What would you be using as fixed storage? A unix would seem to make a fixed disc necessary; there are some pretty stable ones around, for sure, but I'd feel wary about trusting one to perform continuously for hundreds of thousands of miles in a vibrating car.
Ah, this made me happy... remember when the iMac came out and proved computers didn't have to be beige, but PC case manufacturers interpreted that as "transparent coloured plastic is cool"? I hoped against hope that someone would twig to the true possibilities and put a computer in a fake teak case, and now they have!
On a slight sidetrack, I would love to encase my monitor in something like the housing for a DEC VT05 terminal. The obvious issue with painfully high voltages would make it harder than regular casemodding, of course....
This is all top-of-the-head stuff, but I remember reading once that a planet's escape velocity should exceed the RMS velocity of a gas by about six to retain that gas at that temperature. Mars's escape velocity is about 5 kms-1, and the RMS velocity of O2 molecules at room temperature according to this website is about 500 ms-1. No problem so far, but water molecules weigh just over half what oxygen molecules weigh, the RMS velocity of water vapour will be about sqrt(2) higher, putting it in the borderline bracket.
Since water evaporation takes a great deal of heat from liquid water, I imagine the continuous loss of water vapour from the Martian atmosphere would tend to cool the planet, reversing any terraforming effort, while leaching away the natural water resources which are thought to exist and which would be necessary to sustain life in a terraformed settlement -- leaving Mars drier and more wintry than ever...
... I'm pretty sure every single step of that argument is seriously flawed, but frankly I doubt we have enough energy to terraform Mars anyway.
Slashdot Mirror
Russian space-station computers were hydraulic, weren't they?
What would you be using as fixed storage? A unix would seem to make a fixed disc necessary; there are some pretty stable ones around, for sure, but I'd feel wary about trusting one to perform continuously for hundreds of thousands of miles in a vibrating car.
Ah, this made me happy ... remember when the iMac came out and proved computers didn't have to be beige, but PC case manufacturers interpreted that as "transparent coloured plastic is cool"? I hoped against hope that someone would twig to the true possibilities and put a computer in a fake teak case, and now they have!
On a slight sidetrack, I would love to encase my monitor in something like the housing for a DEC VT05 terminal. The obvious issue with painfully high voltages would make it harder than regular casemodding, of course ....
This is all top-of-the-head stuff, but I remember reading once that a planet's escape velocity should exceed the RMS velocity of a gas by about six to retain that gas at that temperature. Mars's escape velocity is about 5 kms-1, and the RMS velocity of O2 molecules at room temperature according to this website is about 500 ms-1. No problem so far, but water molecules weigh just over half what oxygen molecules weigh, the RMS velocity of water vapour will be about sqrt(2) higher, putting it in the borderline bracket.
Since water evaporation takes a great deal of heat from liquid water, I imagine the continuous loss of water vapour from the Martian atmosphere would tend to cool the planet, reversing any terraforming effort, while leaching away the natural water resources which are thought to exist and which would be necessary to sustain life in a terraformed settlement -- leaving Mars drier and more wintry than ever ...
... I'm pretty sure every single step of that argument is seriously flawed, but frankly I doubt we have enough energy to terraform Mars anyway.
Crayons are nonconductive.