The big problem these days is ITAR. Almost every document we release has to go through ITAR review. If it's your job to review this here are your options. Make it sensitive and cover your butt or make it not subject to ITAR and risk your butt. Hmmm which would you do?
You have a serious misunderstand of economics. All things are only worth what people value them to be. Everyone has their own value scale in which they rank choices. Skills and effort don't have anything to do with worth. All skill and effort do is help people decide what course of action to take. I may value a trip to the moon at $10,000. But if nobody can figure out how to do it for that amount of money it won't get done. Or I may accept $1000 to dig a 4ft x 6ft x 6 ft deep hole and fill it back in. But nobody will find it valuable to pay me to do it so it won't get done. It is only when someones value to do something and someones value to pay for something meet does anything get done. If I think a hamburger is worth $2 and McDonalds is willing to sell me one at that price does anything happen.
Pocket change is only annoying if it's worthless metal. With real metal coins you could buy a weeks worth of groceries with a gold coin the size of a dime.
If we still had real metal coins this is what their value would be today.
I am lucky enough to work at KSC and I've seen the last couple dozen launches from the VAB parking lot which is 3 miles away. One thing to remember is that the Soyuz puts out about 800,000 lbf of thrust at liftoff. The Shuttle puts out close to 7 million lbf of thrust. So you need to be a bit further away. It's still so loud that you can feel loose clothing shake on your body and triggers all aftermarket alarm systems in the parking lot.
I had a Motorola cell phone in 1995 and it was about a hundred bucks and about $25 per month for maybe a few hundred minutes a month. I now had a phone faster than my PC back then. The phone was $99 and the monthly fee for my wife and myself is less than $100 including data.
Before this we had free prepaid phones which were still better than the old phones. That plan was $100 for 1000 minutes which is way cheaper than my plan 15 years ago even without counting inflation.
The benefit of a free market is that it does the best job at allocating limited resources. Right now 3G and 4G technology is expensive to implement. So it makes sense that it would be put to first use in a place where there is the fastest payback. All during the roll out of these technologies the prices become better known and cheaper. That allows the technology to spread. Think of it this way. Part of your carrier bill helps to pay for all of those towers you pass as you go about your daily life. The more people using that tower the cheaper it is to use it. Now if you live somewhere so remote that you and 5 families you know are the only ones using the tower you would either have to pay more for modern technology or wait until the tech gets cheaper. This is a perfect example of a free market working to allocate limited resources.
I was looking for questions like (What factor of safety are you using on the cables, bearing, ect) It was the "magically failed" question that blew my mind.
We can handle it safely but it comes at a cost. Here are some examples.
We need to wear these things. http://www.wolfhazmat.de/astrosuit/nasa_01.htm. Every time you run an operation where it might spill you need to clear the work area of all nonessential personnel. You need scrubbers to vent the vapors through when processing. You need detectors/absorbers on every port. You need yearly training for the whole workforce to know what to do when there is a leak (there is a VERY distinctive ammonia smell)
So the main thing isn't that it's unsafe. We know how to work with it properly. The problem is the costs involved with doing it. If an alternative can be found it would make it much safer and quicker to process rockets and spacecraft. Imagine if you had to have a 500 ft clear area around an airplane while fueling it. It would make everything about flying more expensive.
The only reason Nukes get loan guarantee is because the regulators have a history of shutting down your plant that they gave you permission to build after you sunk a couple of billion dollars into it. The guarantee is to the banks that when they loan out the money to build one in the event the project is canceled they will get reimbursed.
There are lot of local scams like this. Let a big company come in and build something large and spend lots of money on studies but when it comes time to operate it close it down. This way they get the construction jobs and taxes but don't actually have to have it operating.
Don't laugh. I was in a large design review once and I had a device that was powered by gravity (counterweights). I was asked if it could fail and I said no unless gravity failed. They then asked well what would happen if it magically failed. I said with a straight face "You would have to roll for damages"
Because that is installed capacity (GW) and not actually energy production (GWh). So since your solar only produces power 1/2 of the day and reduces power based on latitude and season your actual costs $/GWh is much higher.
You are wrong. Property rights exist because property is scarce. This means that if I take your property you cannot have it. If I could take your car but magically it would divide so we could both have one it would no longer be scarce. So you would not need property rights.
The whole point is its not property. Property is protected by the 5th Amendment.
(No person shall be) deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
This is a congressionally granted temporary monopoly. It can be taken away by just passing a law. If it was property you would have to amend the constitution to accomplish this.
"Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American PROPERTY from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs."
From the Constitution Article 1 Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
It's not theft of property. It is a violation of your Congressionally granted limited monopoly.
Here is some perspective. The question is how many of these types of warnings are issued every flight? It's very similar to when environmental groups oppose every development project. If you go out every time warning of disaster eventually a disaster happens and you are proven right. But what is the alternative? To never build? To never fly?
Anyone who has ever designed anything critical always has a feeling they may have missed something. There is a phase called analysis paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis) . It is when you never do something because you are always checking another scenario in which it may fail.
Whenever any complex system fails there will always be a record of someone warning about it because that is what engineers do. In fact it is obvious after the fact. We always think of ways something can fail. But with limited time and limited budget we can't follow all of those lines of thought to their conclusion. You have to prioritize the risks and accept them to get things done.
Although not perfect bimetalism managed to take us from subsistence living through the industrial revolution. Of course we went off of it a couple times when the politicians decided they wanted to go to war.
The whole point is that the reason the poor and middle class are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer is because the bankers get to create the money. If you were given the legal private of printing money you would be alot richer at the expense of everyone else.
" "Hard money" requires a GOVERNMENT to actually give it a value for tender, whether that government is a democratically elected one, or a corporate one."
You have that completely backwards. The ONLY way to have fiat money is to have laws that force you to use it. Otherwise free people will naturally use money that has intrinsic worth.
Slashdot Mirror
If you want to be an economic nerd you only have to read this book. It's long but a great logical explanation of economics with no BS.
mises.org/books/mespm.pdf
The big problem these days is ITAR. Almost every document we release has to go through ITAR review. If it's your job to review this here are your options. Make it sensitive and cover your butt or make it not subject to ITAR and risk your butt. Hmmm which would you do?
As a parent of 3 I would like a backseat camera with DVR. When the yelling starts I can rewind it and see who started it.
The lasers are just good for scanning what can be seen.
If you want to get inside geometry you need to use a CT scanner.
http://www.asianart.com/articles/ghysels/1.html
You have a serious misunderstand of economics. All things are only worth what people value them to be. Everyone has their own value scale in which they rank choices. Skills and effort don't have anything to do with worth. All skill and effort do is help people decide what course of action to take. I may value a trip to the moon at $10,000. But if nobody can figure out how to do it for that amount of money it won't get done. Or I may accept $1000 to dig a 4ft x 6ft x 6 ft deep hole and fill it back in. But nobody will find it valuable to pay me to do it so it won't get done. It is only when someones value to do something and someones value to pay for something meet does anything get done. If I think a hamburger is worth $2 and McDonalds is willing to sell me one at that price does anything happen.
Pocket change is only annoying if it's worthless metal. With real metal coins you could buy a weeks worth of groceries with a gold coin the size of a dime.
If we still had real metal coins this is what their value would be today.
Copper Penny 2.5 cents
Silver/Copper Nickel $1.88
Silver Dime $2.42
Silver Quarter $6.05
Silver Half Dollar $12.10
Silver Dollar $25.90
$1 Gold Coin $83.74
$2.50 Gold Coin $209
$5 Gold Coin $418
$10 Gold Coin $836
$20 Gold Coin $1675
From http://www.coinflation.com/
Some more advances and we will be at Educated Guess.
I am lucky enough to work at KSC and I've seen the last couple dozen launches from the VAB parking lot which is 3 miles away. One thing to remember is that the Soyuz puts out about 800,000 lbf of thrust at liftoff. The Shuttle puts out close to 7 million lbf of thrust. So you need to be a bit further away. It's still so loud that you can feel loose clothing shake on your body and triggers all aftermarket alarm systems in the parking lot.
I had a Motorola cell phone in 1995 and it was about a hundred bucks and about $25 per month for maybe a few hundred minutes a month. I now had a phone faster than my PC back then. The phone was $99 and the monthly fee for my wife and myself is less than $100 including data.
Before this we had free prepaid phones which were still better than the old phones. That plan was $100 for 1000 minutes which is way cheaper than my plan 15 years ago even without counting inflation.
The benefit of a free market is that it does the best job at allocating limited resources. Right now 3G and 4G technology is expensive to implement. So it makes sense that it would be put to first use in a place where there is the fastest payback. All during the roll out of these technologies the prices become better known and cheaper. That allows the technology to spread. Think of it this way. Part of your carrier bill helps to pay for all of those towers you pass as you go about your daily life. The more people using that tower the cheaper it is to use it. Now if you live somewhere so remote that you and 5 families you know are the only ones using the tower you would either have to pay more for modern technology or wait until the tech gets cheaper. This is a perfect example of a free market working to allocate limited resources.
I was looking for questions like (What factor of safety are you using on the cables, bearing, ect) It was the "magically failed" question that blew my mind.
We can handle it safely but it comes at a cost. Here are some examples.
We need to wear these things. http://www.wolfhazmat.de/astrosuit/nasa_01.htm.
Every time you run an operation where it might spill you need to clear the work area of all nonessential personnel.
You need scrubbers to vent the vapors through when processing.
You need detectors/absorbers on every port.
You need yearly training for the whole workforce to know what to do when there is a leak (there is a VERY distinctive ammonia smell)
So the main thing isn't that it's unsafe. We know how to work with it properly. The problem is the costs involved with doing it. If an alternative can be found it would make it much safer and quicker to process rockets and spacecraft. Imagine if you had to have a 500 ft clear area around an airplane while fueling it. It would make everything about flying more expensive.
The only reason Nukes get loan guarantee is because the regulators have a history of shutting down your plant that they gave you permission to build after you sunk a couple of billion dollars into it. The guarantee is to the banks that when they loan out the money to build one in the event the project is canceled they will get reimbursed.
There are lot of local scams like this. Let a big company come in and build something large and spend lots of money on studies but when it comes time to operate it close it down. This way they get the construction jobs and taxes but don't actually have to have it operating.
Don't laugh. I was in a large design review once and I had a device that was powered by gravity (counterweights). I was asked if it could fail and I said no unless gravity failed. They then asked well what would happen if it magically failed. I said with a straight face "You would have to roll for damages"
Because that is installed capacity (GW) and not actually energy production (GWh). So since your solar only produces power 1/2 of the day and reduces power based on latitude and season your actual costs $/GWh is much higher.
You are wrong. Property rights exist because property is scarce. This means that if I take your property you cannot have it. If I could take your car but magically it would divide so we could both have one it would no longer be scarce. So you would not need property rights.
The whole point is its not property. Property is protected by the 5th Amendment.
(No person shall be) deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.
This is a congressionally granted temporary monopoly. It can be taken away by just passing a law. If it was property you would have to amend the constitution to accomplish this.
"Policy makers had recognized a constitutional (and economic) imperative to protect American PROPERTY from theft, to shield consumers from counterfeit products and fraud, and to combat foreign criminals who exploit technology to steal American ingenuity and jobs."
From the Constitution Article 1 Section 8 - Powers of Congress
To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
It's not theft of property. It is a violation of your Congressionally granted limited monopoly.
Here is some perspective. The question is how many of these types of warnings are issued every flight? It's very similar to when environmental groups oppose every development project. If you go out every time warning of disaster eventually a disaster happens and you are proven right. But what is the alternative? To never build? To never fly?
Anyone who has ever designed anything critical always has a feeling they may have missed something. There is a phase called analysis paralysis (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Analysis_paralysis) . It is when you never do something because you are always checking another scenario in which it may fail.
Whenever any complex system fails there will always be a record of someone warning about it because that is what engineers do. In fact it is obvious after the fact. We always think of ways something can fail. But with limited time and limited budget we can't follow all of those lines of thought to their conclusion. You have to prioritize the risks and accept them to get things done.
Just use 5 computer and have them vote on it.
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/flyout/flyfeature_shuttlecomputers.html
Although not perfect bimetalism managed to take us from subsistence living through the industrial revolution. Of course we went off of it a couple times when the politicians decided they wanted to go to war.
The whole point is that the reason the poor and middle class are getting poorer while the rich are getting richer is because the bankers get to create the money. If you were given the legal private of printing money you would be alot richer at the expense of everyone else.
I'm stuck with Honeywell for now. Nest doesn't support two stage heat pumps with variable speed fans.
The only weakness of hard money is that it forces politicians to tax people to pay for the goodies they hand out and the wars they start.
http://www.constitutioncampaign.org/blog/?p=5706
" "Hard money" requires a GOVERNMENT to actually give it a value for tender, whether that government is a democratically elected one, or a corporate one."
You have that completely backwards. The ONLY way to have fiat money is to have laws that force you to use it. Otherwise free people will naturally use money that has intrinsic worth.
I think you confuse libertarian with anarchy.