Downside of retro-rockets

Just an observation: It seems so obvious to use rockets here that one might wonder why they aren't used more extensively.

Well, besides additional complexity and risk (over-and-above the already complex and risky 'chutes) is weight: Using parachutes gives you a "free" slow-down by using the atmosphere, whereas the additional rocket-fuel is extra weight you have to take up with you in the first place, and thus reducing your useful payload.

Of course, on the Moon you have no significant atmosphere, but the reduced gravity-well allows you to use smaller retro-rockets. Mars is a problem: There's a bit of atmosphere, but much less than Earth's, but a much higher gravity than the Moon.

Which just makes the whole NUCLEAR-POWERED, LASER-ARMED TANK ON MARS project so much more awesome. That landing system used a complex arrangement of both rockets and parachutes, and it worked flawlessly.

@Oliver Smith

I think you're confusing *design* age with *aircraft* age. The design of the Blackhawk may be old, but the examples the army would be buying would be new-build. Whereas the Pumas, apparently, really are 30yo flying accidents-waiting-to-happen.

Odd, it seems straightforward to me, but this is the second time I've seen someone make this same error. Perhaps Lewis can word things a bit more clearly in future?

@ Useful research please

The moon and the Earth were seperated at birth. Things we learn about the Moon's geology mmight give us clues to unlock some of the secrets of Earth's geology. And maybe not. And the only way we'll know is to go there and try! That's what exploration and research are all about: Finding stuff you never knew existed.

Also, please remember that, despite the eye-wateringly high price-tags on NASA missions, the _entire_ NASA budget, including Earth observation missions, terrestrial aeronautical research, and unmanned missions, is still only about 1% of the US Federal budget.

When politicians slash NASA budgets they're really just grand-standing for the public. The actual influence on the budget is negligible.

Alien rock on alien planet

@By Steen Hive

"Something "Alien" managed to hit the martian surface without leaving a great big bloody hole?"

Actually, small meteorites don't make holes on earth. If they're small enough they get slowed down to mere "terminal velocity" before they hit the ground.

Of course, that's on Earth. The definition for "small enough" is much, err, smaller on Mars, given that the tenuous atmosphere would slow down an incoming meteor much, much less. So you may still have a point.

Anybody else got any ideas how this rock could have got there without making a mess of the surrounding surface?

@TeeCee

So you figure a fit human is less attractive to EATR than a mouse-potato like myself? That's not good!

But it is like a shark: Apparently sharks only eat humies by mistake, as we taste absolutely horrible: Stringy and sinewy compared to the blubber-insulated seals and fish they prefer. Not enough energy in a human to balance the energy used in catching the things!

@Klaus

Since the wireless signal probably has to travel no more than a centimeter or two, and can probably be isolated from interference by a layer of tin-foil inside the gun, I doubt that jamming or spoofing will be much of a problem.

I'm sure the designers have come up with other safeguards, too. They've had enough time and been paid enough money to do so! Just how long has this development program been dragging on?

WIKILEAKS Mirror

"can their site be distributed over multiple servers?"

IIRC, that is exactly what they already do. Multiple sites across multiple jurisdictions. Makes a meaningful take-down rather tricky to achieve.

Please remind me...

I've been ignoring the iPhone for so long now I'd forgotten all its glaring omissions. No cut-and-paste, no tethering, no MMS, one app open at a time. That's just primitive! BTW, how's the Bluetooth stack looking these days? The last I heard it stank, but that was a while ago.

So can anybody tell me just why people like it so much? Is it the Jobsian Reality Distortion Field?

Having gotten used to all these features on *much* cheaper mid-range phones, it would irritate the blazes out of me to suddenly have them taken away. That's why even a free-with-contract offer didn't tempt me - I'd rather pay more for a supposedly inferior phone, such as the N85.

And I know it's probably childish, but I just don't like the way I can only do what Steve and his marketroids tell me I can do. What features I "don't need". What network I can use. What apps I can use, and where I can buy them. Making me pay twice for the same song if I want to use it as a ring-tone, or, potentially, make me pay extra to send bytes to my laptop.

In his essay "In the Beginning was the Command Line", Neal Stephenson described the Apple corporate culture as one with a slick image of openness, non-conformity, and general "coolness". But behind this entirely artificial facade, it's really being run by sinister control-freaks. Probably a bit harsh, but more than just a grain of truth in it.

@Who gave these morons the power to confiscate property?

AC: "It's only a matter of time till some security moron tries to confiscate a really valuable brooch (say ten times the security moron's annual salary) because it has a "dangerous" pin."

Already happened. Except it wasn't worth 10x the id10t's annual gross - It was literally priceless:

http://www.aero-news.net/columns/avsoapbox.cfm?ContentBlockID=38b4d817-25b7-4629-b664-80683acad131&

(A WW2 vet and ex-State Governor nearly had his Congressional Medal of Hono(u)r confiscated.)

IOW...

...they want a decent AI. They've just come up with a few new, insightful criteria. But it's still the same AI that scientists have been failing to produce for half-a-century or more.

What difference does it make that DARPA tells the world that they want this? It's been a bloody obvious goal for a very long time now. People will be working on this whether or not they they have official knowledge that DARPA will want it. They've known that implicitly for decades!

It's not like DARPA have created some new Grand Challenge with a clear, unambiguous, challenging yet realistic goals. It's not like they're putting any money on the table at all.

Unless I'm just not getting it, this seems like nothing more than an excuse to show some more Powerpoint slides.

@Matt

Actually, they really are intending to do that. You must be psychic!

They're only firing inert rounds for now, while they're trying to get the basic gun to work. But other people are working on how the hell to make a GPS guidance system that will survive kilo-G accelerations. They really do want "Which window do you want it to go through?" levels of accuracy, even after a 200km flight.

The Army managed to get this idea to work with the Copperhead anti-tank artillery round. But I'm guessing the acceleration of a rail-gun round is a couple of orders of magnitude greater still

Nukular!

The excess heat from nuclear power-plants can apparently be used to help crack water. So while it is true that it takes a shed-load of energy to produce H2, it doesn't matter as much if much of that energy would have been wasted anyway.

And producing H2 from natural gas is not a long-term strategy, either, because we'd still be relying on fossil fuels and still pouring CO2 into the atmosphere.

Does anyone know when or if methanol fuel-cells will scale up to car-powering sizes?

Chimps are bad news

I believe the problem is that adult chimps are just as obnoxious, bad-tempered, violent and downright murderous as their cousins Homo Sapiens. Just 6x stronger! Thus they are very hard to control, and capable of dishing out extraordinary amounts of damage to the comparatively puny human physiology.

Those few crazed humans that think that the best way to to save the planet is to destroy mankind in its entirety really should consider taking out the chimps, too. Leave the world to the gorillas (deceptively gentle giants) or to the bonobos (too busy having to sex to be violent).

Coupl'a points on the ravings of others

1) The Kursk: This incident has no bearing on the Kursk tragedy. Even at the time, everyone already knew that there was an American sub in the area, spying on the Russian fleet operations. Which means it had to get damn close, leading everyone to suspect that a collision was the cause of the disaster.

Due to the partial failure of the salvaging operation, there will probably never be a definitive answer: The USA insists that it was a dud torp (and poor sub design) and the Russians will insist that it was a collision with a nosey and irresponsible Yank sub.

2) The subs deliberately shadowing each other: If this really was the case, one or both captains would deserve to be shot! Hunting boomers is a job for dedicated attack subs, not for other boomers.

A boomer's job is to be always ready to destroy a small country at a moment's notice*. Something that is hard to do if you're playing silly buggers with another nation's boomer. So we'd be talking serious dereliction of duty on the part of the captains, which I judge rather unlikely. No nation will leave the keys to their only boomer in the hands of an irresponsible idiot.

*) Unless, of course, the boomer in question is a Russian Typhoon. Their job is to be always ready to destroy a LARGE country at a moment's notice. Can you imagine 200 warheads each of 200kT** yield? That's gonna leave a mark!

**) More than 10 Hiroshima-sized bombs (13-18kT)

3) Men have died under these circumstances before. As noted in the article, collisions were relatively common during the Cold War. I've read about one such incident where the Soviet sub struck the American sub's sail with its prop. The prop-shaft was bent so far out of shape that the water-seal ruptured. The sub filled up so quickly that there wasn't time to seal the bulkheads, and she imploded just a few minutes later.

(Obviously these details had to be inferred from the damage to the American sub, and the recordings of that sub's passive sonar. No-one on the Soviet sub survived, and I doubt anyone ever even found the wreckage.)

Laws of chance...

@Tim Spence

I think it's not only plausible, nut inevitable that this would happen sooner or later. While I agree that the volumes we're talking about here are ginormous, we do have thousands of satellites up there, many of them criss-crossing each other's orbits. Sooner or later, there will be a collision.

If you keep lobbing those peanuts, 100 times a day (figure dragged from a handy orifice), for 40 years (roughly how long we've had artificial satellites) they're going to connect eventually.

F**king cowards?

If there's one thing that the patent trolls must have noticed it's IBM et al stomping on, grinding into the dirt, and then setting fire to the remains of SCO. While not actually a patent dispute, it illustrates a universal point: If you're going to be a bully, don't pick on kids bigger than you, for crying out loud! You'll get what you deserve, in spades.

RTFA

To all the hard-of-thinking who have recommended earplugs: The bloody article states that theyve already tried that, to no avail.

And this story does not help Emirates. They'd be admitting that their cattle-class is a miserable, noisy, sleep-depriving place.

But it does look good for Airbus, and whichever engine-maker they chose.

No joke

There's a tendency to react with "Oh the poor little darlings. Now they know how we feel, stuck in cattle class for the whole flight".

But it's actually not a joke. The last thing I want is for the pilot landing the plane to be sleep-deprived!

But I also note with amusement that now even the pilots have to suffer for the sake of the comfort of the well-heeled. And we're still waiting for our luxury shopping level/gym/what-hav-you -equipped flying hotel. :-)

@Stu (cool name, btw.)

"[T]hat quite chunky fighter aircraft" you're thinking of is probably the US A10, aka The Warthog.

Just two niggles: It's not a mini-gun. I think the term "mini-gun" refers only to Gatling guns under 20mm, and usually "just" 7.62mm. The A10's weapon is a terrifying 30mm!

Secondly, it's not so much a plane with a nose-mounted gun as it is a gun with a breech-mounted airplane! :-)