-
“Fame and riches can be yours! Procedural/action dramas are in and you too can create one if you just follow these very simple steps:
Always start with a couple. He must be boyishly handsome and she must be smoking hot. You can go “mature” but then one has to be an established television star, and the other has to be a J. Crew model. In rare cases you can go “both mature” (CSI: NEW YORK) but then one has to be a former movie star and the other has to be an established television star who’s had a lot of work done. A LOT of work done.
In the (many) scenes that the couple is together there must be equal parts forced banter and equal parts technical gobbledeegook that no one can understand. “
-
“One of Random House’s big books that spring was the diary of New York’s governor, Mario Cuomo. Whatever else Cuomo wanted for his book, outselling New York’s Mayor Ed Koch’s number-one bestseller was a key goal. That never happened. When Cuomo delivered the finest speech of his career at the San Francisco Democratic Convention, he flew back overnight and called Jason Epstein, Random House’s legendary editorial director to complain that his wife Matilda could not find copies of his book in stores around the Cow Palace, where the convention was held. Jason listened to Cuomo’s lament and quietly observed: “Governor, no author since Homer has ever found his own book in a bookstore.””
-
“The laws of physics are immutable. According to these laws, accelerating that large mass and fighting against planetary gravitational fields requires a tremendous amount of energy.
Now consider the laws of chemistry. You can’t change them by legislation. The energy content that can be liberated from rocket fuel, and the propulsion force that can be generated, depend on the mass of the fuel, the molecular bond energies and the temperature at which the chemicals burn.
Scientists and rocket engineers have known this for more than a century and have worked hard to optimise all the parameters. But at the end of the day, there is only so much that you can get out of the rocket fuel – and it’s not enough.”
-
“Showing students how to read critically and formulate research queries is part of the teaching function of college libraries. But how do you teach students to read critically that which has no text?
That is the challenge Frances May, an adjunct librarian at the University of North Texas, took on when she decided to adapt her library’s orientation program to meet what she sees as a growing demand for “visual literacy” among today’s college students.”
-
“As your velocity increases, time as you experience it slows down relative to something moving slower than you. A passenger on a spaceship traveling near the speed of light would appear to have aged less than his friends when he returned to Earth, for instance. Similarly, a fast runner appears to gain time compared to a slow runner.
Einstein’s Pedometer brings special relativity to your daily activities, showing how much time you gain by moving.”
3 thoughts on “Links for 2011-04-16”
Comments are closed.
No continued expansion of space travel? Ouch. Having just come back from a fun “Yuri’s Night” celebration, that is a depressing thought. (Note 50th anniversary year, and of other things too …) with some Star Trek/Wars presence (including full-bore Darth Maul with head spikes – but the “70s NASA Engineers” won the costume contest! They wouldn’t have wanted to give up on trying …) A commenter already noted the Orion nuclear-explosion-pulse drive, and we hear of others too like the exotic VASIMR. (It’s not clear to me what’s supposed to power the VASIMR, maybe nuclear fission if no fusion is available? Also, take off from Moon etc. and not have to climb whole Earth gravity well. Maybe we can do better, but I can’t see spending the money anyway, anytime soon for Mars etc. if we’re so in debt. And speaking of Yuri, for US astronauts to be riding those late-60s Russian jalopies …
I thought of an enhanced photon-sail like concept, more for theoretical fun: note that if light can bounce between layers many times before absorbing (and with 99.99%+ mirrors available, it can be done), much more momentum can be transferred to the layers than off one bounce (of course, net momentum vector remains the same, but each of the two can build up plenty.) That would allow some initial acceleration efficiency in ZG space, and then with ablation of thin layers and an internal source we could get lots of push out of less light (ie, much more than one newton per 150 MW of simple reflection.) Maybe there’s even a way to polarize incoming light such as to allow initial passage of sunlight through one layer, then reflect off it upon return.
One immutable law of physics is that low earth orbit is half way to anywhere.
In orbit, your total energy is midway between escape energy and your energy at the surface. That is the reason the command module stayed in orbit above the moon, and why the Orion concept for a Moon or Mars mission had the command module and booster put into earth orbit by two separate launches.
CCPhysicist, you have a point and the real problem is indeed not having enough energy “to get to” such and such place – it is, and the author noted this, the time it takes to get there without breakthrough technologies.