sevenperforce
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Posts posted by sevenperforce
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3 minutes ago, p1t1o said:
"Casually"?
Is that these "closed timelike loop" things?
Yeah.
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I've thought about this before...I think it is possible to come up with sufficiently extraordinary evidence that we would be safe to accept that SOMETHING out of the ordinary happened. In some cases, time travel might be the best explanation
What would that evidence look like? Well, if you were traveling back in time and wanted to leave irrefutable proof of your presence, what would you write down? You might not be able to leave behind predictions of future events, because you don't necessarily know whether your presence will alter the course of history. Same with language; writing a message in modern English won't do you any good if the English language never develops.
You could, however, leave information that isn't subject to change, but that the ancients would have no way of knowing. For example, you could carve out maps of the surface of the moon and of Mars, along with a large scaled chart of the solar system showing the orbits of the planets, the major moons of each planet, and a variety of comets (particularly ones that could not have been discovered until modern times). You could carve out a large globe showing the exact shape of the continents. You could put skulls next to Vesuvius, Krakatoa, Huaynaputina, Santa Maria, Novarupta, and Mt. St. Helens (since altered history won't keep volcanoes from exploding).
You could also record stuff from science and physics, like the ratios of the masses of all the subatomic particles (that's my avatar, by the way) and/or various physical constants which couldn't be determined until modern times. You could carve out an image of the Milky Way.
Of course, in all those cases, it doesn't PROVE that you time traveled. The same information might conceivably come from an alien visitor. But it's extraordinary enough that time travel would be a reasonable conclusion.
59 minutes ago, p1t1o said:Time travel into the past? Without a machine, or observation of its operation, I'm not sure that empirical evidence even makes sense in this context, as causality will have been violated. I think.
One can casually construct non-causality-violating time travel systems.
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11 minutes ago, softweir said:
Of course, the owner of the "prior art" has to be able to prove how long they have been using the patentable idea. You implied that when you mentioned Carl having emails proving the date, but I feel this point needs to be made explicit! No proof, and there is a danger that the patent may be upheld.
It also depends on whether we are talking about the old rule (first to invent) or the new rule (first to file). For example:
- Carl writes an email to his chef dated January 1 mentioning an idea for bacon-wrapped seaweed, but they don't make any. On May 1, Alice comes up with the idea for bacon-wrapped seaweed and applies for a patent. Under the old rule, Carl could apply for a patent after Alice, citing his January 1 email, and he would get the patent. Under the new rule, Alice would get the patent because she applied first.
- Carl has an interview with a newspaper on January 1 and mentions that they will be adding bacon-wrapped seaweed to their menu, but they never do. On May 1, Alice applies for a patent on bacon-wrapped seaweed. Carl points out that he already published the idea in a newspaper four months earlier, and so the patent is thrown out and both Alice and Carl are free to sell bacon-wrapped seaweed.
- On January 1, Carl begins selling bacon-wrapped seaweed to a small number of his customers, but doesn't put it on the menu. On May 1, Alice applies for a patent on bacon-wrapped seaweed and puts it on her menu. Carl sues, alleging that he came up with the idea first. He loses the lawsuit, because he can't stop Alice from making it since he never applied for a patent, but Alice won't get her patent because Carl was already making the stuff.
- On January 1, Carl files a patent for bacon-wrapped seaweed. On May 1, Alice begins selling bacon-wrapped seaweed. Carl sues for patent infringement. Alice's lawyer finds a trade magazine from 1981 which discusses the possibility of bacon-wrapped seaweed, proving the idea is "prior art", and Carl's patent is thrown out, leaving both parties free to sell it.
One critically important point is the difference between #1 and #3. In case 1, Carl merely came up with the idea. Under the new rules, this won't keep Alice from getting a patent on it if she comes up with the idea independently. In case 3, Carl not only came up with the idea, but developed it and began producing it. In this case, Alice can't get a patent on it. This difference demonstrates the value of actually developing and producing an idea. Anyone can come up with an idea, but you have to actually do the work (either by producing it or by going through the patent process) or it's really not worth much.
It should also be noted that after any of the above cases, Peter from Peter's Pleasure Palace can come up with a method for producing bacon-wrapped seaweed, and that is a new idea which can be patented "on top of" the old idea, regardless of whether the old idea is patented or prior art or anything else.
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7 hours ago, Nibb31 said:
Congratulations! You have just invented the capsule!
Now we just have to make it bigger and put engines on it!
Oh, hello there, SERV.
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A patent is a lot like a contract between an inventor and a government. The inventor agrees discloses how his new idea works, and the government agrees to enforce a 20-year exclusive use arrangement for the inventor. This benefits the inventor, because he is now (theoretically) guaranteed two decades of potential profit, and it benefits the government, because after those 20 years have elapsed, the invention becomes available for public use. Everybody wins.
Another option is to keep your invention a trade secret. If you simply never explain exactly how your invention works, then no one else can reproduce it. Coca-cola did this with their recipe for their eponymous product. Trade secrets, unlike patents, give you the ability to profit from your invention for far longer, as long as no one figures it out.
You can't patent something that someone else invented and produced, even if you came up with the idea independently, and even if they never patented it. If something is already being produced, it is considered "prior art" and so the government will not consider it to be patentable; they are only interested in patenting ideas that otherwise would remain trade secrets.
In the past, ownership of a patent was based on who invented it first. So if Carl's Crab Cafe and Alice's Awesome Eatery both file a patent for bacon-wrapped seaweed at the same time, but Carl has emails proving he invented bacon-wrapped seaweed first, then Carl would get the patent and Alice would not. But just a few years ago, the USPTO changed the rules. Now, the patent is awarded to whoever files first, regardless of whether they actually invented it first. This encourages people to file sooner rather than later, sharing their invention earlier and resulting in more progress.
If you create an idea and decide not to patent it, but just begin production, your competitor may actually still be able to apply for a patent. However, if they attempt to enforce their patent, you can show that you were already PRODUCING the invention, making their claim prior art and getting their patent thrown out. You can also get their patent thrown out if you can show that the idea was already published long before either of you came along. That's what happened with Blue Origin and SpaceX; BO took out a patent for barge landings of first stage rockets, then sued SpaceX for trying to land their rockets on barges. SpaceX pointed out that the Russians had published plans to land rockets on barges long before, and BO's patent was tossed.
Finally, if you don't mind other people using your invention but want to keep someone else from patenting it, you can file a patent directly into the public domain for free.
Disclaimer: not a patent attorney, but I did stay at a Holiday Inn Express last night.
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1 hour ago, tater said:
Dragon 1 is not even close I would think.
Not in absolute terms, no. Except for the trunk; the trunk probably weighs about the same. But more in relative/breakdown terms. For example, if we knew the mass of the Dragon 1 pressure vessel, we could use the square-cube law to estimate the mass of the DV2 pressure vessel.
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I have been digging around online for a while and haven't really come up with much of anything, so I figured I would croudsource this.
The Dragon V2 is listed with a dry mass of 6,400 kg.
Does that include crew amenities, like seats, displays, life support, that sort of thing?
What's the best estimate of how much of that mass is the trunk, how much is the heat shield, how much the SuperDracos weigh, how much the onboard fuel tanks weigh, the mass of the aeroshell and pressure vessel, and so forth? Can we use figures from Dragon 1 to estimate?
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1 hour ago, Thor Wotansen said:
I refuse to believe that the future of space travel will be robotic. As soon as we have any sort expanded operations like asteroid mining going on we will need decisions to happen quicker than the usual hour + of latency that communication from Earth could provide. Also, as soon as we get large scale asteroid mining we can build all our ships in space and people and supplies will be the primary cargo of most launches.
I mean, I don't WANT to believe that the future of space travel is robotic. I just can't think of any near-term reason why squishy, fragile humans would be more economical than disposable robots. And if robot operation is standard when asteroid mining becomes lucrative, it will likely be cheaper to make it happen with robots.
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I think the trick is to use a biaxial or even triaxial configuration. One axis minimizes drag for vertical takeoff (perhaps with some body lift to counteract gravity drag in an airbreather) and one axis provides high drag and/or lift for re-entry and gliding flight.
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I'm inclined to argue that what Blue Origin is doing cannot really be classified as a space program. They are testing a launch system for commercial flights. Now, if one of their New Shepard test launches is used to launch a suborbital probe for NASA to test inflatable re-entry shields, that would be more like a space program.
But it is ultimately semantic.
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15 hours ago, Darnok said:
As for magnetic field, how much more heat, radiation and energy is delivered to us when field is getting weaker? How much more energy and radiation was delivered to Earth when we had ozone layer issues? How much those things can increase global temperature?
Not. Not in comparison to anthropogenic climate change.
18 hours ago, Scotius said:See guys? Just like scientific community, we can't form a consensus. "Climate is changing! No, it isn't." "It's humanity's fault. No, it's a natural cycle." "We are going to suffer because of it. No, we will be fine." One opinion per user. There is no agreement about causes of changes either. How can we reach any conclusion if we don't know what is exactly happening and why?
Unlike the scientific community, there is no peer review here to separate the informed from the uninformed, the facts from the emotion, the thoughtful from the clueless. That's why the scientific community HAS formed a consensus.
And, like it or not, there is a consensus here too. It is a plurality, not a majority, and it is buried under a lot of noise from misinformation, but it is here. You just have to know what to look for.
22 hours ago, LordFerret said:Sun spot cycle studies have been peer-reviewed since there has been peer review. What is it you're referring to?
Obviously I was referring to all the fallacious claims in your post, not to the existence of sunspot cycles.
The notion that there is some equal balance between scientists and Nobel laureates who accept anthropogenic climate change and those who reject it is a laughable fantasy.
More generally...
A few years ago, Enbridge Oil was operating a crude oil pipeline which suffered a catastrophic rupture. Due to a ridiculous amount of corporate stupidity, proper safeguards were not in place and so they continued pumping crude straight out the end of the ruptured pipe and into the Kalamazoo River for over 24 hours before they finally realized what had happened.
After a year-long investigation, federal government issued just three sanctions. The first was a 3.5 million dollar fine, the largest ever levied against an onshore oil pipeline operator. The second was a massive, company-wide recertification of all their operating procedures, at a cost nearly equal to the fine. The third was perhaps the simplest: Enbridge was required to shut down their entire system for about three days, long enough to perform pressure testing to ensure there was no chance of a similar rupture in the future.
Enbridge paid the fine. Enbridge did the company-wide recertification. No problem.
And that third sanction? Enbridge sued the United States to avoid having to shut down their system for three days. Because the fine and the cost of recertification and the cost of a 40-month federal lawsuit was NOTHING compared to the amount of money they would have lost by shutting down their system long enough to test it.
And they didn't even own the oil. They were merely being paid to transport it.
THAT is how much money is involved in fossil fuels. And that's why I laugh and laugh every time I hear someone claim that there is some secret environmentalist lobby paying scientists to agree with global warming. It is pretty much the most ridiculous thing ever.
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19 minutes ago, Thor Wotansen said:
Even if the SSTO in question is only hauling people to orbit that is still a win, the more we do in space, the more peeps we need up there.
As much as I wish that were true, it really isn't. There is very little space stuff that a robot can't do for cheaper. Most of human usefulness in space has been figuring out human presence in space...which is great, and which I totally support, but it doesn't pay for itself.
A small-as-possible SSTO crew ferry would be fantastic, don't get me wrong, but I can't figure out a way to make it economically viable.
6 hours ago, Kryten said:Every time we've tried that it has done the exact opposite of paying for itself. X-33, NASP, Roton, HOTOL, all just soaked up dev funds and coughed up diddly squat. The margins are so thin with SSTO that the first big engineering issue is likely to just kill the project stone dead.
All you need is an engine with a really great TWR and a really low thrust specific fuel consumption.
I'll wait.
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17 minutes ago, LordFerret said:
Unless "climate change" equals "global warming", we're discussing two different things. The climate ALWAYS changes, and ALWAYS will continue to change... it's driven by the Sun. Man-made 'global warming' is another story... and for each Nobel Laureate espousing man-made 'global warming', there is another who denies it.
Sun spot cycle 24.
...said no peer-reviewed scientific study ever.
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1 minute ago, Gaarst said:
No.
In real life most upper stages or manoeuvring systems have really low thrusts and small correction burns last several minutes. (The shuttle's OMS had about 50kN thrust)
Too bad. It performed the actual orbital insertion to circularize, so I thought it might have more kick.
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Did the OMS have enough thrust to push the Shuttle clear of the launch stack if the tank and SRBs were jettisoned?
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58 minutes ago, Nibb31 said:
You would need it to look something like ESA's IXV:
...yes, that would be the plan.
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6 minutes ago, Rakaydos said:
Reentry burn. not boostback burn.
Actually, it would be a boostback, prior to re-entry. It wouldn't be enough to reverse downrange velocity and execute RTLS, but it would most likely be enough to lower re-entry speed to something closer to a CRS-8 entry profile.
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6 minutes ago, PB666 said:
We have alot of 'may's here lately. I think they want to use three identicles just for that reason, to standardize production so they can crank out stuff.
@Frozen_Heart beat me to it, but yeah, the FH core is built differently. The boosters are identical to the F9FT stage 1s, though.
Wasn't trying to add any more rampant speculation; just pointing out that reserving additional propellant for boostback is one of the possible survival modes for the FH core.
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7 hours ago, Rakaydos said:
"Now we know what kind of conditions to expect, I want the Falcon Heavy core to be able to survive twice as much."
They may plan on the FH core to carry a larger reserve propellant budget so it can brake heavily in boostback.
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On 5/14/2016 at 1:51 PM, Thor Wotansen said:
What are you doing for aerodynamic control on those? There's not much space for control surfaces so you might need some pretty hefty reaction wheels in there, and with that very pointy shape, slowing down on reentry might be a challenge.
My thought was to do a blended lifting body/ballistic surface so that as long as you come into the atmosphere pitched up, the craft will auto-orient to the maximum-drag blunt-front orientation. Active stabilization on launch.
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6 hours ago, fredinno said:
Unfortunately, Beryllium costs an arm and a leg, so...
How about compounds? CO looks like a great idea, with a Xenon-level ionization energy, a gas at STP, and a great ISP, though the oxygen's reactivity and Carbon soot probably kills the idea.
Once you ionize the CO it will want to recombine. Xenon, like all noble gases, has the handy attribute of not ever forming compounds with anything.
If you're willing to play with something as deadly as beryllium hydride, use it to build an SSTO.
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36 minutes ago, cubinator said:
Define "moderate".
Moderate: large enough that immediate action is required to prevent serious injury or death; small enough that you have time to take such action.
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13 minutes ago, tater said:
Yeah, they're all about mass fraction.
"Because I'm all about that mass, 'bout that mass, mass fraction"
Another factor that is often overlooked but is perhaps far more important: payload fraction. The ratio of payload to inert stage mass at burnout is the payload fraction, and it determines how much structural margin a given design has. Ideally, your payload should be at least as massive as your inert stage mass at burnout; that way, if you need to add strength or TPS or anything else to your terminal stage, you only lose a few percent of payload for the corresponding percent increase in inert stage mass.
Payload fraction, not mass fraction, is typically what kills SSTOs. If your payload is only a tenth of your dry mass, then an unexpected 10% increase in structural weight cuts 90% of your payload.
In its fully expendable configuration, the terminal stage of the Falcon 9 boasts not a 1:1 payload fraction, but a 5:1 payload fraction. That's money.
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13 minutes ago, Norcalplanner said:
I just reviewed the numbers for the Falcon FT, and I am officially impressed. In the expendable configurstion, they're able to put 22.8 metric tons into orbit using a 549.05 ton rocket, for a payload mass fraction of 4.15 percent. All while only using kerolox engines.
It's not hard to see why. In the FT update, a first stage without payload has roughly 8.8 km/s of dV, while an independent second stage has a whopping 11.3 km/s of dV. SpaceX basically stacked a small SSTO on top of a large SSTO and called it a badass rocket.
Dragon V2 specs
in Science & Spaceflight
Posted
Hmm, those figures might be attainable but you'd be measuring something that's pretty hard to figure out just from looking at it...