Jump to content

Leaderboard

Popular Content

Showing content with the highest reputation on 05/11/21 in all areas

  1. https://phys.org/news/2021-05-space-telescope-golden-mirror-wings.html Space telescope's golden mirror wings open one last time on Earth: The process of deploying, moving, expanding and unfurling all of Webb's many movable pieces after they have been exposed to a simulated launch is the best way to ensure they will perform as intended once in space. Credit: NASA/Chris Gunn For the last time while it is on Earth, the world's largest and most powerful space science telescope opened its iconic primary mirror. This event marked a key milestone in preparing the observatory for launch later this year. As part of the NASA's James Webb Space Telescope's final tests, the 6.5-meter (21-foot, 4-inch) mirror was commanded to fully expand and lock itself into place, just like it would in space. The conclusion of this test represents the team's final checkpoint in a long series of tests designed to ensure Webb's 18 hexagonal mirrors are prepared for a long journey in space, and a life of profound discovery. After this, all of Webb's many movable parts will have confirmed in testing that they can perform their intended operations after being exposed to the expected launch environment. more at link......
    1 point
  2. Delete 'remarkably', replace with 'deceitfully'. Any fool can convert work to heat with 100% efficiency. Only a fool thinks you can do the reverse. Until you grasp this fundamental difference between work (shaft energy, electricity, potential energy, elastic energy etc) and heat, thermodynamics will remain a complete mystery to you. Currently, you are treating the two concepts as equivalent in all your postings.
    1 point
  3. Yes it does. Ambient heat supplies energy to break the hydrogen bonds in the ice crystal, increasing the chemical potential energy of the working medium. This potential energy then flows out when the temperature is reduced and the ice diverts some of that energy into work, as the ice forms and lifts the weight. And then the cycle repeats itself. I've deleted the rest as it just adds confusion.
    1 point
  4. As sub-orbital flights start to, er, take off, a more accurate estimate of the commercial safety profile can start to build. It's not fixed, as with aviation safety will likely improve with time. How much risk to tolerate is a personal choice. I imagine there will be an initial wave of intrepid tourists willing to take the risks, and as price goes down and safety increases more and more people will consider it an option (i guess it will remain the domain of the wealthy for a few decades though). I imagine the fledgling space tourism companies will understand how bad any fatalities will hurt their PR and so take it very seriously. With the New Shepherd starting to take tourists this summer we won't have long to see how the industry approaches things.
    1 point
  5. After checking a few figures, I agree with your starting point about the length and rotational velocity of the pipeline in rounded numbers. But exchemist has a more supportable view of the rotational velocity of the interfaces. Have you thought about how long it takes for the thawing to occur ? Here is a table of measurements from Wikipedia. Note that at this site the temperature does not rise above the freezing point of water at any time of day or night from November to May
    1 point
  6. How do you calculate this result?
    1 point
  7. I don't think there will be a sharp ice/water interface, hurtling round the planet. There will just be a progressive wave of melting and thawing. I'm not sure I follow why the water has to move at all. Won't it just gently expand and contract in situ? Just as any other wave does not involve net physical motion in the direction of travel of the wave.
    1 point
  8. Why for only an hour a day? Space several turbines at different locations along the pipeline and generate power all day and night somewhere on the planet.
    1 point
  9. One of the problems regarding capitalism is the pressure it puts on people to pursue material wealth. I see this primarily as a cultural problem. If you don't earn enough money in a capitalist system, you will become homeless and starve. Such pressure is counterproductive for several reasons. First: it locks people into jobs they don't want to do, jobs that are generally unnecessary for the advancement of society. Society becomes full of people selling useless junk to each other or doing services that in no way benefit mankind: an endless procession of scam artists. Second: it corrupts those disciplines that are truly beneficial for mankind, twisting them in the direction of self-interested profit. Third: money, and not true individual talent, become the end goal of all creative action. In my view this is the most regrettable consequence. Because of the aforementioned reasons: extreme pressure to earn a living and an incentive to work in a job that is superficial in nature, most people never really tap into their true creative ability, whatever that may be. Yes, there are a few who break the mold and actualize their creative potential, but in the vast majority this talent is suppressed, leading to a society where most people are not contributing their talents to the betterment of human civilization. For this, we all suffer. "Creative potential" is an aptitude in any discipline: engineering, mathematics, writing, - whatever discipline a person is naturally good at and interested in.
    1 point
  10. If that were the case then the question must be, how much power is in the system to put a load on? The heat sink being the load, to me, just sounds like a roundabout way of converting heat to energy, transmitting that energy somewhere. Thermodynamically that energy must be lost from the system eventually because no system is a perfectly closed system to our universe. This leads me to think that a superconducting heat sink is what we would think of as a "battery." The superconductor is the "load" or between a load and a power source, and is able to hold onto that potential at lengths of time that to us would seem like a battery. Really all it is is that energy waiting for a load to exhaust it into the universe through something like mechanical force and some frictional heat.
    1 point
  11. So there are two brains with the same consciousness frequency, one is awake and the other one is asleep. What does the person perceive?
    0 points
  12. I agree, sometimes it's hard for enthusiasts or even industry-professionals to separate the complexities of adding "safety" and "assurance" and stagnation. So often times we get pushed onto timeframes that are unrealistic, or expectations that compromise safety and think of that as progress but really we could have done it better had we remained focused. That's an oversimplification. Just before JFK said that h spent 5 minutes detailing the national security risks of allowing Russia to advance rocket technology while the US remains behind, and made the other point that Russia was poised to militarize space unopposed and the US better seize the opportunity of space exploration before that happens. I see an opposite trend. Test flights have increasing frequencies of failures which is a strong indicator of the manufacturing methods employed. What's happening is the mainstreaming of space. The question is can we tolerate the current hazard levels it is at?
    -2 points
×
×
  • Create New...

Important Information

We have placed cookies on your device to help make this website better. You can adjust your cookie settings, otherwise we'll assume you're okay to continue.