vger

Early 90's. Senior year computer science course. Pretty much everyone there had never touched a computer before, except for me and two others. Not surprisingly, we ended up being partners in crime in all manner of digital mischief-making. The epic moment though was a fake virus written in Q-basic. Before we left the class at the end of the day, our instructions were always to end whatever programs we were running, and leave the terminal at the command prompt for the next class to come in. This was the moment to execute the program, and turn the speakers all the way up. Running the program would create a fake command prompt screen that was every bit as convincing as the normal one. Until someone pressed a key. Then came the flashing screen, klaxon alarm noises, garbled text, and something about an imminent critical failure. When this happens on numerous machines simultaneously in a class full of people who don't know squat about computers, the panic is comparable to that of a nuclear bomb alert. Unfortunately, due to our reputation for trouble and computer skill, it wasn't hard to guess who was responsible, even though nobody, not even the computer teacher was able to fully comprehend it. He didn't know HOW we did it, but he knew it was us. Nevertheless, the punishment was well-worth the laughter.

That must be something that is only packaged with your laptop. Might also be part of a software bundle for the GPU, because it certainly sounds like something designed to show off graphics power. I had standard WinXp Pro and have NEVER seen this screen saver.

A lot of medieval armors weren't made to be just functional either. Some went so far as to make the wearer look terrifying. As in, if you saw one of them running at you, you wouldn't think it was a man at all, but some kind of fairy tale monster. Intimidation was a big part of warfare, and having a huge horned dragon head for a helmet could actually be beneficial.

Right, because so many people are turning a huge profit on the LHC...

Sarah isn't going up anymore?

What's the point of having all that money if you're not going to do at least a few insanely eccentric things with it? - - - Updated - - - If I had the money to run a space program, I would. But it would exist to promote commercial space travel, AND perform research at the same time. Much in the same way that some remote Earth expeditions are selling tickets on their ships to raise extra funds. If some rich tycoon wants to ride shotgun on a lunar orbital flight, then why the heck not? How much more money could NASA have raised if they offered to bring back a moon rock sample for anyone who gave $10,000,000 or more? I'm convinced it's only bureaucratic nonsense in their government ties that prevents them from doing things like this. Russia, clearly does NOT have this problem, which is why the wealthy can go to the Cosmonauts for a lift.

You're all thinking in terms of amateur-designed micro launches. There's no way a professional rocket tethered to a balloon is going to get whipped around as much as a tiny GoProCam.

What the heck is less complex than a balloon?

If the Cannae drive works, I say we start calling it an Impulse Engine.

I already made a meme for that. It's 'somewhere' amongst the last 74 pages...

It's definitely NOT a heavy lifter. They say they want to use it mainly for small satellites, and possibly recreational flights.

It'll be interesting to see how this goes. I know this concept has been discussed here on numerous occasions. http://www.aljazeera.com/news/2015/05/balloon-space-launch-system-open-space-150524084640258.html

Are you factoring in labor costs and machinery, or JUST the cost of flying the raw materials and the cost of the materials themselves? Either way, 1.8bil is a pretty good price for such an ambitious project.

If you've never listened to them before, you should check out Gregorian. They're pretty much a cover band, that does everything in chants. It's far more gorgeous and much less comedic than the concept implies.

If you could hold a press conference and say, "I can fund a space program with more cash per year than NASA has had during its entire lifespan," getting the talent wouldn't be very difficult.

Okay, not literally exploding, but that's what was originally thought when it happened. It's older news, but searching the science labs showed no mention of it. Apologies if this HAS appeared here before. www.youtube.com/watch?v=U1fvMSs9cps (no idea why this isn't embedding)

Bill Gates should start his own space program. It's not like he's going to do anything else with that money.

Spiritualist here. Too eclectic to ever fit into a world religion, believe in some things without solid evidence (though I've seen some really weird unexplainable &@^#! in my life), but also am completely opposed to the notion that scientific progress should ever be impeded by such things. Anyway, most of what I could list off here, I doubt anyone doesn't know. I was never big into Christian rock even when I was walking that path. Of the mainstream songs that always got me... Religious or not, if you haven't heard these, you've probably been living under a rock. And if you have heard these, you probably want to shoot me now. A bit more off the beaten path... well-known artists' songs that aren't very well-known. Your call if you want to classify TSO as Christian music. It's one of their original compositions, and it's about Jesus. *shrug* This song moves me like practically nothing else I've ever heard.

There's also the simple risk of it breaking. If that happens, it would be nice to know how to fix it so we don't leave astronauts stranded for no reason. "Houston, how do we fix this?" "Good question. We don't know why it was working in the first place."

Like it even matters. Science has already proven climate change a few dozen times. Nothing short of being incinerated by the sun is going to convince the conservatives.

Actually I've been thinking the opposite in recent years, as have a lot of people, and I think this is why there has been so much hype. It seems like with physics we're beyond the point of finding anything that 'seems like magic until we later understand it.' And I've had this horrible gut feeling that we've done nearly all we can with how far we can push technology - at least where space travel is concerned. This isn't to say that FTL, wormholes, etc are impossible. Only that the amount of energy/fuel required to achieve it is proportional to what we need right now just to push a rocket into space. In other words, any new epic thing that gets proven to be possible won't matter, because it won't be remotely practical anyhow.

I thought Duck & Cover was just a placebo of sorts. You're pretty much doomed in a nuclear attack without shielding. So give folks a procedure for survival and claim that it works, so you don't have a nation of people with anxiety issues?

Daww, I was hoping for something more dynamic, like a silly "simulator" with a chicken you could interact with.

I'm not a politician, so I guess I'm not allowed to criticize anything that controls my life.

Anyway, the sound was probably designed based on tons of psychological research to determine what would most likely grab people's attention. And the best sound for that is one that makes people want to jump out of their seats.