At the Avalon airshow a couple of years ago there was a little electric UAV which is pretty much an inside out version of the Hexacopter. It had two counter rotating props inside a plastic shell.
I used to work for our state road authority and I could immediately see an application for incident management on freeways. We had CCTV cameras on every bend in the road so you could see any crash site and get fairly close with zoom (we had good lenses) but the goal is to book the correct emergency response as early as possible. A small UAV could hover around a crash site and send back CCTV images of the injured people inside vehicles. You could park the aircraft on the CCTV pylon and (as that guy was trying) leave it charging until required.
But wind is the problem, particularly if you need a stable camera platform. Lightness gives you endurance but it reduces inertia.
As long as the only pictures they take are legal ones from public places (including airspace), I don't have a problem.
I might agree if they are abiding by FAA rules. I doubt that's the intent because the images they would get at that attitude would be little more than satellites give now. Also I doubt the FAA would see the humor of these buzzing around aircraft airspace. The problem becomes how far above your house are you comfortable having surveillance drones flying? Do you see a problem with them looking in your second story bedroom window? It's disturbing that privacy itself is becoming a quaint old fashion concept.
In most places model airplanes have free reign under 500 feet altitude. I bet these little UAVs would spent a lot of time under that limit. Probably around 100 feet. They just have to stay clear of airports, and particularly the approach and departure trajectories.
Years ago when I was single I built a cable to run small devices off the power outlet on the power supply of my computer. This is the outlet which was intended to run a monitor in the days before power management. I built a system for my wife and plugged a power board into that cable. One cold day she connected a 2.4kW heater to that power board. All she got in return was smoke.
But maybe that just demonstrates the limits of our thinking. We re used to the parameters of our universe and have trouble imagining how things could be different.
There might actually be something interesting in there. Lots of discoveries have been made by people who were just trying things out or seeing what they could see.
The aliens are vague about the location of the message (it might be in pi) so the Foster character runs software to search for it. Right at the end of the book her program finds a pattern (A circle drawn in 1s and 0s in an 11 by 11 matrix). This pulls together the thread in the book about belief in god vs religion. It turns out that somebody made the universe after all, and the Christians had been (sort of) right all along, though the scientists were right to demand evidence.
I love both the book and film. Thats unusual for me. The Postman was a fantastic book. Don't get me started on the movie.
I often put the DVD of Contact on just to watch the sequence where Fosters character first hears the signal and her crew reconfigure the telescope to analyse it. Its a classic tech scene.
implementing such software directly in the modem could be made mandatory and used to control the people
Installing spyware in modems is pretty much the same as installing it in the network. Its similar to the filtering in China and the doomed proposal in Australia. You can still get around it with SSL.
Yes you can : the tech specs say that the software should be open source and work on any OS
Time to break out the vax.
Or a VMWARE image for it to run it. The image will be a quiet place where nothing bad ever happens. Actually qemu might be a better choice considering the context.
I find it hard to believe that the mass of a football-field-sized balloon is less than the fuel to just drop the orbit into a brief but colourful brush with the atmosphere.
Well you need to factor in the rocket engine, guidance, and the risk that you may lose active control of the vehicle and be unable to deorbit it. My thinking is that a drag brake (or parachute, solar sail or balloon) could be a separate system. Mostly passive. It gets a simple command, or fires on a timer. It orients itself passively and results in re-entry in a couple of months or so.
An uninsulated space suit in a vacuum wouldn't feel very cold on the inside as long as the suit doesn't touch anything on the outside.
What were the physics involved in the Apollo 13 mission when they were getting very cold after turning off the heaters in the spacecraft, using the LEM as a lifeboat?
When it comes to using power, it is easier to heat something than to cool it. The apollo spacecraft was designed to be passively cool in the sense that it reflected enough of the sunlight striking it to need as small amount of heating from batteries to stay warm. If it had absorbed more heat from the sun it would have required active cooling which is very expensive in energy terms.
If somebody panics and takes off in a soyuz without the helmet for their pressure suit, and the docking port is stuffed, will they be able to get back in through an air lock? I suspect not, because the flow in those airlocks is very slow and you need to flood the lock in a minute or so. I don't think its going to work.
Also the Soviet explosive bolts leave much to be desired. You would look pretty silly with half your hatch blown off.
Without thermal controls, the temperature of the orbiting Space Station's Sun-facing side would soar to 250 degrees F (121 C), while thermometers on the dark side would plunge to minus 250 degrees F (-157 C). There might be a comfortable spot somewhere in the middle of the Station, but searching for it wouldn't be much fun!
Oh come off it GP is not trolling. Temperature is always a matter of perspective, even in the room where I am now. If your spacecraft decompressed you would feel cold because of adiabatic expansion. Stand or float in the sun and you will feel warm, but radiation would still be cooling you.
Seriously? You live somewhere where the neighbor's power and gas lines go through YOUR yard? Do you not attach to them along a power/gas right-of-way, perhaps in an adjacent alley?
This happens ALL THE DAMNED TIME when a house gets split off from another property, especially when one is set back further from the road.
Yeah. One of my two sewer lines goes under the next door neighbors house. Its going to be dug up at some point and it will make a terrible mess of their back yard.
Slashdot Mirror
At the Avalon airshow a couple of years ago there was a little electric UAV which is pretty much an inside out version of the Hexacopter. It had two counter rotating props inside a plastic shell.
I used to work for our state road authority and I could immediately see an application for incident management on freeways. We had CCTV cameras on every bend in the road so you could see any crash site and get fairly close with zoom (we had good lenses) but the goal is to book the correct emergency response as early as possible. A small UAV could hover around a crash site and send back CCTV images of the injured people inside vehicles. You could park the aircraft on the CCTV pylon and (as that guy was trying) leave it charging until required.
But wind is the problem, particularly if you need a stable camera platform. Lightness gives you endurance but it reduces inertia.
As long as the only pictures they take are legal ones from public places (including airspace), I don't have a problem.
I might agree if they are abiding by FAA rules. I doubt that's the intent because the images they would get at that attitude would be little more than satellites give now. Also I doubt the FAA would see the humor of these buzzing around aircraft airspace. The problem becomes how far above your house are you comfortable having surveillance drones flying? Do you see a problem with them looking in your second story bedroom window? It's disturbing that privacy itself is becoming a quaint old fashion concept.
In most places model airplanes have free reign under 500 feet altitude. I bet these little UAVs would spent a lot of time under that limit. Probably around 100 feet. They just have to stay clear of airports, and particularly the approach and departure trajectories.
Don't get sucked in!
Years ago when I was single I built a cable to run small devices off the power outlet on the power supply of my computer. This is the outlet which was intended to run a monitor in the days before power management. I built a system for my wife and plugged a power board into that cable. One cold day she connected a 2.4kW heater to that power board. All she got in return was smoke.
But maybe that just demonstrates the limits of our thinking. We re used to the parameters of our universe and have trouble imagining how things could be different.
Vote how you like. I am a Victorian so this is my Big Chance to vote Stephen Conroy out.
segfault
There might actually be something interesting in there. Lots of discoveries have been made by people who were just trying things out or seeing what they could see.
what is the real significance of learning Pi to a more accurate measurement?
The same as the damage a bulldozer would suffer if it were allowed to run over you.
The frustrating bit is that PI is available to 100 trillion digits in the local planning office on Alpha Centauri.
Why?
Why not?
The aliens are vague about the location of the message (it might be in pi) so the Foster character runs software to search for it. Right at the end of the book her program finds a pattern (A circle drawn in 1s and 0s in an 11 by 11 matrix). This pulls together the thread in the book about belief in god vs religion. It turns out that somebody made the universe after all, and the Christians had been (sort of) right all along, though the scientists were right to demand evidence.
I love both the book and film. Thats unusual for me. The Postman was a fantastic book. Don't get me started on the movie.
I often put the DVD of Contact on just to watch the sequence where Fosters character first hears the signal and her crew reconfigure the telescope to analyse it. Its a classic tech scene.
"Once upon a time I was a hell of an engineer"
implementing such software directly in the modem could be made mandatory and used to control the people
Installing spyware in modems is pretty much the same as installing it in the network. Its similar to the filtering in China and the doomed proposal in Australia. You can still get around it with SSL.
Yes you can : the tech specs say that the software should be open source and work on any OS
Time to break out the vax.
Or a VMWARE image for it to run it. The image will be a quiet place where nothing bad ever happens. Actually qemu might be a better choice considering the context.
I am A + B but my Thunderbird is humming just fine. Should I be worried? :)
Can you describe the hum? Mains frequency would worry me. You might have to check the ground pin on your power supply cable.
Of course its a vulnerability, just not with the phone. The vulnerability is in the infrastructure.
Somebody could rewrire the phone lines to my house too, but I don't count that as a vulnerability in the simple electronics in my land line phones.
Make it an Australian football field and you've got a deal.
I find it hard to believe that the mass of a football-field-sized balloon is less than the fuel to just drop the orbit into a brief but colourful brush with the atmosphere.
Well you need to factor in the rocket engine, guidance, and the risk that you may lose active control of the vehicle and be unable to deorbit it. My thinking is that a drag brake (or parachute, solar sail or balloon) could be a separate system. Mostly passive. It gets a simple command, or fires on a timer. It orients itself passively and results in re-entry in a couple of months or so.
An uninsulated space suit in a vacuum wouldn't feel very cold on the inside as long as the suit doesn't touch anything on the outside.
What were the physics involved in the Apollo 13 mission when they were getting very cold after turning off the heaters in the spacecraft, using the LEM as a lifeboat?
When it comes to using power, it is easier to heat something than to cool it. The apollo spacecraft was designed to be passively cool in the sense that it reflected enough of the sunlight striking it to need as small amount of heating from batteries to stay warm. If it had absorbed more heat from the sun it would have required active cooling which is very expensive in energy terms.
I think THE SUN would beg to differ...
Well actually the sun is the best example we have of nearby things losing heat by radiation.
I mean everyone up there's drinking the recycled pee of their crewmates.
As are we all. Our water supply is finite too, you know.
If somebody panics and takes off in a soyuz without the helmet for their pressure suit, and the docking port is stuffed, will they be able to get back in through an air lock? I suspect not, because the flow in those airlocks is very slow and you need to flood the lock in a minute or so. I don't think its going to work.
Also the Soviet explosive bolts leave much to be desired. You would look pretty silly with half your hatch blown off.
I think its great that mundane repairs are being done on a real, fair dinkum space station, and there is nothing interesting to say about it.
Dear troll, it depends on whether you are on the light side or dark side. You'd be losing your heat via your body's radiation.
From NASA article Staying Cool on the ISS:
Without thermal controls, the temperature of the orbiting Space Station's Sun-facing side would soar to 250 degrees F (121 C), while thermometers on the dark side would plunge to minus 250 degrees F (-157 C). There might be a comfortable spot somewhere in the middle of the Station, but searching for it wouldn't be much fun!
Oh come off it GP is not trolling. Temperature is always a matter of perspective, even in the room where I am now. If your spacecraft decompressed you would feel cold because of adiabatic expansion. Stand or float in the sun and you will feel warm, but radiation would still be cooling you.
I was thinking of The Terminal Man. Which is in charge? The brain or the arm?
Seriously? You live somewhere where the neighbor's power and gas lines go through YOUR yard? Do you not attach to them along a power/gas right-of-way, perhaps in an adjacent alley?
This happens ALL THE DAMNED TIME when a house gets split off from another property, especially when one is set back further from the road.
Yeah. One of my two sewer lines goes under the next door neighbors house. Its going to be dug up at some point and it will make a terrible mess of their back yard.