Posts by I ain't Spartacus

Re: Very true.

Smallbrainfield,

There's nothing wrong with adding water to whisky. That's a sensible thing to do. Some taste nicer with a drop of water. I can't remember trying a single whisky both ways, where even just a splash of water doesn't make a noticeable (to large) difference to the taste. Some I prefer with, others without.

The problem with ice is cold, not wet. Chilling whisky destroys most of the flavour. Or at least turns it off until you warm it up again.

So what they've done is to remove any possible good aspects of what ice can do to whisky, and kept only the bad effects. That's magic! The fact that he's asking for start-up funding to make something that's already been available for years, is just icing on the cake of pointlessness.

Aren't they already doing this?

The Chiltern Railways line is being hooked up to Oxford via Bicester at the moment. Then once this is done, they're re-activating the line between Oxford and Bedord.

A quick Google later: link to project

Turns out they've only got funding and approval for the Aylesbury-Oxford-MK-Bedford bit so far. It would seem a bit illogical not to then continue it, as new infrastructure appears to be in fashion again politically, and this route has already covered 2/3rds of the distance.

Also, why more transport links for a hub at King's Cross. It's already easy to get trains to Paddington from Oxford, and Liverpool Street from Cambridge. Surely it's not beyond the wit of our putative tech-pioneers to get a tube and meet in the middle at King's Cross. Or even walk...

Hell if things get too desperate, there are even buses.

Re: Prehaps we need to understand the core problem

You're certainly right about the change. Society can't keep up with changes this fast. Legislation doesn't move that fast either. So not many people have even formed a solid opinion on what the internet should and should not do.

But there's no problem with legislating for Google. Sure it's a huge multi-national. But it makes tens of billions of dollars of sales in Europe per year. And those sales are for advertising to European customers. In the end the EU can control that revenue stream (at least to some extent), and that gives it control over Google.

It's still possible to set up in a different jurisdiction and shout "ya boo sucks to you EU", and publish what you want. So long as it's legal where you are. And so long as you have no financial or physical ties to the jurisidction you're ignoring the laws of, you'll be safe. But Google are about the money, and the EU is a market of half a billion of some of the richest people in the world.

In my personal opinion, some aspects of the internet are currently under-regulated / under-governed. The chances are that that will change gradually. Knowing how society tends to work, I suspect that we may be heading for over-regulating it, and then the pendulum will swing back to a better balance somewhere in between.

Re: Competing with Soyuz...

MacroRodent,

That's interesting, I'd not read about that as a radiation shielding option. I'd imagine that still puts our ship in the range of 10-20 launches (including, consumables, flight and assembly crews) - so the Earth-to-orbit costs alone are going to be somewhere between $5bn and $20bn.

Although hopefully this will be a re-usable asset.

Re: Competing with Soyuz...

Tom 13,

I don't think your solution works. We simply don't have the technology to build anything in space. And we're not even close. The ISS was assembled, but mostly that was just bolting big stuff together. Plus a bit of plumbing. So everything on the main ship that drives to Mars is going to be built in modules on Earth, then lifted to orbit. So in order to have heavy shielding we're going to have use an absurdly large number of launches to get it up there, and then huge amounts of time doing the final assembly in orbit.

I agree that some sort of electric plasma engine is probably the way to go, and it would seem sensible to spend money on our big ship, as it can be continually refurbished and reused. Even if you had to launch another engine module from Earth every time it came back here, rather than trying to refurb the old one.

However, one of the arguments from the article is to use the Orion capsule as a lifeboat. If it can cope with high velocities for landing, then you might have a viable emergency return home option. If something horrible goes wrong with the main ship on the way to Mars, or even the way back, nothing is likely to be able to carry the fuel to decelerate you to Earch orbital speed so you can rendevouz with a landing craft. But being less massive than the main ship, you might be able to get within a sane speed to survive aeorbraking. Now it's possible that a Dragon 3 could do this as well, but I believe Dragon 2 is only designed for orbital re-entry speeds. Although Dragon ought to be a better bet for landing on Mars, as it's designed to land on dry land on its jets.

I think my idea would be to have several multi-purpose craft for all the landings, then a ship to do the long-haul bit that carries them and their fuel between planets. So a bigger Dragon, with better radiation shielding, and better heat shields. That way you've got more options if things go wrong. But it might make more sense to have separate Mars landers.

However I'm not sure Mars is the right question. It seems to me we need fuel and consumables. So capturing an asteroid seems a far better long term plan. That also saves a lot of the difficulties of landing on Mars. Although if we could use Mars as an excuse to build a ship to get us around the solar system, then I guess it would be a good first step.

Re: Why a heat shield?

JohnB,

What it seems to amount to is that this is the only way down, while we're launching stuff into space from Earth. One of the best reasons to go grab an asteroid and mine it, would be to get consumables like water/amonia/whatever. In orbit you've got virtually free electricity from your solar panels, so if you've got chemicals then you can get oxygen to breathe, water to drink (and grow plants) and nitrogen for atmosphere and fertilizer. If you've got water and electricity you've also got hydrogen and oxygen - i.e. rocket fuel.

If we could just get that sort of bulky stuff in space, rather than boosting it up from earth, then all sorts of things in space become much more feasible. As well as a lot less expensive, and a bit less dangerous. At that point we could have re-usable spaceplanes that refuel in orbit and can then slow down from orbital speeds before entering the atmosphere. Some horrific percentage of the shuttle's weight was heat-shield, and an even more horrific percentage was fuel.

We have these fundamental design problems that dog everything that we do. All the weight you carry up from earth must be accelerated to orbital speeds (17,500 mph ish). And the more you carry, the more fuel you need to launch it, and the more fuel you carry, the more fuel you need to lift that fuel. Which is why we mostly throw away bits of our rockets on the way up. And of course, to come back down, you have to lose that 17,500 mph somehow. Currently that's by aerobraking.

Now you could do like aeroplanes, and use lift to help get you up to a good height, before heading for space, but even then you need rockets for once you run out of atmosphere. And then you have to carry these, plus your jets, plus fuel for both, and a heat shield, as you can't carry enough fuel to slow down.

So Virgin's (Scaled Composite's really) design is to use well understood jet technology to carry their space plane to 50,000 feet. That saves loads of weight, and hassle. Then the spaceplane does the rest. Currently they're just after sub-orbital joyrides - but I presume they can also carry a smaller rocket to boost a satellite, instead of passengers with another design. I don't know if you can make a big enough carrier plane to carry a space vehicle with the weight of fuel and shielding to get a useful payload to orbit. But I'd be surprised if that's not possible.

Option 2 is what SpaceX are doing. Make rockets cheaper. No-one's seriously done re-designs on this stuff since the 60s/70s. So they dumped horrible chemicals or hard to handle liquid hydrogen. Instead they're using liquid oxygen and kerosene. Nice money saving. Then they're planning to land the first stage of their rockets instead of dumping them. So you carry a little more fuel, then land them and re-use.

Third is Reaction Engines. They're the old HOTOL lot, still going, but now Skylon. Use a SABRE engine that works like a jet at low speeds, then gets up to supersonic RAMJET speeds, and then will have to use stored oxygen once the atmosphere's too thin.

Oh, and there's an XKCD for everything apparently: linky

Re: The reason Orion was nearly scrapped ...

Flocke Kroes,

The ISS is a perfectly reasonable thing for a space program to fund. It may be bloody expensive, particularly compared with what $100 bn-odd would buy in robot missions over 30 years, but if we want to have a permanent manned space habitat in future then we need to do this stuff. There's still loads of research to do on space medicine and life support. Also we've gained, and are still gaining, useful experience in orbital construction (another vital area). After all, I believe nobody had even come close to drowning in space before last year...

The ISS is doing several very useful things. Fostering international space cooperation, and building a larger group of experienced space-trained people is pretty important for enabling a private space industry. ISS has given us SpaceX (maybe it would have happened without that seed money, but not this quickly), and SpaceX are in my opinion the single most important thing to happen in the space industry so far this century. They give a real hope that space won't remain a hobby for major governments. If we want stuff to happen in space, including cheaper research, it'll only happen when it becomes more accessible, and that will only come when it's cheaper. Also Improving our ability to assemble stuff in space, as well as keep people alive long-term (as above).

That's not to mention another vital job the ISS did, and probably one of the reasons it got funding out of Congress at all. Which was keeping the Russian space program going after the Soviet Union collapsed, which had two purposes. One was to try to build a more friendly relationship with Russia. The other was to stop their missile/rocket scientists from going onto the freelance market, and turning up in inconvenient places like Iran and North Korea.

Re: Wow.

Oddly enough it's considered more sporting to send up all manned capsules empty on their first run nowadays. It's this pesky health'n'safety thing you see.

Also any probe you send outside the van Allen belts to test what the shielding on a modern capsule is good for pretty much might as well be a capsule. Particularly as this is a double test, in that you want the eccentric orbit to get extra speed to test the heat shield anyway. So while you're outside the protection of the magnetic field anyway, you may as well do a little testing.

Anyway how long will the Russians be willing to share Soyuz? Or even be able to fund it? The contract is only to 2018 (from memory). Relations are not good, and look to be worsening.

Apparently Roscosmos are now unable to set a budget, as with sanctions and recession, plus the massive drop in both the oil price and the Rouble, the Russian budget has all gone to crap. As I recall it, something like 35% of the government income is based on oil/gas revenues. So when the oil price drops by 40% in a few months, and they can only borrow at 10% (worse than Greece), something will have to give in their budget. linky

That article seenms a bit over the top, would be interesting to see what it said in the original Izvestia one. Also the ISS partners pay in dollars for their trips, so Roscosmos will actually make more money on those as the Rouble falls.

Re: Hilarious maybe

I saw one of them telly chefs do that. I think it was Raymond Blanc (who otherwise seems to be a sensible chap), putting best steak into a kate & sidney pudding. Given it's going to get seared, then steamed for over 3 hours - I really don't know why he was wasting his time doing that. Plus you want something with a bit of fat in it, to make a nicer gravy.

I'm inspired to have a go now. Since I've started making bread, I'm hoping that my (long neglected) pastry skills will have improved. So I think I should have another go.

Re: Hilarious maybe

Ledswinger,

There's nothing wrong with not serving the best meat in pies. And actually a reasonable gravy content is important, as you need some nice liquid to go with the pastry. Although you don't want gristle or the nasty bits of kidneys hiding in there. Even if it is a right bugger when you have to trim it off - something I have to do regularly as a frequent maker of the superior steak and kidney pudding.

However poor quality of meat is a sign that you shouldn't be going back to a place. Because their product is crap. Whereas non-pie-ness is an all too common problem which the market does not appear to be able to solve. Hence we need government regulation to force compliance with reasonable standards.

A proper pie is a lovely thing to eat. But also a bit of a hassle to make. Therefore it's the sort of thing that we invented restaurants for. So they can do the buggering about, greasing, rolling, shaping, blind baking, filling, sealing etc. I always end up squashing my pastry flat, and turning it into biscuits. Which is why I've resorted to the more forgiving steamed pudding.

I suppose we need to add another exception for cobblers, or whatever you call it when you stretch dough across the top of a casserole and bake it. Actually I think they might be two different (delicious) things. They're really nice, and easy to eat, as you rip off some bread and dip it in the gravy Not like those awful puff pastry hats, that so many places foist on us.

Re: Originally, the pastry wasn't even edible

Surely that depends on the pie? I know that the cornish pasty had what was effectively an inedible pastry handle to hold it by with dirty hands. That was the bit you left - but the rest of the pastry was supposed to be eaten. I'd imagine similar things being true elsewhere. When you're trying to feed people who're taking their meal to work, then you need something to keep it in. But if you're cooking for home, you'd not want to be wasting any ingredients. It's not like flour and fat was lying around just to be thrown away!

Edible plates were the thing, back in the day. So you might serve stew on a trencher of bread, which you eat to mop up the gravy. I'd be amazed if a pie was much different.

Re: It's all too complicated

Andy Davies,

This is pretty much the definition of a 'first world problem'. But I don't like having to get up to pick a new song, so having the device wired to the sound system is annoying. It's OK when you put on an album to play in the background, but if you feel like listening to lots of different stuff, it's nice to have the controller by your chair.

Obviously I could be organised, and have playlists, or be less lazy and get up off my fat backside. But on the other hand it's nice to sit there with a drink, and chat to friends while passing round the iPad and letting people pick some tunes.

It's not worth £100 though. Which is why I currently have to get up. Although my player allows me to use the remote control to skip tracks within the album/artist/playlist the device is playing, for iOS and Android.

Re: It's all too complicated

I just saw an ad for an Asus 7" tablet for £79. Why not just leave one of those there? I'm actually quite tempted to buy one, or maybe a cheap Android phone, as a replacement for my iPod. It can do podcasts when I'm out-and-about, without killing the work phone battery. The work phone is an iPhone, and only has a pathetic 8GB of storage anyway. A 'Droid with an SD card slot solves that problem, for my 25GB of audio + podcasts. Then when at home, it can be the remote for BBC iPlayer, podcasts and music. As well as a Chromecast. Should I bother to get a NAS, (or leave the computer running as a media server), it can control that as well. Or Tesco's Hudl, which is dirt cheap if you use Clubcard points, and not bad if you don't.

Then you just need a Bluetooth connector for music. Or USB.

Android tablets are now so cheap that they're going to beat almost any decently specc'ed dedicated controller made in low volumes. Then you just write an app. Or even don't bother selling and locking down dedicated hardware, just do apps.

Re: "think of the god-awful Indianna Jones 4."

Shrimpling,

Good point. Now it's coming up to Christmas, do you think they'll ever make a sequel to Die Hard?

Re: or...

Stealth paint isn't magic. It's the shape that makes stealth planes hard for radar to detect. Not having any large flat surfaces for the radar to give a simple return off, but to be all angular, so it reflects off in different directions. That's going to make solar panels particularly problematic, as they have to be folded for launching, and then unfold into exactly the large, flat surfaces you're trying to avoid. I guess that's where you consider using a nice RTG power source instead. I'm sure the Russians have got the odd spare bit of plutonium lying about they could use.

Another problem is moving around. If you fire your thrusters, you're easier to spot. Although I guess that depends on whether you're expecting to move far or not.