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Comment What, this is nonsense (Score 4, Insightful) 275

by mrwiggly (#34854510) Attached to: NASA Pitches Heavy Lift Vehicle To Congress

Well, first off all the problem with discoveries tank is due to a manufacturing problem with the stringers, not a design flaw.

Second of all, why use SSME's? They are designed for re-use, and have restart capability that will not be needed. A better choice would be the rocketdyn's RS-68, single use, cheap as fuck, provides more lifting power.

Comment Earth was temporarily hot due to a giant impact (Score 2, Informative) 135

by mrwiggly (#32043758) Attached to: Life's Building Blocks Found On Asteroid 24 Themis

The theory goes that a mars sized planetoid, named Theia, had formed at earths L4 or L5 Lagrangian points. As it's mass grew due to impacts, it was no longer stable at that point, and slammed into earth. The resulting debris cloud came together to form the moon.

See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giant_impact_hypothesis
Data Storage

"Magnetic Tornadoes" Could Offer New Data Storage Tech 109

Posted by ScuttleMonkey from the where-your-data-stops-no-one-knows dept.
coondoggie writes to tell us about the latest technique researchers are investigating as a possible means to store data, magnetic tornadoes. "Conventional computer memories store data in "bits" that consist of two magnetic elements that record data in binary form. When these elements are magnetized in the same direction, the computer reads the bit as a '0'; when magnetized in opposite directions, the bit represents a '1,' researchers stated. According to scientists, a vortex forms spontaneously — one vortex per disk — in a small magnetic disk when the disk's diameter falls below a certain limit. Although the vortex does not whirl about like a meteorological tornado, the atoms in the material do orient themselves so that their magnetic states, or 'moments,' point either clockwise or counterclockwise around the disk's surface. At the center of the disk, the density of this rotation causes the polarity of the vortex core to point either up out of the disk or down like a tornado's funnel, researchers stated. Because the vortices that form on the disks contain two independently controllable and accessible magnetic parameters, they could form the basis for quaternary bits that would contain data written as a 0, 1, 2, or 3."
Government

Obama Proposes Digital Health Records 563

Posted by CmdrTaco from the cuts-both-ways dept.
An anonymous reader writes "'President-elect Barack Obama, as part of the effort to revive the economy, has proposed a massive effort to modernize health care by making all health records standardized and electronic.' The plan includes having all conventional records converted to digital within 5 years. Independent studies are fixing this cost somewhere in the range of $75 to $100 Billion, with most of the money going to paying and training technical staff to work on the conversion. Early government estimates are showing 212,000 jobs could be created by this plan."

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