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Comment No, Bad Boeing! (Score 1) 147

A large cost of space travel is getting everything needed for the journey from Earth into space. Here we have a large quantity of materials perfect for spacecraft manufacturing already in space. Build a recycling plant or leave it for someone else, but pushing it towards Earth just seems like the epitome of waste.

Comment Re:the simulation can never end (Score 2) 144

Not infinitesimally, each universe would probably have to be significantly simpler than the one it's already in, until the point that a universal simulation is too complex for the universe. Of course any one universe could spawn [very large number] of simulated worlds in a tree structure.
So if we assume mediocrity (and assume I'm not just spouting bull), we exist in one of the simpler universes... the original must have been nuts.

Comment Re:175 Kelvin hot enough to boil? (Score 1) 55

I'm having trouble finding a chart that shows 0 (or very low) pressure, but using wolframalpha at 0Pa or at 1 trillionth of an atmosphere (source) the phase is returned as solid at 175 degrees K.
The lack of botherance does seem to be the most likely cause of the other issue. Pity; a lot of people could have learned a new word today.

Comment Re:175 Kelvin hot enough to boil? (Score 1) 55

Using Wikipedian data, 175K seems to be well within the solid phase, so I'd say they're probably going for C. Still, water should not be able to be liquid phase in the Lunar “atmosphere”, so it seems both your guesses are on the money. I would think though, that “boiling” may be used here as a simplification for people unfamiliar with sublimation.

Comment Re:China going there. (Score 1) 55

China has signed and ratified the U.N. Outer Space treaty, meaning they don't have any influence on whether U.S. vehicles can land (and they as a state can't have jurisdiction on the moon). Of course they could easily ignore the treaty, but I imagine that for China it would be easier to just not sign than to break a U.N. treaty.

Comment Boat-like? (Score 3, Interesting) 47

I suppose not every goal is finding extra-terrestrial life, but I almost feel like this is missing the real opportunity on Titan. This is a planet with both lakes of hydrocarbons and volcanic activity, theoretically perfect for life (admittedly neglecting H_2O). Surely a submarine would be more useful than a boat? Wouldn't we rather explore the depths and try to find primitive life where it is most likely to be created (by my admittedly limited understanding of abiogenesis theories)?
Education

Submission + - African Robotics Network announced their $10 robot design challenge announced (wired.com)

An anonymous reader writes: When the African Robotics Network announced their $10 robot design challenge this summer, co-founder Ken Goldberg was careful not to share too many expectations, lest he influence contestants' designs. But he never imagined one of the winning entries would prominently feature a pair of Spanish lollipops.

The challenge, hosted by AFRON co-founders Goldberg and Ayorkor Korsah, emphasized inexpensive designs to help bring robotics education to African classrooms. Goldberg announced AFRON's 10 winners in three categories today at Maker Faire, including the lollipop-laden Suckerbot and traditional (roaming) category first prize winner Kilobot, a Harvard-spawned three-legged, vibrating, swarming robot.

Comment Re:Fascinating (Score 3, Interesting) 121

[...] the electrical force, which is 39 orders of magnitude greater than gravity.

Where are you getting this from? Assuming metric units (I hope you're not doing physics with imperial) neither the difference between coulombic and gravitational constants nor the difference between charge and mass of a proton (the next -place I'd expect one to get that difference from). Regardless, claiming such a difference is a pointless endeavour, given that it's entirely a product of the unit system. In the system of Planck units gravity and coulombic force are identical!
Point is, gravity isn't weak, nucleons are just kind of light.

Comment Depended on my Computer (Score 1) 867

Kubuntu -> Damn Small Linux -> Puppy Linux -> Ubuntu -> Arch
Kubuntu was only installed on my brother's computer, which I used for lack of my own alternative. My first computer was a stripped out shitbox (frequently referred to as a craptop) that was unlikely to run anything bigger than puppy, nevermind storage on its gigabyte hard-drive. DSL wasn't doing much for me as a desktop and this was before I got a grasp on the power of linux, plus Xorg never worked right on that machine so I 'upgraded' to puppy. I got my first decent personal computer (I had access to others) in 2007, a netbook, which I installed Ubuntu on. I quickly discovered that Ubuntu had a lovely habit of breaking something practically unfixable every time it updated (something about drivers I think). When I couldn't run without my screen constantly flashing at me and sound not working, I gave up on Ubuntu for Arch which I also installed on my desktop, which is the best decision I've made. Arch still isn't everything I wanted, and the amount of manual labour to get around the inadequacies of the package manager is a little over the top, so next stop I'm looking at Gentoo, when I have the time and botherance to change it all up again. I only intended this as a test install on my desktop, only using 200GB of a TB hard-disk, but it's been good enough to hold its own.

Submission + - Potential Firefly Reboot on the Books (bleedingcool.com) 1

brisk0 writes: Quote from the article:
Joss Whedon and The Science Channel’s Debbie Myers confirmed to a packed room of journalists that if the planned Firefly reunion movie performs well that we can expect a full Firefly series reboot. And, it seems as if Whedon plans to wipe the slates clean and bring back the entire original cast.

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