Actually, I'm kind of curious how they were able to revive the yeast. That feat alone makes the article interesting. The beer is just a good finish to a hard day's work at the lab.
The comment in the article about the yeast possibly evolving to metabolize a greater range of carbohydrates reminded me of the E-coli evolution experiment that recently garnered renewed attention when a major evolutionary change occured after about 30,000 generations.
This is getting complicated. Before Pluto got demoted our 3rd graders only had to remember earth plus 8 stereotypical Roman gods. Now we've got Hawaiin fertility goddesses, Pacific islander super-deities, Eskimo ice-queens, and TV warrior princesses. Curse they IAU! When will the insanity stop?
Obviously something has to be done. Our preconceived notions about the solar system are collapsing around us. There is only one logical response:
It'll have to go.
Blow everything up except the sun, the original nine planets, and their moons...except Phobos. Blow Phobos up, as well. Too many demon invasions from that place. We'll join the ranks of the people of Krikkit as a civillization that defined its own universe, and our third graders can go back to embarrassing educated adults on television. Do it for the children.
Skylab actually spent several years in development and was intended to be used for a fairly long term. It was to be kept up by reboosts from the Apollo spacecraft that visited it, so it was possible to keep it in orbit. In fact, NASA was considering using the cancelled fourth manned visit to the station to primarily boost it high enough that it would stay in orbit until the shuttle's planned entry into service in 1979 (which ended up being two years late). However, the limitations of the station, compared to the capabilities of the shuttle (especially with a spacehab module in the payload bay), damage sustained during its launch, and the need for on-orbit maintenance led to those plans being cancelled.
Initial design work on Skylab began in 1966, 7 years before it was launched, as part of the Apollo Applications Program. The original plan was to use the second stage of a Saturn-1B rocket, which was actually the same as the third stage of the Saturn V. Because of the smaller capacity of the Saturn 1B, it would be a fully fueled stage with access points added so the first crew could enter the empty stage in orbit and convert the interior, which only had minimal gear at the time of launch. This was called the "wet lab" configuration.
The limitations and complexity of that approach led to a switch to the Saturn V, launching its converted third stage dry and much more fully outfitted (which they could now afford to do since it was full of cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen), including a large docking module at one end, plus all the necessary life-support gear. A large optical telescope was also attached. Three manned missions ultimately were conducted on board Skylab.
The Chinese should be able to similarly reboost this mini space station and replenish consumables each time they visit. However, this will be a very small station. The total interior volume of four Shenzhou orbital modules is barely more than 10% of the interior volume of Skylab and about 1/3 the size of the Soviet Salyut stations. It will also have limited amounts of consumables and power. It won't afford them a lot of versatility.
As far as relativity being considered an ad hoc hypothesis, I'd not heard that, although I do know it took a number of years before it was accepted by the physics community.
Actually, I think I was a little premature in considering relativity ad hoc because it reasonably replaced the existing theory rather than pushing an assumption to save the theory. Aether was the standard model because every scientist knew and could prove in their garage that light behaved like a wave, and the nature of a wave suggests it needs a medium in which it oscillates. Michelson and Morley accidentally blew that theory out of the water (followed by separate experiments showing wave/particle duality). Lorentz and Poincare came up with a completely ad hoc (and wrong) hypothesis about aether. However, Einstein found that the math Lorentz developed was almost dead on, but his reasoning for it was wrong. There was still a degree of ad hoc, because he was still trying to explain the idea that the speed of light was a constant, but that had been repeatedly upheld in terrestrial experiments.
The wikipedia article on Ad Hoc actually lists Einstein's cosmological constant as being ad hoc because he added it in merely on the assumption the universe was static. It turns out the cosmological constant works in the context of dark energy (which is not the same effect as dark matter), but for different reasons.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not scientific, but I'm not sure its big news. He looked at the theory that dinosaurs evolved a direct superiority over crurotarsi, examined the one of the bases for it (physiological diversity as evidenced by fossils) and found it didn't fit the theory.
What's the next step in the scientific method? Reformulate the hypothesis. So what are the facts? Approximately 30 million years of co-existance before one group died out and another survived at the Triassic/Jurassic boundry. If it wasn't simply the rise of the dinosaurs (which is not disproven as the cause, it's simply lost one bit of support), what else could have caused that?
We know that in several instances planet-wide events have caused major extinctions. Fairly frequently even, as the wooly mammoths disappeared a mere 10,000 years ago. As it just so happens, there was a major extinction at the Triassic/Jurassic boundry. About half of all marine species existing at the time disappeared, in addition to nearly all of the crurotarsans and a few dinosaurs. It was basically as bad as the K-T extinction we all know is characterized by the disappearance of dinosaurs.
The cause is currently still unknown, but it's thought that the breakup of the Pangea supercontinent and associated volcanic activity is the most likely cause. An asteroid impact like the K-T extinction is currently not favored due to the lack of evidence like an appropriately aged crater.
So this extinction is already known not be limited to crurotarsans, and in fact was worse in the oceans than on land. My understanding is that is typical of climate-based extinctions like the PETM event. I think then that Dr. Brusatte is offering his physiological diversity theory as one more piece of evidence in support of an existing alternative theory, rather than some brilliant entirely new theory as reuters seems to suggest.
Still, this definitely suggests the dinosaurs had some sort of advantage over the Crurotarsans, which had common evolutionary ancestors from the earlier geological period. It may have been direct, like better agility (a factor not necessarily indicated by simply comparing diversity), or indirect like warm-blood helping them adapt to a changing climate better.
In short, this doesn't sound unscientific at all. It's more likely a poorly written article compounded with us the readers having trouble jiving it with all the things we learned about dinosaurs in grade school. On that note, I'm pretty sure half the pictures I remember seeing in grade school of early triassic "dinosaurs" were actually these guys.
And ad hoc hypotheses are not illegitimate. Dark matter is properly considered an ad hoc hypothesis, as was relativity, for that matter.
The real reason isn't as much the hazard as it is because it can be stored safely on earth for a lot less money than it would take to launch it all into space (and besides, the fact that it is still radioactive means it is potentially useful in the future if we start to run out of fresh fuel).
Uranium, by the way, is almost a non-hazard radiologically. It has a half-life of 700 million years, a block of it will barely tickle a geiger counter, and it decays via alpha emission, which is blocked by a sheet of paper or your outer layer of skin. You'd basically have to ingest it to come to harm, but chemical toxicity would kill you before the radioactivity did.
However, after fissioning, it is no longer uranium. It's a bunch of more hazardous things like strontium-90, cessium-137, or iodine-131 (plus the remaining unfissioned uranium). Some of these have half-lifes measured in days and decay more energetically. Some have half-lives of thousands of years which is definitely less hazardous, but still enough that it needs to be dealt with, especially when you have tons of it.
The reactor will be full of "clean" uranium at launch and only represent a very minor risk. It will only be powered on and generating the really hazardous fission products after landing on the moon.
Furthermore, NASA is talking about a tiny handfull of launches each with perhaps 50 to 100 kg of uranium. This is in comparison to the thousands of tons of spent fuel we currently have to dispose of from power production. It's more practical to build a re-entry-proof shell for a small amount, and the risk compounds with the number of launches you would need for commercial disposal.
You can cool the core with anything. Various schemes used both on earth and in space in the past have used water, helium, liquid sodium, liquid lead, etc. Also helium is already commonly used inside Stirling cycle engines as the working fluid for the generator. Organic rankine cycles actually use a refrigerent as the working fluid. The Russian Alfa class submarines used lead to cool the core and heat water for its turbine. It had to be kept hot and circulating at all times or it would solidify in the pipes. Over half of the submarines were "totaled" when for one reason or another they had to shut down.
For those that are interested, the Russians developed a lightweight fission reactor back in the 60's to power their Radar Ocean Reconnaissance satellite (RORSats) that they used to spy on our aircraft carriers. This was the type of satellite that caused a fluff back in the 70's when Kosmos-954 failed to boost to its disposal orbit and re-entered over Canada.
The reactor only weighed 130 kg and it generated 100 kW of thermal energy, but because it used low efficiency thermocouples to turn heat directly into electricity, it only generated 3 kW electrical. It was sodium cooled. This NASA reactor will use a thermodynamic cycle to spin a generator, and probably have an efficiency between 10 and 20%, so the core doesn't need to be much larger than the Russian version. I'm guessing it will probably be liquid metal cooled with a heat exchanger to expand helium for the generator.
And just to be clear, you can use water in a space reactor if you want. You just have to design for corrosion and used a closed loop so the water re-circulates.
Don't get me wrong, I have great hopes for SpaceX with COTS and commercial opportunities and am quite impressed with their efforts and plans, but you're defining a modicum of success as three failed launches of a rocket that's just barely big enough to get one astronaut in a spacesuit into orbit (but not back again), and then ranking that history above an organization that has conducted 145 successful manned missions involving over 850 crewmen, and plus I don't know how many unmanned missions.
Ares is not perfect. There is a lot of fair criticism that has been directed at the system. At the same time, however, it is better suited to NASA's plans than the Shuttle, which despite itself being often and fairly (and just as often unfairly) criticized has launched more people into space than every other manned system in the world combined. However, the shuttle was a jack of all trades (in LEO that is) and a master of none.
I apologize for that digression. Back to why Ares (or perhaps Direct, but that's unlikely due to politics and differing capabilities) is what NASA wants for it's current plans. NASA has a stated and congressionally-supported goal to create a transportation system capable of returning to the moon and, if desired, going onward to Mars.
SpaceX is very much an unproven operator. NASA is not willing to bank the success of Constellation on that when they have the know-how, technology, and foundational infrastructure to succeed with near certainty. This is not saying NASA isn't interested in SpaceX or that SpaceX isn't cheaper. They very much are, which is why NASA contracted them for under COTS. That alone is almost completely maxing out SpaceX's resources at the present moment. I doubt even Musk himself thinks they could realistically create a system equivalent to Ares 1/Orion by 2015. Yes, SpaceX could potentially save money, but they have a much greater risk of failing, in which case all the money spent on them is wasted. Some would argue that they just need the appropriate resources to succeed. That is delusional. At best, throwing money blindly at them would just lead to another Boeing, Lockheed, or ATK. They would probably succeed, but be no better than what we have currently.
To be clear, the Falcon 9 is not capable of lifting the Orion capsule and the Dragon does not have the operational capabilities to replace the Orion. Orion has more delta-V, more life support capability, more interior volume, higher fault-tolerance, a much higher re-entry capability, and the ability to dock itself with the ISS as well as reside there for extended durations as a lifeboat.
It can be pointed out that the Falcon 9 Heavy has about the same lift capability as the Ares 1. This is true, but it's a further development from an unproven rocket whereas the Ares will use shuttle-derived technology and benefit from NASA's technical experience. Furthermore, Ares 1 will develop many of the components used by the Ares V, which is a rocket nothing in SpaceX's current or proposed plans can come close to, and a key to NASA's plans to returning to the moon.
Of course, others also criticise the whole goal of going to the moon in the first place, but that's another discussion. Suffice to say, the nation is fed up with stagnation in space.
By the way, NASA has economists, accountants, etc. That wasn't why we ended up with the shuttle we have. Besides, economics is an arguably less precise endeavor than engineering.
Ok, I am sick and tired of people saying the US attacked Iraq without provocation. I am not happy with the sum of justifications that were presented in the decision to invade Iraq, but it goes beyond hyperbole to outright falsehood to say it was without provocation, nor was it even merely predicated on the existance of WMD's. Unfortunately, we as a society have such a short memory (and were so single-minded at the time) that we forgot that.
The Iraq War Resolution, the act of Congress that gave Bush the discretionary authority to invade Iraq, cited approximately 20 factors. High among them and comprising several separate factors was not direct evidence of WMD's, but non-compliance of the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, including access for weapons inspectors. Hussein flip-flopping on inspector access was a weekly news topic in 2002. Other forms of non-compliance included violation of the agreed-upon no-fly zones, refusal to return material stolen from Kuwait in 1990, and firing on coalition aircraft. In addition to that, there was the 1993 assassination attempt against Bush Sr, past use of chemical weapons both against the Iranians and the Kurds, Iraqi support of Hamas, the fact that Iraq was a dictatorship (remember those people cheering in the streets in 2003? They may not like us, but they hated Sadaam more), and Congress'es and Clinton's 1998 resolution that made regime change an official US policy.
That may have not been morally sufficient to justify toppling the existing government, especially in the retrospect of the sectarian storm that resulted and was even predicted by some generals, but it is most definitely some level of provocation.
Nor is the US presence a simple occupation. It has been directed all along at setting up a democratic government, which you will note, is increasingly taking over responsibility for the administration of the country. Lest you claim is merely a puppet government, they have been asserting its own interests sometimes in opposition to those of the US increasingly over the last couple of years. For those that think it was a cover for oil control, note that the democratic government has approved oil contracts with China. I see little to no evidence that Russia is actually interested in Ossetian self-determination, especially since they have claimed several times the Ossetians are Russian citizens, as opposed to independent.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be best for the US to take a non-interventionist approach to global politics, but the invasion of Iraq did not come out of the blue.
I was going to stop there, but you got me going. Russia doesn't like the fact that Georgia is independent and can make its own economic deals with the western world, such as building the oil pipeline that runs from the Caspian through Turkey and Georgia to Europe. Russia no longer completely dominates oil trade in the region, but trading through the new pipeline in Georgia is partially dependent on the involved parties being confident the pipeline is a reliable route (ie, there aren't Ossetian separatists shelling around it in violation of their cease-fire with the Georgian government).
It gets all the more interesting when you note that the new Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, hand-picked by Putin, was the chairman of Gazprom as his last job. Gazprom is the state-owned energy company that has an effective monopoly on gas and oil in Russia, and sells eastern Europe most of its supply of supply of gas and oil. Independent oil trade through Georgia directly cuts into Gazprom's business. Anybody who gets ruffled by Cheney's former role of CEO at Halliburton should be doubly interested in Medvedev's ties to Gazprom.
Russia further doesn't like former Soviet-bloc nations having close ties, even being offered membership to NATO. When there's a military larger than the Moscow police behind a former satellite, it means Russi
I will have to wait to look at actual histograms until I get home from work, but it sounds to me like you don't understand image histograms. The blue and green channels can be biased towards the dark end either because someone darkened those channels (which typically results in identifiable artifacts in those channels...spikes or gaps in the histogram), or because there's simply not a lot in the image that is bright in those channels. This is the reason why NASA has the color calibration targets. It's sort of like the white balance cards that pro-photographers often use here on earth.
Anybody with GIMP or Photoshop and an ordinary digital camera can verify this by shooting scenes dominated by one color or another. Alternately, you can find examples on the web (note that even in the correct version, the red channel is much brighter because the target contains more red).
Of course, if you wanted to get serious about it, you could actually get a telescope and look at Mars. Or better yet, you can learn why Mars is red and understand that this is nothing absurd or unprecedented.
Just for the record, that is a diagram of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), not the Large Hadron Collider.
However, the ITER is being perhaps as impressively documented, and a lot of that is also online. Keep in mind that the ITER design is not complete, but the overall architecture shouldn't change much. In addition to a huge amount of data on the operating theory and conditions, if you dig around through the site, you can even find animations of the mechanical parts (which are primarily for maintenance) in action.
Their rocket development program is almost that elementary compared to their stated goals.
The Safir rocket is an adaptation of their Shahab-3 missile. This is a medium range ballistic missile and one of several they claimed to have test-launched en masse last month, giving Stephen Colbert an easy 10 minutes of fill material after it was found out the photos of the launch were doctored. It seems their Shahab inventory, at least flight-ready Shahab's, is not as large as they want outsiders to believe.
The Shahab itself is based on the North Korean Nodong missile, which in turn was developed from second-hand Scud missiles acquired from Egypt. Going back even further, the Scud originated in the 50's in the Soviet Union as a scaled down, improved version of the German V-2. Whew! Talk about a long lineage.
For the launch vehicle derivative, it apparently has been fitted with a different second stage, possibly derived from Soviet SA-2 surface to air missiles, and probably a small third stage with a payload fairing for the orbital version. Payload would likely be very small...the Shahab-3 only carries a 1 ton warhead on a sub-orbital trajectory. The launch weight is less than SpaceX's Falcon-1, which has a 700kg LEO capability and presumably a higher-performance engine.
Despite not having a large technical infrastructure, Iran is not entirely devoid of reasonably competent engineers. Given enough resolve and a couple more tries, they will probably succeed. It at least appears theoretically possible for that rocket to reach orbit.
However, that is still a very, very long ways from putting a man in space, even counting on existing technologies. Such a rocket will not scale well at all, meaning they will need to develop something completely new from the ground up...because North Korea isn't going to be able to supply them with a Soyuz to copy. China, for example, launched their first satellite in 1970, but it wasn't 2003 that they actually put a person in orbit. That was after drawing on Soviet experience and 3-4 generations of their own ballistic mis...err, I mean expendable launch vehicles.
Like many of their past claims, there's little reason to expect Iran to be able to follow through on the man in space claim for the foreseeable future.
In addition to what others have said about the plug-in's mere existance highlighting the problems with IE (which has long been a form of cheap publicity for Firefox), it increases the number of browsers that render HTML/CSS in a compliant manner, assuming any IE users actually utilize the plugin. Believe it or not, however, there are people who actually try both and choose IE anyways for various reasons, suggesting they're not above downloading extras to improve the user experience.
This means developers have one less reason to write non-compliant code, which in turn reduces the number of sites that render poorly in more strictly compliant browsers like Firefox, and therefore, in the long run, fewer users have bad experiences with IE-specific pages, so they have one less reason not to use Firefox.
Yeah, that's convoluted, but I can hardly see them bothering to do this without some degree of incentive.
I don't know why so often we get articles linked to sources completely unrelated to the topic at hand. I understand and appreciate PCMag having articles unrelated to PC's occassionally for the edification of their readers, but there's no reason not to get a topical source for sharing on Slashdot. Space.com and spaceref.com are great news sites for lay-persons, and one thing NASA is generally outstanding about is having detailed, up-to-date, and accurate mission websites.
/rant
Anyways, I think calling this a picture affects readers' expectations. The atomic force microscope is a coordinate mapping tool rather than a camera. It uses tiny probes to sense the surface profile of a target and create elevation maps based on that data. It's more of a three-dimensional graph than a picture and it doesn't use light, but it can reveal much finer details than an optical microscope can.
Here's a similar image to that linked in the summary overlayed with an optical microscope picture of the same area. Note that the optical microscope image is about 3 mm across, of a target of micromachined silicon that has a bunch of tiny pits, posts, and bumps intended to hold dust particles of different types. The atomic force microscope image is 100 times the resolution of the optical image.
Actually, even the optical microscope on Phoenix is far higher resolution than any camera previously flown to another world, but the AFM takes the capability two steps further. Between the two, the Phoenix team is learning a lot about the soil on Mars that should allow them to deduce not only its bulk properties, but even hints about how it formed.
By the way, the Mars Rovers have "microscopic imagers," but these are really more like close-focus cameras than true microscopes. Offhand I can't think of any other robotic space missions that carried microscopes.
When newegg ran me through this about a year ago, I didn't see any options other than opting in (and I did look briefly)...I guess I should have done some more research on this Verified by Visa setup.
Now that I'm in, is it possible to get out? Or is Newegg able to require me to use it for Visa purchases?
You know, I totally agree with you on price, but at the same time it's funny (in a good way) how much more accessible video entertainment is.
I was talking about it with my dad, who told me the little 19" RCA TV I grew up watching that could only take RF inputs, tune 20 channels, occasionally got confused about tracking, and went fuzzy every time the microwave was turned on cost $400 in the early 80's (accounting for inflation, that's like $700-800 now). The VCR he got to go with it cost about the same, and he spent $5 per blank cassette for recording broadcasts (and we definitely had more of those than legitimate programs...don't tell the MPAA).
A 19" CRT and a basic DVD player would be less than $200 now. He spent, in modern dollar equivalent, almost 10 times that much.
And of course, in 1970 he was probably pretty happy watching broadcast-only on the 13" B&W JcPenny TV that's still in the attic and still worked last time I tried it. It was so compact and light you could carry it with one hand!
Yes, the events are synchronized. Main engine cut-off occurs 1.5 seconds before the stage separation pyros fire.
When engine cut-off occurs, valves close to shut off fuel from the pumps. However, there is still fuel left in the lines that finishes burning resulting in a little residual thrust. In their previous test flight, this finished within that 1.5 seconds. However, this launch used a new engine design.
The previous engine design was ablatively cooled. This means the engine nozzle is kept from melting by small amounts of material continuously burning off and carrying heat away. It's pretty analogous to sweating. The newer Merlin 1C is regeneratively cooled, which increases the performance and efficiency of the engine by running the cold fuel through small pipes that surround the engine nozzle for cooling.
These cooling channels means there's more volume of fuel left in the system at cut-off, and the burn ends up being slightly longer. Musk has stated that this didn't show up as a problem on the test stand because of the pressure difference at sea level versus the near vaccuum where staging occured. 14.7 psi across a half-meter or so rocket nozzle amounts to a few thousand pounds of thrust. However, if you watch the test videos they've published, there's noticeably more flame after cutoff in the regenerative version, so I'm frankly kind of surprised they didn't increase their timing margin.
The end result was that the 1st stage bumped back into the 2nd stage after separation, and then got toasted by and deflected flame back at the 2nd stage, apparently seriously damaging it.
I have to nitpick one of Musk's other statements. He claimed that the performance of the first stage was picture perfect. However, while the engine appeared to perform great, it seems the avionics could have done at least slightly better. The video shows a back and forth rolling motion that is probably due to the torque created as the fuel swirls through those cooling channels. Ideally the control system would have been able to account for that smoothly.
This is why when Iran made bogus claims about its missile capabilities that were proven to be not merely false but literally a laughable photoshop job before the day was even over, despite the fact that Israel had shifted into the most diplomatic posture it has held in the past decade as domestic political confusion and the Olmert scandal over-rode almost all the rhetoric about potential attacks on Iran, attacks which didn't occur even when more direct threats were made by Iran with a harder-line PM at the helm of Israel, fears of new turmoil in the Middle east drove oil prices up $20 in a week.
Yep. Speculators are clearly rational. And BS is purple and smells like rainbow sherbert.
Actually, some speculators are rational. Those are generally the same ones who manage their capital on a long term basis and know that if a drop or even a leveling out of the value of their investments is expected in the future, the time to dump that investment and put the money in something else that will show further growth instead of stagnation or decline is ASAP. All-the-more so when inventories are growing because prices have clearly begun affecting demand.
Actually, the republicans aren't really whining like 4 year olds. They're milking it for easy, free press. I honestly don't believe they care about the particular issue that much, but a lot of their supporters do, and throwing in the "us against them" rhetoric helps solidify the "working for the common people claims" even better.
At the same time, however, fully half of congress voted to go sailing because actually doing their job would mean making decisions that are guaranteed to piss off some fraction of their constituency no matter which way they vote. They wussed out.
Dang I wish I could do that.
"Hey boss, this project isn't going so well. I'm undecided between x and y because I think both have some potential to cause the project to fail, so instead of analyzing the situation and making an informed decision like I was hired to do, I'm going to go on vacation for a month and hopefully the VP will forget about it by then and we can go back to rewording old project updates to make it sound like we're getting new work done."
I think I'm one of roughly seven Americans who doesn't have a strong opinion on the drilling issue, but regardless, it bothers me that one side is shirking responsibility on a vote their bosses (the other 299,999,993 Americans) feel is important one way or the other, and the other side only cares about the opportunity to make their club look good.
It takes me back to the good ol' days of 2006. Congress spend so much time arguing about war-spending and sneaking in or deleting riders and pork-barrels that they completely failed to vote on over half of the appropriations bills, meaning most of the actual executive departments of the federal government spent months unsure of their funding, then got stuck with the same budgets as the previous year, whether appropriate or not.
Oh well. At least Ted Kennedy will have some more free time to enjoy his mansion on Nantucket Sound before those evil energy companies almost, sort-of, minorly affect the view with a row of neatly spaced, subtly colored wind turbines that jut glaringly almost half a degree into the skyline on perfectly clear days. Not to mention, Ted Stevens better get headed back to Alaska. Somebody needs to get started on building a series of tubes to nowhere.
Overall, we're not surprised. Scientists have been pretty sure there was subsurface ice there for several years based on ground-penetrating radar on one of the orbiters. Confirming this was a major goal of Phoenix. There weren't a lot of other good explanations for all that hydrogen detected by radar, but that still wasn't considered proof. Nor even were the images of the bright, ice-like material uncovered earlier in the Phoenix mission. Also, we already knew for quite a while about water vapor on Mars, but the next question was about large quantities of surface water.
The Phoenix team was a little surprised by exactly how it occurred, however. Because ice sublimates on Mars once exposed, they had to get the sample into the TEGA oven relatively quickly. It ended up being even stickier than previous samples (possibly due to melting of the ice by friction from the rasp) and didn't fall properly from the scoop into the oven. By the time the results were received, analyzed, and a conclusion reached, they considered the sample already spoiled, but because some likely made it into the oven, the oven was also "contaminated," which affects the accuracy of measuring relative abundance. So they managed to dump the "ruined" sample into the oven to compare it to the last "ruined" sample, but found there was water in it anyways. Unfortunately, because of the sublimation, this still doesn't give them the relative abundance. It also, as far as I know, was only inferred so far by calorimetry. In the next day or two, they should get spectroscopy results back, which will be even better verification.
Because of all this, they're going to spend some more time practicing and polishing their delivery method so they can get a truly fresh sample into the ovens. They've got 6 empty ovens left, although there might be a problem with the doors on some or all of them.
You'll just have to be on the back-end of the adoption curve, assuming widespread use of plugins is really the direction the market moves.
It's not unreasonable to consider installing curbside chargers that take a credit card, but obviously the earliest adopters are going to be dependent on their own chargers.
On the positive side, you urban-dwellers hypothetically already have reduced driving needs and better access to alternate means of transportation.
Supply from the grid is still an issue though. I think having chargers that go beyond simply timing their recharge to be off-cycle with typical peak-demand times will be necessary. It shouldn't be too complicated to do: An internet connection on the charger so it can poll a server run by the power company. The server monitors both supply (and what types of supply if they want to optimize for lowest-cost or cleanest sources) and demand and assigns power limits to the chargers based on marginal supply, time-in-queue, subscription level, etc.
Of course, there will be plenty who hack their chargers to ignore such instructions, but if it's factored into a contract specific to those using a smart-demand system like this, then that is a legal issue more than a technical one. Billing might also be complicated, with some users not wanting to wait for priority, while others would be happy to in exchange for lower rates.
You're correct that the distances are wildly different, but for some observation techniques that really doesn't matter much. The distance between the earth and the moon compared to the distance to the spacecraft is small enough to be just as negligible. There's no reason why something that works 30 million miles away shouldn't work 30 trillion miles away. The only real differences are the brightness and resolution (well...perhaps some of the spectrum may be reduced by the interstellar medium, but that's a pretty specific factor).
You can't resolve objects at the separation of the moon and earth from 30 trillion miles away, not even with the Hubble or Keck telescopes, and especially not with spectroscopes that can give you clues to what chemicals are present on those bodies. By studying star wobbles an astronomer might infer the presence and mass of a "planet," but that won't tell him if it's really a single planet or a planet-moon system. Look at the video and notice that as the moon crosses the earth, the total reflected light from the earth and moon would be decreased by the ratio of the area covered (about 7%) because the moon is blocking part of it. From that, the astronomer can infer not just the presence of the moon, but the relative sizes of the planet and moon.
Assuming the Space Interferometry Mission goes forward as planned, the astronomer might eventually be able to get a spectrum from the planet without being washed out by the parent star. By watching how the spectrum changes during such transits, they can figure out what elements and compounds (like water) are likely present on the planet, and what ones are present on the moon.
It may sound far out, but it's already being done with exoplanets and their stars, and transits of Pluto and it's moon are how we got a lot of our information so far about those two bodies.
Careful about generalizing there. They did not design and develop the B-52. They created an engineering proposal. It established the basic design and confirmed it was physically possible, but there was several more years worth of work for several hundred or perhaps thousands of engineers before the B-52 even flew, and there's been quite a bit more engineering work in the 50+ years since then to keep the B-52 up to date and in good shape.
Regarding the reply below about brain (or rocket) surgey being so easy even a caveman could do it, interestingly enough, they did. Ok, those aren't exactly cavemen, but the idea that brain surgery predates modern medicine by about 3000 years is pretty impressive.
Meanwhile, their brilliant project isn't expected to get anyone to the moon before, what, twenty years?
It depends on congressional funding. Current plans are between 2018 and 2020, but first operations of the rocket for ISS and LEO operations should be about 2015. NASA can't really get cracking on this until the shuttle retires in 2010, which will free up about $3 billion/year in funding...unless congres wants to dole out some extra right now.
How can anyone whose project is in the design stage, scoff at another that is in the conceptual stage?
Design is definitely a step ahead of concept. To be fair, calling it a napkin drawing was a press-briefing response, not the whole story. In fact, several engineers gave it a fairly detailed going over and pointed out some problems. The Direct team then addressed those problems and developed version 2. This is all after NASA already examined the basic architecture of Direct in their ESAS study and concluded two launches of the same vehicle was workable but less than ideal for a lunar mission, and required a vehicle that was overkill for ISS operations. However, some of the assumptions in that study didn't hold true, and Direct is maintaining that NASA needs to take a another look at it.
Neither of them EXIST yet! Where is Ares? Oh, it's in AUTOCAD! Well, that makes ALL the difference!
Much more in-depth analysis has been conducted on Ares I/V than on Direct's Jupiter proposal. Actually, since Direct uses an essentially unmodified shuttle SRB, they can reasonably contend that some of the hardware does exist. Meanwhile however, NASA is building test hardware for the Ares I, and they've begun detailed design on quite a few components, including the J-2X 2nd stage engine and 5-segment SRB. In some ways Direct is ahead, but as far as work that's been done, Ares is ahead.
My take on it is that Direct honestly has a pretty decent proposal. It is definitely feasible. NASA maintains that it doesn't mesh well with what they were directed to do under Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, which is intended to be scalable to Mars missions. NASA prefers the payload splits of the Ares I/V system for lunar missions, the theoretically higher safety of the Ares 1 for manned-launches, and the fewer flights needed for a Mars mission the giant Ares V would afford. Given the engineering issues they've encountered, however, I think it would be a good idea to give the "two-launch" architecture another look.
At the same time, some are maintaining that NASA is pursuing the Ares I/V as a means of protecting jobs in important congressional districts or for major contractors like ATK who will have $billions in contracts for Ares. Others accuse NASA administrator Mike Griffin of having delusions of granduer, wanting to be the engineer responsible for creating the largest rocket ever. I see no convincing arguments for buying into those accusations.
Well, don't forget the Serbs managed to shoot down an F-117 during the showdown with Milosovic, and that was using stuff that was probably equivalent to what the Iraqi's had.*
However, you're not quite correct to the best of my knowledge. Stealth doesn't make things invisible to radar...it makes them harder to see. There's a lot of factors involved, but generally they boil it down into a factor called radar cross section (RCS). This is the size of a typical reflector that would produce the same radar return as the plane in question. A B-52 has a radar cross section the size of...well...a B-52 (not quite actually, but we won't get that deep into it). The B-2, on the other hand, has been said to have a radar cross section of a sparrow. You reduce the radar cross section mainly in two ways: by absorbing the radio wave (materials) or by reflecting it a different direction than straight back (geometry). This means that the way the plane is facing is important, because they're not spheres. If you get an aileron facing flat at a radar, they'll probably see you.
Now remember radar return above. You need enough radar return for the receiver to detect it. As the RCS gets smaller, the return drops, so you need a stronger signal to reflect off it, and/or a more sensitive receiver. A shorter distance means a stronger signal, due to the inverse square law. What the story likely refers to is stealth aircraft passing close enough to British frigates to be detected despite being stealthy.**
* I believe the Air Force concluded the F-117 was shot down by one of several radar-guided missiles fired at it, being guided partially manually, with help from infrared tracking. The F-117 has features to reduce it's infrared signature, too, but I don't think the reduction is as significant in infrared as it is in radar. The Serbs may have gotten enough of a radar return that allowed them to point the missile and let it's infrared seeker lock-on. The F-117's probably also flew riskier routes than a non-stealth aircraft like the F-15E's would take. If it was close enough to the radar, it also might have been possible to shoot it down with a strictly radar-guided missile.
It seems the Serbian military paid attention to both the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi air defenses against the F-117 during Desert Storm, and to the thorough way in which the US focused on destorying those defenses early on, making air supremacy a given only hours after the first bombs fell on Baghdad. They were careful both to protect their radars and missile launchers and to employ alternate detection tools, especially the Mk 1 eyeball.
** The Russians claim they have a technique of finding stealth aircraft by looking for holes in expected radar returns (mountains, etc). That would take extra computer power and it seems to me it would only work effectively on low-altitude aircraft, so it might not be a significant blow to stealth technology. I've also heard some stuff about using two receivers to detect stealth aircraft, but there wasn't enough details to get an idea how it works and how effective it might be.
Slashdot Mirror
Finally! Science does something genuinely useful.
Actually, I'm kind of curious how they were able to revive the yeast. That feat alone makes the article interesting. The beer is just a good finish to a hard day's work at the lab.
The comment in the article about the yeast possibly evolving to metabolize a greater range of carbohydrates reminded me of the E-coli evolution experiment that recently garnered renewed attention when a major evolutionary change occured after about 30,000 generations.
This is getting complicated. Before Pluto got demoted our 3rd graders only had to remember earth plus 8 stereotypical Roman gods. Now we've got Hawaiin fertility goddesses, Pacific islander super-deities, Eskimo ice-queens, and TV warrior princesses. Curse they IAU! When will the insanity stop?
Obviously something has to be done. Our preconceived notions about the solar system are collapsing around us. There is only one logical response:
It'll have to go.
Blow everything up except the sun, the original nine planets, and their moons...except Phobos. Blow Phobos up, as well. Too many demon invasions from that place. We'll join the ranks of the people of Krikkit as a civillization that defined its own universe, and our third graders can go back to embarrassing educated adults on television. Do it for the children.
Skylab actually spent several years in development and was intended to be used for a fairly long term. It was to be kept up by reboosts from the Apollo spacecraft that visited it, so it was possible to keep it in orbit. In fact, NASA was considering using the cancelled fourth manned visit to the station to primarily boost it high enough that it would stay in orbit until the shuttle's planned entry into service in 1979 (which ended up being two years late). However, the limitations of the station, compared to the capabilities of the shuttle (especially with a spacehab module in the payload bay), damage sustained during its launch, and the need for on-orbit maintenance led to those plans being cancelled.
Initial design work on Skylab began in 1966, 7 years before it was launched, as part of the Apollo Applications Program. The original plan was to use the second stage of a Saturn-1B rocket, which was actually the same as the third stage of the Saturn V. Because of the smaller capacity of the Saturn 1B, it would be a fully fueled stage with access points added so the first crew could enter the empty stage in orbit and convert the interior, which only had minimal gear at the time of launch. This was called the "wet lab" configuration.
The limitations and complexity of that approach led to a switch to the Saturn V, launching its converted third stage dry and much more fully outfitted (which they could now afford to do since it was full of cryogenic hydrogen and oxygen), including a large docking module at one end, plus all the necessary life-support gear. A large optical telescope was also attached. Three manned missions ultimately were conducted on board Skylab.
The Chinese should be able to similarly reboost this mini space station and replenish consumables each time they visit. However, this will be a very small station. The total interior volume of four Shenzhou orbital modules is barely more than 10% of the interior volume of Skylab and about 1/3 the size of the Soviet Salyut stations. It will also have limited amounts of consumables and power. It won't afford them a lot of versatility.
Actually, I think I was a little premature in considering relativity ad hoc because it reasonably replaced the existing theory rather than pushing an assumption to save the theory. Aether was the standard model because every scientist knew and could prove in their garage that light behaved like a wave, and the nature of a wave suggests it needs a medium in which it oscillates. Michelson and Morley accidentally blew that theory out of the water (followed by separate experiments showing wave/particle duality). Lorentz and Poincare came up with a completely ad hoc (and wrong) hypothesis about aether. However, Einstein found that the math Lorentz developed was almost dead on, but his reasoning for it was wrong. There was still a degree of ad hoc, because he was still trying to explain the idea that the speed of light was a constant, but that had been repeatedly upheld in terrestrial experiments.
The wikipedia article on Ad Hoc actually lists Einstein's cosmological constant as being ad hoc because he added it in merely on the assumption the universe was static. It turns out the cosmological constant works in the context of dark energy (which is not the same effect as dark matter), but for different reasons.
I wouldn't go so far as to say it's not scientific, but I'm not sure its big news. He looked at the theory that dinosaurs evolved a direct superiority over crurotarsi, examined the one of the bases for it (physiological diversity as evidenced by fossils) and found it didn't fit the theory.
What's the next step in the scientific method? Reformulate the hypothesis. So what are the facts? Approximately 30 million years of co-existance before one group died out and another survived at the Triassic/Jurassic boundry. If it wasn't simply the rise of the dinosaurs (which is not disproven as the cause, it's simply lost one bit of support), what else could have caused that?
We know that in several instances planet-wide events have caused major extinctions. Fairly frequently even, as the wooly mammoths disappeared a mere 10,000 years ago. As it just so happens, there was a major extinction at the Triassic/Jurassic boundry. About half of all marine species existing at the time disappeared, in addition to nearly all of the crurotarsans and a few dinosaurs. It was basically as bad as the K-T extinction we all know is characterized by the disappearance of dinosaurs.
The cause is currently still unknown, but it's thought that the breakup of the Pangea supercontinent and associated volcanic activity is the most likely cause. An asteroid impact like the K-T extinction is currently not favored due to the lack of evidence like an appropriately aged crater.
So this extinction is already known not be limited to crurotarsans, and in fact was worse in the oceans than on land. My understanding is that is typical of climate-based extinctions like the PETM event. I think then that Dr. Brusatte is offering his physiological diversity theory as one more piece of evidence in support of an existing alternative theory, rather than some brilliant entirely new theory as reuters seems to suggest.
Still, this definitely suggests the dinosaurs had some sort of advantage over the Crurotarsans, which had common evolutionary ancestors from the earlier geological period. It may have been direct, like better agility (a factor not necessarily indicated by simply comparing diversity), or indirect like warm-blood helping them adapt to a changing climate better.
In short, this doesn't sound unscientific at all. It's more likely a poorly written article compounded with us the readers having trouble jiving it with all the things we learned about dinosaurs in grade school. On that note, I'm pretty sure half the pictures I remember seeing in grade school of early triassic "dinosaurs" were actually these guys.
And ad hoc hypotheses are not illegitimate. Dark matter is properly considered an ad hoc hypothesis, as was relativity, for that matter.
The real reason isn't as much the hazard as it is because it can be stored safely on earth for a lot less money than it would take to launch it all into space (and besides, the fact that it is still radioactive means it is potentially useful in the future if we start to run out of fresh fuel).
Uranium, by the way, is almost a non-hazard radiologically. It has a half-life of 700 million years, a block of it will barely tickle a geiger counter, and it decays via alpha emission, which is blocked by a sheet of paper or your outer layer of skin. You'd basically have to ingest it to come to harm, but chemical toxicity would kill you before the radioactivity did.
However, after fissioning, it is no longer uranium. It's a bunch of more hazardous things like strontium-90, cessium-137, or iodine-131 (plus the remaining unfissioned uranium). Some of these have half-lifes measured in days and decay more energetically. Some have half-lives of thousands of years which is definitely less hazardous, but still enough that it needs to be dealt with, especially when you have tons of it.
The reactor will be full of "clean" uranium at launch and only represent a very minor risk. It will only be powered on and generating the really hazardous fission products after landing on the moon.
Furthermore, NASA is talking about a tiny handfull of launches each with perhaps 50 to 100 kg of uranium. This is in comparison to the thousands of tons of spent fuel we currently have to dispose of from power production. It's more practical to build a re-entry-proof shell for a small amount, and the risk compounds with the number of launches you would need for commercial disposal.
You can cool the core with anything. Various schemes used both on earth and in space in the past have used water, helium, liquid sodium, liquid lead, etc. Also helium is already commonly used inside Stirling cycle engines as the working fluid for the generator. Organic rankine cycles actually use a refrigerent as the working fluid. The Russian Alfa class submarines used lead to cool the core and heat water for its turbine. It had to be kept hot and circulating at all times or it would solidify in the pipes. Over half of the submarines were "totaled" when for one reason or another they had to shut down.
For those that are interested, the Russians developed a lightweight fission reactor back in the 60's to power their Radar Ocean Reconnaissance satellite (RORSats) that they used to spy on our aircraft carriers. This was the type of satellite that caused a fluff back in the 70's when Kosmos-954 failed to boost to its disposal orbit and re-entered over Canada.
The reactor only weighed 130 kg and it generated 100 kW of thermal energy, but because it used low efficiency thermocouples to turn heat directly into electricity, it only generated 3 kW electrical. It was sodium cooled. This NASA reactor will use a thermodynamic cycle to spin a generator, and probably have an efficiency between 10 and 20%, so the core doesn't need to be much larger than the Russian version. I'm guessing it will probably be liquid metal cooled with a heat exchanger to expand helium for the generator.
And just to be clear, you can use water in a space reactor if you want. You just have to design for corrosion and used a closed loop so the water re-circulates.
Don't get me wrong, I have great hopes for SpaceX with COTS and commercial opportunities and am quite impressed with their efforts and plans, but you're defining a modicum of success as three failed launches of a rocket that's just barely big enough to get one astronaut in a spacesuit into orbit (but not back again), and then ranking that history above an organization that has conducted 145 successful manned missions involving over 850 crewmen, and plus I don't know how many unmanned missions.
Ares is not perfect. There is a lot of fair criticism that has been directed at the system. At the same time, however, it is better suited to NASA's plans than the Shuttle, which despite itself being often and fairly (and just as often unfairly) criticized has launched more people into space than every other manned system in the world combined. However, the shuttle was a jack of all trades (in LEO that is) and a master of none.
I apologize for that digression. Back to why Ares (or perhaps Direct, but that's unlikely due to politics and differing capabilities) is what NASA wants for it's current plans. NASA has a stated and congressionally-supported goal to create a transportation system capable of returning to the moon and, if desired, going onward to Mars.
SpaceX is very much an unproven operator. NASA is not willing to bank the success of Constellation on that when they have the know-how, technology, and foundational infrastructure to succeed with near certainty. This is not saying NASA isn't interested in SpaceX or that SpaceX isn't cheaper. They very much are, which is why NASA contracted them for under COTS. That alone is almost completely maxing out SpaceX's resources at the present moment. I doubt even Musk himself thinks they could realistically create a system equivalent to Ares 1/Orion by 2015. Yes, SpaceX could potentially save money, but they have a much greater risk of failing, in which case all the money spent on them is wasted. Some would argue that they just need the appropriate resources to succeed. That is delusional. At best, throwing money blindly at them would just lead to another Boeing, Lockheed, or ATK. They would probably succeed, but be no better than what we have currently.
To be clear, the Falcon 9 is not capable of lifting the Orion capsule and the Dragon does not have the operational capabilities to replace the Orion. Orion has more delta-V, more life support capability, more interior volume, higher fault-tolerance, a much higher re-entry capability, and the ability to dock itself with the ISS as well as reside there for extended durations as a lifeboat.
It can be pointed out that the Falcon 9 Heavy has about the same lift capability as the Ares 1. This is true, but it's a further development from an unproven rocket whereas the Ares will use shuttle-derived technology and benefit from NASA's technical experience. Furthermore, Ares 1 will develop many of the components used by the Ares V, which is a rocket nothing in SpaceX's current or proposed plans can come close to, and a key to NASA's plans to returning to the moon.
Of course, others also criticise the whole goal of going to the moon in the first place, but that's another discussion. Suffice to say, the nation is fed up with stagnation in space.
By the way, NASA has economists, accountants, etc. That wasn't why we ended up with the shuttle we have. Besides, economics is an arguably less precise endeavor than engineering.
Ok, I am sick and tired of people saying the US attacked Iraq without provocation. I am not happy with the sum of justifications that were presented in the decision to invade Iraq, but it goes beyond hyperbole to outright falsehood to say it was without provocation, nor was it even merely predicated on the existance of WMD's. Unfortunately, we as a society have such a short memory (and were so single-minded at the time) that we forgot that.
The Iraq War Resolution, the act of Congress that gave Bush the discretionary authority to invade Iraq, cited approximately 20 factors. High among them and comprising several separate factors was not direct evidence of WMD's, but non-compliance of the terms of the 1991 Gulf War cease fire, including access for weapons inspectors. Hussein flip-flopping on inspector access was a weekly news topic in 2002. Other forms of non-compliance included violation of the agreed-upon no-fly zones, refusal to return material stolen from Kuwait in 1990, and firing on coalition aircraft. In addition to that, there was the 1993 assassination attempt against Bush Sr, past use of chemical weapons both against the Iranians and the Kurds, Iraqi support of Hamas, the fact that Iraq was a dictatorship (remember those people cheering in the streets in 2003? They may not like us, but they hated Sadaam more), and Congress'es and Clinton's 1998 resolution that made regime change an official US policy.
That may have not been morally sufficient to justify toppling the existing government, especially in the retrospect of the sectarian storm that resulted and was even predicted by some generals, but it is most definitely some level of provocation.
Nor is the US presence a simple occupation. It has been directed all along at setting up a democratic government, which you will note, is increasingly taking over responsibility for the administration of the country. Lest you claim is merely a puppet government, they have been asserting its own interests sometimes in opposition to those of the US increasingly over the last couple of years. For those that think it was a cover for oil control, note that the democratic government has approved oil contracts with China. I see little to no evidence that Russia is actually interested in Ossetian self-determination, especially since they have claimed several times the Ossetians are Russian citizens, as opposed to independent.
I'm not saying it wouldn't be best for the US to take a non-interventionist approach to global politics, but the invasion of Iraq did not come out of the blue.
I was going to stop there, but you got me going. Russia doesn't like the fact that Georgia is independent and can make its own economic deals with the western world, such as building the oil pipeline that runs from the Caspian through Turkey and Georgia to Europe. Russia no longer completely dominates oil trade in the region, but trading through the new pipeline in Georgia is partially dependent on the involved parties being confident the pipeline is a reliable route (ie, there aren't Ossetian separatists shelling around it in violation of their cease-fire with the Georgian government).
It gets all the more interesting when you note that the new Russian president Dmitri Medvedev, hand-picked by Putin, was the chairman of Gazprom as his last job. Gazprom is the state-owned energy company that has an effective monopoly on gas and oil in Russia, and sells eastern Europe most of its supply of supply of gas and oil. Independent oil trade through Georgia directly cuts into Gazprom's business. Anybody who gets ruffled by Cheney's former role of CEO at Halliburton should be doubly interested in Medvedev's ties to Gazprom.
Russia further doesn't like former Soviet-bloc nations having close ties, even being offered membership to NATO. When there's a military larger than the Moscow police behind a former satellite, it means Russi
I will have to wait to look at actual histograms until I get home from work, but it sounds to me like you don't understand image histograms. The blue and green channels can be biased towards the dark end either because someone darkened those channels (which typically results in identifiable artifacts in those channels...spikes or gaps in the histogram), or because there's simply not a lot in the image that is bright in those channels. This is the reason why NASA has the color calibration targets. It's sort of like the white balance cards that pro-photographers often use here on earth.
Anybody with GIMP or Photoshop and an ordinary digital camera can verify this by shooting scenes dominated by one color or another. Alternately, you can find examples on the web (note that even in the correct version, the red channel is much brighter because the target contains more red).
Of course, if you wanted to get serious about it, you could actually get a telescope and look at Mars. Or better yet, you can learn why Mars is red and understand that this is nothing absurd or unprecedented.
Just for the record, that is a diagram of the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER), not the Large Hadron Collider.
However, the ITER is being perhaps as impressively documented, and a lot of that is also online. Keep in mind that the ITER design is not complete, but the overall architecture shouldn't change much. In addition to a huge amount of data on the operating theory and conditions, if you dig around through the site, you can even find animations of the mechanical parts (which are primarily for maintenance) in action.
Hardcore Nerd Stuff:
ITER Design
Their rocket development program is almost that elementary compared to their stated goals.
The Safir rocket is an adaptation of their Shahab-3 missile. This is a medium range ballistic missile and one of several they claimed to have test-launched en masse last month, giving Stephen Colbert an easy 10 minutes of fill material after it was found out the photos of the launch were doctored. It seems their Shahab inventory, at least flight-ready Shahab's, is not as large as they want outsiders to believe.
The Shahab itself is based on the North Korean Nodong missile, which in turn was developed from second-hand Scud missiles acquired from Egypt. Going back even further, the Scud originated in the 50's in the Soviet Union as a scaled down, improved version of the German V-2. Whew! Talk about a long lineage.
For the launch vehicle derivative, it apparently has been fitted with a different second stage, possibly derived from Soviet SA-2 surface to air missiles, and probably a small third stage with a payload fairing for the orbital version. Payload would likely be very small...the Shahab-3 only carries a 1 ton warhead on a sub-orbital trajectory. The launch weight is less than SpaceX's Falcon-1, which has a 700kg LEO capability and presumably a higher-performance engine.
Despite not having a large technical infrastructure, Iran is not entirely devoid of reasonably competent engineers. Given enough resolve and a couple more tries, they will probably succeed. It at least appears theoretically possible for that rocket to reach orbit.
However, that is still a very, very long ways from putting a man in space, even counting on existing technologies. Such a rocket will not scale well at all, meaning they will need to develop something completely new from the ground up...because North Korea isn't going to be able to supply them with a Soyuz to copy. China, for example, launched their first satellite in 1970, but it wasn't 2003 that they actually put a person in orbit. That was after drawing on Soviet experience and 3-4 generations of their own ballistic mis...err, I mean expendable launch vehicles.
Like many of their past claims, there's little reason to expect Iran to be able to follow through on the man in space claim for the foreseeable future.
In addition to what others have said about the plug-in's mere existance highlighting the problems with IE (which has long been a form of cheap publicity for Firefox), it increases the number of browsers that render HTML/CSS in a compliant manner, assuming any IE users actually utilize the plugin. Believe it or not, however, there are people who actually try both and choose IE anyways for various reasons, suggesting they're not above downloading extras to improve the user experience.
This means developers have one less reason to write non-compliant code, which in turn reduces the number of sites that render poorly in more strictly compliant browsers like Firefox, and therefore, in the long run, fewer users have bad experiences with IE-specific pages, so they have one less reason not to use Firefox.
Yeah, that's convoluted, but I can hardly see them bothering to do this without some degree of incentive.
I don't know why so often we get articles linked to sources completely unrelated to the topic at hand. I understand and appreciate PCMag having articles unrelated to PC's occassionally for the edification of their readers, but there's no reason not to get a topical source for sharing on Slashdot. Space.com and spaceref.com are great news sites for lay-persons, and one thing NASA is generally outstanding about is having detailed, up-to-date, and accurate mission websites.
/rant
Anyways, I think calling this a picture affects readers' expectations. The atomic force microscope is a coordinate mapping tool rather than a camera. It uses tiny probes to sense the surface profile of a target and create elevation maps based on that data. It's more of a three-dimensional graph than a picture and it doesn't use light, but it can reveal much finer details than an optical microscope can.
Here's a similar image to that linked in the summary overlayed with an optical microscope picture of the same area. Note that the optical microscope image is about 3 mm across, of a target of micromachined silicon that has a bunch of tiny pits, posts, and bumps intended to hold dust particles of different types. The atomic force microscope image is 100 times the resolution of the optical image.
Actually, even the optical microscope on Phoenix is far higher resolution than any camera previously flown to another world, but the AFM takes the capability two steps further. Between the two, the Phoenix team is learning a lot about the soil on Mars that should allow them to deduce not only its bulk properties, but even hints about how it formed.
By the way, the Mars Rovers have "microscopic imagers," but these are really more like close-focus cameras than true microscopes. Offhand I can't think of any other robotic space missions that carried microscopes.
When newegg ran me through this about a year ago, I didn't see any options other than opting in (and I did look briefly)...I guess I should have done some more research on this Verified by Visa setup.
Now that I'm in, is it possible to get out? Or is Newegg able to require me to use it for Visa purchases?
You know, I totally agree with you on price, but at the same time it's funny (in a good way) how much more accessible video entertainment is.
I was talking about it with my dad, who told me the little 19" RCA TV I grew up watching that could only take RF inputs, tune 20 channels, occasionally got confused about tracking, and went fuzzy every time the microwave was turned on cost $400 in the early 80's (accounting for inflation, that's like $700-800 now). The VCR he got to go with it cost about the same, and he spent $5 per blank cassette for recording broadcasts (and we definitely had more of those than legitimate programs...don't tell the MPAA).
A 19" CRT and a basic DVD player would be less than $200 now. He spent, in modern dollar equivalent, almost 10 times that much.
And of course, in 1970 he was probably pretty happy watching broadcast-only on the 13" B&W JcPenny TV that's still in the attic and still worked last time I tried it. It was so compact and light you could carry it with one hand!
Yes, the events are synchronized. Main engine cut-off occurs 1.5 seconds before the stage separation pyros fire.
When engine cut-off occurs, valves close to shut off fuel from the pumps. However, there is still fuel left in the lines that finishes burning resulting in a little residual thrust. In their previous test flight, this finished within that 1.5 seconds. However, this launch used a new engine design.
The previous engine design was ablatively cooled. This means the engine nozzle is kept from melting by small amounts of material continuously burning off and carrying heat away. It's pretty analogous to sweating. The newer Merlin 1C is regeneratively cooled, which increases the performance and efficiency of the engine by running the cold fuel through small pipes that surround the engine nozzle for cooling.
These cooling channels means there's more volume of fuel left in the system at cut-off, and the burn ends up being slightly longer. Musk has stated that this didn't show up as a problem on the test stand because of the pressure difference at sea level versus the near vaccuum where staging occured. 14.7 psi across a half-meter or so rocket nozzle amounts to a few thousand pounds of thrust. However, if you watch the test videos they've published, there's noticeably more flame after cutoff in the regenerative version, so I'm frankly kind of surprised they didn't increase their timing margin.
The end result was that the 1st stage bumped back into the 2nd stage after separation, and then got toasted by and deflected flame back at the 2nd stage, apparently seriously damaging it.
I have to nitpick one of Musk's other statements. He claimed that the performance of the first stage was picture perfect. However, while the engine appeared to perform great, it seems the avionics could have done at least slightly better. The video shows a back and forth rolling motion that is probably due to the torque created as the fuel swirls through those cooling channels. Ideally the control system would have been able to account for that smoothly.
Right. Because speculators are so rational.
This is why when Iran made bogus claims about its missile capabilities that were proven to be not merely false but literally a laughable photoshop job before the day was even over, despite the fact that Israel had shifted into the most diplomatic posture it has held in the past decade as domestic political confusion and the Olmert scandal over-rode almost all the rhetoric about potential attacks on Iran, attacks which didn't occur even when more direct threats were made by Iran with a harder-line PM at the helm of Israel, fears of new turmoil in the Middle east drove oil prices up $20 in a week.
Yep. Speculators are clearly rational. And BS is purple and smells like rainbow sherbert.
Actually, some speculators are rational. Those are generally the same ones who manage their capital on a long term basis and know that if a drop or even a leveling out of the value of their investments is expected in the future, the time to dump that investment and put the money in something else that will show further growth instead of stagnation or decline is ASAP. All-the-more so when inventories are growing because prices have clearly begun affecting demand.
In case anyone doesn't remember:
Record Oil Prices: Iran and the Strait of Hormuz
Actually, the republicans aren't really whining like 4 year olds. They're milking it for easy, free press. I honestly don't believe they care about the particular issue that much, but a lot of their supporters do, and throwing in the "us against them" rhetoric helps solidify the "working for the common people claims" even better.
At the same time, however, fully half of congress voted to go sailing because actually doing their job would mean making decisions that are guaranteed to piss off some fraction of their constituency no matter which way they vote. They wussed out.
Dang I wish I could do that.
"Hey boss, this project isn't going so well. I'm undecided between x and y because I think both have some potential to cause the project to fail, so instead of analyzing the situation and making an informed decision like I was hired to do, I'm going to go on vacation for a month and hopefully the VP will forget about it by then and we can go back to rewording old project updates to make it sound like we're getting new work done."
I think I'm one of roughly seven Americans who doesn't have a strong opinion on the drilling issue, but regardless, it bothers me that one side is shirking responsibility on a vote their bosses (the other 299,999,993 Americans) feel is important one way or the other, and the other side only cares about the opportunity to make their club look good.
It takes me back to the good ol' days of 2006. Congress spend so much time arguing about war-spending and sneaking in or deleting riders and pork-barrels that they completely failed to vote on over half of the appropriations bills, meaning most of the actual executive departments of the federal government spent months unsure of their funding, then got stuck with the same budgets as the previous year, whether appropriate or not.
Oh well. At least Ted Kennedy will have some more free time to enjoy his mansion on Nantucket Sound before those evil energy companies almost, sort-of, minorly affect the view with a row of neatly spaced, subtly colored wind turbines that jut glaringly almost half a degree into the skyline on perfectly clear days. Not to mention, Ted Stevens better get headed back to Alaska. Somebody needs to get started on building a series of tubes to nowhere.
Overall, we're not surprised. Scientists have been pretty sure there was subsurface ice there for several years based on ground-penetrating radar on one of the orbiters. Confirming this was a major goal of Phoenix. There weren't a lot of other good explanations for all that hydrogen detected by radar, but that still wasn't considered proof. Nor even were the images of the bright, ice-like material uncovered earlier in the Phoenix mission. Also, we already knew for quite a while about water vapor on Mars, but the next question was about large quantities of surface water.
The Phoenix team was a little surprised by exactly how it occurred, however. Because ice sublimates on Mars once exposed, they had to get the sample into the TEGA oven relatively quickly. It ended up being even stickier than previous samples (possibly due to melting of the ice by friction from the rasp) and didn't fall properly from the scoop into the oven. By the time the results were received, analyzed, and a conclusion reached, they considered the sample already spoiled, but because some likely made it into the oven, the oven was also "contaminated," which affects the accuracy of measuring relative abundance. So they managed to dump the "ruined" sample into the oven to compare it to the last "ruined" sample, but found there was water in it anyways. Unfortunately, because of the sublimation, this still doesn't give them the relative abundance. It also, as far as I know, was only inferred so far by calorimetry. In the next day or two, they should get spectroscopy results back, which will be even better verification.
Because of all this, they're going to spend some more time practicing and polishing their delivery method so they can get a truly fresh sample into the ovens. They've got 6 empty ovens left, although there might be a problem with the doors on some or all of them.
You'll just have to be on the back-end of the adoption curve, assuming widespread use of plugins is really the direction the market moves.
It's not unreasonable to consider installing curbside chargers that take a credit card, but obviously the earliest adopters are going to be dependent on their own chargers.
On the positive side, you urban-dwellers hypothetically already have reduced driving needs and better access to alternate means of transportation.
Supply from the grid is still an issue though. I think having chargers that go beyond simply timing their recharge to be off-cycle with typical peak-demand times will be necessary. It shouldn't be too complicated to do: An internet connection on the charger so it can poll a server run by the power company. The server monitors both supply (and what types of supply if they want to optimize for lowest-cost or cleanest sources) and demand and assigns power limits to the chargers based on marginal supply, time-in-queue, subscription level, etc.
Of course, there will be plenty who hack their chargers to ignore such instructions, but if it's factored into a contract specific to those using a smart-demand system like this, then that is a legal issue more than a technical one. Billing might also be complicated, with some users not wanting to wait for priority, while others would be happy to in exchange for lower rates.
You're correct that the distances are wildly different, but for some observation techniques that really doesn't matter much. The distance between the earth and the moon compared to the distance to the spacecraft is small enough to be just as negligible. There's no reason why something that works 30 million miles away shouldn't work 30 trillion miles away. The only real differences are the brightness and resolution (well...perhaps some of the spectrum may be reduced by the interstellar medium, but that's a pretty specific factor).
You can't resolve objects at the separation of the moon and earth from 30 trillion miles away, not even with the Hubble or Keck telescopes, and especially not with spectroscopes that can give you clues to what chemicals are present on those bodies. By studying star wobbles an astronomer might infer the presence and mass of a "planet," but that won't tell him if it's really a single planet or a planet-moon system. Look at the video and notice that as the moon crosses the earth, the total reflected light from the earth and moon would be decreased by the ratio of the area covered (about 7%) because the moon is blocking part of it. From that, the astronomer can infer not just the presence of the moon, but the relative sizes of the planet and moon.
Assuming the Space Interferometry Mission goes forward as planned, the astronomer might eventually be able to get a spectrum from the planet without being washed out by the parent star. By watching how the spectrum changes during such transits, they can figure out what elements and compounds (like water) are likely present on the planet, and what ones are present on the moon.
It may sound far out, but it's already being done with exoplanets and their stars, and transits of Pluto and it's moon are how we got a lot of our information so far about those two bodies.
Careful about generalizing there. They did not design and develop the B-52. They created an engineering proposal. It established the basic design and confirmed it was physically possible, but there was several more years worth of work for several hundred or perhaps thousands of engineers before the B-52 even flew, and there's been quite a bit more engineering work in the 50+ years since then to keep the B-52 up to date and in good shape.
Regarding the reply below about brain (or rocket) surgey being so easy even a caveman could do it, interestingly enough, they did. Ok, those aren't exactly cavemen, but the idea that brain surgery predates modern medicine by about 3000 years is pretty impressive.
Easy statements first:
It depends on congressional funding. Current plans are between 2018 and 2020, but first operations of the rocket for ISS and LEO operations should be about 2015. NASA can't really get cracking on this until the shuttle retires in 2010, which will free up about $3 billion/year in funding...unless congres wants to dole out some extra right now.
Design is definitely a step ahead of concept. To be fair, calling it a napkin drawing was a press-briefing response, not the whole story. In fact, several engineers gave it a fairly detailed going over and pointed out some problems. The Direct team then addressed those problems and developed version 2. This is all after NASA already examined the basic architecture of Direct in their ESAS study and concluded two launches of the same vehicle was workable but less than ideal for a lunar mission, and required a vehicle that was overkill for ISS operations. However, some of the assumptions in that study didn't hold true, and Direct is maintaining that NASA needs to take a another look at it.
Much more in-depth analysis has been conducted on Ares I/V than on Direct's Jupiter proposal. Actually, since Direct uses an essentially unmodified shuttle SRB, they can reasonably contend that some of the hardware does exist. Meanwhile however, NASA is building test hardware for the Ares I, and they've begun detailed design on quite a few components, including the J-2X 2nd stage engine and 5-segment SRB. In some ways Direct is ahead, but as far as work that's been done, Ares is ahead.
My take on it is that Direct honestly has a pretty decent proposal. It is definitely feasible. NASA maintains that it doesn't mesh well with what they were directed to do under Bush's Vision for Space Exploration, which is intended to be scalable to Mars missions. NASA prefers the payload splits of the Ares I/V system for lunar missions, the theoretically higher safety of the Ares 1 for manned-launches, and the fewer flights needed for a Mars mission the giant Ares V would afford. Given the engineering issues they've encountered, however, I think it would be a good idea to give the "two-launch" architecture another look.
At the same time, some are maintaining that NASA is pursuing the Ares I/V as a means of protecting jobs in important congressional districts or for major contractors like ATK who will have $billions in contracts for Ares. Others accuse NASA administrator Mike Griffin of having delusions of granduer, wanting to be the engineer responsible for creating the largest rocket ever. I see no convincing arguments for buying into those accusations.
Well, don't forget the Serbs managed to shoot down an F-117 during the showdown with Milosovic, and that was using stuff that was probably equivalent to what the Iraqi's had.*
However, you're not quite correct to the best of my knowledge. Stealth doesn't make things invisible to radar...it makes them harder to see. There's a lot of factors involved, but generally they boil it down into a factor called radar cross section (RCS). This is the size of a typical reflector that would produce the same radar return as the plane in question. A B-52 has a radar cross section the size of...well...a B-52 (not quite actually, but we won't get that deep into it). The B-2, on the other hand, has been said to have a radar cross section of a sparrow. You reduce the radar cross section mainly in two ways: by absorbing the radio wave (materials) or by reflecting it a different direction than straight back (geometry). This means that the way the plane is facing is important, because they're not spheres. If you get an aileron facing flat at a radar, they'll probably see you.
Now remember radar return above. You need enough radar return for the receiver to detect it. As the RCS gets smaller, the return drops, so you need a stronger signal to reflect off it, and/or a more sensitive receiver. A shorter distance means a stronger signal, due to the inverse square law. What the story likely refers to is stealth aircraft passing close enough to British frigates to be detected despite being stealthy.**
* I believe the Air Force concluded the F-117 was shot down by one of several radar-guided missiles fired at it, being guided partially manually, with help from infrared tracking. The F-117 has features to reduce it's infrared signature, too, but I don't think the reduction is as significant in infrared as it is in radar. The Serbs may have gotten enough of a radar return that allowed them to point the missile and let it's infrared seeker lock-on. The F-117's probably also flew riskier routes than a non-stealth aircraft like the F-15E's would take. If it was close enough to the radar, it also might have been possible to shoot it down with a strictly radar-guided missile.
It seems the Serbian military paid attention to both the ineffectiveness of the Iraqi air defenses against the F-117 during Desert Storm, and to the thorough way in which the US focused on destorying those defenses early on, making air supremacy a given only hours after the first bombs fell on Baghdad. They were careful both to protect their radars and missile launchers and to employ alternate detection tools, especially the Mk 1 eyeball. ** The Russians claim they have a technique of finding stealth aircraft by looking for holes in expected radar returns (mountains, etc). That would take extra computer power and it seems to me it would only work effectively on low-altitude aircraft, so it might not be a significant blow to stealth technology. I've also heard some stuff about using two receivers to detect stealth aircraft, but there wasn't enough details to get an idea how it works and how effective it might be.