Recent content by signerror

But are those fair comparisons? Hubble cost $1.5 billion at launch ($2.5 billion inflation-adjusted), and $10 billion over its entire program. http://www.nytimes.com/1990/04/09/us/telescope-is-set-to-peer-at-space-and-time.html?pagewanted=all...

Or it might as well be, the result would be the same. Dennis Overbye in the NY Times: [SIZE="4"]http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/science/07webb.html" According to this article (found on http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_Webb_Space_Telescope" ), the project cost ballooned from $1.6 billion to...

I'm disappointed that no one's challenged the underlying premise, that government "creating" jobs by taxing productive income and handing it out for unproductive jobs is really "creating" jobs, or any sort of economic benefit at all. True there is some revenue from wind electricity, but it is...

Well, let's see. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deepwater_Horizon_oil_spill" . I think much of the oil is either already onshore, or underwater (in micelles created by BP's detergent) where it can't combust, so this 10-4 meter figure is a conservative estimate of how thick the...

US sends carrier group to Yellow Sea; will arrive "early next week". Sources say they will conduct joint anti-submarine exercises with South Korea.[SIZE="4"] http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5iFz0_2u3nzRFZ30YtPM8sX9UhYJA

Actually, there were ground forces just 100 meters away, in the direction where the camera lens was pointing...

CENTCOM investigation: Killed Reuters cameramen were in company of armed insurgents I note several threads on this subject have been closed by moderators. I believe this post meets PF guidelines, particularly with regards to citation. Yesterday, US CENTCOM released its 2007 investigation into...

Actually, they are thermal breeders. This is what is unique about the U-233/Th-232 fuel cycle: unlike plutonium, you can achieve a positive breeding ratio (that is, a net increase in fissile atoms) with thermal (cold) neutrons. In India's nuclear program, they are designing heavy-water reactors...

IMP - I think the real second stage will have small thrusters to correct that. I.e. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reaction_control_system The video of the launch is on youtube now - it is spectacular! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MeIjVB2O9_4 Condensation...

According to the six hours I spent on NASA TV waiting through delay after delay, the main problem with weather is that flying through clouds causes static charge buildup (triboelectrification) which interferes with RF transmissions. http://blogs.nasa.gov/cm/blog/Ares%20I-X/ By "corona" I...

Now 11:00 AM EDT (15:00 UTC), this time with "only 20% chance of weather interference". 11:08 AM EDT (15:08 UTC) 11:20 AM EDT (15:20 UTC) 11:30 AM EDT (15:30 UTC)

And we're in day 2.

I'm surprised no one mentioned Pamir. The former Soviet Union built (prototype) mobile reactors on large trucks - they were not self-propelled, but they were on wheels. Of course the conclusions in this thread are entirely correct - the system ran on HEU (45%), was very big (much larger than an...

Tentative launch at 8:15 AM EDT (12:15 UTC). (Note I've been editing this opening post since yesterday, to reflect changing launch times.)High resolution NASA feed (1.2 MBPs): http://playlist.yahoo.com/makeplaylist.dll?id=1368163 different formats: http://www.nasa.gov/ntv follow the...

davee123 - Actually, a DFA exists. You only need a constant amount of memory, not an unbounded stack as with pushdown automata for general context-free grammars. vectorcube: Are you familiar with the result that finite automata and regular expressions are equivalent? There is a very simple DFA...