There is a pretty common scam going around where you send out thousands of small, reasonable sounding invoices. A small number of accounting departments pay the bill without question. This sounds similar to that.
Back in the old days (like the 1970's or so) you could put an antenna on top of your TV. It was a pretty crappy alternative to wiring in a proper antenna. Typically it had a plastic plate with two telescopic antennas, one pointing left and the other to the right. The antennas could be moved around to get the best signal and a common form of popular entertainment at the time was arguing about the best position for the "ears".
I think it was in his book Terminal Man that Michael Crichton described a project to build an automated ping pong playing machine. They idea is that the machine detects the incoming ball and uses a bat to deflect it back to where it came from. The people being paid to build the system had some suspicions that the real goal had nothing to do with playing table tennis.
This whole debate seems to be why should I have to use a supertanker when I only need a sea kayak?. If course we still need both, just not in the same quantities.
I am betting that most of the money in the world is stored in relational databases. I can't see that changing soon, but I don't use Oracle for my address book either.
Relax! A pedometer is simply a device used to measure the height of children. It typically consists of a vertical markable surface like a doorframe or wall, a pencil, and a tape measure.
I got a screen capture but I almost missed it because I was thinking about the epoch in the scene on my background image. That is Apollo 17, Station 6 at about 91918279.
Depends upon how smart they are. If they're smart enough to move about in society and take care of themselves, then I guess that you have to let them go.
Don't assume the bad guy movie scenario if you don't have to.
Possibly but then the individual you create would be the only member of their species, at least initially. It seems unlikely that the H. Sapiens population would want to allow Neanderthals to breed and develop their own population so they would experience discrimination and (possibly) violent attack.
Neanderthals are likely to be different from us in some ways. Consider the differences in temperament which create social problems within our own species.
I think it would be irresponsible to recreate Neanderthals without some idea of where they are going to fit in.
we currently have no especially good way of ridding ourselves of orbital debris.
Gravity? Granted its slow, but it works. Everything in orbit now will be gone in, ooh, a century or so.
No. Everything low enough to exprience atmospheric drag will be gone in a century. Anything above 1000km will last thousands of years in orbit. Objects in geosynchronous orbit will last indefinitely because they can slide into valleys in the Earths gravitational field and stay there. Arthur C Clarke liked to point out that one of these places is right above Sri Lanka.
Iridium Satellite should file a claim against the Russians.
Typically, when it comes to right of way, the less maneuverable vehicle has the right of way (for example, a balloon has the right of way over a glider, which has the right of way over an airship, which has the right of way over an airplane. Similar rules apply to seaborne vessels.) Taking at face value the summary's statement that the Russian satellite was non-functional, it was clearly the duty of the operators of the Iridium satellite to take action. If you want to talk claims/liability, I'd say that the Iridium folks are on the hook for huge damages--through negligence they've created a massive hazard to navigation that will be a problem for... what, centuries?
Okay so if a Russian satellite falls from the sky on to my car, I am at fault because I could have moved out of the way?
Thinking about ways to do a cleanup. My thought is to launch something which will physically soak up small particles then deorbit due to radiation pressure. Another way would be to deliberately saturate the cluttered orbits with junk in a retrograde orbit so that momentum cancels out and the results of collisions fall into the atmosphere.
LEMs pulled out of a museum and hacked up into Titan landers
No Baxter used the Apollo CM for that. I made the suggestion because I believe a manned mission to Titan is about as difficult now as the Apollo landings were in 1960. It is a nice, hard goal to set.
You are overlooking some rather glaring exceptions. The abundant life around deep-ocean volcanic vents, for example, that derive their energy from external heat and sulfur compounds.
Yes there are organisms on Earth which live in environments similar to a few places on Europa, Titan, etc. But I am not convinced that those organisms would exist without the rest of our biosphere. They are our outposts but I don't think they can be self contained for ever.
Stephen Baxter's novel Titan ends in the far future where the sun has expanded and destroyed the earth. Titan has thawed out and has its own life. It is a good read though much of it is quite depressing due to Baxters negative views of humanity.
Second, a dream. If ever there was a time to send a large human crew on a career-length mission (maybe 30 - 40 years), this would be the one.
I agree. Sometimes it is easier to justify the harder projects with ultimately better outcomes. JFK pulled it off with Apollo. I wonder if Obama will see an opportunity to extend US influence to the outer planets.
Slashdot Mirror
...may exist on Earth but we won't be able to look for it until we define it.
Sounds pretty clear to me. Maybe rocks are intelligent. How would we know? Has anybody thought to ask?
There is a pretty common scam going around where you send out thousands of small, reasonable sounding invoices. A small number of accounting departments pay the bill without question. This sounds similar to that.
Back in the old days (like the 1970's or so) you could put an antenna on top of your TV. It was a pretty crappy alternative to wiring in a proper antenna. Typically it had a plastic plate with two telescopic antennas, one pointing left and the other to the right. The antennas could be moved around to get the best signal and a common form of popular entertainment at the time was arguing about the best position for the "ears".
I think it was in his book Terminal Man that Michael Crichton described a project to build an automated ping pong playing machine. They idea is that the machine detects the incoming ball and uses a bat to deflect it back to where it came from. The people being paid to build the system had some suspicions that the real goal had nothing to do with playing table tennis.
So you fire radar guided bullets.
They're going to get a visit from the chair throwing monkey...
I love the smell of vinyl chair upholstery in the morning.
This whole debate seems to be why should I have to use a supertanker when I only need a sea kayak?. If course we still need both, just not in the same quantities.
I am betting that most of the money in the world is stored in relational databases. I can't see that changing soon, but I don't use Oracle for my address book either.
Won't somebody think of the children?
Relax! A pedometer is simply a device used to measure the height of children. It typically consists of a vertical markable surface like a doorframe or wall, a pencil, and a tape measure.
you earned your "whooosh"
As did you.
I got a screen capture but I almost missed it because I was thinking about the epoch in the scene on my background image. That is Apollo 17, Station 6 at about 91918279.
Depends upon how smart they are. If they're smart enough to move about in society and take care of themselves, then I guess that you have to let them go.
Don't assume the bad guy movie scenario if you don't have to.
Possibly but then the individual you create would be the only member of their species, at least initially. It seems unlikely that the H. Sapiens population would want to allow Neanderthals to breed and develop their own population so they would experience discrimination and (possibly) violent attack.
Neanderthals are likely to be different from us in some ways. Consider the differences in temperament which create social problems within our own species.
I think it would be irresponsible to recreate Neanderthals without some idea of where they are going to fit in.
What would you do? Keep them in a lab? How would you justify that?
Wonder where the stories about trolls come from?
Here?
We already have one of those.
we currently have no especially good way of ridding ourselves of orbital debris.
Gravity? Granted its slow, but it works. Everything in orbit now will be gone in, ooh, a century or so.
No. Everything low enough to exprience atmospheric drag will be gone in a century. Anything above 1000km will last thousands of years in orbit. Objects in geosynchronous orbit will last indefinitely because they can slide into valleys in the Earths gravitational field and stay there. Arthur C Clarke liked to point out that one of these places is right above Sri Lanka.
How about the progress freighter which hit Mir because it had the incorrect mass information loaded?
Typically, when it comes to right of way, the less maneuverable vehicle has the right of way (for example, a balloon has the right of way over a glider, which has the right of way over an airship, which has the right of way over an airplane. Similar rules apply to seaborne vessels.) Taking at face value the summary's statement that the Russian satellite was non-functional, it was clearly the duty of the operators of the Iridium satellite to take action. If you want to talk claims/liability, I'd say that the Iridium folks are on the hook for huge damages--through negligence they've created a massive hazard to navigation that will be a problem for... what, centuries?
Okay so if a Russian satellite falls from the sky on to my car, I am at fault because I could have moved out of the way?
Thinking about ways to do a cleanup. My thought is to launch something which will physically soak up small particles then deorbit due to radiation pressure. Another way would be to deliberately saturate the cluttered orbits with junk in a retrograde orbit so that momentum cancels out and the results of collisions fall into the atmosphere.
LEMs pulled out of a museum and hacked up into Titan landers
No Baxter used the Apollo CM for that. I made the suggestion because I believe a manned mission to Titan is about as difficult now as the Apollo landings were in 1960. It is a nice, hard goal to set.
You are overlooking some rather glaring exceptions. The abundant life around deep-ocean volcanic vents, for example, that derive their energy from external heat and sulfur compounds.
Yes there are organisms on Earth which live in environments similar to a few places on Europa, Titan, etc. But I am not convinced that those organisms would exist without the rest of our biosphere. They are our outposts but I don't think they can be self contained for ever.
I clicked the link to install Silverlight (firefox, ubuntu, i386) and got sent to Moonlight.
Stephen Baxter's novel Titan ends in the far future where the sun has expanded and destroyed the earth. Titan has thawed out and has its own life. It is a good read though much of it is quite depressing due to Baxters negative views of humanity.
Second, a dream. If ever there was a time to send a large human crew on a career-length mission (maybe 30 - 40 years), this would be the one.
I agree. Sometimes it is easier to justify the harder projects with ultimately better outcomes. JFK pulled it off with Apollo. I wonder if Obama will see an opportunity to extend US influence to the outer planets.
Great book. If you get a chance to see the movie do yourself a favour and forget it. Its horrible.
Biological testing for the returning crew would be more involved than was used for apollo, I think.
You know, it's that rather narrow view of life that has me convinced that we're not going to know we've discovered life until it declares war on us.
We can't look for the answer until we know the question. (apologies to DNA).
In the book version, we send the thing to Titan.
Japetus
Then when Stanley Kubrick does the movie, send it to Europa!
Io.