Restricting the nozzle of a solid rocket usually causes it to explode, so maybe you could "throttle" it by opening the nozzle, to reduce the burn rate. You might even be able to get it to blow itself out that way, I suppose.
Isn't our solar system's ecliptic plane closely aligned with the galactic plane? That's what I remember from the last time I actually looked at the Milky Way up in the sky, anyway. I had always assumed this was for the same reason that the plane of rotation of most of the planets are aligned with their planes of revolution around the sun...
The last time I tried to figure this out, what I came up with was that you could detect a megawatt-level signal out to a distance of a dozen or so light years, using a dish like Aricebo on both ends, and the best available detection technology. The whole SETI project presupposes that other cultures are making an explicit, extremely expensive effort to contact us. We aren't doing that, so I suspect they aren't either. I imagine the folks on other planets have built their equivalent of the Very Large Array and are patiently waiting for signals to come in that they couldn't get the funding to send out, either.
This actually turns out to be an argument for having SETI concentrate on visible-light signals, rather than radio. Higher-frequency signals would have much lower divergence, helping with the collection requirements at the other end. http://www.google.com/search?q=optical+seti
They ask you to upload a copy of your state-issued Id before they'll sell you one, and they make you click a bunch of checkboxes on a form. I suspect that's a CYA move on their part - if someone buys one of these and then blinds themselves or someone else, the wickedlasers guys can say "look, he agreed it was dangerous, and he even went to the effort of scanning his drivers license".
Seriously - I didn't get anywhere near that many x-rays when I had my root canal/crown operation a couple of years ago.
Well, in the case that you know the specific wavelength you want to protect against, you can notch-filter just that frequency. Unfortunately, there's quite a range of wavelengths in high-power portable lasers these days - at least red, green, blue, violet, IR, and UV. Anything that protects against all of those at the same time is probably going to look like welding shades.
beam shape of a laser is primarily related to the shape and size of the lasing cavity. Since diode lasers are so small, they tend to have fairly high divergence. Interestingly, if you expand the beam at the source, it reduces the spread proportionately. Actually, the wickedlasers folks have a chart on their web site: (doesn't include the laser we're discussing her, probably because it's new, but gives you an idea).
http://www.wickedlasers.com/laser-tech/laser_beam_comparison.html
From the pictures on the website, it looks like the projector has an array of 8x3 laser diodes. Not sure whether 8 of those are the blue ones, or more, or less. So figure between $100 and $4 per laser, depending. I'me sure they have that enclosure down to a few bucks by now, considering how many models they make that are nearly the same...
Most C programming these days is systems level - drivers, compilers, database engines, that sort of thing. If you're not working in the embedded world, you probably won't see much C, but if you're writing Linux drivers (for example), C is what you'll be using. So come on out to sunny California, and hack on some kernel modules.
Or, go to work in India or China, for the companies that have outsourced their systems development.
You may have overestimated the problem, here. While it's true that not everybody has a garage in America, there are simple solutions for most people. For the apartment dwellers, they probably park in a parking lot of some sort. The apartment complex can provide (metered) charging stations there. Some employers already provide electric vehicle charging stations. If EVs become more popular, they'll likely add more.
Coulomb Technologies is installing charging stations in the streetlights in San Jose, CA:
http://www.azcentral.com/business/articles/2010/05/13/20100513arizona-companies-charge-charging-electric-cars.html
Not everyone will be able to switch over to electric cars all at once, but that's okay. We don't have the capacity to make them or charge them set up, anyway. One great thing about EVs is that the charging stations are incredibly cheap compared to what it costs to build and operate a gas station. You could put an EV charging station on every street corner of a small city for less than the cost of a single gas station.
> I could easily come up with latest where the Prius beats the fell out of a BMW. say traveling S. on the 605 from City of industry into hunting beach at about 5PM.
That's one place where the Prius really shines - when you're crawling along in traffic at ~ 5 mph for an hour, the engine doesn't run for that whole hour.
> amazing battery life, and it'll do sms and phone calls
Yeah, as it turns out, those two don't go together very well. The cellular modem uses by far more power than anything else on the system, for most phones. The second-highest power drain is usually the display & backlight, so you'd see some improvement, but not "amazing".
They have a new story in which they congratulate themselves over getting Jimbo to act on their behest. Jimbo basically admits he planned this as PR stunt to remove the pressure from him: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057896.html Mike Godwin seems to agree to that strategy: http://lists.wikimedia.org/pipermail/foundation-l/2010-May/057936.html
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The moon is made of green cheese. -- John Heywood
