I think we should turn water+carbon+heat directly into methane. Do it on a large scale in the hotter parts of our planet then ship methane around the world. Aim for a closed carbon cycle.
I would be interested to see if they can create "Minority Report" style integration on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops by using the same OS at all levels and writing the shell so that running applications can be moved between individual devices.
I would recommend a floating colony in Venus' atmosphere. My understanding is that at the point where the atmosphere is near earth norm pressure, the temperatures are also pretty close to what humans can tolerate.
Maybe but what do you do beyond looking at the clouds?
the sun takes up much of the sky, it's not that tiny bright disk in the sky like we have here, you have a giant bright as hell 50% of the sky ball of fire
Its about three times the diameter of the sun from Earth. Not 50% of the sky.
How do you design solar panels that can not fry in that environment?
The problem with Mars is that pressure suits would have to use a lot of energy keeping their occupants warm.
No. Keep in mind that the occupants even when resting are 75 W heaters. Keeping the occupants cool is the real problem.
Plans I have seen in the media give crews about four hours on the surface, as opposed to eight on the moon. Partly the difficulty of keeping the suits warm, and partly the difficulty of lugging all the gear in higher gravity. Remember that the atmosphere on Mars is dense enough to carry heat away, especially in windy conditions.
Mercury is essentially in a vacuum so it doesn't have a temperature, beyond the surface. I would put a base at one pole and operate near the terminator where temperatures are more moderate. Sure atoms from the atmosphere may be an issue, but Mars has wind blown fines, which are an issue too.
For transit to and from Mercury I would use a solar sail. A vehicle like that could take you from a high Earth orbit to a polar orbit around Mercury, and it could operate for a long time. You are correct that the lack of an atmosphere means that you can't aerobrake to a landing on Mercury, but consider that the only feasible aero-braking shuttle on Mars is non-reusable. The heat shield has to be dumped on every landing. Its not like flying a space shuttle. If you use fully powered descent on Mercury and harvest ice at the poles to make fuel, you can use the same engines for descent and ascent, and use them many times. Not having an atmosphere helps with ascent as well, as it did on the moon. Radiation is a problem, I agree, but cosmic radiation may be less of a problem closer to the sun. Radiation is a problem on Mars too, and Mercury has a magnetosphere which works some of the time.
If ice is found at one pole of Mercury a mission could land there and use local water. Temperatures at the pole would not be too bad. Remember those are surface temperatures. They will affect gear left out in the sun, but the real problem will be solar heat soaked up by pressure suits and habitats. If you make them highly reflective your main heat problem will be from people and equipment inside. Apollo used open circuit cooling by sublimating ice. A mercury mission could work the same way.
The slow rotation of Mercury means that astronauts could explore the whole planet by following the terminator. Each traverse would start at one pole, cross the other and finish at the starting point.
The problem with Mars is that pressure suits would have to use a lot of energy keeping their occupants warm. Batteries have limited capacity so EVAs will have to be short. I reckon that gear used on Mercury could be directly derived from gear used on the moon.
I support Obama's focus on developing new technologies before trying for the Moon (again) or Mars. We know we can do it, the question is can we do it affordably enough to SUSTAIN a manned presence?)
Mars may not be the best place for humans to go. Mercury for example looks positively inviting in comparison to Mars. It has energy to burn, and daytime temperatures are actually not much more than on the moon. It may have ice at the poles. Before we send humans we need to know more about the environment, so we send an unmanned probe. Likewise, Titan and Europa may both be targets for human exploration, but some ISRU will be required in both cases so we need to explore the surface first.
I read this bit They are about the size of an AA battery. Pretty cool. They don't have quite the energy density of an alkaline battery as meaning their energy density was comparable to alkaline, but maybe I got that wrong. Too good to be true I suppose.
If you want to move it "elsewhere", why not save time and just fucking moving elsewhere in the first place?
Because every application which provides the file has their own, not very useful way to navigate the directory tree. I find it much easier to use the file manager for that, after the application has saved the file. "Downloads" has much more junk than "Desktop" because I never notice it. Applications save files and I may or not find them there. And my desktop is very clean thanks very much. It has two folders on it.
I don't download music but I do download free porn so I suppose it would make sense for some money to go from me to subsidise the pornographers don't support.
I can minimise on macos but I frequently struggle to get the windows back. I wish it just had a single, global list of windows or apps which always worked.
According to the article the minimise button is going because there will be no way to find anything which is minimised, so there will be no task bar or window list. I look forward to a time when Gnome deprecate windows, dialogs, pixels, etc and shut up shop. Its a shame because I like the version I am using now. These guys are the worst fiddlers. They can't accept that maybe something has been finished and doesn't need more "enhancement"
Storing things on your desktop by the way has LONG been a BAD thing done only by the terminally disorganized.
Really? I use it for temporary files. File comes from somewhere. I save it to the desktop, then move it elsewhere. I much prefer that to saving files to "Downloads" or something because when I get a file I want to see it right in front of me. Typically to mail a file I:
Open a folder
Compose a new mail message
Minimise the mailer app so I can see the folder
Drag the file I want into the new message
Click send
Restore the mailer
This whole thing smells of "Spatial Browsing". Gnome dropped that when the distros turned it off. I wish they would stop telling me how to work.
Well each to their own. It seems silly to take the functions away. I run fvwm by day at work and gnome at home by night. I haven't used windows primarily since 1990 or so and on windows in vmware at work I never maximise either. In fvwm I only maximise vertically, but I have a lot of screen to work with. At home with one, smaller screen, I maximise.
Because a country TLD was meant to be used for services run from within that respective country, or directed at that country. Same goes for all those who abuse.tv for television stuff.
And all those who abuse.com for USA stuff when they should be using.us
Slashdot Mirror
I think we should turn water+carbon+heat directly into methane. Do it on a large scale in the hotter parts of our planet then ship methane around the world. Aim for a closed carbon cycle.
How about Wide Area Multilateration? It is being used in the Sydney terminal area for high precision tracking.
I would be interested to see if they can create "Minority Report" style integration on phones, tablets, laptops and desktops by using the same OS at all levels and writing the shell so that running applications can be moved between individual devices.
I would recommend a floating colony in Venus' atmosphere. My understanding is that at the point where the atmosphere is near earth norm pressure, the temperatures are also pretty close to what humans can tolerate.
Maybe but what do you do beyond looking at the clouds?
The poles could be manageable, but I wouldn't send out even an equatorial terminator-riding mission without some form of rescue capability.
Yes I think you are right about that.
the sun takes up much of the sky, it's not that tiny bright disk in the sky like we have here, you have a giant bright as hell 50% of the sky ball of fire
Its about three times the diameter of the sun from Earth. Not 50% of the sky.
How do you design solar panels that can not fry in that environment?
Ask NASA. They have solar panels on Messenger.
The problem with Mars is that pressure suits would have to use a lot of energy keeping their occupants warm.
No. Keep in mind that the occupants even when resting are 75 W heaters. Keeping the occupants cool is the real problem.
Plans I have seen in the media give crews about four hours on the surface, as opposed to eight on the moon. Partly the difficulty of keeping the suits warm, and partly the difficulty of lugging all the gear in higher gravity. Remember that the atmosphere on Mars is dense enough to carry heat away, especially in windy conditions.
Mercury is essentially in a vacuum so it doesn't have a temperature, beyond the surface. I would put a base at one pole and operate near the terminator where temperatures are more moderate. Sure atoms from the atmosphere may be an issue, but Mars has wind blown fines, which are an issue too.
For transit to and from Mercury I would use a solar sail. A vehicle like that could take you from a high Earth orbit to a polar orbit around Mercury, and it could operate for a long time. You are correct that the lack of an atmosphere means that you can't aerobrake to a landing on Mercury, but consider that the only feasible aero-braking shuttle on Mars is non-reusable. The heat shield has to be dumped on every landing. Its not like flying a space shuttle. If you use fully powered descent on Mercury and harvest ice at the poles to make fuel, you can use the same engines for descent and ascent, and use them many times. Not having an atmosphere helps with ascent as well, as it did on the moon. Radiation is a problem, I agree, but cosmic radiation may be less of a problem closer to the sun. Radiation is a problem on Mars too, and Mercury has a magnetosphere which works some of the time.
If ice is found at one pole of Mercury a mission could land there and use local water. Temperatures at the pole would not be too bad. Remember those are surface temperatures. They will affect gear left out in the sun, but the real problem will be solar heat soaked up by pressure suits and habitats. If you make them highly reflective your main heat problem will be from people and equipment inside. Apollo used open circuit cooling by sublimating ice. A mercury mission could work the same way.
The slow rotation of Mercury means that astronauts could explore the whole planet by following the terminator. Each traverse would start at one pole, cross the other and finish at the starting point.
The problem with Mars is that pressure suits would have to use a lot of energy keeping their occupants warm. Batteries have limited capacity so EVAs will have to be short. I reckon that gear used on Mercury could be directly derived from gear used on the moon.
I support Obama's focus on developing new technologies before trying for the Moon (again) or Mars. We know we can do it, the question is can we do it affordably enough to SUSTAIN a manned presence?)
Mars may not be the best place for humans to go. Mercury for example looks positively inviting in comparison to Mars. It has energy to burn, and daytime temperatures are actually not much more than on the moon. It may have ice at the poles. Before we send humans we need to know more about the environment, so we send an unmanned probe. Likewise, Titan and Europa may both be targets for human exploration, but some ISRU will be required in both cases so we need to explore the surface first.
I read this bit They are about the size of an AA battery. Pretty cool. They don't have quite the energy density of an alkaline battery as meaning their energy density was comparable to alkaline, but maybe I got that wrong. Too good to be true I suppose.
The thing about Teddy is that it clearly demonstrated the emergence which the engineers were trying to build into other robots.
Whats their mass? For a car mass per unit energy stored may be more important than volume.
The I am surprised we don't see them in Hybrid cars. Even pure EVs would benefit from ultra fast charging.
Makes me wonder how you would go using vacuum to insulate a building.
If you want to move it "elsewhere", why not save time and just fucking moving elsewhere in the first place?
Because every application which provides the file has their own, not very useful way to navigate the directory tree. I find it much easier to use the file manager for that, after the application has saved the file. "Downloads" has much more junk than "Desktop" because I never notice it. Applications save files and I may or not find them there. And my desktop is very clean thanks very much. It has two folders on it.
I don't download music but I do download free porn so I suppose it would make sense for some money to go from me to subsidise the pornographers don't support.
to minimize, you can right-click the titlebar, then click minimize, or using ALT+F9.
Seriously: why not have a button to do that?
I can minimise on macos but I frequently struggle to get the windows back. I wish it just had a single, global list of windows or apps which always worked.
And I minimize all the time so I can find things.
According to the article the minimise button is going because there will be no way to find anything which is minimised, so there will be no task bar or window list. I look forward to a time when Gnome deprecate windows, dialogs, pixels, etc and shut up shop. Its a shame because I like the version I am using now. These guys are the worst fiddlers. They can't accept that maybe something has been finished and doesn't need more "enhancement"
Storing things on your desktop by the way has LONG been a BAD thing done only by the terminally disorganized.
Really? I use it for temporary files. File comes from somewhere. I save it to the desktop, then move it elsewhere. I much prefer that to saving files to "Downloads" or something because when I get a file I want to see it right in front of me. Typically to mail a file I:
This whole thing smells of "Spatial Browsing". Gnome dropped that when the distros turned it off. I wish they would stop telling me how to work.
Well each to their own. It seems silly to take the functions away. I run fvwm by day at work and gnome at home by night. I haven't used windows primarily since 1990 or so and on windows in vmware at work I never maximise either. In fvwm I only maximise vertically, but I have a lot of screen to work with. At home with one, smaller screen, I maximise.
Because a country TLD was meant to be used for services run from within that respective country, or directed at that country. .tv for television stuff.
Same goes for all those who abuse
And all those who abuse .com for USA stuff when they should be using .us
Thats better than keeping them in /proc