I am a 40 year old mechanical engineer. When they stopped making 48's I went out and bought two more and left them in storage in case I ever need them. So far I haven't because my original one is still working great. The best thing about it besides RPN and solving linear equations is the ability to convert compound units. If I want to compute angular acceleration T=alpha * I. I can put I in in units that I get out of my CAD software of kg*m^2 and Torque in ft*lbf. Divide. Then put 1 1/s^2 in the stack and press convert and I get my answer. This is the main reason I keep one on my desk.
Not that this would be ecologically feasible but what if you dug a tunnel from the pacific ocean to death valley (-300 feet). Then you could get some power out of the potential water drop. Then as the water floods the valley it's so hot it would evaporate and you could keep letting the water in. The evaporated water would rain on the next mountain down wind and create arable land.
This makes some sense. An engineering program might require more investments in equipment and personnel than other departments. If people are willing to pay it where is the problem?
On the other hand if we had a free market for student loans professions that earned more would be able to get cheaper student loan rates. If you are more likely to pay back your loan your rates are cheaper. If you are not likely to pay them back then your rates are higher. This would require eliminating tax payer financed student loans.
Wow you mean a centrally planned economy isn't working? No kidding. Who would have thought. When China collapses it will be just as shocking to the talking heads as when the Soviet Union collapsed or when we do. Central Planning cannot work. It is an impossibility.
Rail in a free society will be more expensive than planes for a simple reason. Airplanes fly in the air. It doesn't cost anything to build or maintain air. You don't have to buy property rights to lay down your air tracks. But each foot of track requires 50-100 lbs of steel depending on the profile. A 10 mile track requires 2.5-5 million pounds of steel. All an airplane needs is an airport to take off from and land at.
Also look at the system like a network. If you want to build a new train station you have to buy (unless you are communist) a continuous strip of land from the nearest line to your station and design and build all of the crossings without affecting other traffic. Then you also have to make sure the line you are connecting to has the capacity to handle the traffic you are adding . An airport just requires a large enough plot of land. You are instantly connected to every other airport within range of the aircraft that your airport can service.
Hell it's worse than that. The Feds monetary expansion led to the boom of the 20's. Just like giving a teenager a credit card it's all fun until the credit runs out and there are bills to pay. The panics leading up to the creation of the Fed were caused by the big bankers in order to get a Central Bank.
Did you learn about banking in grade school? You think banks borrow from depositors and lend it out? How quaint. This is isn't 1850. Read about the Federal Reserve System and fractional banking. Money is no longer backed by anything. It is created out of nothing and then lent out to you to with interest. There is no need to figure out a deposit/loan ratio because the Federal Reserve is there to pump in as much cash as they need. Ever hear of TARP and the trillions created to prop up banks all around the world? Plus they use FDIC to make sure there are no more runs on banks. Plus they create lots of inflation so the only way to maintain your purchasing power it to "invest" it. Hmm who can I invest with.. Let's see... Oh the same people causing the inflation to begin with. And I can't just invest normally because capital gains will eat it all up. Nope I have to lock it away in a 401k which has lots of restrictions on how often you can move your money around. But the big banks don't have those restrictions so they have a nice system to force you to keep your money with them and then suck it away as your struggle to save.
Handling money isn't that great. Work for a bank where you get to create money out of thin air and lend it out with interest. That is where the real bucks are.
I work with NASA so let me explain how we do things. I'm not saying it's the best way, just our way. Of course here is a good wiki that explains the government design review process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_review_(US_Government).
The design reviews are there to... review the design. The milestones are just places to mark how far along the design is. They are there to provide a stopping point to work towards so that everyone involved can review what is being done to make sure you are on track and you are actually doing the work. It can provide an opportunity for grey beards to chime in with some things you may have forgot to check before you do a lot of detailed design. Also sometimes payments are made at those points. So 99.99% of the work is in the design leading up to those reviews and the review itself gives the contract officers a place to review the work and make changes if necessary. It also helps to make sure the project is on schedule and budget.
SpaceX is working on recovering both stages. Elon has said so many times that if they need to do it in the long run. It will be a gradual process and isn't required for mission success short term.
What is interesting is that SpaceX is a new company but their employees have loads of experience. They basically cherry picked the most talented people and lured them in by letting them build things instead of sit in meetings. Most technical people would rather work than goof off. But in the big companies there is a lot of meeting and large groups that make everything cost so much. SpaceX does away with this and just has the people they need to get the work done. Image if you could get rid of all the people at your company that really don't contribute and how much money you would save?
That is the beauty of price. It lets you know the most efficient way to do something without having to calculate how much of everything is used along the way. The only flaw like you stated is when the market is prevented from working correctly. Things like targeted taxes or tax breaks, subsidies, price control, and letting companies pollute in a way that externalizes costs (dumping waste in public water/air vs paying for proper disposal.)
Here was my experience when I was in college in 1993.
Driving from Georgia Tech to my parents house in NJ about 750 miles and took about 12.5 hours.
Or
Leaving my room walking to the MARTA station 30 minutes Taking the subway to the airport 30 minutes Checking in and waiting 2 hour Gate to Gate time about 3 hours Walk from gate to bus station 30 minutes Wait for bus 2 hours Bus travel time with transfers 2 hours Walk from station to house 30 minutes.
Total time = 11 hours
So for a few hundred dollars and a lot of trouble I got there an hour and a half earlier. Plus I didn't have my car with me so I had to borrow my parents car.
If we could just get a self driving car legalized it would be even better.
I was out in Arizona and I knew I was pretty far away from civilization because when I went to change the radio station it automatically went up the dial then back around to the same station.
I wonder if you shade enough of the desert can you cool it down to where you would change the local climate? I always wondered if you could put a big aqueduct from the Pacific to some of these dry lakes that are a few hundred feet below ground level out in the desert. Then let the water flow in and turn some turbines. It is so hot and dry in those areas the water in the lake would dry out pretty fast keeping the water coming. Then you could harvest and sell the sea salt.
Nope. If you added an #8 Chernobyl would be an 8 and Fukushima would still be a 7. This shows the problem with taking a complex situation and boiling down to a number. It's like saying all Cat 5 Hurricanes are the same. Not true because it is defined a having winds over 135 knots. There is a big difference between one that is barely a Cat 5 and one like Camile that was 165 knots.
Did anyone see the area around the power Plant? Nobody survived the tsunami there but those working at the plant which was designed to take the earthquake and tsunami did fine. If it was a coal or gas plant it wouldn't have been built as well so those workers would have been dead too.
The Shuttle Cross Feeds. The engines are on the Orbiter and the fuel is in the External Tank. It's not exactly the same because you aren't switching the engines from two different tanks which is what will have to happen on the Falcon 9 Heavy. It's the switch that may be tricky.
That is the beauty of a free country. I have lived near NYC and have been there several times. I would never want to live there. I prefer living in rural suburbs. Places with no streetlights or sidewalks. I have to use a car but instead of running out every day to pick up what I need I just make a trip once a week to get what I need. I have room to grow my own fruit and veggies. I'm not saying your choice is right or wrong. It's just your choice.
That reminds me of a comment about Kelly Johnson by his boss. He said "that damn Swede can actually see the air". That is the highest compliment I can imagine.
You are right. Having "nuclear power" as a topic shows that it isn't a serious discussion. It would be like talking about the safety of airplanes. Well you can design a safe airplane or an unsafe one. It is ALL about the design. You can have 40 year old reactors that require active shutdown and cooling and use one through fueling or you can use 3rd and 4th generation reactors that use passive cooling and passive shutdown that breed their own fuel either with thorium or uranium 238. This is how engineering works. You start with a preliminary design and test it. See what problems there are and you make the next design fix those problems. We don't fly 707's anymore.
There is an investigation so we will find out eventually what happened.
I work at KSC and I have had fall protection training. There are certain times you need to wear fall protection. It has to do when you are working near an unprotected edge. You have to wear it when you are near an unprotected edge with a drop of 6 feet. The Pad is really pretty impressive because you can access most areas or the orbiter and a few key areas of the SRB's and ET. Before launch the access arms and platforms are moved away. Most of the Pad is protected by handrails and some of them are very strong since they get hit with exhaust.
There is an interesting policy at the Pads. When there isn't a shuttle at the Pad you wear hard hats. When there is a shuttle you don't wear one because if it falls off it could damage the shuttle. Nothing should fall anyway since everything is supposed to be tethered and things like watches get a strip of tape wrapped around them to keep them from falling off.
Slashdot Mirror
I am a 40 year old mechanical engineer. When they stopped making 48's I went out and bought two more and left them in storage in case I ever need them. So far I haven't because my original one is still working great. The best thing about it besides RPN and solving linear equations is the ability to convert compound units. If I want to compute angular acceleration T=alpha * I. I can put I in in units that I get out of my CAD software of kg*m^2 and Torque in ft*lbf. Divide. Then put 1 1/s^2 in the stack and press convert and I get my answer. This is the main reason I keep one on my desk.
Not that this would be ecologically feasible but what if you dug a tunnel from the pacific ocean to death valley (-300 feet). Then you could get some power out of the potential water drop. Then as the water floods the valley it's so hot it would evaporate and you could keep letting the water in. The evaporated water would rain on the next mountain down wind and create arable land.
Transparency?
All of the problems you mentioned about air traffic control are easily solved by technology. They are just information problems.
The cost of an airport isn't that great compared with the cost of other structures that service that many people.
This makes some sense. An engineering program might require more investments in equipment and personnel than other departments. If people are willing to pay it where is the problem?
On the other hand if we had a free market for student loans professions that earned more would be able to get cheaper student loan rates. If you are more likely to pay back your loan your rates are cheaper. If you are not likely to pay them back then your rates are higher. This would require eliminating tax payer financed student loans.
Wow you mean a centrally planned economy isn't working? No kidding. Who would have thought. When China collapses it will be just as shocking to the talking heads as when the Soviet Union collapsed or when we do. Central Planning cannot work. It is an impossibility.
Rail in a free society will be more expensive than planes for a simple reason. Airplanes fly in the air. It doesn't cost anything to build or maintain air. You don't have to buy property rights to lay down your air tracks. But each foot of track requires 50-100 lbs of steel depending on the profile. A 10 mile track requires 2.5-5 million pounds of steel. All an airplane needs is an airport to take off from and land at.
Also look at the system like a network. If you want to build a new train station you have to buy (unless you are communist) a continuous strip of land from the nearest line to your station and design and build all of the crossings without affecting other traffic. Then you also have to make sure the line you are connecting to has the capacity to handle the traffic you are adding . An airport just requires a large enough plot of land. You are instantly connected to every other airport within range of the aircraft that your airport can service.
Hell it's worse than that. The Feds monetary expansion led to the boom of the 20's. Just like giving a teenager a credit card it's all fun until the credit runs out and there are bills to pay. The panics leading up to the creation of the Fed were caused by the big bankers in order to get a Central Bank.
Did you learn about banking in grade school? You think banks borrow from depositors and lend it out? How quaint. This is isn't 1850. Read about the Federal Reserve System and fractional banking. Money is no longer backed by anything. It is created out of nothing and then lent out to you to with interest. There is no need to figure out a deposit/loan ratio because the Federal Reserve is there to pump in as much cash as they need. Ever hear of TARP and the trillions created to prop up banks all around the world? Plus they use FDIC to make sure there are no more runs on banks. Plus they create lots of inflation so the only way to maintain your purchasing power it to "invest" it. Hmm who can I invest with.. Let's see... Oh the same people causing the inflation to begin with. And I can't just invest normally because capital gains will eat it all up. Nope I have to lock it away in a 401k which has lots of restrictions on how often you can move your money around. But the big banks don't have those restrictions so they have a nice system to force you to keep your money with them and then suck it away as your struggle to save.
Handling money isn't that great. Work for a bank where you get to create money out of thin air and lend it out with interest. That is where the real bucks are.
I work with NASA so let me explain how we do things. I'm not saying it's the best way, just our way. Of course here is a good wiki that explains the government design review process. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Design_review_(US_Government).
The design reviews are there to ... review the design. The milestones are just places to mark how far along the design is. They are there to provide a stopping point to work towards so that everyone involved can review what is being done to make sure you are on track and you are actually doing the work. It can provide an opportunity for grey beards to chime in with some things you may have forgot to check before you do a lot of detailed design. Also sometimes payments are made at those points. So 99.99% of the work is in the design leading up to those reviews and the review itself gives the contract officers a place to review the work and make changes if necessary. It also helps to make sure the project is on schedule and budget.
SpaceX is working on recovering both stages. Elon has said so many times that if they need to do it in the long run. It will be a gradual process and isn't required for mission success short term.
What is interesting is that SpaceX is a new company but their employees have loads of experience. They basically cherry picked the most talented people and lured them in by letting them build things instead of sit in meetings. Most technical people would rather work than goof off. But in the big companies there is a lot of meeting and large groups that make everything cost so much. SpaceX does away with this and just has the people they need to get the work done. Image if you could get rid of all the people at your company that really don't contribute and how much money you would save?
That is the beauty of price. It lets you know the most efficient way to do something without having to calculate how much of everything is used along the way. The only flaw like you stated is when the market is prevented from working correctly. Things like targeted taxes or tax breaks, subsidies, price control, and letting companies pollute in a way that externalizes costs (dumping waste in public water/air vs paying for proper disposal.)
Here was my experience when I was in college in 1993.
Driving from Georgia Tech to my parents house in NJ about 750 miles and took about 12.5 hours.
Or
Leaving my room walking to the MARTA station 30 minutes
Taking the subway to the airport 30 minutes
Checking in and waiting 2 hour
Gate to Gate time about 3 hours
Walk from gate to bus station 30 minutes
Wait for bus 2 hours
Bus travel time with transfers 2 hours
Walk from station to house 30 minutes.
Total time = 11 hours
So for a few hundred dollars and a lot of trouble I got there an hour and a half earlier. Plus I didn't have my car with me so I had to borrow my parents car.
If we could just get a self driving car legalized it would be even better.
I was out in Arizona and I knew I was pretty far away from civilization because when I went to change the radio station it automatically went up the dial then back around to the same station.
I wonder if you shade enough of the desert can you cool it down to where you would change the local climate? I always wondered if you could put a big aqueduct from the Pacific to some of these dry lakes that are a few hundred feet below ground level out in the desert. Then let the water flow in and turn some turbines. It is so hot and dry in those areas the water in the lake would dry out pretty fast keeping the water coming. Then you could harvest and sell the sea salt.
Nope. If you added an #8 Chernobyl would be an 8 and Fukushima would still be a 7.
This shows the problem with taking a complex situation and boiling down to a number. It's like saying all Cat 5 Hurricanes are the same. Not true because it is defined a having winds over 135 knots. There is a big difference between one that is barely a Cat 5 and one like Camile that was 165 knots.
Did anyone see the area around the power Plant? Nobody survived the tsunami there but those working at the plant which was designed to take the earthquake and tsunami did fine. If it was a coal or gas plant it wouldn't have been built as well so those workers would have been dead too.
The Shuttle Cross Feeds. The engines are on the Orbiter and the fuel is in the External Tank. It's not exactly the same because you aren't switching the engines from two different tanks which is what will have to happen on the Falcon 9 Heavy. It's the switch that may be tricky.
That is the beauty of a free country. I have lived near NYC and have been there several times. I would never want to live there. I prefer living in rural suburbs. Places with no streetlights or sidewalks. I have to use a car but instead of running out every day to pick up what I need I just make a trip once a week to get what I need. I have room to grow my own fruit and veggies. I'm not saying your choice is right or wrong. It's just your choice.
That reminds me of a comment about Kelly Johnson by his boss. He said "that damn Swede can actually see the air". That is the highest compliment I can imagine.
300 baud! You bourgeoisie.I had to play Hunt the Wumpus with my TRS-80 with its 110 baud phone muff modem.
We could have upgraded the TPS to metalic heat pipes. Google heat pipe leading edge
You are right. Having "nuclear power" as a topic shows that it isn't a serious discussion. It would be like talking about the safety of airplanes. Well you can design a safe airplane or an unsafe one. It is ALL about the design. You can have 40 year old reactors that require active shutdown and cooling and use one through fueling or you can use 3rd and 4th generation reactors that use passive cooling and passive shutdown that breed their own fuel either with thorium or uranium 238. This is how engineering works. You start with a preliminary design and test it. See what problems there are and you make the next design fix those problems. We don't fly 707's anymore.
There is an investigation so we will find out eventually what happened.
I work at KSC and I have had fall protection training. There are certain times you need to wear fall protection. It has to do when you are working near an unprotected edge. You have to wear it when you are near an unprotected edge with a drop of 6 feet. The Pad is really pretty impressive because you can access most areas or the orbiter and a few key areas of the SRB's and ET. Before launch the access arms and platforms are moved away. Most of the Pad is protected by handrails and some of them are very strong since they get hit with exhaust.
http://www.osha.gov/pls/oshaweb/owadisp.show_document?p_id=10757&p_table=STANDARDS
There is an interesting policy at the Pads. When there isn't a shuttle at the Pad you wear hard hats. When there is a shuttle you don't wear one because if it falls off it could damage the shuttle. Nothing should fall anyway since everything is supposed to be tethered and things like watches get a strip of tape wrapped around them to keep them from falling off.