The reason nuclear needs loans guarantees is not because the technology might not work out. It is because at any point during the construction some environuts can sue and shut down construction or operation due to stupid laws. It is the laws and regulations that are the problem. If they could be guaranteed that except for actual technical construction reasons they could not be shut down you wouldn't need the laws.
But it this way. Imagine you bought a piece of property to build a house but your neighbors had the right to shut down your construction with only a lawsuit and not a ruling. Would you try to build there?
As someone who routinely rides out storms in Florida the reason isn't the forecasters. The problem is the local governments that refuse to let you back to your house because there is no power or water. They like to blockage places playing safety guard instead of just checking to see if you actually live there and let you back. This may work for one storm but after having lots of damage that could of been prevented if you were allowed home you get pissed. And don't say insurance will handle it because the hurricane deduction is 2% of the covered value of the house so can run several thousand dollars.
The problem with macroeconomics is that it takes everything that is well established in micro and messes it up instead of just expanding it. I think Austrian Economics does the best job at expanding it to explain macroscopic effects.
When you get things like paradox of thirft or liquidity trap it becomes voodoo.
I worked on Ares I and I agree with the cancelation. The only thing I said was that with our investment to date on ISS we should have maintained shuttle flying one or two missions a year until we had one of the commercial guys ready.
I was also against constellation from the beginning because the tax Laura already bought two rockets with the Atlas and Delta. For crew transport I would have picked the Atlad V 401 and figured out the biggest crew capsule you could fit on it. Also there were some ideas for using fuel depots that sounded excellent. It would allow companies to get paid for delivering fuel to orbit. What is great about that is usually you need an expensive rocket because you are carrying an expensive payload. Well fuel is cheap. You could have made money with a cheap rocket that only worked half the time. And if you launch enough you get better by practice. With the fuel already in space you only need to launch you spacecraft with enough fuel to get to orbit and dock. Oh well. Another congress and another president.
I may be wrong but I think he was talking about could we keep the shuttle program going as is. I intended to say we could have maintained tha capability by flying two missions a year and if we had to use parts off of other orbiters to keep one or two flying we could. The SRBs were going to keep flying anyway and the ET line was being mothballed becausemthere was still speculation some of the equipment could be used on the next shuttle derived vehicle. I would have liked to keep the capability until we had the commercial guys flying.
Since I have been working at KSC during this whole mess I'll give my perspectIve. Bush did set the end date for the last shuttle launch. He then outlined the VSE and Griffen came up with the Constellation program. The problem is Bush's lack of leadership in getting the funding to get it done. It would have taken maybe 5 billion more a year which we would rather spend in Mideast wars.
When Obama came in he had a choice. Get more funding to get constellation going, restart the shuttle components production to eliminate a gap, or trash everything and wait for commercial space to come up to speed. He chose the third option.
So while Bush started the cancellation of the shuttle program Obama could have easily reversed it.
You should check out Universal Geometry and Rational Trigonometry. By redefining length and angle you can greatly simplify geometry where all problems are solvable by algebra without trig functions. Very cool.
No kidding. I work in the D part of R&D. It is very interesting but most of the time you don't know exactly what you are doing. You have set backs and great leaps forward. The budget and scheduling meetings are always funny. It's like "so when do you expect your breakthrough?". Are you serious? Then the facilities group gets kudos because they came in only slightly over budget and schedule doing the office renovations which we could have easily done on budget by getting a fixed price bid.
Honestly that $1M will do more good being put to work building electric cars or cheap access to space. There will always be poor sick people. If a large portion of funds were given to the poor and needy we wouldn't have money to grow technology and as a country we would be bankrupt. Oh wait... Crap.
All of the raw data and analysis needs to be released. This can easily be an open source project. I started trying to track down the data and it was a bit difficult. Apparently in the old days the temperature was just recorded by hand at weather stations around the country. The thermometers had to be located away from structures to reduce heat island effect. There were quite a few data points missing in bad (ie cold) weather when the people operating the stations were too lazy to get the data. So data from near by stations was used to fill in that missing data. That is a big no no. You can try to interpolate data but you don't do it and include your interpolation as raw data.
Also the different data sets, tree rings, surface stations, and satellite data didn't agree well so they were massaged together. That is where I get really worried.
Basing your temperature data on temperature stations that have had AC condensers installed near by or put in the middle of waste water treatment areas isn't going to give you good data. The number of stations that are not in compliance is amazing.
US kids get dumber the more years they spend at school. We are pretty competitive in the world when it comes to elementary school children. Basically before puberty hits and our anti-intellectual culture takes over. Maybe less hours in school will make the kids smarter.
One thing to remember is the farther things are away from us the older they are and the more red shifted they are. So in order to see farther you have to be able to see fainter , longer wavelengths.
It will like trying to suck a whale through a straw. There just won't be enough capacity to make a dent in shipping. Now if it was instead used as a literal pipeline it may be useful.
What I was suggesting is maybe the yeast is from Germany and the Nazis that left brought their yeasts for beer making to Argentina and they got released into the wild.
Check ASCE 7. When you design a structure you check many load cases. On the east coast the winds in the south and snow loads in the north have a larger effect than seismic loads. In the few areas on the east coast that have significant earthquakes include those load cases in the building code.
This is pretty common in jock worshipping schools in the US. The athletes will steal the exam out of the pile, look over the shoulder, or do other similar things to get the right answer. The teacher just grades the exam as is.
But what if it's the other children imposing the reign of terror? Do you sacrifice 30 kids education for the off chance you may reach one kid and instead of having a career as a fry chef he can work the grill. No thanks. Let the kid go to work. And just so you know kids of any age are allowed to work in this country in 3 very important industries.
You cannot teach someone when they are not willing to learn. If a child doesn't want to learn they should be expelled from school and given working papers. Why punish those that are there to learn with disruptive people?
You have to separate the government from the people. Do you think the US keeps our currency stable? The Fed has been printing trillions to give to their friends in high places. The Chinese communist government does the same thing but at an even greater rate. This causes terrible inflation in China which keeps it people poor for the benefit of their dear leaders. And you want our government to do the same?
In the last 20 years there has been a shift in structural engineering from Allowable Strength Design to Load and Resistance Factor Design. The goal is to make cheaper and lighter structures by taking advantage of better known dead loads. Also new AISC and ASCE codes come out pretty regularly and you need to stay on top of things. Most Civil Engineers have to maintain a Professional Engineer licence which requires continuing education.
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The reason nuclear needs loans guarantees is not because the technology might not work out. It is because at any point during the construction some environuts can sue and shut down construction or operation due to stupid laws. It is the laws and regulations that are the problem. If they could be guaranteed that except for actual technical construction reasons they could not be shut down you wouldn't need the laws.
But it this way. Imagine you bought a piece of property to build a house but your neighbors had the right to shut down your construction with only a lawsuit and not a ruling. Would you try to build there?
As someone who routinely rides out storms in Florida the reason isn't the forecasters. The problem is the local governments that refuse to let you back to your house because there is no power or water. They like to blockage places playing safety guard instead of just checking to see if you actually live there and let you back. This may work for one storm but after having lots of damage that could of been prevented if you were allowed home you get pissed. And don't say insurance will handle it because the hurricane deduction is 2% of the covered value of the house so can run several thousand dollars.
Are you serious? Communist countries are PURE regulation. That is the point. The government controls everything.
The problem with macroeconomics is that it takes everything that is well established in micro and messes it up instead of just expanding it. I think Austrian Economics does the best job at expanding it to explain macroscopic effects.
When you get things like paradox of thirft or liquidity trap it becomes voodoo.
I worked on Ares I and I agree with the cancelation. The only thing I said was that with our investment to date on ISS we should have maintained shuttle flying one or two missions a year until we had one of the commercial guys ready.
I was also against constellation from the beginning because the tax Laura already bought two rockets with the Atlas and Delta. For crew transport I would have picked the Atlad V 401 and figured out the biggest crew capsule you could fit on it. Also there were some ideas for using fuel depots that sounded excellent. It would allow companies to get paid for delivering fuel to orbit. What is great about that is usually you need an expensive rocket because you are carrying an expensive payload. Well fuel is cheap. You could have made money with a cheap rocket that only worked half the time. And if you launch enough you get better by practice. With the fuel already in space you only need to launch you spacecraft with enough fuel to get to orbit and dock. Oh well. Another congress and another president.
I may be wrong but I think he was talking about could we keep the shuttle program going as is. I intended to say we could have maintained tha capability by flying two missions a year and if we had to use parts off of other orbiters to keep one or two flying we could. The SRBs were going to keep flying anyway and the ET line was being mothballed becausemthere was still speculation some of the equipment could be used on the next shuttle derived vehicle. I would have liked to keep the capability until we had the commercial guys flying.
Since I have been working at KSC during this whole mess I'll give my perspectIve. Bush did set the end date for the last shuttle launch. He then outlined the VSE and Griffen came up with the Constellation program. The problem is Bush's lack of leadership in getting the funding to get it done. It would have taken maybe 5 billion more a year which we would rather spend in Mideast wars.
When Obama came in he had a choice. Get more funding to get constellation going, restart the shuttle components production to eliminate a gap, or trash everything and wait for commercial space to come up to speed. He chose the third option.
So while Bush started the cancellation of the shuttle program Obama could have easily reversed it.
You should check out Universal Geometry and Rational Trigonometry. By redefining length and angle you can greatly simplify geometry where all problems are solvable by algebra without trig functions. Very cool.
http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~norman/YouTube.htm#WildTrig
Funny. I feel like that when trying to teach economics on /.
No kidding. I work in the D part of R&D. It is very interesting but most of the time you don't know exactly what you are doing. You have set backs and great leaps forward. The budget and scheduling meetings are always funny. It's like "so when do you expect your breakthrough?". Are you serious? Then the facilities group gets kudos because they came in only slightly over budget and schedule doing the office renovations which we could have easily done on budget by getting a fixed price bid.
Honestly that $1M will do more good being put to work building electric cars or cheap access to space. There will always be poor sick people. If a large portion of funds were given to the poor and needy we wouldn't have money to grow technology and as a country we would be bankrupt. Oh wait... Crap.
All of the raw data and analysis needs to be released. This can easily be an open source project. I started trying to track down the data and it was a bit difficult. Apparently in the old days the temperature was just recorded by hand at weather stations around the country. The thermometers had to be located away from structures to reduce heat island effect. There were quite a few data points missing in bad (ie cold) weather when the people operating the stations were too lazy to get the data. So data from near by stations was used to fill in that missing data. That is a big no no. You can try to interpolate data but you don't do it and include your interpolation as raw data.
Also the different data sets, tree rings, surface stations, and satellite data didn't agree well so they were massaged together. That is where I get really worried.
Some good information here.
http://www.surfacestations.org/
See http://www.surfacestations.org/
Basing your temperature data on temperature stations that have had AC condensers installed near by or put in the middle of waste water treatment areas isn't going to give you good data. The number of stations that are not in compliance is amazing.
US kids get dumber the more years they spend at school. We are pretty competitive in the world when it comes to elementary school children. Basically before puberty hits and our anti-intellectual culture takes over. Maybe less hours in school will make the kids smarter.
One thing to remember is the farther things are away from us the older they are and the more red shifted they are. So in order to see farther you have to be able to see fainter , longer wavelengths.
It will like trying to suck a whale through a straw. There just won't be enough capacity to make a dent in shipping. Now if it was instead used as a literal pipeline it may be useful.
What I was suggesting is maybe the yeast is from Germany and the Nazis that left brought their yeasts for beer making to Argentina and they got released into the wild.
Check ASCE 7. When you design a structure you check many load cases. On the east coast the winds in the south and snow loads in the north have a larger effect than seismic loads. In the few areas on the east coast that have significant earthquakes include those load cases in the building code.
Lots of Nazi's left Germany for Argentina after WWII.
This is pretty common in jock worshipping schools in the US. The athletes will steal the exam out of the pile, look over the shoulder, or do other similar things to get the right answer. The teacher just grades the exam as is.
Or better yet let them work at Walmart for the rest of the school year and see if they want to behave.
But what if it's the other children imposing the reign of terror? Do you sacrifice 30 kids education for the off chance you may reach one kid and instead of having a career as a fry chef he can work the grill. No thanks. Let the kid go to work. And just so you know kids of any age are allowed to work in this country in 3 very important industries.
1. Farming
2. Acting
3. Seasonal Wreath making.
You cannot teach someone when they are not willing to learn. If a child doesn't want to learn they should be expelled from school and given working papers. Why punish those that are there to learn with disruptive people?
You have to separate the government from the people. Do you think the US keeps our currency stable? The Fed has been printing trillions to give to their friends in high places. The Chinese communist government does the same thing but at an even greater rate. This causes terrible inflation in China which keeps it people poor for the benefit of their dear leaders. And you want our government to do the same?
In the last 20 years there has been a shift in structural engineering from Allowable Strength Design to Load and Resistance Factor Design. The goal is to make cheaper and lighter structures by taking advantage of better known dead loads. Also new AISC and ASCE codes come out pretty regularly and you need to stay on top of things. Most Civil Engineers have to maintain a Professional Engineer licence which requires continuing education.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_design#ASD_versus_LRFD