Cuba has many problems but malnutrition doesn't seem to be one of them. According the CIAs own statistics (in their world factbook) Cubans have a similar life expectancy to Americans; this couldn't possibly be true in a nation with system-wide poor nutrition.
1. I don't drink Bacardi, not because of any Cuban politics, but because I'm not a 16-year-old chav girl in a miniskirt.
2. I know Batistas Cuba wasn't wonderful
3. No I have never been to Cuba.
I am willing to entertain the possibility that Castro might be right about the embargo making Internet access hard to come by in Cuba, and also appreciate that its easy for a regime to start assuming every anti-government blogger is on the CIA payroll when they've had so many genuine covert attacsk from the US government - that doesn't make this kind of social control right.
Who knows, maybe Raul will be able to set that right without giving away any of the gains of the revolution. I'm not holding my breath though; most likely outcome is that Cuba will just end up as the next Haiti.
Is it possible that Fidel is simply not aware of the state of the country he used to run? Is it possible this has been the case for a long time - possibly even longer than he has been publicly seen to be an invalid?
Unless you are building an orbital weapon system (or a telescope to catch transient astronomical events like GRBs) super fast attitude changes are not really needed.
IKAROS is as maneuverable as any spacecraft realistically needs to be, and I promise you that future solar sails will be build using its attitude control method will be used over the 'bendy sails' method.
Everything I have been taught about spacecraft design, by people who have all designed hardware used on orbit, says that you choose a solid state system over one with moving parts every single time. Mechanically moving the sail to alter the attitude is a complex technique that only has use for faster attitude changes, and in such applications you would use faster, more established, and simpler thrustsers or momentum wheels.
Like I said, its good for NASA to look to solar sails, but they should update their mission by looking to the solar sail that is currently flying to Venus
IKAROS is capable of adjusting its attitude whilst spinning, through the use of LCD panels on the sail which subtly alter its albedo and thus the effect of light pressure, so you are wrong on at least that note.
Of course IKAROS changes the situation. At the original launch date, the solar sail was an untried technology and thus NanoSail-D was innovative. Now the Japanese have a sail flying to Venus, a NASA solar sail mission should be updated based on what they have learned from IKAROS. Your analogy of horseless carriages in 1801 only holds water if people are still producing ones based on primitive steam engines (instead of more sophisticated ones or internal combustion engines) years later.
I fully approve of NASA launching a solar sail mission, I just think its pointless in the light of the success thus far of IKAROS to launch the same one they were planning to launch years ago.
It never makes sense to use a solar sail in LEO, because below about 800km or so altitude the drag force of the remnants of the atmosphere apply more pressure than sunlight does. Below 800km, you've not got a solar sail you've got a parachute.
Nanosail D was originally to launch on one of the ill-fated Falcon 1 test flights, at which time it would have indeed been proving the technology. But now that JAXA have not only proved the technology, but applied it to interplanetary travel, it seems a bit moot.
Absolutely. The autodidact gets to shield herself from any information threatening to her own worldview whilst giving herself the impression that she is learning a great deal. This combination of wilful ignorance and massive overconfidence often causes an individual to get a fake PhD from an unaccredited hut somewhere in the rural US and then go on national television sprouting a bunch of psuedoscientific crap, and claiming to be a world authority on poo.
Yes, von Braun *might* have been able to trump Sputnik with a Redstone - but a Redstone is a far smaller rocket, basically just a stretched V-2. Anyone arguing that Redstone is a more advanced rocket than the R-7 series is someone lacking a basic knowledge of rocket science.
Your random googling of PBS documentary is not evidence, you complete tool. The idea that this was some cunning ploy by the US to fool the Russians, and that US rocket technology was simply superior in the late 1950s, is not supported by facts.
You are proposing a completely ridiculous revisionist history, that even NASA and the US government don't hold to. Go to fucking Cape Caneveral you total retard - they will tell you the US didn't start to take the lead until Gemini.
Super sekret plan to trick the Russians? Bullshit. Show some evidence outside your redneck survivalist conspiracy websites. The R7 derivatives kicked the arse of the Redstone and Vanguard rockets - and that is a historical fact I dare you to disprove.
Yes, so its *partial* failure isn't some kind of ZOMG SKY IS FALLING NO MORE SPACEFLIGHT event. The only reason it was so with shuttle failures is because human lives were lost and thus answers were required before proceeding.
Progress, like any spacecraft, is a complex system. Things won't always go to plan - that said it has, like a lot of the old Russian hardware, a decent track record. This isn't the first time one has gone a but funky, but it is very far from the first time one has been sent up to a space station.
These things have been supplying stations in LEO since 1978, but to hear the media tell it this is a flaky, experimental piece of equipment just waiting to go wrong, and the failure of just a single docking attempt might put the whole ISS program in danger.
Anyone else reminded of that mythical, conspiracy-nut material from Russia that is supposed to be able to set off thermonuclear reactions without a fission primary? Imagine if you had a pellet of lithium deuteride, surrounded by a sphere of this stuff, then imploded with high explosives...
Of course, the actual research doesn't suggest anything nearly that exciting (and if it did, I doubt it would get published in Nature...) - its just the press release being a bit overzealous as usual.
Putting aside the issue of how you recharge it (lets assume you move to disposables) then its of little use anyway. Battery life isn't so much of an issue as power consumption, and what is limiting us in increasing the latter is not energy density it is heat. Lithium ion batteries are about as efficient as they can be, so every extra milliwatt you want to draw for your latest mobile ubertoy is going to up the amount of heat being pumped into the users pockets/testicles, regardless of how good your engineering is.
No, I honestly believe Nick Clegg or someone on his staff will read all comments and take them on board. Then *he* will get ignored by the people in power. The complete disregard for your petitions has moved up a level.
Sadly, that won't work. As soon as the wire is exposed to the field, the charge carriers in the wire move to neutralize the field inside the wire. The critical difference between a 100V potential in the atmosphere and a 100V battery is that in the battery, you not only have the potential but you also have a chemical reaction that will maintain the potential as fast as the circuit it is connected to would neutralize it. This process results in a constant flow of charge carriers i.e. a current.
That is the key difference between a wire held static in an electric field and a circuit connected to a battery; there is potential (voltage) in both cases but only current in the case of the battery. You can also think of it in terms of energy conservation; Power P=IV and thus if you have a voltage but no source of energy, current I must equal zero, and your radio remains unpowered.
That website is practically push-polling; for example, it doesn't offer the chance to cut some of the £5 billion we spend on prisons (presumably by not throwing non-violent drug users into prison when they steal to support a habit, just a thought...)
I hope they do well to. And buy a steadycam, some sets, some good lighting, work on their acting, and do some research (Baikonur is not in Russia guys...).
I love the idea of the project. I think their concept really has potential - but the fact is I've been spoilt by TV production values. I'd rate it about equal to the pilot episode of Red Dwarf in those terms (which screened in 1988 iirc on a low budget for the time). Its going to be niche program until it can close that gap a bit. Maybe the $20,000 they want for episode 2 will go towards resolving their problems. It could be the nature of torrent series; the first couple of episodes acting as almost a 'demo tape' to solicit donations until they get enough cash to do it properly.
I'm going to donate to them, and keep watching - but for the moment at least the idea that this is closer to commercial TV than to some guys messing around with a camcorder is laughable.
Not to split the debate, but the fact you have to think about your healthcare situation before taking time off work for a personal project surely discourages volunteering of any sort; yet another sign the US needs to join the fucking 21st century and get universal healthcare already.
You make a fair point about JSC/MSFC, but the article and summary however tried to turn this into a kind of libertarian gotcha which it is not. I might seem over sensitive on this issue, but Slashdot is full to the brim of 19-year old libertarians cherry picking examples of government doing badly and business doing well then going 'ZOMG WHO IS JOHN GALT' or some such shit.
What you've highlighted is a specific problem with the current way NASA is run. The problem comes when some douchebag tries to extrapolate from this to some idiotic randroid political jibe.
I've no problem with using government developed technology, but then when the people who've obtained this technology *for free* turn around and say 'hah! our R&D costs are lower! government sucks! corporations ftw!' its kind of irritating and retarded.
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Yup. People will be as free, wealthy and happy in Cuba as they now are in Haiti. Good times.
Cuba has many problems but malnutrition doesn't seem to be one of them. According the CIAs own statistics (in their world factbook) Cubans have a similar life expectancy to Americans; this couldn't possibly be true in a nation with system-wide poor nutrition.
1. I don't drink Bacardi, not because of any Cuban politics, but because I'm not a 16-year-old chav girl in a miniskirt.
2. I know Batistas Cuba wasn't wonderful
3. No I have never been to Cuba.
I am willing to entertain the possibility that Castro might be right about the embargo making Internet access hard to come by in Cuba, and also appreciate that its easy for a regime to start assuming every anti-government blogger is on the CIA payroll when they've had so many genuine covert attacsk from the US government - that doesn't make this kind of social control right.
Who knows, maybe Raul will be able to set that right without giving away any of the gains of the revolution. I'm not holding my breath though; most likely outcome is that Cuba will just end up as the next Haiti.
Is it possible that Fidel is simply not aware of the state of the country he used to run? Is it possible this has been the case for a long time - possibly even longer than he has been publicly seen to be an invalid?
Unless you are building an orbital weapon system (or a telescope to catch transient astronomical events like GRBs) super fast attitude changes are not really needed.
IKAROS is as maneuverable as any spacecraft realistically needs to be, and I promise you that future solar sails will be build using its attitude control method will be used over the 'bendy sails' method.
Everything I have been taught about spacecraft design, by people who have all designed hardware used on orbit, says that you choose a solid state system over one with moving parts every single time. Mechanically moving the sail to alter the attitude is a complex technique that only has use for faster attitude changes, and in such applications you would use faster, more established, and simpler thrustsers or momentum wheels.
Like I said, its good for NASA to look to solar sails, but they should update their mission by looking to the solar sail that is currently flying to Venus
IKAROS is capable of adjusting its attitude whilst spinning, through the use of LCD panels on the sail which subtly alter its albedo and thus the effect of light pressure, so you are wrong on at least that note.
Of course IKAROS changes the situation. At the original launch date, the solar sail was an untried technology and thus NanoSail-D was innovative. Now the Japanese have a sail flying to Venus, a NASA solar sail mission should be updated based on what they have learned from IKAROS. Your analogy of horseless carriages in 1801 only holds water if people are still producing ones based on primitive steam engines (instead of more sophisticated ones or internal combustion engines) years later.
I fully approve of NASA launching a solar sail mission, I just think its pointless in the light of the success thus far of IKAROS to launch the same one they were planning to launch years ago.
It never makes sense to use a solar sail in LEO, because below about 800km or so altitude the drag force of the remnants of the atmosphere apply more pressure than sunlight does. Below 800km, you've not got a solar sail you've got a parachute.
Nanosail D was originally to launch on one of the ill-fated Falcon 1 test flights, at which time it would have indeed been proving the technology. But now that JAXA have not only proved the technology, but applied it to interplanetary travel, it seems a bit moot.
Absolutely. The autodidact gets to shield herself from any information threatening to her own worldview whilst giving herself the impression that she is learning a great deal. This combination of wilful ignorance and massive overconfidence often causes an individual to get a fake PhD from an unaccredited hut somewhere in the rural US and then go on national television sprouting a bunch of psuedoscientific crap, and claiming to be a world authority on poo.
Idiot.
Yes, von Braun *might* have been able to trump Sputnik with a Redstone - but a Redstone is a far smaller rocket, basically just a stretched V-2. Anyone arguing that Redstone is a more advanced rocket than the R-7 series is someone lacking a basic knowledge of rocket science.
Your random googling of PBS documentary is not evidence, you complete tool. The idea that this was some cunning ploy by the US to fool the Russians, and that US rocket technology was simply superior in the late 1950s, is not supported by facts.
You are proposing a completely ridiculous revisionist history, that even NASA and the US government don't hold to. Go to fucking Cape Caneveral you total retard - they will tell you the US didn't start to take the lead until Gemini.
LMFAO
Super sekret plan to trick the Russians? Bullshit. Show some evidence outside your redneck survivalist conspiracy websites. The R7 derivatives kicked the arse of the Redstone and Vanguard rockets - and that is a historical fact I dare you to disprove.
Yes, so its *partial* failure isn't some kind of ZOMG SKY IS FALLING NO MORE SPACEFLIGHT event. The only reason it was so with shuttle failures is because human lives were lost and thus answers were required before proceeding.
These things have been supplying stations in LEO since 1978, but to hear the media tell it this is a flaky, experimental piece of equipment just waiting to go wrong, and the failure of just a single docking attempt might put the whole ISS program in danger.
Anyone else reminded of that mythical, conspiracy-nut material from Russia that is supposed to be able to set off thermonuclear reactions without a fission primary? Imagine if you had a pellet of lithium deuteride, surrounded by a sphere of this stuff, then imploded with high explosives...
Of course, the actual research doesn't suggest anything nearly that exciting (and if it did, I doubt it would get published in Nature...) - its just the press release being a bit overzealous as usual.
Putting aside the issue of how you recharge it (lets assume you move to disposables) then its of little use anyway. Battery life isn't so much of an issue as power consumption, and what is limiting us in increasing the latter is not energy density it is heat. Lithium ion batteries are about as efficient as they can be, so every extra milliwatt you want to draw for your latest mobile ubertoy is going to up the amount of heat being pumped into the users pockets/testicles, regardless of how good your engineering is.
No, I honestly believe Nick Clegg or someone on his staff will read all comments and take them on board. Then *he* will get ignored by the people in power. The complete disregard for your petitions has moved up a level.
Sadly, that won't work. As soon as the wire is exposed to the field, the charge carriers in the wire move to neutralize the field inside the wire. The critical difference between a 100V potential in the atmosphere and a 100V battery is that in the battery, you not only have the potential but you also have a chemical reaction that will maintain the potential as fast as the circuit it is connected to would neutralize it. This process results in a constant flow of charge carriers i.e. a current.
That is the key difference between a wire held static in an electric field and a circuit connected to a battery; there is potential (voltage) in both cases but only current in the case of the battery. You can also think of it in terms of energy conservation; Power P=IV and thus if you have a voltage but no source of energy, current I must equal zero, and your radio remains unpowered.
That website is practically push-polling; for example, it doesn't offer the chance to cut some of the £5 billion we spend on prisons (presumably by not throwing non-violent drug users into prison when they steal to support a habit, just a thought...)
Yeah, it was catastrophic when that happened in western European nations. Oh fucking wait, it didn't. My evidence trumps your retarded fuckwittery.
I hope they do well to. And buy a steadycam, some sets, some good lighting, work on their acting, and do some research (Baikonur is not in Russia guys...).
I love the idea of the project. I think their concept really has potential - but the fact is I've been spoilt by TV production values. I'd rate it about equal to the pilot episode of Red Dwarf in those terms (which screened in 1988 iirc on a low budget for the time). Its going to be niche program until it can close that gap a bit. Maybe the $20,000 they want for episode 2 will go towards resolving their problems. It could be the nature of torrent series; the first couple of episodes acting as almost a 'demo tape' to solicit donations until they get enough cash to do it properly.
I'm going to donate to them, and keep watching - but for the moment at least the idea that this is closer to commercial TV than to some guys messing around with a camcorder is laughable.
Not to split the debate, but the fact you have to think about your healthcare situation before taking time off work for a personal project surely discourages volunteering of any sort; yet another sign the US needs to join the fucking 21st century and get universal healthcare already.
Yours truly, evil granny-killing eurosocialist pig
You make a fair point about JSC/MSFC, but the article and summary however tried to turn this into a kind of libertarian gotcha which it is not. I might seem over sensitive on this issue, but Slashdot is full to the brim of 19-year old libertarians cherry picking examples of government doing badly and business doing well then going 'ZOMG WHO IS JOHN GALT' or some such shit.
What you've highlighted is a specific problem with the current way NASA is run. The problem comes when some douchebag tries to extrapolate from this to some idiotic randroid political jibe.
I've no problem with using government developed technology, but then when the people who've obtained this technology *for free* turn around and say 'hah! our R&D costs are lower! government sucks! corporations ftw!' its kind of irritating and retarded.
The lesson that you should use slave labour to build small, simple, suborbital rockets?