Iridium satellites are not in geosynchronous orbit. If they were, you wouldn't get 'Iridium flares' in the morning and evening when the sun glints off the solar panels of satellites in the constellation. The system was so named because it was originally supposed to have as many satellites as there are protons/electrons in an atom of Iridium, with the constellation resembling the orbits of those electrons. In reality, they launched a few fewer, so it should be named after a different element, but they stuck with Iridium. Iridium largely failed because the implementation was crap. It was analog/voice only, $5000 phones, $8/minute, etc. Now that it's been bought up, people have figured out ways to use Iridium for data telemetry at cheaper rates, and it's actually seeing some use.
If they're talking about current chemical propulsion technologies, then yes, they'll be out there for the better part of a year. If we get dig out nuclear propulsion technology that's already been developed, such as NERVA, and other things such as gas core nuclear rockets, it's simple to cut the trip down to weeks while simultaneously packing dozens of tons of extra shielding.
If you're a product of the US education system, go ask for your money back, because you didn't get what you paid for. Rights are not granted by a constitution. Rights are inherent (at the 'certain inalienable' ones). Freedom of speech is merely acknowledged by the US Constitution, not granted.
No. Mixing H2O2 and Kerosene would be a bipropellant engine. And H2O2 decomposition looks like this: 2H2O2 => 2H2O + O2. It most certainly does not give you hydrogen and oxygen.
TFA claims there are no constantly sunlit spots near the south pole, but remembering an article I saw a few years ago, I looked up Malapert Mountain, also in a space.com article. Same story..constantly lit, on a crater rim, and the inside of the crater is constantly dark, so it would be perfect for an optical telescope with a short cable run to the moon base at the crater rim. They even suspect strongly that there's water ice in the crater there. So, what gives? Is the previous article wrong or are the people in the current article suffering from amnesia/not-discovered-here? They seem to both be using data from Clementine. Here's another, more informative site on Malapert with lots of pretty pictures.
It destroys all the plankton within some number of feet (let's say 20) of the surface of the ocean, destroying a valuable CO2 => O2 machine. This also eliminates a food source for the next layer of ocean life, and so on, down the chain, until only the fittest survive (obviously, extremophiles feeding off the material at ocean floor vents are fine). This has a significant negative effect on the atmosphere, causing (they think) a massive, multi-year ice age and die off. Even if it irradiates half the planet, we are totally screwed if we are in any way still dependent as a species on the Earth having a breathable atmosphere and lots of plants and animals to eat.
If you allow nuclear reactor operators to reprocess waste in a manner that Al Gore had banned when he was in the Senate, then there's not nearly so much waste. France doesn't seem to have a problem with it, and gets most of their power from nukes. Besides, with nuclear reactors, the waste is small, and easily containable. Existing coal power plants each belch tons of Thorium-234 and other isotopes directly into the air. If coal power plants were regulated to the degree that nuclear power plants are regarding release of radiation, coal wouldn't be economically viable as a power source.
Actually, the original reason corporations were granted charters at all were so that they could serve the citizenry in a way that was not possible for individuals to accomplish. They at all times exist at the whim of the citizens, at least in the United States.
The author of this article did some pretty spotty research. Bergen R/C is in Cassopolis, Michigan, not Mississippi (someone doesn't know their state abbreviations), and the Industrial Twin carries 20 pounds, not 20 kilograms, for 30 minutes, and even that is a slight overstatement of its capabilities.
James Webb doesn't cover the same spectrum that Hubble does. Visual and UV will be completely ignored by it. No replacement for Hubble is in the works, and UV coverage can't be obtained from Earth-based telescopes. This has been well-covered before -- please inform yourself before you recklessly cast aspersions on a space project in typical sissy fashion.
The speed they're talking about is typically GBP (gain bandwidth product), or the frequency at which the gain of the transistor is 1. It's not typically useful at a gain of 1 (for instance, if you want to fan it out to like transistors, it'll need to be at least n for n fanouts). The clock speed on a chip is significantly slower than the speeds they're talking about because in order to achieve that external clock speed, the individual components must be faster. Say you had a P4, with its 20 stage pipeline. Each pipeline stage must complete in a clock cycle. However, say there's a propagation of say, 10 transistors for the output at the end of that pipeline stage to be valid. Each individual transistor would have to be 10 times as fast as the clock speed in order for the processor to work. There will not be 500GHz or 1THz computers any time soon, at least not without extremely long pipelines and even faster transistors than this (to accomodate a useful fanout value).
Every time an article quoting a GBP-derived transistor speed comes out, everyone misunderstands this issue, so, here it is.
The primary use for these simulations is to verify that, based on the current state of maintenance/decay of our current stockpile of nuclear weapons, how well those weapons are going to work. Aside from the obvious issues with the active ingredients decaying over time, there are other issues with materials that must be simulated. It's not necessarily used for new weapons development, although that is one use.
Columbia was not damaged by debris from the SRBs, it was damaged by the main external tank, which contains LH2/LO2. The SRBs contain solid rocket fuel at room temperature, and thus do not have any insulation required for cryogenic chemical storage. If stuff were falling off the SRBs, you'd have bigger problems than debris impact.
We use a standard Orinoco Silver PC Card for wireless on the (PC/104-based) avionics for our robotic helicopter, and even with a half watt external amp plugged in, the entire system gets 3 hours of battery life off a 12V 3Ah NiMH pack. We get a 28dB signal at slightly over a mile. As long as you don't buy a power-sucking prism-based card, it's not a problem.
I don't know what the hell you're talking about regarding RPN taking too long to learn. I'd never heard anything about it except it being hard to use when I bought my HP 48GX at the beginning of my junior year of high school, and I had RPN licked within five minutes of getting the calculator out of the store, while driving to dinner with my parents. I can barely add numbers on a TI calc, but I can fly on my HP.
You can already get single chip systems based on their IA chips if you're doing embedded development: Kontron's X-Board, which just came out. We're using a Kontron PC/104 board with a standalone Geode on it right now and it's the most rock solid board I've ever used. The X-board is going to make our next revision incredibly small, low power, and inexpensive.
Although, I have to wonder what this will do the ZFMicrosystems lawsuit against National. Basically, ZFMicro was started by the original founder of Ampro, which originated the popular PC/104 standard, and integrated a 586 processor core with a bunch of peripherals into the ZFx86, a neat little cheap (I have an MZ104 from Tri-m Systems that uses it. Squeezes a slackware distro into a 6.8MB file on a flash chip). Unfortunately, ZFMicro used National as their foundry and for some of their last-line development. So National got access to schematics and layout info for the chip, instead of just masks. National then proceeded to steal it and integrate the Geode proc they bought from Cyrix with some on-chip peripherals in the same way, and then put ZFMicro out of business by refusing to ship any more ZFx86s.
The price of raw titanium usually hovers around 40 cents US/pound, actually. Because it melts at 3000 degrees F, however, it's difficult to work into usable pieces, hence raising the price. Titanium shavings/scrap are much cheaper than finished bar/plate stock. It also has a reputation for being difficult to machine, which it's not; merely counterintuitive.
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You'll never see people making the first floor of every building a parking garage. Two words: truck bomb.
Iridium satellites are not in geosynchronous orbit. If they were, you wouldn't get 'Iridium flares' in the morning and evening when the sun glints off the solar panels of satellites in the constellation. The system was so named because it was originally supposed to have as many satellites as there are protons/electrons in an atom of Iridium, with the constellation resembling the orbits of those electrons. In reality, they launched a few fewer, so it should be named after a different element, but they stuck with Iridium. Iridium largely failed because the implementation was crap. It was analog/voice only, $5000 phones, $8/minute, etc. Now that it's been bought up, people have figured out ways to use Iridium for data telemetry at cheaper rates, and it's actually seeing some use.
If they're talking about current chemical propulsion technologies, then yes, they'll be out there for the better part of a year. If we get dig out nuclear propulsion technology that's already been developed, such as NERVA, and other things such as gas core nuclear rockets, it's simple to cut the trip down to weeks while simultaneously packing dozens of tons of extra shielding.
If you're a product of the US education system, go ask for your money back, because you didn't get what you paid for. Rights are not granted by a constitution. Rights are inherent (at the 'certain inalienable' ones). Freedom of speech is merely acknowledged by the US Constitution, not granted.
No. Mixing H2O2 and Kerosene would be a bipropellant engine. And H2O2 decomposition looks like this: 2H2O2 => 2H2O + O2. It most certainly does not give you hydrogen and oxygen.
That's three quarters of the states to ratify an amendment.
Rights not granted to the government are reserved to the states, or to the people. That is all, jackass.
TFA claims there are no constantly sunlit spots near the south pole, but remembering an article I saw a few years ago, I looked up Malapert Mountain, also in a space.com article. Same story..constantly lit, on a crater rim, and the inside of the crater is constantly dark, so it would be perfect for an optical telescope with a short cable run to the moon base at the crater rim. They even suspect strongly that there's water ice in the crater there. So, what gives? Is the previous article wrong or are the people in the current article suffering from amnesia/not-discovered-here? They seem to both be using data from Clementine. Here's another, more informative site on Malapert with lots of pretty pictures.
It destroys all the plankton within some number of feet (let's say 20) of the surface of the ocean, destroying a valuable CO2 => O2 machine. This also eliminates a food source for the next layer of ocean life, and so on, down the chain, until only the fittest survive (obviously, extremophiles feeding off the material at ocean floor vents are fine). This has a significant negative effect on the atmosphere, causing (they think) a massive, multi-year ice age and die off. Even if it irradiates half the planet, we are totally screwed if we are in any way still dependent as a species on the Earth having a breathable atmosphere and lots of plants and animals to eat.
That's their way of telling you to get off the god damn phone while you're driving.
Power usage is generally linear with frequency, but proportional to the square of the voltage. Your example would use roughly half the power.
If you allow nuclear reactor operators to reprocess waste in a manner that Al Gore had banned when he was in the Senate, then there's not nearly so much waste. France doesn't seem to have a problem with it, and gets most of their power from nukes. Besides, with nuclear reactors, the waste is small, and easily containable. Existing coal power plants each belch tons of Thorium-234 and other isotopes directly into the air. If coal power plants were regulated to the degree that nuclear power plants are regarding release of radiation, coal wouldn't be economically viable as a power source.
That Rotomotion system is actually $5500.
Actually, the original reason corporations were granted charters at all were so that they could serve the citizenry in a way that was not possible for individuals to accomplish. They at all times exist at the whim of the citizens, at least in the United States.
The author of this article did some pretty spotty research. Bergen R/C is in Cassopolis, Michigan, not Mississippi (someone doesn't know their state abbreviations), and the Industrial Twin carries 20 pounds, not 20 kilograms, for 30 minutes, and even that is a slight overstatement of its capabilities.
James Webb doesn't cover the same spectrum that Hubble does. Visual and UV will be completely ignored by it. No replacement for Hubble is in the works, and UV coverage can't be obtained from Earth-based telescopes. This has been well-covered before -- please inform yourself before you recklessly cast aspersions on a space project in typical sissy fashion.
The speed they're talking about is typically GBP (gain bandwidth product), or the frequency at which the gain of the transistor is 1. It's not typically useful at a gain of 1 (for instance, if you want to fan it out to like transistors, it'll need to be at least n for n fanouts).
The clock speed on a chip is significantly slower than the speeds they're talking about because in order to achieve that external clock speed, the individual components must be faster. Say you had a P4, with its 20 stage pipeline. Each pipeline stage must complete in a clock cycle. However, say there's a propagation of say, 10 transistors for the output at the end of that pipeline stage to be valid. Each individual transistor would have to be 10 times as fast as the clock speed in order for the processor to work.
There will not be 500GHz or 1THz computers any time soon, at least not without extremely long pipelines and even faster transistors than this (to accomodate a useful fanout value).
Every time an article quoting a GBP-derived transistor speed comes out, everyone misunderstands this issue, so, here it is.
The primary use for these simulations is to verify that, based on the current state of maintenance/decay of our current stockpile of nuclear weapons, how well those weapons are going to work. Aside from the obvious issues with the active ingredients decaying over time, there are other issues with materials that must be simulated. It's not necessarily used for new weapons development, although that is one use.
Columbia was not damaged by debris from the SRBs, it was damaged by the main external tank, which contains LH2/LO2. The SRBs contain solid rocket fuel at room temperature, and thus do not have any insulation required for cryogenic chemical storage. If stuff were falling off the SRBs, you'd have bigger problems than debris impact.
Yes, in Diamond Age. The ads were for a Hindustani hotel.
Russian Soyuz has had successful crew ejections when the booster rocket exploded on launch: here.
We use a standard Orinoco Silver PC Card for wireless on the (PC/104-based) avionics for our robotic helicopter, and even with a half watt external amp plugged in, the entire system gets 3 hours of battery life off a 12V 3Ah NiMH pack.
We get a 28dB signal at slightly over a mile. As long as you don't buy a power-sucking prism-based card, it's not a problem.
I don't know what the hell you're talking about regarding RPN taking too long to learn. I'd never heard anything about it except it being hard to use when I bought my HP 48GX at the beginning of my junior year of high school, and I had RPN licked within five minutes of getting the calculator out of the store, while driving to dinner with my parents. I can barely add numbers on a TI calc, but I can fly on my HP.
You can already get single chip systems based on their IA chips if you're doing embedded development: Kontron's X-Board, which just came out. We're using a Kontron PC/104 board with a standalone Geode on it right now and it's the most rock solid board I've ever used. The X-board is going to make our next revision incredibly small, low power, and inexpensive.
Although, I have to wonder what this will do the ZFMicrosystems lawsuit against National. Basically, ZFMicro was started by the original founder of Ampro, which originated the popular PC/104 standard, and integrated a 586 processor core with a bunch of peripherals into the ZFx86, a neat little cheap (I have an MZ104 from Tri-m Systems that uses it. Squeezes a slackware distro into a 6.8MB file on a flash chip). Unfortunately, ZFMicro used National as their foundry and for some of their last-line development. So National got access to schematics and layout info for the chip, instead of just masks. National then proceeded to steal it and integrate the Geode proc they bought from Cyrix with some on-chip peripherals in the same way, and then put ZFMicro out of business by refusing to ship any more ZFx86s.
The price of raw titanium usually hovers around 40 cents US/pound, actually. Because it melts at 3000 degrees F, however, it's difficult to work into usable pieces, hence raising the price. Titanium shavings/scrap are much cheaper than finished bar/plate stock. It also has a reputation for being difficult to machine, which it's not; merely counterintuitive.