Considering that you are referring to events 43 years ago in the US which occurred before over half of the residents of the country alive now were born (median age: 37 years) isn't this a bit of a stretch? The US Army charged on the Bonus Army protesters in 1932 -- do you want to use that as an example, too?, It's just as applicable.
I'm in my 50's and have taken antibiotics twice and in both cases the doctor at the emergency room said I could have easily died without them -- once with pneumonia which I thought I could "tough out" at home and once when a cat bite swelled up my hand to twice its normal size, with red lines going up my arm. I'm glad the antibiotics were there and worked both times!
World War I and World War II were "periods of instability" caused to some extent by the economic changes of the Industrial Revolution. I'm not sure we want to see the period of instability called WW III by the survivors.
The AC is cherry picking the space firsts as is usually done with this common post. Not to take away from the Soviets who really did accomplish the 'firsts' listed, the USA had: first successful mission to another planet (Mariner 2 flyby of Venus in 1962), first successful mission to Mars (Mariner 4 flyby of Mars in 1964), first orbital rendezvous (Gemini 6 in 1966), first spacecraft docking (Gemini 8 in 1966). These were all within the first 10 years after the Soviets launched Sputnik 1. Arguably the USA could have had the first satellite and first man in space except for policy differences -- the US Jupiter C booster had launched a payload on a reentry test to nearly 90% of orbital velocity in 1956, a year before Sputnik. Wernher von Braun and his Army group at Huntsville were subsequently ordered by the Eisenhower administration not to launch a satellite or even allow another launch to 'accidentally' go into orbit as it would have been considered 'provocative'. After Sputnik, the Jupiter C did launch the first US satellite in Jan 1958 less than 90 days after the team being given the order to go ahead. As far as the first man in space -- the last unmanned test flight of the Mercury-Redstone manned system was on March 24, 1961, three weeks before the launch of Vostok 1. This last test flight was added because of some anomalies with the previous Mercury-Redstone which had successfully carried a chimpanzee. If not for this decision, MR3 with Alan Shepherd would have launched before Gagarin in Vostok 1. However, Vostok's orbit of the Earth was considerably more of an accomplishment than MR3's suborbital mission even if Vostok had not come first -- as I said, I give full credit to the Soviets for their accomplishments of that time.
In case anyone was wondering, the US succeeded on the country's second attempt to launch a mission to Mars. This was the Mariner 4 flyby launched Nov 28, 1964. The first US attempt, the identical Mariner 3, failed three weeks earlier when the shroud on the launch vehicle failed to open properly.
The second attempt by the US to orbit Mars was also successful; Mariner 9 in 1971 became the first (human) probe to orbit Mars (or any other planet), followed within a month by the Russian Mars 2 and Mars 3.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exploration_of_Mars
Bush I -- he is actually the president of the last 50 years second most likely to have actually committed a felony with a good chance of conviction had it gone to trial (second only to Nixon). His pardons of six members of the Reagan administration during the active trials, including the former Secretary of Defense, decapitated the prosecution of felonies committed in the Iran-Contra criminal activities. As VP at the time and former CIA director, is it credible to believe that Bush himself didn't know what was going on?
No and I'll tell you why, I read it somewhere else -- no one has figured out how to gerrymander a whole state yet. Currently the Republicans hold the majority of the seats in the House even though they overall received fewer votes in House elections in 2012 than the Democrats. This is mostly due to the very effective (or horrific, if you believe in equal representation) gerrymandering of the House seats done after the 2010. Party representation in the Senate is much closer to the popular vote of the people, though it wasn't intended that way. It's ironic but the Senate has become the house of Congress which best represents the popular vote as the House was intended. If the State legislatures selected the Senate, the Senate would represent the gerrymandering of the State legislatures, nothing more. Until partisan gerrymandering is fixed, a popularly elected Senate is the best we've got. The US Constitution was not designed to withstand the corruption of strong political parties.
Not much of an explanation but the formulas are here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Velocity-addition_formula
For observer X, objects A and B are moving at 1.8c relative to each other; as other posters pointed out there is no prohibition on this, but observers on A and B cannot observe each other separating that fast. According to my math (from the reference above) they observe each other traveling at 0.994c relative to each other. Your distance questions above scale accordingly -- the distances are different for the different observers.
There is no trivial, easy explanation, it's just that an observer's measures of distance, time, and velocity are not independent and for high measured relative velocities the measures of time and distance are mixed together differently for observers moving relative to each other. The basic equations of Special Relativity aren't that hard to work through, you just have to do it (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_relativity). There are geometrical explanations (spacetime as a manifold upon which the observed coordinates depend on the observer), but they are not trivial enough for a
There are other physical constants, too. The charge of the electron for one and Plank's constant for another. The reality of a 'physical constant' is that it is just a ratio of one measured quantity in the observed Universe to another measured quantity that is always the same, so is sort of a conversion factor between physical observables which are somehow tightly related (not a great explanation, I know).
As for your light from the flashlight story -- there is no easy explanation because the easy explanations all depend on things behaving as we have grown up observing and internally modeling them in our low energy, slow speed existence. The explanation is just that at high relative speeds between observers the measurements of time and distance mix into each other such that each observer will always observe a light beam (in a vacuum) to be at 1.0c no matter what the speed of its source. A slightly deeper explanation is that time and 3 dimensional space form a four dimensional manifold (fancy name for something which local coordinates can be mapped to a flat space) in which the mix of time and space dimensions depends on the motion of the observer (actually reference frame of the observer). Relativistic effects are beyond the classical existence we model in heads growing up and so require math to take us beyond intuitive notions, that's about all I've got on the issue.
The thing is, the majority of all the representatives in both houses of Congress were able to reach agreement once the requirement was dropped that the agreement had to have the support of a majority of the Republicans. This is where the system broke down -- a minority of all the representatives could force a shutdown over the wishes of the majority because the (not defined anywhere in the Constitution) 'rules' of the House allowed a smaller group to enforce their wishes on the majority. Why did they do this? Because the pro-shutdown group could not win enough elections across the country to set policy the way they wanted it, so instead they thought shutdown and default were legitimate tactics. That is all on the Republicans. As the President stated afterward -- if you want to legitimately set policy, go out and win some elections!
Don't take anything I said as contradicting your well thought out and reasoned original post (a rarity on the NSA subject). I was just pointing out that when push comes to shove, Canada is the same as the US for what really counts -- corporate profit. I will make one slight disagreement with you, -- no matter who is running the national government up there, Alberta with it's oil would have enough pull to make the Keystone Pipeline a Canadian national priority.
The main thing Canada wants from the US right now (and probably their #1 foreign policy goal) is to get the Keystone Pipeline built so they can sell their tar sands oil out of North America at a good profit. There won't be any type of walling off as long as there is a chance that pipeline gets built.
Curiosity, listed as a "success" was way over budget by the time it launched. From wikipedia, "Eventually the costs for developing the rover did reach $2.47 billion, that for a rover that initially had been classified as a medium-cost mission with a maximum budget of $650 million, yet NASA still had to ask for an additional $82 million to meet the planned November launch." That percentage overrun is in exactly the same ball park as James Webb and SLS.
IANANP (I am not a nuclear physicist) but my take on this is, after considering all the other replies on this thread, is that you are technically correct. The proton initiates the breakup of the Boron 11 nucleus into three He 4 nuclei. Whether or not a short lived highly excited, Carbon 12 nucleus is an intermediate isn't so important. Similarly when a U235 nucleus is hit with a slow neutron, an intermediate highly excited U236 is formed which breaks up in traditional fission. I think that nuclear reactions with the very light nuclei are just traditionally called 'fusion' since they are studied in the same way as good old D-T fusion, etc. The terms 'fission' and 'fusion' do not describe the actual nuclear reactions completely.
Hey mods -- agree or disagree, what possible legitimate reason is the parent to this post now at -1? The Slashdot moderation system has completely failed due to idiots with mod points and political one-sightedness.
PURGE COMPLETE.
