agree, and THEN they erode or drop the wall that THEY TOLD YOU was there, THAT is evil.
Slashdot Mirror
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KqFJ5pPu2g
:(
In an alternate universe, Microsoft didn't buy Bungie, and the iMacs became the ultimate game platforms. I will never forgive Microsoft for perhaps the smartest move they ever made. It was, to quote Cutler Beckett from POTC III, "just good business."
"There is nothing 'out there' that is worth the cost of going. Forget that motivation. Does that mean we shouldn't go? No, but it means we've passed the Point of No Return on Investment!"
Michael Gavon on 'Rocket Science' ©1990
;-)
For example: Mining the asteroids for Unobtanium. To mine the Unobtanium, you need to lift the mining equipment to the asteroid. Bring or get the energy to mine it. Load it and de-orbit it from the Belt to Earth AND THEN STOP IT. You can work some cool tricks (slingshots, balutes, solar sails, whatnot) but the energy remains the same. The amount of energy to get something there and back is IMMENSE. You will NEVER recoup that money spent on energy and structure by selling what you bring back. Remember the payload of rocks from Apollo.
The only thing up there that MIGHT pay for itself is an energy source, like Dilithium. Nothing else is worth it.
Find another motivation. Today's XKCD might help, or it might explain why it WON'T work.
You decide... and decide you must. If you choose not to decide you still have made a choice
I have programmed on TRS-80s and 8088 w/8087s. Compiled C and Read & Go BASIC.
But now I'm programming python on an 8-core Xeon. When I'm writing a stored procedure or a nested loop of two recordsets, I ***STILL*** catch myself thinking about how slowly those instructions would take on a slower machine. "Do you know how LONG that looping will take?... oh. 0.000006 seconds. heh heh. I catch myself "subvocalizing" the loops, and I shy away from something "so resource intensive" and look for another, more efficient solution.
Yes, it's great to learn how a computer does what it does, but if you miss the simple solution because your mind is "read and go"-ing, then you hobble yourself.
The only place which would be "constantly" in the umbra from the Sun would be the L2 LaGrange point, opposite the sun. http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/e/ee/Lagrange_points2.svg The Sun-staring SOHO uses the opposite L1 to stay OUT of the umbra. However, it's roughly a million miles from earth. So, let's just say no and build another one.
Any other place that you "park it" will end up revolving into view of the Sun. Sorry. I didn't design this system.
The Mac is not a typewriter not only lays down guidelines, but explains the logic behind them, such as why punctuation should be hung, why there should not be two spaces after periods, why text set in all caps should be avoided.
I didn't like it. It didn't' shoot anything...
Ikaros is not in an "orbit". It is in a (nearly) constant-thrust trajectory which drops inward from earth toward Venus. As a windsurfer, you can easily imagine a windboard being towed by a jetski at 10 knots. With the wind from your left, you cut loose, catch the breeze, bear left and accelerate to 20 knots, whipping around another jetski passing at 18 knots. But then, you sail by and surf down the coast, leaving the jet skis behind. That is what IKAROS is doing. It has no way to apply the 'brakes' to stop or orbitally insert into Venus. The parents analogy was misinformation. You can't thrust TOWARD the sun any more than a hot air balloon can set a sail and move upwind.
A sailboat can travel against the wind because the force which is perpendicular to the wind is pushing the KEEL/daggerboard with an angle of attack against the WATER! The keel is a wing which generates 'lift' upwind. If you want to test this, pull up the daggerboard and the boat will slip sideways against the wind. Without the keel and the water, the boat will not progress into the wind.
If you angle the sail of the spacecraft, you will get a reduced thrust away from the sun, and a force in the horizontal direction (perpendicular to the radius vector). Canting the sail will bump the s/c side to side, and will reduce the thrust, but you can ONLY reduce thrust to Zero! You can't go negative. No braking thrust. ONLY if you "luff" the sail, parallel to the solar wind, will the thrust drop to zero, but then you are coasting UP the gravity well. By that time, you are probably past escape velocity, and will not be seen again. And remember, you didn't remove the initial orbital velocity of Earth, so you 'climb' is really a slowly-increasing spiral. At that distance, adding 10% to your velocity is escape velocity (at earth radius, V0 * sqrt(2)... 41% increase is escape, less farther out.)
disclosure: I'm a degreed aerospace engineer and accomplished sailor.
causes vaporization, the force applied to the object can be larger than from the energy of the beam alone.
Only if the vaporized material is "nozzled" in a single direction. If it just goes everywhere, you get no net change in momentum. AND... if it move "a little" then the beam won't be hitting it. Try sending a bowling ball down an alley by hitting it with a BB gun.
Also, in another post, I stated a "rule of thumb", that a rifle in orbit can't fire a bullet fast enough to de-orbit. Your vaporization won't change the velocity enough to notice, orbitally speaking.
Parent is a degreed Aerospace engineer. You are correct about the delta-V. Google "specific impulse" and realize why it takes a 365 foot rocket to lift a volkswagen. That is... why the propellant to payload ratio is so freaking high! (Technical term)
.308 rifle out the "back" of the ISS (retrograde to velocity), the bullet probably wouldn't de-orbit. That's a lot of delta-v! If you shot it straight down (down the radius vector), it would loop around you and come back DOWN at you 1 orbit later and at the same velocity it left!
Regarding the radiometer: The answer is 'yes, but...' You would have to hit the object with enough "photon momentum" to change the velocity, literally, delta the v. The losses of distance, surface area reduce your killer beam to a few photons pretty fast. And it's SURE not worth the cost.
Magnitudes are your enemy here. If you shot a
To accomplish this, you would need a vast array of laser brooms. The percentage of objects which travel through your cone of opportunity are a minuscule proportion. You can't cover 180 degrees (the part you can see) of the sky because the distance to the target at the horizon is several hundred km through thermal layers.
The inverse of that minuscule proportion is the number of brooms you'd need.
Forget the energy needed and environmental impact of blasting a terawatt (ok, then... how big?) laser into space. You hit a Vulcan in the eye with that an they will be pissed!
Solve the "how do you apply force at a distance" issue and yer halfway there.
I'm convinced.
It's a self-UN-fulfilling prophecy... just like when computer makers began rounding up to 667MHz processors. Apparently, 66Mhz, 266MHz, 466MHz needed to be rounded down, but they had to round up 666.
Both the lead developer and the project manager of our site had to be committed. Otherwise, murders were going to be committed.
Very informative. I can't wait to hear from the other one.
BOTH of them?
He's got the "right stuff".
http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2010-07-26/leadership-tips-from-tony-hayward-or-not-.html
And experience in negatively impacting an entire ecosystem. Perfect! (Also perfect that this article posted 14 minutes before the Slashdot article. ;-)
I assume admins are active in an annual affirmation of amazing alliteration as apparent amid abnormal (also atypical) alphabetical arrangements!
First, fed-findings-fault-fat-feet
Reception Recall Ruckus Roundup
What's next? "Open Office dot Org offers Oracle, Overstock, Opera, Oprah, opplications for the oPhone?"
Video games! HAH! I learned to drive recklessly from Han Solo on the big screen. I didn't need no stinkin' video game! Kiss my asteroids!
What am I lacking? ***The INTERNET!!!***
I could get an iPad, but what if I want to search real estate listings or sort through my iPhoto library with my wife between innings and both see well? I could bring in my laptop, but where do I put it when I'm not using it? I'm tired of the stuff I do (internet and computer) being the visitor in the living room. This could solve that.
Unless Apple tries to put HDTV/DVR into a tiny box, the Blu-Ray is redundant. Rather than have a dongle to get my TV into a computer, let's do it the other way around. The Mac Mini is the Internet Dongle.
Who here has a monster TV and doesn't have the Blu-Ray already? Hands... Anyone?
A huge solar flare is predicted to fry the Earth. Astronauts must go to the Sun to drop a talking bomb (Freddy) at the right time so the flare will point somewhere else...
the Nanites and the self-aware computers finally hit their stride.
...and?
Well, all fanboi-ness aside, here's an and...
Apple Surpasses Microsoft In Market Capitalization... and in 1997, we all thought that this would NEVER happen.
In 1997, Apple was already in the obituary columns. Now, it's the second largest company in the world (market cap). But they made some changes
These are great lessons for any company, but perhaps, FOSS should learn from this. Or else FOSS will 'never' make it big on the desktop.
...Statements of Privacy Policy do. When a site gives explicit guidelines, to which you agree, and THEN they erode or drop the wall that THEY TOLD YOU was there, THAT is evil.
I'm looking at you, Facebook.