jccooper

92 ms·

841.
by jccooper 12y ago
Too bad the preservation killed the possibility of genetic sequencing; phylogenetics seems a lot more useful and accurate to me than morphological taxonomy. But in 1986 I guess genetic sequencing wasn't much of a thing (though the hist
842.
by jccooper 12y ago
Dunno, but I'll bet the internal reasoning is somewhere between "we need to drive adoption of Payments" and "we'll save an extra percent or two that otherwise goes to a 3rd party".
843.
by jccooper 12y ago
A variety of websites can do it. See http://www.seaplus.com/mainmenu.php and/or search "freighter travel". It costs more than you might think, partly because meals are included.
844.
by jccooper 12y ago
Great. There goes my month.
845.
by jccooper 12y ago
Only if it erupted while they were wearing silly socks. Said volcano is nowhere near the canal.
846.
by jccooper 12y ago
Not really. But there is: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Par%C3%ADcutin Some stories have the farmer plowing the initial fissure open. If only he'd left that dirt alone, right? Volcanic activity can lie very close t
847.
by jccooper 12y ago
Dunno. That's an awfully high capital cost to compete with the Panama Canal--which will have a lot lower cost to expand its capacity to match a competitor's features (mostly extra size) if they turn out to be in high demand. The c
848.
by jccooper 12y ago
No doubt they could come up with something dangerous, but I wouldn't worry about that particular mode. Plasma doesn't travel far. A nice portable high intensity directed neutron radiation source might be pretty nasty, though.
849.
by jccooper 12y ago
"His patent application was eventually denied on the basis that it was 'wholly theoretical, everything being based upon calculation and nothing upon trial or demonstration.'" He'd get that patent today. Little as it
850.
by jccooper 12y ago
Hard to believe they wouldn't pay already earned wages. That's pretty foundational to payroll law and the mere concept of doing that (at least, if your company is not already essentially dead) should cause several heads in HR and
851.
by jccooper 12y ago
Yes; in fact they have videos showing the whole stack re-entering and doing a propulsive landing (one at a time, of course.) The second stage will need a re-entry heat shield, but otherwise can land like the first. Tricky part is getting en
852.
by jccooper 12y ago
I would suspect SpaceX has the numbers. I don't think they're just guessing that what they want to do will work. Rocket engineers are big on numbers. They intend to do a return to launch site--at least eventually. There will be se
853.
by jccooper 12y ago
I like the "Direct Capital Group", which manages to fit three categories at the same time.
854.
by jccooper 12y ago
Parachutes also hit a lot harder. Powered landing you can touch down with ~0m/s. Parachutes you'd get something like 10 m/s (~22mph.) Not necessarily nice on your equipment.
855.
by jccooper 12y ago
They will. It's not been seen to be a problem before, so they went with the simplest solution. In rockets, every ounce counts. Now they know it happens (at least sometimes) in this very novel flight regime, they'll do something ab
856.
by jccooper 12y ago
Better video from the first landing, despite the data corruption, than this one, due to the ice fouling. Wonder why this one got iced? Clouds? But even so, it certainly shows success. Can't wait to see 'em get a stage back. That&#
857.
by jccooper 12y ago
They're territorial, mean, and not particularly scared. Does depend on number of donkeys vs number of coyotes though. They're ornery, not magic.
858.
by jccooper 12y ago
First was a first stage helium valve, second was weather, third was thrust vector control actuator.
859.
by jccooper 12y ago
The biggest cost is the machine. High precision and exotic materials are usually involved, and they're usually hand-crafted in small numbers, and require gigantic tooling and facilities. And there's lots of testing and QA: since y
860.
by jccooper 12y ago
Because limited funding is not kind to large rockets.
861.
by jccooper 12y ago
Probably I'm hung up on "Firely's engines are actually self-pressurized". If they actually mean that, it's some sort of novel system. If they actually mean self-pressurizing tanks then that's a bit more normal-
862.
by jccooper 12y ago
Tom Markusic (CEO) is a real propulsion engineer. He's had a major hand in at least two liquid engines (Merlin and Newton). Which may or may not be a good thing. The overly-ambitious design of their rocket seems like it might be a symp
863.
by jccooper 12y ago
Or they could scale up once they prove their ability to fly... just like SpaceX did with the Falcon 1. Which, granted, had more payload capacity that the Firefly Alpha is designed for. But they could follow a similar plan. There may be some
864.
by jccooper 12y ago
Good luck to 'em. But I don't know that I would have picked several never-flown techniques as the basis for my least-cost rocket. I count at least four: aerospike nozzle, methane fuel, autogenous pressurization (whatever they mean
865.
by jccooper 12y ago
Incumbents are correct that adding evolutionary features will allow maturation of technology and public acceptance. However, you cannot use that route to get to a completely autonomous vehicle. There will almost certainly be a red area once
866.
by jccooper 12y ago
Incorrect title. It was the NASA Space Flight forum (or rather some members thereof). NASA had nothing to do with it.
867.
by jccooper 12y ago
I think I was on 2.6.38. Seems like it ought to work, but didn't. Dunno.
868.
by jccooper 12y ago
To apply the sysctl changes right away: sudo sysctl -p /etc/sysctl.conf My oldish kernel doesn't recognize the PID settings, which is unfortunate.
869.
by jccooper 12y ago
Both offer different price tiers based on volume. If you split between the two you could end up paying more percentage than just one. Besides it being annoying to deal with two systems.
870.
by jccooper 12y ago
True. And yet, it's also a very Elon move: vertical integration, making a big bet on growth, and doing so domestically in spite of theoretically lower-cost foreign production. (You can see all those factors in Tesla and SpaceX.) Perhap

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