Having well understood chemistry and physics isn't the same thing as having a working piece of hardware. Rockets have well understood chemistry and physics as well, but new designs rarely work the first time. The fact that the 1945 bombs worked the first time is equal parts luck and the fact that they literally had the smartest people in the world gathered in one place. It should probably be seen as an aberration.
As to South Africa's weapons, well, we'll never know if they should have been tested or not, will we?
A test ban would make a nuclear weapons program far less useful for countries that don't already have working designs. You want nuclear weapons for two things: As a deterrent, and for a first strike capability.
Unproven deterrents aren't very useful. In what world do complicated devices work without ever being tested? A nuke you can't test isn't going to be very scary to your neighbors.
By the same token, the point of a nuclear first strike is your enemy isn't there to retaliate when you're done. But if you don't know whether or not your weapon works, you can't depend on avoiding payback. So again, an untested weapon isn't useful for a cold-cocking your sworn enemy. If it doesn't work you're going to find yourself without any friends or any way to defend yourself as the rest of the world decides your government is too crazy to be allowed to survive.
Which leaves... what? Why build one? The states that already have working designs will probably keep them, but if you're running a middle tier (in the economic and technical sense) country a test ban adds some weight to the "Oh, let's not bother" side of the scale.
Cliff Stoll is probably unsurprised. As am I. A computer is a tool to accomplish a task, and giving computers to kids who don't have any use for them is likely to be less productive than giving them all math textbooks.
You're confusing "investigated" with "taken into custody". The cops are investigating, and will continue to investigate until they decide there's nothing more to learn. They'll question him over and over, and If they decide he wasn't being truthful they can still arrest him.
Zimmerman is screwed. Even if everything went down the way he says it did, and he's tried and found not guilty, Eric Holder's Justice Department will do an end-run around double jeopardy and convict him on some nebulous civil rights thing. Because that's what the mob wants. It's exactly the sort of thing the court system was set up to prevent.
This. Exposure on a popular website is potentially worth more to a writer than anything they could reasonably expect to be paid. That was the deal going in, and they don't have a legal leg to stand on just because it didn't work out.
As others have noted, this is only "new" in the sense that they've made a prototype of a particular design. There's no new technology from what I can see. Ion engines have always been well suited for any mission that can be performed with tiny amounts of thrust over a long period, and it's not surprising you can plot a very-low-thrust course that can get you to the moon if you have plenty of time.
I still have my doubts about microsatellites. There are fixed costs to launching satellites regardless of size. Granted, you can launch oodles of them at once, but for that to be a good idea you need to have thought up a bunch of worthwhile experiments. If you have to pad it out with high school ant farms you may as well have built a bigger and more capable probe.
The contractor who just remodeled my bathroom has two big dogs to protect job sites at night. One night a bunch of guys showed up and cleaned him out while he was hiding in his trailer frantically calling 9/11. The dogs had been drugged. The cops actually showed up in time to make arrests, and they told him the dogs are almost always drugged or killed without anyone the wiser.
My experience with tape in a government shop is they'll basically last forever provided you keep them in the recommended temperature and humidity range. We didn't have any trouble pulling data off of well-cared-for tapes that were almost 40 years old. Of course, the ones that were left out in a shipping container in the hot sun only lasted a year or two.
I'm not a big Obama fan (understatement of the year), but I have to give the guy credit for what he's done with the space program. Congress has always treated NASA as a pork piggy bank, but in recent years things have gotten so bad it's a wonder the agency can accomplish anything.
Subsidizing demand led to subsidized production. In other words, one market interference (subsidized demand for solar) leads to its counterpoint, government tariff and taxation of the same product.
This is muddled logic. There's no reason for subsidized demand to lead to subsidized production if demand is subsidized to the point where producers can make a profit. Well, no reason other than to make sure jobs get created in your country instead of somewhere else.
Because you don't own stock in, or work for, a domestic solar cell manufacturer. This industry could end up being enormous, and that means a lot of money and jobs are at stake.
There's another problem, too. If the US government doesn't do anything when the Chinese government prices US manufacturers out of business, it sends a signal to potential solar cell investors and manufacturers, and that is there isn't any way to make money manufacturing solar cells in the US. I'm not going to get funding to bring a clever new design to market because investors know the Chinese government will ultimately put me out of business.
This could be a big deal in submarine warfare if they can get the temperature up. With the advent of AIP, navies are having to rely on second-string technologies like Magnetic Anomaly Detectors.
Okay, I gotta ask what I always ask with these kinds of stories. If I get liver cancer (or whatever). how long do I have to hold out before the local hospital can offer a tailored virus to cure me?
Meh. If the board really wanted to get rid of him they could just fire him without going through a whispering campaign. He may have the support of the vast majority of the board with only one or two disgruntled holdouts.
It's not like people don't do that already with regular tattoo ink.
My worry would be getting exposed to random magnetic fields from motors and such, then having to endure the smirks of people around me "Oh, is it Spring already? Hahaha." It would be like going through a second adolescence - "No, I will not go to the board and work out this math problem. I'm staying right here at my desk. Sitting. With my legs crossed."
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It would take time to determine the source of nuke but would the public be willing to retaliate 6 months later with a nuclear reprisal?
There's no doubt in my mind. In fact, I doubt they'd be willing to wait for absolute certainty.
Having well understood chemistry and physics isn't the same thing as having a working piece of hardware. Rockets have well understood chemistry and physics as well, but new designs rarely work the first time. The fact that the 1945 bombs worked the first time is equal parts luck and the fact that they literally had the smartest people in the world gathered in one place. It should probably be seen as an aberration.
As to South Africa's weapons, well, we'll never know if they should have been tested or not, will we?
A test ban would make a nuclear weapons program far less useful for countries that don't already have working designs. You want nuclear weapons for two things: As a deterrent, and for a first strike capability.
Unproven deterrents aren't very useful. In what world do complicated devices work without ever being tested? A nuke you can't test isn't going to be very scary to your neighbors.
By the same token, the point of a nuclear first strike is your enemy isn't there to retaliate when you're done. But if you don't know whether or not your weapon works, you can't depend on avoiding payback. So again, an untested weapon isn't useful for a cold-cocking your sworn enemy. If it doesn't work you're going to find yourself without any friends or any way to defend yourself as the rest of the world decides your government is too crazy to be allowed to survive.
Which leaves... what? Why build one? The states that already have working designs will probably keep them, but if you're running a middle tier (in the economic and technical sense) country a test ban adds some weight to the "Oh, let's not bother" side of the scale.
RIght. But it's not that they're replacing the desktop. They're replacing the television.
Cliff Stoll is probably unsurprised. As am I. A computer is a tool to accomplish a task, and giving computers to kids who don't have any use for them is likely to be less productive than giving them all math textbooks.
You're confusing "investigated" with "taken into custody". The cops are investigating, and will continue to investigate until they decide there's nothing more to learn. They'll question him over and over, and If they decide he wasn't being truthful they can still arrest him.
Zimmerman is screwed. Even if everything went down the way he says it did, and he's tried and found not guilty, Eric Holder's Justice Department will do an end-run around double jeopardy and convict him on some nebulous civil rights thing. Because that's what the mob wants. It's exactly the sort of thing the court system was set up to prevent.
This. Exposure on a popular website is potentially worth more to a writer than anything they could reasonably expect to be paid. That was the deal going in, and they don't have a legal leg to stand on just because it didn't work out.
Huffington was never a conservative, just like she's not a leftist now. She's just a moth attracted to the flame of political power.
As others have noted, this is only "new" in the sense that they've made a prototype of a particular design. There's no new technology from what I can see. Ion engines have always been well suited for any mission that can be performed with tiny amounts of thrust over a long period, and it's not surprising you can plot a very-low-thrust course that can get you to the moon if you have plenty of time.
I still have my doubts about microsatellites. There are fixed costs to launching satellites regardless of size. Granted, you can launch oodles of them at once, but for that to be a good idea you need to have thought up a bunch of worthwhile experiments. If you have to pad it out with high school ant farms you may as well have built a bigger and more capable probe.
The contractor who just remodeled my bathroom has two big dogs to protect job sites at night. One night a bunch of guys showed up and cleaned him out while he was hiding in his trailer frantically calling 9/11. The dogs had been drugged. The cops actually showed up in time to make arrests, and they told him the dogs are almost always drugged or killed without anyone the wiser.
Yep. And it's relatively cheap. A decent pump 12 ga. is less than half the cost of a .45 auto.
My experience with tape in a government shop is they'll basically last forever provided you keep them in the recommended temperature and humidity range. We didn't have any trouble pulling data off of well-cared-for tapes that were almost 40 years old. Of course, the ones that were left out in a shipping container in the hot sun only lasted a year or two.
You can't know based on a few sentences taken out of context, and neither can any of the people who are huffing indignantly.
Well, sure, if they were talking ten years out I'd agree. But they're not. They're talking about next year.
Depends, as it always does, on how many jobs are getting delivered to which districts. Congress doesn't care if it works.
By 2013 the Falcon Heavy version will have 2.5 times the payload capacity of the Ariane 5.
I'm not a big Obama fan (understatement of the year), but I have to give the guy credit for what he's done with the space program. Congress has always treated NASA as a pork piggy bank, but in recent years things have gotten so bad it's a wonder the agency can accomplish anything.
Subsidizing demand led to subsidized production. In other words, one market interference (subsidized demand for solar) leads to its counterpoint, government tariff and taxation of the same product.
This is muddled logic. There's no reason for subsidized demand to lead to subsidized production if demand is subsidized to the point where producers can make a profit. Well, no reason other than to make sure jobs get created in your country instead of somewhere else.
Because you don't own stock in, or work for, a domestic solar cell manufacturer. This industry could end up being enormous, and that means a lot of money and jobs are at stake.
There's another problem, too. If the US government doesn't do anything when the Chinese government prices US manufacturers out of business, it sends a signal to potential solar cell investors and manufacturers, and that is there isn't any way to make money manufacturing solar cells in the US. I'm not going to get funding to bring a clever new design to market because investors know the Chinese government will ultimately put me out of business.
This could be a big deal in submarine warfare if they can get the temperature up. With the advent of AIP, navies are having to rely on second-string technologies like Magnetic Anomaly Detectors.
Okay, I gotta ask what I always ask with these kinds of stories. If I get liver cancer (or whatever). how long do I have to hold out before the local hospital can offer a tailored virus to cure me?
Oh come on. Military robots can't reproduce either. Also, you the verb in that last sentence.
Meh. If the board really wanted to get rid of him they could just fire him without going through a whispering campaign. He may have the support of the vast majority of the board with only one or two disgruntled holdouts.
I would do that as well, except I can't give up navigation software. Got me out of too many jams.
It's not like people don't do that already with regular tattoo ink.
My worry would be getting exposed to random magnetic fields from motors and such, then having to endure the smirks of people around me "Oh, is it Spring already? Hahaha." It would be like going through a second adolescence - "No, I will not go to the board and work out this math problem. I'm staying right here at my desk. Sitting. With my legs crossed."