Ankaios

26 ms·

241.
by Ankaios 11y ago
In this case, it seems like there's a reasonable argument for asylum.
242.
by Ankaios 11y ago
There's no such thing as overkill.
243.
by Ankaios 11y ago
Which astronauts were politically connected prior to selection?
244.
by Ankaios 11y ago
For those of you in Silicon Valley, USS Macon was based out of Moffett Field (named after Adm. Moffett). The big hangar (currently just its frame) that you can see from US 101 on the west side of Moffett Field was Macon's hangar. The
245.
by Ankaios 11y ago
That was already clear.
246.
by Ankaios 11y ago
Not necessarily. See inflation-adjusted bonds, for instance.
247.
by Ankaios 11y ago
The pollution gets shifted to the power plants, but the greenhouse gas emissions from power plants are often better than those from cars. IIRC, in California the fraction from hydro and other renewables is ~ 25 %. Nuclear is another 15 % o
248.
by Ankaios 11y ago
As a wise man once said, "The whole point of the doomsday machine is lost if keep it a secret."
249.
by Ankaios 12y ago
Not everyone.
250.
by Ankaios 12y ago
I wonder if they even tested it out at small scale yet. Screens will give the wrong parallax–it won't look like the view out a window. (It might be fine for a view displayed on a distant forward bulkhead or maybe even on seat backs, bu
251.
by Ankaios 12y ago
Yeah, me too. Luckily I didn't have that billion to blow on it. :)
252.
by Ankaios 12y ago
If I had a spare billion bucks laying around when the shuttle program ended, I thought it would been fun to actually try out an RTLS. Tie up the necessary loose ends on the autopilot, stack up an empty shuttle, invite a lot of people, and l
253.
by Ankaios 12y ago
No abort options were available while the solid rocket boosters were burning, as they were in Challenger's case. (I agree, though, that a failure during SRB firing doesn't really count as "cleanly" avoiding demonstrating
254.
by Ankaios 12y ago
NASA has opportunities like the Small Explorers (SMEX, http://explorers.larc.nasa.gov/APSMEX/ ), Discovery ( http://discovery.nasa.gov/p_mission.cfml ), and New Frontiers ( http://discoverynewfr
255.
by Ankaios 12y ago
Long before that, probably. People are currently working on a couple of attempts now.
256.
by Ankaios 12y ago
Of course it's an accomplishment, even if others did it long ago. If I successfully run my first marathon (unlikely), it'll still be an accomplishment even though someone else first did it 2500 years ago. Getting a spacecraft into
257.
by Ankaios 12y ago
Are you seriously claiming that a policy of labeling and testing units caused MCO to be lost? Have you actually studied the mishap? If labeling and verifying the units was done carefully it would have prevented the accident. A millinewton
258.
by Ankaios 12y ago
The SI units absolutely include newtons and millinewtons. The derived units ( http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/units.html ) and prefixes ( http://physics.nist.gov/cuu/Units/prefixes.html )
259.
by Ankaios 12y ago
No, the important lesson is to always label your units, and another one might be to always be careful passing dimensionful numbers between codes and teams. You can run into the same problem by accidentally even forgetting to convert between
260.
by Ankaios 12y ago
Personally I think the first "human-like" AI will be created to estimate stock valuations and that many copies of it will exist in virtual machines on the peripheries of exchanges.
261.
by Ankaios 12y ago
The "why should I have to give you X before you'll give me Y? - here have junk instead" thing is wrong IMO. That's an interesting opinion. However, this isn't just "their house." They chose to provide th
262.
by Ankaios 12y ago
The SpaceX design is probably the less risky one. They are already flying a version of Dragon which is very similar, and will have many more flights of it by the time of the first crewed flights. The differences between the crew and cargo v
263.
by Ankaios 12y ago
Both will make ground landings.
264.
by Ankaios 12y ago
No, the Centaur upper stage is a standard part of an Atlas V. All Atlas V vehicles use Centaur second stages. Since the Centaur failed, part of the Atlas V system failed.
265.
by Ankaios 13y ago
The U.S. is different, though, because our government was created by the people, and we claim that its powers were delegated to it by us. In the U.S., the buck ultimately stops with us, the citizens.
266.
by Ankaios 13y ago
Well, I'm a Firefox user, and I understand the difference, and I use the input fields differently depending on whether I mind particular information leaking to a search company. So, I personally strongly prefer leaving things the way t
267.
by Ankaios 13y ago
I'm not sure that civil-service headcount will give you a good indication of how much of the government is operational. At NASA, IIRC only ~ 20% of the funds go to civil servant salaries. The rest goes out the door in contracts, grants
268.
by Ankaios 13y ago
While I agree that there is a "gulf of difference" between tracking people by private business and by the NSA, I trust private business much less than I trust the NSA. And I trust the NSA barely at all.
269.
by Ankaios 13y ago
Should they be worried? Nah. As a shareholder you can just click on more ads to make up for it. :)
270.
by Ankaios 13y ago
Thank you, EPIC. In vacuuming up and blindly storing all of the descriptive data about phone calls, I am impressed that the NSA and its superiors may have managed to carry out "unreasonable seizure" without "unreasonable sear

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