"The hospital of Bicêtre, France boasts a prodigiously deep well underneath, dating from 1735. The horizontal wheel that pumped the water was turned
initially by twelve horses, then, starting in 1781, by 72 men, taking shifts on a 24 hr day. These workers were eventually replaced by epileptic
patients and "madmen" in residence at the hospital."
I would also challenge the notion that fluorinated plastics can be produced energy efficiently enough to actually produce an energy surplus by collecting raindrops. I might be wrong though, but out of laziness I'll leave the proof to somebody else.
Also consider the Chinese anti missile test some months ago, the Chinese should also be able to track their space junk if this experiment was to be meaningful.
The problem is though that even lesser developed Nations without their own space program have the need to protect their defense installations. Even though their means might be limited they certainly can do damage to an attacker within range of their defenses. So even they want to detect the prying eyes in the sky.
What they probably don't have is the same number of guys with a telescope, spare time, and the education to hunt for satellites and even guess their purpose. Combined with a distribution medium like the internet for collaboration and collection of information that a bunch of amateurs would have come up with easily, this would become a valuable source of information to those lesser developed nations. This would only cost you an internet connection and an OLPC.
We do have a national ID card in Germany. The coercion scheme is simple you have to have an ID, it is required by law. Either it is the passport or it is the national ID card or some ersatz.
If you look at the Wikipedia entry for it you are offered some motivation for why the ID card might be a good thing.
First you need it if you want to vote, also you can use it if you must prove you are who you pretend to be, this is all pretty much the same as in the pdf provided. The german ID card is not enough to prove you are a German citizen but only an indicator that this might be the case.
This so far allows the government to know that you exist and are older than 16 years.
In addition to that you have to sign up at your local "ID" office (for lack of better word) when ever you move to a new place, so now the government also knows where you live if you are the kind of citizen which doesn't like paying some annoying fines.
The time you become aware of this whole ID thing in Germany is when you get drafted by your local drafting office since they get your identity through the local ID office. Well anyway, you have to spent some 9 months of your life either serving in the army or in some social function if you don't like to serve in the army.
This is our current setup. Certainly, it makes it easier for the government to interfere with your life.
I'm wondering why your government wants this now.
One reason mentioned in the pdf might be the credibility of the UK identity assurance. Especially if the UK wants to fit into the EU it might help to have something more of a rigid scheme for IDing its citizens. This might just be peer pressure.
To compare that with some more extreme government interference I remember that the former GDR had a system in place where if riots were to breakout particularly troublesome individuals were to be locked up into makeshift prison camps. Even if you were not particularly aligned with the system you were able to get hold of that information but you would not be told by the government openly about it. This sort of plan wouldn't only require some sort of ID system but also some pervasive spying on a countries citizens.
We are obviously not that far, there is hardly anything forbidden nowadays you would get locked up for, which doesn't at least border on plain old crime and about which some public consensus couldn't be obtained.
On the other hand if shit like the above mentioned prison camps would appear again I would expect that some information would leak out. The question I ask myself frequently though is what I might do then. I could keep my head low like last time. Or run away maybe?
How about retaliation? We (the guys with the terrorist mindset) should dress up as sociologists in sandals and self knit clothes and start picketing our universities for more math lectures and a stronger focus on statistics. Also tougher exams would help.
I mean that would teach them to poke fun of us engineers.
>I guess I don't know why Germany still has any neo-nazies (obviously not in the millions, of course, but quite a lot of 'em).
Well first of all there will always be narrow minded nut cases like this, so we will never get down to zero.
If you look at how the Nazis are distributed you will notice that there are less in Western Germany than in the eastern part (per person).
I guess the reason is that eastern Germany hadn't had much time in getting rid of the authoritarian culture which pervaded Germany at the beginning of the 20th century.
There is a good book about it: "Politics West Germany", Russell J. Dalton, ISBN 0-673-39887-0
It describes the changes Western Germany had to go through to become what it is now. I think that us east Germans have to go through a similar process. One indicator that we have improved will be that we have a stronger economy and the other might be that we will have less Nazis.
I wrote a comment a bit later than you did and I found that his numbers are not entirely unreasonable but it takes some stretching.
You could count the number of NPD and REP voters in 2005 and you would end up with about a million. This is not even unjustified despite the fact that many right wing voters might be nonviolent. Legal stuff aside you should ask who would those voters support if Nazis attacked you, would they even call the police or would they cheer them on. This might be crucial for your survival.
In the end I find that the numbers matter not as much here. He is distorting the truth. More Nazis mean more action so the government has to do more about them, and more importantly the quality of police action against the Nazis is far more aggressive than against Scientology.
I guess fighting Scientology requires mainly brains, I doubt that much use of force is needed.
>Note also, that the German government is much more concerned about dealing with the 20,000 or so Scientologists >there, rather than the 2 million or so neo-Nazis.
They even translated that for you. There are no more excuses for uninformed comments like yours. It contains 86 pages on right wing groups and 11 on Scientology. While that doesn't need to mean much, you will find that the Scientology part mostly contains information on why the BfV had to take action and some information about Scientology. The Nazis on the other hand mean way more trouble and that is reflected in the report. In addition to that you will find reports about the results of police action taken against the Nazis. Some think the government doesn't go far enough but you are still mistaken if you think less is done about Nazis than about Scientologists.
From that document you should mainly take away that the German government steps into action if some entity attempts to act against the constitution. This is the result of the demise of the Weimar Republic. On page 9 you will find:
"- commitment to values, i.e. the state recognizes its attachment to certain values it considers especially important and which are therefore not negotiable;
-the readiness to defend values, i.e. the state is willing to uphold these most important values against extremist positions; and
-preventive action to protect the Constitution, i.e. the state does not wait to react until extremists have violated the law."
If you read the part about Scientology you will find that our government followed the guidelines provided above. Are you suggesting the government should apply two different standards instead?
The number of Neo-Nazis given by you is probably slightly too high, there are about 40000 with party affiliation and if you count the number of votes for the two most right-wing parties in the 2005 election you end up with roughly one million. This is not to say that there might be even more people with this sort of view in Germany but this would merely be guessing. The number of Scientologists is also lower, 6000 to 12000 depending on whom you are listening to. You are in the right ballpark though. This fiddling with numbers doesn't help my argument but I'll leave it in here for entertainment value.
I would agree with your comment on the importance of watching the government though. I'm wondering about Britain's recent legislation against handguns (and not so recent, i.e. Dunblane related). Especially since there is not much of a link between gun violence and legal handgun possession but rather the local culture. Germany didn't quite go that far with its gun legislation lately they just raised the age of possession to 25. Below that you have to undergo psychological testing to get a gun. Who knows, German politicians might still remember that Hitler disarmed all legal handgun owners who didn't fit his picture of the perfect German.
At least I don't need Windows to watch NASATV, although I find it nice to see that ESA is catching up with NASA. Remember that one planetary (Mars/Saturn?) mission where NASA was much more open about the received data than ESA? There was some nasty spat about this and finally the Europeans put some processed data on the Web. They seem to have some elitist view of space travel over here in Europe which has only been cured by NASA being closer to the people. This latest NASA project is one aspect of it.
I liked the challenge of the DIY part of the question. There are occasions where I would ask the same. In most cases I end up with the same conclusion as with your problem, if the learning experience isn't worth it forget it.
But as I see at work it takes a nice lab and time to get anything interesting done. I rather try to learn something at work especially since your employer pays for it (more or less voluntarily) and you have far better means there.
What I sometimes think is that one could spend more time bastardizing things, i.e. taking things apart and making something new out of it - it still takes a lab though. Or maybe start a free software project if you have time and little money.
Actually I can't top the Samsung with an array of CF modules, USB sticks might work, but I don't wanna go there.
You could still try to find a cheap, used server mainboard which supports more than 4GB of RAM and connect it to your machine through GigE/NFS. Uh, an Intel server mainboard - S3000AH - supports 8GB, costs like $120 on ebay, that could do, you can actually get a cheaper motherboard, something AMD based. Isn't this totally funny, you can actually, with some luck, find a cheaper mother board than that Gigabyte RAM disk:), and it even supports more memory, but it probably is slower (although there are inexpensive Infiniband adapters out there).
Well actually you are very possibly wrong, there are most likely stars in there.
If you take Gimp and use the curves tool to map almost black to something human visible you can see a few dots besides Mercury and some at the lower screen border. Those lower border spots cover more than one pixel so they are probably not hot pixels which would have been removed anyway.
The raw data might have shown you more but I couldn't find it somehow.
I know you meant that to be a joke but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a perfectly serious comment.
Well I found that you could get 1GB DDR-2 RAM at 15 euros. Interestingly SDRAM and DDR RAM will be more expensive per GB if you buy them new. If you look for 1GB Flash you can get a CF card for 12 euros. Your only way to grow your own SSD is if you can get used RAM much cheaper than 12 euros.
The next question is how do you want to hook it up to your machine, certainly through PIDE. I suppose a Spartan3 could do the job since it can also talk to DDR2-RAM.
Then comes the interesting part. How much is your time worth?
You have to come up with a design and layout for your PCB. You will probably get a multilayer PCB which will be costly. If you are lucky you can populate the board yourself, especially if you can go without BGAs (unlikely).
Then you have to test the result and program the FPGA. If you messed up your PCB layout you are back to getting a new board and doing some more soldering and testing.
I have not done any design with IDE interfaces so I can't say how difficult this will be (it is probably the simplest). Also I don't know how to connect the DDR2-RAM to the Spartan.
This will take you some months (4-6, you do have a job do you?) by then the FLASH memory price will have fallen further.
My Samsung SSD 32GB has cost me ~320 euros. You will have to get below that with your design supporting the same amount of memory.
160 euros for 32GB (if you are lucky and get it for half the price)
30 euros for 4 prototype PCBs (my estimate)
60 euros for one larger spartan (XC3S1500-4FG456C)
50 euros for a JTAG adapter (if you don't have one)
0 for Xilinx tools
0 for your time
-? for the learning exercise
0 for the lab you already have (should include a logic analyzer and a decent scope otherwise add cost for renting one) ------------- 300 euros sum
Uh right, add a decent Li-Ion battery and add 20 euros.
I guess you have figured out by now, that waiting for 6 more months twiddling your thumbs might get you there cheaper.
The growth potential of mankind on earth is limited. We are just barely starting to understand this as earths climate is starting to change through our own doing. Even if global warming could be averted, other resource shortages could arise (water, landmass,...).
If we could settle in space we would have easier access to large amounts of raw materials (planets, moons, asteroids, stars [1],...) and energy. Our potential for growth would be limited still, but by what limits.
If growth isn't your thing just remember that your 401k plan is just based on the bet on growth.
Of course NASA isn't really up to such grandiose plans with its tiny budget. So if the western world (most of it anyway) hadn't gone to war over a waning resource (the Australian defense minister said so) but invested that kind of money into real and long term growth out into the solar system we would have something to look forward to. Instead we are descending into some sort of dark age where we cling to the memories and believes of centuries past, feverishly holding onto what runs through our fingers like oil.
OK, I went over board, but you still might want to have a look at this wonderful book
"Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience", ISBN 0-520-05898-4, 1985.
Its the conference proceedings of an Interstellar Migration conference held at Los Alamos in '83. Those people had ideas back then, they wouldn't even have dared to ask dumb questions like "Is space exploration is worth the public cost?".
[1] The book mentioned above explains that stellar husbandry could be used to gain raw materials from stars.
it is not all that surprising I suppose. If there were any rivalries then certainly between MS and Google.
Their homepage mentions though that it is meant to take a whole sky survey over a short period of time, i.e. a couple of days (I'm confused about this actually). With that capability all kinds of transient phenomena could be observed.
I'm not sure that NEOs do have the highest priority there. Although this is certainly part of the mission and certainly would have the broadest impact with people.
Did a certain large highly networked game reseller sell user information to the DoD already?
I heard people arguing that the Vietnam war was a means of reducing the number of angry young men produced by the baby boom.
Also I heard complaints about only 20 percent of soldiers being the real killers the rest just could not cope with the battlefield.
Independently of this theory, is Mr. Thompson suggesting that the DoD should stop looking for the most socially acceptable means of defending the US? How unpatriotic of him if he does.
If he actually claims that the DoD is behind violent video games he might be looking to increase the credibility of his theory. If right and left were to agree with him only the DoD would produce violent video games in the future.
I'll be preparing for this. Back to my virtual efforts of demolishing the Chinese wall by playing Mahjongg.
Well anthropomorphizing the rocket equation doesn't really help him, but he has the following to say about SSTOs:
"The rocket equation tells you that an SSTO booster using LH2 fuel and LO2 oxidizer needs a fuel mass fraction of around 0.92. That means that 92% of the take-off weight needs to be ascent propellant, and only 8% is left for everything else.
This is a very demanding requirement. The second and third stages of the Saturn V actually achieved a dry mass fraction of about 10%. But these are not complete spacecraft, only expendable stages without payload or recovery gear.
But the Space Cadets want a reusable booster than can quickly return to its launch site and take off again in a few days with another payload. This requires the addition of large amounts of weight which renders the vehicle incapable of orbital flight"
He does indeed deliver no definite proof that SSTOs are impossible but lets the reader come to his conclusion by giving the Venture Star and the DC-X example of NASA development leading to infeasible results. This is all trial and error so nothing definitive.
As I understand it you want to land vertically and rocket assisted. Don't you think that in vacuum you would have to achieve the same weight ratio for going up as for going down with the engines being the same. I don't know how much aerobreaking is going to happen but my gut feel is that you end up with impossibly small payloads and/or some other mechanism of landing. Bell made that point too with the DC-X and the Venture star.
Then you are still hoping for high turnaround times. Ok, you could pipeline the whole rebuilding effort which you will probably need as much as the shuttle but you still have to pay for it.
You would have to prove that your vehicle can operate cheaper despite more frequent launches which the smaller payloads will require. Don't forget the only cost you won't have compared to the classical design is the launcher cost.
Actually there is a nice article here about launch costs:
With your larger number of launches to get the same mass into orbit you can easily cause higher costs for labor per mass in orbit which is going to kill your SSTO dreams.
Anyway, I didn't calculate much either, but increasing launches to get the same mass into orbit is a fact if you want to reenter the atmosphere with the whole vehicle in good shape. With that your only hope is some increased efficiency in spacecraft operations. As the article above shows this is hard to achieve since some costs are fixed and won't go away anytime soon. I can already see it happening that even if you are successful with your project you will notice that despite your increased efficiency you won't have gained much because all your efficiency gains have been eaten up by an increased number of less valuable launches.
BTW, looking at that "cold hard equation" I would rather increase the exhaust velocity than fiddle with petty spaceship masses;).
In an older article he is actually cited as saying:
"According to Weldon, it's imperative that lawmakers who believe human space flight is important and who come from states with a strong NASA presence -- both Democrats and Republicans -- put their political capital on the line to save NASA funding from the new leadership's chopping block."
Well obviously there is nothing wrong with keeping jobs (especially high tech) in your state, that is certainly what people voted you for. But should it go as far as to impede any new program? Given that Ares is probably launching from Florida too and that it is a manned program what is he so scared about? Is there another election coming up during the spaceship gap?
"As the shuttles' 2010 retirement nears, NASA planned on getting exemptions to a congressional ban that prohibits purchases of Russian Soyuz rockets. The ban was imposed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, which Russia is accused of helping."
I still think you are right however, this is Mr. Weldons attempt at getting his share of the pork.
I'm worried about this because it would require a considerable amount of money to go into the shuttles. The article states "Griffin said it would cost $2.5 billion to $4 billion per year to keep the shuttles flying past 2010", so this would probably require an increase in NASA funding which they probably won't get.
Here is a quote: ""Where is the sexy new stuff?" they ask. "For that matter, where is the sexy old stuff? Why isn't Mike Griffin pulling out the blueprints for X-30/NASP, DC-X/Delta Clipper, or X-33/VentureStar? Billions of dollars were spent on these programs before they were cancelled. Why aren't we using all that research to design a cheap, reusable, Single-Stage-To-Orbit vehicle that operates just like an airplane and doesn't fall in the ocean after one flight?"
The answer to this question is: All of these vehicles were fantasy projects. They violated basic laws of physics and engineering. They were impossible with current technology, or any technology we can afford to develop on the timescale and budgets available to NASA. They were doomed attempts to avoid the Cold Equations of Spaceflight. "
He goes on to explain why SSTOs won't work and so on. I found Dr. Bells articles depressing and insightful. In the end I would rather settle for something that works rather than some space cadets wet dream that hasn't a chance of taking off.
Well and then there is the first project Orion which would have to suffer from not-on-my-planet syndrome but it might have worked.
Slashdot Mirror
You are quite wrong, treadmills have been used in the past to power all sorts of things. Here is an example:
http://www.uic.edu/aa/college/gallery400/notions/histories.htm
"The hospital of Bicêtre, France boasts a prodigiously deep well underneath, dating from 1735. The horizontal wheel that pumped the water was turned
initially by twelve horses, then, starting in 1781, by 72 men, taking shifts on a 24 hr day. These workers were eventually replaced by epileptic
patients and "madmen" in residence at the hospital."
I would also challenge the notion that fluorinated plastics can be produced energy efficiently enough to actually produce an energy surplus by collecting raindrops. I might be wrong
though, but out of laziness I'll leave the proof to somebody else.
Well most developed nations could develop radar installations to track space junk and their own satellites.
(I just wanted to know about the object size one can track and found some interesting paper:
http://www.esa.int/esapub/bulletin/bullet109/chapter16_bul109.pdf)
Also consider the Chinese anti missile test some months ago, the Chinese should also be able to track their
space junk if this experiment was to be meaningful.
The problem is though that even lesser developed Nations without their own space program have the need to protect
their defense installations. Even though their means might be limited they certainly can do damage to an attacker
within range of their defenses. So even they want to detect the prying eyes in the sky.
What they probably don't have is the same number of guys with a telescope, spare time, and the education to hunt
for satellites and even guess their purpose. Combined with a distribution medium like the internet for collaboration
and collection of information that a bunch of amateurs would have come up with easily, this would become a valuable
source of information to those lesser developed nations. This would only cost you an internet connection and an OLPC.
We do have a national ID card in Germany. The coercion scheme is simple you have to have an ID, it is required by law.
Either it is the passport or it is the national ID card or some ersatz.
If you look at the Wikipedia entry for it you are offered some motivation for why the ID card might be a good thing.
First you need it if you want to vote, also you can use it if you must prove you are who you pretend to be, this is all
pretty much the same as in the pdf provided. The german ID card is not enough to prove you are a German citizen but only
an indicator that this might be the case.
This so far allows the government to know that you exist and are older than 16 years.
In addition to that you have to sign up at your local "ID" office (for lack of better word) when ever you move to a new place,
so now the government also knows where you live if you are the kind of citizen which doesn't like paying some annoying fines.
The time you become aware of this whole ID thing in Germany is when you get drafted by your local drafting office since they get
your identity through the local ID office. Well anyway, you have to spent some 9 months of your life either serving in the army
or in some social function if you don't like to serve in the army.
This is our current setup. Certainly, it makes it easier for the government to interfere with your life.
I'm wondering why your government wants this now.
One reason mentioned in the pdf might be the credibility of the UK identity assurance. Especially if the UK wants to fit into
the EU it might help to have something more of a rigid scheme for IDing its citizens. This might just be peer pressure.
To compare that with some more extreme government interference I remember that the former GDR had a system in place where if riots
were to breakout particularly troublesome individuals were to be locked up into makeshift prison camps. Even if you were not
particularly aligned with the system you were able to get hold of that information but you would not be told by the government
openly about it. This sort of plan wouldn't only require some sort of ID system but also some pervasive spying on a countries citizens.
We are obviously not that far, there is hardly anything forbidden nowadays you would get locked up for, which doesn't at least border
on plain old crime and about which some public consensus couldn't be obtained.
On the other hand if shit like the above mentioned prison camps would appear again I would expect that some information would leak
out. The question I ask myself frequently though is what I might do then. I could keep my head low like last time. Or run away maybe?
Try potassium chlorate.
How about retaliation? We (the guys with the terrorist mindset) should dress up as sociologists in sandals and self knit clothes and start picketing our universities for more math lectures and a stronger focus on statistics. Also tougher exams would help.
I mean that would teach them to poke fun of us engineers.
No self respecting terrorist uses guns anymore, and yes your comment was modded inciteful.
>After all, who wants a sociologist in their terror cell?
I picture the following as your average sociologists terrorist cell.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P2jJdrz9bY&feature=related
>I guess I don't know why Germany still has any neo-nazies (obviously not in the millions, of course, but quite a lot of 'em). Well first of all there will always be narrow minded nut cases like this, so we will never get down to zero. If you look at how the Nazis are distributed you will notice that there are less in Western Germany than in the eastern part (per person). I guess the reason is that eastern Germany hadn't had much time in getting rid of the authoritarian culture which pervaded Germany at the beginning of the 20th century. There is a good book about it: "Politics West Germany", Russell J. Dalton, ISBN 0-673-39887-0 It describes the changes Western Germany had to go through to become what it is now. I think that us east Germans have to go through a similar process. One indicator that we have improved will be that we have a stronger economy and the other might be that we will have less Nazis.
I wrote a comment a bit later than you did and I found that his numbers are not entirely unreasonable but it takes some stretching.
You could count the number of NPD and REP voters in 2005 and you would end up with about a million. This is not even unjustified despite the fact that many right wing voters might be nonviolent. Legal stuff aside you should ask who would those voters support if Nazis attacked you, would they even call the police or would they cheer them on. This might be crucial for your survival.
In the end I find that the numbers matter not as much here. He is distorting the truth. More Nazis mean more action so the government has to do more about them, and more importantly the quality of police action against the Nazis is far more aggressive than against Scientology.
I guess fighting Scientology requires mainly brains, I doubt that much use of force is needed.
>Note also, that the German government is much more concerned about dealing with the 20,000 or so Scientologists >there, rather than the 2 million or so neo-Nazis.
I call bullshit on that one. Start reading here:
http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/en/index_en.html
http://www.verfassungsschutz.de/download/en/en_publications/annual_reports/vsbericht2005_engl/vsbericht_2005_engl.pdf
They even translated that for you. There are no more excuses for uninformed comments like yours. It contains 86 pages on right wing groups and 11 on Scientology. While that doesn't need to mean much, you will find that the Scientology part mostly contains information on why the BfV had to take action and some information about Scientology. The Nazis on the other hand mean way more trouble and that is reflected in the report. In addition to that you will find reports about the results of police action taken against the Nazis. Some think the government doesn't go far enough but you are still mistaken if you think less is done about Nazis than about Scientologists.
From that document you should mainly take away that the German government steps into action if some entity attempts to act against the constitution. This is the result of the demise of the Weimar Republic. On page 9 you will find:
"- commitment to values, i.e. the state recognizes its attachment to
certain values it considers especially important and which are
therefore not negotiable;
-the readiness to defend values, i.e. the state is willing to uphold
these most important values against extremist positions; and
-preventive action to protect the Constitution, i.e. the state does
not wait to react until extremists have violated the law."
If you read the part about Scientology you will find that our government followed the guidelines provided above.
Are you suggesting the government should apply two different standards instead?
The number of Neo-Nazis given by you is probably slightly too high, there are about 40000 with party affiliation and if you count the number of votes for the two most right-wing parties in the 2005 election you end up with roughly one million. This is not to say that there might be even more people with this sort of view in Germany but this would merely be guessing. The number of Scientologists is also lower, 6000 to 12000 depending on whom you are listening to. You are in the right ballpark though. This fiddling with numbers doesn't help my argument but I'll leave it in here for entertainment value.
I would agree with your comment on the importance of watching the government though. I'm wondering about Britain's recent legislation against handguns (and not so recent, i.e. Dunblane related). Especially since there is not much of a link between gun violence and legal handgun possession but rather the local culture. Germany didn't quite go that far with its gun legislation lately they just raised the age of possession to 25. Below that you have to undergo psychological testing to get a gun. Who knows, German politicians might still remember that Hitler disarmed all legal handgun owners who didn't fit his picture of the perfect German.
At least I don't need Windows to watch NASATV, although I find it nice to see that ESA is catching up with NASA. Remember that one planetary (Mars/Saturn?) mission where NASA was much more open about the received data than ESA? There was some nasty spat about this and finally the Europeans put some processed data on the Web. They seem to have some elitist view of space travel over here in Europe which has only been cured by NASA being closer to the people. This latest NASA project is one aspect of it.
Relax, evolution is going to sort it all out.
He probably wanted to kick only religious nut cases and not all religious people.
I liked the challenge of the DIY part of the question. There are occasions where I would ask the same. In most cases I end up with the same conclusion as with your problem, if the learning experience isn't worth it forget it.
:), and it even supports more memory, but it probably is slower (although there are inexpensive Infiniband adapters out there).
But as I see at work it takes a nice lab and time to get anything interesting done. I rather try to learn something at work especially since your employer pays for it (more or less voluntarily) and you have far better means there.
What I sometimes think is that one could spend more time bastardizing things, i.e. taking things apart and making something new out of it - it still takes a lab though. Or maybe start a free software project if you have time and little money.
Actually I can't top the Samsung with an array of CF modules, USB sticks might work, but I don't wanna go there.
You could still try to find a cheap, used server mainboard which supports more than 4GB of RAM and connect it to your machine through GigE/NFS.
Uh, an Intel server mainboard - S3000AH - supports 8GB, costs like $120 on ebay, that could do, you can actually get a cheaper motherboard, something AMD based. Isn't this totally funny, you can actually, with some luck, find a cheaper mother board than that Gigabyte RAM disk
Well actually you are very possibly wrong, there are most likely stars in there.
If you take Gimp and use the curves tool to map almost black to something human visible you can see a few dots besides Mercury and some at the lower screen border.
Those lower border spots cover more than one pixel so they are probably not hot pixels which would have been removed anyway.
The raw data might have shown you more but I couldn't find it somehow.
I know you meant that to be a joke but I just couldn't pass up the opportunity to make a perfectly serious comment.
Well I found that you could get 1GB DDR-2 RAM at 15 euros. Interestingly SDRAM and DDR RAM will be more expensive per GB if you buy them new. If you look for 1GB Flash you can get a CF card for 12 euros. Your only way to grow your own SSD is if you can get used RAM much cheaper than 12 euros.
The next question is how do you want to hook it up to your machine, certainly through PIDE. I suppose a Spartan3 could do the job since it can also talk to DDR2-RAM.
Then comes the interesting part. How much is your time worth?
You have to come up with a design and layout for your PCB. You will probably get a multilayer PCB which will be costly. If you are lucky you can populate the board yourself, especially if you can go without BGAs (unlikely).
Then you have to test the result and program the FPGA. If you messed up your PCB layout you are back to getting a new board and doing some more soldering and testing.
I have not done any design with IDE interfaces so I can't say how difficult this will be (it is probably the simplest). Also I don't know how to connect the DDR2-RAM to the Spartan.
This will take you some months (4-6, you do have a job do you?) by then the FLASH memory price will have fallen further.
My Samsung SSD 32GB has cost me ~320 euros. You will have to get below that with your design supporting the same amount of memory.
160 euros for 32GB (if you are lucky and get it for half the price)
30 euros for 4 prototype PCBs (my estimate)
60 euros for one larger spartan (XC3S1500-4FG456C)
50 euros for a JTAG adapter (if you don't have one)
0 for Xilinx tools
0 for your time
-? for the learning exercise
0 for the lab you already have (should include a logic analyzer and a decent scope otherwise add cost for renting one)
-------------
300 euros sum
Uh right, add a decent Li-Ion battery and add 20 euros.
I guess you have figured out by now, that waiting for 6 more months twiddling your thumbs might get you there cheaper.
The growth potential of mankind on earth is limited. We are just barely starting to understand this as earths climate is starting to change through our own doing.
Even if global warming could be averted, other resource shortages could arise (water, landmass,...).
If we could settle in space we would have easier access to large amounts of raw materials (planets, moons, asteroids, stars [1],...) and energy. Our potential for growth would be limited still, but by what limits.
If growth isn't your thing just remember that your 401k plan is just based on the bet on growth.
Of course NASA isn't really up to such grandiose plans with its tiny budget. So if the western world (most of it anyway) hadn't gone to war over a waning resource (the Australian defense minister said so) but invested that kind of money into real and long term growth out into the solar system we would have something to look forward to. Instead we are descending into some sort of dark age where we cling to the memories and believes of centuries past, feverishly holding onto what runs through our fingers like oil.
OK, I went over board, but you still might want to have a look at this wonderful book
"Interstellar Migration and the Human Experience", ISBN 0-520-05898-4, 1985.
Its the conference proceedings of an Interstellar Migration conference held at Los Alamos in '83. Those people had ideas back then, they wouldn't
even have dared to ask dumb questions like "Is space exploration is worth the public cost?".
[1] The book mentioned above explains that stellar husbandry could be used to gain raw materials from stars.
Lets be heretical - don't post a job ad on Slashdot. (It would be a necessary requirement but certainly not sufficient.)
Well I'm glad to have gotten rid of them.
people search for even colder place because permafrost is thawing.
http://www.informedresponse.co.uk/environews/?p=39
One muddy mess. No wonder they want to go somewhere cold.
That is nice to hear. Given that also Google is involved
http://www.lsst.org/News/google.shtml
it is not all that surprising I suppose. If there were any rivalries then certainly between MS and Google.
Their homepage mentions though that it is meant to take a whole sky survey over a short period of time, i.e. a couple of days (I'm confused about this actually). With that capability all kinds of transient phenomena could be observed.
I'm not sure that NEOs do have the highest priority there. Although this is certainly part of the mission and certainly would have the broadest impact with people.
Did a certain large highly networked game reseller sell user information to the DoD already?
I heard people arguing that the Vietnam war was a means of reducing the number of angry young men produced by the baby boom.
Also I heard complaints about only 20 percent of soldiers being the real killers the rest just could not cope with the battlefield.
Independently of this theory, is Mr. Thompson suggesting that the DoD should stop looking for the most socially acceptable means of defending the US? How unpatriotic of him if he does.
If he actually claims that the DoD is behind violent video games he might be looking to increase the credibility of his theory. If right and left were to agree with him only the DoD would produce violent video games in the future.
I'll be preparing for this. Back to my virtual efforts of demolishing the Chinese wall by playing Mahjongg.
Well anthropomorphizing the rocket equation doesn't really help him, but he has the following to say about SSTOs:
;).
"The rocket equation tells you that an SSTO booster using LH2 fuel and LO2 oxidizer needs a fuel mass fraction of around 0.92. That means that 92% of the take-off weight needs to be ascent propellant, and only 8% is left for everything else.
This is a very demanding requirement. The second and third stages of the Saturn V actually achieved a dry mass fraction of about 10%. But these are not complete spacecraft, only expendable stages without payload or recovery gear.
But the Space Cadets want a reusable booster than can quickly return to its launch site and take off again in a few days with another payload. This requires the addition of large amounts of weight which renders the vehicle incapable of orbital flight"
He does indeed deliver no definite proof that SSTOs are impossible but lets the reader come to his conclusion by giving the Venture Star and the DC-X example of NASA development leading to infeasible results. This is all trial and error so nothing definitive.
As I understand it you want to land vertically and rocket assisted. Don't you think that in vacuum you would have to achieve the same weight ratio for going up as for going down with the engines being the same. I don't know how much aerobreaking is going to happen but my gut feel is that you end up with impossibly small payloads and/or some other mechanism of landing. Bell made that point too with the DC-X and the Venture star.
Then you are still hoping for high turnaround times. Ok, you could pipeline the whole rebuilding effort which you will probably need as much as the shuttle but you still have to pay for it.
You would have to prove that your vehicle can operate cheaper despite more frequent launches which the smaller payloads will require. Don't forget the only cost you won't have compared to the classical design is the launcher cost.
Actually there is a nice article here about launch costs:
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/233/1
With your larger number of launches to get the same mass into orbit you can easily cause higher costs for labor per mass in orbit which is going to kill your SSTO dreams.
Anyway, I didn't calculate much either, but increasing launches to get the same mass into orbit is a fact if you want to reenter the atmosphere with the whole vehicle in good shape. With that your only hope is some increased efficiency in spacecraft operations. As the article above shows this is hard to achieve since some costs are fixed and won't go away anytime soon. I can already see it happening that even if you are successful with your project you will notice that despite your increased efficiency you won't have gained much because all your efficiency gains have been eaten up by an increased number of less valuable launches.
BTW, looking at that "cold hard equation" I would rather increase the exhaust velocity than fiddle with petty spaceship masses
In an older article he is actually cited as saying:
"According to Weldon, it's imperative that lawmakers who believe human space flight is important and who come from states with a strong NASA presence -- both Democrats and Republicans -- put their political capital on the line to save NASA funding from the new leadership's chopping block."
http://www.spacedaily.com/reports/Weldon_Says_Democrats_Set_To_Cripple_Manned_Space_Program_999.html
Well obviously there is nothing wrong with keeping jobs (especially high tech) in your state, that is certainly what people voted you for. But should it go as far as to impede any new program? Given that Ares is probably launching from Florida too and that it is a manned program what is he so scared about? Is there another election coming up during the spaceship gap?
The article states:
"As the shuttles' 2010 retirement nears, NASA planned on getting exemptions to a congressional ban that prohibits purchases of Russian Soyuz rockets. The ban was imposed to curb the spread of nuclear weapons technology to Iran, which Russia is accused of helping."
I still think you are right however, this is Mr. Weldons attempt at getting his share of the pork.
I'm worried about this because it would require a considerable amount of money to go into the shuttles. The article states "Griffin said it would cost $2.5 billion to $4 billion per year to keep the shuttles flying past 2010", so this would probably require an increase in NASA funding which they probably won't get.
Here is a nice article:
http://www.physorg.com/news6341.html
Here is a quote:
""Where is the sexy new stuff?" they ask. "For that matter, where is the sexy old stuff? Why isn't Mike Griffin pulling out the blueprints for X-30/NASP, DC-X/Delta Clipper, or X-33/VentureStar? Billions of dollars were spent on these programs before they were cancelled. Why aren't we using all that research to design a cheap, reusable, Single-Stage-To-Orbit vehicle that operates just like an airplane and doesn't fall in the ocean after one flight?"
The answer to this question is: All of these vehicles were fantasy projects. They violated basic laws of physics and engineering. They were impossible with current technology, or any technology we can afford to develop on the timescale and budgets available to NASA. They were doomed attempts to avoid the Cold Equations of Spaceflight. "
He goes on to explain why SSTOs won't work and so on. I found Dr. Bells articles depressing and insightful. In the end I would rather settle for something that works rather than some space cadets wet dream that hasn't a chance of taking off.
Well and then there is the first project Orion which would have to suffer from not-on-my-planet syndrome but it might have worked.