They have obviously been trained to trust the machine to fix their mistakes.
What's wrong with that? When I get in my car, I expect to have a handbrake which I can use in case my normal brakes fail. Only an idiot would design a car which required a complete brake system check before every use.
Machines SHOULD be designed in a way that makes it damn near impossible for the user to screw up. They should also be designed so that critical safety systems are redundant and fail-safe. Look at any large aircraft on the market - they have 2-3 different systems controlling fuel flow, multiple electrical generators on 4-6 separate buses, multiple hydrolic pumps and backup actuators... any system that can endanger the aircraft is backed up by AT LEAST one other system, and often by 2 or 3. Meanwhile the cockpit controls are kept as simple as possible, and often include nice colorful lines and diagrams to help the monkey in the seat figure out which button to push. That's the way all systems which have the potential to harm people should be designed - so that even someone with minimal training operating a 50 year old machine can use it, and have a greater than 50% chance of not killing himself or others.
Built around the Motorola MC6845 display controller, the CGA card featured several graphics and text modes. The highest resolution of any mode was 640×200, and the highest color depth supported was 4-bit (16 colors).
and the PC speaker just went "beep".
A PC speaker generates waveforms using the Programmable Interval Timer.[citation needed] The PC speaker was often used in very innovative ways to create the impression of polyphonic music or sound effects within computer games of its era, such as the LucasArts series of adventure games from the mid-1990s, using swift arpeggios.[citation needed] Several programs, including MP (Module Player, 1989), ScreamTracker, Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, and even device drivers for Linux[3] and Microsoft Windows, could play pulse-code modulation (PCM) sound through the PC speaker using special techniques explained later in this article. Several games such as Space Hulk and Pinball Fantasies were noted for their elaborate sound effects; Space Hulk in particular even had full speech.
I'm guessing that the people who modded you "informative" were probably born in the 90's.
Even more when you buy Kindle books you get two discounts: first, the books are usually cheaper (not by much) and second, you don't pay shipping charges.
"Not by much" is exactly right, and as far as shipping charges, I've never paid Amazon to ship me anything. They offer free shipping on larger orders, so I'll wait until I have a few books I'm interested in and order them all at once.
I think that if you buy about 20-30 books it's like you get the device for free.
Huh? You think you're going to get a $10 discount per book? Not bloody likely! Maybe if you bought 200 books, the kindle would end up being free... but by then it will probably have broken, and you'll be paying out the ass to have it shipped back to them and repaired/replaced.
E-readers need to have colour displays, and they need to be a lot more robust than the devices so far offered by Amazon, which seem to be excessively fragile.
Fujitsu already has a colour e-book reader on sale in Japan. PlasticLogic says they should have one available for next spring...ish. I'm not sure about the durability, though. As for the price, they're going to start dropping over the next year or two now that so many different companies/products are getting into the market.
given the amount of research that went into chemical weapons back then, I'd have to say yes.
Talk about a non-sequitur. They were researching mustard gas, so you think they came up with a virus. I guess the fact that they were researching how to build better biplanes also means they sequenced the human genome, eh?
As I said - find a better insurance company. Mine pays out completely reasonable amounts, decreased my premiums in 2008, and raised them by 4% this year. I've never even HEARD of your "disloyalty bonus" but, if that kind of thing works where you are, you've got bigger problems than your insurance premiums; I'd be much more concerned about the constant risk of slipping in the puddles of drool left behind by all the people around you.
lol. Ok, yeah, sure, that counts. I can go and get scanned, and have the doctor tell me: "Congratulations, you have a brain tumor! Now go back to the public system and wait 3 years to have it removed!"
Don't get me wrong - the increased availability of MRI machines is always a good thing, but it's just an attempt by private businesses to capitalize on a major flaw of the public system in the one area where they can do so. I guess they finally realized that there was money to be made from all those poor bastards who kept going to the US for scans. I'd much rather see private clinics and hospitals that can provide a full range of services, but that's not possible with the current laws.
A health insurance corporation is driven to achieve the best result and largest profits for its shareholders, rather than the best health for its customers. One that can take your money in premiums for your entire lifetime and then manage to deny you coverage when it comes time to pay out has essentially won and is performing well from a capitalist perspective, but it isn't providing good healthcare.
That's never been a convincing argument. Does your car-insurance company try to screw you the same way? Mine certainly never has.
I've never been in accident myself, but my sister is with the same company. She's been involved in 3 accidents - none her fault - and each time the company had a rental car for her in less than an hour, and cut her a cheque within a month. Oh, and all 3 times, she got more money from them than what she originally paid for the car! So, tell me again - how is it that insurance companies are only looking to screw her out of her premiums without ever paying anything back?
If your insurance company sucks, the solution isn't a government takeover - it's making a smart decision about where you get your insurance. That's why it's such a horrible idea to have medical insurance tied to your employer, by the way. I'm sure that if you employer had to pick and pay for your car insurance, you'd end up with a rental bicycle and a cheque for fifty bucks.
If you'd bothered to read my sig, you wouldn't have had to waste your breath on that diatribe. As a matter of fact, I live in the above mentioned Socialist Paradise of Canuckistan, not the Eeeeevil United States of Capitalist Pigdogs.
Are you really that naive to think that private business doesn't do the exact same thing all the time?
I'm sure some do. Then they get bailed out by your government, instead of failing and being replaced by corporations which don't have their heads up their asses. You let the government encourage stagnation in the private sector, and then blame the resultant inefficiency on capitalism. That's like stuffing your face full of McDonalds for every meal, and then blaming the agricultural industry for making you fat.
If you actually look at the output of U.S. healthcare, you might notice we spend the most, and don't get the best care.
The US has the best medical care in the world - it's only on average that you receive lower quality care. You want to improve things, fix your tort laws. Then eliminate medicare, and stop giving away services to the rest of the world. I guarantee the figures will look much more balanced.
This is why I find it amusing when people say that a socialized medical system is inherently more efficient than a US-style system. Sure, in the US you have insurance companies skimming off the top and money being wasted on advertising and lobbyists... but you don't have bureaucrats wasting billions in order to keep themselves and their buddies rolling in the dough, and billions more being wasted through sheer indifference. Or, at least you wouldn't in a purely capitalist system - I wouldn't be surprised if this type of thing was going on with Medicare on a regular basis.
My calculations were based on the power requirement (200MW)
Uhuh. And you're getting this power requirement from... where, exactly?
It's also a laboratory prototype, not an operational space and long duration rated reactor. There's a difference.
I see. So your complaint is that we only have a prototype reactor to power a prototype engine. Oh, darn. Well that just put the whole concept in the crapper. How shall we ever recover.
Did I miss something? Oh, wait - I didn't. TOPAZ-I has flown only twice, twenty years ago, for a bare fraction of the lifetime required to power a VASMIR craft.
And.... ?
So your complaint about the NASA reactor is that it's only a prototype. Your complaint about TOPAZ is that it's only flown twice. What will your complaint be 80 years from now? "Oh, those Warp Engines have only been tested on 2 flights to Alha Centauri!".
I see your problem - you're a natural pessimist. It's not that you have a complaint about this technology so much as that you like having things to complain about. That's fine - sometimes people like you can be a useful tool for putting a stop on unrealistic goals. But you sure are annoying.
A 10 tonne reactor won't put out the power required to propel a vehicle heavy enough that it's weight is negligible at reasonable accelerations any more than a lawnmower engine will do so for an SUV.
You're forgetting that chemical propulsion uses so much more fuel that your weight for any long-distance trip will actually end up being lower, even with the addition of a 10 tonne reactor. Quickly checking wikipedia I see that, for a LEO-to-LLO OTV flight, the fuel saving would about 52 metric tonnes. You could pack in 2 reactors and still have an advantage, even accounting for greater weight on deceleration. But let's forget about that and address your analogy:
A lawnmower engine could push your SUV at phenomenal speeds, if you took away friction and air resistance and gave it a long enough run time. If we use rockets for propulsion on a Mars trip, we fire a burst at the beginning, then coast for months, then fire a burst at the end. If we use VASIMR, we can accelerate for half the trip, and decelerate for the other half. Your acceleration is lower, but your total trip time still ends up being far shorter.
Lastly, unless you're a NASA engineer, or unless you can provide some figures which clearly show that this is an unworkable concept, I'm going to have to go with Ad Astra's assessments on this over yours.
For those that do live in the US there is no expectation of privacy in regards to your rubbish.
I'm pretty sure that's universal. It's not that his country protects his "rubbish" so much as that he has really silly expectations based on a lack of familiarity with laws.
I went and got that book because I knew I agreed with her, and I heard it was very well written, and I was STILL bored to tears. Keep in mind that I'm an adult who typically goes through a book every week or two. Those kids won't make it past the first chapter.
The real problem with Atlas Shrugged is that it's a 300 page novel which was drawn out into a 900 page paperweight. At a third of the actual size, it would have made for excellent reading.
You and I may have strong feelings about politics, but high school students will be indifferent and oblivious.
I read Starship Troopers when I was in grade 10, and I sure as hell wasn't indifferent and oblivious. Initially, I was disgusted with the idea of voting requiring government service. It didn't seem fair in the least. By the end, though, I'd pretty much pulled a 180 (or at least a 150). It was an eye opener - a way of thinking which I'd never considered before. The idea of responsibility or civic duty may not have been clear to me immediately, but that book planted the seeds which slowly germinated over the next few years. It lead, in part, to my decision to join the military.
No thank you, there's little enough time to get through all the things I want to learn, investigate and use without wasting two years learning ( through routine degradation ) how to effectively kill other human beings without questioning the reason and/or be the instrument of a system I can see the need for but don't always agree with the letter of.
That's cool. Instead, you can spend 2 years learning to effectively protect your life and the lives of those around you, through direct force, organization, medical assistance, and sound decision making.
In practice this is likely to continue a jock culture for another two years of what's already a painful experience for the generally more sensitive/intelligent members of a society, and training 1.5 million young adults to kill effectively almost guarantees the shit will hit the fan regularly.
I've trained dozens of sensitive/intelligent members of society during my stint as a military instructor, all of whom joined voluntarily. They didn't seem to see it as an extension of "jock culture" - instead they found acceptance, encouragement, and a courage and self-confidence which they didn't think they possessed. I should know, I started off the same. Being sensitive and intelligent didn't prevent me from becoming the stereotypical "Drill Sargent" - it just meant I knew how to play the game better. It's not your sensitivity which has made you so opposed to joining - it's your ignorance.
Your army is big enough to fight the entire world already.
This sentence is clearly the crescendo of your diatribe; the clear, unambiguous proclamation of your ignorance on all things military. Ironically enough, you've managed to make a good argument for universal service, while attempting to argue against it.
They were producing RTG's in that weight/power range - not reactors AFAIK.
You're right - I went and re-checked the numbers, and it's actually 260 kilos, which is just a weeee bit more:)
(200Mw/55kw)*260lb=4.5 tons. Not negligible by any stretch.
True, but you're off by three orders of magnitude on the the thrust figure. The article says 200kW, not 200mW. That would put the weight at 945 pounds. Of course, since I made a mistake on the unit of measure, it would actually be 945 kilos. Also, in the interest of fairness, I'll admit I made another mistake - 55kW was the rated thermal output of the reactors I was looking at, but their electric output would be far lower.
On the other hand, there's the SAFE-400. Looks like NASA actually still produces some great feats of engineering - this reactor puts out 100kWe and weighs in at a mere 1,200 kilograms. Two of them would obviously be about 2.4 tonnes. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to scale up, either, which would further reduce the weight.
As for that kind of weight not being negligible... I don't see it as an issue. If you're talking about unmanned probes, then yeah, it's a lot. In that case you're better off using RTG's and ion engines. But if you want manned flight, the weight of the reactors will make up a fraction of the weight of your spacecraft. You'll want multiple engines with larger reactors, and your acceleration would suck, but even at 10 tonnes the weight would be negligible compared to the weight of your vehicle and supplies.
I didn't say it was insurmountable - I said it was unsolved. Actually it's worse than unsolved - there isn't anyone actually working on solving the issues.
NASA is. The Russians are - their TOPAZ reactors were/are pretty damn good. It's a safe bet that China is probably working on it, too, and I wouldn't be surprised if India had a small program. I'd really love to see private industry involved in this, but even without them there are plenty of usable models on already, and more research being conducted into improving the designs. Give it some time.
I was referring to the moderne looking one with the air suspension.
Yeah, I figured. It was supposed to be a joke. Unfortunately, 12 dumb-asses and a couple guys with mod points have no sense of humour. I especially love the fact that almost all 12 of them wrote the same damn response. I guess it's too much effort to scroll down a bit and see if anyone else has responded.
When asked about the 2CVs performance and acceleration, many owners said it went "from 0-60 in one day". Others jokingly said they "had to make an appointment to merge onto an interstate highway system".
Slashdot Mirror
What's wrong with that? When I get in my car, I expect to have a handbrake which I can use in case my normal brakes fail. Only an idiot would design a car which required a complete brake system check before every use.
Machines SHOULD be designed in a way that makes it damn near impossible for the user to screw up. They should also be designed so that critical safety systems are redundant and fail-safe. Look at any large aircraft on the market - they have 2-3 different systems controlling fuel flow, multiple electrical generators on 4-6 separate buses, multiple hydrolic pumps and backup actuators ... any system that can endanger the aircraft is backed up by AT LEAST one other system, and often by 2 or 3. Meanwhile the cockpit controls are kept as simple as possible, and often include nice colorful lines and diagrams to help the monkey in the seat figure out which button to push. That's the way all systems which have the potential to harm people should be designed - so that even someone with minimal training operating a 50 year old machine can use it, and have a greater than 50% chance of not killing himself or others.
Screw that. For the price of a girlfriend, I could get a new game every week! Clearly gaming is the better deal.
Wrong on both points. CGA was only 4 colors
Built around the Motorola MC6845 display controller, the CGA card featured several graphics and text modes. The highest resolution of any mode was 640×200, and the highest color depth supported was 4-bit (16 colors).
and the PC speaker just went "beep".
A PC speaker generates waveforms using the Programmable Interval Timer.[citation needed] The PC speaker was often used in very innovative ways to create the impression of polyphonic music or sound effects within computer games of its era, such as the LucasArts series of adventure games from the mid-1990s, using swift arpeggios.[citation needed] Several programs, including MP (Module Player, 1989), ScreamTracker, Fast Tracker, Impulse Tracker, and even device drivers for Linux[3] and Microsoft Windows, could play pulse-code modulation (PCM) sound through the PC speaker using special techniques explained later in this article. Several games such as Space Hulk and Pinball Fantasies were noted for their elaborate sound effects; Space Hulk in particular even had full speech.
I'm guessing that the people who modded you "informative" were probably born in the 90's.
Even more when you buy Kindle books you get two discounts: first, the books are usually cheaper (not by much) and second, you don't pay shipping charges.
"Not by much" is exactly right, and as far as shipping charges, I've never paid Amazon to ship me anything. They offer free shipping on larger orders, so I'll wait until I have a few books I'm interested in and order them all at once.
I think that if you buy about 20-30 books it's like you get the device for free.
Huh? You think you're going to get a $10 discount per book? Not bloody likely! Maybe if you bought 200 books, the kindle would end up being free ... but by then it will probably have broken, and you'll be paying out the ass to have it shipped back to them and repaired/replaced.
E-readers need to have colour displays, and they need to be a lot more robust than the devices so far offered by Amazon, which seem to be excessively fragile.
Fujitsu already has a colour e-book reader on sale in Japan. PlasticLogic says they should have one available for next spring...ish. I'm not sure about the durability, though. As for the price, they're going to start dropping over the next year or two now that so many different companies/products are getting into the market.
given the amount of research that went into chemical weapons back then, I'd have to say yes.
Talk about a non-sequitur. They were researching mustard gas, so you think they came up with a virus. I guess the fact that they were researching how to build better biplanes also means they sequenced the human genome, eh?
As I said - find a better insurance company. Mine pays out completely reasonable amounts, decreased my premiums in 2008, and raised them by 4% this year. I've never even HEARD of your "disloyalty bonus" but, if that kind of thing works where you are, you've got bigger problems than your insurance premiums; I'd be much more concerned about the constant risk of slipping in the puddles of drool left behind by all the people around you.
lol. Ok, yeah, sure, that counts. I can go and get scanned, and have the doctor tell me: "Congratulations, you have a brain tumor! Now go back to the public system and wait 3 years to have it removed!"
Don't get me wrong - the increased availability of MRI machines is always a good thing, but it's just an attempt by private businesses to capitalize on a major flaw of the public system in the one area where they can do so. I guess they finally realized that there was money to be made from all those poor bastards who kept going to the US for scans. I'd much rather see private clinics and hospitals that can provide a full range of services, but that's not possible with the current laws.
A health insurance corporation is driven to achieve the best result and largest profits for its shareholders, rather than the best health for its customers. One that can take your money in premiums for your entire lifetime and then manage to deny you coverage when it comes time to pay out has essentially won and is performing well from a capitalist perspective, but it isn't providing good healthcare.
That's never been a convincing argument. Does your car-insurance company try to screw you the same way? Mine certainly never has.
I've never been in accident myself, but my sister is with the same company. She's been involved in 3 accidents - none her fault - and each time the company had a rental car for her in less than an hour, and cut her a cheque within a month. Oh, and all 3 times, she got more money from them than what she originally paid for the car! So, tell me again - how is it that insurance companies are only looking to screw her out of her premiums without ever paying anything back?
If your insurance company sucks, the solution isn't a government takeover - it's making a smart decision about where you get your insurance. That's why it's such a horrible idea to have medical insurance tied to your employer, by the way. I'm sure that if you employer had to pick and pay for your car insurance, you'd end up with a rental bicycle and a cheque for fifty bucks.
actually there are private clinics you can go to for some things
Acupuncturists and Chiropractors don't count as "private clinics". If I wanted to see frauds and charlatans, I'd go to a carnival.
If you'd bothered to read my sig, you wouldn't have had to waste your breath on that diatribe. As a matter of fact, I live in the above mentioned Socialist Paradise of Canuckistan, not the Eeeeevil United States of Capitalist Pigdogs.
Are you really that naive to think that private business doesn't do the exact same thing all the time?
I'm sure some do. Then they get bailed out by your government, instead of failing and being replaced by corporations which don't have their heads up their asses. You let the government encourage stagnation in the private sector, and then blame the resultant inefficiency on capitalism. That's like stuffing your face full of McDonalds for every meal, and then blaming the agricultural industry for making you fat.
If you actually look at the output of U.S. healthcare, you might notice we spend the most, and don't get the best care.
The US has the best medical care in the world - it's only on average that you receive lower quality care. You want to improve things, fix your tort laws. Then eliminate medicare, and stop giving away services to the rest of the world. I guarantee the figures will look much more balanced.
And it isn't like private healthcare is not around when there is a socialized system anyway. You get a choice.
Not in Canada you don't. The only way for me to have a choice is to go to another country.
This is why I find it amusing when people say that a socialized medical system is inherently more efficient than a US-style system. Sure, in the US you have insurance companies skimming off the top and money being wasted on advertising and lobbyists ... but you don't have bureaucrats wasting billions in order to keep themselves and their buddies rolling in the dough, and billions more being wasted through sheer indifference. Or, at least you wouldn't in a purely capitalist system - I wouldn't be surprised if this type of thing was going on with Medicare on a regular basis.
Uhuh. And you're getting this power requirement from ... where, exactly?
It's also a laboratory prototype, not an operational space and long duration rated reactor. There's a difference.
I see. So your complaint is that we only have a prototype reactor to power a prototype engine. Oh, darn. Well that just put the whole concept in the crapper. How shall we ever recover.
Did I miss something? Oh, wait - I didn't. TOPAZ-I has flown only twice, twenty years ago, for a bare fraction of the lifetime required to power a VASMIR craft.
And .... ?
So your complaint about the NASA reactor is that it's only a prototype. Your complaint about TOPAZ is that it's only flown twice. What will your complaint be 80 years from now? "Oh, those Warp Engines have only been tested on 2 flights to Alha Centauri!".
I see your problem - you're a natural pessimist. It's not that you have a complaint about this technology so much as that you like having things to complain about. That's fine - sometimes people like you can be a useful tool for putting a stop on unrealistic goals. But you sure are annoying.
A 10 tonne reactor won't put out the power required to propel a vehicle heavy enough that it's weight is negligible at reasonable accelerations any more than a lawnmower engine will do so for an SUV.
You're forgetting that chemical propulsion uses so much more fuel that your weight for any long-distance trip will actually end up being lower, even with the addition of a 10 tonne reactor. Quickly checking wikipedia I see that, for a LEO-to-LLO OTV flight, the fuel saving would about 52 metric tonnes. You could pack in 2 reactors and still have an advantage, even accounting for greater weight on deceleration. But let's forget about that and address your analogy:
A lawnmower engine could push your SUV at phenomenal speeds, if you took away friction and air resistance and gave it a long enough run time. If we use rockets for propulsion on a Mars trip, we fire a burst at the beginning, then coast for months, then fire a burst at the end. If we use VASIMR, we can accelerate for half the trip, and decelerate for the other half. Your acceleration is lower, but your total trip time still ends up being far shorter.
Lastly, unless you're a NASA engineer, or unless you can provide some figures which clearly show that this is an unworkable concept, I'm going to have to go with Ad Astra's assessments on this over yours.
Why in the world would I call the cops on someone who's taking things that I don't want??
For those that do live in the US there is no expectation of privacy in regards to your rubbish.
I'm pretty sure that's universal. It's not that his country protects his "rubbish" so much as that he has really silly expectations based on a lack of familiarity with laws.
Ayn Rand's Atlas Shrugged
I went and got that book because I knew I agreed with her, and I heard it was very well written, and I was STILL bored to tears. Keep in mind that I'm an adult who typically goes through a book every week or two. Those kids won't make it past the first chapter.
The real problem with Atlas Shrugged is that it's a 300 page novel which was drawn out into a 900 page paperweight. At a third of the actual size, it would have made for excellent reading.
You and I may have strong feelings about politics, but high school students will be indifferent and oblivious.
I read Starship Troopers when I was in grade 10, and I sure as hell wasn't indifferent and oblivious. Initially, I was disgusted with the idea of voting requiring government service. It didn't seem fair in the least. By the end, though, I'd pretty much pulled a 180 (or at least a 150). It was an eye opener - a way of thinking which I'd never considered before. The idea of responsibility or civic duty may not have been clear to me immediately, but that book planted the seeds which slowly germinated over the next few years. It lead, in part, to my decision to join the military.
Sorry, my government is supposed to work for ME, not the other way around.
The military doesn't work for the government - it works for the citizens.
Have you ever been in the military?
I don't know about him, but I sure have.
You want to JAIL people who have committed no crimes!
Have you been to jail?
No thank you, there's little enough time to get through all the things I want to learn, investigate and use without wasting two years learning ( through routine degradation ) how to effectively kill other human beings without questioning the reason and/or be the instrument of a system I can see the need for but don't always agree with the letter of.
That's cool. Instead, you can spend 2 years learning to effectively protect your life and the lives of those around you, through direct force, organization, medical assistance, and sound decision making.
In practice this is likely to continue a jock culture for another two years of what's already a painful experience for the generally more sensitive/intelligent members of a society, and training 1.5 million young adults to kill effectively almost guarantees the shit will hit the fan regularly.
I've trained dozens of sensitive/intelligent members of society during my stint as a military instructor, all of whom joined voluntarily. They didn't seem to see it as an extension of "jock culture" - instead they found acceptance, encouragement, and a courage and self-confidence which they didn't think they possessed. I should know, I started off the same. Being sensitive and intelligent didn't prevent me from becoming the stereotypical "Drill Sargent" - it just meant I knew how to play the game better. It's not your sensitivity which has made you so opposed to joining - it's your ignorance.
Your army is big enough to fight the entire world already.
This sentence is clearly the crescendo of your diatribe; the clear, unambiguous proclamation of your ignorance on all things military. Ironically enough, you've managed to make a good argument for universal service, while attempting to argue against it.
I really can't tell whether you're an idiot who's being serious, or a fool who's being sarcastic ...
They were producing RTG's in that weight/power range - not reactors AFAIK.
You're right - I went and re-checked the numbers, and it's actually 260 kilos, which is just a weeee bit more :)
(200Mw/55kw)*260lb=4.5 tons. Not negligible by any stretch.
True, but you're off by three orders of magnitude on the the thrust figure. The article says 200kW, not 200mW. That would put the weight at 945 pounds. Of course, since I made a mistake on the unit of measure, it would actually be 945 kilos. Also, in the interest of fairness, I'll admit I made another mistake - 55kW was the rated thermal output of the reactors I was looking at, but their electric output would be far lower.
On the other hand, there's the SAFE-400. Looks like NASA actually still produces some great feats of engineering - this reactor puts out 100kWe and weighs in at a mere 1,200 kilograms. Two of them would obviously be about 2.4 tonnes. There's no reason why they shouldn't be able to scale up, either, which would further reduce the weight.
As for that kind of weight not being negligible ... I don't see it as an issue. If you're talking about unmanned probes, then yeah, it's a lot. In that case you're better off using RTG's and ion engines. But if you want manned flight, the weight of the reactors will make up a fraction of the weight of your spacecraft. You'll want multiple engines with larger reactors, and your acceleration would suck, but even at 10 tonnes the weight would be negligible compared to the weight of your vehicle and supplies.
I didn't say it was insurmountable - I said it was unsolved. Actually it's worse than unsolved - there isn't anyone actually working on solving the issues.
NASA is. The Russians are - their TOPAZ reactors were/are pretty damn good. It's a safe bet that China is probably working on it, too, and I wouldn't be surprised if India had a small program. I'd really love to see private industry involved in this, but even without them there are plenty of usable models on already, and more research being conducted into improving the designs. Give it some time.
I was referring to the moderne looking one with the air suspension.
Yeah, I figured. It was supposed to be a joke. Unfortunately, 12 dumb-asses and a couple guys with mod points have no sense of humour. I especially love the fact that almost all 12 of them wrote the same damn response. I guess it's too much effort to scroll down a bit and see if anyone else has responded.
Way ahead of it's time, as well. What a ride!
When asked about the 2CVs performance and acceleration, many owners said it went "from 0-60 in one day". Others jokingly said they "had to make an appointment to merge onto an interstate highway system".
Yep, a heck of a ride ...