How HE LIkes BEer Beef & Cake! Now Obese Forms are NEver Nature’s MakinG. ALl of SImilar Plight Should C[L]onsider ARight Keeping CAre of the SCoops that they T[I]ake.
I wonder if SpaceX are looking at Waverider designs for BFR re-entry. With a strongly negative dihedral, you can contain the shock wave under the "wings" and use it as a lifting surface - "compression lift". To change your lift direction you roll the vehicle around the inside of the shock cone.
Since the purpose of such "wings" is to contain the shock rather than generate lift directly, they don't need much thickness, just (a lot of) heat resistance - maybe even something as flimsy as a woven mesh....which means they could be folded and stowed for other phases of flight to reduce drag, you could easily swap out the wings for different planetary atmospheres, and by having your payload/CG on a sliding sled you need fewer control surfaces - like a hang glider.
TLDR / WAG: Replacing those huge leg-stablizer-thngs on the "Tintin BFR" with something resembling fold-away mosquito netting would add a lot of lightness....could this be Elon's "delightfully counter-intuitive" new BFR design?
I thought the power of these things were measured in TeV...
Serious question to any engineers who know how to build these devices: is the diameter/length of the accelerator relevant to the performance or just to the cost?
"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low railing. From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below-one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon's six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens onto another gallery, identical to the first - identical in fact to all. To the left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. One is for sleeping, upright; the other, for satisfying one's physical necessities. Through this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance. In the vestibule there is a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite - if it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication? I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figuration and promise of the infiniteLight is provided by certain spherical fruits that bear the name "bulbs." There are two of these bulbs in each hexagon, set crosswise. The light they give is insufficient, and unceasing."
This experiment will test whether plants can survive radiation, flourish in partial gravity, and thrive in a small, controlled environment.
We can (and have) test all those things here on Earth. IIRC, NASA successfully grew lettuce in zero-g on a shuttle mission.
The moon is a terrible place to grow plants:
- 13-day/night cycle
- 275 Kelvin temperature variation
- 25 rem/yr radiation with no solar flare protection
- no water
- lunar regolith useless as soil
In other words you have to take the whole environment with you. Growing plants on a scale sufficient to be considered food on the moon is a long way off.
It makes for a good kids public outreach program, but let's be realistic: the moon is basically good for 2 things - a huge radio telescope on the far side, and the 1-50 ppb He-3 in the lunar regolith. By the time we're ready to do those things, robots will be good enough to do it all for us.
"Thank you to use Nuclear-Friend. The main characteristic in machine of control rod moves in with slim middle, can nimble neutron dependable work send, of via sea warmness thusly turbine twist out machine-wind.
ALERTNESS, magnet-imprison with ionisation threatening badass. Fleeting bioluminescence in bird appendage observation, conjunction Cherenkov neon likeness, linking chain of no command (barking!) to blinking indications. Personages of vicinity ascending fucking with sparks! Ability detriment remove with "fast-neutron-sheilding-blanket" (slowly neutrons with alacrity) to mammalian sex babylove machine faulty. As packing box inside includes dosimeter for life-spirit guard dog is. Un-normal witness with e=mc2 of cloudy fungus c.10km bigness, warranty glue not connected."
Motivated people throughout history have endured considerably more privation than being confined to 92 m2/person for 17 months. We know that from a psychological standpoint, people can and will make a trip of this nature. The key word here is motivation.
But if the participants know that the whole thing is a simulation, it robs the experiment of any useful insight into many aspects of psychological stress because this motivational factor is missing; the difference between a simulated airlock and a real one will not be lost on participants. The project would thus seem to be a way to validate the astronaut selection process itself, and not just a study on long-term isolation - in other words, "we know people can handle it, but we still don't have a reliable way of knowing which ones". The recent diapers-and-knives episode amply illustrates that astronaut selection is something of an inexact science.
Of course, this still leaves lots of room for interesting experiments on group dynamics, but we already know quite a lot on this subject: for example, years of experimentation with Skylab, Mir etc. suggested that if there was some tension in the group, ground control would usually create an obviously impossible schedule of work for the team, creating a them-versus-us mentality which tended to bring the team closer; tensions within the group were eased by colluding to grumble about ground control.
This sort of thing has been studied exhaustively by many military and civilian organisations for a long time, so what are the objectives here?
I am a lifelong bilingual (English/French), and I have quite distinct personality traits depending on the language I'm using. In English, I am reserved and polite whereas in French, I am more outgoing, brash and tend to swear more.
If I go out for an evening with Francophone friends, we drink wine, live to eat (expensive "fine" food), and talk about each other. If I go out with Anglophones, we drink beer, eat to live (cheap familiar food like pizza), and talk about current affairs. There are more jokes in English, but more sex and ribaldry in French.
It's a nice balance. I suspect if I only spent time with French folk, I'll eventually die of liver failure, whereas if I only spent time with Anglophones, I'll die of heart disease. I can't be bothered to check which is statistically likely to kill me first, but surely I'm hedging my risk between the two?
From TFA:
...wavelengths have been stretched to infrared wavelengths by the growing space-time that causes the Universe's expansion. should perhaps read:
...wavelengths have been stretched to infrared wavelengths by the growing space-time that results in the Universe's expansion. It is the expansion of space itself, rather than the proper motion of celestial objects away from each other, that is important. If you change the distance metric used in formulae rather than the distance values, your resulting speed values are not limited by special relativity.
I find it ironic that America is in favour of the colonisation of new territories in Space.
A cursory examination of history before the Declaration of Indepedence indicates the reasons for colonising America were nearly all commercial, and not founded in nebulous notions like "Because it's there" or "Because it's difficult". And in the end, things didn't work out too well for the colonising authorities, IIRC.
If you want to spend billions of tax dollars colonising planets only to have the ungrateful curs set fire to your tea supply, go right ahead. I mean, by colonisation, you're talking about taxing Martian settlers for their natural resources; I find it hard to believe they'll be given representation (i.e. keeping the resources for themselves) the minute they ask for it.
Or will they be given representation with Diebold voting machines?
Of course it can, and the universe is expanding in exactly this way. That's not entirely correct, at least not in the sense most people intuitively assume when you say "expanding". Objects in the Universe are not expanding away from each other into "nothingness", but rather it is the fabric of space itself which is stretching. Since it is the metric defining distance itself that is changing, this expansion (and the *resultant* moving apart of objects) is unaffected by the limit c indicated by special relativity.
Slashdot Mirror
How HE LIkes BEer Beef & Cake!
Now Obese Forms are NEver Nature’s MakinG.
ALl of SImilar Plight
Should C[L]onsider ARight
Keeping CAre of the SCoops that they T[I]ake.
I wonder if SpaceX are looking at Waverider designs for BFR re-entry.
With a strongly negative dihedral, you can contain the shock wave under the "wings" and use it as a lifting surface - "compression lift".
To change your lift direction you roll the vehicle around the inside of the shock cone.
Since the purpose of such "wings" is to contain the shock rather than generate lift directly, they don't need much thickness, just (a lot of) heat resistance - maybe even something as flimsy as a woven mesh. ...which means they could be folded and stowed for other phases of flight to reduce drag, you could easily swap out the wings for different planetary atmospheres, and by having your payload/CG on a sliding sled you need fewer control surfaces - like a hang glider.
(Citation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2015...)
TLDR / WAG: Replacing those huge leg-stablizer-thngs on the "Tintin BFR" with something resembling fold-away mosquito netting would add a lot of lightness....could this be Elon's "delightfully counter-intuitive" new BFR design?
I thought the power of these things were measured in TeV...
Serious question to any engineers who know how to build these devices: is the diameter/length of the accelerator relevant to the performance or just to the cost?
"hot" is a euphemism for someone or something having a high degree of radioactivity.
That is not a euphemism. It is a colloquialism.
"That woman is hot" is a colloquialism for "I desire sexual congress with that woman".
Both of these phrases are euphemisms for "I'd fuck her".
A euphemism is the substitution of an offensive word or phrase with a genteel or inoffensive one.
"The universe (which others call the Library) is composed of an indefinite, perhaps infinite number of hexagonal galleries. In the center of each gallery is a ventilation shaft, bounded by a low railing. From any hexagon one can see the floors above and below-one after another, endlessly. The arrangement of the galleries is always the same: Twenty bookshelves, five to each side, line four of the hexagon's six sides; the height of the bookshelves, floor to ceiling, is hardly greater than the height of a normal librarian. One of the hexagon's free sides opens onto a narrow sort of vestibule, which in turn opens onto another gallery, identical to the first - identical in fact to all. To the left and right of the vestibule are two tiny compartments. One is for sleeping, upright; the other, for satisfying one's physical necessities. Through this space, too, there passes a spiral staircase, which winds upward and downward into the remotest distance. In the vestibule there is a mirror, which faithfully duplicates appearances. Men often infer from this mirror that the Library is not infinite - if it were, what need would there be for that illusory replication? I prefer to dream that burnished surfaces are a figuration and promise of the infiniteLight is provided by certain spherical fruits that bear the name "bulbs." There are two of these bulbs in each hexagon, set crosswise. The light they give is insufficient, and unceasing."
- The Library of Babel, Jorge Luis Borges
From TFA:
This experiment will test whether plants can survive radiation, flourish in partial gravity, and thrive in a small, controlled environment.
We can (and have) test all those things here on Earth. IIRC, NASA successfully grew lettuce in zero-g on a shuttle mission.
The moon is a terrible place to grow plants:
- 13-day/night cycle
- 275 Kelvin temperature variation
- 25 rem/yr radiation with no solar flare protection
- no water
- lunar regolith useless as soil
In other words you have to take the whole environment with you. Growing plants on a scale sufficient to be considered food on the moon is a long way off.
It makes for a good kids public outreach program, but let's be realistic: the moon is basically good for 2 things - a huge radio telescope on the far side, and the 1-50 ppb He-3 in the lunar regolith. By the time we're ready to do those things, robots will be good enough to do it all for us.
You're very clever young man, very clever. But I'm afraid it's rugs all the way down.
I can just imagine the operating manaul:
"Thank you to use Nuclear-Friend. The main characteristic in machine of control rod moves in with slim middle, can nimble neutron dependable work send, of via sea warmness thusly turbine twist out machine-wind.
ALERTNESS, magnet-imprison with ionisation threatening badass. Fleeting bioluminescence in bird appendage observation, conjunction Cherenkov neon likeness, linking chain of no command (barking!) to blinking indications. Personages of vicinity ascending fucking with sparks! Ability detriment remove with "fast-neutron-sheilding-blanket" (slowly neutrons with alacrity) to mammalian sex babylove machine faulty. As packing box inside includes dosimeter for life-spirit guard dog is. Un-normal witness with e=mc2 of cloudy fungus c.10km bigness, warranty glue not connected."
That's heresay.
Motivated people throughout history have endured considerably more privation than being confined to 92 m2/person for 17 months. We know that from a psychological standpoint, people can and will make a trip of this nature. The key word here is motivation.
But if the participants know that the whole thing is a simulation, it robs the experiment of any useful insight into many aspects of psychological stress because this motivational factor is missing; the difference between a simulated airlock and a real one will not be lost on participants. The project would thus seem to be a way to validate the astronaut selection process itself, and not just a study on long-term isolation - in other words, "we know people can handle it, but we still don't have a reliable way of knowing which ones". The recent diapers-and-knives episode amply illustrates that astronaut selection is something of an inexact science.
Of course, this still leaves lots of room for interesting experiments on group dynamics, but we already know quite a lot on this subject: for example, years of experimentation with Skylab, Mir etc. suggested that if there was some tension in the group, ground control would usually create an obviously impossible schedule of work for the team, creating a them-versus-us mentality which tended to bring the team closer; tensions within the group were eased by colluding to grumble about ground control.
This sort of thing has been studied exhaustively by many military and civilian organisations for a long time, so what are the objectives here?
I am a lifelong bilingual (English/French), and I have quite distinct personality traits depending on the language I'm using. In English, I am reserved and polite whereas in French, I am more outgoing, brash and tend to swear more.
If I go out for an evening with Francophone friends, we drink wine, live to eat (expensive "fine" food), and talk about each other. If I go out with Anglophones, we drink beer, eat to live (cheap familiar food like pizza), and talk about current affairs. There are more jokes in English, but more sex and ribaldry in French.
It's a nice balance. I suspect if I only spent time with French folk, I'll eventually die of liver failure, whereas if I only spent time with Anglophones, I'll die of heart disease. I can't be bothered to check which is statistically likely to kill me first, but surely I'm hedging my risk between the two?
...wavelengths have been stretched to infrared wavelengths by the growing space-time that results in the Universe's expansion. It is the expansion of space itself, rather than the proper motion of celestial objects away from each other, that is important. If you change the distance metric used in formulae rather than the distance values, your resulting speed values are not limited by special relativity.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metric_expansion
I find it ironic that America is in favour of the colonisation of new territories in Space. A cursory examination of history before the Declaration of Indepedence indicates the reasons for colonising America were nearly all commercial, and not founded in nebulous notions like "Because it's there" or "Because it's difficult". And in the end, things didn't work out too well for the colonising authorities, IIRC. If you want to spend billions of tax dollars colonising planets only to have the ungrateful curs set fire to your tea supply, go right ahead. I mean, by colonisation, you're talking about taxing Martian settlers for their natural resources; I find it hard to believe they'll be given representation (i.e. keeping the resources for themselves) the minute they ask for it. Or will they be given representation with Diebold voting machines?
Whaa? You mean you aren't wearing tinfoil eyeshades?
I, for one, welcome our new persistent vegetative state overlords.