PakledHostage

UPDATE Thanks to m4v's help, I have fixed the bug that resulted in the Figaro receiver sometimes failing to find satellites. I have uploaded the new version to SpacePort. Please help me show m4v our appreciation by giving him some rep points (click the little star at the bottom left of any of his posts, above).

As I said in an earlier post in this thread, rather than calling those of us who are cautious about increasing our reliance on nuclear power "stupid", can you please educate us? Why is nuclear waste precious? In what quantity? How do we deal with the problems that Mr Shifty mentioned? What do we do with the radioactive waste that we can't use? How do we prevent future Fukushima's and Chernobyls, given that humans and human built systems are fallible? Nuclear energy is great when everything works, but there are real risks that need to be taken into account before we expand our reliance on it.

Relevant XKCD (references are given on the lower left corner of the chart):

As you obviously feel that you're enlightened on the subject, can I suggest that you provide some more references for those of us who are too "stupid" to share your viewpoint? I'm afraid that the tone of your post doesn't compel me to accept your argument without further research. I am open to nuclear energy as an alternative to oil, but I am concerned about widespread use of energy technology that generates dangerous waste that must be isolated for millennia and that has the potential to render large areas uninhabitable when things go wrong. I have friends who are engineers working in the nuclear power industry and respect their technical expertise, and I do not equate nuclear reactors to atomic bombs. Even so I agree with the level of caution that surrounds more widespread adoption of nuclear power to solve our energy needs for the reasons that I mentioned above.

While I am not disputing anything else you posted, I would like to make one minor correction: Humans can breath fine on the summit of Mt. Everest. It has been summited many times without the use of supplemental oxygen. Reinhold Messner and Peter Habeler were the first to do it in 1978. Two years later, Reinhold Messner returned to climb Everest solo, again without oxygen. That's not to diminish the effect of altitude on the human body, however. Pilots flying unpressurized aircraft require oxygen when flying above 10000 feet for more than 1/2 hour, and at all times when the aircraft is above 12000 feet altitude. Climbers and high altitude inhabitants can survive above 12000 feet altitude without oxygen, but they must acclimatize to the lower pressures over the course of several days. Above about 18000 feet (roughly 50 kPa), acclimatization has only a limited benefit and the body will slowly deteriorate.

You do realize that Kryten was being sarcastic?

Two of the greatest engineering achievements captured in the same video: And just for fun (kids, don't try this at home!):

There's a neat video of Hayabusa's sample return capsule re-entering over Australia. The probe itself burned up during re-entry as planned, but the sample return capsule survived:

If by that you mean that it is a robotic mission involving a probe and an impactor, then sure...

No, a redneck owns a home that is mobile and 5 cars that aren't. A hippie just owns a 1967 VW bus and a goat.

And we should remember that the 3 R's in the waste hierarchy: "reduce, reuse, recycle" run in that order for good reason.

If feels a bit funny to defend my defence of another forum member to the forum member I was defending, but I was thinking of this quote when I posted above: That part, to the best of my knowledge, is correct. This is done as a precaution because it would take the pilot and engines too long to respond after the pilot recognized that they'd missed the hook. You can see and hear them doing it in the videos.

I've had a couple of people sending me PMs to ask about when the next Figaro update is coming out, so I'll answer it publicly: In a week or so. I will try to find time to download v0.22 of the game over the coming weekend and will work on it then. Also, m4v very kindly provided me with some of of his troubleshooting findings and I will be incorporating his suggestions into the code when I finally get a chance to work on it.

Some good ones have been mentioned already. The wheel is certainly an influential engineering achievement. So is fire. The LHC is a political and a technical triumph, and the internet has changed the world. My own bias is towards commercial aircraft, however. Daily utilization of an aircraft at a major carrier is upwards of 12 hours a day. More for long-haul aircraft. Maintenance opportunities at the airline's major base for an aircraft like a 767 may only happen once every week or so. Yet they fly thousands of hours every year covering hundreds of thousands of kilometres with an incredible safety, reliability and on time record. This despite the harsh environments that they operate in, and the efficiency and performance that we expect of them. Much like the internet, we take commercial airliners a bit for granted, but they have had a revolutionary effect on our societies.

Don't completely discount Mr Shifty though... I recall from some of his other posts that he served aboard at least one US aircraft carrier.

I was going with the stereotype about the guy in it.

Rate of change of acceleration with respect to time... I always thought that'd make a good custom license plate if you could find a way to fit it in. Especially for an SUV.

No, the path of the eclipse passes over the Atlantic and Africa in the map that lajos posted. You don't get to see one from Wisconsin until August of 2017. Even then it will only be a partial eclipse in Wisconsin. You'd have to drive south to see totality. Definitely make the effort to see one if you can. I saw a total solar eclipse from Southern Germany in 1999. During totality, the street lights came on, the birds stopped singing... Everything was quiet. You could see the edge of the moon's shadow coming as the clouds started to light up again in the distance. The speed was immense. I have never felt so small and insignificant.

I see your troll and raise you one. Please go on?

We're being trolled... It was a stupid question to begin with, then Deviation's first ever post conjured it up from the dead yesterday.

Several hyperbolic comets (likely originating in the Oort Cloud) are discovered every year. Wikipedia's long period comet entry includes a table of hyperbolic comet discoveries by year: 2013 8 2012 10 2011 12 2010 4 2009 8 2008 7 2007 12 Interestingly, JPL's small body database does not include any objects with eccentricity significantly greater than 1. An object's orbital eccentricity would have to be significantly greater than 1 for it to be of extrasolar origin.

Say hello to my little friend: Sorry, I couldn't resist... In all seriousness, there are plenty of resources online that explain the Oort Cloud. Here are two: 1. cosmos4kids 2. wikipedia

The only one that I could find is Puerto Rico. Here's the link to the interactive map: http://chartsbin.com/view/5261

Coincidentally, I was looking at a website the other day that generates maps, by country, of a variety of parameters. Here are two from that website that show which countries in the world use Metric officially and for road distance & speed units:

You make a valid point. The more advanced warning we have, the easier it will be to prevent a collision. A nuke detonated in proximity to it may be enough to divert it, in the extremely unlikely event that it turns out to be on a collision course. If you're interested, we discussed other methods of diverting an asteroid on this forum a few weeks ago. Here's the link: In the current level of technology, what would stop a impact event?