"The problem, of course, becomes trying to establish the safety of childbearing in low Gs"
No, that's not the problem.
We can debate all of the "fufy" issues regarding space travel until the cows come home.
Radiation. That's the major issue on the table. For short missions (a few months) it's a non issue. But for missions that take a year or so, like a mars mission, the people will be exposed to the continuous Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) and the solar cycle dependent solar energetic Particle (SEP) events... i.e. radiation. Our atmosphere shields us from the majority of these particles but when you put someone on the moon or mars you have to duplicate the shielding of the Earths atmosphere to achieve the same radiation protection we enjoy on Earth. Bottom line is that is a lot of mass and some of that mass has the nasty problem that it produces a lot of secondary particles (neutrons).
To shield or not to shield... that is the question.
There are a lot of people working on this problem. There is currently no solution. If we put someone in space for an extended period of time (years) there is a serious radiation problem. We will get there in the future but bringing issues up like childbearing, or the mental fatigue, or if masturbation in low G causes a tilted penis... etc... are orders of magnitude below the real current threats.
"will be viewed and stone-age tech in about 15 to 20 years from now."
It's far more likely that in 15 years the nano-technologies will just be starting the intellectual property rights battles that will put the current software IP battles to shame.
Nano has legal, religious, corporate, governmental, philosophical issues that will not be overcome for decades to come.
+5 for using any form of the noun Luddite in a sentence....except it's a double d.
For those not wanting to look it up from Merriam-Webster Online
One entry found for Luddite. Main Entry: Luddite Pronunciation: 'l&-"dIt Function: noun Etymology: perhaps from Ned Ludd, 18th century Leicestershire workman who destroyed machinery : one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change - Luddite adjective
"I suppose it could be argued that for discussion of supersonic shocks one would need a better approximation..."
Thats kind of an understatement. Produce the GCR spectra from a hydrodynamic fluid and badda-bing... a nobel prize awaits you.
"for exotic phenomena and long-range interactions, or regions with large electromagnetic fields, perhaps full MHD equations are necessary"
Lets first of all admit that we have no friggin idea what the ISM is like as we have not measured it. We can only assume that it works similiar to the plasmas we do have access to inside our own heliosphere and here MHD is very important for damn near everything, sure it's got it's limitations (I'm more of a kinetic fan myself) but it still does a fair job in lots of environments. Go ahead and try to compress the Earth's magnetosphere without a strong negative Bz (i.e. using simple hydrodynamic equations)... aint' going to happen.
"taught in university classes" I probably should go back and dust off the old notes, it has been over 10 years since I fought through my plasma theory course.
"I fail to see what thez have to do with the discussion of this article"
I cant even remember what the origional article was about. I guess I'm getting senile.
"Sorry to get technical but I get really annoyed by ignorant individuals "correcting" other people's technical errors..."
Alright so your going to get annoyed by this one as well..
"The ISM is a fluid much like any other"
No, It's not just some ordinary fluid. You try to apply the basic hydrodynamic equations to these systems and you will get nonsense. The term is magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD), it's a electrically conductive plasma, not just an ordinary fluid.
"Seems by now we could have something a little more advanced"
"If these robot missions are to take the place of manned exploration as some have indicated, ETC..."
Holly shit. Nearly all of the scientific advances have taken place on these robotic missions. Your FUD would like everyone to think that manned missions somehow trump robotic missions on the science-production front. Go ahead and do the study (don't waste your time, it has already been done) and you will find that any 1 of these robotic missions have produced far greater advances in our understanding than all of the manned missions combined.
I am not anti-manned-spaceflight. I just think that any mission should have to justify it's purpose, expectations, and cost along with all of the other proposed missions. If there is a justifiable scientific purpose, reasonable scientific expectations, and can be done at a reasonable cost then peer review it's ass, place that mission in the cue, and launch it when appropriate.
Agreed... but... We would love to produce HD type pics from these missions. It's not a scientific problem, nor is it a technical problem, it's a financial problem! Let's take a look:
The camera. This dude has to work in a radiation environment. You cannot just take your high-def Newegg purchased camera and launch it. These types of things have been tried before (non-flight qualified parts) and they don't last long. No, you have to build this bad boy from scratch with parts (CCDs, etc) that can withstand a severe radiation environment.
BitRate. One of the significant cost issues on any mission is the science bitrate requirements. It costs a lot of money to get data back to Earth. First there is the instruments ability to collect such data (insignificant)... Second there is the spacecrafts ability to transmit this data, a very significant problem.. (with increased bitRate comes increased power requirements, increased mass, etc...) and with that comes a significant increase in the launch costs, to say nothing of the development costs.
Collection... With an increased bitRate comes a greater requirement to collect the data and so a significant increase in cost.. You don't just point your little home dish at the right location and get a signal... (don't get me wrong, that would be great, but the power to generate such a signal would be sadly cost prohibitative). No, you have to collect the data on the big boys and they are not cheap.
In each and every one of these missions the scientists and engineers have to scale back their desires (not because of any technological problems but) because what they would like to do cannot be done given the funding opportunity. So you cut, scale back, cut some more, scale back again, etc... and eventually you arrive at a proposal that might actually be funded. It's not exactly what you would hope for, but given the opportunity available it's your best bet at a viable mission.
What.. you look up the word "Lagrange" and hence you're a "Tom-Cruse" type expert on the scientific progress of current space missions? It's "glib" such comments that amount to nothing but FUD on an the scientific progress that has been made in the last decase.
Um... and how exactly would you propose we do that with the instrumentation on the spacecraft? It's not like you're the first person that has thought of life on Saturn. Go ahead and advocate another 1B mission to the planet equipped with the instrumentation to conduct such experiments and the "so-called" scientists will be knocking a path to your door.
"And if you look at the sun with a telescope or magnifying glass, you can actually see solar flares."
I don't know much about this whole telescope thing your talking about but the magnifying glass is a great idea. Of course you have to make sure that it's in focus or you wont see the fascinating details involved with the flares. Make sure that you hold the magnifying glass at the correct position so that the focal point of the magnifying glass is directly on your cornea. And ignore the smell.
"If someone steals your car they get charged with the theft of your car, not the theft of your dog which happened to run out the gate when they drove through it."
But even if your car is recovered and returned to you that person is still charged with theft.
"Just out of curiosity, how big of a penis does that type of a rat have? I mean, you said the rat is delicious. I suppose you were talking about the body, but I'm asking about its penis. Could its penis be stuffed with its body meat to make a ratcock sausage?"
That has got to be one of the strangest questions I've ever heard. Why are you interested in the penis of a rat?. Why would you even think about making a rat-penis-sausage?. Please tell me your some kind of herbivore-penile-scientist.
The solar sails work with photons of course. I've never thought about the solar wind as a propulsion device, I would imagine there might be a low density problem with that. But that's beside the point.
Our solar wind is 400 km/s on average and it takes 3 or 4 days to reach the Earth. So at the speed of the interstellar wind that journey would take 60+ days, and that's just 1 AU. To get to 100 AU that would be like 16 years, similar to the speed Voyager is moving at.
If you want to use 20 km/s to get somewhere you have better make sure there are two of every species on board.
"this is really information that should be on a subscription basis"
And why is that? I'm a solar physcist and I like the Sun. So by your logic you should have to pay to see pictures taken by SOHO instruments, you should have to pay for pictures taken by Hubble, you should have to pay for the graphs of voyager magnetic field data at the termination shock.
If your company paid for the research then they should own it, but if you are paid from government grants as I am (or publicly funded universities, etc...) then you have no more right to the research then I do.
We are not talking about mandatory subscriptions here, we are talking about the gov. sub. data/research/ that has already been paid for. It's the monopolization of such data that leads to corruption.
"Cut the losses, turn the research material over to the rightful organizations (ACS, SOCMA, whoever) and be done with it."
And I guess you would support the gov turning over the rights of all NASA data to NASA who would then turn that data over to the individual organizations that collected the data, took the pics, etc... Then next time you want to see a picture of a cool looking nebula or some other thing you would be hit with a service fee?
The gov should pay for research and as part of the deal all the data should be made publicly available. If some co. can figure out a way to make a buck off it then more power to them, but the scientists who recieve the grant should still be compelled to make all of the data public.
the point exactly, as if the speed of light were a constant, v(photons) != c.
There is no doubt that we have examined light in very few media. The next media may indicate that there is no c (kind of like there is no spoon... matrix quote).
Well, it's not quite that bad. It boots on 2 of my three systems (kind of).
Background....
I run Linux everyday (at work). I log into my xp desktop then ssh to my redhat box. I map a network drive and use Xvision (an sco product...gasp) for my X functions. That is where I get my real work done. Of course the emacs and such are local on my XP box but I "make" like the best of them.
I don't do this because I like to, I do it because that is what my co provides. I'm not an admin as you can tell. I'm a sci. guy. I work with the tools available to me.
3 systems in review.
1. Old Dell laptop, PIII. Knoppix boots just fine, all looks good until I try to access the outside world. Well I have a Linksys WUSB12 wireless USB stick for access. As far as I can tell it's not supported under Linux at all (bummer). Any hints?
2. My home hacked together (by me) system, well over 2 years old. Nothing special, P4, Asus board, enermax power supply, WD HD, but of course I've got a MS keyboard and mouse. When I pop in the Knoppix CD it boots, but no mouse and no keyboard at all (bummer). Never gotten far enough to see if my D-link wireless would work. Any hints again?
3. My work system New fancy dell screamer, flat screen, probably a ms keyboard and mouse as well, etc... frozen boot. I have to pull the power cord, reinsert, and quickly eject the CD during bios boot to get the system back (bummer).
My only point is this. I would love to slowly transition to Linux on the desktop but until I can get my work done without taking a sabbatical and purchasing Linux-approved-supported hardware ( Yea I do understand it's a driver problem) I just don't have the time.
No, I'm not sure about the time frame. From what I recall the core samples that showed the increased solar activty were from 100-400 years ago. The timeline went further back than that and showed significant fluctuations all of which were consistent with our current space-age being at a lull.
I wish I could find that reference as I'm currently writing a proposal and I wanted to plug that work but for the life of me I cant find it ( and I have looked).
"Into Astromony? Ever notice the ammount of coronal mass ejections has dramaticly increased in the last 50 or so years?"
First of all "Astromoney" or astronomy as us non-Berkeley folks like to say, has nothing to do with CMEs. The proper field is space physics, very different than astronomy.
Second your claim is dead wrong. Ice core samples have shown that the current space-age is in a relative lull when it comes to solar activity. I have seen the presentations from a scientist in Australia (Ken McCracken... cant find the publication so perhaps it's not out yet but I did see the presentation of the observations at a number of conferences). Anyway the presentation shows convincingly that hundreds of years ago the sun was much more active than it is now. Since your right at Berkeley go talk to Bob Lin, I'm sure he can educate you further.
Slashdot Mirror
MOD PARENT UP!!!!! +5 funny
/. mod faction interfere with a very funny post.
don't let the right wing
"The problem, of course, becomes trying to establish the safety of childbearing in low Gs"
No, that's not the problem.
We can debate all of the "fufy" issues regarding space travel until the cows come home.
Radiation. That's the major issue on the table. For short missions (a few months) it's a non issue. But for missions that take a year or so, like a mars mission, the people will be exposed to the continuous Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR) and the solar cycle dependent solar energetic Particle (SEP) events... i.e. radiation. Our atmosphere shields us from the majority of these particles but when you put someone on the moon or mars you have to duplicate the shielding of the Earths atmosphere to achieve the same radiation protection we enjoy on Earth. Bottom line is that is a lot of mass and some of that mass has the nasty problem that it produces a lot of secondary particles (neutrons).
To shield or not to shield... that is the question.
There are a lot of people working on this problem. There is currently no solution. If we put someone in space for an extended period of time (years) there is a serious radiation problem. We will get there in the future but bringing issues up like childbearing, or the mental fatigue, or if masturbation in low G causes a tilted penis... etc... are orders of magnitude below the real current threats.
"will be viewed and stone-age tech in about 15 to 20 years from now."
It's far more likely that in 15 years the nano-technologies will just be starting the intellectual property rights battles that will put the current software IP battles to shame.
Nano has legal, religious, corporate, governmental, philosophical issues that will not be overcome for decades to come.
"I'm a neoludite"
+5 for using any form of the noun Luddite
in a sentence....except it's a double d.
For those not wanting to look it up from
Merriam-Webster Online
One entry found for Luddite.
Main Entry: Luddite
Pronunciation: 'l&-"dIt
Function: noun
Etymology: perhaps from Ned Ludd, 18th century Leicestershire workman who destroyed machinery
: one of a group of early 19th century English workmen destroying laborsaving machinery as a protest; broadly : one who is opposed to especially technological change
- Luddite adjective
"Many other nations don't display aggressive nationalism as commonly seen in the 'Western world'.
I truly don't believe that this statement can be supported by facts "
Your dead on. It's either
"national aggression" or
"religious aggression" or
"tribal aggression" or
"ethnic aggression" or
insert your favorite here.
Each and every nation on the planet has asserted it's nationalism or they would by default be part of a different nation.
"I suppose it could be argued that for discussion of supersonic shocks one would need a better approximation..."
Thats kind of an understatement. Produce the GCR spectra from a hydrodynamic fluid and badda-bing... a nobel prize awaits you.
"for exotic phenomena and long-range interactions, or regions with large electromagnetic fields, perhaps full MHD equations are necessary"
Lets first of all admit that we have no friggin idea what the ISM is like as we have not measured it. We can only assume that it works similiar to the plasmas we do have access to inside our own heliosphere and here MHD is very important for damn near everything, sure it's got it's limitations (I'm more of a kinetic fan myself) but it still does a fair job in lots of environments. Go ahead and try to compress the Earth's magnetosphere without a strong negative Bz (i.e. using simple hydrodynamic equations)... aint' going to happen.
"taught in university classes"
I probably should go back and dust off the old notes, it has been over 10 years since I fought through my plasma theory course.
"I fail to see what thez have to do with the discussion of this article"
I cant even remember what the origional article was about. I guess I'm getting senile.
"Sorry to get technical but I get really annoyed by ignorant individuals "correcting" other people's technical errors..."
Alright so your going to get annoyed by this one as well..
"The ISM is a fluid much like any other"
No, It's not just some ordinary fluid. You try to apply the basic hydrodynamic equations to these systems and you will get nonsense. The term is magneto-hydrodynamics (MHD), it's a electrically conductive plasma, not just an ordinary fluid.
"Seems by now we could have something a little more advanced"
"If these robot missions are to take the place of manned exploration as some have indicated, ETC..."
Holly shit. Nearly all of the scientific advances have taken place on these robotic missions. Your FUD would like everyone to think that manned missions somehow trump robotic missions on the science-production front. Go ahead and do the study (don't waste your time, it has already been done) and you will find that any 1 of these robotic missions have produced far greater advances in our understanding than all of the manned missions combined.
I am not anti-manned-spaceflight. I just think that any mission should have to justify it's purpose, expectations, and cost along with all of the other proposed missions. If there is a justifiable scientific purpose, reasonable scientific expectations, and can be done at a reasonable cost then peer review it's ass, place that mission in the cue, and launch it when appropriate.
Agreed... but... We would love to produce HD type pics from these missions. It's not a scientific problem, nor is it a technical problem, it's a financial problem! Let's take a look:
The camera. This dude has to work in a radiation environment. You cannot just take your high-def Newegg purchased camera and launch it. These types of things have been tried before (non-flight qualified parts) and they don't last long. No, you have to build this bad boy from scratch with parts (CCDs, etc) that can withstand a severe radiation environment.
BitRate. One of the significant cost issues on any mission is the science bitrate requirements. It costs a lot of money to get data back to Earth. First there is the instruments ability to collect such data (insignificant)... Second there is the spacecrafts ability to transmit this data, a very significant problem.. (with increased bitRate comes increased power requirements, increased mass, etc...) and with that comes a significant increase in the launch costs, to say nothing of the development costs.
Collection... With an increased bitRate comes a greater requirement to collect the data and so a significant increase in cost.. You don't just point your little home dish at the right location and get a signal... (don't get me wrong, that would be great, but the power to generate such a signal would be sadly cost prohibitative). No, you have to collect the data on the big boys and they are not cheap.
In each and every one of these missions the scientists and engineers have to scale back their desires (not because of any technological problems but) because what they would like to do cannot be done given the funding opportunity. So you cut, scale back, cut some more, scale back again, etc... and eventually you arrive at a proposal that might actually be funded. It's not exactly what you would hope for, but given the opportunity available it's your best bet at a viable mission.
What.. you look up the word "Lagrange" and hence you're a "Tom-Cruse" type expert on the scientific progress of current space missions? It's "glib" such comments that amount to nothing but FUD on an the scientific progress that has been made in the last decase.
Um... and how exactly would you propose we do that with the instrumentation on the spacecraft? It's not like you're the first person that has thought of life on Saturn. Go ahead and advocate another 1B mission to the planet equipped with the instrumentation to conduct such experiments and the "so-called" scientists will be knocking a path to your door.
"And if you look at the sun with a telescope or magnifying glass, you can actually see solar flares."
I don't know much about this whole telescope thing your talking about but the magnifying glass is a great idea. Of course you have to make sure that it's in focus or you wont see the fascinating details involved with the flares. Make sure that you hold the magnifying glass at the correct position so that the focal point of the magnifying glass is directly on your cornea. And ignore the smell.
"If someone steals your car they get charged with the theft of your car, not the theft of your dog which happened to run out the gate when they drove through it."
But even if your car is recovered and returned
to you that person is still charged with theft.
"Just out of curiosity, how big of a penis does that type of a rat have? I mean, you said the rat is delicious. I suppose you were talking about the body, but I'm asking about its penis. Could its penis be stuffed with its body meat to make a ratcock sausage?"
That has got to be one of the strangest questions I've ever heard. Why are you interested in the penis of a rat?. Why would you even think about making a rat-penis-sausage?. Please tell me your some kind of herbivore-penile-scientist.
"dude you are some weird son of a bitch if you memorize the history of rats in New Zealand."
Funniest and most on-topic post in this thread
Until they start calling us "ugly bags of water"
The solar sails work with photons of course. I've never thought about the solar wind as a propulsion device, I would imagine there might be a low density problem with that. But that's beside the point.
Our solar wind is 400 km/s on average and it takes 3 or 4 days to reach the Earth. So at the speed of the interstellar wind that journey would take 60+ days, and that's just 1 AU. To get to 100 AU that would be like 16 years, similar to the speed Voyager is moving at.
If you want to use 20 km/s to get somewhere you have better make sure there are two of every species on board.
"this is really information that should be on a subscription basis"
And why is that? I'm a solar physcist and I like the Sun. So by your logic you should have to pay to see pictures taken by SOHO instruments, you should have to pay for pictures taken by Hubble, you should have to pay for the graphs of voyager magnetic field data at the termination shock.
If your company paid for the research then they should own it, but if you are paid from government grants as I am (or publicly funded universities, etc...) then you have no more right to the research then I do.
We are not talking about mandatory subscriptions here, we are talking about the gov. sub. data/research/ that has already been paid for. It's the monopolization of such data that leads to corruption.
"Cut the losses, turn the research material over to the rightful organizations (ACS, SOCMA, whoever) and be done with it."
And I guess you would support the gov turning over the rights of all NASA data to NASA who would then turn that data over to the individual organizations that collected the data, took the pics, etc... Then next time you want to see a picture of a cool looking nebula or some other thing you would be hit with a service fee?
The gov should pay for research and as part of the deal all the data should be made publicly available. If some co. can figure out a way to make a buck off it then more power to them, but the scientists who recieve the grant should still be compelled to make all of the data public.
the point exactly, as if the speed of light were a constant, v(photons) != c.
There is no doubt that we have examined light in very few media. The next media may indicate that there is no c (kind of like there is no spoon... matrix quote).
"Photons...cannot exist at a speed less than light"
And yet the stick looks bent when placed in water.
60 seconds?
I'd just be happy if Knoppix booted at all.
Well, it's not quite that bad. It boots on 2 of my three systems (kind of).
Background....
I run Linux everyday (at work). I log into my xp desktop then ssh to my redhat box. I map a network drive and use Xvision (an sco product...gasp) for my X functions. That is where I get my real work done. Of course the emacs and such are local on my XP box but I "make" like the best of them.
I don't do this because I like to, I do it because that is what my co provides.
I'm not an admin as you can tell. I'm a sci. guy. I work with the tools available to me.
3 systems in review.
1. Old Dell laptop, PIII.
Knoppix boots just fine, all looks good until I try to access the outside world. Well I have a Linksys WUSB12 wireless USB stick for access. As far as I can tell it's not supported under Linux at all (bummer). Any hints?
2. My home hacked together (by me) system, well over 2 years old.
Nothing special, P4, Asus board, enermax power supply, WD HD, but of course I've got a MS keyboard and mouse. When I pop in the Knoppix CD it boots, but no mouse and no keyboard at all (bummer). Never gotten far enough to see if my D-link wireless would work. Any hints again?
3. My work system
New fancy dell screamer, flat screen, probably a ms keyboard and mouse as well, etc... frozen boot. I have to pull the power cord, reinsert, and quickly eject the CD during bios boot to get the system back (bummer).
My only point is this. I would love to slowly transition to Linux on the desktop but until I can get my work done without taking a sabbatical and purchasing Linux-approved-supported hardware ( Yea I do understand it's a driver problem) I just don't have the time.
No, I'm not sure about the time frame. From what I recall the core samples that showed the increased solar activty were from 100-400 years ago. The timeline went further back than that and showed significant fluctuations all of which were consistent with our current space-age being at a lull.
I wish I could find that reference as I'm currently writing a proposal and I wanted to plug that work but for the life of me I cant find it ( and I have looked).
Exactly.
There is a good reason why scientists have decided to boycot the Kansas Intelligent design review/pannel/whatever.
When you know the motive of the excercise is against what you think is right then your participation in such an excercise is dubious as best
"Into Astromony? Ever notice the ammount of coronal mass ejections has dramaticly increased in the last 50 or so years?"
First of all "Astromoney" or astronomy as us non-Berkeley folks like to say, has nothing to do with CMEs. The proper field is space physics, very different than astronomy.
Second your claim is dead wrong. Ice core samples have shown that the current space-age is in a relative lull when it comes to solar activity. I have seen the presentations from a scientist in Australia (Ken McCracken... cant find the publication so perhaps it's not out yet but I did see the presentation of the observations at a number of conferences). Anyway the presentation shows convincingly that hundreds of years ago the sun was much more active than it is now. Since your right at Berkeley go talk to Bob Lin, I'm sure he can educate you further.