I’m sure if a full scale space elevator was to be constructed, any airplane flying into the area would be instructed to turn around, and if they don’t they’d probably get shot down. Plus really, if I was a pilot, and knew my heading was in the direction of a giant laser beam powering a 20 ton climber I would generally do what I can to avoid it.
For automated directions (including Google Maps URL), you can fingerbut neglect to include information that mundanes might need like what town you live in.
directions@xxxxxxcom or send email to directions@xxxxxxx.net.
No talent. None. Way too obscure for general consumption.And responds
I think worrying about what interests you, what stirs your passion, is a far more effective recipe for success than worrying about "general consumption".
I think (redacted) brought a great deal of criticism on himself by making the rules subject to his own changing opinions, rather than keeping them as fixed limits that teams could rely on.
A unique way of minimising the drag of the twin engine installation was put forward by Petter. This involved stacking the engines vertically (staggered to avoid too much weight aft, with the lower engine forward of the upper), effectively tucking them behind the cockpit, fed from the nose and achieving minimum frontal area. This effectively gave twice the thrust of its contemporaries for an increase in frontal area of only 50%.
A retired veteran and candidate for Oklahoma State School Superintendent says he wants to make schools safer by creating bulletproof textbooks.
Crozier says the idea is still in its initial stages and he has no idea how much it would cost to cover the books.
“So what you’re saying is,” Brithpth said slowly and distinctly, “is that you eat with the same orifice you breathe with?”
“Yup,” I replied.
My guest did that thing again. He paused, in the way that a glacier might be said to pause. For a slow ten-count, he was perfectly still.
“How do you keep from clogging the tube?” he asked for the third time in an hour.
Let me go back
As long as players wear masks and thick clothing, no one suffers anything worse than a bruise. The basic concept is simple: he who is the least-splattered is the winner. National tournaments can pull in hundreds of devotees and paintball has built up a solid appeal among stag - and hen - parties, pub teams, students and office workers.
But none will ever have faced a paintball gun like the one I am swivelling into position - which is just as well given that it could be lethal to anyone not protected by a thick layer of armour.
Epitaph: Foolish humans, never escaped Earth.
- Vernor Vinge
The Martin B-57 Canberra was a twin-engine jet bomber and reconnaissance aircraft which entered service in the 1950s. Originally based on the British English Electric Canberra, the US-built B-57 had evolved into several unique variants.
snip
WB-57F
- Weather reconnaissance version.
- RB-57Fs used for high altitude atmospheric sampling in support of nuclear weapon testing and weather research. Two WB-57F aircraft were transferred to NASA and are the only WB-57s still flying in the world today [4]. They are used for atmospheric research and for monitoring Space Shuttle takeoff and landing.
Once commercial guys do this and they it for profit and once it is successful and profitable the whole picture changes. I'm convinced that investment will no longer be a problem if we do our job right. And that is to go out and do the right things to solve the safety problems and start flying a lot of people.and
The SR-71 and Concorde] went all the way through their life cycle until they got too rusty to maintain, and got shut down and we retreated back to the same performance, military and commercial, that we had in 1960. Guys, that was 45 years ago. Now go back from 1960, 45 years earlier when airplanes were biplanes with fabric wings and wooden propellers. What the hell have we been doing?
The question is "How can orbital debris be required by international law to de-orbit or move to a graveyard orbit?"
My first thought is to question the assumption of requiring international law to do anything.
The root problem is debris. It's in the way, a hazard. It needs to be minimized or eliminated.
Solution - provide incentives to the owners and operators to do so.
International law is one avenue and it should be pursued.
Another incentive would be for the operators of launch systems to offer discounts to satellite operators who demonstrate they practice debris minimization. They suffer a small profit loss in return for the assurance that the satellite won't cause problems for them later. Enlightened self-interest anyone?
Jasper - your satellite has no delta-v budget. If the launch provider offered to cut your launch cost by 20%, would your program find the budget then? How much would it take? We might make an exception for universities.
Note I am not speaking of a cartel or any action that would be construed as a restraint of trade - merely a basic self-serving convention. The satelllite owners could turn it around as well, arbitrte between launch services.
The proper name of the movie is “28 Days Later”. I’m not trying to be a prick, I just don’t want anyone to rent “28 Days” thinking there is zombies in it. “28 Days” is a Sandra Bullock movie where “A big-city newspaper columnist is forced to enter a drug and alcohol rehab center after stealing a limousine and crashing it into a house.” Man, sounds like some zombies would have really improved that flick.
Just to give you an idea of current inequality, statistically speaking, the top 1 percent of all income earners in this great land earn roughly 20 percent of the total income. The top 1 percent of wealth holders have close to one-third of all wealth. The top 5 percent of wealth holders have very roughly 50 percent of all wealth in this country.
As you can see, that does not leave a lot for everyone else.
There are a number of ways to respond to this situation. You can become indignant and say that it’s a violation of American democratic principles. This is a good way to put yourself into a sanctimonious mood, and it offers some psychic satisfaction.
Another way, possibly more satisfying in the long run, would be to ask yourself how the top 1 percent of wealth holders and income earners got to be that way, and then to try to do it yourself. My own observation, having been both a critic and a moderately well-paid person, is that while it’s nice to be a critic, it’s also nice to have your own swimming pool. (The best is both, but that’s another story.)
This article smells as fishy as last week’s halibut. Let’s start at the top. Bodine describes his Mac as a “Power Mac G5 Dual 2.7GHz computer.” He then says that he paid $4,552.71 for it “on May 21, 2006.”
The signs of doom were there on day one, but I ignored them. I pretended that I liked the one button mouse.
Doing a simple screen capture was an immense chore. On a PC you just press Alt and tap PrtScr. With the Mac I had to download and launch special programs to accomplish this simple task.
I didn't even bother with the Mac's iCal or Mail, which required me to buy an @mac.com address
For me the killer was the Web browser. Safari simply cannot read Flash. It is, quite simply, a second-rate browser.
I realized it was time to unload the silvery box of frustration when I had to buy a "Dummies" book on how to operate it
Despite lacking known metallic resources that would make it attractive towards future space corporations, Ceres does have one element that would make this asteroid worth its weight in gold--water. Scientists believe that Ceres could contain up to 200 million cubic kilometers of fresh water--about five times as much as planet Earth.
With the heart of the asteroid belt located around 2.7 AU (astronomical unit), Ceres lies in perfect position to supply future colonists with the necessary food supplies, as its orbit ranges between 2.55 and 2.98 AU. As the asteroid king makes its journey around the sun, mining colonies could be easily resupplied with food grown on the rocky world, enabling permanent outposts to focus on extracting minerals and precious metals.
I have worked several mass murder cases during both criminal and civil suits, and I have discovered something that has important implications for survival: the people who live through these horrible events are active and aggressive. They either run out of the building, or if cornered, they aggress against the perpretrator, and then run. People who are killed do not run or hide effectively: they usually choose obvious hiding places, like under a desk or table. As a psychologist, this behavior appears to be acutely regressive-like the child who hides in an obvious place, believing that if he closes his eyes and cannot see, he won't be seen.A reasonably intelligent person might conclude it's better to stand and fight than to die on your knees (or cowering under a desk). The topic of discussion on her post is that the Burleson ISD is teaching their kids to fight back.
From Fark, a piece on what the Earth would look like without humans. Maybe it’s me, but it can’t quite keep the wistful tone from showing through; it has more admiration for Earth’s self-healing properties than for mankind’s accomplishments. The Fark comments were just what I expected – flamers dumping on the “eco-tards,” bitter little pills who hate people and wish them gone so Gaia can breathe free, witty snipers, believers who posit a higher purpose, cynics who think they can shatter deeply-held religious convictions with a deft analogy. The usual. This entry stuck out:The truly hilarious thing in this thread is that those offended by the article actually imagine that they (or the human race in general) are important or worthwhile or are more deserving of existence on Earth than a Grizzly Bear or a mosquito or a Blue-Footed Booby. What a howler.
Guess what? You're wrong.
God didn't create the Earth for you. You aren't superior to, or even more interesting than, any other life form. You have no more value or worth than anything else, but you do have gigantic egos and a twisted perspective.
When you die or Homo sapiens goes extinct, it won't mean anything and will have no more cosmic significance than the extinction of the Dodo Bird. In fact, the persons who are offended by this article are the least rational among us, and therefore the most animalistic, the most degraded, and the least "superior" to other life forms. Ooga Booga!
What irony! Did you know that you're walking cartoons?
Hahahahahah!
A nest of maggot larvae, a newborn ward at a hospital: ten French chefs say No Difference. Dude’s hard core! But so is Lewis Black, a comic I’ve heard here and there. Funny guy. Shouts a lot. Got that angry man thing going for him. This web ad pops up on some sites I visit:
Yes, that’s us, all right; living in a society which represents the pinnacle of freedom and comfort in the history of the species, and we’re SCREWED, and only the idiots think we aren’t. Of course we’re screwed, inasmuch as the grave yawns in front of us all, but in time, in time. “Red White and Screwed,” however, suggests that Americans are really truly screwed, and I can hear the crowd whooping and wooing in agreement. Perhaps there’s a moment in his speech where he notes that it could be worse than being an American; you could be a Falun Gong believer getting a truncheon in the face in a Chinese jail, or a Saudi woman with an off-the-charts IQ sitting in a windowless room unable to go outside until the resident penis comes home, but I suspect that Mr. Black views everything as Pretty Much Screwed, with America uniquely screwed in ways that make him shout truth to power.
You can tell by the ad – it’s been cleverly defaced to suggest you should buy an SUV. An SUV! Moloch’s Chariot! The Sled of Baal! The vehicle no one wanted until ad campaigns reprogrammed your brain, and now gas is three dollars and you’re SCREWED! Well, it’s down to $2.15, but only because it’s being manipulated, which is more proof you’re SCREWED!
Eh.
Optimism: it’s not for the weak.
The current controversy over Liftport’s release of a roadmap for the Space Elevator is important because it is allowing for a larger set of issues to be considered. In my opinion, the root of the action by Liftport and the contention to the release of its roadmap point to what is missing in the Space Elevator community.
Because we are in the “infancy” of the Space Elevator, it is not clear what it will grow into in its maturity. Therefore, we have a broad range of work that is valid, ranging from speculative visions to detailed scientific and engineering research. Unfortunately, not all of it is of high quality nor does all of it further the Space Elevator. In short, we have exuberant individuals and small teams working independently and in concert, some for the positive and some for the negative! There has been no oversight, criticism or acclimation of effort, no matter how well carried out or how shabbily executed. This must change!
As a community we need to work more closely together to encourage and support good work while discouraging shoddy work. And we need to do this out of the public eye. All of us need to be willing to have our work reviewed. Indeed, my most talented scientific colleagues insist on having their work reviewed by peers because they know the importance of their work and they honor their reputations! This level of activity is for adults with serious intentions. It is not for the insincere or insecure. Through this process we will all be called to a higher standard of work.
Moreover, the release by Liftport of a roadmap, does an important service by, in fact, pointing toward the need for a roadmap for the Space Elevator effort. I am taking a stand that a roadmap must be generated by the community, be of appropriate depth and call out milestones. In this way, our now separate efforts can be focused to produce a greater, cumulative effect. This will not be easy or without dissent, but it is important and necessary.
I call upon the Space Elevator community to attend the 2nd Biennial Space Elevator Workshop (which is a part of the Space Exploration 2007 Conference sesinstitute.org). If the community responds, we will set aside an afternoon to have first a structured discussion and then a more free-ranging session concerning a roadmap outline. We must quickly and efficiently determine the intent, timescale, scope and depth of the document. Then we can select the major milestones and finally elect a small group to draft a first draft for posting on spaceelevator.com for review.
In the meantime and as preparation for the workshop, I call upon every space elevator group to discuss the roadmap concept and to distill the most important milestones they see as necessary for Space Elevator development. As a guide, I refer everyone to NASA’s roadmaps a few examples of which are:
* Astrobiology Roadmap
* Exploration of Neighboring Planetary System
* NASA Origins Map
These are available on line and usually are the result of a process in which the interested scientific and engineering community was heavily involved in the development of the roadmap.
When you come to the workshop, be prepared to roll up your sleeves and get to work.
To reduce the mass of the systems, advanced materials (composites) are needed in all structural components.And recalled the MiG-25 Foxbat. Built to counter a high-altitude bomber that never made it into production it was rumored to be one hell-on-wheels wonder machine.
It stands to reason that self-righteous, inflexible, single-minded, authoritarian true believers are politically organized. Open-minded, flexible, complex, ambiguous, anti-authoritarian people would just as soon be left to mind their own fucking business.
R.U. Sirius
In How To Mutate and Take Over The World
[From a conversation and followup email from Kevin at The Smallest Minority.--Joe]
... candiate must have seven years progressive experience with Whompfoozle Version 3.9 ...when Whompfoozle 3.9 was released six months ago, and didn't exist two years before that.
The team that compiled this roadmap consisted of: Michael Laine who has no technical background, Tom Nugent is a recent graduate with limited experience on the space elevator, and two student interns at Liftport.
Why October 27, 2031?
In October 2006, Liftport released the first comprehensive analysis of the steps needed to design, manufacture and deploy a space elevator. The results of this study pushed the former date, April 12, 2018, back a few years.
Space Elevator Roadmap Version 1.0 Public Beta
Liftport Group is happy to announce that we have (some might say at long last) produced a draft roadmap for space elevator development.
In conjunction with the Roadmap and to help foster an open approach to space elevator development, Liftport Group is also offering the LiftPort Space Elevator Questions Database (i.e Questions Database).
The product of a determined effort by our staff and interns over a busy summer, the Roadmap provides the most realistic timetable yet for the development, deployment and operation of our proposed space elevator.
The Questions Database is intended to be a public repository for research and design questions related to the development of the space elevator.
Questions is still under development, and is only the latest tool we're using to involve the public. We encourage people from all walks of life and all over the world to become involved with space elevator research and advocacy.
Tom Nugent's blog post is here.
The Roadmap is available here.
A graphic (not to scale) suitable for your desktop is here.
A graphic (not to scale) suitable for printing is here.
LiftPort Space Elevator Questions Database (LPQDB) is available here ,
Man, I hated the "digital" uniforms when they first came out. I thought they looked stupid. And initially they WERE stupid. The original concept included things like zip-off SLEEVES. Does that seem smart to ANYONE? "Sorry Gunny. I can't go war… I lost all my left arms in a tragic laundry day mix-up."
But they grew on me. I mean hey, wash and wear, baby! Nowadays you don't iron your cammies, you don't polish your boots, and all your brass is anodized. What the hell to the D.I.s do to screw with the recruits anymore? No starch. No Kiwi. No Brasso. Em-Nu stock has plummeted… hell, do they even MAKE Em-Nu anymore?
I'm not even supposed to buy black socks from here on out. Now they're all "coyote" brown. Apparently "sand" wasn't as cool a name for brown as "coyote" was... but I'm stuck with green t-shirts which look downright silly behind desert cammies...
An enormous ring of superconducting magnets similar to a particle accelerator could fling satellites into space, or perhaps weapons around the world, suggest the findings of a new study funded by the US air force.
Previous studies have investigated the use of magnets to accelerate satellites to the high speeds required for launch. But most have focused on straight tracks, which have to gather speed in one quick burst. Supplying the huge spike of energy needed for this method has proven difficult.
The advantage of a circular track is that the satellite can be gradually accelerated over a period of several hours. And the setup is technologically feasible and cost effective, suggests a recent, preliminary study of the idea funded by the air force's Office of Scientific Research.
Anything launched in this way would have to be able to survive enormous accelerations – more than 2000 times the acceleration due to gravity (2000g). This would seem to be an obstacle for launching things like communications satellites, but Fiske points out that the US military uses electronics in laser-guided artillery, which survive being fired out of guns at up to 20,000g.
Although Epstein is sceptical about the prospects for such a ring, he cautions that if built, the ring itself could become a target for attacks. This is because of its potential for use as a weapon, launching missiles that could reach anywhere in the world. "The ring then becomes one of the most important targets on the planet," he told New Scientist.
snipWorth the read
CHENEY: Well, we need to invade Iraq and Afghanistan. So what we've decided to do is crash a whole bunch of remote-controlled planes into Wall Street and the Pentagon, say they're real hijacked commercial planes, and blame it on the towelheads; then we'll just blow up the buildings ourselves to make sure they actually fall down.RUMSFELD: Right! And we'll make sure that some of the hijackers are agents of Saddam Hussein! That way we'll have no problem getting the public to buy the invasion.
CHENEY: No, Dick, we won't.
RUMSFELD: We won't?
CHENEY: No, that's too obvious. We'll make the hijackers Al Qaeda and then just imply a connection to Iraq.
RUMSFELD: But if we're just making up the whole thing, why not just put Saddam's fingerprints on the attack?
CHENEY: (sighing) It just has to be this way, Dick. Ups the ante, as it were. This way, we're not insulated if things go wrong in Iraq. Gives us incentive to get the invasion right the first time around.
BUSH: I'm a total idiot who can barely read, so I'll buy that. But I've got a question. Why do we need to crash planes into the Towers at all? Since everyone knows terrorists already tried to blow up that building complex from the ground up once, why don't we just blow it up like we plan to anyway, and blame the bombs on the terrorists?
RUMSFELD: Mr. President, you don't understand. It's much better to sneak into the buildings ourselves in the days before the attacks, plant the bombs and then make it look like it was exploding planes that brought the buildings down. That way, we involve more people in the plot, stand a much greater chance of being exposed and needlessly complicate everything!
snip
A gunman killed six people at a one-room Amish schoolhouse Monday morning in Pennsylvania's bucolic Lancaster County, and several others were taken to hospitals with injuries, authorities said.I doubt like hell a wack job will walk into my house and execute my children. It's not why we home school (okay 'public charter school distance education'), more of a unanticipated benefit.
Anousheh goes on to writeOur deepest fear is not that we are inadequate. Our deepest fear is that we are powerful beyond measure.
It is our light, not our darkness, that most frightens us. We ask ourselves, who am I to be brilliant, gorgeous, talented and fabulous? Actually, who are you not to be?
You are a child of God. Your playing small doesn’t serve the world. There’s nothing enlightened about shrinking so that other people won’t feel insecure around you.
We are all meant to shine, as children do. We are born to make manifest the glory of God that is within us. It’s not just in some of us, it’s in everyone.
And as we let our own light shine, we unconsciously give other people permission to do the same. As we are liberated from our own fear, our presence automatically liberates others.
Nelson Mandela
Via.But this is no longer only my Quest. It is the duty of every one of you to go beyond just reading and writing on the Space Blog. It is your duty to make sure this excitement, this wave, this wonderful force that has awakened the best in us continues on.
I don’t like to be idealized or become an icon. I’m not special, I just found that light inside me that you all have and got my strength from it. It seems like I found the key to open up your hearts and souls so now you can reach inside and gain strength from there.
Now that we are here, let’s all be equal in this Quest and share the responsibility of saving our world. It is too much for one person but when it is up to all of us, I know we can do it
