The researchers collected roughly 70-meter core samples from the lake and painstakingly counted the layers to come up with a direct record stretching back 52,000 years.
Holy crap. "Painstakingly" doesn't even begin to cover counting 52,000 stripes in a core sample.
Is Iran really incapable of making printing presses of the required quality? They seem reasonably advanced in other technical areas, and presses don't require any secret sauce in the way of advanced materials or processes. Why don't they just copy what they've been using?
Am I the only one who thinks management teams that bring in consultants to do mass layoffs are pussies? If you fuck up a company so badly 30% of the employees have to go, the very least you can do is not hide in the proverbial closet until it's over.
The US could send someone up in a Falcon 9/Dragon if there were some pressing need to do so. The capsule works, and it's (partly) pressurized. They don't have a launch escape system (yet), but neither did the shuttle.
The problem is there isn't a pressing, or, actually, any need at all, to send people into space. You can get far more done for far less money using robotic probes. Until we can drop the cost per kg to LEO by a factor of at least 20, manned space is a vanity project, nothing more.
I would think the material you mined would be far more valuable for building things in orbit. Even tailings and slag would be valuable as reaction mass.
Re:Putting the cart before the horse.
on
The Great Meteor Grab
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· Score: 4, Interesting
Lately Congress seems to recognize no limits to its jurisdiction. If they can extradite people for violating US drug laws in other countries, extradite British bankers who never set foot in the US for violating US banking laws, arrest Canadians for running poker websites, and tax expats for ten years after citizenship is renounced, there really isn't any place in the universe in which US law doesn't apply. Assuming they have the muscle to enforce it, I guess. As an American I have no idea why other countries put up with this nonsense, but there it is.
I don't think they can really afford to launch again until they've determined the root cause of the failure. Presumably there are multiple ways an engine can fail, and you'd rather not be in the position of having two engines fail from different problems if you could have done something about it. We're not talking about a weapon system during a war where those kinds of things become acceptable risks.
Well, that and it's been fifty years since NASA started playing with engines in earnest. There's no way they could have loaded everything up with sensors the way we do today - you can usually figure out what went wrong from the telemetry even if the engine is totally obliterated and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. That saves a lot of time in development, and it also allows you to look at a successful flight and say "hey... that number is only 60% of what we expected" or "the shutdown transient is big enough to damage the engine we're planning to use for tail landings later" or "this part of the rocket isn't supposed to get hotter in this phase of the flight".
The fact that SpaceX may have built a reliable rocket more quickly than NASA doesn't really surprise me. What surprises me is guys with slide rules were able to build a rocket that worked at all using high-speed cameras and primitive telemetry. A few countries around the world still can't get this right even using known-working designs as patterns.
This is a oft mentioned fallacy by the anti-government crowd. The cheapest way to get a letter (an actual paper one, not e-mail) from NYC to LA is via the US Postal Service.
What a horrible example. Of course it's the cheapest way. Legally, it's the only way to send a non-priority letter. Now, I don't have a beef with the postal service, and as far as postal services go the USPS is pretty good compared to what you find in other countries. But you can't knock private companies for not being competitive when they're not allowed to compete by law.
I understand that. What I'm saying is they could send up people in the Dragon capsule they have on the pad if there was some kind of emergency. There wouldn't be a launch escape system, but then again shuttle didn't have one either.
The problem is aluminum has an unpleasant taste, so even if what you say is true, it only matters if you pour your beer into a glass before you drink it.
The most legitimate complaint I've heard is the drug was sold as less likely to be abused because of the time release formula. It probably didn't even take a whole day for people to figure out you could crush the pills and snort them.
15-20 years ago, doctors were written up and called out for not treating enough pain.
As they should have been. You had people in the last few weeks of life being denied effective pain treatment because submitting too many of some particular government form might be a headache for the doctor. As far as I'm concerned when someone is near death they ought to be able to get whatever they want. So what if the patient is taking more than he needs for the pain. Are we really worried about addiction in someone who's going to be dead in a few weeks?
Aren't there some fundamental physical limits on how low your energy usage can be for a given amount of information based on thermodynamics? Is it just the case that they're way, way less than what we're using now?
The upper limit is going to be mostly governed by energy. When fertilizer gets expensive, so will food. So it's bound to happen at some point. But we're a long way from that scenario at present. If we're really "about a year away" from food riots then there's something else going on.
Slashdot Mirror
Holy crap. "Painstakingly" doesn't even begin to cover counting 52,000 stripes in a core sample.
Is Iran really incapable of making printing presses of the required quality? They seem reasonably advanced in other technical areas, and presses don't require any secret sauce in the way of advanced materials or processes. Why don't they just copy what they've been using?
That only applies to legal findings. Private citizens are free to jump to whatever conclusions strike their fancy.
Bullshit. There's no reason we can't hold them to the same standards as everyone else.
Am I the only one who thinks management teams that bring in consultants to do mass layoffs are pussies? If you fuck up a company so badly 30% of the employees have to go, the very least you can do is not hide in the proverbial closet until it's over.
They hired the two Bobs.
The US could send someone up in a Falcon 9/Dragon if there were some pressing need to do so. The capsule works, and it's (partly) pressurized. They don't have a launch escape system (yet), but neither did the shuttle.
The problem is there isn't a pressing, or, actually, any need at all, to send people into space. You can get far more done for far less money using robotic probes. Until we can drop the cost per kg to LEO by a factor of at least 20, manned space is a vanity project, nothing more.
I would think the material you mined would be far more valuable for building things in orbit. Even tailings and slag would be valuable as reaction mass.
Lately Congress seems to recognize no limits to its jurisdiction. If they can extradite people for violating US drug laws in other countries, extradite British bankers who never set foot in the US for violating US banking laws, arrest Canadians for running poker websites, and tax expats for ten years after citizenship is renounced, there really isn't any place in the universe in which US law doesn't apply. Assuming they have the muscle to enforce it, I guess. As an American I have no idea why other countries put up with this nonsense, but there it is.
But they brought supplies on the test docking mission. The difference this time around was that it is an official resupply mission.
Actually the other engines can definitely be impacted in a catastrophic failure.
I don't think they can really afford to launch again until they've determined the root cause of the failure. Presumably there are multiple ways an engine can fail, and you'd rather not be in the position of having two engines fail from different problems if you could have done something about it. We're not talking about a weapon system during a war where those kinds of things become acceptable risks.
Well, that and it's been fifty years since NASA started playing with engines in earnest. There's no way they could have loaded everything up with sensors the way we do today - you can usually figure out what went wrong from the telemetry even if the engine is totally obliterated and sinks to the bottom of the ocean. That saves a lot of time in development, and it also allows you to look at a successful flight and say "hey... that number is only 60% of what we expected" or "the shutdown transient is big enough to damage the engine we're planning to use for tail landings later" or "this part of the rocket isn't supposed to get hotter in this phase of the flight".
The fact that SpaceX may have built a reliable rocket more quickly than NASA doesn't really surprise me. What surprises me is guys with slide rules were able to build a rocket that worked at all using high-speed cameras and primitive telemetry. A few countries around the world still can't get this right even using known-working designs as patterns.
Stop digging, moron. RevDisk pointed out the relevant law.
I wish people would learn even a tiny bit about the subject before they start spouting off. They teach this stuff in grade school.
This is a oft mentioned fallacy by the anti-government crowd. The cheapest way to get a letter (an actual paper one, not e-mail) from NYC to LA is via the US Postal Service.
What a horrible example. Of course it's the cheapest way. Legally, it's the only way to send a non-priority letter. Now, I don't have a beef with the postal service, and as far as postal services go the USPS is pretty good compared to what you find in other countries. But you can't knock private companies for not being competitive when they're not allowed to compete by law.
I understand that. What I'm saying is they could send up people in the Dragon capsule they have on the pad if there was some kind of emergency. There wouldn't be a launch escape system, but then again shuttle didn't have one either.
SpaceX could put a man in LEO and higher if the need was there.
But it isn't, and that's the entire problem with manned spaceflight. There's no reason for it.
The problem is aluminum has an unpleasant taste, so even if what you say is true, it only matters if you pour your beer into a glass before you drink it.
The most legitimate complaint I've heard is the drug was sold as less likely to be abused because of the time release formula. It probably didn't even take a whole day for people to figure out you could crush the pills and snort them.
15-20 years ago, doctors were written up and called out for not treating enough pain.
As they should have been. You had people in the last few weeks of life being denied effective pain treatment because submitting too many of some particular government form might be a headache for the doctor. As far as I'm concerned when someone is near death they ought to be able to get whatever they want. So what if the patient is taking more than he needs for the pain. Are we really worried about addiction in someone who's going to be dead in a few weeks?
Yeah, the guy most likely just stopped breathing.
Wait... he supported Obama?
Aren't there some fundamental physical limits on how low your energy usage can be for a given amount of information based on thermodynamics? Is it just the case that they're way, way less than what we're using now?
There is still an upper limit ahead.
The upper limit is going to be mostly governed by energy. When fertilizer gets expensive, so will food. So it's bound to happen at some point. But we're a long way from that scenario at present. If we're really "about a year away" from food riots then there's something else going on.