A heat source on earth is cooled by conduction (a pot transferring heat to the surface its sitting on), convection (air moving over the surface and carrying away heat), and radiation (direct transmission of energy via photons). In the "icy vacuum of space" you get no conduction or convection, so you're limited to radiation as a method of dispensing of heat. If you're on the moon you can conduct a lot back into the ground as you suggest as well.
However, the black cold of space is a pretty good source to radiate towards (since you don't get anything radiated back), so you get more out of radiation than you would on Earth. However, since cooling on earth is dominated by the other two, you still have to have huge radiator constructs. If you look at the ISS a lot of the panels aren't solar panels, but are in fact radiators. Of course, a deep space probe with a nuclear reactor is going to have a simpler system than the ISS, since the heating is dominated by the constantly changing views of the Earth and Sun in LEO.
If you've ever seen any pictures of the proposed nuclear powered JIMO probe, it had huge panels hanging off of the main truss. These were radiator panels as well, since it wouldn't have required solar panels.
Actually, an RTG has more risk than a reactor, as others have pointed out. A just-started reactor that has no spent fuel has almost no radioactivity, so if it blew up on launch and was completely torn apart, the biggest risk is just the heavy metal poisoning, not the radioactivity.
However, an RTG gets its power from the heat of the radiation, so it is required to be moderately radioactive. Even then you would try to design it to rely on alpha radiation, rather than beta or gamma, so that it can capture the most heat and pose the least danger.
Some reactor designs would pose more danger once they're running and outside of the atmosphere, but what's the risk in doing it out there on an unmanned probe? Without a magnetosphere most parts of the solar system are flooded with radiation anyway, and it really doesn't cause problems for non-living things. The only place where I'd say there's legitimate concern is a mission to explore the oceans of Europa, or somewhere else we think there's the possibility of life.
A competitive company making money by producing a product that people are willing to use/pay for without coercion is not a bad thing.
However, a state-granted monopoly on common household services that makes obscene amounts of money by overcharging for said services and not developing the infrastructure is a bad thing. Internet services are more than a mere convenience in the modern world, and should be treated as a utility like power and water. Cable television is obviously less critical, although it should still be regulated more firmly since they are granted that monopoly. I'm a registered Republican and all for pro-business legislation and minimization of regulation where appropriate, but when there is no free market, you have to regulate it to protect consumers since they can't choose another option.
Assuming you require a car (i.e. live in a rural area, doing work you could only do in a rural area), if you want to be green, you have to buy used?
The logic falls apart there, because it only works if everyone isn't trying to do it as well. Rather, when purchasing a new car you should consider the longevity and production efficiency of the vehicle as well as the fuel usage and emissions. That way even if you resell it, it will have a long life, and will make it so those who do buy used will have nice, clean, long-lasting cars.
In addition to this care being more comfortable than an old Metro, you'll notice you can only find a few new cars that are that are just becoming that efficient.
Those old cars didn't have the same emissions requirements as new cars, and the parts used to clean the emissions of some of the nastier stuff in there hurt fuel economy. Advocating using dirtier engines to reduce gas usage sounds a bit like robbing Peter to feed Paul.
While some might debate the validity of global warming, one trip to LA will convince anyone with eyes of serious smog problems, so keeping those old style engines out of new cars seems reasonable.
Imagine the headline "Life Discovered on Earth-like Planet 25 light years away". Your typical newspaper-reading/internet-news-scouring/cable-news-watching connected person will know of it immediately. They may not understand the details, they may not have followed the whole saga, but they'll know and they'll find it interesting, because its clear-cut, easy to understand, and impressive.
After that, the last connected folks will hear about it through discussion. "So did you hear about that planet they found with life?" makes a much better conversation than "So what about this weather?", yet is something you might say to someone in the elevator.
Think of how much the general public cared about the non-issue of re-classifying Pluto. Discovery of extra-terrestrial life is much more important and just as easy to understand, and is such a leap beyond our current knowledge. That's not say that it would be the existential, world-changing discovery that I believe proof of intelligent life would be, but people would care.
Except, assuming this is following the same format as NASA COTS, its intended to be a break from that exact problem.
This is not a cost-plus contract, it's a fixed-price contract. That is, if the contractor doesn't deliver, they don't get their money, and if they go over-budget its out of their own pockets. This forces the companies to behave like actual competitive corporations and not the military/industrial complex leeches they currently are, and also opens the door to other, smaller groups (e.g. SpaceX with the Dragon capsule if it ever comes to pass).
This isn't big government vs. small government, its smart vs. stupid government. The traditional methods appease the big companies and bring lots of jobs to every state (you'll notice Lockheed Martin has locations in most states), so are more likely to do well in congress. Programs like COTS and CCDev, however, intend to achieve the agency goals in the most effective manner possible, assuming you define those goals as building spacecraft and advancing the frontier, rather than bringing the pork home.
The thing is, the smarter oil companies are rebranding/re-aligning themeselves as energy companies. If they see practical profit in it, which is necessary for any reasonable power system, theyll grab it and develop. Id be more worried about them patenting things and making it overpriced.
This is a prize, not a cost-plus contract. Boeing and Northrop and LockMart are free to enter, but they're looking for innovative designs on what can be a fairly small aircraft. Therefore small teams from those companies are likely to be on equal footing with smaller companies and university teams. One group I'm familiar with that could make a good showing is a small company thats based out of Stanford working on 2-man electric aircraft.
Compare it to the NASA COTS contract, where the Lockheed/Boeing group PlanetSpace lost out to the smaller and more nimble SpaceX and Orbital Sciences (after Rocketplane/Kistler crapped out). Its a contract instead of prize (no up front money), its a larger scale so you're dealing with 1000+ employee companies instead of small teams, but you still have a more level playing field where the smaller companies can compete with the old players, often to the benefit of the taxpayer and with more innovation.
I dont think they're really making fun of the shuttle here, its expressing frustration... and even then barely more than just expressing the facts. Anyone who pays much attention knows that the Florida weather patterns are bad for launches this time of the year, and SpaceX will face the same problems whenever it gets around to launching the Falcon 9 from Florida.
As you say the Falcon 1 and the Shuttle are so different its hard to make comparisons. Ones still a highly experimental new low-cost launcher for small satellites and the other is a legacy piece of hardware thats being pushed to its limits to meet international agreements and give us a strong base for the largest human community in space.
Giving SpaceX a hard time about its launch record isn't particularly fair either. Rocket engineering is hard. There's only so much you can test on the ground before you actually launch it, and its very hard to get something right the first time. Each launch had a different specific failure that was corrected and improved upon. While they're 2 for 5 so far, the fact of the last two being two successful launches in a row gives me as much confidence as if they had only launched twice and were 2 for 2.
The fact that the Shuttle launched successfully the first time is a testament to the skill of those who designed it, and the technical skill of it should stand out even for those who disagree with the overall architecture. Because its so much more expensive than somehting like a Falcon 1, you really can't afford to lose any, so you have to spend a lot more money getting it absolutely right the first time... though I can't say for sure, I'd guess that the cost of the failures for Falcon 1 would have been pretty comparable to the engineering cost to design it absolutely right the first time.
Even those of us who are very supportive of NewSpace development, the new entreprenurial groups such as SpaceX and Bigelow, don't dismiss the achievements and accomplishments of NASA. We wouldn't be were we are without Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, SkyLab, the Shuttle and the ISS. Personally, I even find the 'but we're still just hanging around in LEO' arguments off, because while it may not be as flashy, the hanging around in LEO is providing valuable science on what it takes to actually live in space. I'd even make the argument that Apollo was an abberation of Cold War politics and that just finally getting to the moon now is actually about on schedule (I think von Braun's original plan was to do it around 2000); if anything you might argue Apollo slowed us down because it was funded at an unsustainable level, but made everyone say we already went to the moon, Mars is the only next step, when in actuality there was a lot more less-sexy work that needed to be done.
The place where we disagree is the future of NASA... the idea of NASA developing their own unique launch vehicles instead of leveraging what commercial vehicles have done. It would be like the military refusing both proposals for the new tanker planes because they don't like having their vehicles based on normal commercial ones. Launching to orbit is done... it was pioneering government work in the 60s, but at this point its a matter of fine-tuning and efficiency, and NASA should be getting out of the launcher business. There's well document profit potential in building launchers, and its counterproductive to have the government as a competitive member. Where NASA should be working is on the frontiers... doing the life science work, developing the scientific probes, creating the spacecraft that take us from LEO to Mars and the asteroids. But since the goals of congressmen deciding funding aren't necessarily exploration and development, but rather keeping jobs in their state, the space program isn't so much about how to do it best, but how to keep people employed in various districts best.
Someone tried it with Mir: http://www.orphansofapollo.com/. Well, they used their commando money anyway to do it anyway, until the US government stopped them.
Yes. I'd never say the DX is a pocket device, and neither are the standard size Kindle or PRS... well, my Kindle (1st Gen) barely fits in a cargo pocket, so I guess it technically is. For the pocket device, for reading on the subway or in line at the bank, the iPhone is much better (yes, I'm a gadget whore); but really the pair of devices going through the Amazon service are great compliments, allowing for long-period reading as well as short-period, at your convenience reading, and synchronizing between the two.
I think the DX is serving a different market entirely, that of academics and students (and any others) who deal with a lot of formatted PDFs and documents with lots of charts and graphs. This isn't something you'd carry everywhere, but something you'd carry instead of mounds of academic papers or loads of textbooks, in a briefcase or backpack. Something that a lot of people don't get, is that when I (and presumably others) get a text-and-math document thats more than 3 or 4 pages, first thing I do after determining that its worth reading at all is print it out, because its much more comfortable to read. A DX could be a good substitute for this, particularly if they improve the note-taking capabilities. Hell, with faster refresh, touch/stylus screen, text recognition, and a standardized format it would allow us to finally be rid of paper... I have month-old scratch paper lying around my room right now... of course thats quite a bit ways away.
If I were staying on for a PhD right now I'd give it serious consideration... however, I think I'd still prefer to read pleasure reading books on the standard sized Kindle. Of course this leaves an academic who likes reading (and is willing to put up with the DRM) in a really bad position, since the DX is a (probably) poor substitute for the 6" model.
Note in all of this that I haven't had a chance to see the DX, or even the normal Kindle 2... its only my opinion based on my use of the Kindle 1, my typical work flow, and what the advertised and reviewed capabilities are.
Huh? Amazon clearly states that the DX has native PDF support. You're confusing it with the standard, smaller Kindle 2. The ability to read letter/A4 sized PDFs is the primary reason for the existence of the DX (along with newspapers), since the original form factor is really more convenient for straight-text, reflowable format fiction, being smaller.
The PRS-505 has the same sized screen as the standard Kindle, which suggests to me (I haven't used one) that it requires a lot of scrolling to display a non-reformatted PDF, and for that reason I'd expect a DX is much more comfortable to use. This is the reason that the original Kindle didn't include it: they decided they'd rather not implement it all rather than do it in a frustrating manner (I personally think the Sony choice was better, but the logic of both approaches is sound).
Not having seen one, I can't say for sure that its comfortable enough for normal use, but its going to be better than a smaller screen model, no matter the brand.
I'd imagine he meant we'd never see *practical* self-encapsulated solar cars.
Obviously, solar cars exist and work, look at the university solar car races that have been going on for years. However, look at those cars and you'll see why unless you develop 80%-efficient PV cells you're not going to be able to make a car you can drive your family around in, handle emergencies, and generally do things a modern gas-powered midsize sedan can do.
The best ones max out at 80 mph, can fit one person, look like lumpy pancakes, are incredibly uncomfortable and generally have the smallest member of the team as the driver. Further, they drive only during the day and do their best to charge the batteries at dusk and dawn when they're not driving. And thats all highway driving too, so regenerative braking and other advances that come with hybrid vehicles don't give you much help.
Energy storage, whether by solar/wind/nuclear stored in batteries/chicken-hydrogen-tanks or solar->agriculture->biodeisel are the only ways to make a fully capable "green" car... neglecting any Mr. Fusion type advances.
I think you're right for the most part. Teaching FORTRAN for non-CS students makes a lot of sense as an introduction, partially because its simple (except for the damned exponent function, ** instead of ^) like you said, and also because a lot of legacy code is written in Fortran. I'd say that professors continue to teach it because that legacy code is there.
However, I'd also say no new code should be written in FORTRAN, so its necessary to teach something newer. C++, Java, Ruby or Python are probably not the best choices. For Aerospace/Mechanical, and probably civil engineering MATLAB/OCTAVE is the obvious choice. It's an industry standard, makes matrix manipulation incredibly easy, and allows you to display data easily. For science groups who deal with a lot of statistics, I've heard R/S work well. For Chemical Engineering, apparently, VB in Excel is the way to go... makes me glad I didn't go that way, but if its what industry uses... and again the professors/department are going to select this well.
Sadly, I think so much of the debate is from CS people who don't realize that we're not talking about trying to write highly-optimized, deployable code. We're talking about people trying to get an answer. If it takes half the time to write and double the time to run in my mind its a pretty good trade-off if its for your own use.
While I'm an advocate of the commercial space segment, I think you're reaching a bit far here. Most people calling for it (myself included) believe that NASA needs to get out of the business of building launchers and buy them off the shelf, but continue their efforts to explore the frontier.
There are plenty of commercial opportunities for launching to LEO, and new NASA programs like COTS are attempting to foster this development by basically assuring the companies that the government will be a reliable customer. As such, it makes sense that NASA should limit its work on directing the construction of new launch vehicles and help to develop an open market that they and others can purchase from. Things like COTS, as well as efforts to reform ITAR would go a long way for this.
However, there is no reasonable commercial reason to do science and exploration, yet there is very high value for society in exploring and doing this science and development. This is exactly why we formed governments in the first place, to do the things that benefit our society and advance our interests that individuals and private groups are incapable of doing. Defense isn't really commercially beneficial (neglecting war profiteering which just leaches off of the government effort), but I think most people agree its necessary to some extent, thus why we have governments do it. In the 1500s and 1600s, governments paid for the initial exploration of the world, and only later did commercial entities come in to exploit and profit from it. Continued government spending on exploration efforts seems appropriate and proper if we ever want to leave the planet, especially at the low level of funding it has.
I think the answer to the question (whether sending humans is worth it) really depends on what you/we think the goals are.
For pure science, I'd argue that sending humans to deep space definitely is not worthwhile. While you may get more science/dollar for it (another debate), the total cost is so high that the current state of politics cannot sustain it. That is, the cost is too high to be able to complete it within 6 or 7 years when an administration change is going to rework everything anyway. For pure science we get a lot more value out of robotic missions because they can be finished more quickly and are sustainable in the political sphere.
However, if your goal is the eventual development of a human ability to leave the Earth permanently then of course its important to keep sending people. There are legitimate questions as to how best to utilize limited funding to advance that goal, particularly when the final goal is decades or centuries away, but I think they all involve continuing to send people to space and pushing further and further out.
Finally, if you're goal is an international pissing contest, let the other two groups decide and keep sending them the checks. I think Hubble and the Mars Rovers give us as much prestige as the shuttle (maybe not as much as Apollo though), so it ends up working out the same in the end for this group.
I'd guess (having no real experience with international space missions) that as far as the Chinese government is concerned it's ready, but the Russians probably want to check it themselves before launch since its riding with their own probe. Hate to have it fall apart at Max Q and destroy everything on board.
Assuming the Chinese agency developing the probe was competent and the Russian group has no axe to grind, then it probably is really ready, in the same way a manuscript is "done" before a final proofreading.
But, again, I have no actual experience with this kind of thing, thats just my instinct.
So in other words, according to you, microgravity conditions don't exist anywhere, the only places getting close would be the vast voids between galactic clusters? Anywhere else, you're being affected by gravity and accelerating toward a some body or another.
Commonly, orbital conditions are referred to as zero-g. But guess what, you're in free fall there too, but your velocity is high enough that you continue to miss the planet. The only difference between the zero-g portion of a parabolic flight and an object in orbit as far as you could actually measure with an inertial measurement unit (accelerometer and gyros) is that there are sudden and drastic changes at the beginning and end of the parabola. You could only tell the difference by comparing it to something fixed (i.e. defining a reference frame), such as looking out the window. However, this doesn't make the orbiting case any more 'pure', since you are still moving and accelerating pretty fast compared to the Earth, constantly changing direction (and speed in anything but a circular orbit). Of course this all neglects acceleration relative to the Sun, galactic center, and neighboring galaxies.
And really, I don't think I'm particularly confused on it. I'm an aerospace engineering grad student focusing on dynamics and control, with a heavy mix of orbital mechanics. While this doesn't necessarily mean I'm that smart or particularly good at much, I do think that I'm entitled to be fairly confident in my understanding of basic dynamics.
Huh? I'm pretty sure thats the definition of Zero-G. If you're going to try and be pedantic, complain about it not being called microgravity... all the objects in free fall have a mutual gravitational attraction to each other, so you do end up with micro-g (~g*1e-6) levels of gravity, thus making Zero-G a misnomer.
You'd be absolutely right if they were calling this the first space wedding. But they're not. The only difference between free-fall and microgravity is your reference frame. That understanding was one of the main things that allowed Einstein to derive general relativity from its special relative.
Well, I doubt its exactly what the AC is looking for, the first "Space Honeymoon" is already planned, as soon as SpaceShipTwo gets flying: http://spacelove.org/. Information is on the menu bar on the bottom... Loretta and George Whitesides have already bought their tickets, although I think lately they've been too busy to update that particular page.
I think the criticisms coming from either side come to the same point, and make sense. From a 'blind justice' viewpoint, the tests were designed to be racially unbiased, and as such, the results should be respected. That the city threw it out because there were no black candidates sounds pretty terrible to me, since it isn't evidence of a failure of the test, but rather a statistical anomaly. However, from the purely technical, blind justice view, I've seen the argument that her ruling was that what the city did was legal, and this just means the law needs to be re-examined.
The focus on the 'sympathy' aspect is much more interesting, since its something she's supposed to rule based on, according to herself and the President. This focus is why the author considers it, even if its not something he agrees with, because its relevant to her selection criterion. And my impression, taken with other comments (aware of the fact that people are doing their best to dig up dirt), is that her sympathy may not really extend much to white men, even if they are poor and with disabilities. As a white man myself, this is a little worrisome. I mean, I'm aware for the most part we've still got it easy, but if things went really badly for me at some point in the future, I'd hope that no one else would hold it against me.
Summing up, the concern is that she seems (based on admittedly limited evidence) to apply sympathy to minorities and women, but has no sympathy for white men, even if they didn't grow up silver spoon in hand.
They're actually classified as non-profit under 501c3. Thus it doesn't really matter how much money they give away, as long as they're not making money for owners/shareholders, and avoid supporting specific candidates and parties (supporting issues is allowed.) A student-run space advocacy group that i've been involved with is classified the same way as far as the IRS is concerned, and we're in no way a charity, and hardly have enough money for that to mean anything anyway.
Also, I don't think any honest church would claim to be a direct charity. The standard collections are known to support the ministries of the church, which while good for the community (at least in the eyes of the church members), are not given directly to the poor and needy. In fact, I know at my mother's church they have certain collections where they specifically state that it will go to a particular charity instead of the general church fund.
Finally, I'd point out that even though most church funding isn't directly charitable, it is indirectly. Clergy provide support and counseling for their congregation, regardless of their economic status or amount paid in. Church buildings are used for external groups like AA and the Boy/Girl Scouts, as well as church-run programs that are again not dependent on amount paid to the church. Church members will often volunteer en-masse to help out in the community and in the world, often while avoiding direct proselytizing (rules are that you don't bring it up, but you're free to if those you're helping ask). It seems to me that churches are for the most part good for their community and indirectly charitable, as long as their not trying to force an agenda (ahem... Prop. 8).
While you're correct that it wouldn't help areas where starvation is an issue, it does have a seriously detrimental effect on poor but not starving areas such as rural Mexico, or even the lowest classes in the US. When food prices go up, it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet, making life harder for those who are much closer to us.
Solving starvation in Africa requires global political solutions. Easing poverty in the Americas could be helped a lot by bring food costs down.
PATRIOT act is a different beast, since its something that involved congress explicitly stating something was legal, even if the constitutionality is questionable.
Whats happening here is something thats well within laws that in my mind make sense, balancing the needs of national security with clear boundaries that protect the rights of Americans. Stopping foreign violence from spreading over our border is definitely within the scope of the federal government's responsibility.
If they're doing more than they say it is, I'd say its more akin to the NSA wiretapping, and the light of public scrutiny did put an end to that. Even though those responsible weren't held accountable (except at the ballot box), the proper order of things was restored. If congress starts trying to pass laws that make it legal, then we may have trouble: I think (hope?) we're far enough past the 9/11 panic for something like that not to pass easily though.
However, I do agree that what we do need to keep a watch on it. I'd suggest explicit laws stating the limits of how satellite surveillance can be used domestically. My layman's guess at what it should be is that it should require a warrant, since its so much broader than targeted surveillance, and that military assets are off limits for law enforcement. Otherwise, we eventually end up with UK-style CCTV systems, which isn't much different as far as I'm concerned... easy non-targeted persistent surveillance. Of course, court cases after the first attempts are much more likely to solve things than congress passing something, although we can always hope.
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A heat source on earth is cooled by conduction (a pot transferring heat to the surface its sitting on), convection (air moving over the surface and carrying away heat), and radiation (direct transmission of energy via photons). In the "icy vacuum of space" you get no conduction or convection, so you're limited to radiation as a method of dispensing of heat. If you're on the moon you can conduct a lot back into the ground as you suggest as well.
However, the black cold of space is a pretty good source to radiate towards (since you don't get anything radiated back), so you get more out of radiation than you would on Earth. However, since cooling on earth is dominated by the other two, you still have to have huge radiator constructs. If you look at the ISS a lot of the panels aren't solar panels, but are in fact radiators. Of course, a deep space probe with a nuclear reactor is going to have a simpler system than the ISS, since the heating is dominated by the constantly changing views of the Earth and Sun in LEO.
If you've ever seen any pictures of the proposed nuclear powered JIMO probe, it had huge panels hanging off of the main truss. These were radiator panels as well, since it wouldn't have required solar panels.
Actually, an RTG has more risk than a reactor, as others have pointed out. A just-started reactor that has no spent fuel has almost no radioactivity, so if it blew up on launch and was completely torn apart, the biggest risk is just the heavy metal poisoning, not the radioactivity.
However, an RTG gets its power from the heat of the radiation, so it is required to be moderately radioactive. Even then you would try to design it to rely on alpha radiation, rather than beta or gamma, so that it can capture the most heat and pose the least danger.
Some reactor designs would pose more danger once they're running and outside of the atmosphere, but what's the risk in doing it out there on an unmanned probe? Without a magnetosphere most parts of the solar system are flooded with radiation anyway, and it really doesn't cause problems for non-living things. The only place where I'd say there's legitimate concern is a mission to explore the oceans of Europa, or somewhere else we think there's the possibility of life.
A competitive company making money by producing a product that people are willing to use/pay for without coercion is not a bad thing.
However, a state-granted monopoly on common household services that makes obscene amounts of money by overcharging for said services and not developing the infrastructure is a bad thing. Internet services are more than a mere convenience in the modern world, and should be treated as a utility like power and water. Cable television is obviously less critical, although it should still be regulated more firmly since they are granted that monopoly. I'm a registered Republican and all for pro-business legislation and minimization of regulation where appropriate, but when there is no free market, you have to regulate it to protect consumers since they can't choose another option.
Assuming you require a car (i.e. live in a rural area, doing work you could only do in a rural area), if you want to be green, you have to buy used?
The logic falls apart there, because it only works if everyone isn't trying to do it as well. Rather, when purchasing a new car you should consider the longevity and production efficiency of the vehicle as well as the fuel usage and emissions. That way even if you resell it, it will have a long life, and will make it so those who do buy used will have nice, clean, long-lasting cars.
In addition to this care being more comfortable than an old Metro, you'll notice you can only find a few new cars that are that are just becoming that efficient.
Those old cars didn't have the same emissions requirements as new cars, and the parts used to clean the emissions of some of the nastier stuff in there hurt fuel economy. Advocating using dirtier engines to reduce gas usage sounds a bit like robbing Peter to feed Paul.
While some might debate the validity of global warming, one trip to LA will convince anyone with eyes of serious smog problems, so keeping those old style engines out of new cars seems reasonable.
No, I really can't imagine that.
Imagine the headline "Life Discovered on Earth-like Planet 25 light years away". Your typical newspaper-reading/internet-news-scouring/cable-news-watching connected person will know of it immediately. They may not understand the details, they may not have followed the whole saga, but they'll know and they'll find it interesting, because its clear-cut, easy to understand, and impressive.
After that, the last connected folks will hear about it through discussion. "So did you hear about that planet they found with life?" makes a much better conversation than "So what about this weather?", yet is something you might say to someone in the elevator.
Think of how much the general public cared about the non-issue of re-classifying Pluto. Discovery of extra-terrestrial life is much more important and just as easy to understand, and is such a leap beyond our current knowledge. That's not say that it would be the existential, world-changing discovery that I believe proof of intelligent life would be, but people would care.
Except, assuming this is following the same format as NASA COTS, its intended to be a break from that exact problem.
This is not a cost-plus contract, it's a fixed-price contract. That is, if the contractor doesn't deliver, they don't get their money, and if they go over-budget its out of their own pockets. This forces the companies to behave like actual competitive corporations and not the military/industrial complex leeches they currently are, and also opens the door to other, smaller groups (e.g. SpaceX with the Dragon capsule if it ever comes to pass).
This isn't big government vs. small government, its smart vs. stupid government. The traditional methods appease the big companies and bring lots of jobs to every state (you'll notice Lockheed Martin has locations in most states), so are more likely to do well in congress. Programs like COTS and CCDev, however, intend to achieve the agency goals in the most effective manner possible, assuming you define those goals as building spacecraft and advancing the frontier, rather than bringing the pork home.
The thing is, the smarter oil companies are rebranding/re-aligning themeselves as energy companies. If they see practical profit in it, which is necessary for any reasonable power system, theyll grab it and develop. Id be more worried about them patenting things and making it overpriced.
This is a prize, not a cost-plus contract. Boeing and Northrop and LockMart are free to enter, but they're looking for innovative designs on what can be a fairly small aircraft. Therefore small teams from those companies are likely to be on equal footing with smaller companies and university teams. One group I'm familiar with that could make a good showing is a small company thats based out of Stanford working on 2-man electric aircraft.
Compare it to the NASA COTS contract, where the Lockheed/Boeing group PlanetSpace lost out to the smaller and more nimble SpaceX and Orbital Sciences (after Rocketplane/Kistler crapped out). Its a contract instead of prize (no up front money), its a larger scale so you're dealing with 1000+ employee companies instead of small teams, but you still have a more level playing field where the smaller companies can compete with the old players, often to the benefit of the taxpayer and with more innovation.
I dont think they're really making fun of the shuttle here, its expressing frustration... and even then barely more than just expressing the facts. Anyone who pays much attention knows that the Florida weather patterns are bad for launches this time of the year, and SpaceX will face the same problems whenever it gets around to launching the Falcon 9 from Florida.
As you say the Falcon 1 and the Shuttle are so different its hard to make comparisons. Ones still a highly experimental new low-cost launcher for small satellites and the other is a legacy piece of hardware thats being pushed to its limits to meet international agreements and give us a strong base for the largest human community in space.
Giving SpaceX a hard time about its launch record isn't particularly fair either. Rocket engineering is hard. There's only so much you can test on the ground before you actually launch it, and its very hard to get something right the first time. Each launch had a different specific failure that was corrected and improved upon. While they're 2 for 5 so far, the fact of the last two being two successful launches in a row gives me as much confidence as if they had only launched twice and were 2 for 2.
The fact that the Shuttle launched successfully the first time is a testament to the skill of those who designed it, and the technical skill of it should stand out even for those who disagree with the overall architecture. Because its so much more expensive than somehting like a Falcon 1, you really can't afford to lose any, so you have to spend a lot more money getting it absolutely right the first time... though I can't say for sure, I'd guess that the cost of the failures for Falcon 1 would have been pretty comparable to the engineering cost to design it absolutely right the first time.
Even those of us who are very supportive of NewSpace development, the new entreprenurial groups such as SpaceX and Bigelow, don't dismiss the achievements and accomplishments of NASA. We wouldn't be were we are without Mercury, Gemini, Apollo, SkyLab, the Shuttle and the ISS. Personally, I even find the 'but we're still just hanging around in LEO' arguments off, because while it may not be as flashy, the hanging around in LEO is providing valuable science on what it takes to actually live in space. I'd even make the argument that Apollo was an abberation of Cold War politics and that just finally getting to the moon now is actually about on schedule (I think von Braun's original plan was to do it around 2000); if anything you might argue Apollo slowed us down because it was funded at an unsustainable level, but made everyone say we already went to the moon, Mars is the only next step, when in actuality there was a lot more less-sexy work that needed to be done.
The place where we disagree is the future of NASA... the idea of NASA developing their own unique launch vehicles instead of leveraging what commercial vehicles have done. It would be like the military refusing both proposals for the new tanker planes because they don't like having their vehicles based on normal commercial ones. Launching to orbit is done... it was pioneering government work in the 60s, but at this point its a matter of fine-tuning and efficiency, and NASA should be getting out of the launcher business. There's well document profit potential in building launchers, and its counterproductive to have the government as a competitive member. Where NASA should be working is on the frontiers... doing the life science work, developing the scientific probes, creating the spacecraft that take us from LEO to Mars and the asteroids. But since the goals of congressmen deciding funding aren't necessarily exploration and development, but rather keeping jobs in their state, the space program isn't so much about how to do it best, but how to keep people employed in various districts best.
Someone tried it with Mir: http://www.orphansofapollo.com/. Well, they used their commando money anyway to do it anyway, until the US government stopped them.
Yes. I'd never say the DX is a pocket device, and neither are the standard size Kindle or PRS... well, my Kindle (1st Gen) barely fits in a cargo pocket, so I guess it technically is. For the pocket device, for reading on the subway or in line at the bank, the iPhone is much better (yes, I'm a gadget whore); but really the pair of devices going through the Amazon service are great compliments, allowing for long-period reading as well as short-period, at your convenience reading, and synchronizing between the two.
I think the DX is serving a different market entirely, that of academics and students (and any others) who deal with a lot of formatted PDFs and documents with lots of charts and graphs. This isn't something you'd carry everywhere, but something you'd carry instead of mounds of academic papers or loads of textbooks, in a briefcase or backpack. Something that a lot of people don't get, is that when I (and presumably others) get a text-and-math document thats more than 3 or 4 pages, first thing I do after determining that its worth reading at all is print it out, because its much more comfortable to read. A DX could be a good substitute for this, particularly if they improve the note-taking capabilities. Hell, with faster refresh, touch/stylus screen, text recognition, and a standardized format it would allow us to finally be rid of paper... I have month-old scratch paper lying around my room right now... of course thats quite a bit ways away.
If I were staying on for a PhD right now I'd give it serious consideration... however, I think I'd still prefer to read pleasure reading books on the standard sized Kindle. Of course this leaves an academic who likes reading (and is willing to put up with the DRM) in a really bad position, since the DX is a (probably) poor substitute for the 6" model.
Note in all of this that I haven't had a chance to see the DX, or even the normal Kindle 2... its only my opinion based on my use of the Kindle 1, my typical work flow, and what the advertised and reviewed capabilities are.
Huh? Amazon clearly states that the DX has native PDF support. You're confusing it with the standard, smaller Kindle 2. The ability to read letter/A4 sized PDFs is the primary reason for the existence of the DX (along with newspapers), since the original form factor is really more convenient for straight-text, reflowable format fiction, being smaller.
The PRS-505 has the same sized screen as the standard Kindle, which suggests to me (I haven't used one) that it requires a lot of scrolling to display a non-reformatted PDF, and for that reason I'd expect a DX is much more comfortable to use. This is the reason that the original Kindle didn't include it: they decided they'd rather not implement it all rather than do it in a frustrating manner (I personally think the Sony choice was better, but the logic of both approaches is sound).
Not having seen one, I can't say for sure that its comfortable enough for normal use, but its going to be better than a smaller screen model, no matter the brand.
I'd imagine he meant we'd never see *practical* self-encapsulated solar cars.
Obviously, solar cars exist and work, look at the university solar car races that have been going on for years. However, look at those cars and you'll see why unless you develop 80%-efficient PV cells you're not going to be able to make a car you can drive your family around in, handle emergencies, and generally do things a modern gas-powered midsize sedan can do.
The best ones max out at 80 mph, can fit one person, look like lumpy pancakes, are incredibly uncomfortable and generally have the smallest member of the team as the driver. Further, they drive only during the day and do their best to charge the batteries at dusk and dawn when they're not driving. And thats all highway driving too, so regenerative braking and other advances that come with hybrid vehicles don't give you much help.
Energy storage, whether by solar/wind/nuclear stored in batteries/chicken-hydrogen-tanks or solar->agriculture->biodeisel are the only ways to make a fully capable "green" car... neglecting any Mr. Fusion type advances.
I think you're right for the most part. Teaching FORTRAN for non-CS students makes a lot of sense as an introduction, partially because its simple (except for the damned exponent function, ** instead of ^) like you said, and also because a lot of legacy code is written in Fortran. I'd say that professors continue to teach it because that legacy code is there.
However, I'd also say no new code should be written in FORTRAN, so its necessary to teach something newer. C++, Java, Ruby or Python are probably not the best choices. For Aerospace/Mechanical, and probably civil engineering MATLAB/OCTAVE is the obvious choice. It's an industry standard, makes matrix manipulation incredibly easy, and allows you to display data easily. For science groups who deal with a lot of statistics, I've heard R/S work well. For Chemical Engineering, apparently, VB in Excel is the way to go... makes me glad I didn't go that way, but if its what industry uses... and again the professors/department are going to select this well.
Sadly, I think so much of the debate is from CS people who don't realize that we're not talking about trying to write highly-optimized, deployable code. We're talking about people trying to get an answer. If it takes half the time to write and double the time to run in my mind its a pretty good trade-off if its for your own use.
While I'm an advocate of the commercial space segment, I think you're reaching a bit far here. Most people calling for it (myself included) believe that NASA needs to get out of the business of building launchers and buy them off the shelf, but continue their efforts to explore the frontier.
There are plenty of commercial opportunities for launching to LEO, and new NASA programs like COTS are attempting to foster this development by basically assuring the companies that the government will be a reliable customer. As such, it makes sense that NASA should limit its work on directing the construction of new launch vehicles and help to develop an open market that they and others can purchase from. Things like COTS, as well as efforts to reform ITAR would go a long way for this.
However, there is no reasonable commercial reason to do science and exploration, yet there is very high value for society in exploring and doing this science and development. This is exactly why we formed governments in the first place, to do the things that benefit our society and advance our interests that individuals and private groups are incapable of doing. Defense isn't really commercially beneficial (neglecting war profiteering which just leaches off of the government effort), but I think most people agree its necessary to some extent, thus why we have governments do it. In the 1500s and 1600s, governments paid for the initial exploration of the world, and only later did commercial entities come in to exploit and profit from it. Continued government spending on exploration efforts seems appropriate and proper if we ever want to leave the planet, especially at the low level of funding it has.
I think the answer to the question (whether sending humans is worth it) really depends on what you/we think the goals are.
For pure science, I'd argue that sending humans to deep space definitely is not worthwhile. While you may get more science/dollar for it (another debate), the total cost is so high that the current state of politics cannot sustain it. That is, the cost is too high to be able to complete it within 6 or 7 years when an administration change is going to rework everything anyway. For pure science we get a lot more value out of robotic missions because they can be finished more quickly and are sustainable in the political sphere.
However, if your goal is the eventual development of a human ability to leave the Earth permanently then of course its important to keep sending people. There are legitimate questions as to how best to utilize limited funding to advance that goal, particularly when the final goal is decades or centuries away, but I think they all involve continuing to send people to space and pushing further and further out.
Finally, if you're goal is an international pissing contest, let the other two groups decide and keep sending them the checks. I think Hubble and the Mars Rovers give us as much prestige as the shuttle (maybe not as much as Apollo though), so it ends up working out the same in the end for this group.
I'd guess (having no real experience with international space missions) that as far as the Chinese government is concerned it's ready, but the Russians probably want to check it themselves before launch since its riding with their own probe. Hate to have it fall apart at Max Q and destroy everything on board.
Assuming the Chinese agency developing the probe was competent and the Russian group has no axe to grind, then it probably is really ready, in the same way a manuscript is "done" before a final proofreading.
But, again, I have no actual experience with this kind of thing, thats just my instinct.
So in other words, according to you, microgravity conditions don't exist anywhere, the only places getting close would be the vast voids between galactic clusters? Anywhere else, you're being affected by gravity and accelerating toward a some body or another.
Commonly, orbital conditions are referred to as zero-g. But guess what, you're in free fall there too, but your velocity is high enough that you continue to miss the planet. The only difference between the zero-g portion of a parabolic flight and an object in orbit as far as you could actually measure with an inertial measurement unit (accelerometer and gyros) is that there are sudden and drastic changes at the beginning and end of the parabola. You could only tell the difference by comparing it to something fixed (i.e. defining a reference frame), such as looking out the window. However, this doesn't make the orbiting case any more 'pure', since you are still moving and accelerating pretty fast compared to the Earth, constantly changing direction (and speed in anything but a circular orbit). Of course this all neglects acceleration relative to the Sun, galactic center, and neighboring galaxies.
And really, I don't think I'm particularly confused on it. I'm an aerospace engineering grad student focusing on dynamics and control, with a heavy mix of orbital mechanics. While this doesn't necessarily mean I'm that smart or particularly good at much, I do think that I'm entitled to be fairly confident in my understanding of basic dynamics.
Huh? I'm pretty sure thats the definition of Zero-G. If you're going to try and be pedantic, complain about it not being called microgravity... all the objects in free fall have a mutual gravitational attraction to each other, so you do end up with micro-g (~g*1e-6) levels of gravity, thus making Zero-G a misnomer.
You'd be absolutely right if they were calling this the first space wedding. But they're not. The only difference between free-fall and microgravity is your reference frame. That understanding was one of the main things that allowed Einstein to derive general relativity from its special relative.
Well, I doubt its exactly what the AC is looking for, the first "Space Honeymoon" is already planned, as soon as SpaceShipTwo gets flying: http://spacelove.org/. Information is on the menu bar on the bottom... Loretta and George Whitesides have already bought their tickets, although I think lately they've been too busy to update that particular page.
I think the criticisms coming from either side come to the same point, and make sense. From a 'blind justice' viewpoint, the tests were designed to be racially unbiased, and as such, the results should be respected. That the city threw it out because there were no black candidates sounds pretty terrible to me, since it isn't evidence of a failure of the test, but rather a statistical anomaly. However, from the purely technical, blind justice view, I've seen the argument that her ruling was that what the city did was legal, and this just means the law needs to be re-examined.
The focus on the 'sympathy' aspect is much more interesting, since its something she's supposed to rule based on, according to herself and the President. This focus is why the author considers it, even if its not something he agrees with, because its relevant to her selection criterion. And my impression, taken with other comments (aware of the fact that people are doing their best to dig up dirt), is that her sympathy may not really extend much to white men, even if they are poor and with disabilities. As a white man myself, this is a little worrisome. I mean, I'm aware for the most part we've still got it easy, but if things went really badly for me at some point in the future, I'd hope that no one else would hold it against me.
Summing up, the concern is that she seems (based on admittedly limited evidence) to apply sympathy to minorities and women, but has no sympathy for white men, even if they didn't grow up silver spoon in hand.
They're actually classified as non-profit under 501c3. Thus it doesn't really matter how much money they give away, as long as they're not making money for owners/shareholders, and avoid supporting specific candidates and parties (supporting issues is allowed.) A student-run space advocacy group that i've been involved with is classified the same way as far as the IRS is concerned, and we're in no way a charity, and hardly have enough money for that to mean anything anyway.
Also, I don't think any honest church would claim to be a direct charity. The standard collections are known to support the ministries of the church, which while good for the community (at least in the eyes of the church members), are not given directly to the poor and needy. In fact, I know at my mother's church they have certain collections where they specifically state that it will go to a particular charity instead of the general church fund.
Finally, I'd point out that even though most church funding isn't directly charitable, it is indirectly. Clergy provide support and counseling for their congregation, regardless of their economic status or amount paid in. Church buildings are used for external groups like AA and the Boy/Girl Scouts, as well as church-run programs that are again not dependent on amount paid to the church. Church members will often volunteer en-masse to help out in the community and in the world, often while avoiding direct proselytizing (rules are that you don't bring it up, but you're free to if those you're helping ask). It seems to me that churches are for the most part good for their community and indirectly charitable, as long as their not trying to force an agenda (ahem... Prop. 8).
While you're correct that it wouldn't help areas where starvation is an issue, it does have a seriously detrimental effect on poor but not starving areas such as rural Mexico, or even the lowest classes in the US. When food prices go up, it becomes harder and harder to make ends meet, making life harder for those who are much closer to us.
Solving starvation in Africa requires global political solutions. Easing poverty in the Americas could be helped a lot by bring food costs down.
PATRIOT act is a different beast, since its something that involved congress explicitly stating something was legal, even if the constitutionality is questionable.
Whats happening here is something thats well within laws that in my mind make sense, balancing the needs of national security with clear boundaries that protect the rights of Americans. Stopping foreign violence from spreading over our border is definitely within the scope of the federal government's responsibility.
If they're doing more than they say it is, I'd say its more akin to the NSA wiretapping, and the light of public scrutiny did put an end to that. Even though those responsible weren't held accountable (except at the ballot box), the proper order of things was restored. If congress starts trying to pass laws that make it legal, then we may have trouble: I think (hope?) we're far enough past the 9/11 panic for something like that not to pass easily though.
However, I do agree that what we do need to keep a watch on it. I'd suggest explicit laws stating the limits of how satellite surveillance can be used domestically. My layman's guess at what it should be is that it should require a warrant, since its so much broader than targeted surveillance, and that military assets are off limits for law enforcement. Otherwise, we eventually end up with UK-style CCTV systems, which isn't much different as far as I'm concerned... easy non-targeted persistent surveillance. Of course, court cases after the first attempts are much more likely to solve things than congress passing something, although we can always hope.