Heh, where's the old hacker spirit? Why develop the same thing twice and compete, when you can cooperate? I don't know the costs of the russian development, but if it's comparable, why should both parties separately pay $400M for a new design from scratch, each, if you can share the costs and pay $300M each to have a common design and two identical shuttles built. Is the word "cooperation" so dead? Cold war rages on?
...is, whether NASA will retain exclusive rights to the vehicle. $400mln to develop, probably below $100mln to build next, once first one has been built, ground infrastructure of some $50mln required... I guess there would be quite a few companies willing to invest some $200mln to provide orbital tours, maybe later build "orbital hotel" etc. The investment would probably pay back in 20 or so flights, maybe a year...
If the separation procedure is safe enough (e.g. the shuttle is detached - dropped from the bottom of the plane and falls at least 100m before launching its own engine), it may be one of the safer methods. If the top of the carrier plane is used as a launch pad, that's a different matter. I haven't heard of a bomber plane destroyed by colliding with its own bomb midair.
Actually, if the deal is "fixed price" and there's no nasty backdoors, either they do it for below $400M and get the rest as a profit, or they go above $400M and pay the difference from their pockets. Most probably they would go for it, because before they know they are over budget, they will have spent enought, that it will cost them less to finish the work and get $400M back, losing total minus what they get (say, $500M-$400M=$100M) than all they have invested so far (say, $250M). Not to mention all the "prestige" work for NASA gives.
The shuttle itself, being reusable, weights so much that putting it in orbit costs a fortune. Normally, in case of rockets like Soyuz, maybe 1% of the original mass is put in the orbit, a tiny, light reentry device, maybe some payload. In case of the shuttle we need to lift a huge, ultra-heavy vehicle into orbit, it requires vastly more fuel. The hydrogen fuel tank is not reusable. Reworking the first-degree rockets is expensive. Because of added mass, extra material properties must be taken into consideration. It's cheaper to send 5 missions, 5-ton each, than one 25-ton one, but you can't take the shuttle apart and launch it in pieces. What originally was thought to be cheaper, seems to be a failed idea.
If we can get back into space for 400 million, call it a bargain, secretly poison 90% of the military decision makers and GO! Otherwise, they will say "Going into space? What a waste of money! That's almost 1/5 of a stealth bomber! No way!"
1) Yeah, raping for virginity. Shot 500 to save 100 from automobiles. Long time ago I have noticed the deep hipocrisy of the hunter society. The funding comes out of your pockets, right? You claim you love the nature, love the wild animals, right? So why won't you fund all the environmental efforts WITHOUT killing deers from population that is already too small? 2) Deers are herd animals. You see a herd of deers in shoting range. Do you shot the one that stands in direction of nearest town or the more with most impressive antlers? 3) Bluff again. Predator hunting. Hunters love to bend facts to their needs. Predators, as more rare, are more expensive to hunt. Endangered species, illegal to hunt, are top price. So much for protection. In some places there's a shortage of predators (or none at all.) In others, surplus. So what's the most obvious solution, according to hunters? Kill predators where's the surplus, kill herbivores where's shortage of predators. Somehow solutions to all problems you encounter involves killing things. And somehow never killing itself is the point, you always "fund environmental care", "regulate population", "protect vegetation" and so on. Typical solution to ANY environmental problem presented to average hunter is to kill some of something. Say, some species is on threshold of extinction. So organise hunt to kill off half of the existing specimens and use the money to save the rest. 4) Hardly possible that the winter alone would kill more of a population than winter+predators. You, as a hunter, probably know the "prey-predator curve" from math, and know that for certain boundary conditions the amplitudes can be minimised. Without predators, winter plays the role of "predator". Of course if you start off with population on the "game factory" level, and not on "sustainable without predators" level, you are bound to end up with ecological disaster. You gladly do so, to "prove" your point to the authorities by showcasing the "mass dying".
Depends on the project. Strictly. $100 for crapload of shitty code vs $100 for some edits to makefile of a portably written, clean project is completely different matter.
No. Same as modern day TVs. The problems of first screens are now gone and the new phosphors have extremely long lifetimes. The great advantage of it is that it replaces one ancient, extremely problematic and obsolete technology, in which no improvement was made for ages (the cathode ray tube) while retaining another "mature" technology, which was being improved all the time and is very advanced by now - the fluorescent layer on the screen (and only because of need of pairing it with sucky ray tube years of innovation get obsoleted now.) Think CRT with one tiny ray tube for each pixel.
Except this is a "budget" product. Plasma has superior image quality. This is the low end of the "flat screen" industry (though should nicely compete with LCD, which sucks in so many domains)
Seems so. Common CRT has only one, strong catode ray tube that lights each pixel in sequence, that's where the flicker comes from. Here each nanotube works as a single catode ray tube for a single pixel, so it can work continuously, lighting that one pixel until it is requested to go dark. Maximum brightness should be much better too, because the ray can spend more time in one place.
Note the 5x rule applies to "top quality, leading edge" items, not "budget niche" items. Long-known product A is being replaced with far superior product B at 10x the price of A. After some time the price drops to 5x of A. But then someone develops product C, only a bit better than A, but much cheaper in production than B (though still a bit more than A.) They can't release it for 6x price of A because it's worse than B, even if very new. The new displays MUST go quite a bit below Plasma, and probably start off not all that much above LCD.
Because then Mirrordot would mirror Slashdot, including link to mirrordot mirror of slashdot including... Kaboom, Slashdot and Mirrordot slashdotted each other!
With enough herbivores left, there wouldn't be problems with predators meaning danger to humans. Actually -regulating- the populations of herbivores and predators by hunters would perfectly solve that problem. But then, you'd shot 4 deers a year, not 15. Too bad, so much good meat wasted by these bastard predators, let's kill them.
Except it's helluva more expensive, and getting superconductivity in devices that wasn't made with it on mind may cause a range of errors. Plus, I bet at such low temperatures, transistors work much slower (if at all).
Actually, higher concentration for prolonged periods of time will increase its levels in blood (as HCO3) so much, that its pH will kill you. Why would astronauts on Apollo 13 need the carbon dioxide filters so badly? They had whole tanks of pure liquid oxygen, enough for years of breathing. If CO2 wasn't toxic, they could mix enough oxygen in, creating breathable CO2-O2 atmosphere instead of the standard N2-O2, just releasing some into space to maintain pressure. Unfortunately no matter how much oxygen is there in the air, carbon dioxide isn't "neutral enough". Sure "drowning" in pure CO2 (with oxygen displaced) is much faster, sure low levels of CO2 are completely harmless, but higher concentration of it IS lethal independently of the oxygen levels.
Sorry, but the cells will generate enough heat themselves, that no fan would be able to remove it all. Actually, in stack of 4-5 cells, the but-last (before the one sticking to the cooler) would likely explode, boiling. One, well adjusted thermoelectric cell, with really good cooling (water, really big fan) can be useful and actually decrease the CPU power. Adding the second one will already produce more heat than any commonly available solution (fans, water cooling) can remove. Maybe dry ice could remove the surplus heat, but then, why not use the dry ice straight on the radiator? It would be more efficient.
Sure, more dangerous. But probably more handy to build and could last longer. Valve set to slow dripping, pipe outlets (possibly with some spraying tips) over the radiators, possibly even electric valve with some temperature feedback loop - temperature rising, pour more, temperature dropping too much, cut off. 1 liter is something like 6 cents in bulk, so it should last quite long. Sure pouring a bucket of liquid nitrogen over a PC won't do much good, but you should be able to release it as slowly as you only desire, so...?
<karp> I was doing this on fotka.pl [amateur photo portal. Girls post their photo sand get rated 1-10 by visitors] <karp> I had a script to check fotka.pl every day and look at the notes. <karp> If any was rated above 7 <karp> it was sending an email <karp> If the girl wrote back, it was sending another one, nicer. <karp> I got laid twice this way. <karp> Only the third mail was written "manually", <karp> the two first, sent by the script. <karp> Efficiency better than 1 in 100.
There wouldn't be a problem, except that the predators that would normally keep deer in check are largely absent. No one wants cougars or packs of wolves living near their town. But without these top predators, deer populations have nothing to keep their numbers down -- except hunting.
Therefore, interestingly enough, conservation demands that we hunt more deer.
Traditional explaination. "We don't want X, it's so dangerous and nobody wants it, so let's kill it. But then Y starts growing uncontrollably, so let's kill Y to keep it in check." What about: "We love killing. We know Y population won't explode because X keeps it in check. So let's spread some FUD, then kill the X population, then when Y starts growing uncontrollably, spread some more FUD and keep killing Y on regular basis."
That was 20 years ago and the deer population still hasn't fully recovered to normal levels, though it's getting there through nice, sustainable, controlled growth, encouraged by more aggressive wildlife management policies (more hunting).
Don't you see some error in your way of thinking? How is KILLING more deer to allow RECOVER the original population? Or you mean the population is STILL TOO HIGH (despite the mass dying because of the harsh winter) and you intend to help recover its original, lower number?
Truth is, the population WOULD have regulated itself. 75% of the population - the weakest would die. Next year the "boom" would be smaller. Then possibly there would be more food over winter, and so, in some time the population would ballance itself, equal number dying over winter as being born as "surplus" over normal population.
But no, hunters couldn't stand seeing so much good meat, so much game going to waste. Feed them now, shot them later, the preferred way. Of course let the weak survive so we could shot the best ones and still have the numbers matching.
The problem with hunters is that they justify their actions by short-term problems ("if we don't kill enough deers, they will destroy trees this winter") while their long-term tactics is directed at maximizing their own interest - first kill off all the predators (remove the competition) then maximize the population, while maximizing hunting - more born, more killed, more meat. The ballance could be kept - some predators, some herbivores and just several shots a year to keep the ballance wherever it gets out of hand. But no, you prefer to turn forests into game factory, where you MUST kill A LOT of wild animals to keep the area from ecological disaster. It's not "population control". It's "meat harvest."
Slashdot Mirror
Heh, where's the old hacker spirit?
Why develop the same thing twice and compete, when you can cooperate? I don't know the costs of the russian development, but if it's comparable, why should both parties separately pay $400M for a new design from scratch, each, if you can share the costs and pay $300M each to have a common design and two identical shuttles built.
Is the word "cooperation" so dead? Cold war rages on?
...is, whether NASA will retain exclusive rights to the vehicle.
$400mln to develop, probably below $100mln to build next, once first one has been built, ground infrastructure of some $50mln required... I guess there would be quite a few companies willing to invest some $200mln to provide orbital tours, maybe later build "orbital hotel" etc. The investment would probably pay back in 20 or so flights, maybe a year...
If the separation procedure is safe enough (e.g. the shuttle is detached - dropped from the bottom of the plane and falls at least 100m before launching its own engine), it may be one of the safer methods. If the top of the carrier plane is used as a launch pad, that's a different matter. I haven't heard of a bomber plane destroyed by colliding with its own bomb midair.
Number eager to spend $30 million. Count the interest and insurance.
Actually, if the deal is "fixed price" and there's no nasty backdoors, either they do it for below $400M and get the rest as a profit, or they go above $400M and pay the difference from their pockets. Most probably they would go for it, because before they know they are over budget, they will have spent enought, that it will cost them less to finish the work and get $400M back, losing total minus what they get (say, $500M-$400M=$100M) than all they have invested so far (say, $250M). Not to mention all the "prestige" work for NASA gives.
The shuttle itself, being reusable, weights so much that putting it in orbit costs a fortune. Normally, in case of rockets like Soyuz, maybe 1% of the original mass is put in the orbit, a tiny, light reentry device, maybe some payload. In case of the shuttle we need to lift a huge, ultra-heavy vehicle into orbit, it requires vastly more fuel. The hydrogen fuel tank is not reusable. Reworking the first-degree rockets is expensive. Because of added mass, extra material properties must be taken into consideration. It's cheaper to send 5 missions, 5-ton each, than one 25-ton one, but you can't take the shuttle apart and launch it in pieces. What originally was thought to be cheaper, seems to be a failed idea.
If we can get back into space for 400 million, call it a bargain, secretly poison 90% of the military decision makers and GO!
Otherwise, they will say "Going into space? What a waste of money! That's almost 1/5 of a stealth bomber! No way!"
1) Yeah, raping for virginity. Shot 500 to save 100 from automobiles. Long time ago I have noticed the deep hipocrisy of the hunter society. The funding comes out of your pockets, right? You claim you love the nature, love the wild animals, right? So why won't you fund all the environmental efforts WITHOUT killing deers from population that is already too small?
2) Deers are herd animals. You see a herd of deers in shoting range. Do you shot the one that stands in direction of nearest town or the more with most impressive antlers?
3) Bluff again. Predator hunting. Hunters love to bend facts to their needs. Predators, as more rare, are more expensive to hunt. Endangered species, illegal to hunt, are top price. So much for protection. In some places there's a shortage of predators (or none at all.) In others, surplus. So what's the most obvious solution, according to hunters? Kill predators where's the surplus, kill herbivores where's shortage of predators. Somehow solutions to all problems you encounter involves killing things. And somehow never killing itself is the point, you always "fund environmental care", "regulate population", "protect vegetation" and so on. Typical solution to ANY environmental problem presented to average hunter is to kill some of something. Say, some species is on threshold of extinction. So organise hunt to kill off half of the existing specimens and use the money to save the rest.
4) Hardly possible that the winter alone would kill more of a population than winter+predators. You, as a hunter, probably know the "prey-predator curve" from math, and know that for certain boundary conditions the amplitudes can be minimised. Without predators, winter plays the role of "predator". Of course if you start off with population on the "game factory" level, and not on "sustainable without predators" level, you are bound to end up with ecological disaster. You gladly do so, to "prove" your point to the authorities by showcasing the "mass dying".
Whoa! More rape for virginity!
Depends on the project. Strictly.
$100 for crapload of shitty code vs $100 for some edits to makefile of a portably written, clean project is completely different matter.
Same as CRT. But the power consumption probably won't be much lower.
No.
Same as modern day TVs. The problems of first screens are now gone and the new phosphors have extremely long lifetimes. The great advantage of it is that it replaces one ancient, extremely problematic and obsolete technology, in which no improvement was made for ages (the cathode ray tube) while retaining another "mature" technology, which was being improved all the time and is very advanced by now - the fluorescent layer on the screen (and only because of need of pairing it with sucky ray tube years of innovation get obsoleted now.)
Think CRT with one tiny ray tube for each pixel.
Except this is a "budget" product. Plasma has superior image quality. This is the low end of the "flat screen" industry (though should nicely compete with LCD, which sucks in so many domains)
Seems so.
Common CRT has only one, strong catode ray tube that lights each pixel in sequence, that's where the flicker comes from. Here each nanotube works as a single catode ray tube for a single pixel, so it can work continuously, lighting that one pixel until it is requested to go dark.
Maximum brightness should be much better too, because the ray can spend more time in one place.
Note the 5x rule applies to "top quality, leading edge" items, not "budget niche" items. Long-known product A is being replaced with far superior product B at 10x the price of A. After some time the price drops to 5x of A. But then someone develops product C, only a bit better than A, but much cheaper in production than B (though still a bit more than A.) They can't release it for 6x price of A because it's worse than B, even if very new. The new displays MUST go quite a bit below Plasma, and probably start off not all that much above LCD.
Because then Mirrordot would mirror Slashdot, including link to mirrordot mirror of slashdot including...
Kaboom, Slashdot and Mirrordot slashdotted each other!
With enough herbivores left, there wouldn't be problems with predators meaning danger to humans. Actually -regulating- the populations of herbivores and predators by hunters would perfectly solve that problem. But then, you'd shot 4 deers a year, not 15. Too bad, so much good meat wasted by these bastard predators, let's kill them.
Except it's helluva more expensive, and getting superconductivity in devices that wasn't made with it on mind may cause a range of errors. Plus, I bet at such low temperatures, transistors work much slower (if at all).
Actually, higher concentration for prolonged periods of time will increase its levels in blood (as HCO3) so much, that its pH will kill you. Why would astronauts on Apollo 13 need the carbon dioxide filters so badly? They had whole tanks of pure liquid oxygen, enough for years of breathing. If CO2 wasn't toxic, they could mix enough oxygen in, creating breathable CO2-O2 atmosphere instead of the standard N2-O2, just releasing some into space to maintain pressure. Unfortunately no matter how much oxygen is there in the air, carbon dioxide isn't "neutral enough". Sure "drowning" in pure CO2 (with oxygen displaced) is much faster, sure low levels of CO2 are completely harmless, but higher concentration of it IS lethal independently of the oxygen levels.
Sorry, but the cells will generate enough heat themselves, that no fan would be able to remove it all. Actually, in stack of 4-5 cells, the but-last (before the one sticking to the cooler) would likely explode, boiling. One, well adjusted thermoelectric cell, with really good cooling (water, really big fan) can be useful and actually decrease the CPU power. Adding the second one will already produce more heat than any commonly available solution (fans, water cooling) can remove. Maybe dry ice could remove the surplus heat, but then, why not use the dry ice straight on the radiator? It would be more efficient.
Sure, more dangerous. But probably more handy to build and could last longer. Valve set to slow dripping, pipe outlets (possibly with some spraying tips) over the radiators, possibly even electric valve with some temperature feedback loop - temperature rising, pour more, temperature dropping too much, cut off. 1 liter is something like 6 cents in bulk, so it should last quite long. Sure pouring a bucket of liquid nitrogen over a PC won't do much good, but you should be able to release it as slowly as you only desire, so...?
http://bash.org.pl/192
Translation:
<karp> I was doing this on fotka.pl [amateur photo portal. Girls post their photo sand get rated 1-10 by visitors]
<karp> I had a script to check fotka.pl every day and look at the notes.
<karp> If any was rated above 7
<karp> it was sending an email
<karp> If the girl wrote back, it was sending another one, nicer.
<karp> I got laid twice this way.
<karp> Only the third mail was written "manually",
<karp> the two first, sent by the script.
<karp> Efficiency better than 1 in 100.
There wouldn't be a problem, except that the predators that would normally keep deer in check are largely absent. No one wants cougars or packs of wolves living near their town. But without these top predators, deer populations have nothing to keep their numbers down -- except hunting.
Therefore, interestingly enough, conservation demands that we hunt more deer.
Traditional explaination.
"We don't want X, it's so dangerous and nobody wants it, so let's kill it. But then Y starts growing uncontrollably, so let's kill Y to keep it in check."
What about:
"We love killing. We know Y population won't explode because X keeps it in check. So let's spread some FUD, then kill the X population, then when Y starts growing uncontrollably, spread some more FUD and keep killing Y on regular basis."
That was 20 years ago and the deer population still hasn't fully recovered to normal levels, though it's getting there through nice, sustainable, controlled growth, encouraged by more aggressive wildlife management policies (more hunting).
Don't you see some error in your way of thinking? How is KILLING more deer to allow RECOVER the original population? Or you mean the population is STILL TOO HIGH (despite the mass dying because of the harsh winter) and you intend to help recover its original, lower number?
Truth is, the population WOULD have regulated itself. 75% of the population - the weakest would die. Next year the "boom" would be smaller. Then possibly there would be more food over winter, and so, in some time the population would ballance itself, equal number dying over winter as being born as "surplus" over normal population.
But no, hunters couldn't stand seeing so much good meat, so much game going to waste. Feed them now, shot them later, the preferred way. Of course let the weak survive so we could shot the best ones and still have the numbers matching.
The problem with hunters is that they justify their actions by short-term problems ("if we don't kill enough deers, they will destroy trees this winter") while their long-term tactics is directed at maximizing their own interest - first kill off all the predators (remove the competition) then maximize the population, while maximizing hunting - more born, more killed, more meat. The ballance could be kept - some predators, some herbivores and just several shots a year to keep the ballance wherever it gets out of hand. But no, you prefer to turn forests into game factory, where you MUST kill A LOT of wild animals to keep the area from ecological disaster. It's not "population control". It's "meat harvest."
Except, he couldn't bitch it's a vaporware, seeing separate components clicking together and thing being built before his eyes.