After the last time this topic came up on Slashdot (complete with a long argument over whether retaining nukes for anti-asteroid work was wise) I was doing some Wikipedia browsing and came upon this tidbit: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

"An April 2014 GAO report notes that the NNSA is retaining canned subassemblies (CSAs) " associated with a certain warhead indicated as excess in the 2012 Production and Planning Directive are being retained in an indeterminate state pending a senior-level government evaluation of their use in planetary defense against earthbound asteroids."[10] In its FY2015 budget request, the NNSA noted that the B53 component disassembly was "delayed", leading some observers to conclude they might be the warhead CSAs being retained for potential planetary defense purposes."

In that prior thread there was a lot of pooh-poohing the need for nukes because even a small, non-nuclear impact can nudge an orbital trajectory out of an impact course.... IF it's applied months or even years ahead of time. That doesn't do us any good for a big rock we spot far too late - but a massive 9 megaton nuke like the B53 is a different story. Now, how about delivering it?

The bomb - in its planetary weapon role - weighed four tons (about 3600 kilograms.) Lets assume that the mass of the completed bomb (no longer needed for parachutes, etc,) is allocated to RCS systems, gyroscopes, a small engine and fuel for terminal intercept course correction, so it stays at a hefty four imperial tons. What could lift this hefty package?

As it turns out, a whole lot of things: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Note that the biggest of those rockets can lift well in excess of the 3600kg of the weapon, which allows them plenty of spare delta-V for a TLI injection (for a gravity-assist slingshot around the moon,) and the biggest Atlas V can put a staggering 12,000kg into sun-synchronous orbit, so it can almost certainly put 3600kg into solar orbit. There's plenty of delta-v in these vehicles for highly-elliptical, fuel-inefficient, time-efficient intercept orbits. If that's not enough, we actually REACHED a comet in a highly-elliptical solar orbit with a spacecraft of almost 3,000kg mass (well within the weight limits of dozens of smaller nuclear bombs that would be sufficient to nudge an impactor off-course given a long-range intercept,) and the stories about this spacecraft (Rosetta) have been all over /. in the past few months.

How do comments this clueless get modded to +5!?

Sure, they should just roll the dice with people's lives and millions of dollars of government-owned equipment. Allies being close to enemies doesn't "stop" an airstrike, it doesn't make the bombs refuse to fall - just bomb away!

Moron.

It's the exact same thing that happens after every spree shooting. It is nothing new.

Am I the only one that installed RAID 1 and never looked back?

Pardon sir, but you are wrong.

The AH-64D Apache utilizes a mast-mounted radome - it can "see" the outlines of tanks and other vehicles by popping its radome over the top of ridgelines like a submarine using a periscope to see above the waves. This also allows it to select and illuminate targets without being exposed to hostile fire. Then it fires AGM-114L (Longbow) Hellfire missiles; (the only Hellfire missile to use radar guidance) to eliminate enemy short-range mobile SAMs and AA guns. This is, of course, presuming that the US would not attain air superiority and simply bomb them with GPS-guided JDAMS from 10,000 feet above their missile engagement ceiling.

As for the "supersonic missiles," welcome to the 80s, pal. That tech has since been sold to the Indians (who've made their Brahmos series of missiles from it.) It's second-hand quality tech. Back in the 80s, the Russians planned on pitting an entire regiment of Backfire bombers with Sunburns against a carrier battle group - the F-14 and the Phoenix missile were purpose-built to demolish this threat. We didn't bother retaining either the weapon or the aircraft, because the Sunburn is 80s tech and our fleet missile defense systems are 2015 tech. With carrier-launched AWACS radar support, these weapons will be picked up at long range and destroyed by SM-6 interceptors before they even see a US ship.

As for stealth:

1. The F-117 was hit by a Surface-To-Air missile system, not a "MiG-21," The SAM was operated by an extremely competent officer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... 2. The advent of the F-22 makes the F-117 and its relative vulnerabilities obsolete. The F-22's combination of reduced radar cross-signature and supersonic flight ability lets it release a guided bomb from long-distance (well outside enemy radars detection zone against the F-22) with enough energy that it can simply glide all the way to the target. All the standoff advantage of a cruise missile, but almost undetectable and a lot cheaper.

As for " staying in Afghanistan for a decade and still losing that war," you must have us confused with the Russians, who evacuated and left so much equipment that we found a lot of their armored vehicles being used by the Taliban. Everyone was worried they might have a few working Stingers we gave them for fighting the Russians - turns out it's what the Russians LEFT them that was more dangerous; including some ZSU-23 SPAAGs. During the war, they ran out of AK-74s, so they started issuing old AK-47s. Then they ran out of AK-47s and started issuing Mosin Nagants - the mass-produced bolt-action rifle from WWII best known to Westerners as the $120 rifle at Cabellas that broke high school kids buy. That, sir, is what a "lost war" looks like. Right now US drones rule the skies over Afghanistan, and the local populace lives knowing that someone thousands of miles away could kill them with the press of a button. And they know the US can afford to do it indefinitely. This is the country that built a massive fleet of specialized armored vehicles to protect against IEDs, gave half of them away to the new Iraqi army and sold the rest to domestic police departments because they didn't need or want them anymore. That's the kind of obscene wealth the United States throws around in its military programs. Only three nations can operate an aircraft carrier; the most complete means of power projection ever devised. France has one. Russia has one. Argentina has a broken-down French carrier they can hardly keep floating; and the Indians and Chinese are buying their own broken-down Russian ones.

The United States fields eleven. Eleven aircraft carriers. Nuclear-powered ones. As well as massive surface fleets designed to protect them from any conceivable attack.

Criticize the morality and wisdom of America's military expenditures and use of force till the cows come home, for all I care - but when you start trying to deny the unassailable military might of the United States, you come across as a raging moron to anybody with a goddamn brain or the ability to spend five minutes on Wikipedia.

Obligatory XKCD: http://what-if.xkcd.com/131/

"When instructions say let stand for 1-2 minutes, it's not just to protect your mouth from hot food—it's giving the hot and cold spots time to equalize, so the whole thing will be sufficiently heated throughout. And if some part of the food doesn't conduct heat well (e.g. rice) or contains a lot of chunks of ice (e.g. frozen fruit or meat) they also might tell you to stir midway through cooking. This helps to transfer the heat more evenly into the food, move food away from cold spots, and also break up chunks of ice and mix them with warmer pockets of water to help melt them... It turns out that "turning the microwave off every so often to let the food cool" is exactly what the "power level" setting does! Choosing a lower power level doesn't actually change the strength of the microwaves; it just means that the microwave generator won't be running the whole time... In effect, the microwave is just automating the tedious task of zapping something a bunch of times on "high" for 10 seconds each and letting it sit for a while in between."

After I read this XKCD, I started putting my Schwan's breakfast bagels in at 50% power for twice the recommended time, and the icy center vanished. All those years of raging against the magnetron for our burned mouths and surprise icy centers, and the solution was there the entire time. Is this a cautionary tale to engineers who would mock and shun the liberal arts majors who document their ingenious technical solutions? Or were these features documented all along, in instruction manuals easily tossed aside by generations upon generations of nerds who blithely assumed that they knew all there was to know about the simple and unassuming microwave, only to burn their mouths and vent their wrath upon hapless users by screaming "RTFM!"

When you stare into the hot pocket, the hot pocket stares into you.

I recently switched to Pale Moon (a fork of Firefox focused on stability) and I haven't looked back.

Everyone else likes to bitch about Firefox's ramrodding of shitty UI choices down their throats, but to me the vast instability of modern firefox just cannot be borne. In large part this is due to shockwave flash being a pile of shit; the current version has a bug where it reports itself as out-of-date (despite not being) which forces you to click every flash window to confirm that yes, you do in fact want the goddamn thing to play. Pale Moon has that same problem; because it's Flash, not Pale Moon's fault. However, when the shitty fucking app finally crashes, Pale Moon usually survives. When it crashes in Firefox, it takes the browser down with it.

I remember back when Firefox 2.0 was the latest and greatest thing - I was on a 28.8k dial-up connection at the time; so I'd never, ever, ever close a loaded page if I could help it. My personal record for open tabs was somewhere north of 4,000 - I have a screenshot of it somewhere. This was on an old laptop with a grand total of 2 gigabytes of RAM. On my modern desktop - a gaming rig with a beefy processor and 16 gigabytes of RAM - the idea of getting to even 1,000 open tabs is a goddamned joke. We've been told that Firefox's memory leaks were being fixed, but if anything Firefox is far less stable than it used to be.

YOU. Yes you, opening the reply window to blame all my problems on "dodgy plugins." Shut up. Shut the hell up. I tried a reinstall of Firefox, a complete nuke-and-pave to eliminate the instability that so plagued me, but it was all for naught. It doesn't surprise me one damn bit that Chrome is pulling ahead of Firefox in the browser wars - it's because Chrome actually works, and has much better stability and crash recovery.

The great irony of this post is that, had it been written in the late 1700s or early 1800s, it would be completely un-ironic. That was the era of the rapier; a blade designed specifically for efficient handling in narrow back alleyways in Europe for killing people trying to smash your skull in and steal your purse. Look up any of the old fencing manuals; there's a reason the off-hand accessory (usually used for parries) is a lantern or a heavy cloak (i.e. what you would have on you as a matter of course when walking about town.)

You, sir, may sniff about the increased safety enjoyed by someone equipped with a sidearm; but your ancestors had no such qualms. As for "accidental shootings," I'd be interested in the data (or lack thereof) pertaining to those, as well. I carry a concealed pistol every day, and thanks to training, practice, prudence, good safety habits and above all; modern safety features in its design, my pistol has never bitten me or peed on the carpet.

I have a book on my shelf at home that was printed in the 80s; and it's all about how the japanese are going to take over the computer industry as we know it; how the world will soon belong to Japan. SECOND VERSE, SAME AS THE FIRST! A WHOLE LOT LOUDER AND A WHOLE LOT WORSE!

Dude. http://classic.slashdot.org/st... You're welcome.

It's the existence of these databases that worries me; not who is making them. If the database exists, the government can and will access them, either through secret warrants or through outright illegal cracking, as the NSA did. I don't much worry about Facebook violating my rights - but what the government might do with the massive facial recognition database Facebook made of their users is a different story.

Cool propaganda post bro

To quote a friend of mine, "I love these things! You can't knock over a normal security guard and rip out all the expensive electronics in them!"

You raise a very good point. TFA is simply elucidating what everyone already knows: there's absolutely no chance that the Mars One project seriously intends to launch a payload, much less people - to anywhere, much less Mars. A manned Mars mission is a blatant impossibility for NASA as-is, given a host of technological, political and monetary barriers... but even their eggheads have churned out some rough sketches with a lot of whitespace labeled "work this out later." It's the preliminary brainstorming that proceeds the engineering: before engineers could build the LM, someone had to decide that lunar-orbit rezvendous was the way to go.

The fact that the Mars One project hasn't even done this much says everything. (TFA's commentor tells Slashdot nothing new, but does help inform the less technically-inclined.) In light of this, the Mars One projects Serious Statements have always sounded like a novel way to make people start thinking about space; to consider a Mars mission "seriously" instead as just another airy, easily-dismissed "someday we'll have flying cars" fantasy. The "suicide mission" aspect is both sensationalist and a way to force people to comtemplate the inherent human risks in space exploration. I personally have no problem with this and I wish them luck with their interesting promotion of space exploration. However, the parent post asks a very, very good question:

If they're not going to Mars with that money - or even producing preliminary brainstorms - what the heck ARE they doing with it?

Actually, yes. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/F... There's even a list somewhere of isolated tribes that made first contact in the 20th century. And this list of peoples yet uncontacted: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U...