Petroleum and coal is fossilized carbon from ages when microbes did not exist to break down the dead vegetation Burning is effectively releases tens of millions of years of stored carbon in the form of CO2
That is a short lived resource and OPEC can always choose to produce more oil which makes it more economically feasible to stop the fracking operations like we saw earlier this year
The sooner that we get off of fossil fuels the better
My first thoughts are 1. Secondary story to cover a primary tool being used, which they do not want to expose. Kinda like 'giving carrots to pilots' was a cover for development of radar 2. Striking fear into an enemy, which prevents them from using a primary recruiting tool 3. Wanting to trumpet successes while programs are facing restrictive laws in Congress, the Courts and public opinion
Yes, allowing ourselves to remain dependent on a resource that we do not have regional control over is a very dangerous proposal In the US we should be working diligently to reduce our long-term dependence on oil, something that we have neglected to do for the past 40 years when the first OPEC embargo demonstrated how we rely on an unstable region
Nuclear should have been the answer with electric vehicles following soon behind Instead we let our fears of radioactive materials scare us into the arms of the fossil-fuels companies only to face the costs of additional wars and global warming as a result, while they dance away with their profits
Aluminum and 'rare earths' are two that we should be keeping our eyes on for long term strategies Oh, yeah and water, but those warm-hearted Canadians would never hold that over our heads... would they?
JBF is described as in her early 40's, a Berkeley MBA that headed a tech firm that was acquired by Google, married and actor, got elected as a California Senator and then elected to VP on a unnamed party's political ticket...
So yea, neither Hillary or Carly, but the tech firm and run for CA Senate seat made me think of Carly I got the impression that the gopers wanted to think it was Hillary the instant that they read about her being muzzled with a bolt through her tongue
Sure, and those companies operate under supervision of laws that make those things possible
Look at water rights for example. British common law developed due to competitive use of water by different groups, agricultural, industrial and domestic. As a result the laws regulated how each land owner could affect the water running through their property. This is a very effective form of government control and is the model for water law that is followed in the US
On the other hand Spanish water law had a top-down approach where the people upstream could have greater control over the water and either not let it flow through or pollute what left their property. This has proven unworkable and Spain has gone through major reforms to modernize their water laws
Government control keeps companies from abusing each other, the public and the environment. That is why the Earth is still liveable and not a cesspool
It is really a matter of picking the approach that fits your situation
Everybody would love to have fiber to the curb, but if they are in their car wifi or cell towers start to seem acceptable
If you start wanting to slurp up more data than the cell towers can support, or building your house waaay far off the grid and either option starts to look pale compared to a low-latency high speed satellite connection
It will probably become part of a scaled-cost system where you pay more the further you are from a fiber trunk and the more data you want to consume
Plenty of people will want to pay for it and more than a few will get cut-rate service in the same way that city-bound POTS users helped pay for their country cousins to get their telephone service
Recognizing the actual costs and not just sweeping them under the rug for the rest of us to take care of is not 'progressive', it used to be called doing business
Too many business 'leaders' think that shirking your costs off onto a sucker is the way to behave, I call is carny hucksterism and it is doomed to fail in the long haul
It comes down to GEO requires fewer satellites to cover the planet (because they have a wider horizon) but sucks because of long latency for travel time, i.e. HughesNet, compared to a lot of satellites to cover the planet in a lower orbit
It would not take 4000 satellites to cover the planet in GEO, but it would in a LEO where each low orbiting satellite has a limited view of the planet. You also get the advantages of shorter latency the closer that the satellite is to perpendicular over your head (closer to 5 thousands of a second than half a second). With a high density you also have easier handshaking between satellites and spread your customers out over more satellites for better bandwidth (both problems that Iridium faced)
I think that Virgin Galactic also made a pre-announcement for building a LEO network
Um, yeah... I remember having a teacher in the 70's who said things like 'no space exploration until every human is fed' and 'explore the ocean first... blah, blah, blah'
My reply at thirteen was uncouth but similar to my feelings now, which could be summed up as, 'all of this money spent on space systems is a fraction of the annual interest on the money sponged up by the dictators who are preventing food and financial aid from making it to the starving people of their countries'
The benefits, or return on investment, for launching these sort of systems is significant or business people like Musk would never consider it. Compare that to the benefits of making another Mugabe as rich as King Solomon
And... these are not going to be geosynchronous, they are in a lower LEO than Iridium so they will require a denser network of satellites to cover the planet
On the good side they will have much less latency than GEO
I remember seeing the assembly line for Iridium satellites and the excitement over the endless launches (on everything from Long March to Atlas) and thinking, "Mother of God, this is what we should be doing!"
The Koch brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and received tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks and corporate welfare as a result
If you consider that the Kochs received close to a hundred to one return on investment, then Google would be stupid NOT to spend the money in a similar effort
B'sides, they just might convince some of the Luddites that science actually works
Citation "Existing evidence indicates that EC use is by far a less harmful alternative to smoking. There is no tobacco and no combustion involved in EC use; therefore, regular vapers may avoid several harmful toxic chemicals that are typically present in the smoke of tobacco cigarettes. Indeed, some toxic chemicals are released in the EC vapor as well, but their levels are substantially lower compared with tobacco smoke, and in some cases (such as nitrosamines) are comparable with the amounts found in pharmaceutical nicotine products. Surveys, clinical, chemistry and toxicology data have often been mispresented or misinterpreted by health authorities and tobacco regulators, in such a way that the potential for harmful consequences of EC use has been largely exaggerate" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Vape, trending terminology for Vaporizer, or electronic cigarette
The Juice is a flavoring in propylene glycol that may or may not contain nicotine (or thc in states where it is legal)
I have used to to quit smoking, and then to quit nicotine
The vapor has 99.9% less carcinogens than tobacco smoke, some recent research indicates that the nicotine version is less addictive than tobacco smoke since it does not contain secondary chemicals that act like an anti-depressant
Anti-smoking activists that make money from the taxation of tobacco (result of the nationwide lawsuit settlement) are seeing their revenues reduced by half because of the people moving away from tobacco to vapes
They are now working aggressively to get vapes covered under similar taxation by making false claims that they are as dangerous as tobacco products. They have no facts on their side as even NIH studies site them as being as safe as nicotine gum, so they fight with a lot of bluster, emotion and fear articles about teens using vapes
They have demonstrated that they do not care about the impact to health, just the money going into their pockets
Give a prohibitionist a dime, and they will spend it looking for a way to get another dollar from you
Probably not a conventional ramjet "In a ramjet, the high pressure is produced by "ramming" external air into the combustor using the forward speed of the vehicle" https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k...
Perhaps you mean the Bussard ramjet or ramscoop "The Bussard ramjet is a theoretical method of spacecraft propulsion proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard, popularized by Poul Anderson's novel Tau Zero, Larry Niven in his Known Space series of books, Vernor Vinge in his Zones of Thought series, and referred to by Carl Sagan in the television series and book Cosmos. Bussard ramscoops are also seen in Star Trek, where they are situated at the glowing tips of the warp nacelles of spacecraft, although the hydrogen is not used as nuclear fuel." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
I like the idea since it would consume the hydrogen that could potentially pierce the spacecraft at relativistic speeds
In the Proton M there is a new upper stage that uses a store-able fuel There was an effort to move away from 'foreign' parts suppliers, notably Ukrainian http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...
Slashdot Mirror
Petroleum and coal is fossilized carbon from ages when microbes did not exist to break down the dead vegetation
Burning is effectively releases tens of millions of years of stored carbon in the form of CO2
Damn right!
That is a short lived resource and OPEC can always choose to produce more oil which makes it more economically feasible to stop the fracking operations like we saw earlier this year
The sooner that we get off of fossil fuels the better
My first thoughts are
1. Secondary story to cover a primary tool being used, which they do not want to expose. Kinda like 'giving carrots to pilots' was a cover for development of radar
2. Striking fear into an enemy, which prevents them from using a primary recruiting tool
3. Wanting to trumpet successes while programs are facing restrictive laws in Congress, the Courts and public opinion
Yes, allowing ourselves to remain dependent on a resource that we do not have regional control over is a very dangerous proposal
In the US we should be working diligently to reduce our long-term dependence on oil, something that we have neglected to do for the past 40 years when the first OPEC embargo demonstrated how we rely on an unstable region
Nuclear should have been the answer with electric vehicles following soon behind
Instead we let our fears of radioactive materials scare us into the arms of the fossil-fuels companies only to face the costs of additional wars and global warming as a result, while they dance away with their profits
Aluminum and 'rare earths' are two that we should be keeping our eyes on for long term strategies
Oh, yeah and water, but those warm-hearted Canadians would never hold that over our heads... would they?
Maybe they posted a Geocache on their command site
*SEVENEVES SPOILERS READ IF IT MATTERS TO YOU*
JBF is described as in her early 40's, a Berkeley MBA that headed a tech firm that was acquired by Google, married and actor, got elected as a California Senator and then elected to VP on a unnamed party's political ticket...
So yea, neither Hillary or Carly, but the tech firm and run for CA Senate seat made me think of Carly
I got the impression that the gopers wanted to think it was Hillary the instant that they read about her being muzzled with a bolt through her tongue
Sure, and those companies operate under supervision of laws that make those things possible
Look at water rights for example. British common law developed due to competitive use of water by different groups, agricultural, industrial and domestic. As a result the laws regulated how each land owner could affect the water running through their property. This is a very effective form of government control and is the model for water law that is followed in the US
On the other hand Spanish water law had a top-down approach where the people upstream could have greater control over the water and either not let it flow through or pollute what left their property. This has proven unworkable and Spain has gone through major reforms to modernize their water laws
Government control keeps companies from abusing each other, the public and the environment. That is why the Earth is still liveable and not a cesspool
It is really a matter of picking the approach that fits your situation
Everybody would love to have fiber to the curb, but if they are in their car wifi or cell towers start to seem acceptable
If you start wanting to slurp up more data than the cell towers can support, or building your house waaay far off the grid and either option starts to look pale compared to a low-latency high speed satellite connection
It will probably become part of a scaled-cost system where you pay more the further you are from a fiber trunk and the more data you want to consume
Plenty of people will want to pay for it and more than a few will get cut-rate service in the same way that city-bound POTS users helped pay for their country cousins to get their telephone service
Recognizing the actual costs and not just sweeping them under the rug for the rest of us to take care of is not 'progressive', it used to be called doing business
Too many business 'leaders' think that shirking your costs off onto a sucker is the way to behave, I call is carny hucksterism and it is doomed to fail in the long haul
Yeah, I think that Seattle Times is confused, here is a decent article from Extreme Tech
http://www.extremetech.com/ext...
It comes down to GEO requires fewer satellites to cover the planet (because they have a wider horizon) but sucks because of long latency for travel time, i.e. HughesNet, compared to a lot of satellites to cover the planet in a lower orbit
It would not take 4000 satellites to cover the planet in GEO, but it would in a LEO where each low orbiting satellite has a limited view of the planet. You also get the advantages of shorter latency the closer that the satellite is to perpendicular over your head (closer to 5 thousands of a second than half a second). With a high density you also have easier handshaking between satellites and spread your customers out over more satellites for better bandwidth (both problems that Iridium faced)
I think that Virgin Galactic also made a pre-announcement for building a LEO network
Good times, good times
Yeah, I really enjoyed it, but I read JBF as a 'what if Carly Fiorina got elected', because Hillary is just too old to take the g-force of launch
To be honest I hope that it is a series like Baroque Cycle
Um, yeah... I remember having a teacher in the 70's who said things like 'no space exploration until every human is fed' and 'explore the ocean first... blah, blah, blah'
My reply at thirteen was uncouth but similar to my feelings now, which could be summed up as, 'all of this money spent on space systems is a fraction of the annual interest on the money sponged up by the dictators who are preventing food and financial aid from making it to the starving people of their countries'
The benefits, or return on investment, for launching these sort of systems is significant or business people like Musk would never consider it. Compare that to the benefits of making another Mugabe as rich as King Solomon
And... these are not going to be geosynchronous, they are in a lower LEO than Iridium so they will require a denser network of satellites to cover the planet
On the good side they will have much less latency than GEO
I remember seeing the assembly line for Iridium satellites and the excitement over the endless launches (on everything from Long March to Atlas) and thinking, "Mother of God, this is what we should be doing!"
Yeah, he is the sort of guy you would expect to strap a nuclear reactor to a comet in order to help save the human gene pool
Hey, don't get in the way of Taco Cowboy's Libertarian leanings, 'cause he is a true believer that government can't do anything right
I am just waiting to see evidence of a private company discovering a way to profit by NOT turning the world into an unlivable cesspool
The Koch brothers have spent hundreds of millions of dollars lobbying and received tens of billions of dollars in tax breaks and corporate welfare as a result
If you consider that the Kochs received close to a hundred to one return on investment, then Google would be stupid NOT to spend the money in a similar effort
B'sides, they just might convince some of the Luddites that science actually works
Dang, am I sounding like a fanboi or what?
Hoverboards with freekin LASERS!
Citation
"Existing evidence indicates that EC use is by far a less harmful alternative to smoking. There is no tobacco and no combustion involved in EC use; therefore, regular vapers may avoid several harmful toxic chemicals that are typically present in the smoke of tobacco cigarettes. Indeed, some toxic chemicals are released in the EC vapor as well, but their levels are substantially lower compared with tobacco smoke, and in some cases (such as nitrosamines) are comparable with the amounts found in pharmaceutical nicotine products. Surveys, clinical, chemistry and toxicology data have often been mispresented or misinterpreted by health authorities and tobacco regulators, in such a way that the potential for harmful consequences of EC use has been largely exaggerate"
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...
Vape, trending terminology for Vaporizer, or electronic cigarette
The Juice is a flavoring in propylene glycol that may or may not contain nicotine (or thc in states where it is legal)
I have used to to quit smoking, and then to quit nicotine
The vapor has 99.9% less carcinogens than tobacco smoke, some recent research indicates that the nicotine version is less addictive than tobacco smoke since it does not contain secondary chemicals that act like an anti-depressant
Anti-smoking activists that make money from the taxation of tobacco (result of the nationwide lawsuit settlement) are seeing their revenues reduced by half because of the people moving away from tobacco to vapes
They are now working aggressively to get vapes covered under similar taxation by making false claims that they are as dangerous as tobacco products. They have no facts on their side as even NIH studies site them as being as safe as nicotine gum, so they fight with a lot of bluster, emotion and fear articles about teens using vapes
They have demonstrated that they do not care about the impact to health, just the money going into their pockets
Give a prohibitionist a dime, and they will spend it looking for a way to get another dollar from you
Probably not a conventional ramjet
"In a ramjet, the high pressure is produced by "ramming" external air into the combustor using the forward speed of the vehicle"
https://www.grc.nasa.gov/WWW/k...
Perhaps you mean the Bussard ramjet or ramscoop
"The Bussard ramjet is a theoretical method of spacecraft propulsion proposed in 1960 by the physicist Robert W. Bussard, popularized by Poul Anderson's novel Tau Zero, Larry Niven in his Known Space series of books, Vernor Vinge in his Zones of Thought series, and referred to by Carl Sagan in the television series and book Cosmos. Bussard ramscoops are also seen in Star Trek, where they are situated at the glowing tips of the warp nacelles of spacecraft, although the hydrogen is not used as nuclear fuel."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B...
I like the idea since it would consume the hydrogen that could potentially pierce the spacecraft at relativistic speeds
Just picked up a USB battery with a solar panel on one side...
I will vape after the fall of society, just have to figure out which warehouse has the juice in it
recharge your vape
In the Proton M there is a new upper stage that uses a store-able fuel
There was an effort to move away from 'foreign' parts suppliers, notably Ukrainian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/P...