They claim 10-100 times more effective than other methods. First of all they dont define more effective. Second of all, they seem to dismiss ideas like a gravity tug out of hand as not developed enough.
The idea of throwing nukes at an object of potentially unknown size bugs me, especially when much more controlled options exist. All that needs to be done is to nudge the NEO out of small zones known as "keyholes" that are small, finite portions of space where the pull of the Earth will push the object into a collision course on its next orbit rather than another random non-intersecting orbit.
A fairly massive object (something a Delta IV Heavy could launch) would be perfectly capable of handling an Apophis sized object with enough lead time (on the order of years, but certainly less than decades), by flying in formation with the object in the right location to shift its orbit slightly. This is a lot easier than Apollo, which we pulled off in less than 10 years, so to dismiss it as too difficult is ridiculous, and it seems a lot more responsible than launching nukes at an object we dont fully understand.
I think there is a target audience. While I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence, I think the real target would be those girls, who are already interested in math and science, transitioning from elementary to middle school where the social pressures to not be 'nerdy' start becoming important.
The way I see it, my younger sister who is 12, just beginning middle school, is the target audience. She likes math, she's good at math. Her career goal right now is to be an Aerospace Engineer (partially from seeing rockets I built in school, partially from October Sky). Not that I think she'll stick with that, but the interest is there, and she loves her little teen people or whatever magazines too. So the point is to provide some learning yes, but also to talk about some role models and ideas for the future, in a way that won't be too nerdy, in hopes to convince them that its possible to be good at math and cool.
To be fair, I got a 10" laptop from averatec that I'm very happy with (Averatec 1020). It has the standard features, 60gb hd, 1 GHz Celeron M, 512Mb ram (with 2 slots, both upgradeable), and 1280x768 resolution. It only cost be about $900, so significantly cheaper than the lifebook, but significantly more expensive (and more powerful) than this one.
If I didn't already have this machine though, I'd be lined up to get this new one.
I did a project on this about a year and a half ago, and the solution we came to was in fact a parachute, but one capable of opening at Mach 2 or 3, similar to what Viking used. Unfortunately, since this has little use on Earth it is a very costly development process, and anything larger than Viking is significantly different, and a higher velocity opening speed would be nice. Following this a normal parachute, retro rockets, airbags or combinations thereof are still necessary.
Also, the problem with a retro rocket the whole way isnt just that its heavier gravity (just means more fuel,) but also the process of igniting a rocket with an incident airflow of mach 3 or higher is not a trivial problem.
Overall, Mars is the hardest place to land in the inner solar system. the Moon and Mercury are small and have no atmosphere, so Apollo is an obvious and easy choice. Venus has an atmosphere so thick you can drop any funny shaped item in and it will drop to the surface at low speeds, assuming the static heat doesnt destroy it. Earth, obviously, you can do well enough if you're careful with the shape and throw up some parachutes at the end. Mars though has such a thin atmosphere it makes everthing hard.
As others have pointed out, we are in fact time travelling all of the time. However, to time travel as I'm sure you mean, significantly faster than our surroundings, Einsteins time dilation does the trick nicely, its just a matter of propulsion technology.
Note that also, too, we can observe the past due to the finite speed of light. Thus, given our current knowledge it is always possible to travel to the future and observe the past, but never the other way around (except maybe at quantum scales as discussed in TFA).
This, according to my random ponderings makes me think that if its possible to travel to the past, it will also be possible to observe the future, and in fact in some respects, they could be two aspects of the same thing.
Just for the record, I'm not a physicist, so beyond the first couple of facts this is all random amateur speculation.
This is just a completely uninformed gas, but I would guess it would be a case where it only happens briefly, after the experimenter has reached what amounts to a point of no return. In other words, perhaps the change occurs only after the action is already 'locked in' but hasn't actually occured. I'd suppose if this is true its probably on the order of femtoseconds, or something like that.
Anyway, I'm not particularly knowledgable on quantum stuff, as I'm sure this post shows, but that would be my guess.
The Giant Magellan Telescope, which is being sponsored by a number of universities, is slated to be 24.5m diameter, with a pretty good fill factor (I think around 80%) is significantly larger and seems to be steady enough politically to survive.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Magellan_Telesc ope [wikipedia.org]
My interpretation, though I'm not British or particularly knowledgable on the subject, is that if they paid a BBC license fee for the tinfoil hat, they would have every right to sue.
In theory, the federal government's primary power is in national defense and regulating interstate trade, and still most anything that they do is justified in those terms, although often times its a stretch. Those rights not specifically given to the federal government are reserved for the individual states. If the federal side tries to assume those reserved powers, the states can take the federal government to court, which are supposed to judge how well that law adheres to the constitution.
Of course, since the Civil War, and particularly since the depression era, the federal powers have extended far beyond this. One of the more common methods is by denying states funding for not following a particular idea; this is how we now have 21 year drinking age across the country, because Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) lobbied congress that it should be that way, and since alcohol is bad and we must think of the 16 and 18 year old children, they agreed, and told the states they had to agree. Of course, they had no right to do so, but they did have rights over the interstate highway system, and then denied states highway funding until they fell in line.
Ultimately, what will happen here is probably that it will go to court, eventually get to the supreme court, where they SHOULD decide whether or not it falls under the 'regulating interstate trade' clause. Of course it will probably come down to idealogical concerns rather than a question of whether or not its legal for congress to do so.
I hope that helps, and for the record, I'm not a political scientist or anything, just a (hopefully) informed citizen.
I disagree, I think that the important thing is the use of open standards, not necessarily open office or any particular software suite. I personally like MS Office*, and OOo always pisses me off by being slow as a dog on my laptop (Ubuntu 7.04). At any rate, this is ultimately a good thing because it makes it so that you can communicate more easily no matter what software you use.
Open Source is wonderful, but in my opinion its open standards that are absolutely vital.
*As much as I like any office software, I'm a LaTeX and Matlab guy if I can help it.
All right, answered my own question, looks like you can detect third bodies and odd geometries (like rings) by looking for non-symmetric parts in the intensity variation as it transits the star. Found this paper ftp://ftp.iac.es/tepstuff/lisbon98/deeglis98.pdf (PDF file, I can't vouch for the site.) which describes some of the variations in the shape.
I guess the camera has a high dynamic range but not particularly strong light collecting capabilities, which makes it ideal for doing this with bright, nearby stars, especially with all the assets already on orbit, where all that needs to be done is point and click. Pretty cool trick.
I'm curious about the extra-solar planet observation part, I can't find much about the EPOCh observations beyond whats in the article and thats just that they're looking for rings, moons, earth-sized planets etc. They say they're using a transit method (where they detect the slight drop in intensity as a planet passes in front of its star,) and surely that camera is incapable of resolving any features that small. They are relying on the stars being close and bright though, curious what trick they're using.
Definitely a great effort, its hard not to love those guys out in Pasadena.
I'd disagree, I have a bunch of albums I listen to straight through all the time, maybe skipping one or two songs, and they are pretty recent, for example:
Ben Folds - Songs for Silverman Death Cab - Transatlanticism White Stripes - White Blood Cells The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow Train - For Me It's You Semisonic - Feeling Strangely Fine Ben Kweller - Ben Kweller Matchbox 20 - Yourself or Someone Like You
etc... I think they're amazing albums, and I listen to them regularly, among others. I think it's easy to judge music as all good in the past and all bad now, but its not really true, its just not what you hear on the radio all the time, and from what I've heard its always been that way. For instance Nick Drake is one of my favorite artists from the 70s, but he was never popular, and Led Zeppelin and The Eagles from what I've heard werent heard nearly as often the Captain and Tenil or whatever other crap I'm too young to have actually heard.
Of course, the quality of those particular albums is just my opinion.
I bought a CD on saturday, and I'm enjoying listening to it. There are quite a few reasons I bought it in a CD format.
1. I like it uncompressed, I probably couldn't hear the difference with the new iTunes DRM-free tracks, but I don't have to worry about recompressing them later and having the flaws come popping out. 2. I run linux and it's really a PITA to boot over to windows to use iTunes, and eMusic doesn't have some of the artist I enjoy. 3. The cover art and the convenience of having a disk for the car premade with a nice pressing is enjoyable. 4. I want to buy from artists I enjoy so they can keep making music
I don't see online distribution quite solving these things yet. ALthough, I will admit, most consumers are a lot more apathetic about these issues than me.
Just FYI, I would guess that the 'I don't use email' statement is mostly tongue-in-cheek, with a mode of truth (e.g. his secretary handles most of the actual process.)
As a student at Texas A&M University (where Dr. Gates was president until 6 months ago,) he communicated with the student body regularly via email, and in fact that was how I first learned of his nomination as Secretary of Defense.
From a conversation I had last November (i.e. I don't have any sources to back this up) with a woman who does biological space science, there haven't been any experiments yet, but she was actually involved in a project to perform lab rat tests with pregnancy in space. I somehow doubt that they've actually run it yet though. I could be totally wrong though.
Well, I'd say NASA should outsource launch services, or at least start to look at doing it (and in fact they are with the COTS program.) I would argue that they're job should be to do new and unprofitable things out in deep space, and let commercial companies handle launches (which can be profitable).
This isn't entirely offtopic, because I'd say that that may be the approach AMD is taking here. Lots of companies can make silicon chips with ever smaller features, its just a matter of time and money, and AMD can depend on someone being able to do the job (like launching to LEO for spacecraft in a few years hopefully). Instead AMD's job is to innovate and design new chips and letting someone else actually manufacture them has the chance to reduce their costs and make them more agile, since they can focus their core competency on design, and let other focus and innovate on manufacturing techniques.
(Note, I'm not well versed on the silicon industry, but this is my intuition as a generally technical person)
I'd imagine that has more to do with military budget more than anything else. Most countries probably know basically how it works (RAM, proper geometry), but they don't have the money available for the military to develop it fully, since the basic concepts are only a small part of the picture, and I'm sure all that RAM, and the design time to match aerodynamic needs with low visibility geometry probably takes a lot of time, money, and experience (we've been doing it for a long time, relatively.)
I can't say that I remember that, but it doesn't seem too surprising. This weekend at the International Space Development Conference (I'm a space nerd, not a game nerd) we were able to organize a special student event with him (about 15 of us having a conversation with him about Armadillo stuff) and he was very friendly and great to talk to (he knows his shit too, which is really impressive for it just being a really expensive hobby.)
Also, later, when some of my friends were sitting at their booth during some presentation or another he just came by and started talking to them for a while. His attitude and friendliness, along with his intimate understanding of his rockets really impressed me.
Also, since they are based on the real teams, it makes sense to put out the new game as soon as possible after the previous season. If I cared to play the games (I don't, but I know plenty who do, and I don't mind watching) I'd rather make it a preview of the next season rather than a repeat of the just finished ones. That is I'd rather play with Steve McGee as my quarterback rather than Reggie McNeal while playing Texas A&M.
Actually, one of the biggest concerns isn't the amount of energy or even the amount of time (although of course these are serious issues.) The biggest is the mass of fuel required; this is usually the driving factor for the propulsion on any mission further out than LEO.
The basic equation for the mass fraction (initial mass over final mass):
m_i/m_f = Exp(Delta-V/V_exhaust)
So, based on this, in order to achieve the initial mass for 1kg of final payload would be:
SSME(V_exhaust ~ 4500 m/s): 3.03e14476 kg Ion Thruster (V_exhaust ~ 40000 m/s): 4.02e1628 kg VASMIR (V_exhause ~ 300000 m/s): 1.40e217 kg Antimatter (V_exhaust ~ 3e8 m/s): 1.64 kg
Thus, in order to get to.5c, antimatter, or something else that has exhaust velocity near the speed of light is required to get to that speed. Of course this is still based on the idea that some kind of rocket propulsion is necessary. Still leaves the possibility of solar sails (my personal favorite) or more crazy stuff like space-time folding or whatever sci-fi stuff may actually work.
Slashdot Mirror
They claim 10-100 times more effective than other methods. First of all they dont define more effective. Second of all, they seem to dismiss ideas like a gravity tug out of hand as not developed enough.
The idea of throwing nukes at an object of potentially unknown size bugs me, especially when much more controlled options exist. All that needs to be done is to nudge the NEO out of small zones known as "keyholes" that are small, finite portions of space where the pull of the Earth will push the object into a collision course on its next orbit rather than another random non-intersecting orbit.
A fairly massive object (something a Delta IV Heavy could launch) would be perfectly capable of handling an Apophis sized object with enough lead time (on the order of years, but certainly less than decades), by flying in formation with the object in the right location to shift its orbit slightly. This is a lot easier than Apollo, which we pulled off in less than 10 years, so to dismiss it as too difficult is ridiculous, and it seems a lot more responsible than launching nukes at an object we dont fully understand.
Just my thoughts anyway.
I think there is a target audience. While I have nothing more than anecdotal evidence, I think the real target would be those girls, who are already interested in math and science, transitioning from elementary to middle school where the social pressures to not be 'nerdy' start becoming important.
The way I see it, my younger sister who is 12, just beginning middle school, is the target audience. She likes math, she's good at math. Her career goal right now is to be an Aerospace Engineer (partially from seeing rockets I built in school, partially from October Sky). Not that I think she'll stick with that, but the interest is there, and she loves her little teen people or whatever magazines too. So the point is to provide some learning yes, but also to talk about some role models and ideas for the future, in a way that won't be too nerdy, in hopes to convince them that its possible to be good at math and cool.
Oh, yes, forgot to mention, that price and model was a year ago, almost exactly.
To be fair, I got a 10" laptop from averatec that I'm very happy with (Averatec 1020). It has the standard features, 60gb hd, 1 GHz Celeron M, 512Mb ram (with 2 slots, both upgradeable), and 1280x768 resolution. It only cost be about $900, so significantly cheaper than the lifebook, but significantly more expensive (and more powerful) than this one.
If I didn't already have this machine though, I'd be lined up to get this new one.
Sounds like a good game for the JSC Christmas party.
Excuse me, the workER also got the backup/ground test model.
That didn't even make sense otherwise.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20070726/ap_on_re_us/sp ace_sabotage
According to that article the work also got the backup/ground test model (not sure what is, just that it wasn't flight hardware). Definitely not an accident
I did a project on this about a year and a half ago, and the solution we came to was in fact a parachute, but one capable of opening at Mach 2 or 3, similar to what Viking used. Unfortunately, since this has little use on Earth it is a very costly development process, and anything larger than Viking is significantly different, and a higher velocity opening speed would be nice. Following this a normal parachute, retro rockets, airbags or combinations thereof are still necessary.
Also, the problem with a retro rocket the whole way isnt just that its heavier gravity (just means more fuel,) but also the process of igniting a rocket with an incident airflow of mach 3 or higher is not a trivial problem.
Overall, Mars is the hardest place to land in the inner solar system. the Moon and Mercury are small and have no atmosphere, so Apollo is an obvious and easy choice. Venus has an atmosphere so thick you can drop any funny shaped item in and it will drop to the surface at low speeds, assuming the static heat doesnt destroy it. Earth, obviously, you can do well enough if you're careful with the shape and throw up some parachutes at the end. Mars though has such a thin atmosphere it makes everthing hard.
This concept sure looks interesting though.
As others have pointed out, we are in fact time travelling all of the time. However, to time travel as I'm sure you mean, significantly faster than our surroundings, Einsteins time dilation does the trick nicely, its just a matter of propulsion technology.
Note that also, too, we can observe the past due to the finite speed of light. Thus, given our current knowledge it is always possible to travel to the future and observe the past, but never the other way around (except maybe at quantum scales as discussed in TFA).
This, according to my random ponderings makes me think that if its possible to travel to the past, it will also be possible to observe the future, and in fact in some respects, they could be two aspects of the same thing.
Just for the record, I'm not a physicist, so beyond the first couple of facts this is all random amateur speculation.
This is just a completely uninformed gas, but I would guess it would be a case where it only happens briefly, after the experimenter has reached what amounts to a point of no return. In other words, perhaps the change occurs only after the action is already 'locked in' but hasn't actually occured. I'd suppose if this is true its probably on the order of femtoseconds, or something like that.
Anyway, I'm not particularly knowledgable on quantum stuff, as I'm sure this post shows, but that would be my guess.
The Giant Magellan Telescope, which is being sponsored by a number of universities, is slated to be 24.5m diameter, with a pretty good fill factor (I think around 80%) is significantly larger and seems to be steady enough politically to survive.c ope [wikipedia.org]
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_Magellan_Teles
My interpretation, though I'm not British or particularly knowledgable on the subject, is that if they paid a BBC license fee for the tinfoil hat, they would have every right to sue.
In theory, the federal government's primary power is in national defense and regulating interstate trade, and still most anything that they do is justified in those terms, although often times its a stretch. Those rights not specifically given to the federal government are reserved for the individual states. If the federal side tries to assume those reserved powers, the states can take the federal government to court, which are supposed to judge how well that law adheres to the constitution.
Of course, since the Civil War, and particularly since the depression era, the federal powers have extended far beyond this. One of the more common methods is by denying states funding for not following a particular idea; this is how we now have 21 year drinking age across the country, because Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) lobbied congress that it should be that way, and since alcohol is bad and we must think of the 16 and 18 year old children, they agreed, and told the states they had to agree. Of course, they had no right to do so, but they did have rights over the interstate highway system, and then denied states highway funding until they fell in line.
Ultimately, what will happen here is probably that it will go to court, eventually get to the supreme court, where they SHOULD decide whether or not it falls under the 'regulating interstate trade' clause. Of course it will probably come down to idealogical concerns rather than a question of whether or not its legal for congress to do so.
I hope that helps, and for the record, I'm not a political scientist or anything, just a (hopefully) informed citizen.
I disagree, I think that the important thing is the use of open standards, not necessarily open office or any particular software suite. I personally like MS Office*, and OOo always pisses me off by being slow as a dog on my laptop (Ubuntu 7.04). At any rate, this is ultimately a good thing because it makes it so that you can communicate more easily no matter what software you use.
Open Source is wonderful, but in my opinion its open standards that are absolutely vital.
*As much as I like any office software, I'm a LaTeX and Matlab guy if I can help it.
All right, answered my own question, looks like you can detect third bodies and odd geometries (like rings) by looking for non-symmetric parts in the intensity variation as it transits the star. Found this paper ftp://ftp.iac.es/tepstuff/lisbon98/deeglis98.pdf (PDF file, I can't vouch for the site.) which describes some of the variations in the shape.
I guess the camera has a high dynamic range but not particularly strong light collecting capabilities, which makes it ideal for doing this with bright, nearby stars, especially with all the assets already on orbit, where all that needs to be done is point and click. Pretty cool trick.
I'm curious about the extra-solar planet observation part, I can't find much about the EPOCh observations beyond whats in the article and thats just that they're looking for rings, moons, earth-sized planets etc. They say they're using a transit method (where they detect the slight drop in intensity as a planet passes in front of its star,) and surely that camera is incapable of resolving any features that small. They are relying on the stars being close and bright though, curious what trick they're using.
Definitely a great effort, its hard not to love those guys out in Pasadena.
I'd disagree, I have a bunch of albums I listen to straight through all the time, maybe skipping one or two songs, and they are pretty recent, for example:
Ben Folds - Songs for Silverman
Death Cab - Transatlanticism
White Stripes - White Blood Cells
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
Train - For Me It's You
Semisonic - Feeling Strangely Fine
Ben Kweller - Ben Kweller
Matchbox 20 - Yourself or Someone Like You
etc... I think they're amazing albums, and I listen to them regularly, among others. I think it's easy to judge music as all good in the past and all bad now, but its not really true, its just not what you hear on the radio all the time, and from what I've heard its always been that way. For instance Nick Drake is one of my favorite artists from the 70s, but he was never popular, and Led Zeppelin and The Eagles from what I've heard werent heard nearly as often the Captain and Tenil or whatever other crap I'm too young to have actually heard.
Of course, the quality of those particular albums is just my opinion.
I bought a CD on saturday, and I'm enjoying listening to it. There are quite a few reasons I bought it in a CD format.
1. I like it uncompressed, I probably couldn't hear the difference with the new iTunes DRM-free tracks, but I don't have to worry about recompressing them later and having the flaws come popping out.
2. I run linux and it's really a PITA to boot over to windows to use iTunes, and eMusic doesn't have some of the artist I enjoy.
3. The cover art and the convenience of having a disk for the car premade with a nice pressing is enjoyable.
4. I want to buy from artists I enjoy so they can keep making music
I don't see online distribution quite solving these things yet. ALthough, I will admit, most consumers are a lot more apathetic about these issues than me.
Just FYI, I would guess that the 'I don't use email' statement is mostly tongue-in-cheek, with a mode of truth (e.g. his secretary handles most of the actual process.)
As a student at Texas A&M University (where Dr. Gates was president until 6 months ago,) he communicated with the student body regularly via email, and in fact that was how I first learned of his nomination as Secretary of Defense.
From a conversation I had last November (i.e. I don't have any sources to back this up) with a woman who does biological space science, there haven't been any experiments yet, but she was actually involved in a project to perform lab rat tests with pregnancy in space. I somehow doubt that they've actually run it yet though. I could be totally wrong though.
Well, I'd say NASA should outsource launch services, or at least start to look at doing it (and in fact they are with the COTS program.) I would argue that they're job should be to do new and unprofitable things out in deep space, and let commercial companies handle launches (which can be profitable).
This isn't entirely offtopic, because I'd say that that may be the approach AMD is taking here. Lots of companies can make silicon chips with ever smaller features, its just a matter of time and money, and AMD can depend on someone being able to do the job (like launching to LEO for spacecraft in a few years hopefully). Instead AMD's job is to innovate and design new chips and letting someone else actually manufacture them has the chance to reduce their costs and make them more agile, since they can focus their core competency on design, and let other focus and innovate on manufacturing techniques.
(Note, I'm not well versed on the silicon industry, but this is my intuition as a generally technical person)
I'd imagine that has more to do with military budget more than anything else. Most countries probably know basically how it works (RAM, proper geometry), but they don't have the money available for the military to develop it fully, since the basic concepts are only a small part of the picture, and I'm sure all that RAM, and the design time to match aerodynamic needs with low visibility geometry probably takes a lot of time, money, and experience (we've been doing it for a long time, relatively.)
I can't say that I remember that, but it doesn't seem too surprising. This weekend at the International Space Development Conference (I'm a space nerd, not a game nerd) we were able to organize a special student event with him (about 15 of us having a conversation with him about Armadillo stuff) and he was very friendly and great to talk to (he knows his shit too, which is really impressive for it just being a really expensive hobby.)
Also, later, when some of my friends were sitting at their booth during some presentation or another he just came by and started talking to them for a while. His attitude and friendliness, along with his intimate understanding of his rockets really impressed me.
Also, since they are based on the real teams, it makes sense to put out the new game as soon as possible after the previous season. If I cared to play the games (I don't, but I know plenty who do, and I don't mind watching) I'd rather make it a preview of the next season rather than a repeat of the just finished ones. That is I'd rather play with Steve McGee as my quarterback rather than Reggie McNeal while playing Texas A&M.
Actually, one of the biggest concerns isn't the amount of energy or even the amount of time (although of course these are serious issues.) The biggest is the mass of fuel required; this is usually the driving factor for the propulsion on any mission further out than LEO.
.5c, antimatter, or something else that has exhaust velocity near the speed of light is required to get to that speed. Of course this is still based on the idea that some kind of rocket propulsion is necessary. Still leaves the possibility of solar sails (my personal favorite) or more crazy stuff like space-time folding or whatever sci-fi stuff may actually work.
The basic equation for the mass fraction (initial mass over final mass):
m_i/m_f = Exp(Delta-V/V_exhaust)
So, based on this, in order to achieve the initial mass for 1kg of final payload would be:
SSME(V_exhaust ~ 4500 m/s): 3.03e14476 kg
Ion Thruster (V_exhaust ~ 40000 m/s): 4.02e1628 kg
VASMIR (V_exhause ~ 300000 m/s): 1.40e217 kg
Antimatter (V_exhaust ~ 3e8 m/s): 1.64 kg
Thus, in order to get to
Just my thoughts and numbers.