Laying aside the fact that I vehemently disagree with her on just about everything, Clinton is far too divisive and polarizing. The presidency is the last place you want someone who is hated by half the country--witness GWB right now.
Second, just because times were generally good while Clinton was in office doesn't make it his doing by any means. He didn't really do much of anything.
Personally, I don't care how much light a given politician reflects, or what plumbing fixtures are installed. They're politicians, they all suck. Especially when we're entrenched with the current two-party system which insists that belief in A implies belief in B, C, D, E, F, and Q; and party2 essentially believes !party1.
It's times like these that I wish we'd hurry our dumb asses up and build huge observatories on the far side of the moon. Fixed that for you. Of course, the real benefit isn't for light pollution (though that's easy enough to take care of when there's no air), since no "side" of the moon is in perpetual darkness. You have about a 336-hour day.
The real benefit is for radio astronomy. The far side always faces away from earth, which is a giant radio noise source, and the bulk of the moon itself blocks all the signal. It's really the only place where you won't get such interference (a few space probes notwithstanding).
Exactly. The goal of space exploration shouldn't just be "hey, let's beat someone there" or "oooh, pretty rocks." We should be focusing on things like survival of the species. As John Young said, "the dinosaurs are extinct because they didn't have a space program." Sooner or later, something will come along with the ability to kill off every human on earth, and you know the moment it does people will be asking "why didn't we have a space program or some other way to survive this?" Going gonads-to-the-wall on colonization and expansion would give us some measure of insurance, and incidentally would develop lots of nifty stuff that we could use to make things better back here, too. Think high-efficiency water recycling and power generation. And I really hope I never have to go around saying "well, I told you so".
You realize that the "sperm" from a sperm whale (in the "let's kill the whales and take their sperm!" idea) isn't actually sperm, right? "Spermaceti" is the sorta waxy stuff in the whale's head that helps with buoyancy control and echolocation. It was often used for making perfume a long time ago.
Of course, that whooshing sound I just heard was probably a joke going right over my head...
Yes, it has thrusters. Midcourse corrections happen every now and then.
It's not so much that orbital mechanics is hard; a lot of it is just brute-force computation. The hard part is getting reliable data to base said computation on.
And when you build one, you don't have to pay some mechanic to do everything beyond changing the oil. As the builder, you can do anything you want--including major structural repair--yourself. I wouldn't necessarily suggest doing major structural changes unless you're an engineer or whatever... but you get my point. You do your own annuals and maintenance, saving you a ton on labor and parts. It's not particularly hard to do; you just need to be patient and committed enough to detail to spend two to five (or more) years building said plane, then maintain it properly.
If you can make the payments on a brand-new medium-sized car or full-size truck, you can afford an airplane.
Similarly, there are over 200 countries in the world. Go to two new ones every year on holiday. I wish I could afford to go to one country (other than mine) every year, let alone two different ones every year.
You move in when you reasonably and safely can. If traffic's light and you're already at speed, no reason not to move in right at the beginning if there is a safe gap.
What I'm talking about the idiots who run right up to the end (sometimes faster than the rest of the traffic), not even trying to look for an opening. Then, once the lane runs out, they slam their brakes on and force their way in--if some poor sod has to stomp on their brakes to let them in, the asshat doesn't care. And to be more specific, I'm talking about when a travel lane just ends, not really on-ramps and such.
That's probably the case a lot of times... but I figured I'd follow the old rule to, in the absence of other information, "never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity".
Its all the people driving SLOWLY that makes us aggressive people cut them off! No, it's all of the idiots who sit over in the left lanes, then go "oh, shit, that's my exit!" and cut across three lanes of traffic. Exits here are numbered by mile marker, you have a pretty good idea of when your exit is coming up and there is no excuse why you can't be prepared ahead of time.
Or the classic merge or lane ending... idiots continue right to the end, then go "oh shit, the lane ran out! I have to get over!" See I-75S at the Brookwood interchange, or GA-400S merging to I-85S.
And the really sucky thing with it all is that most of these idiots drive the same way to work every day. You think they would have learned (after the 200th time) that the lane runs out after the merge, or that their exit is at a certain place.
The only US job I can think of with a minimum rest requirement is aircraft flight crew--they have a duty time limit (16 hr, I think), minimum rest/off-duty period (8 hr off-duty, but some of that gets taken by eating and going to/from hotel), and maximum duty time per year (2000hr). There is also a maximum flight time per day (8 hr).
That assumes the airplane is so equipped. Lots of smaller aircraft (737, A32X, etc), and even somelarger ones (some 767s, for example) only have one door forward of the wing.
But all the nice shiny metal bits (masts, stays, bolts, cleats, etc) reflect radar, so your sailboat is still visible.
There's nothing intrinsic in radar that recognizes age; even old sailing ships would still be somewhat visible on radar. Stealth is as much dependent on shape as materials, and big things perpendicular to the radar (especially when made of metal) are about as unstealthy as you get.
I don't think you'll ever see an Orion operating from surface launch, but it is very viable as a deep-space propulsion system. You could also launch tritium pellets, ignite them with lasers, and travel that way (saves the problem of using up all our uranium...)
Perhaps it is a typo or the authors meant to avoid confusing the PHBs with 'technical' jargon like SSH, SFTP, and HTTPS I know a few of the guys that wrote this, and I'm pretty sure they aren't intending simple, easy-to-hack communications protocols. They're aerospace and mechanical engineers, not IT or network types--but I'm quite sure they know such systems need to be secure. Telnet and FTP are more recognizable to the layperson (and PHBs, and beancounters), and I guess an argument could be made that SSH and SFTP are kind of like subsets of those, in a way. Overall, they probably went with the "simple" versions to emphasize OTS stuff as opposed to a custom-designed or very specialized communications protocol. And besides, I'd expect the actual radio signals to be encrypted, maybe as a "wrapper" around the FTP/Telnet-style data.
On a side note, this was the same thing we had to do for our senior design projects last year. IMO, our concept was cooler (with implantable seismometers and explosive charges to map the interior), but their proposal is obviously a lot better and more professional.
Pretty much every airplane is required to have a magnetic compass of sorts. It still gets used quite a bit on small airplanes; larger ones like airliners and business jets only use it as a backup.
But the US missile can launch from essentially any one of several Aegis-equipped cruisers, rather than needing a relatively fixed ballistic missile (like the Chinese system). The US missile is a descendant of the SM-1 Standard SAM developed to protect ships against aircraft and cruise missiles. The SM-3 version (to be used in the test) was developed specifically to intercept ballistic missiles--the only modification for this test is a software upgrade. I think it's already in regular service.
I'd expect that shooting a satellite whose orbit is already decaying might hasten the process by a couple days (smaller pieces would generally have a lower ballistic coefficient and therefore decay faster), but not by a significant amount.
The real benefit (to the US) is that turning a big, expensive satellite with lots of classified equipment on board into a bunch of little satellites means that the expensive bits are rendered unusable and far less likely to get to the ground intact, where they can be analyzed. It also provides a good opportunity to test a new missile system, and shows the Chinese that the US can play at their game, too.
But you have clearly violated my patent on "conveyance of verbal information with tonal accompaniment", colloquially known as "songwriting" and "singing", respectively, when composing and conveying the information, respectively.
Games can indeed be very educational--my favorite one during high school taught me orbital mechanics...
But yes, it is indeed the content that matters. I laugh at fart jokes as much as the next guy, but I don't subject myself to two hours of it on a regular basis, and I certainly don't find it worth the money to see it in a theater. I've met far too many people who got bored with stuff and turned it off because there weren't explosions or sex scenes in the first five minutes.
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Let me guess... Georgia Tech?
Laying aside the fact that I vehemently disagree with her on just about everything, Clinton is far too divisive and polarizing. The presidency is the last place you want someone who is hated by half the country--witness GWB right now.
Second, just because times were generally good while Clinton was in office doesn't make it his doing by any means. He didn't really do much of anything.
Personally, I don't care how much light a given politician reflects, or what plumbing fixtures are installed. They're politicians, they all suck. Especially when we're entrenched with the current two-party system which insists that belief in A implies belief in B, C, D, E, F, and Q; and party2 essentially believes !party1.
The real benefit is for radio astronomy. The far side always faces away from earth, which is a giant radio noise source, and the bulk of the moon itself blocks all the signal. It's really the only place where you won't get such interference (a few space probes notwithstanding).
Exactly. The goal of space exploration shouldn't just be "hey, let's beat someone there" or "oooh, pretty rocks." We should be focusing on things like survival of the species. As John Young said, "the dinosaurs are extinct because they didn't have a space program." Sooner or later, something will come along with the ability to kill off every human on earth, and you know the moment it does people will be asking "why didn't we have a space program or some other way to survive this?" Going gonads-to-the-wall on colonization and expansion would give us some measure of insurance, and incidentally would develop lots of nifty stuff that we could use to make things better back here, too. Think high-efficiency water recycling and power generation. And I really hope I never have to go around saying "well, I told you so".
Or a blatant act of vandalism and destruction of property.
You realize that the "sperm" from a sperm whale (in the "let's kill the whales and take their sperm!" idea) isn't actually sperm, right? "Spermaceti" is the sorta waxy stuff in the whale's head that helps with buoyancy control and echolocation. It was often used for making perfume a long time ago.
Of course, that whooshing sound I just heard was probably a joke going right over my head...
Yes, it has thrusters. Midcourse corrections happen every now and then.
It's not so much that orbital mechanics is hard; a lot of it is just brute-force computation. The hard part is getting reliable data to base said computation on.
And when you build one, you don't have to pay some mechanic to do everything beyond changing the oil. As the builder, you can do anything you want--including major structural repair--yourself. I wouldn't necessarily suggest doing major structural changes unless you're an engineer or whatever... but you get my point. You do your own annuals and maintenance, saving you a ton on labor and parts. It's not particularly hard to do; you just need to be patient and committed enough to detail to spend two to five (or more) years building said plane, then maintain it properly.
If you can make the payments on a brand-new medium-sized car or full-size truck, you can afford an airplane.
You move in when you reasonably and safely can. If traffic's light and you're already at speed, no reason not to move in right at the beginning if there is a safe gap.
What I'm talking about the idiots who run right up to the end (sometimes faster than the rest of the traffic), not even trying to look for an opening. Then, once the lane runs out, they slam their brakes on and force their way in--if some poor sod has to stomp on their brakes to let them in, the asshat doesn't care. And to be more specific, I'm talking about when a travel lane just ends, not really on-ramps and such.
That's probably the case a lot of times... but I figured I'd follow the old rule to, in the absence of other information, "never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by stupidity".
Or the classic merge or lane ending... idiots continue right to the end, then go "oh shit, the lane ran out! I have to get over!" See I-75S at the Brookwood interchange, or GA-400S merging to I-85S.
And the really sucky thing with it all is that most of these idiots drive the same way to work every day. You think they would have learned (after the 200th time) that the lane runs out after the merge, or that their exit is at a certain place.
The only US job I can think of with a minimum rest requirement is aircraft flight crew--they have a duty time limit (16 hr, I think), minimum rest/off-duty period (8 hr off-duty, but some of that gets taken by eating and going to/from hotel), and maximum duty time per year (2000hr). There is also a maximum flight time per day (8 hr).
That assumes the airplane is so equipped. Lots of smaller aircraft (737, A32X, etc), and even somelarger ones (some 767s, for example) only have one door forward of the wing.
I forget who said it, but...
"The fastest way to make a million dollars in the airline industry is to start with a billion."
But all the nice shiny metal bits (masts, stays, bolts, cleats, etc) reflect radar, so your sailboat is still visible.
There's nothing intrinsic in radar that recognizes age; even old sailing ships would still be somewhat visible on radar. Stealth is as much dependent on shape as materials, and big things perpendicular to the radar (especially when made of metal) are about as unstealthy as you get.
I don't think you'll ever see an Orion operating from surface launch, but it is very viable as a deep-space propulsion system. You could also launch tritium pellets, ignite them with lasers, and travel that way (saves the problem of using up all our uranium...)
I think the asteroid is rather small to be causing big tidal effects. It's only 200-300m or so, if I'm remembering right.
On a side note, this was the same thing we had to do for our senior design projects last year. IMO, our concept was cooler (with implantable seismometers and explosive charges to map the interior), but their proposal is obviously a lot better and more professional.
I replaced the windows logo in the startup/shutdown with a skull and crossbones on a couple machines... was good for a laugh.
The good old "screenshot the desktop and hide all the icons" worked really well too. Ah, those were the days...
Pretty much every airplane is required to have a magnetic compass of sorts. It still gets used quite a bit on small airplanes; larger ones like airliners and business jets only use it as a backup.
But the US missile can launch from essentially any one of several Aegis-equipped cruisers, rather than needing a relatively fixed ballistic missile (like the Chinese system). The US missile is a descendant of the SM-1 Standard SAM developed to protect ships against aircraft and cruise missiles. The SM-3 version (to be used in the test) was developed specifically to intercept ballistic missiles--the only modification for this test is a software upgrade. I think it's already in regular service.
I'd expect that shooting a satellite whose orbit is already decaying might hasten the process by a couple days (smaller pieces would generally have a lower ballistic coefficient and therefore decay faster), but not by a significant amount.
The real benefit (to the US) is that turning a big, expensive satellite with lots of classified equipment on board into a bunch of little satellites means that the expensive bits are rendered unusable and far less likely to get to the ground intact, where they can be analyzed. It also provides a good opportunity to test a new missile system, and shows the Chinese that the US can play at their game, too.
But you have clearly violated my patent on "conveyance of verbal information with tonal accompaniment", colloquially known as "songwriting" and "singing", respectively, when composing and conveying the information, respectively.
Prepare to be sued.
Games can indeed be very educational--my favorite one during high school taught me orbital mechanics...
But yes, it is indeed the content that matters. I laugh at fart jokes as much as the next guy, but I don't subject myself to two hours of it on a regular basis, and I certainly don't find it worth the money to see it in a theater. I've met far too many people who got bored with stuff and turned it off because there weren't explosions or sex scenes in the first five minutes.