The big problem with learning to fly is the price of gas. AV gas still has lead so it is a lot more expensive than auto-gas. I think it has more to do with there only being one refinery that makes avgas, and the demand a tiny fraction of "mogas".
Well, we know you've never actually flown an airplane before, because you wouldn't be making inane statements like this. Those restrictions aren't there because we're a bunch of snobs trying to hog all the fun; they have them because it's very easy to fuck up flying a plane, and if you do fuck up the consequences are a lot more severe than they would be in a car. Ground controllers don't fly the aircraft; in essence, their job is to make sure planes don't hit each other, which is actually a much bigger challenge than you would think. Of course, you wouldn't know that.
Autopilots aren't there to replace the meatware... you find them on larger transport aircraft to take the load off the pilots so they can concentrate on the other stuff, like navigating around storms, dealing with clearances, or working the systems (especially in an emergency), without having to waste some brainpower on "keep the wings level". And all these automated systems you seem to get off to fail a lot more often than you would think. Knowing how to deal with emergencies, and being able to do it, are why airline pilots get paid what they do. Take a look sometime at crash statistics for the military's unmanned aircraft... simle software bugs or communications glitches have caused many crashes. They wouldn't have happened had there been a person on board to override the systems. I realize that pilots can cause accidents too, but they have one advantage an autopilot doesn't: common sense. The autopilot will happily drive you into the heart of a severe storm, or follow a spurious command to lock all your control surfaces at maximum deflection.
Finally, a lot of airplanes don't have autopilots at all. The vast majority of light private aircraft don't; most of those that do don't have anything more complicated than a simple altitude and heading hold. And even in airliners, takeoffs are always flown manually; and unless restricted by weather or airspace, landings and most flight under 10,000 ft is as well. Crews generally only do autolands when they absolutely have to, and even then they keep very close watch in case something goes wrong.
Tell you what: you go ahead and get on a fully automated airplane. I'll stick with human pilots, myself.
[quote]One is threaded conversations like GMail offers[/quote]
Meh... personally, that irritates the crap out of me, because I tend to organize chronologically and spatially... essentially, with a traditional "newest message at the top" format, I can find things by knowing "oh, the one I'm looking for is older than this one" and remembering which messages were close to one another in the list. Threads work for message boards, usenet (if configured right) and slashdot, but only if you can show it graphically . Showing me just the most recent message does me no good, and I should have the option to not use "conversations".
Rail lines could work in certain areas (say, down the populated corridors along the east and west coast, and maybe among some cities further inland like Atlanta, Chicago, etc). But trying to connect all the way across the middle of the country most likely isn't feasable. Atlanta to Los Angeles (via Dallas) is about 2200 miles. I'm seeing numbers of about $50 million per mile for new rail line, giving this one route a cost of around $110 billion. More northerly routes would have to run across the Rockies, which will add a lot to the cost.
Add political squabbling and stuff to that, and it gets even more expensive. Additionally, while trains between major city centers might work, what about the significant number of people that don't live near a large population center? Connecting a bunch of smaller cities in the midwest by air is easier and requires much less infrastructure. Conversely, connecting Boston--PHL-NYC-Washington by rail would be great. I realize there are already trains operating those routes, but I think they're fairly limited on capacity.
A good bit of the air traffic congestion could be solved fairly easily by trading frequency for capacity (ie flying larger airplanes, but fewer flights), but airlines won't do it as long as the public keeps demanding more options for their flights. Delta currently operates almost 30 flights from Atlanta to the NYC area (JFK, LGA, EWR) every day--about one every half hour between 6AM and 10PM.
Germany is about the size of Montana. It's a little easier (and cheaper) to connect something with rail when it's that small. Consider that the US is a couple thousand miles coast-to-coast, and that major cities are often hundreds of miles apart, and the cost for such a rail system climbs astronomically.
I'd suspect the rage of economic growth in other countries has more to do with them having a somewhat more sensible collective consumer, and them not having a government so poor at international relations.
To be fair, the cost of networking all of the major cities together with high-speed rail would be ridiculous... and I'd expect that the emissions and environmental impact from building them would pretty much balance out the airplanes.
I distinctly remember solving programming puzzles while dreaming, back when I was taking senior design. Then I woke up, and got pissed when I realized I had to do it all over again--but in one or two cases, my methodology from the dream actually worked, or so it seems.
And yes, I was that deep in the project that I was dreaming in Matlab... that was the worst three months of my life.
Well, boo-goddamn-hoo. Maybe if shareholders paid more attention to what the companies they invest in are doing, we wouldn't have so much corporate malfeasance. So if the shareholders are knowingly deceived by the executives, they should have to pay the price for it? Oh wait, they already did.
It's just not feasible for small shareholders of corporations to keep track of every little thing going on within them. You can't seriously expect some guy with 100 shares of Coke (out of almost half a billion) to be monitoring the day-to-day business of the company, and be able to monitor corruption on the part of the board. You'd pretty much kill off the entire economy if you made everyone liable like that.
There were a couple of STS missions planned and designated but not flown. To avoid confusion (hah) they didn't change the mission numbers when one was cancelled. They did that not just because of canceled missions, but also re-sequenced ones. The reasoning was that keeping the same mission designations (STS-XX), but flying them out of order, was less confusing than having to go through and change press kits, mission plans, payload specifications, and everything else each time there was a schedule change. Remember, shuttle launch manifests are drawn up well in advance, and crews train for at least a year or two for a specific mission.
According to Wikipedia, there have been 98 manned Soyuz flights (including the one currently in progress). I'd bet that this number is pretty accurate.
And I wouldn't say the shuttle was "too ambitious"; rather, I'd say that it's the resut of politicians and bean-counters trying to dictate too much of the design.
But have a lot better safety record. Only 4 vs 14 crew fatalities, with Soyuz having been flying longer. That's like saying that the 747 has a worse safety record than the shuttle, because something like 2,000 people have died on it, and it's been flying longer. More have died on the shuttle because it carries more people.
Soyuz has also had two fatal accidents in roughly the same number of flights; there have also been several incidents in the past few years of the reentry guidance failing and the capsule going "ballistic".
Many, many years ago. Though it was the other way around. And, my case turned out happier.
So there I was, Fall 2001, my senior year in high school. As one of my classes, my friends and I were the tech support for the entire school, and we had administrator priviliges on everything but the county network and the gradebooks. We reformatted computers, did network stuff, set up teacher accounts, and so on. We also got away with playing Rainbow Six over the network.
At the time of my incident, the school's computers were all running an old version of Netscape, which hadn't been updated in some time. I believe most of the computers had IE 5, which even though it was IE, was far superior to the Netscape version the school was running.
Anyways, I was in one of the English department's writing labs, working on an assignment using IE instead of the school-sanctioned Netscape. The lab administrator flipped out, wrote me up, unplugged the computer, and sent me to see the assistant principal. (Now, this woman running the labs was a complete idiot... if anything out of the ordinary happened, even "please insert disk into drive a," she'd flip out and unplug the computer, then put in a work request... by the time we got there, she'd tried to turn it back on, and wondered why it wouldn't start up...) And to make it even better, I had just been in that morning reformatting one of her computers. Go figure.
So I get to the principal's office, and explain what was going on. She laughed, explained that the school was basically getting some kind of kickback to use Netscape, and told me not to worry about it. She later had words with the lab administrator.
I see some very interesting ideas that would be interesting to explore...
How about this scenario:
-Franchise granted after completion of public service (defined below). As with Heinlein's system, any mentally-competent person of legal age must be given a job, so to speak. One difference I'd make is that it wouldn't be a "one-shot" affair; if you quit before your term is up, you can still come back later, but you have to start over (no credit for previous service).
-"Public service" would fall under two categories: hazardous, and non-hazardous.
Hazardous duty would be military, police, coast guard, firefighter, etc. In other words, your job description involves putting your life at risk.
Non-hazardous duty would be disaster relief, social work, medical service, etc. A service term for this category would be longer than for hazardous duty.
-Included in any of the above would be some form of basic training, including first aid, emergency response, and simple military stuff (small arms, platoon-level tactics, etc), for the reasons mentioned in parent (particulary the "government should be afraid of the populace" one). And somewhat following the Swiss model, anyone who wishes to be part of the "home guard" (basically a voluntary militia) would be issued a battle rifle, sidearm, and ammunition contingent upon regular qualification.
-You may not collect public benefits (like medicare, welfare, social security, if there are any), unless you are currently serving or have successfully completed a term. "Drop-outs" lose their benefits until they sign up again. Children automatically receive benefits until eligible to sign up for service, as do those ineligible due to mental handicap.
-A felony conviction voids any service record; one may regain status after serving the appropriate sentence and completing another service term (possibly require hazardous service in this case?).
-Service would also be a prerequisite for holding public office. I'm tempted to require two consecutively-served terms as a requirement, actually. There would also be term limits to prevent career politicians.
Few things irritate me more than parasites who choose to contribute nothing to society, but insist they are entitled to the benefits of it. Again, to preempt the flames I know to be coming, I'm referring to those who do so by choice, not those with physical/mental handicaps. To paraphrase (I think) Voltaire, your democracy is over once people start using the force of government to plunder for themselves.
I believe the SST fleet only does about 8000mph on re-entry Eh... you mean STS fleet, and try around 17,000 mph at entry interface.
Aerodynamic heating at super/hypersonic speeds is not due to friction (at least as most people think of it), but rather compressibility effects. Air gets hotter as you slow it down(highly simplified explanation--kinetic energy turns into thermal); the change is dramatic across a shockwave.
I don't think the materials are sufficiently developed to allow a non-ablative shield at Mach 12, say; but I think lower speeds around Mach 6 should be possible in a few years. And around those speeds, you don't necessarily need scramjets; a standard ramjet would work fine, assuming your engine can take the static pressure and temperature inside it (my memory from a design project back in school seems to tell me that Mach 6 gives you a pressure ratio of about 50:1, and temperatures approaching modern limits).
There's actually a fair bit of speculation that it can barely even get to Mach 2. As best anyone can tell, the inlets are fixed (unlike the F-14, F-15, Concorde, SR-71, etc that had adjustable ramps or cones to tailor the airflow), which means that eventually you will start getting very large losses in the intake. The B-1 lost Mach 2 capability when it was remade into the B version, which had fixed intakes more suited for guarding the engine faces against radar exposure.
The numbers I'm inclined to believe show supercruise topping out about Mach 1.6, with top speed around 1.9-2.0. And remember, top speed isn't a truly important figure anyways. The F-14 and F-15 could max out in the neighborhood of Mach 2.3-2.5, but loaded down for combat you probably wouldn't see them break 1.5 or so. They certainly couldn't make it to Mach 2 in such a condition. Think of it as the F-22 having a much higher average speed; it can't match the absolute numbers but it'll certainly do it for longer. This gives it the ability to cover more territory, carry more energy into a fight, and drop bombs from further out than other aircraft. And its engines give it an absolutely phenomenal acceleration--it'll easily beat an F-15 in a drag race without using afterburners.
Problem 2: the flywheel has about the same amount of energy as gasoline a car normally carries, right? Just make the flywheel out of something that breaks in to a ton of little pieces that gets caught by the container (as suggested by the wiki article) Anything that is energy-dense is going to have this problems, like Sony Batteries, gasoline, etc. The problem is that gasoline won't release all of its energy at once (unless it's atomized and ignited, but in an accident most of it would still remain liquid). A flywheel would let go all of its energy at one time. This problem exists with big capacitors too...
And IIRC, there's no feasable way to get reasonable range out of a compressed-air car. You'd need a really light vehicle, very efficient motor, and your gas would be stored at an incredibly high pressure--and then you're back to the "instant release of energy" problem.
The computing industry was able to develop in the private sector because the barriers to entry were lower, the field is intrinsically less dangerous, and the payoff is much more immediate.
In order to do anything useful in space besides floating around for a couple minutes, you first have to get there. Getting to orbit takes a lot of energy, and requires technology that, if not at the cutting edge, is at least somewhere near the front of the blade. We're just now starting to see private companies getting into the launch business (which, incidentally, is one of the parts where the private sector could start taking over). However, stuff like deep-space and long duration operations, planetary colonization, and in-situ resource utilization--the stuff that's critical to mankind's long-term survival and expansion into the galaxy--is the stuff private industry isn't going to touch. The potential for return is low, and any profit won't come for a very long time. Doesn't matter how much it benefits humanity in the long run, or whether it's actually the right thing to do... the private sector's only motivation is profit. If it's not going to help boost next quarter's returns, a company just won't bother.
A wiser person than me once said, "an individual person is smart; people are stupid, panicky, and short-sighted" or something to that effect. The general public sees no point in working on anything that doesn't provide an immediate personal benefit. People don't want to spend the money now to figure out how to, say, move an asteroid so it doesn't hit earth, because they don't see anything in it for themselves. They want bread and circuses.
If you made an announcement that an asteroid will hit earth in 30 years, some of them might wake up... but I'd bet most of them would blow it off, saying "it's not my problem, I'll be dead by then" or "that's too far away; I'm not going to worry about it." Tell them the same asteroid will hit in one year, and everyone will flip out and demand something be done--but at that point, it'll most likely be far too late to do anything. Now, being smart about this, wouldn't you rather invest in the technology now, so we'll have it when we need it, instead of chugging along fat, dumb, and happy, and listening to the latest Hannah Montana release?
"Obviously not economical, and will not get economical until a radically different method of propulsion is developed."
Maybe so. But that development will never happen if we just sit on our asses and don't do anything about it! The Wright brothers had to work for years, constantly testing and improving their designs, and practicing their flying. You learn nothing about spaceflight by sitting around on earth doing paper studies and waiting for incredible new technology.
Kennedy proposed going to the moon even before the first manned Mercury mission. Should we have just scrapped it, moved right on to Apollo, and made our first manned spaceflight a moon landing attempt? Hell no. We had to learn to work in space and develop techniques to do so (at least somewhat) safely.
Second, I was replying to the notion (at least how I interpreted it) that we shouldn't bother with spaceflight until we get a bunch of new, more economical equipment. I was trying to get across that newer, better things don't come along just by sitting there and waiting for them. If you want an improvement, you're going to have to work at it and get experience. Paper studies don't translate into experience or hardware without a whole lot of elbow grease.
Third, it depends on how you define "rocket" as to whether they've reached their potential or not. If you mean the standard chemical rocket, the technology is about as efficient as it gets. If you start throwing in nuclear stuff, it gets more interesting. A nuclear thermal rocket (where a nuclear core heats propellant that then gets expelled) can reach twice the exhaust velocity of a high-end LOX/LH2 engine (like the shuttle's SSME). An overview of the more advanced propulsion concepts is here: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3c2.html It gives a good summary of a bunch of concepts that are at least physically possible, though maybe not currently feasible or within our technology level.
But that's my point... "The Market" won't look further than the tip of its own genitalia. It tends to be motivated by the prospect of (quick) money; long-term survival of humanity as a whole just doesn't have much immediate profit potential. The really meaningful stuff we need to research, like long-duration flight, partially to fully self-sufficient colonies, advanced (nuclear) propulsion, asteroid defense, and truly permanent outposts, just doesn't have market return. Or, if it does, the technology may take 30-40 years or more to develop. No private investment group is going to sink that much money (if it can even get it) into research that may not pay out until most of its members are dead.
The primary goal of such exploration should be the continuation of the species, with the closely-related secondary priorities of preserving earth's environment and bettering the human condition. The establishment of colonies and space habitats (in concordance with goal 1) can feed directly into goals 2 and 3 (better/cleaner/more efficient technology, new resources, etc). Pure scientific research is nice if you can get it, and is often necessary for the aforementioned goals, but it shouldn't be our primary goal. Too many people see it as the only objective of a space program, and thereby dismiss space as "not helpful to me."
If we sit around waiting for a "more economical method" to come along, it just isn't going to happen.*
That would be like man deciding in 1900 to never bother with airplanes until he could build $modern_jet_airliner. Technology doesn't magically develop, you have to actively do it. Anyone that's helped develop a new concept into something worthy of production can tell you that you won't figure it out until you sit down and actually start making the thing.
It would be nice if space exploration could be privately funded. Unfortunately, the space stuff that will actually be important either doesn't have much monetary return associated with it, or has so long of a development timeline (no returns for at least 20+ years) that no investor will ever jump for it. It's very rare these days to see a company that looks much further than the next quarter's profit/loss statement--and "long range" planning is only two years' worth. Similarly, politicians only plan as far as the next election. And sadly, the general public is the same way, seeking instant gratification rather than a longer but more effective investment.
I'm not a fan of government funding things, either. But space is too important to ignore.
Normally the open plan offices translate into qualitative benefits in the company (people are happier, more collaborative, less secretive etc...). But then there are freaks like me... I can't stand it when I feel like I'm being watched. Doesn't matter if I'm doing what I'm supposed to be doing or not, I don't like feeling that someone could be over there staring at me--especially from behind. I always sat in the back of the classroom all the way through school--or at least far enough back so nobody was behind me. At restaurants, I can't sit at tables in the middle--I wait for a booth, preferably in the corner.
I tend to be a little reclusive by nature (I like to have walls around when I'm working); an open office plan would absolutely kill me. I do work in a cubicle, but it's not in an office-space-style giant cube farm. My department has its own building with attached workshop, and I'm in one of six cubes in the office area. Our lead engineer is 30 feet away, and all of my interns are in the cubes. We just walk over and talk if we need to.
There's really something nice about customizing your work area. I can store the parts for my lunch (I bring in sandwich stuff and make lunch at work) and keep my 20-inch super-high-resolution CRT for cad work. Now if I could just get an office next time one opens up...
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Well, we know you've never actually flown an airplane before, because you wouldn't be making inane statements like this. Those restrictions aren't there because we're a bunch of snobs trying to hog all the fun; they have them because it's very easy to fuck up flying a plane, and if you do fuck up the consequences are a lot more severe than they would be in a car. Ground controllers don't fly the aircraft; in essence, their job is to make sure planes don't hit each other, which is actually a much bigger challenge than you would think. Of course, you wouldn't know that.
Autopilots aren't there to replace the meatware... you find them on larger transport aircraft to take the load off the pilots so they can concentrate on the other stuff, like navigating around storms, dealing with clearances, or working the systems (especially in an emergency), without having to waste some brainpower on "keep the wings level". And all these automated systems you seem to get off to fail a lot more often than you would think. Knowing how to deal with emergencies, and being able to do it, are why airline pilots get paid what they do. Take a look sometime at crash statistics for the military's unmanned aircraft... simle software bugs or communications glitches have caused many crashes. They wouldn't have happened had there been a person on board to override the systems. I realize that pilots can cause accidents too, but they have one advantage an autopilot doesn't: common sense. The autopilot will happily drive you into the heart of a severe storm, or follow a spurious command to lock all your control surfaces at maximum deflection.
Finally, a lot of airplanes don't have autopilots at all. The vast majority of light private aircraft don't; most of those that do don't have anything more complicated than a simple altitude and heading hold. And even in airliners, takeoffs are always flown manually; and unless restricted by weather or airspace, landings and most flight under 10,000 ft is as well. Crews generally only do autolands when they absolutely have to, and even then they keep very close watch in case something goes wrong.
Tell you what: you go ahead and get on a fully automated airplane. I'll stick with human pilots, myself.
[quote]One is threaded conversations like GMail offers[/quote]
Meh... personally, that irritates the crap out of me, because I tend to organize chronologically and spatially... essentially, with a traditional "newest message at the top" format, I can find things by knowing "oh, the one I'm looking for is older than this one" and remembering which messages were close to one another in the list. Threads work for message boards, usenet (if configured right) and slashdot, but only if you can show it graphically . Showing me just the most recent message does me no good, and I should have the option to not use "conversations".
Rail lines could work in certain areas (say, down the populated corridors along the east and west coast, and maybe among some cities further inland like Atlanta, Chicago, etc). But trying to connect all the way across the middle of the country most likely isn't feasable. Atlanta to Los Angeles (via Dallas) is about 2200 miles. I'm seeing numbers of about $50 million per mile for new rail line, giving this one route a cost of around $110 billion. More northerly routes would have to run across the Rockies, which will add a lot to the cost.
Add political squabbling and stuff to that, and it gets even more expensive. Additionally, while trains between major city centers might work, what about the significant number of people that don't live near a large population center? Connecting a bunch of smaller cities in the midwest by air is easier and requires much less infrastructure. Conversely, connecting Boston--PHL-NYC-Washington by rail would be great. I realize there are already trains operating those routes, but I think they're fairly limited on capacity.
A good bit of the air traffic congestion could be solved fairly easily by trading frequency for capacity (ie flying larger airplanes, but fewer flights), but airlines won't do it as long as the public keeps demanding more options for their flights. Delta currently operates almost 30 flights from Atlanta to the NYC area (JFK, LGA, EWR) every day--about one every half hour between 6AM and 10PM.
Germany is about the size of Montana. It's a little easier (and cheaper) to connect something with rail when it's that small. Consider that the US is a couple thousand miles coast-to-coast, and that major cities are often hundreds of miles apart, and the cost for such a rail system climbs astronomically.
I'd suspect the rage of economic growth in other countries has more to do with them having a somewhat more sensible collective consumer, and them not having a government so poor at international relations.
To be fair, the cost of networking all of the major cities together with high-speed rail would be ridiculous... and I'd expect that the emissions and environmental impact from building them would pretty much balance out the airplanes.
I distinctly remember solving programming puzzles while dreaming, back when I was taking senior design. Then I woke up, and got pissed when I realized I had to do it all over again--but in one or two cases, my methodology from the dream actually worked, or so it seems.
And yes, I was that deep in the project that I was dreaming in Matlab... that was the worst three months of my life.
It's just not feasible for small shareholders of corporations to keep track of every little thing going on within them. You can't seriously expect some guy with 100 shares of Coke (out of almost half a billion) to be monitoring the day-to-day business of the company, and be able to monitor corruption on the part of the board. You'd pretty much kill off the entire economy if you made everyone liable like that.
the average person isn't smart enough to figure that out.
And in response to your sig: Yeah, you may only save 59 seconds over 8 miles... but on a 500 mile trip, that adds up to an hour.
According to Wikipedia, there have been 98 manned Soyuz flights (including the one currently in progress). I'd bet that this number is pretty accurate.
And I wouldn't say the shuttle was "too ambitious"; rather, I'd say that it's the resut of politicians and bean-counters trying to dictate too much of the design.
Soyuz has also had two fatal accidents in roughly the same number of flights; there have also been several incidents in the past few years of the reentry guidance failing and the capsule going "ballistic".
Many, many years ago. Though it was the other way around. And, my case turned out happier.
So there I was, Fall 2001, my senior year in high school. As one of my classes, my friends and I were the tech support for the entire school, and we had administrator priviliges on everything but the county network and the gradebooks. We reformatted computers, did network stuff, set up teacher accounts, and so on. We also got away with playing Rainbow Six over the network.
At the time of my incident, the school's computers were all running an old version of Netscape, which hadn't been updated in some time. I believe most of the computers had IE 5, which even though it was IE, was far superior to the Netscape version the school was running.
Anyways, I was in one of the English department's writing labs, working on an assignment using IE instead of the school-sanctioned Netscape. The lab administrator flipped out, wrote me up, unplugged the computer, and sent me to see the assistant principal. (Now, this woman running the labs was a complete idiot... if anything out of the ordinary happened, even "please insert disk into drive a," she'd flip out and unplug the computer, then put in a work request... by the time we got there, she'd tried to turn it back on, and wondered why it wouldn't start up...) And to make it even better, I had just been in that morning reformatting one of her computers. Go figure.
So I get to the principal's office, and explain what was going on. She laughed, explained that the school was basically getting some kind of kickback to use Netscape, and told me not to worry about it. She later had words with the lab administrator.
I see some very interesting ideas that would be interesting to explore...
How about this scenario:
-Franchise granted after completion of public service (defined below). As with Heinlein's system, any mentally-competent person of legal age must be given a job, so to speak. One difference I'd make is that it wouldn't be a "one-shot" affair; if you quit before your term is up, you can still come back later, but you have to start over (no credit for previous service).
-"Public service" would fall under two categories: hazardous, and non-hazardous.
Hazardous duty would be military, police, coast guard, firefighter, etc. In other words, your job description involves putting your life at risk.
Non-hazardous duty would be disaster relief, social work, medical service, etc. A service term for this category would be longer than for hazardous duty.
-Included in any of the above would be some form of basic training, including first aid, emergency response, and simple military stuff (small arms, platoon-level tactics, etc), for the reasons mentioned in parent (particulary the "government should be afraid of the populace" one). And somewhat following the Swiss model, anyone who wishes to be part of the "home guard" (basically a voluntary militia) would be issued a battle rifle, sidearm, and ammunition contingent upon regular qualification.
-You may not collect public benefits (like medicare, welfare, social security, if there are any), unless you are currently serving or have successfully completed a term. "Drop-outs" lose their benefits until they sign up again. Children automatically receive benefits until eligible to sign up for service, as do those ineligible due to mental handicap.
-A felony conviction voids any service record; one may regain status after serving the appropriate sentence and completing another service term (possibly require hazardous service in this case?).
-Service would also be a prerequisite for holding public office. I'm tempted to require two consecutively-served terms as a requirement, actually. There would also be term limits to prevent career politicians.
Few things irritate me more than parasites who choose to contribute nothing to society, but insist they are entitled to the benefits of it. Again, to preempt the flames I know to be coming, I'm referring to those who do so by choice, not those with physical/mental handicaps. To paraphrase (I think) Voltaire, your democracy is over once people start using the force of government to plunder for themselves.
Aerodynamic heating at super/hypersonic speeds is not due to friction (at least as most people think of it), but rather compressibility effects. Air gets hotter as you slow it down(highly simplified explanation--kinetic energy turns into thermal); the change is dramatic across a shockwave.
I don't think the materials are sufficiently developed to allow a non-ablative shield at Mach 12, say; but I think lower speeds around Mach 6 should be possible in a few years. And around those speeds, you don't necessarily need scramjets; a standard ramjet would work fine, assuming your engine can take the static pressure and temperature inside it (my memory from a design project back in school seems to tell me that Mach 6 gives you a pressure ratio of about 50:1, and temperatures approaching modern limits).
There's actually a fair bit of speculation that it can barely even get to Mach 2. As best anyone can tell, the inlets are fixed (unlike the F-14, F-15, Concorde, SR-71, etc that had adjustable ramps or cones to tailor the airflow), which means that eventually you will start getting very large losses in the intake. The B-1 lost Mach 2 capability when it was remade into the B version, which had fixed intakes more suited for guarding the engine faces against radar exposure.
The numbers I'm inclined to believe show supercruise topping out about Mach 1.6, with top speed around 1.9-2.0. And remember, top speed isn't a truly important figure anyways. The F-14 and F-15 could max out in the neighborhood of Mach 2.3-2.5, but loaded down for combat you probably wouldn't see them break 1.5 or so. They certainly couldn't make it to Mach 2 in such a condition. Think of it as the F-22 having a much higher average speed; it can't match the absolute numbers but it'll certainly do it for longer. This gives it the ability to cover more territory, carry more energy into a fight, and drop bombs from further out than other aircraft. And its engines give it an absolutely phenomenal acceleration--it'll easily beat an F-15 in a drag race without using afterburners.
And IIRC, there's no feasable way to get reasonable range out of a compressed-air car. You'd need a really light vehicle, very efficient motor, and your gas would be stored at an incredibly high pressure--and then you're back to the "instant release of energy" problem.
Pick me! Pick me! (though my intern days are behind me now...)
The computing industry was able to develop in the private sector because the barriers to entry were lower, the field is intrinsically less dangerous, and the payoff is much more immediate.
In order to do anything useful in space besides floating around for a couple minutes, you first have to get there. Getting to orbit takes a lot of energy, and requires technology that, if not at the cutting edge, is at least somewhere near the front of the blade. We're just now starting to see private companies getting into the launch business (which, incidentally, is one of the parts where the private sector could start taking over). However, stuff like deep-space and long duration operations, planetary colonization, and in-situ resource utilization--the stuff that's critical to mankind's long-term survival and expansion into the galaxy--is the stuff private industry isn't going to touch. The potential for return is low, and any profit won't come for a very long time. Doesn't matter how much it benefits humanity in the long run, or whether it's actually the right thing to do... the private sector's only motivation is profit. If it's not going to help boost next quarter's returns, a company just won't bother.
A wiser person than me once said, "an individual person is smart; people are stupid, panicky, and short-sighted" or something to that effect. The general public sees no point in working on anything that doesn't provide an immediate personal benefit. People don't want to spend the money now to figure out how to, say, move an asteroid so it doesn't hit earth, because they don't see anything in it for themselves. They want bread and circuses.
If you made an announcement that an asteroid will hit earth in 30 years, some of them might wake up... but I'd bet most of them would blow it off, saying "it's not my problem, I'll be dead by then" or "that's too far away; I'm not going to worry about it." Tell them the same asteroid will hit in one year, and everyone will flip out and demand something be done--but at that point, it'll most likely be far too late to do anything. Now, being smart about this, wouldn't you rather invest in the technology now, so we'll have it when we need it, instead of chugging along fat, dumb, and happy, and listening to the latest Hannah Montana release?
"Obviously not economical, and will not get economical until a radically different method of propulsion is developed."
Maybe so. But that development will never happen if we just sit on our asses and don't do anything about it! The Wright brothers had to work for years, constantly testing and improving their designs, and practicing their flying. You learn nothing about spaceflight by sitting around on earth doing paper studies and waiting for incredible new technology.
Kennedy proposed going to the moon even before the first manned Mercury mission. Should we have just scrapped it, moved right on to Apollo, and made our first manned spaceflight a moon landing attempt? Hell no. We had to learn to work in space and develop techniques to do so (at least somewhat) safely.
First, it's "would HAVE", not "would of."
Second, I was replying to the notion (at least how I interpreted it) that we shouldn't bother with spaceflight until we get a bunch of new, more economical equipment. I was trying to get across that newer, better things don't come along just by sitting there and waiting for them. If you want an improvement, you're going to have to work at it and get experience. Paper studies don't translate into experience or hardware without a whole lot of elbow grease.
Third, it depends on how you define "rocket" as to whether they've reached their potential or not. If you mean the standard chemical rocket, the technology is about as efficient as it gets. If you start throwing in nuclear stuff, it gets more interesting. A nuclear thermal rocket (where a nuclear core heats propellant that then gets expelled) can reach twice the exhaust velocity of a high-end LOX/LH2 engine (like the shuttle's SSME). An overview of the more advanced propulsion concepts is here: http://www.projectrho.com/rocket/rocket3c2.html It gives a good summary of a bunch of concepts that are at least physically possible, though maybe not currently feasible or within our technology level.
But that's my point... "The Market" won't look further than the tip of its own genitalia. It tends to be motivated by the prospect of (quick) money; long-term survival of humanity as a whole just doesn't have much immediate profit potential. The really meaningful stuff we need to research, like long-duration flight, partially to fully self-sufficient colonies, advanced (nuclear) propulsion, asteroid defense, and truly permanent outposts, just doesn't have market return. Or, if it does, the technology may take 30-40 years or more to develop. No private investment group is going to sink that much money (if it can even get it) into research that may not pay out until most of its members are dead.
The primary goal of such exploration should be the continuation of the species, with the closely-related secondary priorities of preserving earth's environment and bettering the human condition. The establishment of colonies and space habitats (in concordance with goal 1) can feed directly into goals 2 and 3 (better/cleaner/more efficient technology, new resources, etc). Pure scientific research is nice if you can get it, and is often necessary for the aforementioned goals, but it shouldn't be our primary goal. Too many people see it as the only objective of a space program, and thereby dismiss space as "not helpful to me."
If we sit around waiting for a "more economical method" to come along, it just isn't going to happen.*
That would be like man deciding in 1900 to never bother with airplanes until he could build $modern_jet_airliner. Technology doesn't magically develop, you have to actively do it. Anyone that's helped develop a new concept into something worthy of production can tell you that you won't figure it out until you sit down and actually start making the thing.
*short of benevolent alien intervention...
It would be nice if space exploration could be privately funded. Unfortunately, the space stuff that will actually be important either doesn't have much monetary return associated with it, or has so long of a development timeline (no returns for at least 20+ years) that no investor will ever jump for it. It's very rare these days to see a company that looks much further than the next quarter's profit/loss statement--and "long range" planning is only two years' worth. Similarly, politicians only plan as far as the next election. And sadly, the general public is the same way, seeking instant gratification rather than a longer but more effective investment.
I'm not a fan of government funding things, either. But space is too important to ignore.
I tend to be a little reclusive by nature (I like to have walls around when I'm working); an open office plan would absolutely kill me. I do work in a cubicle, but it's not in an office-space-style giant cube farm. My department has its own building with attached workshop, and I'm in one of six cubes in the office area. Our lead engineer is 30 feet away, and all of my interns are in the cubes. We just walk over and talk if we need to.
There's really something nice about customizing your work area. I can store the parts for my lunch (I bring in sandwich stuff and make lunch at work) and keep my 20-inch super-high-resolution CRT for cad work. Now if I could just get an office next time one opens up...