Posts by John Smith 19 16330 publicly visible posts • joined 10 Jun 2009
" A whole new meaning.....
brings a whole new meaning to......
Klingons on the starboard bow........
(Can't believe no-one got there before me)"
I was expecting a raft of replies along the lines of "Surely you mean the #2 problem in closed cycle life support."
People just don't appreciate good comic opportunities.
<sigh>
It's been done.
IIRC the Skylab 'naught dried their feces by vacuum exposure for packing in the LOX tank of the re-purposed launch vehicle they were living in.
People have done some work on urine but it seems feces are the #1 unsolved problem in closed cycled life support.
Potentially they offer a rich range of starting options for combining with all that CO2 you have left over. Note in space ultra high vacuum is cheap. We're talking pressures in micro Torr (millionths of a millimetre of Hg). Evacuate a chamber, connect your tank of chopped up feces to it and the water should come off readily. A little gentle centrifuging will get the water to collect.
"In other words, it's a cultural and social problem, and those are always slow, difficult and expensive to fix. Which is why politicians want to do something quick, easy and cheap (for them) instead. It won't work, but they're "doing something"."
So the whole banning advertising (to stop people thinking its a good idea in the first place) and putting a floor price on alcohol (so the borderline people think "OK maybe 1 bottle, not 2 this time") won't stop an alcoholic.
But it will substantially reduce the next generation of would-be alkies.
Again this strategy is like the cigarette strategy. It's taken a generation, but it's cut the source by 50%.
And yes. I know both heavy smokers and heavy drinkers.
"In my case, I dont smoke (major cause) , drank 2 pints of beer a day(ok a bit much maybe but nowhere near damaging levels), exercised(a major prevention), ate decently ie no pizzas/ready horsemeat meals(another prevention) and I STILL got heart disease......"
Which raises the question how many generations of your family died of heart attacks? Heat disease is like breast cancer and if you're a women and several female relatives have it that's a pretty big clue you've got problems above the average.
You're the inverse to Lemmy from Motorhead (bottle of whiskey a day and a diabetic). How can he not have heart trouble?
You might call it luck but I'll suspect he's better genetically equipped to metabolize alcohol, and it's breakdown products.
That's the "bad luck" people talk about in this argument.
For those TL:DR types here's the quick version.
Ban advertising of alcohol, not alcohol. In the UK you'll still be able to go into any shop or pub that sells alcohol and if over age buy it, just as you can a pack of cigarettes or a bag of tobacco.
Put a minimum price on a unit of alcohol. In the UK the alcoholics drink of choice is cider, which is taxed at a lower rate than other drinks. High alcohol cider is readily available (c8.5% alcohol). Note that "units" seem to be by volume and type of drink but in reality it's the % of Ethanol that matters.
In fact if this policy were applied to all drugs, along with making them legal, it would be the start of a revolution in the way the some parts of the Western world relate to recreational drug use.
"SpaceX is (was?) a front-runner,"
Is, given OSC is months away from their first launch, despite them being the "safe pair of hands." They are the only player that have launched, are launching and have a manifest of stuff to launch.
"and this is a pretty significant set-back for them."
No it's not. The vehicle is in orbit. They are working the problem as any supplier would and they have backups in place to over ride the problem to continue the mission. Significant would be a failed launch.
It is an issue that this is the 2nd launch to ISS that has had problems. However it could be argued that finding bugs during this and the remaining 10 resupply missions is a very much better way to find them than when they are in a position to carry (or begin to carry) crew.
BTW The sub editing on this article was not good. Thee technical term for them are "Thrusters," not boosters (that was the 1st stage of the F9).
NASA specs 3 clusters working, but Spacex have simmed a berthing with 2.
Re-entry can be done with 1 cluster working.
The propellant system worked fine on all 4 clusters. The problem was in the GHe pressurization system in 3 of them. Cleared it by repeatedly opening and closing the valves to this tank. This system will return to Earth so they can study it. It sounds like a duff batch of Helium with some water or CO2 in it.
NASA people very complimentary about how Spacex handled it. Calm, methodical. No premature conclusions, tested hypotheses for proof. I got the impression they were afraid Spacex staff would go headless chicken on them but they stayed rock solid.
The crewed version of Dragon will not have solar panels. it will run on batteries only. Cargo Dragon can run about 14 hours without panel deployment and about 1 month without berthing to ISS. The batteries on crew Dragon will be much bigger (but they'll re-enter if they can't dock fairly quickly. A few days at most).
Please. No Tesla battery jokes.
"The thing is we rarely know about issues other craft & missions may experience. SpaceX has the rather unenviable responsibility to report on every little thing: Investors, contract holders, and the public "
Want them certainly.
Actually only NASA, as the customer (or the FAA, who are involved in this) has anywhere near the power to demand them.
Spacex is a private company. They don't have to tell the public anything, although obviously they feel its better business to let the world know what's going on. NASA does the same and the Russians (I think) are coming round to being more open.
"At which point it really will be a case of "There goes the neighbourhood""
To be clear that is "There goes the neighbourhood" in the sense of being converted into a cloud of radioactive dust.
I suppose the other reason would be the notion it suggests America is a country full of trigger happy nut jobs will will inevitably graduate to home nukes.
To which I would say either accept that's how parts of the world views you or do something about it.
The choice is entirely yours.
"Um, no, in the U.K. you are more likely to kill the robot with a long, lethal kitchen knife. That's how how you blokes like to kill each other without guns. A bit sloppier, as it takes longer to bleed out from a knife wound, which is why the U.K. has one of the highest violent crime rates in the civilized world."
And too scared to post with your name on a UK website.
That's a ROTLFAO moment.
But seriously do you know anything about murder and crime rates in the G20?
But recently I heard Americans are trying to do something about this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xr8PQDoZXSo
"We all know the real reason they called in the robot team...
Neither of the first responders were going to fit through the doorway."
You're not sure suggesting the average American police officer is a wobblebottom little broader in the beam than is convenient for getting through the average door are you?
"Can't wait for the report from America when one of these is destroyed by an RPG7 or other anti-tank weapon that the American householder happenes to have stashed under his bed. Now that would be news."
No doubt will a statement along the lines of
"Hey, the 2nd amendment allows me to bear arms in the defense of my home. It don't way what arms I can carry, right?"
Of course you know it's only a matter of time before one of them has one something bigger stashed under their bed. At which point it really will be a case of "There goes the neighbourhood"
The trouble with kit build houses is they tend to be all or nothing propositions and this system allows a more "incremental" approach to building a house.
It combines the use of standard components (Like a Segal house) with the potential for unique (or at least highly tailored) designs.
It has been done with cars (the "Africar" project, despite it's unfortunate ending).
But why no love for Autoclaved Aerated Concrete?
"What makes this catalyst different to standard DMFC tech?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_methanol_fuel_cell"
Let me see.
DMFC 1% methanol in solution. New cell 100% Methanol
DMFC low efficiency at 1 atm/lowish temp . New cell Good efficiency at those conditions.
DMFC non intermediate H2 generation. New cell reforms Methanol into H2 at 1/2 the temperature and 1/20th the pressure.
The internet is a remarkable mechanism for increasing anyone's knowledge about almost any subject.
Perhaps you might try using it, otherwise you'll be posting AC for some time to come.
Lots of routes to produce Methanol, including carbon neutral if you start from fast growing biomass. Yeast make Ethanol, which is more complex. for example
No insane levels of compression/cooling needed to store Hydrogen, requiring c3x the energy to make the H2 in the first place.
Temperature/pressure levels well below historical systems giving big savings in hardware construction. Those values are well below continuous maximum use temperatures of several plastics.
Hydrogen consumed as it is made. That 25L/sec IE 1 mole/sec would never be seen in practice and there would be no 25L tank of GH2 on the vehicle.
Catalyst life is poor (so far) but note catalysts are "poisoned" they are not destroyed and in industry "regenerating" a catalyst bed is SOP, as is recovery and recycling of spent catalyst.
The joker is how much Ruthenium do you need for a reasonable sized vehicle.
Same as a catalytic converter? OK. Same as a gold bar. Not OK.
Thumbs up for some tricky chemistry which might make Hydrogen a more viable fuel.
"I'll get stuck into awk and take a hard look at ML just for kicks."
You might like to take a look at Gnu AWK (or GAWK)
There appears to be a version (4.0?) that allows indirection through the contents of an array (AWK uses content addressable arrays so for the right array the text "red" "green" "blue" are just as valid indexes into an array as 1,2,3 (but not the same array.
This indirection allows you to implement that favorite C idiom the array of pointers to functions, eliminating complex logic to decide which function to call to process some input.
Sadly this does not appear to be available in the Windows binaries.
ML is a macro processor. Like M4 it processes any type of file. Unlike these it is not line orientated and not character based. It processes groups of characters as a group (called "atoms" in the docs). In essence it looks for patterns of them (described as "delimiters" and "arguments") and replaces whichever ones you tell it to. It will then (depending on what you tell it to do) go over the replacement text and replace any macro calls it finds (or not, if you tell it to skip over it). Atoms can be single characters including punctuation.
An m4 macro def looks like a programming language function definition and its call much like a programming language function call, sometimes with parameters.
ML is much more free format. Once it finds the first macro delimiter (IE the macro name, which can be multiple atoms) it then looks for the argument (which can also be multi atom) and the next delimiter and so on, then replaces it by the what follows "AS" in the definition (including the start and end markers, or not as the case may be).
This flexibility does mean that you need to tell it what the "skip" and "insert" atoms (1 or more characters) are to begin with. That means you can process virtually any kind of file contents. The patterns can internally repeat and things like counts of the the number of delimiters and arguments are held in internal (accessible) variables. Including setting up the insert and skip delimiters it can do an infix -> Polish notation conversion in 4 lines.
Downsides. AFAIK its 1 character variable names and the Windows version can only chew on 5 input files at at time (I/O for different OS's is described in different appendices of the user manual, which are separate files). It's flow control is more GOTO/label than anything modern (it dates from the late 60's). It's graph node notation is especially tricky to get used to and it's case sensitive on input, which is starting to look like the big low level design mistake of otherwise excellent languages and tools.
The big one is it's so flat out different from M4 you may have trouble getting your head round it. Effectively you draw a template of what it has to look for. Normally it then takes what it finds in the gaps and drops that into whatever you have defined as the output. I'd say you can come close to re-modelling virtually any language into any other with it if you can figure out how to tell it what to do with the input.
And it's interactive by default, so you can play around quite a lot.
Bottom line. Lots of opportunity for mayhem.
Is that not somewhat impressive?
Amazing what you can do if you abandon needing some kind of common language runtime.
BTW for those who feel assembler lacks data structure and security. It's all in the macro support in the assembler, or a very flexible macro processor like ML
If you can figure out how to make it work. :)
It is the ability to remotely coerce another brain into carrying out what you want them to do.
The neat part of this is they seem to have tried out various locations for the electrodes to get the best results. So they are sharpening up the tools for this exercise.
That does not sound much like some kind of organic networked computer to me. More like the descendents of MKSearch/ MKUltra.
I'd agree the Phol/Kornbluth novel "Wolfbane" is very good example of the supposed purpose of this idea. Likewise I can see the point of being able to descramble the actual optic nerve signals to enable advanced prostheses. As described so far not so sure.
Highly suspicious.
And as long as space is a programme, not a place to go it always will be.
BTW The Apollo astroanauts who got off the ground have all lived to fairly ripe old ages. They got cataracts a few years earlier than expected.
An interesting comparison on the Mars journey was the increase in risk of getting cancer would be the same as smoking a pack of cigarettes a day on the flight.
It's a cliche but some people have done that for decades without having cancer. That's not "luck," that having few or no cancer precursor genes in their DNA coupled with cancer resistant variants of those genes that are prone to turning cancerous, possibly assisted by a diet with a higher level of anti oxidants in it. The "luck" is being born with that combination of genes in the first place. If they had the average mix genes they'd have left various bits of themselves in surgery and a load of hair in chemo by now.
Benefits. Everyone wants them, no one wants to pay for them.
Sorry folks but the global economy still runs on some means of exchange. IE Cash. Processing, storage and bandwidth have all gotten cheaper but that does not mean they are free
Then there is the screen real estate on mobiles. If it's small enough to fit in your pocket who would want 25-50% (of not a lot) of their screen taken up with this? I've got to admit ElReg on a compute without adblock is a very different experience.
I think the fairest way is that the advertiser pays you
For your attention EG, you accept x% of your screen will take ads, possibly with you telling them what you're interested in.
For your data. They want to know where you are, what you want etc. Pay you for it.
It seems everyone make money off this data except the source IE You.
I've noted when I try to be even handed I tend to get down voted. But you can't have it both ways. If some deal looks too good to be true, guess what, it is.
As endless tech pundits have pontificated for decades.
And maybe for mobile devices they are right. I don't get why more phones don't have a serious go at voice recognition, given that speech input/output is supposed to be a core capability.
But for fast high volume text input a panel filled with dish topped buttons looks the way to for the foreseeable future.
Of course people might mind less if the qwerty layout was not intentionally stupid, but with no consensus on a better one I guess we're stuck with it. But lets be frank, several of the others can stomp it into the ground for speed.
Guess I'm still waiting for that direct neural interface tech to read the text straight out of my brain, William Gibson style.
<sigh>
Because at the press conference they said the life support would be getting stripped down about as often as one of these.
Joking aside the record for the longest continuous period in space seems to be the Russian who was up for 274 days.
Likewise the ISS is re-supplied on roughly a monthly basis and it's said running an environmental control and life support system for 501 day is
And the endless fun to be had from the ISS piss water re-cycling system are well known.
While it's true nothing formerly exists there is a fair degree of certainty that they will a crew rated Dragon capsule and Bigelow has launched 2 generations of inflatable habitat already. . ECLSS is likely to be the long pole in this field. Developing a reliable (or at least on orbit repairable) closed cycle ECLSS is a major challenge.
Is the schedule tight? Very. Possible. Maybe. Will it look like the pictures? Probably not.
And BTW this really would be a case of going "Where no one has gone before."
"plus we have no practical method of radiation shielding once we are outside our own magnetosphere. Even the spacestation isnt perfect. There are a few lab ideas but not to the scale of a habitation module."
Apart from using a large bag of water and polythene for shielding
And launching at the minimum stage of the solar sun spot cycle (which is what they are targeting)
And the possibilities of using radioprotective additives to the atmosphere in the capsule.
And the possibilities for similar work on food.
It was a CFC, developed IIRC as a blood plasma substitute (yes this has been used as a plot device in at least one novel).
IIRC the space Shuttle fuel cell coolant was also a 3m product originally developed as a safer (less flammable) alternative to Carbon Tetrachloride and Chloroform. Sadly it was a CFC.
Novec 1230 (which I guess is what they are using) is described as a "Fluoroketone" and used as a Halon replacement as a fire suppressant. So a bit of Flourine but no Chlorine.
Thumbs up for clever thinking. Given others have suggested it before what's their Special Sauce (C Lewis Page)?
"Reputation is very important of course; especially for banks and major corporations who need our trust to operate. "
Not to mention the suppliers of Public Key Encryption software to those banks & corporations.
Not mentioning any names of course.
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