This is a horrible tfa for a simple concept: Instead of producing the H2 through electro-hydrolysis at a production facility, then trying to distribute it to cars, they simply use the electro-positivity of light metals to produce H2 within the car itself via chemo-hydrolysis, which can then be burned in the engine.
The reason people don't do this now, is that pure light metals are hard to come by, and are often difficult to handle. Sodium and lithium are excellent light metals which are too expensive to refine as pure metals to make effective fuel supplies. Their process likely uses incomplete oxidation with the weaker, but cheaper metals magnesium and aluminum, with some form of reaction catalyzer to increase the rate of H2 production.
A. Are Mg and Al cheaper/kCal than petroleum based fuels?
B. Toxicity vs. Petroleum, is the "goo" produced/kCal more toxic than that of Petroleum. Cheaper to handle? Since you have to carry it around instead of throw it into atmo you can't use much fuel to go places.
C. What is the magic catalyst?
This whole thing seems like a japanese or european concept car, with maybe 30-50hp and more a replacement for an electric car than any competitor to current models, at least not in America.
Ultimately an on-die memory controller is the only way to bridge the increasingly large gap between the CPU and RAM. Intel's managed amazingly low latencies to RAM given that they've got an entire extra bus and chip to run through, but they're still ~50% higher than AMD's. The netburst architecture was supposed to be insensitive to RAM latencies but Intel is not keeping up in the bandwidth department either, and it's clear that these CPUs are suffering from a lack of RAM bandwidth (twice the processing power per chip, but no increase in bandwidth).
Good call, but there is one thing missing. FBDRAM. The limiting factor in cpu/ram communication for intels is the fact that there are essentially 2 busses between the cpu and the actual chips. With fbd, you can have an 8x pcie link to each dimm, give the processors a 16-32x link, which is low pin and easy to implement (this is easier in hyperxport, as shown by amd btw), and the dram handles its own refresh, timings, read/writes, commands, as an autonomous unit. Even if next year we go DDR3 or QDR or MRAM or RDRAM, you don't really have to change the sockets, and nobody outside of the ram chip knows the difference. Ram will finally be as easy to upgrade as video cards (ever hear someone ask for ram in a computer store? its like getting a diagnosis for brain cancer, takes a lot of tests).
AMD using ht for the chip-chip bus was pure genius, moreso because they managed to pull it off. Now all support logic can be made to a standard, and configured by the motherboard manufacturer, instead of prescribed from on high by intel. Now AMD will have to pull the same rabbit out of a hat with PCI express, for their next socket, and however they plan to treat FBD. Should be fun.
buy a cheap serial card reader, plugged into a sff linux system, or embedded if possible (soekris would fit this). use ldap (possibly with activedirectory if a windows shop) or nis if you must to keep track of user directories. have the linux box poll the xerox's incoming directory and move the next file to appear. downside of this is you have to swipe your card every time you scan a page, but with some ingenuity you can get around this. move the incoming documents to ~bobsdir/scanned_documents/, and/or send an email to bob.
can use gs to filter the tiff/pdf into another format if you need, unix is nifty. all this is is a big bash script triggered by a small program polling on the card reader.
Ok, I'm not sure the argument was ever that linux was secure by design. You need the best security, you should probably go secure solaris or openbsd.
The argument is not so much pro-linux, as much as it is "Windows? Are you fucking crazy?"
Linux can be very secure if configured and admin'd properly, and given the same resources far more secure than windows. The argument is that it's the closest to a mainstream alternative with market presence and a large application base.
positive pressure: point all rear fans out and all front fans in, or vice-versa if you can duct your PS exhaust away from the intakes. 1, positive pressure means higher air density and greater thermal conductivity of... air. 2, put some light foam mesh filters on the fans and you have less sound and filter dust as long as you clean them.
do not put them on carpet or hardwood: i recommend a sheet metal base for the cases, which can be dusted often. tends to accumulate less dust, and will decrease the ground (electrical) bias between the tower and floor, helping keep the ground dust from being attracted to the case.
side cowling for fan: basically a cover for the top of the fan intakes so any drifting dust is less likely to get sucked in. preferably with a grating to keep feathers etc from getting sucked in also. also putting a oversized flat sheetmetal "hat" on your case helps too for the same reason.
those ionic things from sharper image: expensive and extreme, but they actually help with the smaller dust. prolly pointless in your case though.
really the filters and positive pressure are the big ones, but it all depends on how far you want to go.
Wanting to make money in his job? Damn the capitalist swine! He shall be among the first to die when the workers wrath is unleashed upon the fat Bourgeoisie pigs!
CEO's (having been one myself) earn millions because they have 1 important skill, getting other people to do their work. There's a saying, the best ceo's have the best golf scores. The problem is we no longer have the will to do real innovation nowadays. Look at the biggest changes in the last decade, not enormous scientific endeavors like the Apollo landing, but basically figuring out how to market decent tech to normal people. We've gotten afraid of the big challenges, a comfortable culture becomes risk-averse. Ask the Romans how that worked out.
Whatever, this too shall pass, and I for one welcome our new offshore contract overlords.
Seriously, Indian education, makes this country look just pathetic, but actually see value in an education, rather than as we see it, something you just gotta do to get to the "good shit".
wow, that's like one of the least publicized or cared about features in osx. handy as fuck tho, esp smart folders, can keep a desktop folder that contains all your "x" from all locations, local, lan, wan.
honestly 10 years ahead of you poor windows guys, maybe only 5 by the time vista comes out.
wonder why it hasn't made kde/gnome yet? probably considered too n00b.
I see that resemblence, but in a way BSG has more hope, there is more room for "gee what if". SAAB had a relatively confined, military story, just soldiers trying to get through the war. BSG (not counting pegasus) was dark, but every episode tried to give you hope that, even though your race was killed in a horrific nuclear holocaust, and you were running from an inplacable foe with little or no resources, things were kinda looking up.
That said I still love SAAB more than any series till BSG, but they were short on plot points and heavy on character development, which is great, but not exactly what people tune into sci-fi for (laser guns going "pyoo-pyoo!", big explosions, fast ships, and klingon boobs?)
It was a bit too real, and seriously depressing, but a great show, sigh.
The legal question is COPYRIGHT, ie the right to copy material granted by the owner of the copyright. So, copying it in any form, off the internet, from one hard drive to another, even copying it from your hard drive into ram for execution is governed by copyright, which is the basis for the software industry.
It sounds a little like an antiquanted way of viewing data, but that's how the law has worked for centuries, and is the means adapted to legally control data now.
So, legally yeah all that stuff is illegal simply because you aren't authorized to copy that data in that manner. Watching it with or without commercials doesn't matter, touching the data at all is the issue.
Legally it's not gray at all, but imho the metaphor being used is not completely suited to its application. Honestly though I don't have a good legal model for it myself either though, so who am I to bitch.
Someone (not IANAL, likely a judge) should write one and set precedent, likely at the supreme court level if it is not politically possible at the congressional level. At some point it'll happen unless they make the copyright model more suitable for actual digital content.
Someone else pointed that out, I apologized. I confused the An-225 (designation condor?) with the An-124, a, still very large cargo hauler. It's been a while since I read up on soviet-era cargo jets, my bad.
Wow... I wrote like a bunch of shit regarding the nature of scientific expertise, specialization in a global economy, design and production cycles, and you come back to me with "Oh yeah, well that's the wrong plane!"
Anything? I mean innovation in the global economy is a huge subject in itself, with many contested theories, not counting the neccessity of a body like NASA to keep developing new vehicles to ensure a strong base of expertise.
Cause, I mean yeah it's the wrong plane, but I mean wow, you missed the real argument 2 exits back on the interstate, cause it's really about NASA having completely lost it's global relevance by focusing too much resources on cold-war programs that are no longer economically or politically feasible. Spending money on a Soyuz program buys them 2 things: time, to support the ISS and continue spaceflight without their primary launch platform, and expertise, from the soyuz to build a more efficient launch system capable of serving nasa's current needs safely and economically.
My reply was that people who say "Why don't we just do everything cause we're the best people to do it" is relatively stupid. I'm against people who think everything is simple and obvious and they're the only one's who "really get it", but hey what do I know, I'm just an American.
Oh, and I'd say that the US government is quickly turning into what the Founding Fathers said to overthrow.
Nobody should ever type that on a computer connected to the internet. The world has real repression and political persecution, places where ever trying to type things like that would buy you a short trip to a painful execution (Talibanistan comes to mind).
Even the founding fathers would have been executed for that, under the heading of sedition against the state(=king) and treason. It's terribly fashionable and insanely cliche to say how much the government is screwing us and how badly we need to change it, but unless you plan to pick up a rifle and walk down to your state legislature, or file a damn petition or even distribute a pamphlet, your "hehe, fuck the govt, hehe yeah" bullshit attitude is a joke.
Have you read the constitution? Not like in school, but really? The best part of america right now, or really ever is the argument always continues. Federalist vs. Nationalist, Socialist vs. Liberatarian, Laisser-Faire vs. Regulatory, these fights have never been authoritatively settled, because there is no right answer, and as long as people keep fighting about it, we stay in the happy medium. If the country starts moving too far to one side, it suffers and inertia builds to push it the other way. That is the system the founding fathers built, and I imagine they'd be surprised as hell to see their delicate balance lasting 200 years and governing 300 million people, when most governments before lasted as long as the king survived, and governed maybe 10 million.
The founding fathers built a system that learns from experience and tends to promote successful thinkers in a way that no other system has been proven to do even remotely successfully. You want a place where your point of view always wins and never is contested? A place where your interests are always respected because you are the only person who really knows what's right? Go to Africa, become a tin-pot despot in charge of some democracy in name only.
America is the triumph of majority over the dissent of the individual, which is a lot more stable and evolutionarily successful than the reverse, and the only people who say otherwise are the people pushing you to hate and fear the rest of america so they can tell you "oh, but support me, and I'll make all your problems, caused by all those other evil people go away, I promise".
What the founding fathers would be pissed about is the shallowness of modern american politics, and that isn't the fault of the us government, it's because of the shallowness of the us citizenry.
I disagree. Ever try to vote a communist premier out of office?
The Soviet public sector has an ENORMOUS economic base. In terms of actual resources, you have to realize that it's budget was roughly equal to the public and private budget of the united states combined, so putting 10% of that into a space program would be similar to putting 2-5x the total american federal budget into the space program. Also, the scientists have more "incentive" to succeed, when a failure means poverty, bread-lines, and possible execution.
In America, the politics of the budget and appropriations tend to screw the space program. It's hard to build a reliable launch vehicle when all parameters of its design and operation are mandated by a political board trying to satisfy their own constituents as a higher priority compared to the damn thing actually flying. For any of those commitee members, the possibility of forcing the shuttle to use launch base X means they can now raise funds from businesses profiting from that decision, making them more likely to stay in office. This is compounded by the fact that the decisions this commitee makes are changed very regularly depending on instantaneous public opinion, changes in the economy, changes in world politics, changes in national politics, changes in technology, changes in the private sector, ad nauseum extremis.
So blaming the public sector is very popular, but not always realistic, a lot of the time, the failure lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Yeah ok, I'll just get my 4 guys together, pull the parts list off the internet and roll out a few FUCKING SPACESHIPS!
How complicated to build and design do you think these things are? How much money do you think we have?
No we don't have an An-124, it's the largest plane currently flying, built by the russians partly as an expression of national pride, and it cost shitloads. Only flies a few times a year btw, not a lot of people need that much lifting power.
We don't (always at least) blow money on giant phallic symbols of economic domination, it takes money away from real economic domination, and apparently you are too much of an idiot with regards to finance to understand that.
Global free-market economics is based on specialization, ie. everybody doesn't do everything, but everyone finds something to be good at, and if someone else needs to do it too you pay that guy to help you. It's why we make most of the movies in the world and kashmir makes all the nice knit sweaters, and columbia makes all the cocaine, specialization has oppurtunity cost.
Even if we decided today to make a cheaper soyuz-type launch vehicle, expect one ready to fly in about 8-10 years, counting design, validation, testing, certification, etc. That is unless you want a bunch of astronauts to jump into a tin-can, strap a giant rocket to their ass and hold their breath.
The shuttle took nearly 2 decades to become flight ready, and cost... a real fucking lot, and still didn't fill half of it's original mission profile. Originally it was supposed to be a single piece to orbit vehicle, no boosters or external fuel tank or nothin'.
Unlike most things, this is rocket science, and logistics, and economics, and like 900 other things, and is much harder than throwing together a toaster.
Btw, Russia has had about 3 space stations in orbit during the 70's, 80's and 90's, including mir which was a surprising success. They are much MUCH better and more experienced at space than we are, which is why we had them help us with the ISS, just like we ripped off all of germany's experience when we started nasa and wanted icbm's. America is not the holy god of all everything, superior to all other countries in every way, though we do generally run the tables in most things. A lot of the time our experience and success comes from finding other countries that are very skilled at various fields, and ripping off their scientists and techologies, ie stealing britain's machinery expertise in the 19th century to build our own industrial revolution, or getting einstein, niels bohr (they had to call him nick during ww2 because niels was "too german"), werner van braun (warner brown), and everyone else from germany to build our atomic techonology, and space technology, and everything else.
Calling Russia a third-world economy is insulting and arrogant, and shows your ignorance/youth.
Actually it does. The clause in NASA's budget stopping them from buying Russian made soyuz capsules in the first place is there because Russia sold nuclear reactor technology to Iran, and congress got mad. So it is politics, just a different kind.
... As a member of a liberal east coast state, why would I leave?
I live about 1 mile from lexington, which some american's remember as part of "Lexington and Concord" where the revolutionary war began. You can't go 10 feet without tripping over a monument to a great battle, or a founding father, or where the constitution was signed.
I guess what I'm saying is, I doubt we'd leave. For all the red states call us pussies and tell us we're not "Real Americans" with "Real American Values", we consider ourselves to be more truly american than anyone, especially considering how I doubt most of the people who honestly believe that kind of crap have never read the consitution they so claim to defend. It's an intellectual document, a work of art from a time when the main form of government was a crazy monarch buying up hundreds of clocks and planting or cutting down trees.
I don't think I would care if they left much personally, for all that they call my state "Taxachusetts", the federal budget sends something like 65% of our tax revenues to the poorer southern states who laugh at us for having a social conscience, but I'd rather they just stayed quiet instead of parroting the latest political manipulation by those who have agenda's that require their support.
We have a beautiful place up here, the guy who bags my groceries makes about $11/hour, more than most college grads from Tennessee, where I used to live, and the college graduation rate is huge, probably close to 50%, so to those who call me a liberal weakling who doesn't stand up to government trying to take all their money, and who is driving us towards a social state, I disagree. I paid $100K in taxes last year, and consider every penny worthwhile, because I really love my city, my state, my country, and my way of life, and am willing to pay for it. To those who decry any federal influence or taxation, to those who decry our apparent lack of "true american values", to those why scream that we are "out of touch with the american mainstream", can you say the same about yourselves?
There are few states in the country where I see the American dream as fully realized as Massachusetts. I know more first generation immigrants putting their children through college or grad school and creating new dynasties of success here than all other 12 states I have lived in combined.
So, if any states really want to leave, go in peace, I love my country as it is, thx.
Harder to be arrogant when your shuttle breaks up into millions of bite-sized pieces over scenic texas.
But yeah, actually nasa wanted to pay the russians to use their soyuz to supply and man the iss before, the soyuz has about 1/10 to 1/20 the operational cost of the shuttle, and can be launched, like whenever, but congress would never allow it. I'm guessing the threat of "No Space 4 J00!" due to the shuttles' grounding has nudged them to be more flexible.
It's not so much pride btw, nasa and the us government are forbidden to do high level business with russia due to a provision in their budget that says they cannot due business with anyone who supplies nuclear technology to iran, which russia was kinda doing. So it's a law that was changed more than anything. Does speak well for nasa's willingness to be practical though.
wrote a while back during the last shuttle scare that this would be a good idea to keep america in space till they get a new launch vehicle sorted out, glad they finally did it.
Soyuz is one of the safest and most reliable space vehicles in existence, and considering the shuttles are grounded for god knows how long, we need a system to service and supply the iss.
Yeah I know it has limited cargo capacity, but it costs roughly 1/10 the cost of the shuttle to launch, if that, can be launched far more often, and its cargo capacity can be augmented by elv's like the delta or titan.
Plus side, we are less likely to lose astronauts, and can actually keep the iss supplied enough to do science beyond plugging the leaks with their fingers, and hopefully launch astronauts twice as often if it scales up well.
win/win from my pov.
ps. my "confirm i'm not a script" word is cannabis. Cool.
Slashdot Mirror
Nice refs, thanks for the link.
This is a horrible tfa for a simple concept: Instead of producing the H2 through electro-hydrolysis at a production facility, then trying to distribute it to cars, they simply use the electro-positivity of light metals to produce H2 within the car itself via chemo-hydrolysis, which can then be burned in the engine.
/kCal than petroleum based fuels?
/kCal more toxic than that of Petroleum. Cheaper to handle? Since you have to carry it around instead of throw it into atmo you can't use much fuel to go places.
The reason people don't do this now, is that pure light metals are hard to come by, and are often difficult to handle. Sodium and lithium are excellent light metals which are too expensive to refine as pure metals to make effective fuel supplies. Their process likely uses incomplete oxidation with the weaker, but cheaper metals magnesium and aluminum, with some form of reaction catalyzer to increase the rate of H2 production.
A. Are Mg and Al cheaper
B. Toxicity vs. Petroleum, is the "goo" produced
C. What is the magic catalyst?
This whole thing seems like a japanese or european concept car, with maybe 30-50hp and more a replacement for an electric car than any competitor to current models, at least not in America.
Good call, but there is one thing missing. FBDRAM. The limiting factor in cpu/ram communication for intels is the fact that there are essentially 2 busses between the cpu and the actual chips. With fbd, you can have an 8x pcie link to each dimm, give the processors a 16-32x link, which is low pin and easy to implement (this is easier in hyperxport, as shown by amd btw), and the dram handles its own refresh, timings, read/writes, commands, as an autonomous unit. Even if next year we go DDR3 or QDR or MRAM or RDRAM, you don't really have to change the sockets, and nobody outside of the ram chip knows the difference. Ram will finally be as easy to upgrade as video cards (ever hear someone ask for ram in a computer store? its like getting a diagnosis for brain cancer, takes a lot of tests).
AMD using ht for the chip-chip bus was pure genius, moreso because they managed to pull it off. Now all support logic can be made to a standard, and configured by the motherboard manufacturer, instead of prescribed from on high by intel. Now AMD will have to pull the same rabbit out of a hat with PCI express, for their next socket, and however they plan to treat FBD. Should be fun.
pls sir, perhaps you've said enough?
(pulls out his hypodermic of fentanyl)
That's right, it'll all be fine now, just relax.
buy a cheap serial card reader, plugged into a sff linux system, or embedded if possible (soekris would fit this). use ldap (possibly with activedirectory if a windows shop) or nis if you must to keep track of user directories. have the linux box poll the xerox's incoming directory and move the next file to appear. downside of this is you have to swipe your card every time you scan a page, but with some ingenuity you can get around this. move the incoming documents to ~bobsdir/scanned_documents/, and/or send an email to bob.
can use gs to filter the tiff/pdf into another format if you need, unix is nifty. all this is is a big bash script triggered by a small program polling on the card reader.
Ok, I'm not sure the argument was ever that linux was secure by design. You need the best security, you should probably go secure solaris or openbsd.
The argument is not so much pro-linux, as much as it is "Windows? Are you fucking crazy?"
Linux can be very secure if configured and admin'd properly, and given the same resources far more secure than windows. The argument is that it's the closest to a mainstream alternative with market presence and a large application base.
Not holier than thou, just holier than you.
had similar problems so here's a run-down:
positive pressure: point all rear fans out and all front fans in, or vice-versa if you can duct your PS exhaust away from the intakes. 1, positive pressure means higher air density and greater thermal conductivity of... air. 2, put some light foam mesh filters on the fans and you have less sound and filter dust as long as you clean them.
do not put them on carpet or hardwood: i recommend a sheet metal base for the cases, which can be dusted often. tends to accumulate less dust, and will decrease the ground (electrical) bias between the tower and floor, helping keep the ground dust from being attracted to the case.
side cowling for fan: basically a cover for the top of the fan intakes so any drifting dust is less likely to get sucked in. preferably with a grating to keep feathers etc from getting sucked in also. also putting a oversized flat sheetmetal "hat" on your case helps too for the same reason.
those ionic things from sharper image: expensive and extreme, but they actually help with the smaller dust. prolly pointless in your case though.
really the filters and positive pressure are the big ones, but it all depends on how far you want to go.
Wanting to make money in his job? Damn the capitalist swine! He shall be among the first to die when the workers wrath is unleashed upon the fat Bourgeoisie pigs!
CEO's (having been one myself) earn millions because they have 1 important skill, getting other people to do their work. There's a saying, the best ceo's have the best golf scores. The problem is we no longer have the will to do real innovation nowadays. Look at the biggest changes in the last decade, not enormous scientific endeavors like the Apollo landing, but basically figuring out how to market decent tech to normal people. We've gotten afraid of the big challenges, a comfortable culture becomes risk-averse. Ask the Romans how that worked out.
Whatever, this too shall pass, and I for one welcome our new offshore contract overlords.
Seriously, Indian education, makes this country look just pathetic, but actually see value in an education, rather than as we see it, something you just gotta do to get to the "good shit".
wow, that's like one of the least publicized or cared about features in osx. handy as fuck tho, esp smart folders, can keep a desktop folder that contains all your "x" from all locations, local, lan, wan.
honestly 10 years ahead of you poor windows guys, maybe only 5 by the time vista comes out.
wonder why it hasn't made kde/gnome yet? probably considered too n00b.
Wow, food for thought indeed.
I see that resemblence, but in a way BSG has more hope, there is more room for "gee what if". SAAB had a relatively confined, military story, just soldiers trying to get through the war. BSG (not counting pegasus) was dark, but every episode tried to give you hope that, even though your race was killed in a horrific nuclear holocaust, and you were running from an inplacable foe with little or no resources, things were kinda looking up.
That said I still love SAAB more than any series till BSG, but they were short on plot points and heavy on character development, which is great, but not exactly what people tune into sci-fi for (laser guns going
"pyoo-pyoo!", big explosions, fast ships, and klingon boobs?)
It was a bit too real, and seriously depressing, but a great show, sigh.
The legal question is COPYRIGHT, ie the right to copy material granted by the owner of the copyright. So, copying it in any form, off the internet, from one hard drive to another, even copying it from your hard drive into ram for execution is governed by copyright, which is the basis for the software industry.
It sounds a little like an antiquanted way of viewing data, but that's how the law has worked for centuries, and is the means adapted to legally control data now.
So, legally yeah all that stuff is illegal simply because you aren't authorized to copy that data in that manner. Watching it with or without commercials doesn't matter, touching the data at all is the issue.
Legally it's not gray at all, but imho the metaphor being used is not completely suited to its application. Honestly though I don't have a good legal model for it myself either though, so who am I to bitch.
Someone (not IANAL, likely a judge) should write one and set precedent, likely at the supreme court level if it is not politically possible at the congressional level. At some point it'll happen unless they make the copyright model more suitable for actual digital content.
Someone else pointed that out, I apologized. I confused the An-225 (designation condor?) with the An-124, a, still very large cargo hauler. It's been a while since I read up on soviet-era cargo jets, my bad.
Wow... I wrote like a bunch of shit regarding the nature of scientific expertise, specialization in a global economy, design and production cycles, and you come back to me with "Oh yeah, well that's the wrong plane!"
Anything? I mean innovation in the global economy is a huge subject in itself, with many contested theories, not counting the neccessity of a body like NASA to keep developing new vehicles to ensure a strong base of expertise.
Cause, I mean yeah it's the wrong plane, but I mean wow, you missed the real argument 2 exits back on the interstate, cause it's really about NASA having completely lost it's global relevance by focusing too much resources on cold-war programs that are no longer economically or politically feasible. Spending money on a Soyuz program buys them 2 things: time, to support the ISS and continue spaceflight without their primary launch platform, and expertise, from the soyuz to build a more efficient launch system capable of serving nasa's current needs safely and economically.
Just saying.
Yeah that's what I said...
My reply was that people who say "Why don't we just do everything cause we're the best people to do it" is relatively stupid. I'm against people who think everything is simple and obvious and they're the only one's who "really get it", but hey what do I know, I'm just an American.
Nobody should ever type that on a computer connected to the internet.
The world has real repression and political persecution, places where ever trying to type things like that would buy you a short trip to a painful execution (Talibanistan comes to mind).
Even the founding fathers would have been executed for that, under the heading of sedition against the state(=king) and treason. It's terribly fashionable and insanely cliche to say how much the government is screwing us and how badly we need to change it, but unless you plan to pick up a rifle and walk down to your state legislature, or file a damn petition or even distribute a pamphlet, your "hehe, fuck the govt, hehe yeah" bullshit attitude is a joke.
Have you read the constitution? Not like in school, but really? The best part of america right now, or really ever is the argument always continues. Federalist vs. Nationalist, Socialist vs. Liberatarian, Laisser-Faire vs. Regulatory, these fights have never been authoritatively settled, because there is no right answer, and as long as people keep fighting about it, we stay in the happy medium. If the country starts moving too far to one side, it suffers and inertia builds to push it the other way. That is the system the founding fathers built, and I imagine they'd be surprised as hell to see their delicate balance lasting 200 years and governing 300 million people, when most governments before lasted as long as the king survived, and governed maybe 10 million.
The founding fathers built a system that learns from experience and tends to promote successful thinkers in a way that no other system has been proven to do even remotely successfully. You want a place where your point of view always wins and never is contested? A place where your interests are always respected because you are the only person who really knows what's right? Go to Africa, become a tin-pot despot in charge of some democracy in name only.
America is the triumph of majority over the dissent of the individual, which is a lot more stable and evolutionarily successful than the reverse, and the only people who say otherwise are the people pushing you to hate and fear the rest of america so they can tell you "oh, but support me, and I'll make all your problems, caused by all those other evil people go away, I promise".
What the founding fathers would be pissed about is the shallowness of modern american politics, and that isn't the fault of the us government, it's because of the shallowness of the us citizenry.
my bad, had the two confused, the 225 is the Buran heavy lifter, the 124 is an actual functioning cargo hauler.
Reliabity? Track record?
Soyuz has a very long and distinguished one.
SpaceX? Have they launched to leo yet? Will they be around in 10 years? 1?
How many successful launches have they had? What are their launch capabilities? Launch windows? Possible orbit packages?
It's rocket science, you go with what you know works, especially when you've got 2 shuttles out on a full count and the pitcher is a lefty.
I disagree. Ever try to vote a communist premier out of office?
The Soviet public sector has an ENORMOUS economic base. In terms of actual resources, you have to realize that it's budget was roughly equal to the public and private budget of the united states combined, so putting 10% of that into a space program would be similar to putting 2-5x the total american federal budget into the space program. Also, the scientists have more "incentive" to succeed, when a failure means poverty, bread-lines, and possible execution.
In America, the politics of the budget and appropriations tend to screw the space program. It's hard to build a reliable launch vehicle when all parameters of its design and operation are mandated by a political board trying to satisfy their own constituents as a higher priority compared to the damn thing actually flying. For any of those commitee members, the possibility of forcing the shuttle to use launch base X means they can now raise funds from businesses profiting from that decision, making them more likely to stay in office. This is compounded by the fact that the decisions this commitee makes are changed very regularly depending on instantaneous public opinion, changes in the economy, changes in world politics, changes in national politics, changes in technology, changes in the private sector, ad nauseum extremis.
So blaming the public sector is very popular, but not always realistic, a lot of the time, the failure lies not in our stars, but in ourselves.
Yeah ok, I'll just get my 4 guys together, pull the parts list off the internet and roll out a few FUCKING SPACESHIPS!
... a real fucking lot, and still didn't fill half of it's original mission profile. Originally it was supposed to be a single piece to orbit vehicle, no boosters or external fuel tank or nothin'.
How complicated to build and design do you think these things are? How much money do you think we have?
No we don't have an An-124, it's the largest plane currently flying, built by the russians partly as an expression of national pride, and it cost shitloads. Only flies a few times a year btw, not a lot of people need that much lifting power.
We don't (always at least) blow money on giant phallic symbols of economic domination, it takes money away from real economic domination, and apparently you are too much of an idiot with regards to finance to understand that.
Global free-market economics is based on specialization, ie. everybody doesn't do everything, but everyone finds something to be good at, and if someone else needs to do it too you pay that guy to help you. It's why we make most of the movies in the world and kashmir makes all the nice knit sweaters, and columbia makes all the cocaine, specialization has oppurtunity cost.
Even if we decided today to make a cheaper soyuz-type launch vehicle, expect one ready to fly in about 8-10 years, counting design, validation, testing, certification, etc. That is unless you want a bunch of astronauts to jump into a tin-can, strap a giant rocket to their ass and hold their breath.
The shuttle took nearly 2 decades to become flight ready, and cost
Unlike most things, this is rocket science, and logistics, and economics, and like 900 other things, and is much harder than throwing together a toaster.
Btw, Russia has had about 3 space stations in orbit during the 70's, 80's and 90's, including mir which was a surprising success. They are much MUCH better and more experienced at space than we are, which is why we had them help us with the ISS, just like we ripped off all of germany's experience when we started nasa and wanted icbm's. America is not the holy god of all everything, superior to all other countries in every way, though we do generally run the tables in most things. A lot of the time our experience and success comes from finding other countries that are very skilled at various fields, and ripping off their scientists and techologies, ie stealing britain's machinery expertise in the 19th century to build our own industrial revolution, or getting einstein, niels bohr (they had to call him nick during ww2 because niels was "too german"), werner van braun (warner brown), and everyone else from germany to build our atomic techonology, and space technology, and everything else.
Calling Russia a third-world economy is insulting and arrogant, and shows your ignorance/youth.
Actually it does. The clause in NASA's budget stopping them from buying Russian made soyuz capsules in the first place is there because Russia sold nuclear reactor technology to Iran, and congress got mad. So it is politics, just a different kind.
... As a member of a liberal east coast state, why would I leave?
I live about 1 mile from lexington, which some american's remember as part of "Lexington and Concord" where the revolutionary war began. You can't go 10 feet without tripping over a monument to a great battle, or a founding father, or where the constitution was signed.
I guess what I'm saying is, I doubt we'd leave. For all the red states call us pussies and tell us we're not "Real Americans" with "Real American Values", we consider ourselves to be more truly american than anyone, especially considering how I doubt most of the people who honestly believe that kind of crap have never read the consitution they so claim to defend. It's an intellectual document, a work of art from a time when the main form of government was a crazy monarch buying up hundreds of clocks and planting or cutting down trees.
I don't think I would care if they left much personally, for all that they call my state "Taxachusetts", the federal budget sends something like 65% of our tax revenues to the poorer southern states who laugh at us for having a social conscience, but I'd rather they just stayed quiet instead of parroting the latest political manipulation by those who have agenda's that require their support.
We have a beautiful place up here, the guy who bags my groceries makes about $11/hour, more than most college grads from Tennessee, where I used to live, and the college graduation rate is huge, probably close to 50%, so to those who call me a liberal weakling who doesn't stand up to government trying to take all their money, and who is driving us towards a social state, I disagree. I paid $100K in taxes last year, and consider every penny worthwhile, because I really love my city, my state, my country, and my way of life, and am willing to pay for it. To those who decry any federal influence or taxation, to those who decry our apparent lack of "true american values", to those why scream that we are "out of touch with the american mainstream", can you say the same about yourselves?
There are few states in the country where I see the American dream as fully realized as Massachusetts. I know more first generation immigrants putting their children through college or grad school and creating new dynasties of success here than all other 12 states I have lived in combined.
So, if any states really want to leave, go in peace, I love my country as it is, thx.
I'm not totally against zonk, but I'd def vote for trip to get editor privs.
His british jedi PM comment made the washington post, full cited quote. Sartre would be pleased.
Harder to be arrogant when your shuttle breaks up into millions of bite-sized pieces over scenic texas.
But yeah, actually nasa wanted to pay the russians to use their soyuz to supply and man the iss before, the soyuz has about 1/10 to 1/20 the operational cost of the shuttle, and can be launched, like whenever, but congress would never allow it. I'm guessing the threat of "No Space 4 J00!" due to the shuttles' grounding has nudged them to be more flexible.
It's not so much pride btw, nasa and the us government are forbidden to do high level business with russia due to a provision in their budget that says they cannot due business with anyone who supplies nuclear technology to iran, which russia was kinda doing. So it's a law that was changed more than anything. Does speak well for nasa's willingness to be practical though.
wrote a while back during the last shuttle scare that this would be a good idea to keep america in space till they get a new launch vehicle sorted out, glad they finally did it.
Soyuz is one of the safest and most reliable space vehicles in existence, and considering the shuttles are grounded for god knows how long, we need a system to service and supply the iss.
Yeah I know it has limited cargo capacity, but it costs roughly 1/10 the cost of the shuttle to launch, if that, can be launched far more often, and its cargo capacity can be augmented by elv's like the delta or titan.
Plus side, we are less likely to lose astronauts, and can actually keep the iss supplied enough to do science beyond plugging the leaks with their fingers, and hopefully launch astronauts twice as often if it scales up well.
win/win from my pov.
ps. my "confirm i'm not a script" word is cannabis. Cool.
People might not get the reference otherwise.
They're forming a coalition together, but unfortunately it's incompatible with the gpl.
So it looks like you're all stuck with communism again, so have fun with that!