mapt

132 ms·

1411.
by mapt 13y ago
It's also missing basic information about orbital approach. Just how far away is it going to be on this 'return'? What would be the dV to an Earth capture? edit: It will apparently "enter the earth-moon system" in
1412.
by mapt 13y ago
Anti-satellite weapons significantly expand the amount of space debris that we have to deal with, and threaten a global impact cascade we term 'Kessler Syndrome'. The Space Shuttle was designed to do several things that had noth
1413.
by mapt 13y ago
The merits of the presidential system are actually a plotline in one of the episodes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gLoio0Z6jLw
1414.
by mapt 13y ago
It started experiencing frequent netsplits as the Super Bowl stream began, and went down completely a few seconds before the Half-Time Show, then came back up for a few seconds right after it ended. Since then I've been reconnecting o
1415.
by mapt 13y ago
Common-sense statistical distinction: It's not even necessary to posit a 'radiation-associated cancer' category to account for differential cancer increases, as long as there are some cancers somewhere that pop up in response
1416.
by mapt 13y ago
Natural gas is perhaps 80% +- 15% methane. The rest is a variety of gasses, some of which constitute useful fuels in themselves, like propane and butane: these may be incorporated into the finished product (which is why we don't sell
1417.
by mapt 13y ago
Are modern hard drives not rated to survive very long in spun-down, powered-down condition?
1418.
by mapt 13y ago
They wouldn't have been happy to die in their sleep 10 years earlier, they would have been dead. [grammar distinction]. Whether they would have prospectively desired at the time to die in their sleep 10 years earlier, on the other ha
1419.
by mapt 13y ago
I was surprised to find that the Chinese norm for airline booking is inordinately more passenger-friendly than the Western norm. Flights are regular, prices are posted and do not change much, and it is very common to book a ticket for sa
1420.
by mapt 13y ago
There are two standards for a corporate executive to consider: 1) What the majority of the shareholders say 2) What a court would rule if a minority of the shareholders decided to sue the executive on the grounds that they (and presumably t
1421.
by mapt 13y ago
Notably, this project is not dead, only the orbiter is. The SLS, built on Shuttle parts minus the spaceplane, launches first prototype in 2017. To what end, few can say.
1422.
by mapt 13y ago
We have created sufficient variety of failed VTOL plane concepts that there are certainly a number of types you've never seen. It is a recurrent trend - every engineering team thinks they have an answer which puts a novel spin on thin
1423.
by mapt 13y ago
If Congress demands it? Yes, they can brief Congress on what they're doing. They were created by Congress and the career positions continue to exist at the pleasure of the Congress. Further, there are procedures that exist to do so.
1424.
by mapt 13y ago
Would this change if a small, minimally developed sovereign nation adopted Bitcoin as its official currency, as opposed to the US Dollar or the Euro or a local currency that is not capable of earning much seigniorage per year?
1425.
by mapt 13y ago
I offer no actual reply, only a thought experiment, keeping in mind that the USD is another floating currency that fluctuates in value: ... " Is there a tax guide that would explain the consequences of me using some of the US Dollars I
1426.
by mapt 13y ago
Can #2 be turned on and off in a controllable manner, such that it grants only a modest statistical advantage (sufficient, say, to keep the pool above 50%) ?
1427.
by mapt 13y ago
There are three people are well-placed to say how much money is 'market value': 1) The owners themselves, by self-declaring asset values for taxation purposes (on pain of having them vulnerable to eminent domain seizure if they un
1428.
by mapt 13y ago
It seems like the price of the various measures that avoid invoking eminent domain ends up being so extraordinarily high (hundred-million-dollar bridge trusses and the like), I do not quite understand why offering market plus 100% or someth
1429.
by mapt 13y ago
Take your post. Append: ", so far." and ", yet." Now you understand the concern.
1430.
by mapt 13y ago
"Tailored to your needs" "Not a random or lowest-common-denominator-based spec" So you want it to cost what a 1,200 sqft building would cost, but you want to spend it on architects and custom builders instead of cheap
1431.
by mapt 13y ago
The world is now compartmentalized, since Bradley Manning. We appear to have had a stretch there where they just ran a Secret Clearance wiki and document dump, and a separate TS/SCI wiki and document dump, and that was it except for
1432.
by mapt 13y ago
Point of inquiry: Suppose it costs the animal kingdom 1,000,000,000,000 microbial animals of various sorts, 1,000,000,000 macroscopic arthropods, 1,000,000 vertebrates, and 10,000 mammals to live one life according to the lifestyle we expec
1433.
by mapt 13y ago
The hazard here is not inside a fully parallel blinded trial with controls in the same environment, but in comparison and replication of studies, as well as sequential studies where the lab temperature changed. If quite minor, to human sen
1434.
by mapt 13y ago
Put politics aside? Nationalism is all we've got to push forward space exploration; While there were initially subtexts involving spy satellites and nuclear weapons, the tech has been there for forty years, and forty years ago we st
1435.
by mapt 13y ago
"Momentum Machines estimates that every fast food franchise in America spends an average of $135,000 annually on staffing." Think about that for a second. $135,000 is all the entire staff of a McDonalds sees per year, in pay and
1436.
by mapt 13y ago
And what is it you suppose this satellite is tasked with? http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_NRO_Launches This is an intelligence mission, it's just one of the least sinister of all the intelligence missions tha
1437.
by mapt 13y ago
Yes, it's a ballsy logo, but on the other hand... Wikipedia tells us that NROL-39's payload is actually a Topaz synthetic aperture radar (SAR) node, flying in constellation with two others already in operation, and two more to com
1438.
by mapt 13y ago
Show them these things before they tase you, bro.
1439.
by mapt 13y ago
No, it's not "you've been drinking" -> 20x more dangerous. Much idiocy has been put forth by people who are unable to understand basic layman's toxicology/pharmacology. Drugs have effects. More of the sub
1440.
by mapt 13y ago
1) It seems we have this problem: http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2008/03/25/202471/the-bigge... Carbon is easier here because it's a lot closer to 'tons of fuel burned'. 2) Aside fr

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