Posts by Martin Budden 2493 publicly visible posts • joined 27 Apr 2007
I think this may be the first comment so far which shows a good attitude toward being a father.
Daughters should *not* be locked away until they are 56. Shotguns (and even jokes about shotguns) are *not* appropriate. Listen to your daughter, be there for her, support her, by all means give gentle guidance but don't be pushy about it, and remember that it's better to allow her choice of beau into your home where you know she is safe than to drive her away through disapproval.
You speak the truth.
I was told about that trick by my high school biology teacher, so when a consultant tried it at medical school I was already wise to it and I did the finger switcheroo just like the consultant had. He noticed me switch, but the student next to me didn't...
It's not mythical, it's standard industry practise. Google does it: http://royal.pingdom.com/2007/04/11/fedex-still-faster-than-the-internet/.
"Ah but that was eight years ago" I hear you say. Good point: has the internet overtaken a van full of disks since then? If not, will it ever? These questions have been answered as only xkcd can: https://what-if.xkcd.com/31/.
Using my house as an example, your rail-gun idea isn't going to work:
1. I live much much further than 20-50 miles from the nearest (sea-connected) navigable water.
2. That mountain range I can see from my window is a pretty effective shield.
3. Even if I did live within 20-50 miles in an area with no significant topography, a rail-gun slug (or any kind of unguided artillery) isn't going to be single-house-accurate over that range because of all the wobbly air it must pass through.
As a homebrewer I can attest to the excellent efficiency of a counter-flow heat exchanger: near-boiling wort entering my plate chiller is cooled to around 20C in just a couple of seconds as it passes through, and the cold tap water flowing in the opposite direction comes out too hot to touch.
You do realise that an Archimedes screw operates at an angle and won't work vertically up a space elevator, don't you?
And do you have any idea how much power would be needed to lift enough water to make a noticeable difference to sea levels?
Finally (and assuming AGW sea-level rise is real, I really don't want to get into that debate here, let's just assume it is and carry on, ok), what do you think will happen to sea levels once climate returns to its "usual" state if we have removed so much water already? That's right, sea levels go down from "usual" levels.
any missed bacteria could cause an outbreak of dysentery, salmonella or something much worse
For such an outbreak to occur one of the astronauts would need to be already carrying "dysentery, salmonella or something much worse", which is very unlikely given the health checks carried out before leaving Earth. An occurrence of E. Coli food poisoning would be possible because it can exist in healthy people's lower intestine.
Sterilising poo is actually quite simple though, heat and/or UV light will do the trick, both of which are in plentiful supply on the ISS (due to all the unfiltered sunshine).
Google's News & Weather app on Android has a section called "Suggested for you" and for each article there it specifically asks me if I'm interested in the topic of that article: right now it is asking me "Are you interested in Archimedes?" with an up-thumb and a down-thumb. If I click the up-thumb then in the future I'll get more articles about Archimedes. I like this because I can down-thumb topics such as One Direction and never have to hear about them again.
Please keep in mind I was replying to a post which suggested that the majority of the 400 tons of water was for shielding and only a small amount of that would be needed as propellant: see my emphasis below. (p.s. I haven't checked the feasibility of Voland's right hand's proposal so I admit I am making one assumption there by accepting the hand's suggestion). This is important because it means much less than 400 tons would be needed to be lifted from Earth to LEO to be used as propellant.
The only way to provide reasonable shielding is if the astronauts are shielded by the propellant. 1m of water goes a very long way towards shielding both nuclear propulsion and cosmic rays. 1m tank + shield around a sphere with 10m radius is ~ 400 tons. If some of this water is used as a propellant to get to Mars orbit and back you are also looking at a journey time under 30 days.
It is a lovely chart, yes I've seen it before, and thanks for reminding me of it. What the chart shows is that the Δv needed to get from LEO to Mars (9.51) is pretty much the same as the Δv needed to get from Earth to LEO (9.4). So, it's do-able. Especially if Voland's right hand is correct and the propellant needed to go from LEO to Mars and back is only a small part of the 400 tons of water.
It always amuses me that so much effort can go into software development without any of the developers bothering to make notes on how to use their own software.
A long time ago I had to write train-the-trainer for some new software: the original functional spec was of some help. Between the spec and the finished product I was able to work out how it all worked (and I found & reported a few bugs along the way).
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