Assuming I'm reading him right, he's saying that we could convert existing stuff to biodiesel now for relatively little cost, and then electrify over the longer term.
Then you move on to plan B, which is "get as many people off the planet as possible." Something we should be thinking about and working towards, even though it may take hundreds of years.
The airplane would have never been built if the Wright brothers (and everyone else) had kept waiting for 747s instead.
Current space technology is about at the same development level (compared to something like a practical interplanetary shuttle) as the Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloons are to the A380 or 787. Sitting around just waiting for the technology to develop doesn't work--we still need to figure out how to survive long-term in space and operate in that environment. We should be ready so that, when a really good propulsion technology comes along (fusion-based or something) we can take advantage of it.
If that's how you feel about it, you can go ahead and plan to off yourself the day it's supposed to hit. The vast majority of the rest of us have taken a bit of a liking to this whole "living and breathing" thing; we'd like to keep doing it. By your logic, we shouldn't have severe weather warnings, hurricane tracking, earthquake and tsunami warning, etc. because those things are our "fate" too.
I really think there should be some kind of conspiracy (how to pull it off, I don't know) to make the general public believe an asteroid is going to hit in the near future. Maybe that would wake people up.
Yes, but a strike from a satellite will impart certainly less than 1mm/s. That's the magnitude of the change I'm talking about (or even smaller). And I'm not talking about whether the boy's prediction of the odds is correct or not... many people were saying that they didn't believe a tiny change could affect the outcome at all. I'm just trying to explain that tiny changes can indeed have a very large effect later on.
If they included their "Bill of Rights" as part of the contract of service, then it would be enforceable through contract law, just like any other part of their agreement is. That's fine and dandy, until they include the clause of "we may change this contract whenever we want without notice" like everyone else does.
No, this flyby is on Friday, April 13, 2029. It won't hit then. The subsequent encounters (and possible orbital resonance) are the concerns.
Today's grammar lesson: "hit's" shouldn't have an apostrophe (one of these --> ' ). Except in special circumstances, it should only be used for posessives (except "its") or contractions (isn't, won't, etc.).
Yep... the general populace derides the space program as a waste of money, preferring its funding to go to "education" or "helping the poor." Nevermind that NASA's budget is just a drop in the bucket compared to those...
But as soon as something (like an asteroid about to hit earth) comes along, they will be the first ones whining "but why didn't "they" do something about it?" My response will be "I told you so."
Multi-body orbit problems are highly chaotic... part of my senior design program was writing a program to simulate this asteroid's trajectory and a spacecraft observing it to refine the data, then projecting the refined data forward. Essentially, we wanted to find out how long we would need to observe said asteroid in order to get our error ellipse down to a specified level.
Turns out that even tiny velocity changes (well below 1m/s) had huge effects on the rest of the trajectory. If our spacecraft's first measurement was off in the wrong direction, our solution never converged in the time we needed it to.
+1 on the co-op and hobby projects ideas. Both of those helped me tremendously as an engineering student, and it's why I have the job I do today.
I'm also going to take this opportunity to plug for Georgia Tech... as much as we alums may bitch about "the shaft" and everything else, it really was a good education. And if you have leanings towards things outside purely technical stuff, the liberal arts program there (such as it is) is actually quite good. My wife graduated with one of their degrees, and I did a semester of undergrad research under that department. They don't cover as much of the "traditional" stuff like Shakespeare and all those dead poets (instead trending more towards stuff like science fiction), but they do quite well considering the circumstances.
The school also has a very interesting program (called "computational media") that kind of combines CS with an arts degree. They do a lot of game design, web applications, etc. through that.
In short, your experience will be what you make of it.
Well, a gallon of gas has about 131 megajoules of energy... so that comes out to 46,078 Joules per mile. I don't have the energy used by the solar cars for comparison, though.
First, they don't teach "slow traffic keep right" here. Or if they do, nobody follows it.
Second, the video was filmed on I-285 around Atlanta, where the speed limit is 55mph. Under normal, uncongested, non-rush-hour traffic conditions, the flow of traffic is generally about 75mph. Anyone trying to do 55 on their own is putting themselves and those around them in serious danger.
The problem is that, in practice, speed limits are not actually set according to what the road can handle. They are set either by laws saying "______ speed within XX distance of a city/town" (regardless of the road), or when the powers-that-be actually do try to analyze traffic, they pick the most congested time and set the limit according to that. They should be setting the limit for uncongested traffic, because as traffic builds, it will self-regulate its speed and slow down as necessary.
A rather simplified analogy: Let us suppose you have 10 computers sharing a router with one internet connection. The internet connection's speed is 100 units per second; each computer has a 120 units per second link to the router (and the network in general). Let us also suppose the router throttles connection speed according to the demand placed upon it. Would it make any sense to you to set an absolute limit on each computer of 15 units per second? The router already balances the load; why artificially restrict the connection if the system can handle a faster one?
It does depict them, you just aren't looking hard enough. On a traditonal rocket engine, the chamber is a bulbed or cylindrical chamber above the nozzle. It narrows down, then expands into a bell shape to allow the combusted hot gasses to expand and accelerate.
In the linked illustration on the right, look along the top edge of the aerospike, where the flames are coming from. All of the little canisters along both edges (where the flames come out) are combustion chambers. You just have a bunch of small ones instead of one large one. Compare that to the image on the left (a standard bell nozzle)--notice that you have a chamber at the top, which narrows down to a throat, and then opens back up. Basically, an aerospike does is cut off at the throat and turn the nozzle inside out. You then have an inner wall to expand against, with the outside atmosphere providing the outer wal.
But even if you dislike the book, you have to agree that the movie took it and completely changed the entire premise. Taking someone's characters, plot, title, and everything else, then completely twisting around his message, just isn't right. It's like the train wreck that was I, Robot (with Will Smith), which was like pissing on Asimov's grave. Or, let's let Maddox explain.
I'd love to see Starship Troopers done correctly; without twisting around the whole point of the book... and with powered armor and real drops. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress would also be an awesome movie... but getting the 1/6th gravity correct would be a big technical challenge. Might need to be an animated one for now, though. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night would be awesome too.
A serious, non-Disney 20,000 Leagues would be interesting.
The Mote in God's Eye (Niven and Pournelle) would be good as a miniseries, as would the stories of Falkenberg's legions.
I'm sure I could think of others if I wasn't so tired today...
I seem to remember reading that the Catholic Church (at least) is open to the idea of life elsewhere. The big debate comes with intelligent life: are the aliens Saved?
When they say electrical, I'm pretty sure they mean it operates electrically, rather than, say, mechanically.
I highly doubt a simple circuit protection fuse would need to be housed in a container "measuring nearly 33 inches high and almost 19 inches in diameter".
And of course, they do their speed measurements when traffic is heavier instead of when it's nice and light, dropping the limit further. Traffic will self-regulate its speed as it gets heavier or conditions get worse; you don't need to set limits off of those conditions because then they restrict things too much when it's light.
Also, driver training in Germany is more stringent. All it generally takes in the US is parallel parking, going one trip around the block, and not running over any cones. Too many idiots make it through.
It is indeed. I think the AE program is structured more for those intending to go to grad school than to industry. But yeah, a fair number of professors that don't care and few hands-on things.
True; I'd much rather see everyone so divided that nothing gets done, than for a strong majority of the extreme wing of either party to hold Congress and the Presidency (I'm a moderate "small-L" libertarian).
The prof was an ass and did "magic math": didnt explain what his steps were. I had one prof who said, when asked to work example problems the day before an exam: "it's not my job to work problems; I'm here to talk about whatever I want." I started going to the other section after that.
I was also threatened by a TA because I asked him to explain a problem in English rather than Obfuscated Proof. To this day I don't understand how I passed the class.
That's our way of blowing off steam. I did my share of complaining about The Shaft and my baby-eating controls professor, but having that outlet with which to vent helped keep me from huddling in the corner and rocking back and forth.
Whining's just a coping strategy, and it's less detrimental than, say, alcohol (which you save for after the exam/project/final, in most cases).
On a side note, I did almost bring a six-pack to a final once. I was failing the class so badly and knew I wouldn't pass the final that I considered doing it just for the laugh factor. I hate controls theory...
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Assuming I'm reading him right, he's saying that we could convert existing stuff to biodiesel now for relatively little cost, and then electrify over the longer term.
Then again, I could be wrong...
Mmmm... taxes. Don'y you just love them?
Then you move on to plan B, which is "get as many people off the planet as possible." Something we should be thinking about and working towards, even though it may take hundreds of years.
The airplane would have never been built if the Wright brothers (and everyone else) had kept waiting for 747s instead.
Current space technology is about at the same development level (compared to something like a practical interplanetary shuttle) as the Montgolfier brothers' hot air balloons are to the A380 or 787. Sitting around just waiting for the technology to develop doesn't work--we still need to figure out how to survive long-term in space and operate in that environment. We should be ready so that, when a really good propulsion technology comes along (fusion-based or something) we can take advantage of it.
If that's how you feel about it, you can go ahead and plan to off yourself the day it's supposed to hit. The vast majority of the rest of us have taken a bit of a liking to this whole "living and breathing" thing; we'd like to keep doing it. By your logic, we shouldn't have severe weather warnings, hurricane tracking, earthquake and tsunami warning, etc. because those things are our "fate" too.
I really think there should be some kind of conspiracy (how to pull it off, I don't know) to make the general public believe an asteroid is going to hit in the near future. Maybe that would wake people up.
No, this flyby is on Friday, April 13, 2029. It won't hit then. The subsequent encounters (and possible orbital resonance) are the concerns.
Today's grammar lesson: "hit's" shouldn't have an apostrophe (one of these --> ' ). Except in special circumstances, it should only be used for posessives (except "its") or contractions (isn't, won't, etc.).
Yep... the general populace derides the space program as a waste of money, preferring its funding to go to "education" or "helping the poor." Nevermind that NASA's budget is just a drop in the bucket compared to those...
But as soon as something (like an asteroid about to hit earth) comes along, they will be the first ones whining "but why didn't "they" do something about it?" My response will be "I told you so."
"Think of the children" indeed...
Multi-body orbit problems are highly chaotic... part of my senior design program was writing a program to simulate this asteroid's trajectory and a spacecraft observing it to refine the data, then projecting the refined data forward. Essentially, we wanted to find out how long we would need to observe said asteroid in order to get our error ellipse down to a specified level.
Turns out that even tiny velocity changes (well below 1m/s) had huge effects on the rest of the trajectory. If our spacecraft's first measurement was off in the wrong direction, our solution never converged in the time we needed it to.
+1 on the co-op and hobby projects ideas. Both of those helped me tremendously as an engineering student, and it's why I have the job I do today.
I'm also going to take this opportunity to plug for Georgia Tech... as much as we alums may bitch about "the shaft" and everything else, it really was a good education. And if you have leanings towards things outside purely technical stuff, the liberal arts program there (such as it is) is actually quite good. My wife graduated with one of their degrees, and I did a semester of undergrad research under that department. They don't cover as much of the "traditional" stuff like Shakespeare and all those dead poets (instead trending more towards stuff like science fiction), but they do quite well considering the circumstances.
The school also has a very interesting program (called "computational media") that kind of combines CS with an arts degree. They do a lot of game design, web applications, etc. through that.
In short, your experience will be what you make of it.
I've always heard it as "powned"
Well, a gallon of gas has about 131 megajoules of energy... so that comes out to 46,078 Joules per mile. I don't have the energy used by the solar cars for comparison, though.
First, they don't teach "slow traffic keep right" here. Or if they do, nobody follows it.
Second, the video was filmed on I-285 around Atlanta, where the speed limit is 55mph. Under normal, uncongested, non-rush-hour traffic conditions, the flow of traffic is generally about 75mph. Anyone trying to do 55 on their own is putting themselves and those around them in serious danger.
The problem is that, in practice, speed limits are not actually set according to what the road can handle. They are set either by laws saying "______ speed within XX distance of a city/town" (regardless of the road), or when the powers-that-be actually do try to analyze traffic, they pick the most congested time and set the limit according to that. They should be setting the limit for uncongested traffic, because as traffic builds, it will self-regulate its speed and slow down as necessary.
A rather simplified analogy: Let us suppose you have 10 computers sharing a router with one internet connection. The internet connection's speed is 100 units per second; each computer has a 120 units per second link to the router (and the network in general). Let us also suppose the router throttles connection speed according to the demand placed upon it. Would it make any sense to you to set an absolute limit on each computer of 15 units per second? The router already balances the load; why artificially restrict the connection if the system can handle a faster one?
It does depict them, you just aren't looking hard enough. On a traditonal rocket engine, the chamber is a bulbed or cylindrical chamber above the nozzle. It narrows down, then expands into a bell shape to allow the combusted hot gasses to expand and accelerate.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Aerospikeprinciplediagram.gif
In the linked illustration on the right, look along the top edge of the aerospike, where the flames are coming from. All of the little canisters along both edges (where the flames come out) are combustion chambers. You just have a bunch of small ones instead of one large one. Compare that to the image on the left (a standard bell nozzle)--notice that you have a chamber at the top, which narrows down to a throat, and then opens back up. Basically, an aerospike does is cut off at the throat and turn the nozzle inside out. You then have an inner wall to expand against, with the outside atmosphere providing the outer wal.
Read this site for more: http://www.aerospaceweb.org/design/aerospike/main.shtml
I took his thermodynamics class. He doesn't make it easy, but you definitely know your stuff at the end.
See the link in the other reply.
But even if you dislike the book, you have to agree that the movie took it and completely changed the entire premise. Taking someone's characters, plot, title, and everything else, then completely twisting around his message, just isn't right. It's like the train wreck that was I, Robot (with Will Smith), which was like pissing on Asimov's grave. Or, let's let Maddox explain.
Gah... should preview first when I'm using tags... sorry everyone
I'd love to see Starship Troopers done correctly; without twisting around the whole point of the book... and with powered armor and real drops. The Moon Is a Harsh Mistress would also be an awesome movie... but getting the 1/6th gravity correct would be a big technical challenge. Might need to be an animated one for now, though. Clarke's Against the Fall of Night would be awesome too.
A serious, non-Disney 20,000 Leagues would be interesting.
The Mote in God's Eye (Niven and Pournelle) would be good as a miniseries, as would the stories of Falkenberg's legions.
I'm sure I could think of others if I wasn't so tired today...
I seem to remember reading that the Catholic Church (at least) is open to the idea of life elsewhere. The big debate comes with intelligent life: are the aliens Saved?
When they say electrical, I'm pretty sure they mean it operates electrically, rather than, say, mechanically.
I highly doubt a simple circuit protection fuse would need to be housed in a container "measuring nearly 33 inches high and almost 19 inches in diameter".
And of course, they do their speed measurements when traffic is heavier instead of when it's nice and light, dropping the limit further. Traffic will self-regulate its speed as it gets heavier or conditions get worse; you don't need to set limits off of those conditions because then they restrict things too much when it's light.
Also, driver training in Germany is more stringent. All it generally takes in the US is parallel parking, going one trip around the block, and not running over any cones. Too many idiots make it through.
It is indeed. I think the AE program is structured more for those intending to go to grad school than to industry. But yeah, a fair number of professors that don't care and few hands-on things.
True; I'd much rather see everyone so divided that nothing gets done, than for a strong majority of the extreme wing of either party to hold Congress and the Presidency (I'm a moderate "small-L" libertarian).
I was also threatened by a TA because I asked him to explain a problem in English rather than Obfuscated Proof. To this day I don't understand how I passed the class.
That's our way of blowing off steam. I did my share of complaining about The Shaft and my baby-eating controls professor, but having that outlet with which to vent helped keep me from huddling in the corner and rocking back and forth.
Whining's just a coping strategy, and it's less detrimental than, say, alcohol (which you save for after the exam/project/final, in most cases).
On a side note, I did almost bring a six-pack to a final once. I was failing the class so badly and knew I wouldn't pass the final that I considered doing it just for the laugh factor. I hate controls theory...