Maybe this needs clarification - the probe was not "deorbited" i.e. deliberately smashed into Mercury in a controlled manner. They did all they could to keep it up in orbit as long as possible, but the fuel finally ran out and its orbit inevitably decayed and it finally impacted today.
Now fully out of fuel, the spacecraft smashed into a region near Mercury's north pole, out of sight from Earth, at about 20:00 GMT on Thursday.
That, to me, is the really sad part. They should have reserved enough fuel to deliberately crash it so that the impact could be seen and analyzed.
Blast it away from Mercury for what purpose? What else are you going to study out there? Mercury doesn't have any moons. There's nothing Sunward, and not enough thrust do climb away from the Sun to anywhere else - even if you could break out of Mercury's gravitational pull. The instruments were purpose built to study the surface of Mercury, so they're not going to register anything meaningful if you do break out of orbit.
So I ask you, why blast away from Mercury? What are you going to accomplish?
"Honey, should we have another kid?"
"No."
"But..."
"No! No! No"
[dejected] "Alright".
"Oh! Come on Ref! That was blatant interference. How could you not call that?... Um... Did you say something Sweetie?"
No. Having families is what happens when there's nothing better to do. That's why the population booms whenever there is a power outage. You want to reduce the population growth? Give everyone a TV, and internet access.
HOV lanes exist to encourage ride sharing and to reduce the traffic load during rush hour.
Yeah, that's what it says on the tin. In reality they just eat up a lane of traffic that could otherwise be used to alleviate rush hour congestion. It might be different if they actually ADDED HOV lanes instead of taking one of the normal lanes and rebranding it. After all, who's going to get into a car with a bunch of strangers, and not have a vehicle when they reach their destination?
Yes, it is what you said. I apologize. I saw your "Yes it does" in response to the statement that this tech "doesn't exactly solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions" and went from there. I didn't read your post thoroughly enough.
We don't know if holding at the current CO2 levels solves the problem, or not. We may plug all the holes in the boat and still be too heavy to float. Besides, diesel is only one slice of the fossil fuel pie. Can this blue crude form gasoline? And what about replacing coal? We have a long way to go before we can consider the the holes in the boat plugged.
No CO2 is being sequestered anywhere with this process. It may stop the greenhouse gas production, but it does nothing to reduce what's already there. It's like plugging the hole in the boat. Sure, the water isn't coming in anymore, but you still have a hull full of water with nobody bailing.
It doesn't matter what temperature you run your reactor at. They're not putting the water and CO2 into the nuclear core. They're just using the electrical power generated by the reactor.
By posting "I'm fine", they clearly were not "people in a disaster". However, they could have been a block or two away from the disaster and thought it important to let people know their status.
I do miss the "swim across the Atlantic" bit they used to have.
But I miss far more, the old Google Calculator. You used to be able to stuff like "circumference of earth in football fields", but now-a-days it's not much better than a four function calculator.
Your perspective is warped. If characters performing behaviour that would get you thrown in jail were the criterion for making a movie bad, then we can toss Pulp Fiction; Kill Bill; Ocean's Eleven; Batman; The Usual Suspects; The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly; practically every western, actually; every crime movie; every vigilante movie; every horror movie; and a whole slew of others right on the trash heap.
For the love of sanity why? The moon is 770 times as far away, which means you'd need a laser almost 600,000 times more powerful than one in Low Earth Orbit to deliver the same "punch". (Lasers spread out like any other beam of light, so inverse square law applies). Your aiming mechanism also needs to be magnitudes more accurate. If you're running this off solar power, then the moon based laser is going to be out of commission half the time, and is not going to be at peak energy most of the time. Furthermore, the launch costs are going to be astronomical.
A satellite based system can be in perpetual sunlight, with the solar panels constantly at the optimum angle for energy collection. You're right on top of the target, so aiming is easier and power delivered on target is greater.
Slashdot Mirror
They're not trying to be 1960s NASA. They're trying to be 2015's Star Trek.
The same thing they do with other impactors - a flash of light. Then they can do a spectral analysis from which they derive the chemical composition.
I'd rather have a radar tracking system tell me where the other planes are than to rely on a fragile human pilot looking out the window.
Maybe this needs clarification - the probe was not "deorbited" i.e. deliberately smashed into Mercury in a controlled manner. They did all they could to keep it up in orbit as long as possible, but the fuel finally ran out and its orbit inevitably decayed and it finally impacted today.
That, to me, is the really sad part. They should have reserved enough fuel to deliberately crash it so that the impact could be seen and analyzed.
Save it for what? So it could spend three or four years STUDYING NOTHING before running out of fuel?
Blast it away from Mercury for what purpose? What else are you going to study out there? Mercury doesn't have any moons. There's nothing Sunward, and not enough thrust do climb away from the Sun to anywhere else - even if you could break out of Mercury's gravitational pull. The instruments were purpose built to study the surface of Mercury, so they're not going to register anything meaningful if you do break out of orbit.
So I ask you, why blast away from Mercury? What are you going to accomplish?
I believe the conversation goes more like:
"Honey, should we have another kid?"
"No."
"But..."
"No! No! No"
[dejected] "Alright".
"Oh! Come on Ref! That was blatant interference. How could you not call that?... Um... Did you say something Sweetie?"
No. Having families is what happens when there's nothing better to do. That's why the population booms whenever there is a power outage. You want to reduce the population growth? Give everyone a TV, and internet access.
HOV lanes exist to encourage ride sharing and to reduce the traffic load during rush hour.
Yeah, that's what it says on the tin. In reality they just eat up a lane of traffic that could otherwise be used to alleviate rush hour congestion. It might be different if they actually ADDED HOV lanes instead of taking one of the normal lanes and rebranding it. After all, who's going to get into a car with a bunch of strangers, and not have a vehicle when they reach their destination?
Yes, it is what you said. I apologize. I saw your "Yes it does" in response to the statement that this tech "doesn't exactly solve the problem of greenhouse gas emissions" and went from there. I didn't read your post thoroughly enough.
We don't know if holding at the current CO2 levels solves the problem, or not. We may plug all the holes in the boat and still be too heavy to float. Besides, diesel is only one slice of the fossil fuel pie. Can this blue crude form gasoline? And what about replacing coal? We have a long way to go before we can consider the the holes in the boat plugged.
No CO2 is being sequestered anywhere with this process. It may stop the greenhouse gas production, but it does nothing to reduce what's already there. It's like plugging the hole in the boat. Sure, the water isn't coming in anymore, but you still have a hull full of water with nobody bailing.
So THAT's what they're fracking with!
It's a small scale test plant, not a full, industrial scale production plant.
It doesn't matter what temperature you run your reactor at. They're not putting the water and CO2 into the nuclear core. They're just using the electrical power generated by the reactor.
Splitting a statement between the first line and the subject is bad form.
By posting "I'm fine", they clearly were not "people in a disaster". However, they could have been a block or two away from the disaster and thought it important to let people know their status.
Who says you can't make money from things in the public domain? Where do you think symphony orchestras get their material?
Italicised colon followed by a period to make the "therefore" symbol... clever.
I do miss the "swim across the Atlantic" bit they used to have.
But I miss far more, the old Google Calculator. You used to be able to stuff like "circumference of earth in football fields", but now-a-days it's not much better than a four function calculator.
Monsanto to the rescue, I'm sure.
Your perspective is warped. If characters performing behaviour that would get you thrown in jail were the criterion for making a movie bad, then we can toss Pulp Fiction; Kill Bill; Ocean's Eleven; Batman; The Usual Suspects; The Good, The Bad, and the Ugly; practically every western, actually; every crime movie; every vigilante movie; every horror movie; and a whole slew of others right on the trash heap.
It is a good picture, but I think I like this one better. It's got kind of a Michael Whelan feel to it.
Why not just build them in an inert state to begin with; like, say, Nebraska or Wyoming?
For the love of sanity why? The moon is 770 times as far away, which means you'd need a laser almost 600,000 times more powerful than one in Low Earth Orbit to deliver the same "punch". (Lasers spread out like any other beam of light, so inverse square law applies). Your aiming mechanism also needs to be magnitudes more accurate. If you're running this off solar power, then the moon based laser is going to be out of commission half the time, and is not going to be at peak energy most of the time. Furthermore, the launch costs are going to be astronomical.
A satellite based system can be in perpetual sunlight, with the solar panels constantly at the optimum angle for energy collection. You're right on top of the target, so aiming is easier and power delivered on target is greater.
How about build a desalination plant with use of nuclear power in California?
Did you learn nothing from Fukushima? Don't build nuclear power plants in earthquake zones! Bad idea.