[The Orion is] not big enough for a generation ship. Let's deal with practicalities here.
General Atomic studied several sizes of Orion in 1959, the biggest of which was the "Super-Orion", weighing in at a stupendous 8.000.000 tons. According to the Wikipedia page:
it could easily be a city. In interviews, the designers contemplated the large ship as a possible interstellar ark. This extreme design could be built with materials and techniques that could be obtained in 1958 or were anticipated to be available shortly after. The practical upper limit is likely to be higher with modern materials.
Freeman Dyson published a paper called "Interstellar Transport" (Physics Today, October 1968, p. 41–45) on how to build an Orion spaceship to get to Alpha Centauri, so yes, it could carry enough fuel for interstellar travel. Your other two points are correct though.
I don't know where you get your figures from, but according to the Wikipedia page for Specific Impulse, the ISP for an Orion-style drive is 10.000 to 100.000.
Close to shore, money's on the croc. A bit further out, the shark.
The show "Animal Face-Off" on Discovery did their first episode on Great White vs Saltwater Croc, and their conclusion was that the Great White would win, mostly because it doesn't have to surface to breathe:
The shark is looking for food. It hits the crocodile with the bump-and-bite technique. It then tries to attack. The crocodile bites the shark's tail, but can't get a good grip. The shark swims away and comes back for a full-on assault, but the croc strikes first by biting on the shark's pectoral fin and then performing a death roll, tearing off the shark's fin. Despite the bad injury, the shark is still fast and strong. Then both animals collide head on, and the crocodile clamps on to the shark's snout. The shark can't fight back, and the crocodile attempts another death roll, and both combatants sink. Running out of air, the crocodile breaks off the attack and heads to the surface to breathe, which allows the shark to return and bite the croc's belly, ending the fight.
Someone else posted with a link to the actual device my then co-worker used, the MouseTrapper. According to that poster, it was first made in 1984, so 27 years in fact.
No, they failed when they bought up Mythic to get some MMO-experienced developers for SWTOR. Mythic, for chrissakes! The ones that made the oh so popular Warhammer Online, which has lost 90% of their release subscribers in the two years it's been out.
WAR is a lingering niche game in addition to being a bug-ridden, unbalanced, gear-dependent PvP mess with some of the worst developer/player communications I've ever witnessed.
Exactly. If you look at NASA's announcement of the press conference, the headline is "NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2" (emphasis mine).
It's not a NASA embargo, it's a Science Journal embargo.
In 2007, a star in the Galactic halo, HE 1523-0901, was estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old, nearly as old as the Universe. As the oldest known object in the Milky Way at that time, it placed a lower limit on the age of the Milky Way
I used to teach a Unix/Linux sysadmin course, and one of my guest lecturers was a guy from IBAS. He made it quite clear that even those guys, who make a living recovering data from hard drives in all kinds of sorry states, couldn't recover the data if it was overwritten. The amount of times it was overwritten didn't matter in the slightest, once was enough.
If I remember correctly he said that the only thing that overwriting data multiple times does is make you feel more secure. The data is gone after the first overwrite, after that it's all about covering your ass and feeling good.
On a (somewhat more) serious note: man went to the Moon ONCE
Well, six times really: Apollo 11 Apollo 12 Apollo 14 Apollo 15 Apollo 16 Apollo 17 All of them had man walking (and for some even driving) on the moon.
1) Using actual, real, computers and programming languages used out in industry. Have you write programs for Intel/AMD computers and use C++, C#, Java, Python, and so on. Basically, use tools that you'll actually use while teaching you the theory so you learn not only a useful theory, but useful practical knowledge as well.
2) Using artificial, "for education only" stuff. Create their own computer architecture that you run in an emulator, and create languages that are not actually used outside of the environment. Teach you the theory in an isolated setting, without real application. Have the tools you learn be useless outside the walls of the university.
Me? I vote #1. Much better to learn on tools that people will ask you to use than to learn on than to learn on something that isn't useful to your future.
Me, I vote #2. Tools change. Better to learn WHY things work the way they work than HOW to get a certain tool to accomplish something.
Sure, the humanoid form is great - for humans. At our current level of technology it's awkward at best for our robots.
The humanoid form is a solution to a set of problems that our ancestors needed to solve to survive. Our robots don't need to solve the same problems, so it might actually be better (read: less wasteful) to design non-humanoid robots.
I agree that using the J58 as an example of a typical jet engine is rather like using an atom bomb as an example of an explosion. At the same time, since the J58 is essentially a turbojet/ramjet hybrid, it might be said to be the distant forefather of the X51 engine.
Oh, and anything that makes me go look at pictures of the most beautiful aircraft in the world, the SR-71, is a good thing.
man noun, plural men, verb, manned, manning, interjection –noun 1. an adult male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman. 2. a member of the species Homo sapiens or all the members of this species collectively, without regard to sex: prehistoric man. 3. the human individual as representing the species, without reference to sex; the human race; humankind: Man hopes for peace, but prepares for war.
Slashdot Mirror
Wooosh.
[The Orion is] not big enough for a generation ship. Let's deal with practicalities here.
General Atomic studied several sizes of Orion in 1959, the biggest of which was the "Super-Orion", weighing in at a stupendous 8.000.000 tons. According to the Wikipedia page:
it could easily be a city. In interviews, the designers contemplated the large ship as a possible interstellar ark. This extreme design could be built with materials and techniques that could be obtained in 1958 or were anticipated to be available shortly after. The practical upper limit is likely to be higher with modern materials.
Freeman Dyson published a paper called "Interstellar Transport" (Physics Today, October 1968, p. 41–45) on how to build an Orion spaceship to get to Alpha Centauri, so yes, it could carry enough fuel for interstellar travel. Your other two points are correct though.
Bah, preview fail. The ISP for an Orion-style drive is 10.000 to 1.000.000.
I don't know where you get your figures from, but according to the Wikipedia page for Specific Impulse, the ISP for an Orion-style drive is 10.000 to 100.000.
Wouldn't "space probe" be more accurate? I don't believe it was ever intended to be manned.
Close to shore, money's on the croc. A bit further out, the shark.
The show "Animal Face-Off" on Discovery did their first episode on Great White vs Saltwater Croc, and their conclusion was that the Great White would win, mostly because it doesn't have to surface to breathe:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_Face-Off
Someone else posted with a link to the actual device my then co-worker used, the MouseTrapper. According to that poster, it was first made in 1984, so 27 years in fact.
Yeah, same here. 1996-1997 something. Exact same principle. It's nothing "new" about this thing, they've been around for at least 15 years.
No, they failed when they bought up Mythic to get some MMO-experienced developers for SWTOR. Mythic, for chrissakes! The ones that made the oh so popular Warhammer Online, which has lost 90% of their release subscribers in the two years it's been out.
WAR is a lingering niche game in addition to being a bug-ridden, unbalanced, gear-dependent PvP mess with some of the worst developer/player communications I've ever witnessed.
It's not boding well for SWTOR...
Exactly. If you look at NASA's announcement of the press conference, the headline is "NASA Sets News Conference on Astrobiology Discovery; Science Journal Has Embargoed Details Until 2 p.m. EST On Dec. 2" (emphasis mine).
It's not a NASA embargo, it's a Science Journal embargo.
From wikipedia:
In 2007, a star in the Galactic halo, HE 1523-0901, was estimated to be about 13.2 billion years old, nearly as old as the Universe. As the oldest known object in the Milky Way at that time, it placed a lower limit on the age of the Milky Way
the person whos dying
We're all dying.
This is purely senseless and is a mark of poor language design.
Languages (in general) aren't designed, they evolve. Which makes your (all too long-winded) point quite moot.
19 miles is still in the stratosphere.
I used to teach a Unix/Linux sysadmin course, and one of my guest lecturers was a guy from IBAS. He made it quite clear that even those guys, who make a living recovering data from hard drives in all kinds of sorry states, couldn't recover the data if it was overwritten. The amount of times it was overwritten didn't matter in the slightest, once was enough.
If I remember correctly he said that the only thing that overwriting data multiple times does is make you feel more secure. The data is gone after the first overwrite, after that it's all about covering your ass and feeling good.
On a (somewhat more) serious note: man went to the Moon ONCE
Well, six times really:
Apollo 11
Apollo 12
Apollo 14
Apollo 15
Apollo 16
Apollo 17
All of them had man walking (and for some even driving) on the moon.
1) Using actual, real, computers and programming languages used out in industry. Have you write programs for Intel/AMD computers and use C++, C#, Java, Python, and so on. Basically, use tools that you'll actually use while teaching you the theory so you learn not only a useful theory, but useful practical knowledge as well.
2) Using artificial, "for education only" stuff. Create their own computer architecture that you run in an emulator, and create languages that are not actually used outside of the environment. Teach you the theory in an isolated setting, without real application. Have the tools you learn be useless outside the walls of the university.
Me? I vote #1. Much better to learn on tools that people will ask you to use than to learn on than to learn on something that isn't useful to your future.
Me, I vote #2. Tools change. Better to learn WHY things work the way they work than HOW to get a certain tool to accomplish something.
Sure, the humanoid form is great - for humans. At our current level of technology it's awkward at best for our robots.
The humanoid form is a solution to a set of problems that our ancestors needed to solve to survive. Our robots don't need to solve the same problems, so it might actually be better (read: less wasteful) to design non-humanoid robots.
That said, I'm all for the fem-bots.
Since the study was made with a Firefox plugin, I think you'll find that 100% of the Windows, Mac and Linux users in the study use Firefox.
I agree that using the J58 as an example of a typical jet engine is rather like using an atom bomb as an example of an explosion.
At the same time, since the J58 is essentially a turbojet/ramjet hybrid, it might be said to be the distant forefather of the X51 engine.
Oh, and anything that makes me go look at pictures of the most beautiful aircraft in the world, the SR-71, is a good thing.
man
noun, plural men, verb, manned, manning, interjection
–noun
1. an adult male person, as distinguished from a boy or a woman.
2. a member of the species Homo sapiens or all the members of this species collectively, without regard to sex: prehistoric man.
3. the human individual as representing the species, without reference to sex; the human race; humankind: Man hopes for peace, but prepares for war.
(emphasis mine)
Damn, and me just running out of modpoints yesterday. Well said, thrawn_aj.
It is the right aspect ratio - for a movie theater screen.
The ghost of H.P. Lovecraft approves of this post.