Wow, this is cool. This answers half the question about where the missing mass in the universe is.
Once this number is refined, we can calculate how much mass has been consumed by black holes because we think we know how much the universe weighs.
Once we understand how much mass black holes have consumed of our universe, we can plot the expected frequency of different classes of black holes.
Once we have THAT number, we can start figuring out how many black holes should be where, and we can use observed results to produce more evidence for and against theories such as quantum black holes.
This discovery could eventually refine our view of the entire universe! Hot damn!
The Saturn V was replaced (I use the term loosely) by the Shuttle because it was expected the Shuttle would lower launch costs significantly.
Unfortunately, due to incorrect assumptions at design time, the Shuttle now has costs very similar to the Saturn V, but boosts less cargo.
The Saturn V derivatives, such as the Saturn V-D could have carried 326,500 kg to orbit! And some of the Nova series boosters could have boosted over a million lbs into orbit in one shot!
Unfortunately, Congress decided to shut down the Saturn line. To avoid any conflict, they ordered the tooling and dies used the create these incredible vehicles destroyed and sold as scrap. Scrap metal!
Now, we have an expensive white elephant (in a distinctly non-elephant like Delta configuration) in the form of the space shuttle. It costs over $500 million to launch, and carries about half of what the original expected payload capacity was supposed to be. It requires extensive refitting between missions, too. The motors need to be pulled and rebuilt each time, and the re-usable solid boosters get so contaminated by salt water, they need to be extensive refurbished before re-use, and that gets rid of almost any benefit from re-usabillity.
The future is Rotary Rocket with their SSTO manned vehicle (small payload, smaller price) or the Energia w/ their succesful Proton heavy lift launcher and their new Fregat stages and Zenit.
I hope that one day nanotechnology realizes the potential we all think it has. If so, maybe hobbyists will use nanosites to construct a new generation of Saturn V boosters from reconstructed blueprints (a set still exists in the Library of Congress) and launch them from the beaches of America.
I hope I live to see that day, so I can see that huge booster my grandparents helped design lift off the pad like my parents and the rest of the generation before me did, and then, maybe, I'll know that our day in space is truly here.
First of all, all of our pictures of asteroids are from tens of thousands of miles away. The Eros expedition is the first close up inspection of an Asteroid, and it's a necessary next step in freeing ourselves from the danger of exceeding our resources on Earth.
Asteroid mining can be a reality. For a good book, read 'Mining the Sky'. It discusses the obstacles that need to be overcome, and also illustrates the immense effect asteroid mining can have on our world.
New advances in ultrasonic drilling is reducing the complexity of asteroid sampling devices, and vaccuum smelting processes are being actively pursued. These, plus the scientific observations afforded by the Shoemaker-NEAR spacecraft will make it possible to avoid paying $10,000+ a lb to carry the materials needed to build tomorrows space colonies and industrial space presence.
The types of missions people pay the most attention to are the warm and fuzzy ones like J. Glenn's return to space and the Mars Pathfinder. The missions that will provide the best return on our investment in the future are the Cassini's, the SOHOs, and the Shoemaker-NEAR. They may not be as flashy as a remote control car driving a few feet on Mars, but they provide the type of rock-hard scientific data that's needed to get us into space for keeps....and being in space for keeps means removing eggs from the basket, which helps our chances at survival.
Unfortunately, they built all the facilities before cancelling the Vandenburg launches from SLC-6. Total spent on launch site: $8 billion. Total succesful launches of ANYTHING from this launchpad: 0.
You're incorrect. Visit the Encyclopedia Astronautica for more info and pictures (as in photographs) of the spacecraft mentioned on Deepcold.com. All of the spacecraft on Deepcold were actually constructed to varying degrees. The soviet lander shown was constructed, as were many of the blue-gemini vehicles. They were never finished or flight-rated because of budget cuts.
You should check your facts better before making sweeping statements like that.
> You mean I paid $400 for this Palm Vx and I >can't put a simple database on it without >schlepping another $24.95 to some nearly >anonymous company in West Podunk?
With Microsoft, you can get a device for $800 and then schlep out $200 for a simple database program from Microsoft.
>unlike the Palm, which offers limited Internet >accessibility with "Web Clippings," the Pocket >PC, along with a modem, allows you unlimited Web >access
They fail to mention that the Palm, along with a modem, also allows unlimited web access. Web clipping only applies to the Palm VII, a wireless capability that the PocketPC doesn't even have.
Damn those hackers! I know all about them, I've seen Hackers and The Net (Sandra B. is one hot computer expert! Rrrowr!), so I don't doubt anything I read about the abilities of these super mastermind criminal geniuses.
I hear new cars have computers in them. I oughta visit my local dealer and have him remove the computer from my car. I'm sure the hackers can use my cell phone to 'download' a program to my car that could cause it to blow up. If the dealer won't remove it, I'll get a paint scraper and shave all those funny little black rectangles off the circuit boards myself!
I sure am glad the Weekly World News is on top of this threat. They report all the stories that the other newspapers won't touch, but that's because they aren't afraid of exposing the truth! I'd better get back to the supermarket, there might be some stunning new development in the Jon-Benet Ramsey case (last I heard, it was the mom!) or biblical prophesies my pastor hasn't told me about. Glory!
Space travel isn't about prestige, it's about survival. That's it in a nutshell. As a species, we now have the power to exterminate all life on the surface of the planet. A couple more years, and we'll have the abillity to destroy all life below the surface as well.
As long as we have this, and as long as there are asteroids passing near Earth, we're vulnerable to extermination.
Think about it, all of civilization and humanity could be gone in less then 20 minutes. There's more time devoted to advertisements in an episode of ER than it would take to destroy all of civilization.
Iridium is a debacle, true. But don't assume bad market research in telecommunications means that space is gauche. It's not true, no matter how stylistically you try to liken the de-orbiting behemoths to 'flaming cadillacs'.
From Nasawatch: Editor's note: word is spreading fast at NASA MSFC that Boeing may have actually sold the two ISS tanks at a surplus property sale for $50. The tanks cost NASA $750,000.
Stay tuned.
Shuttle external tanks were part of O'Neill's visi
on
The High Frontier
·
· Score: 3
Gerard O'Neill was a proponent of re-using the space shuttle's external tanks (which are taken to 95% of orbital velocity before being discarded) as a base for a space colony.
The Shuttle ET is discarded right before an orbital circularization burn and could be held on to during that burn without depleting the orbital maneuvering fuel supply badly. For more information on how this these tanks could be converted to space stations and more, visit the following:
I work at Symantec, and CNN is shivering with anticipation waiting in our antivirus research lab to hear about juicy computer problems. Me and some friends were thinking it would be fun to pull a couple breakers at 4:00 Pacific (GMT midnight) after hyping it up to them to see if we could get them to broadcast live panic.
Tee-hee-hee....
Of course, there's also the question: 'Would my career be worth the infamy of being the last person to streak naked during a live CNN broadcast in the 1900s?' It's a tough call, that'd be an awfully tempting title....
> I wonder how the Tanzanians would react to this:), why not somewhere in te alps of the rockies instead;-)
The closer you are to the equator, the greater the boost the rotation of the Earth gives you. Ever wonder why KSC is located in Florida and not New Jersey? It's both to avoid having population downrange AND to take as much advantage of the rotation of the earth to get a free boost into orbit.
Mt. Kilimanjaro is a heck of a lot closer to the equator then the Rockies, and it offers a natural support structure for pointing your tracks upwards. Who knows, maybe Tanzania will become a major economic force in the next century, considering how it controls one of the most ideal places to launch stuff into orbit from... ?
You could cut the cost of launching even further and make the spacecraft much smaller if you replaced the bulk of your rocket fuel with a light-ship system instead. This is a device which has a chamber on the bottom that lasers on the ground fire at 60 times a second, instantly heating the air in the chamber, forcing it out the back, then sucking in more air from in front and having the cycle repeated. It's not science fiction, either, because a few people have built working prototypes that consisted of a laser that used this method to propel small models up to a couple hundred feet into the air. Think about it, the power source is kept on the ground and can be effective up until the high atmosphere, at which point you would switch to rockets and just use them for the last couple of steps.
Within 20 years, we could be launching vehicles the size of a minivan into orbit for a couple hundred dollars in electricity and a small tank of rocket fuel.
I did a little math, and I hope the numbers aren't totally off here... The Space Shuttle, accelerating at about 3gs, takes about 50 seconds to reach 600 miles per hour. The SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) consume over 1,000 lbs of fuel each second, so by getting rid of that first 50 seconds worth of fuel, you can put an extra 50,000lbs of cargo into orbit.
These numbers apply to the Space Shuttle itself, which is only rated to carry 55,000 lbs of cargo in any case, so think about how important that first 600mph is first and imagine what it could do for a spacecraft designed to take advantage of it. In the case of the Space Shuttle, it would theoretically double the cargo weight capacity (if there were only enough volume to take advantage of that).
Using magnetic assist is an excellent idea. I would like to see the day when a launching track goes up the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro and can toss cargo and ships into orbit almost unassisted.
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Wow, this is cool. This answers half the question about where the missing mass in the universe is.
Once this number is refined, we can calculate how much mass has been consumed by black holes because we think we know how much the universe weighs.
Once we understand how much mass black holes have consumed of our universe, we can plot the expected frequency of different classes of black holes.
Once we have THAT number, we can start figuring out how many black holes should be where, and we can use observed results to produce more evidence for and against theories such as quantum black holes.
This discovery could eventually refine our view of the entire universe! Hot damn!
Unfortunately, due to incorrect assumptions at design time, the Shuttle now has costs very similar to the Saturn V, but boosts less cargo.
The Saturn V derivatives, such as the Saturn V-D could have carried 326,500 kg to orbit! And some of the Nova series boosters could have boosted over a million lbs into orbit in one shot!
Unfortunately, Congress decided to shut down the Saturn line. To avoid any conflict, they ordered the tooling and dies used the create these incredible vehicles destroyed and sold as scrap. Scrap metal!
Now, we have an expensive white elephant (in a distinctly non-elephant like Delta configuration) in the form of the space shuttle. It costs over $500 million to launch, and carries about half of what the original expected payload capacity was supposed to be. It requires extensive refitting between missions, too. The motors need to be pulled and rebuilt each time, and the re-usable solid boosters get so contaminated by salt water, they need to be extensive refurbished before re-use, and that gets rid of almost any benefit from re-usabillity.
The future is Rotary Rocket with their SSTO manned vehicle (small payload, smaller price) or the Energia w/ their succesful Proton heavy lift launcher and their new Fregat stages and Zenit.
I hope that one day nanotechnology realizes the potential we all think it has. If so, maybe hobbyists will use nanosites to construct a new generation of Saturn V boosters from reconstructed blueprints (a set still exists in the Library of Congress) and launch them from the beaches of America.
I hope I live to see that day, so I can see that huge booster my grandparents helped design lift off the pad like my parents and the rest of the generation before me did, and then, maybe, I'll know that our day in space is truly here.
First of all, all of our pictures of asteroids are from tens of thousands of miles away. The Eros expedition is the first close up inspection of an Asteroid, and it's a necessary next step in freeing ourselves from the danger of exceeding our resources on Earth.
...and being in space for keeps means removing eggs from the basket, which helps our chances at survival.
Asteroid mining can be a reality. For a good book, read 'Mining the Sky'. It discusses the obstacles that need to be overcome, and also illustrates the immense effect asteroid mining can have on our world.
New advances in ultrasonic drilling is reducing the complexity of asteroid sampling devices, and vaccuum smelting processes are being actively pursued. These, plus the scientific observations afforded by the Shoemaker-NEAR spacecraft will make it possible to avoid paying $10,000+ a lb to carry the materials needed to build tomorrows space colonies and industrial space presence.
The types of missions people pay the most attention to are the warm and fuzzy ones like J. Glenn's return to space and the Mars Pathfinder. The missions that will provide the best return on our investment in the future are the Cassini's, the SOHOs, and the Shoemaker-NEAR. They may not be as flashy as a remote control car driving a few feet on Mars, but they provide the type of rock-hard scientific data that's needed to get us into space for keeps.
Unfortunately, they built all the facilities before cancelling the Vandenburg launches from SLC-6. Total spent on launch site: $8 billion. Total succesful launches of ANYTHING from this launchpad: 0.
You should check your facts better before making sweeping statements like that.
> You mean I paid $400 for this Palm Vx and I
>can't put a simple database on it without
>schlepping another $24.95 to some nearly
>anonymous company in West Podunk?
With Microsoft, you can get a device for $800 and then schlep out $200 for a simple database program from Microsoft.
I'm not certain how this is superior...
>unlike the Palm, which offers limited Internet
>accessibility with "Web Clippings," the Pocket
>PC, along with a modem, allows you unlimited Web
>access
They fail to mention that the Palm, along with a modem, also allows unlimited web access. Web clipping only applies to the Palm VII, a wireless capability that the PocketPC doesn't even have.
It's a non-statement, and deceptive.
Damn those hackers! I know all about them, I've seen Hackers and The Net (Sandra B. is one hot computer expert! Rrrowr!), so I don't doubt anything I read about the abilities of these super mastermind criminal geniuses.
I hear new cars have computers in them. I oughta visit my local dealer and have him remove the computer from my car. I'm sure the hackers can use my cell phone to 'download' a program to my car that could cause it to blow up. If the dealer won't remove it, I'll get a paint scraper and shave all those funny little black rectangles off the circuit boards myself!
I sure am glad the Weekly World News is on top of this threat. They report all the stories that the other newspapers won't touch, but that's because they aren't afraid of exposing the truth! I'd better get back to the supermarket, there might be some stunning new development in the Jon-Benet Ramsey case (last I heard, it was the mom!) or biblical prophesies my pastor hasn't told me about. Glory!
Space travel isn't about prestige, it's about survival. That's it in a nutshell. As a species, we now have the power to exterminate all life on the surface of the planet. A couple more years, and we'll have the abillity to destroy all life below the surface as well.
As long as we have this, and as long as there are asteroids passing near Earth, we're vulnerable to extermination.
Think about it, all of civilization and humanity could be gone in less then 20 minutes. There's more time devoted to advertisements in an episode of ER than it would take to destroy all of civilization.
Iridium is a debacle, true. But don't assume bad market research in telecommunications means that space is gauche. It's not true, no matter how stylistically you try to liken the de-orbiting behemoths to 'flaming cadillacs'.
Editor's note: word is spreading fast at NASA MSFC that Boeing may have actually sold the two ISS tanks at a surplus property sale for $50. The tanks cost NASA $750,000.
Stay tuned.
Gerard O'Neill was a proponent of re-using the space shuttle's external tanks (which are taken to 95% of orbital velocity before being discarded) as a base for a space colony.
The Shuttle ET is discarded right before an orbital circularization burn and could be held on to during that burn without depleting the orbital maneuvering fuel supply badly. For more information on how this these tanks could be converted to space stations and more, visit the following:
http://www.orbit6.com/et/
I work at Symantec, and CNN is shivering with anticipation waiting in our antivirus research lab to hear about juicy computer problems. Me and some friends were thinking it would be fun to pull a couple breakers at 4:00 Pacific (GMT midnight) after hyping it up to them to see if we could get them to broadcast live panic.
Tee-hee-hee....
Of course, there's also the question: 'Would my career be worth the infamy of being the last person to streak naked during a live CNN broadcast in the 1900s?' It's a tough call, that'd be an awfully tempting title....
> I wonder how the Tanzanians would react to this :), why not somewhere in te alps of the rockies instead ;-)
The closer you are to the equator, the greater the boost the rotation of the Earth gives you. Ever wonder why KSC is located in Florida and not New Jersey? It's both to avoid having population downrange AND to take as much advantage of the rotation of the earth to get a free boost into orbit.
Mt. Kilimanjaro is a heck of a lot closer to the equator then the Rockies, and it offers a natural support structure for pointing your tracks upwards. Who knows, maybe Tanzania will become a major economic force in the next century, considering how it controls one of the most ideal places to launch stuff into orbit from... ?
You could cut the cost of launching even further and make the spacecraft much smaller if you replaced the bulk of your rocket fuel with a light-ship system instead. This is a device which has a chamber on the bottom that lasers on the ground fire at 60 times a second, instantly heating the air in the chamber, forcing it out the back, then sucking in more air from in front and having the cycle repeated. It's not science fiction, either, because a few people have built working prototypes that consisted of a laser that used this method to propel small models up to a couple hundred feet into the air. Think about it, the power source is kept on the ground and can be effective up until the high atmosphere, at which point you would switch to rockets and just use them for the last couple of steps.
Within 20 years, we could be launching vehicles the size of a minivan into orbit for a couple hundred dollars in electricity and a small tank of rocket fuel.
I did a little math, and I hope the numbers aren't totally off here... The Space Shuttle, accelerating at about 3gs, takes about 50 seconds to reach 600 miles per hour. The SSMEs (Space Shuttle Main Engines) consume over 1,000 lbs of fuel each second, so by getting rid of that first 50 seconds worth of fuel, you can put an extra 50,000lbs of cargo into orbit.
These numbers apply to the Space Shuttle itself, which is only rated to carry 55,000 lbs of cargo in any case, so think about how important that first 600mph is first and imagine what it could do for a spacecraft designed to take advantage of it. In the case of the Space Shuttle, it would theoretically double the cargo weight capacity (if there were only enough volume to take advantage of that).
Using magnetic assist is an excellent idea. I would like to see the day when a launching track goes up the side of Mt. Kilimanjaro and can toss cargo and ships into orbit almost unassisted.