Re: Huuuuulaaaaa!

The chances of anything coming on Mars...

Re: Aiee!

Oh, that's alright then.

Re: Look out for ice

Would this affect the conductivity at all?

Re: Define "drilling"

Ah, misread article. Point noted.

Re: Define "drilling"

Also, it is worth remembering that the later Apollo flights had core sampling drills with them too.

There are quite a few of us "more mature" readers out here and we don't take kindly to being tarred by this brush (well I don't anyway).

Oy! Less about the age!

Re: Spider Robinson covered this a few years ago

Stephen Baxter has also played with this idea in the "Malifant" series of stories (Space, Time, Origin and Phase Space - especially Phase Space).

Re: Camera watching me, watching them...

Blob of Blu-Tak should do the job well.

Re: The Apple what?

I will agree with Mr Lewis here, I do think this is an indication of the Reg readership. Well, I am going to add some more fuel to the fire. As well as being a faithful follower of El Reg I have also been a subscriber to Which for the last twenty years. Over the years I have found these people quite reliable when they produce tests and comparisons. Ok, I agree that they may not be as technically inclined as the commentards here but that's not their audience. The one thing that keeps cropping up when they they test laptops, desktops, tablets and smartphones is that Apple keeps coming up near the top of their recommendations, if not the top.

It's not all unbridled praise from Which though, they do criticize Apple for a number of points that will be familiar to the Reg readership, particularly cost and upgrade ability of the recent consumer items. But it is noticeable that Apple kit fares well in their direct comparisons of kit.

As a whole though it does tend to recommend Apple products to a wider audience than the Reg readers, an audience that may be looking for a simpler experience with their computing kit and may not have a problem about such ideas as a "walled garden" (in fact they may even appreciate it as means of providing a level of security for their devices).

Now, I can see the reaction to this already. "Which are Apple shills/apologists", etc. Knowing the Consumer Association (the organisation that produces Which) I don't think so, they are fiercely independent and brook no nonsense when it comes to that kind of thing.

My position on this?

Neutrality with regard to tech, I have to work with Windows, Apple and Ubuntu boxes and I can see the ups and downs of all three platforms (but that's another post...). But, as I said, I do find Which to be reliable, I have used a lot of their recommendations when buying washing machines, TVs, DVD recorders and other stuff over the years and have not been disappointed (I have also taken their switching services advice and am quite happy with it). So I cannot ignore their comments over Apple.

If you want to call me a Which shill, that's ok, I've done well by them over the years.

Not necessarily.

True, Google has had bit of a booting over tax recently (though I have to admire their honesty over it!) but they have been supporting computing based activities in the UK for quite some time - look at their support for Bletchley Park.

While this can be seen as trying gain some good publicity after bad, I do think this is honestly meant by Google.

Re: nice sizzle reel, anyway...

Actually, Bernal Sphere is the colony design (conceived by J D Bernal in 1929!). The cylindrical design of colony comes from Gerard K O'Neill in 1976, in his book The High Frontier: Human Colonies in Space. His Island 1 concept used the Bernal Sphere as it's starting point.

A Dyson sphere is a structure that totally encloses a star as a means to fully exploit the energy given off by the star and to provide living space. Larry Niven used this as the jumping off point for his Ringworld concept as he felt this was more practical!

Sources (if you are interested in following up);

Bernal Sphere; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bernal_sphere

O'Neill Cylinder; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O'Neill_cylinder

Dyson Sphere; http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere

Larry Niven's Ringworld ( and a good description of Dyson sphere); His essay "Bigger Than Worlds", published in many places but in my collection in "Playgrounds of the Mind", 1991, Tor Books.

Re: Fifteen years earlier

Maybe so, but SpaceX have only flown this three times so far, Delta Clipper had a quite a few over several years! Give SpaceX their time and I think you will see something quite impressive.

Re: Fimo

looks like some left over uncooked pastry from someone mince pies to me...

Re: does the lego actually contribute to something?

Fun?

Besides, according to the article, once designed the kids had big hand in building it - easy to do with Lego.

Fair nuff!

I agree, not to see proof but just to see how it works. Things like this fascinate me.

The natural world is full of engineers, at all levels!

Re: If Obama had not grounded the Shuttle...

Er - no, shuttles could not be launched into polar orbits like the one the Korean satellite is in.

BTW, the shuttle grounding started with GWB, Obamha just followed through with it.

Re: This seems a bit mixed up...

Had a look at the orbital parameters of the bird earlier. It's perigee (lowest point in it's orbit) is 505 km (about 300 miles). That means it has a fair orbital life before it will reenter the atmosphere, probably about 10 years give or take 2. As was mentioned, it'll be tracked and any conflicts will be handled by moving the affected satellite out of the way if possible. The biggest worry is that the Korean satellite will fall to pieces before it's orbit decays. Then it becomes a much more difficult object to predict as there could be debris that can't be tracked properly and as the pieces bump against each other here could be slight changes in orbits to account for, not much of a change but the error will build up over time. I think the biggest worry for me would be any propellant tanks rupturing, that could have the effect of shredding the satellite and we would be looking at a cloud of debris that would spread out further the longer it stays in orbit.

Hope this helps.

Re: Puts "something" into orbit?

Unfortunately the X-37B, that was launched last night, is in a very different orbital plane to the Korean satellite. The Korean satellite is in a polar orbit and the X37 has been placed into a mid inclined orbit around the equator. True, the X37 has quite a high capability for orbital change and this will no doubt be used soon to confuse the satellite spotters, but I think that this kind of plane change would be beyond it. To be able to intercept the Korean satellite the X37 would have to be launched from Vandenburg into a polar orbit.

Interestingly, so far no one has commented on any kind of signal coming from the Korean bird, I wonder if it's inert or not worked as planned.

Re: Looks

Because this bit is set in the seventies perhaps?

Re: Newquay as a spaceport?

I don't anywhere in the UK would be suitable for a launch site, we're too far North to be practical. You could certainly build a runway for transit to a more suitable launch site and as the Skylon vehicle would not have to be fully fuelled for a sub-orbital hop (or even a Concorde like flight) to that site the runway would not have to be built as hard as the orbital launch site.

It has been said before, and I agree, the best launch site for a Skylon would be Ascension Island. Virtually on the equator so the perfect orbital launch site and still a British territory. There is already a military airbase there, run by the RAF for large aircraft. It doesn't take much imagination to see this being upgraded to handle Skylon orbital launches and it's main runway does run roughly East-West. NASA and the ESA both have a launch tracking presence on the Island so there is an infrastructure in place that can be accessed to prepare Skylon launch facilities. All in all a pretty good choice.

So, Ascension Island, Start investing in property there, it could be the gateway to orbit!

Re: Life?

...they say.

But -

The chance on anything staying on Mars are pretty good!

BTW has anyone worked out the chances of anything coming from Earth?

Re: And Lo!

Sweet!

no they don't

Don't forget Blur, they had a tune on Beagle that would have played to announce a successful landing...

Hmmmm...

Re: the joyride business

A lot has been made of the "joyride" aspect but no one has mentioned the science side. It seems that Virgin has already taken money from labs wanting to fly experiments and test equipment in microgravity. Without the suborbitals the other ways are 30 second chunks. in a vomit comet or try to get a space on ISS or some other satellite.

These suborbital beasties do have a serious application.

Re: Africa

What about Ascension Island? Close to the equator (closer than Kennedy) and already has a military airport runway capable of handling big aircraft (Vulcans and Victors during the Falklands war) and has NASA and ESA tracking facilities. And still British controlled, sounds good to me.

Human spaceflight hardware

Life support, food, water, seats, spacesuits, cargo for the mission, survival equipment, toilet facilities.

Soon all adds up you know.

Watch the film

If you watch this scene from the beginning you see that one of the astronauts carries his pad to the table before he watches it. However there is some truth in what you say. The "video" on the pads is a 16 mm movie projected onto the screen from beneath the table, like every screen on the spacecraft ( ref The Making of Kubrick's 2001, Ed Jerome Agel 1970). Arthur Clarke called the device a Newspad.

Andrew Newstead

APU Exhaust

Those flames are the exhausts of the auxilary power units which provide hydraulic power for the orbiter's aerodynamic control surfaces (rudder and elevons). The APU burns hydrazine to drive the pumps for the system and has to have exhaust vents. The flames from the APU are not visible in daylight and you only see them on night landings. The hydrazine is nasty stuff and is the reason for all the trucks that follow the orbiter up the runway, blowing the fumes away and ventilating the rear of the orbiter to make it safe fro people to work around after landing.

The hydrazine APU was one of the systems that was proposed for replacement as part of a major upgrade that NASA was planning to the Shuttle system before the Columbia disaster. It would have been replaced with an electrically driven system like that used on a lot of modern aircraft now days.

Hope this clears up this mystery

Andrew Newstead

Me too

CE4 - cracking camera. Still got it and still works. Not used it for a while since going digital, though.

Chinon is not like the other Dixon brands, it was actually an independant Japanese camera company that Dixon's were the sole UK importer for. It had quite a good reputation for it's lenses, I still use my CE4's 50 mm lens on my digital SLR in manual mode - fast and bright.

Chinon used the Pentax mounting formats like a few camera manufacturers (Practika for example), this allowed them to take advantage of lots of 3rd party lenses made for Pentax cameras.

How about

Midsommer for next years Hols?

Unfortunately...

Product placement has taken the edge off what used to be a rather good way of adding realism to a science fiction film. Kubrik did it with 2001 as a way to ground his audience with the reality of his future images. There are many logos around the film but they are in context and subtly placed so as to extend a realism. Many other films of the period used the device too.

Bladerunner, on the other hand, may have gone a little over the top...

And as for Alien/s, well we all buy from Weyland-Yuttani now - don't we?