"...the weaker motor would be completely unable..." Exactly. In this transmission, the output speed is a linear combination of three input speeds. There's no difference between the "main" and "secondary" drives that would let him use small motors for the latter. I believe the Prius transmission works the same - its output is a linear combination of three inputs (one ICE and two electric motors). Both the electric motors are substantial.
She couldn't do that today, because there are too many ads.
So the old Soviet saying gets updated: "You pretend to entertain us, we pretend to watch the ads"
I recommend the "reproducible research" methodology described at http://reproducibleresearch.net/index.php/Main_Page . The idea is that for each paper you publish, you make available an archive with the software, data, scripts, etc., so the user need only type "make" to reproduce every figure in the paper.
If we do discover an asteroid coming our way, I think we need a
better method of dealing with it than a nuclear explosion, which
would just break it up and make some collision more
likely (i.e. like a shotgun instead of a rifle). I propose to
use a space elevator instead. I assume the asteriod will be
rotating, so I suggest we use that rotational kinetic energy for
propulsion:
(1) Rendezvous with the asteroid. Time is important,
so this will probably require a nuclear rocket.
(2) Construct a
really strong anchor point, probably using a net around the
entire asteriod.
(3) Construct a space elevator connected to the
anchor. The asteriod will have much weaker gravity and much
higher rotational velocity than the earth, so an elevator there
wouldn't have to be nearly as long or strong as here. The motion
of the asteriod may not be simple (precession in addition to
rotation), which means the elevator will pivot about the anchor
point.
(4) Use the elevator to launch payloads (bags of rubble). This doesn't require any net energy: a payload beyond the stationary
orbit radius will pull outward, and can be used to lift the next
payload.
Each launch gives the asteroid a nudge (by conservation of
momentum). You can't choose the direction of the nudges
arbitrarily - assuming simple rotation, they have to be in the
plane of rotation. Approximately twice a year, payloads can be
launched toward earth. That would be a good time to send
construction workers back home.
I suggest a third possibility: that zero gravity interferes with the immune response at a very basic level. The body uses antibodies to recognize bacteria. For "recognition" they use proteins that mesh with those on the surface of the bacteria. That requires them to approach at the right orientation. Of course, thermal motion will jostle the bacteria and antibodies, so eventually all orientations are tried. However, suppose that bacteria and antibodies are large enough and asymmetric enough that they tend to float with one side up. That reduces the "recognition" problem from five degrees of freedom to four (two to specify the "latitude" and "longitude" on the bacterium, and two to specify like coordinates on the antibody).
I have not found any info on the asymmetry of bacteria or antibodies. X-ray crystallography might be able to detect it. Random tumbling might be close enough to zero gee to show the effect on recognition.
I think any long-term space mission should use artificial gravity.
We shouldn't spend too much effort sending people into space until there's a financial payoff. Until then, we should concentrate on robotic missions, in the hopes that one of them will discover that opportunity. And even though distant places may be more interesting, we should concentrate on places with shallow gravity wells because it's more likely some industrial operation could be feasible there.
E.g. if the fusion power people figure out how to generate electricity with helium 3, then we will want to set up lunar mining operations.
Or if we find a relatively convenient asteroid (low delta V from earth, not necessarily short distance) with a high concentration of platinum.
With a big industrial operation, you will want somebody on site for troubleshooting and security. (Otherwise maybe I'll send a robot to steal He3 from your robot:-). Then we'll develop the infrastructure for other things: tourism, colonization, radar astronomy from the far side of the moon, etc. An important part of that infrastructure is a launch method that's much more efficient than rockets - e.g. a space elevator or a rotovator.
Geothermal power requires wells that don't yield oil. Shell and the other oil companies should know a lot about that - including wells they have already drilled (where they didn't find oil, or where the oil has run out), and technology for geological exploration.
As someone else posted, the yield from a given well will fall over time. I could see a geothermal power plant planning ahead for this effect: Drill one or two wells, assess the conditions, and build the power plant. Every few months (years?), drill another well a little further away, to compensate for the reduced yield from early wells. You could adjust the rate of drilling and the amount of water you pump down each well to match the demand for baseline power. The drilling rig workers might even be able to work at a steady pace, instead of having to pick up and move every few years.
Even if the oil companies don't want to fund all the effort as IR&D, I'd expect them to be actively promoting the research.
That's what I did during our recent power outage (nearly five days). We have "hot water by gas", and during the previous outage I learned some of the heating pipes were actually outside the wall insulation, and they froze and split in three places. Even though our wood stove was keeping the house livable. To prevent that happening again, I: turned off the breaker supplying the furnace, turned the furnace power and all zone pumps off, unwired the furnace power switch from the house power, wired in an extension cord instead, connected to an inverter in the car, started the car, turned on the furnace, and turned on one zone pump at a time. For some reason the furnace would only run the zone for domestic hot water for the first half hour or so. After that, it would run the other zones (per those thermostats).
The inverter was only 325 W, and I did blow several 35A fuses (I'd rather have one protected by a circuit breaker). However, it worked well enough to protect our pipes.
Energy storage is indeed the biggest issue. However, note that gasoline is one of the most efficient forms of energy storage around. So, how about synthesizing the gasoline (and diesel) via thermal depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) of agricultural waste, garbage, sewer sludge, etc., using a nuclear power plant for the process heat (i.e. cogeneration)? Eventually we can use a fourth generation nuclear reactor that can burn the U235 and actinides in "spent" fuel from current reactors, and solve several problems at once (http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/nucleargen4.aspx).
Actually I use C-x r t much more often, to insert a string at the beginning of several lines. For example, write out a multi-line help message, then prefix everything with ' printf("', or manually add a "> " prefix to quoted lines in a message. It can also replace the first several characters of every line with a common prefix. The one thing it cannot do is remove the first several characters (i.e. replace them with nothing). For that, you need C-x r k.
Do you believe in the concept of "escape velocity" with regards to aging (the notion that, if researchers discover each year ways of reducing our effective age by at least a year, we can live arbitrarily long)? Or is it more realistic to expect research to find the "low hanging fruit" first, with subsequent improvement being more and more difficult (the way computer program optimization works)?
The cost of a solar power plant should be dominated by capital expenses. So what lifetime are they assuming to come up with that 6 to 8 cents/KWH? And what interest rate on the construction bonds? It seems a more realistic comparison would be in terms of cost per peak capacity, or else cost per average capacity (averaged over a year, including bad weather as well as nights).
Re: testing. I remember a command center that ran on a generator only as long as the inside tank had fuel. When they tried to switch to the outside tank, the generator died. There was water in the connecting pipe, which had frozen.
No, they're claiming that if you always replace each drive at the end of its warranty period, then you'll experience a failure on average every 70 years.
Right. The cargo hold is pressurized because it's much cheaper to build a pressure vessel with curved sides (the skin of the aircraft) than with a flat side (the passenger compartment floor).
Also, pets are shipped with cargo, so temperatures can't get too low.
Maybe they intended them for laptops, but even the 1490 is four times thicker than I need. It's five inches too big in each of the other dimensions too. My Dell X-300 is only 11 x 9.3 x 1".
Yes, the experimenters would need distance and/or shielding to handle the neutrons released by the fusion. However, some of the neutrons would be absorbed by the metal in the tokamak itself which would make it radioactive, and that radioactivity would persist even after you turn off the power. That makes everything awkward.
When I started graduate school in physics, the proton to electron mass ratio was 6*pi^5, to within the experimental error. By the time I left, they had refined the ratio and 6*pi^5 was no longer within the experimental error. I had not checked recently.
"Unaddressed are...the way it would wrap around the equator when it tries to lift any significant mass (most of orbital launch acceleration is horizontal, not vertical)." The climber would drift westward, and the net bend in the ribbon would impart a horizontal eastward acceleration. (The angular momentum gained by the climber comes from the earth. ) You can think of the elevator as the world's largest stringed instrument. A climber falling off in mid-climb would pluck it.
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"...the weaker motor would be completely unable..." Exactly. In this transmission, the output speed is a linear combination of three input speeds. There's no difference between the "main" and "secondary" drives that would let him use small motors for the latter. I believe the Prius transmission works the same - its output is a linear combination of three inputs (one ICE and two electric motors). Both the electric motors are substantial.
She couldn't do that today, because there are too many ads. So the old Soviet saying gets updated: "You pretend to entertain us, we pretend to watch the ads"
I recommend the "reproducible research" methodology described at http://reproducibleresearch.net/index.php/Main_Page . The idea is that for each paper you publish, you make available an archive with the software, data, scripts, etc., so the user need only type "make" to reproduce every figure in the paper.
(1) Rendezvous with the asteroid. Time is important, so this will probably require a nuclear rocket.
(2) Construct a really strong anchor point, probably using a net around the entire asteriod.
(3) Construct a space elevator connected to the anchor. The asteriod will have much weaker gravity and much higher rotational velocity than the earth, so an elevator there wouldn't have to be nearly as long or strong as here. The motion of the asteriod may not be simple (precession in addition to rotation), which means the elevator will pivot about the anchor point.
(4) Use the elevator to launch payloads (bags of rubble). This doesn't require any net energy: a payload beyond the stationary orbit radius will pull outward, and can be used to lift the next payload. Each launch gives the asteroid a nudge (by conservation of momentum). You can't choose the direction of the nudges arbitrarily - assuming simple rotation, they have to be in the plane of rotation. Approximately twice a year, payloads can be launched toward earth. That would be a good time to send construction workers back home.
I suggest a third possibility: that zero gravity interferes with the immune response at a very basic level. The body uses antibodies to recognize bacteria. For "recognition" they use proteins that mesh with those on the surface of the bacteria. That requires them to approach at the right orientation. Of course, thermal motion will jostle the bacteria and antibodies, so eventually all orientations are tried. However, suppose that bacteria and antibodies are large enough and asymmetric enough that they tend to float with one side up. That reduces the "recognition" problem from five degrees of freedom to four (two to specify the "latitude" and "longitude" on the bacterium, and two to specify like coordinates on the antibody).
I have not found any info on the asymmetry of bacteria or antibodies. X-ray crystallography might be able to detect it. Random tumbling might be close enough to zero gee to show the effect on recognition.
I think any long-term space mission should use artificial gravity.
We shouldn't spend too much effort sending people into space until there's a financial payoff. Until then, we should concentrate on robotic missions, in the hopes that one of them will discover that opportunity. And even though distant places may be more interesting, we should concentrate on places with shallow gravity wells because it's more likely some industrial operation could be feasible there. E.g. if the fusion power people figure out how to generate electricity with helium 3, then we will want to set up lunar mining operations. Or if we find a relatively convenient asteroid (low delta V from earth, not necessarily short distance) with a high concentration of platinum. With a big industrial operation, you will want somebody on site for troubleshooting and security. (Otherwise maybe I'll send a robot to steal He3 from your robot :-). Then we'll develop the infrastructure for other things: tourism, colonization, radar astronomy from the far side of the moon, etc. An important part of that infrastructure is a launch method that's much more efficient than rockets - e.g. a space elevator or a rotovator.
Geothermal power requires wells that don't yield oil. Shell and the other oil companies should know a lot about that - including wells they have already drilled (where they didn't find oil, or where the oil has run out), and technology for geological exploration. As someone else posted, the yield from a given well will fall over time. I could see a geothermal power plant planning ahead for this effect: Drill one or two wells, assess the conditions, and build the power plant. Every few months (years?), drill another well a little further away, to compensate for the reduced yield from early wells. You could adjust the rate of drilling and the amount of water you pump down each well to match the demand for baseline power. The drilling rig workers might even be able to work at a steady pace, instead of having to pick up and move every few years. Even if the oil companies don't want to fund all the effort as IR&D, I'd expect them to be actively promoting the research.
That's what I did during our recent power outage (nearly five days). We have "hot water by gas", and during the previous outage I learned some of the heating pipes were actually outside the wall insulation, and they froze and split in three places. Even though our wood stove was keeping the house livable. To prevent that happening again, I: turned off the breaker supplying the furnace, turned the furnace power and all zone pumps off, unwired the furnace power switch from the house power, wired in an extension cord instead, connected to an inverter in the car, started the car, turned on the furnace, and turned on one zone pump at a time. For some reason the furnace would only run the zone for domestic hot water for the first half hour or so. After that, it would run the other zones (per those thermostats). The inverter was only 325 W, and I did blow several 35A fuses (I'd rather have one protected by a circuit breaker). However, it worked well enough to protect our pipes.
Energy storage is indeed the biggest issue. However, note that gasoline is one of the most efficient forms of energy storage around. So, how about synthesizing the gasoline (and diesel) via thermal depolymerization (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_depolymerization) of agricultural waste, garbage, sewer sludge, etc., using a nuclear power plant for the process heat (i.e. cogeneration)? Eventually we can use a fourth generation nuclear reactor that can burn the U235 and actinides in "spent" fuel from current reactors, and solve several problems at once (http://www.americanenergyindependence.com/nucleargen4.aspx).
Actually I use C-x r t much more often, to insert a string at the beginning of several lines. For example, write out a multi-line help message, then prefix everything with ' printf("', or manually add a "> " prefix to quoted lines in a message. It can also replace the first several characters of every line with a common prefix. The one thing it cannot do is remove the first several characters (i.e. replace them with nothing). For that, you need C-x r k.
Do you believe in the concept of "escape velocity" with regards to aging (the notion that, if researchers discover each year ways of reducing our effective age by at least a year, we can live arbitrarily long)? Or is it more realistic to expect research to find the "low hanging fruit" first, with subsequent improvement being more and more difficult (the way computer program optimization works)?
The cost of a solar power plant should be dominated by capital expenses. So what lifetime are they assuming to come up with that 6 to 8 cents/KWH? And what interest rate on the construction bonds? It seems a more realistic comparison would be in terms of cost per peak capacity, or else cost per average capacity (averaged over a year, including bad weather as well as nights).
Re: testing. I remember a command center that ran on a generator only as long as the inside tank had fuel. When they tried to switch to the outside tank, the generator died. There was water in the connecting pipe, which had frozen.
voting block 1 (55 people) give 55 votes to A, 10 to B, and 40 to D.
voting block 2 (30 people) gives 30 votes to B, 5 to C, and 20 to D.
voting block 3 (15 people) gives 15 to C, and 10 to D.
Totals: A=55, B=40, C=20, D=70.
(Pardon the format. Apparently tables are not allowed!)
I didn't see anything about controlling for age. I would expect age to be correlated with wealth, and cellphone time, and fertility problems.
No, they're claiming that if you always replace each drive at the end of its warranty period, then you'll experience a failure on average every 70 years.
Right. The cargo hold is pressurized because it's much cheaper to build a pressure vessel with curved sides (the skin of the aircraft) than with a flat side (the passenger compartment floor). Also, pets are shipped with cargo, so temperatures can't get too low.
Maybe they intended them for laptops, but even the 1490 is four times thicker than I need. It's five inches too big in each of the other dimensions too. My Dell X-300 is only 11 x 9.3 x 1".
Actually they are trying to develop fuel cells for laptops: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/3031870.stm, http://www.pcworld.com/article/112533-1/article.ht ml, http://www.physorg.com/news3656.html. I have been looking forward to them. I suppose this plot will make it hard to get them approved for use on aircraft, though.
Yes, the experimenters would need distance and/or shielding to handle the neutrons released by the fusion. However, some of the neutrons would be absorbed by the metal in the tokamak itself which would make it radioactive, and that radioactivity would persist even after you turn off the power. That makes everything awkward.
When I started graduate school in physics, the proton to electron mass ratio was 6*pi^5, to within the experimental error. By the time I left, they had refined the ratio and 6*pi^5 was no longer within the experimental error. I had not checked recently.
"Unaddressed are...the way it would wrap around the equator when it tries to lift any significant mass (most of orbital launch acceleration is horizontal, not vertical)." The climber would drift westward, and the net bend in the ribbon would impart a horizontal eastward acceleration. (The angular momentum gained by the climber comes from the earth. ) You can think of the elevator as the world's largest stringed instrument. A climber falling off in mid-climb would pluck it.
US law includes the concept of "reasonable expectation of privacy". We badly need a "reasonable expectation of security".