Haha! Hope it doesn't go pop as my office is next to JET... Though it t does, a JET fusion pulse output is about the same as 50 sticks of dynamite, so wouldn't even break it's vacuum vessel.

Really now, they've fired ~2MJ pulse. But what does that mean? 2MJ of laser light was present in their test chamber. This was fueled by 400MJ of electrical energy stored in capacitors. So we can now see that they have accomplished making a 0.5% efficient laser. This is nothing to write home about. Lets consider the actual fusion power output. The most they've had is about 1kJ of fusion energy output. This is not a lot. The balance between energy in and energy out is very poor. Getting 1kJ from 400MJ is about the best they can hope for. An overall efficiency of 0.00025%. Who here thinks that's good? JET, which is the smaller brother of ITER has achieved a 90% energy balance. Still not breaking even, but still 3600 times closer. ITER is designed to output 10 times more energy than is input. So it'll spank NIF. QED. That doesn't stop it being expensive though...

If the Russians go to the moon, there' bound to be vodka. If we can get the Jamacans, Columbians and Spearmint Rhino staff to send a crew each, it'll be a party moon!

So that's where I put it. Thanks NASA:O)

Well put. I was thinking much the same thing. To put it another way, if you stop off X times on the way to a star, then you'll use X + 1 times the fuel for a single trip, assuming you achive the same velocity. This puts X + 1 times the wear on the engines and means taking a fuel generating plant along for the ride. Further, because of the short hops, more time will be spent stopped or changing direction (the planets will probably not be in a straight line between us and a star). Basically, it'd take longer and be a lot of faff.

Fortunatly I've lived to early to sufer this fate. But I'm sure I'd end up stuck on the rock feeling grumpy about my boss with no escape. Though I expect life out there would start as 10 year stints then back to earth, all arranged by a company. Pay would be great and naturally no tax. Then the company would go bust and the air shipments would stop, causing governments to step in to save the problem at huge expense. You then find your pay was stock linked and die grim faced on the way back as the lowest rank emplyee finally cracks and goes postal.

Naturally I couldn’t let this bit of maths go. I’ve made an overly complicated spreadsheet that generates correctly formatted wall planners. Initially I was happy that this nonsense happens every 4 years and will do for the useful period of the wall planner generator. Then I drank too much coffee and added the correction anyway. Assuming cell A1 contains the year of interest, this formula gives the number of days in February: =IF(MOD(A1,4)=0,IF(MOD(A1,100)=0,IF(MOD(A1,1000)=0,29,28),29),28)

Thanks buddy. You point things out well.

Bahh, rushed the spelling, but got the 1st post:O)

We're off to see the sponge bob, the spunge bob of the deep...

Hopefully no time soon, but almost certainly before 2100, when the next leap year doesn't happen. If due to lots of exercise, few pizzas and a whole bunch of luck we do survive that long, then we'll all be too dotty to know what day it is anyway. Glad this is sorted. All we have to know is that it happens every 4 years and will do for the entire rest of ever, so long as we care. Lets get coding and hardwire in a leap year to make the 2100 bug!

So, if I start a nuclear programme and then stop, someone will give me a quarter of a million tonnes of cake..? This could be worth a go!

I retract this comment, it's an HDMI port and it looks like they used solder.

Today I wanted a phase locked loop chip from Farnell. Could I get onto the site to look it up? No... Seems the world wants a router that's had it's wings clipped and a DVI port nailed to the top.

Remember though, you're drinking and smoking for 2. And where drink's concerned, the little fella's basically swimming around in neat rum. (taking the assumption that you are a pirate and mostly drink rum of course)