Addition of the ODS (the docking port assembly for Mir/ISS ops) on Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour took up some space in the forward payload bay, prohibiting Hubble from being returned. Columbia did not have the ODS, but was scheduled to get one as soon as STS-107 was over (IIRC).
"These things aren't funny and they never have been!"
On the contrary... they are. Not for the content, but rather because some people get so fucking upset about it. "Oh no, it's vulgar and obscene!" Well, 50% of the population (give or take) has one, and every one of us came out of one in some form or another.
This isn't to say I agree with drawing it on say, the school mentioned in another post, or on the wall of someone's house--that's vandalism. But drawing one in the snow on a frozen lake, or covering your friend's car in penises (drawn with shaving cream)--THAT's funny.
The "big idea" with the wireless system was to allow the IFE (in-flight entertainment)--TV screens on the backs of seats and such--to run over the wireless. That way, you wouldn't have to rerun wires if you changed the seating configuration. I think the need for an access point above each row was driven by a need to handle streaming video and games to eight or nine people in each row at the same time. Regular laptop access and all would have been secondary, I think.
They're also nice when you're looking around at a bookstore and find a book you like, but don't feel like getting at the moment. You can take a picture of it for reference, and look at it later.
My phone also has enough resolution that, if I miss a day of class and need to get notes, I can just take a picture of someone else's (with their permission, of course) and transcribe it later.
"The Next shuttle launch should include a flight plan that after working on ISS to go get the satellites and return it to earth. That is what the shuttle is supposed to be for, and wouldn't cost a whole lot more since the shuttle is in orbit anyways.
But knowing NASA the shuttle won't have enough maneuvering fuel to complete the task."
It's a limitation of physics, not poor planning. Since the satellite launched from Vandenberg, its orbital inclination is going to be significantly different than that of the shuttle/ISS (90 degrees or so, vs 51.6). Plane changes in LEO are expensive fuel-wise; I don't feel like running the calculation right now, but I'd hazard a guess that the required delta-V is somewhere around 40-50% of orbital velocity. It's the same kind of thing as when people were asking why the shuttle couldn't go to ISS if there was a problem while working on hubble. The delta-V came out to something over 6000m/s, and that would have basically required most of an all-up stack (tank and boosters as well) to do. In this case, if you really wanted to get to said satellite, you would have to launch from the old SLC-6 pad, also at Vandenberg. Of course, this has now been converted to launch one of the EELVs. So, not gonna happen. You can't just point at things in space and say "go there!"
So, if you don't have a result you can hold in your hand in the next five years, it's useless? It reminds me of Michael Faraday's demonstration of electromagnetic induction to the British Prime Minister of his day. Far from being impressed, the Prime Minister said, "Of what use is this discovery, Mr Faraday?" Faraday replied, "Of what use is a baby, Mr. Prime Minister?" Babies certainly don't solve any problems on their own, and require a lot of education and development before they truly benefit society. Right now, human space travel is somewhere about the zygote stage. We can get to the point where it's truly useful, but only if we're willing to put the effort in to develop the technology and don't just sit around whining that "it's too expensive, and I want it NOW!!1!" If the Wright brothers, Otto Lilienthal, et al had decided that "we shouldn't worry about developing airplanes until we can cross the Atlantic in them and drink champagne whle we're doing it," we would have never flown.
Everyone seems to be seeing space exploration as pure scientific research. Yes, that is nice and useful and all... but we should be looking at it with the goal of eventually expanding human presence in the universe. I refer you to http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellaneous/archiv e/2006-12-18-why-go.html as an example. Unfortunately, I don't think the general public will take the idea too seriously until either (A) we find life (possibly intelligent) or (B) we see a big asteroid headed our way. And by then, it may be too late.
Oh lord... why did I read that? Just when I'd managed to get the last vestiges of scheme out of my head, I revisit the nightmare of freshman year... DAMN YOU GEORGIA TECH!
Built an RV-6 with my dad... and planning building a -7 (if I can afford it), or something else (if I can't). That'll probably be a few years down the road, though.
My dad's -6 is very basic (analog VFR only, though we do have a Garmin 196). Mine's going to have something like a Dynon, and I'm going to put airbrakes on it.
Are we going to look at this from a pure physics standpoint, or a "practical use" standpoint?
Yes, the laws of physics and thermodynamics say that we need to put more energy into the water/methane/$other_hydrogen_source to "crack" it and get hydrogen than we will get back from burning it or recombining it in fuel cells. However, that's not the point. As other posters have said, _all_ fuels take more energy to create or store than they produce when consumed.
You say that "[h]ydrogen is a non-starter, even with this technology. Why? Simple physics: it takes more energy to unbond water than you get back from burning the hydrogen and thusly re-bonding it back into water. Period, end of story. It's a little thing called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Deal." Again, all fuels require that. Yes, I know that most of that has already been done for us (plants into animals into fossil fuels), but sunlight is FREE. Once we get infrastructure in place, it is (from a _practical_ standpoint) self-sustaining. In other words, we don't have to sit there and pay for every Joule of solar energy we use, because it's going to be there regardless. Might as well take advantage of it.
It's kinda like designing a rocket vs. designing an airplane. When you design a rocket, you have to carry all of your propellant (oxidizer and fuel) with you, and it all has to be accounted for. Every bit of extra fuel or inefficiency hurts you in overall performance. Similarly, when you design a plane, you know that you need air (your oxidizer) to run your engine and to fly. The difference is, however, that you don't need to worry about carrying the air with you. It's everywhere, and you don't have to worry about where it's going to come from. Essentially, it is free. There's a reason rockets define efficiency in terms of total propellant used, while airplanes define it only by fuel used--I don't really care how much air the plane uses, because again--I don't have to pay for it.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, at the real-world practical level of things, efficiency is defined as "what you get" over "what you paid for." We don't have to continually pay money for the sunlight to produce hydrogen (which could then power its own distribution costs) like we have to continually pay for the coal/oil/uranium that would be used for the same thing (or that is used in the process of collecting, refining, and distributing themselves).
I'd really like to get my hands on this in the next week or two; trying to finish projects and study for finals would be a lot easier without that pesky sleep thing. These companies could make a killing at Georgia Tech...
"Equal education" and "equal opportunity" are two different things.
An equal education means that everyone is taught the same thing--no more, no less. Equal outcome, in other words.
Equal opportunity gives everyone the chance to go as far as they want. You don't hold anyone back, and no one is left by the wayside, either. Nobody is denied the chance to try and learn something (though not everyone will succeed).
Those launch systems with lower Isp are able to get away with it by staging. The SSME's need to run for the entire launch. A viable SSTO system may _just_ be possible with Isp's in the 450 range. Anything below that requires an unobtainium structure.
Also bear in mind that those engines aren't lifting 25 tons into orbit. They're lifting that 25 tons, plus the mass of the external tank (on the order of 80,000 lb), plus the orbiter itself (order of 160,000lb). The overkill is in the mass of the orbiter. The air force wanted lots of cross-range (1000+ mi) so they could launch at Vandenburg and recover in one orbit, and they wanted a 15x60-foot payload bay. This implies big wings, and a big body, implying lots of mass.
"One example is in Huntington Beach, CA, where along Pacific Coast Highway, marked crosswalks were removed because it was found that pedestrians assumed they had the right of way and were struck while crossing to the beach. They did have the right of way, technically speaking, but tell that to the guy that you just stepped out in front of and mowed you down."
I always thought "pedestrians have right-of-way" means that if you come upon a person in the road, you stop for them (instead of them being responsible for dodging you). Apparently, though, it means "pedestrians can jump out into traffic and fuck everything up whenever they want, and you have to stop." I'm getting very tired of seeing a guy just walk across and cause both lanes of traffic to stop, when he could have just waited three seconds for all the cars to go by, and then not hold it up. And I'm getting tired of people who wait at an intersection, then as soon as the light changes, try to go across traffic. Why don't they cross parallel to it (like the little crossing signals show!)
"Instead, police focus on pulling over speeders on the highway outside of rush hour (more revenue for the town), which does not improve safety at ALL."
MOD PARENT UP! It's amazing how true that is...
And about the turn signals; their use (or more accurately, the lack thereof) is the best indicator of the mentality here. There are only three reasons I can think of for why most people are not using them: (1) they don't know how to operate it, (2) they don't know when they're supposed to use them, or (3) they deliberately choose not to. I think it's mainly (3).
"Everyone else in most 1st world countries work 40 hours a week. Infact its illegal to go over 45 or 50 in France. America as a result is leading in divorce. You may love what you do but when you age and you are in the death bed will you think of work or your wife?"
I don't think the solution is to follow the French example and make working overtime _illegal_. However, I do agree that people are driving themselves too hard at work.
I particularly enjoy my free time. Over my four rotations as a co-op (like a recurring internship, for those wondering), I and the other co-ops were offered overtime pretty much every week. I think I was the only one who didn't work an average of 50+ hours/week. I probably did maybe 20, total. Even in the future, I intend to only work overtime when necessary--sudden bills coming up, or need-it-yesterday type projects.
Sounds like the bio-warfare in Ribofunk (Paul Di Filippo)... the soldiers catch viruses or agents that make them alternately unable to use articles, giggle all day, reduces them to the mental level of two-year-olds, etc.
LCC is the _school_ that offers the degree (like the "School of Mechanical Engineering" does ME and NRE). The degree itself is called Science, Technology, and Culture (STAC)... and even that's not really a "literature" degree, per se. The general idea is that you study how science and technology have affected society and culture (including such things as literature, art, communications, etc). You end up taking a fair number of science and CS courses, and I'd say that graduates probably have a better science education than just about all other non-engineering/science majors. They may be artsy people--but at least they're geeky artsy people that understand computers and know Newton's laws.
(disclaimer--I'm not a STAC major, I've just been dating one for five years)
Also, a further clarification on who Georgia Tech is (and is not):
Georgia Tech's "full name," so to speak, is the "Georgia Institute of Technology." It is NOT "Georgia Tech University." The word "university" appears nowhere in any part of our name, so do not use it.
Or conversely... I could look at porn and the people sitting to the left and right of me would see legitimate work... now just sit back and imagine the possibilities...
> pretty much everything in the world is made for the right handed
> like cars, jice pitchers , toilet paper dispendsers and door knobs
How do you figure? Toilet paper dispensers are found on either side of the toilet. Door knobs go on whatever side of the door doesn't have hinges, and cars are pretty much ambidextrious (and consider right-hand versus left-hand drive cars too)
There's already something like this... it's called ADS-B, and it's much more accurate than the current radar/transponder setups. It's been on trial in Alaska for a couple years (and I believe in operation in Europe). The main concern is the ability of someone to spoof or jam the signals.
Hell, at my high school the _students_ were the official tech support. We handled things like teachers unplugging the computer (then wondering why it won't turn on) to reformat/reinstallation, virus cleanup, email trouble, upgrades, etc. The only things we didn't do were purchasing and network administration (officially, at least; we got hold of the administrator password to the school's network but not the county). We even got to crack a few cases and swap components out. And the best part was that it counted for class credit--a nice easy elective for my senior year, and if we had no work requests we could just sit and play Rainbow Six over the network.
"Installing Windows and then installing all the applications you need, one by one, is a royal PIA. Installing Linux is a breeze. You should try it."
There is one thing worse:
Installing Windows/booting a new system for the first time, and having to UNinstall all the included sample programs and other crap. I just bought a new Toshiba notebook (cheaper model; it's just a portable supplement to my homebuilt desktop), but having to go through and uninstall:
Sonic DLA/Recordnow AOL free trial MS Works 7 MS office standard trial Photoshop elements McAfee security 30-day trial Toshiba special screensaver
before I could even start installing my stuff really sucks. Took almost two hours.
Slashdot Mirror
Addition of the ODS (the docking port assembly for Mir/ISS ops) on Discovery, Atlantis, and Endeavour took up some space in the forward payload bay, prohibiting Hubble from being returned. Columbia did not have the ODS, but was scheduled to get one as soon as STS-107 was over (IIRC).
Note: He's being sarcastic.
"These things aren't funny and they never have been!"
On the contrary... they are. Not for the content, but rather because some people get so fucking upset about it. "Oh no, it's vulgar and obscene!" Well, 50% of the population (give or take) has one, and every one of us came out of one in some form or another.
This isn't to say I agree with drawing it on say, the school mentioned in another post, or on the wall of someone's house--that's vandalism. But drawing one in the snow on a frozen lake, or covering your friend's car in penises (drawn with shaving cream)--THAT's funny.
The "big idea" with the wireless system was to allow the IFE (in-flight entertainment)--TV screens on the backs of seats and such--to run over the wireless. That way, you wouldn't have to rerun wires if you changed the seating configuration. I think the need for an access point above each row was driven by a need to handle streaming video and games to eight or nine people in each row at the same time. Regular laptop access and all would have been secondary, I think.
This has reportedly been done several times with the "T" from the top of Tech Tower.
They're also nice when you're looking around at a bookstore and find a book you like, but don't feel like getting at the moment. You can take a picture of it for reference, and look at it later.
My phone also has enough resolution that, if I miss a day of class and need to get notes, I can just take a picture of someone else's (with their permission, of course) and transcribe it later.
"The Next shuttle launch should include a flight plan that after working on ISS to go get the satellites and return it to earth. That is what the shuttle is supposed to be for, and wouldn't cost a whole lot more since the shuttle is in orbit anyways.
But knowing NASA the shuttle won't have enough maneuvering fuel to complete the task."
It's a limitation of physics, not poor planning. Since the satellite launched from Vandenberg, its orbital inclination is going to be significantly different than that of the shuttle/ISS (90 degrees or so, vs 51.6). Plane changes in LEO are expensive fuel-wise; I don't feel like running the calculation right now, but I'd hazard a guess that the required delta-V is somewhere around 40-50% of orbital velocity. It's the same kind of thing as when people were asking why the shuttle couldn't go to ISS if there was a problem while working on hubble. The delta-V came out to something over 6000m/s, and that would have basically required most of an all-up stack (tank and boosters as well) to do. In this case, if you really wanted to get to said satellite, you would have to launch from the old SLC-6 pad, also at Vandenberg. Of course, this has now been converted to launch one of the EELVs. So, not gonna happen. You can't just point at things in space and say "go there!"
So, if you don't have a result you can hold in your hand in the next five years, it's useless? It reminds me of Michael Faraday's demonstration of electromagnetic induction to the British Prime Minister of his day. Far from being impressed, the Prime Minister said, "Of what use is this discovery, Mr Faraday?" Faraday replied, "Of what use is a baby, Mr. Prime Minister?" Babies certainly don't solve any problems on their own, and require a lot of education and development before they truly benefit society. Right now, human space travel is somewhere about the zygote stage. We can get to the point where it's truly useful, but only if we're willing to put the effort in to develop the technology and don't just sit around whining that "it's too expensive, and I want it NOW!!1!" If the Wright brothers, Otto Lilienthal, et al had decided that "we shouldn't worry about developing airplanes until we can cross the Atlantic in them and drink champagne whle we're doing it," we would have never flown.
v e/2006-12-18-why-go.html as an example. Unfortunately, I don't think the general public will take the idea too seriously until either (A) we find life (possibly intelligent) or (B) we see a big asteroid headed our way. And by then, it may be too late.
Everyone seems to be seeing space exploration as pure scientific research. Yes, that is nice and useful and all... but we should be looking at it with the goal of eventually expanding human presence in the universe. I refer you to http://www.wellingtongrey.net/miscellaneous/archi
Oh lord... why did I read that? Just when I'd managed to get the last vestiges of scheme out of my head, I revisit the nightmare of freshman year... DAMN YOU GEORGIA TECH!
sorry.
Holy crap, I remember those! Anyone have something that'll still play them? I have a few I'd like to convert to MP3 format, for old times' sake.
Built an RV-6 with my dad... and planning building a -7 (if I can afford it), or something else (if I can't). That'll probably be a few years down the road, though.
My dad's -6 is very basic (analog VFR only, though we do have a Garmin 196). Mine's going to have something like a Dynon, and I'm going to put airbrakes on it.
Are we going to look at this from a pure physics standpoint, or a "practical use" standpoint?
Yes, the laws of physics and thermodynamics say that we need to put more energy into the water/methane/$other_hydrogen_source to "crack" it and get hydrogen than we will get back from burning it or recombining it in fuel cells. However, that's not the point. As other posters have said, _all_ fuels take more energy to create or store than they produce when consumed.
You say that "[h]ydrogen is a non-starter, even with this technology. Why? Simple physics: it takes more energy to unbond water than you get back from burning the hydrogen and thusly re-bonding it back into water. Period, end of story. It's a little thing called the Second Law of Thermodynamics. Deal." Again, all fuels require that. Yes, I know that most of that has already been done for us (plants into animals into fossil fuels), but sunlight is FREE. Once we get infrastructure in place, it is (from a _practical_ standpoint) self-sustaining. In other words, we don't have to sit there and pay for every Joule of solar energy we use, because it's going to be there regardless. Might as well take advantage of it.
It's kinda like designing a rocket vs. designing an airplane. When you design a rocket, you have to carry all of your propellant (oxidizer and fuel) with you, and it all has to be accounted for. Every bit of extra fuel or inefficiency hurts you in overall performance. Similarly, when you design a plane, you know that you need air (your oxidizer) to run your engine and to fly. The difference is, however, that you don't need to worry about carrying the air with you. It's everywhere, and you don't have to worry about where it's going to come from. Essentially, it is free. There's a reason rockets define efficiency in terms of total propellant used, while airplanes define it only by fuel used--I don't really care how much air the plane uses, because again--I don't have to pay for it.
I guess what I'm trying to get at is that, at the real-world practical level of things, efficiency is defined as "what you get" over "what you paid for." We don't have to continually pay money for the sunlight to produce hydrogen (which could then power its own distribution costs) like we have to continually pay for the coal/oil/uranium that would be used for the same thing (or that is used in the process of collecting, refining, and distributing themselves).
I'd really like to get my hands on this in the next week or two; trying to finish projects and study for finals would be a lot easier without that pesky sleep thing. These companies could make a killing at Georgia Tech...
"Equal education" and "equal opportunity" are two different things.
An equal education means that everyone is taught the same thing--no more, no less. Equal outcome, in other words.
Equal opportunity gives everyone the chance to go as far as they want. You don't hold anyone back, and no one is left by the wayside, either. Nobody is denied the chance to try and learn something (though not everyone will succeed).
Those launch systems with lower Isp are able to get away with it by staging. The SSME's need to run for the entire launch.
A viable SSTO system may _just_ be possible with Isp's in the 450 range. Anything below that requires an unobtainium structure.
Also bear in mind that those engines aren't lifting 25 tons into orbit. They're lifting that 25 tons, plus the mass of the external tank (on the order of 80,000 lb), plus the orbiter itself (order of 160,000lb). The overkill is in the mass of the orbiter. The air force wanted lots of cross-range (1000+ mi) so they could launch at Vandenburg and recover in one orbit, and they wanted a 15x60-foot payload bay. This implies big wings, and a big body, implying lots of mass.
"One example is in Huntington Beach, CA, where along Pacific Coast Highway, marked crosswalks were removed because it was found that pedestrians assumed they had the right of way and were struck while crossing to the beach. They did have the right of way, technically speaking, but tell that to the guy that you just stepped out in front of and mowed you down."
I always thought "pedestrians have right-of-way" means that if you come upon a person in the road, you stop for them (instead of them being responsible for dodging you). Apparently, though, it means "pedestrians can jump out into traffic and fuck everything up whenever they want, and you have to stop." I'm getting very tired of seeing a guy just walk across and cause both lanes of traffic to stop, when he could have just waited three seconds for all the cars to go by, and then not hold it up. And I'm getting tired of people who wait at an intersection, then as soon as the light changes, try to go across traffic. Why don't they cross parallel to it (like the little crossing signals show!)
"Instead, police focus on pulling over speeders on the highway outside of rush hour (more revenue for the town), which does not improve safety at ALL."
MOD PARENT UP! It's amazing how true that is...
And about the turn signals; their use (or more accurately, the lack thereof) is the best indicator of the mentality here. There are only three reasons I can think of for why most people are not using them: (1) they don't know how to operate it, (2) they don't know when they're supposed to use them, or (3) they deliberately choose not to. I think it's mainly (3).
"Everyone else in most 1st world countries work 40 hours a week. Infact its illegal to go over 45 or 50 in France. America as a result is leading in divorce. You may love what you do but when you age and you are in the death bed will you think of work or your wife?"
I don't think the solution is to follow the French example and make working overtime _illegal_. However, I do agree that people are driving themselves too hard at work.
I particularly enjoy my free time. Over my four rotations as a co-op (like a recurring internship, for those wondering), I and the other co-ops were offered overtime pretty much every week. I think I was the only one who didn't work an average of 50+ hours/week. I probably did maybe 20, total. Even in the future, I intend to only work overtime when necessary--sudden bills coming up, or need-it-yesterday type projects.
Sounds like the bio-warfare in Ribofunk (Paul Di Filippo)... the soldiers catch viruses or agents that make them alternately unable to use articles, giggle all day, reduces them to the mental level of two-year-olds, etc.
LCC is the _school_ that offers the degree (like the "School of Mechanical Engineering" does ME and NRE). The degree itself is called Science, Technology, and Culture (STAC)... and even that's not really a "literature" degree, per se. The general idea is that you study how science and technology have affected society and culture (including such things as literature, art, communications, etc). You end up taking a fair number of science and CS courses, and I'd say that graduates probably have a better science education than just about all other non-engineering/science majors. They may be artsy people--but at least they're geeky artsy people that understand computers and know Newton's laws.
(disclaimer--I'm not a STAC major, I've just been dating one for five years)
Also, a further clarification on who Georgia Tech is (and is not):
Georgia Tech's "full name," so to speak, is the "Georgia Institute of Technology." It is NOT "Georgia Tech University." The word "university" appears nowhere in any part of our name, so do not use it.
Or conversely... I could look at porn and the people sitting to the left and right of me would see legitimate work... now just sit back and imagine the possibilities...
> pretty much everything in the world is made for the right handed
> like cars, jice pitchers , toilet paper dispendsers and door knobs
How do you figure? Toilet paper dispensers are found on either side of the toilet. Door knobs go on whatever side of the door doesn't have hinges, and cars are pretty much ambidextrious (and consider right-hand versus left-hand drive cars too)
There's already something like this... it's called ADS-B, and it's much more accurate than the current radar/transponder setups. It's been on trial in Alaska for a couple years (and I believe in operation in Europe). The main concern is the ability of someone to spoof or jam the signals.
Hell, at my high school the _students_ were the official tech support. We handled things like teachers unplugging the computer (then wondering why it won't turn on) to reformat/reinstallation, virus cleanup, email trouble, upgrades, etc. The only things we didn't do were purchasing and network administration (officially, at least; we got hold of the administrator password to the school's network but not the county). We even got to crack a few cases and swap components out. And the best part was that it counted for class credit--a nice easy elective for my senior year, and if we had no work requests we could just sit and play Rainbow Six over the network.
"Installing Windows and then installing all the applications you need, one by one, is a royal PIA. Installing Linux is a breeze. You should try it."
There is one thing worse:
Installing Windows/booting a new system for the first time, and having to UNinstall all the included sample programs and other crap. I just bought a new Toshiba notebook (cheaper model; it's just a portable supplement to my homebuilt desktop), but having to go through and uninstall:
Sonic DLA/Recordnow
AOL free trial
MS Works 7
MS office standard trial
Photoshop elements
McAfee security 30-day trial
Toshiba special screensaver
before I could even start installing my stuff really sucks. Took almost two hours.