Heinlein was a graduate of the naval academy and went on to be a radar technician, so he would have had plenty of engineering. In any event, the quote stands on its own: Whatever his qualifications, he was absolutely right.
Oh, for fuck's sake. Split hairs and bounce definitions all you like, the truth is this:
I wouldn't call it "splitting hairs" to point out you've completely redefined a word so you can add a little gratuitous shock value.
Humans in large numbers live in a system which, (despite its not being a default necessary model of how society must work), leaves people no choice but to suffer and toil for the benefit of a tiny few elites and their managerial staffers who effectively own a disproportionate degree of the energy and wealth of the world.
But what you refuse to face here is growth is the thing that lifts whole societies out of poverty, and this is the best model to produce growth. There are plenty of poor countries around the world with high degrees of equality. And they'll always be poor. Would you rather live in Cuba or China? Me, I'd take China. In a generation working class Chinese will be wealthy compared to working class Chinese today. Absent the same sort of political change the Chinese went through under Deng, Cubans doctors will still be whoring themselves out to foreign tourists.
Is that really too hard to grasp?
No actually, I grasped the problem right away. You'd like to tell yourself you've made a positive impact on the world without have to actually do anything. But that's not about Chinese workers; that's about you and how you want other people to perceive you. The reality is if people like you get what you want thousands of poor Chinese people will be out on the street, replaced by machines or cheaper labor in Vietnam. But that will be okay, because you'll have what you want: cheap grace.
I'd love to see you air-lifted into the skin of a poor Chinese worker and be allowed to 'choose' your way out from under the hammer. If it were that easy, everybody would manage it. The system is designed to create worker drones, suck them dry and toss them into the ditch.
Meh. I'd so the same thing the Chinese people are doing - getting a factory job and thanking God that I got a good job and don't have to work on the farm any more.
But cost is what's keeping more ambitious plans on the drawing board. As Heinlein said, once you're in LEO you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system. We've known how to get to LEO for 60 years now, but we don't do it very often because it costs so damn much. If SpaceX can actually get the cost per kg as low as they plan, it's going to have more effect on human spaceflight than anything we've done since Apollo.
The comparison to slavery seems overblown to me. Slaves can't quit and take another job. For Chinese blue collar types, Foxconn is a nice place to work compared to the alternatives. When that stops being the case it will be difficult to attract people, just like any country in the west.
I recently met a friend who has been working for 20 years at one of the larger technical companies in Japan. I jokingly asked him when he would be CEO and he said never. This was because he had 0 chance of being CEO because his credentials out of school weren't the right ones. Abilities and passion are not variables in the decision.
He's probably right, but it's hard for us in the US to throw stones. Unless you founded the company, what are the odds you'll make it into the penthouse office if you didn't go to an Ivy League school?
I agree Japan is too far in debt, but the 200% number everyone likes to bandy around is exaggerated, as it includes inter-agency borrowing. The net debt/GDP figure is something like 130%.
Nope, this isn't MOAB. That's the GBU-43, which comes in at a mere 22,600 pounds. Also, MOAB has a different role - it's designed to go off in the air and create huge overpressures in the surrounding area. the GBU-57 is a bunker buster.
They've had working guided mortar rounds since 2006 and guided artillery since 2010 or so. The acceleration problems have been mostly solved. What's impressive to me is the fact that they packet it into a bullet form factor.
But it's not. It's a four inch bullet. Besides, the weight is what matters when you're worried about kick.
Also, if it's guided you don't have to worry as much about harmonics and whatnot in the gun itself. You could put in some hydraulics for recoil suppression. Or you could make it recoiless.
That's pretty easy to counter. The laser doesn't have to have a 100% duty cycle, so what you do is send a code down the beam. The bullet is looking for the same code and ignores everything else. You could even get fancy and use more than one frequency, though I doubt that would be necessary.
You're making a lot of assumptions here. In real life unless the people on the receiving end are prepared for just this kind of thing and looking in the right direction they won't be able to react before it's too late.
Even more than that, but only under the right conditions. And the bullet takes a few seconds to get to the target - if the shot isn't planned just perfectly the target won't be where the shooter expected him to be.
What's funny about this is when a campaign add becomes news for some reason the networks will show it on their news segment. Seems like turnabout is fair play.
The other reason, which I didn't see in the article, is the U-2 can carry a heavier sensor package than the Global Hawk. When they speced out the RQ-4 I don't think they envisioned the kinds of sensor packages in regular use today.
On the other hand drones have a big persistence advantage. Pilots can only last so long, and at the altitudes the U-2 guys are flying they're on almost pure oxygen, which for some reason I don't understand is supposed to be much more exhausting than breathing a more normal mixture at more normal pressures.
I don't know. Maybe I did read the link you provided, which is why I was asking what you meant. Rambus's patent applications predated the JEDEC meetings. The sleazy behavior they engaged in was in their failure to disclose the patents and efforts to steer the emerging standard such that you couldn't implement it without running afoul of the RAMBUS patents. Definitely what they did was fraudulent and wrong, but "stolen" isn't the right word here.
13:1? By whose accounting? NASA has a long history of taking credit for things other people have done, from semiconductors (military) to velcro (Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral). I have yet to see any credible evidence we got even a 1:1 return on our money.
According to wikipedia, the Merlin engine uses a pintle injector like the LEM did. That's kind of a small thing, actually, since there are all sorts of ways to do fuel injection.
Because for every dollar the federal government spends it borrows forty cents. We could get rid of DoD entirely and we'd still be borrowing money. Even in the pacifist's dream scenario (which will never actually happen) we still don't have the money to waste on a moon base.
We could get a far better research return on our $50bn by spending it on... research. And I'd rather put money into finding a cure for Alzheimers than a new radiation-resistant memory chip.
But that doesn't imply hard things are worth doing because they're hard. Life is full of hard things that aren't worth doing.
I think this is worth it (if done right) simply because we can.
That's wonderful logic for mountain climbing or an extended vacation, especially if you're spending your own money. But spending a trillion dollars from the national purse to do something "because we can" is the height of folly.
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Heinlein was a graduate of the naval academy and went on to be a radar technician, so he would have had plenty of engineering. In any event, the quote stands on its own: Whatever his qualifications, he was absolutely right.
I wouldn't call it "splitting hairs" to point out you've completely redefined a word so you can add a little gratuitous shock value.
But what you refuse to face here is growth is the thing that lifts whole societies out of poverty, and this is the best model to produce growth. There are plenty of poor countries around the world with high degrees of equality. And they'll always be poor. Would you rather live in Cuba or China? Me, I'd take China. In a generation working class Chinese will be wealthy compared to working class Chinese today. Absent the same sort of political change the Chinese went through under Deng, Cubans doctors will still be whoring themselves out to foreign tourists.
No actually, I grasped the problem right away. You'd like to tell yourself you've made a positive impact on the world without have to actually do anything. But that's not about Chinese workers; that's about you and how you want other people to perceive you. The reality is if people like you get what you want thousands of poor Chinese people will be out on the street, replaced by machines or cheaper labor in Vietnam. But that will be okay, because you'll have what you want: cheap grace.
Meh. I'd so the same thing the Chinese people are doing - getting a factory job and thanking God that I got a good job and don't have to work on the farm any more.
But cost is what's keeping more ambitious plans on the drawing board. As Heinlein said, once you're in LEO you're halfway to anywhere in the solar system. We've known how to get to LEO for 60 years now, but we don't do it very often because it costs so damn much. If SpaceX can actually get the cost per kg as low as they plan, it's going to have more effect on human spaceflight than anything we've done since Apollo.
Is that true? I thought unions were still quite powerful in the UK.
The comparison to slavery seems overblown to me. Slaves can't quit and take another job. For Chinese blue collar types, Foxconn is a nice place to work compared to the alternatives. When that stops being the case it will be difficult to attract people, just like any country in the west.
He's probably right, but it's hard for us in the US to throw stones. Unless you founded the company, what are the odds you'll make it into the penthouse office if you didn't go to an Ivy League school?
Nah, seppuku is a little harsh. But it really should cost him a finger.
I agree Japan is too far in debt, but the 200% number everyone likes to bandy around is exaggerated, as it includes inter-agency borrowing. The net debt/GDP figure is something like 130%.
where to I apply to be a judge?
How deep is your basement?
Nope, this isn't MOAB. That's the GBU-43, which comes in at a mere 22,600 pounds. Also, MOAB has a different role - it's designed to go off in the air and create huge overpressures in the surrounding area. the GBU-57 is a bunker buster.
They've had working guided mortar rounds since 2006 and guided artillery since 2010 or so. The acceleration problems have been mostly solved. What's impressive to me is the fact that they packet it into a bullet form factor.
But it's not. It's a four inch bullet. Besides, the weight is what matters when you're worried about kick.
Also, if it's guided you don't have to worry as much about harmonics and whatnot in the gun itself. You could put in some hydraulics for recoil suppression. Or you could make it recoiless.
That's pretty easy to counter. The laser doesn't have to have a 100% duty cycle, so what you do is send a code down the beam. The bullet is looking for the same code and ignores everything else. You could even get fancy and use more than one frequency, though I doubt that would be necessary.
You're making a lot of assumptions here. In real life unless the people on the receiving end are prepared for just this kind of thing and looking in the right direction they won't be able to react before it's too late.
Even more than that, but only under the right conditions. And the bullet takes a few seconds to get to the target - if the shot isn't planned just perfectly the target won't be where the shooter expected him to be.
What's funny about this is when a campaign add becomes news for some reason the networks will show it on their news segment. Seems like turnabout is fair play.
The other reason, which I didn't see in the article, is the U-2 can carry a heavier sensor package than the Global Hawk. When they speced out the RQ-4 I don't think they envisioned the kinds of sensor packages in regular use today.
On the other hand drones have a big persistence advantage. Pilots can only last so long, and at the altitudes the U-2 guys are flying they're on almost pure oxygen, which for some reason I don't understand is supposed to be much more exhausting than breathing a more normal mixture at more normal pressures.
People quit smoking like that all the time.
I don't know. Maybe I did read the link you provided, which is why I was asking what you meant. Rambus's patent applications predated the JEDEC meetings. The sleazy behavior they engaged in was in their failure to disclose the patents and efforts to steer the emerging standard such that you couldn't implement it without running afoul of the RAMBUS patents. Definitely what they did was fraudulent and wrong, but "stolen" isn't the right word here.
"Stolen"? How so?
They didn't arrest him for a potential crime. What he did is illegal in the UK.
13:1? By whose accounting? NASA has a long history of taking credit for things other people have done, from semiconductors (military) to velcro (Swiss engineer Georges de Mestral). I have yet to see any credible evidence we got even a 1:1 return on our money.
According to wikipedia, the Merlin engine uses a pintle injector like the LEM did. That's kind of a small thing, actually, since there are all sorts of ways to do fuel injection.
Because for every dollar the federal government spends it borrows forty cents. We could get rid of DoD entirely and we'd still be borrowing money. Even in the pacifist's dream scenario (which will never actually happen) we still don't have the money to waste on a moon base.
We could get a far better research return on our $50bn by spending it on... research. And I'd rather put money into finding a cure for Alzheimers than a new radiation-resistant memory chip.
But that doesn't imply hard things are worth doing because they're hard. Life is full of hard things that aren't worth doing.
That's wonderful logic for mountain climbing or an extended vacation, especially if you're spending your own money. But spending a trillion dollars from the national purse to do something "because we can" is the height of folly.