Shpaget

I'm trying to find the show where the narrator quite openly mocks looneys and their crazy ideas. He has somewhat characteristic voice, a bit high pitched, not sure if natural, or adjusted for content. I'm not sure what channel it's on, but recently the episode included Erich von Daniken. Rings any bells?

Love the yoyo despin! BTW, does anybody have a guess what would be the cost of such a rocket (few kg payload ~250 km suborbital)?

This actually made its way into one of the largest national newspapers here. Eight years later, they still haven't removed the article from the online edition. http://www.jutarnji.hr/dva-mjeseca-na-zvjezdanom-nebu/232952/ Google Translation here.

It's clearly FSM.

Volcanoes bring up silicon. Asteroids stir up the metals. Remember the hypothesis about the formation of the Moon. According to it the Earth was struck by a very large object. That would thoroughly mess up the differentiation. This wikipedia article is interesting. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Banded_iron_formation

Words. I didn't understand the meaning of "zap away". The vehicle part didn't make it any easier. Thanks for clarification.

I don't understand. Yeah, 50Hz hum is present everywhere. Really hard to get rid of and shouldn't surprise anybody when it comes up. Well, everybody with half a brain knows that ancient aliens are actually invented by the Reptilians in order to hide their own presence and continue to rule the Earth.

Going by that logic they should just grow algae and make some green mushy burgers.

Shouldn't they eat it solo? It makes no sense to eat it combined with other rehydrated halffoods. I'd assume they would be interested in the lettuce itself, not the fajitas.

So, flipping through TV channels I get to Discovery Science and see some parachutes and stuff. Cool, I'll watch that. Turns out it's about an accident in which a woman was skydiving, her parachute didn't open properly and she crash landed. She survived the fall, ended up in hospital, bla bla... The TV show is called Weird or what and they try to answer how she managed to survive. Turns out it's divine intervention. Sure, there's a physicist analyzing the actual footage of the accident, describing the fall and injuries and offering a reasonable explanation, yet the narrator keeps on bringing "somebody up there". Next is a man who died in his bed in a fire. It's a weird fire where mostly just his bed is burnt, the rest of the house is pretty much fine. There are some matches near by, he has an oxygen enrichment thing nearby (not mentioned if he was breathing from it or was it just placed there), yet here comes a guy that's been studying spontaneous human combustion (SHC) and he's certain this is textbook SHC, no doubt about it. Another guy offers an explanation on how fires work, but the SHC guy responds by saying the explanation is a fabrication and stops just short of calling him a liar. The final case is a woman who allegedly is a real life incarnation of Storm from X-Men (a guy studying that sort of cases actually mentions X-Men). She claims to have an influence on pretty much anything and everything that uses electricity. She drains batteries significantly faster than usual, street lights turn off as she's walking down the street, fuses blow up, TVs break down, jukeboxes stop playing... Obviously, despite having the opportunity of being on camera, she doesn't demonstrate any of it. The X-Men guy hooks her up to an oscilloscope which shows what appears to be a 50Hz wave, obviously a proof. What's wrong with you Discovery? /rant for now

According to that approach of determining what is closed loop, not even the entire Earth is closed, since it receives the necessary energy from the Sun. However, OP has clearly stated that this hypothetical colony is not entirely closed, since it too receives, not only energy from the Sun, but also material from asteroids (space ecosystem). Take a look at this: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2267504/The-sealed-bottle-garden-thriving-40-years-fresh-air-water.html He hasn't opened the bottle since 1972, so apart from the light (energy) getting into it, it's closed system, and on a very tiny scale to boot. Scale that up, actively control the population and you can have an almost closed system. There will have to be replenishments since the atmosphere will leak and there will be other material losses, but I believe it can be done if done on a large scale. My guess is that a few tens thousand people with plenty of robots, and better space engines could survive without Earth.

There are plenty of examples of "primitive" closed loop communities on Earth. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Uncontacted_peoples As for space... The main asteroid belt has much, much more iron than a few billion humans could use in several million years. By that time, if we're still stuck in the belt, we don't deserve to get further, do we? Since iron itself is a poor material, we need carbon to make steel. Plenty of that as well. Other alloying metals are plentiful as well. Volatiles a bit of an issue. Water rich comets are a bit more scarce in the main belt (still plenty of them I suppose). Any space station will be losing atmosphere and will need regular replenishing. Not just nitrogen and oxygen, but all the trace elements as well. Earthlings depend on those tiny traces of elements. For example, arsenic, while toxic, is essential for mammals. Space colonies would need to make sure such elements are present in adequate quantities in food/water/air.

It is distance. Throughout my education I was thought s denotes distance. Our countries' system may have different conventions. I've seen weirder stuff.

Yes, coil guns need to be capable of delivering very high power for a short time. However, for this application, this MOSFET would probably be more than enough. It is rated for 60 V and 30 A continuous current. Also if you look at absolute maximum ratings, you'll notice that pulsed current goes up to 128 A. That's more than 7 kW. In any case, it's not the MOSFET that's the weak link here. Entire wiring needs to be capable of supporting that current, not continuously, obviously. Also, looking over the internet, some use thyristors or IGBTs instead of MOSFETs.

Kinetic energy EK= (m x v2)/2 Work W = F x s Power P = W / t However, force meter (dynamometer) won't be able to measure force of a projectile (that doesn't make sense). It's used for measuring continuous forces. If measuring the speed of the projectile is not practical for you, you could measure impulse of force. If you hit a small piece of styrofoam that has more mass than the projectile, and is big enough so the projectile doesn't penetrate it completely, you could measure the speed of the styrofoam after the impact and calculate the speed of the projectile that way.

Power MOSFETs are designed for high power and fast switching. As for the original question, I don't think you'll be able to calculate that easily. I'd be surprised if there was extensive data on styrofoam penetration. My guess is that you'll just have to build any coil gun (or any other ejector) and test it. Measure the muzzle velocity (and preferably impact velocity) and penetration depth. Then graph it with varying velocities. You probably won't get linear graph. After you have that data for a range of velocities and calibers, you can go about designing the coilgun to suit your needs. Start with the energy required to achieve your goal (speed and mass of the projectile). That should give you an idea about the capacitors you need to use.

I'll be three in a month.

Good point, but now that you mention it, what exactly is patentable here? A bit faster passenger plane than those we already have? Big deal. Rocket powered plane? Chuck Yeager would be chuckling in his grave if he wasn't still alive. How the hell does crap like this get a patent?

With capacity for only 24 passenger, how will they ever make it profitable?

And the strategy they pick is a graveyard orbit, one slightly higher that the operational, which only delays the problem and does not solve it. Furthermore, according to this, only one third of the satellites are successfully boosted to a graveyard orbit, one third only partially and the rest just stay in GEO. Apparently, you are required to decide what to do when the satellite is at the end of life, but nobody will punish you if you don't actually do it.

I get a little bit annoyed every time I hear the word extract used in this manner. How the hell do you make an extract of a plant? One can extract a certain compound of it, but not the plant itself. The best example of it would be this sort of crap. Pearl extract? What a devious way to sell chalk at $500 per kg. Tell your mom to stay clear of those weight (mass) loss products and implement better eating habits. It's a lot better way to reduce body mass by just adjusting the amount of food you eat vs. any (non-approved) pill whose manufacturers spent more time in designing the label than the actual product.

Dayligh should be equal to 5600K. Also, custom should allow you to set it to anything you want. Just as there is the Sunny 16 rule, there is the Looney 11, which translates to f11 and 1/n for shutter speed where n is ISO setting. Yeah, there's quite a bit of grain there. That's ISO 80, not 800? Rather poor perfomance. Or it could be just my mobile phone screen.

Take a look at RimWorld. It's still in Alpha and being made by a small studio, so it may not be finished soon, but if you wan to support them... Despite its, looks it's quite complex and has quite a bit of content already. Perhaps I'm not very good at it, but I find it a bit difficult.

Nope, Pluto pictures for me. Looks like you have some browser redirect malware.

5600K After all, you're shooting landscape lit by sunshine.