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Comment Re:These cars should have to pass drivers ed tests (Score 1) 29

People who have taken driver's ed still make damn foolish mistakes. As is Waymo currently has a lower accident rate per mile driven than humans do on average.

As such, I consider 'we were made aware of the problem and deployed a fix' to be an acceptable outcome. Much like a teenager who just upgraded from a learner's permit, they should keep improving.

As they keep identifying and fixing bugs, IE incorrect driving decisions, the rate should keep dropping until they're better than all but the best human drivers.

Comment Re:So what, all 12 people? (Score 1) 131

They have about the same population density, around the same amount of roads by population, etc...
We can care because they make for a good test case, especially for the northern USA.

It's like how polling around 1k people should give pretty good results for any question for the entire country, within 3%. Around 10k people for a 95% chance of being within 1% (where exact methodology to ensure a true random sample may be more important).

Now, we shouldn't assume any experience will be 100% the same, but on average we should see similar results.

Comment Re:numbers (Score 1) 131

So Norway has a car for every 1.9 people, and the USA for every 1.2 people.
While a significant difference, it isn't like it is an order of magnitude difference. I also remember seeing figures that places Norway at around the same population density as the USA, and about the same number of roads and distance driven per year.
I'd argue that Norway can and should be examined to inform on actions inside the USA, especially northern areas.

Comment Re:Refuel in orbit [Re: I'm rooting for it!!] (Score 1) 166

I want to remind you that I never said 400 tons of fuel, I just used your numbers. I said 8 launches, calling Musk's 4 bull. Even with only 100 tons/fuel per launch, that's 800 tons without changing stuff up should be allow them to stuff more fuel into starship, saving weight via not needing other cargo stuff, just bigger tanks.

Also, I said "reach the moon", not "land on it".

And changing development timelines is pretty normal.

Comment Re:Refuel in orbit [Re: I'm rooting for it!!] (Score 1) 166

You're still rewriting the proposals to get your figures.
It isn't 100 tons of fuel per launch, it is closer to 150 that they are figuring. Hundreds of m/s is still many tons of fuel.
10 launches, not 16.
400 tons of fuel plus 220 tons is 620T total, that is about 65% fuel, easily enough to reach the moon.
Landing with 220T would need some more, but as I said, i discounted Musk's statement.

Besides, who says we'll go to the moon with v3 instead of the 200t v4?

And with saying a year or more for 5 launches, SpaceX is expending starships faster now. There isn’t any real reason to thing that they won't have 4 or more rockets and be able to turn them around quickly to get the fuel launched rapidly. Lots of testing and development first though. I'll fully admit that.
Basically just figure that starship will have to same reuse abilities as falcon 9, roughly.

Comment Re:Refuel in orbit [Re: I'm rooting for it!!] (Score 1) 166

They still aren't reducing payload. 200 tons is intended for block 4, block 3 is 100 tons. 100 tons was the planned payloads for the starships I was looking at.
What you might be missing is that a "refueler" starship isn't necessarily restricted to just its payload capacity for fuel transfer. It could be deliberately redesigned for holding more fuel more efficiently, so when I looked it up, the plan is 8 launches. Not to mention that maybe Starship doesn't need the full 1600 tons for a moon mission. Right now, I'm seeing estimates of 8-10, though higher is possible of course. It's active development, things could change. Musk said it could be as few as four, but I tend to discount him.

Looking, it's around 6 km/s of delta-v to land on the moon from LEO. It should have right around 6 km/s when fully loaded (100 tons). So a full fuel load would be mandated. But they're also figuring on the lunar starship having some fuel on board after launch, and tanker starships being able to move ~150 tons per launch.

16 flights would be a worst case scenario.

Comment Re:Refuel in orbit [Re: I'm rooting for it!!] (Score 1) 166

I moved zero goalposts. Moving the goalposts is when a person initially supports one position, then changes it when challenged. Given that I'd only made ONE post of the topic, that's hard to do.

The discussion was about equivalency, as you say. Personally, I consider "cost" a very important metric when considering equivalency. It's not like I only looked at cost either, I looked at the total payload as well. I considered the number of launches as well, for which Starship would still be cheaper even if it takes 10 times as many launches.

As for it being a "fucking month" of launches, who says? SpaceX is building multiple starship launch points, they've launched 3 falcon rockets in a single day before, 14 rockets in a single month.
If it takes 10 launches for the mission, that would be closer to two weeks, not a month. They CAN keep it up right now. They've done it before. Yes, lots of stuff to scale up, but you should recognize that Starship is still in development, they can build more hardware and ground equipment as necessary to support this stuff.

Also, is it really worth spending 10 times as much in order to send 1/3rd the stuff "in a single shot" in order to save a week or so? Odds are, given the costs of SLS, that they wouldn't save the time anyways - delays and overruns will still let Starship launch faster (once in service).

And you've actually identified yourself as the moron, thank you very much. You see, I'm not the one that called SLS obsolete. You did.

Comment Re:Refuel in orbit [Re: I'm rooting for it!!] (Score 1) 166

Somebody did make a price comparison, I did.

And yes, I looked into it. Looking into something doesn't have to be a deep dive, I don't need to be 100% up on the topic.

Besides, v3 is only v3. There's more development room. Besides, you must not have looked into it by your own standard, because v3 is bigger than V2, increasing capacity, bot decreasing it.

For all the savings of launch capacity if it takes 3 launches of starship to equal 1 launch of SLS, Starship costs so much less that we can just build more launch capacity. Ground facilities are not that expensive.

Comment Re:Refuel in orbit [Re: I'm rooting for it!!] (Score 2) 166

I've looked into that.
1 SLS launch to the moon, ~46 metric tons to lunar transfer orbit, $4B for the launch.
Starship: 100 metric tons to the surface of the moon, around $100M for the single use lunar craft, around $10M a launch for the reusable refuelers. It is expected to take about 8 refuelings for the moon trip, not 16.
So, still around an order of magnitude cheaper for around 3 times the payload to the surface.

Comment Re:police officers working from home? and not on t (Score 5, Informative) 57

Police detectives tend to not work "a beat", but instead a selection of cases. Reviewing paperwork from the field can easily take up most of their time. They could have to be reading like a hundred witness statements to try to figure out what actually happened, most likely, who's lying, and why. Collaborating testimony with other evidence, reviewing security camera footage, reading test results - DNA, fingerprint, drug, residue, etc... Deciding whether or not there's enough evidence to try for a warrant or the UK's equivalent. Following up with witnesses, scheduling interviews, etc...

Comment Re:The stupid it hurts. (Score 1) 146

I might be being pessimistic, but I'm not being massively so like the original poster, who was assuming replacement every 15 years. I was pushing that out to 20-30 and suggesting even longer. But, well, I wanted to stick to tested information. And most of that information is with EVs at this point, not grid reserve. We shall have to see.

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