calbiterol

Dunno. I have to rebuild my computer, and I'm going to partition the hard drive, with one partition linux and the other windows. Anything and everything online will be done on linux (except online gaming) - I've had too many problems with viruses, spyware, adware, etc on windows, even with antivirus. I'm going to try a live install (boot off CD) of ubuntu after I get it up and running again, and if I like it better than the SUSE I'm going to originally install, then I can play around and let you know. Look for something about the user interface.

I don't want to sound like I'm going ballistic on you, but... About the elevator, this is just plain wrong. Based on a study by Bradley Carl Edwards, using current technology (or technology extrapolated about 5 years from current technology), a feasible, operational space elevator could be constructed in 10-15 years for a mere US$10 billion or so, including legal costs. A second could then be built for as little as $3 billion and with construction timetables compressed to as little as six months. Costs and construction time continually decrease after each elevator is built, according to this study. Also, where on God's green earth are you getting your figures for launch costs?! Mine point to US $20 000 per kilogram for geostationary orbit, and $6-12 thousand per kilogram for low earth orbit. That's a LOT more than $1000 a pound, down to "$500 pretty soon." Any craft would have to be put even further out than geostationary. Sources: August 2005 issue of IEEE Spectrum, "A Hoist to the Heavens" and http://ares.jsc.nasa.gov/HumanExplore/Exploration/EXLibrary/docs/ISRU/04Making.htm NEA's? Forgive me if it's a dumb question, but what is an NEA? And as to the rest: actually, no. Especially since "launch" costs could be potentially brought below $10 per kilogram with space elevators. To put the small figure of $10 billion into perspective, NASA's annual budget is $15 billion. The US government's annual budget (based on the Office of Management and Budget's figure for the current economy) is upwards of $12 trillion. So, with only a shade more than 0.1% of the US budget/economy, two space elevators could be constructed. The shuttle's launch cost is $400-500 million. The cost in launches for the ISS is much higher than that of building a space elevator, and the space elevator is a much larger structure (and, quite frankly, much more important) than the ISS. In my own defense... You're forgetting a few. Scaled Composites/Tier One, the companies responsible for the first private suborbital flight by Burt Rutan's SpaceShipOne. Needless to say, I'm already pretty well versed in these companies. (I plan to become a private sector aerospace engineer in a few years.) I don't mean to sound hostile, but it's a very common (and annoying) misconception that space elevators are immensely expensive and unpractical. They aren't, and we could start construction on one in less than five years, if the government was motivated to do so.

Now THAT was poetic justice, Herme3. I think Sayo will be proud.

You gotta be kidding me. Seriously, don't waste our time with your ridiculously degenerate defecation of an answer. In other words, cut the crap, you boil-brained whore-master. Come back when you have something intelligent to say. Your odiferously nonsensical babbling will get you nowhere. Ahah. Much more reasonable. I still think that this would make it harder for potentially great products to compete, though.

Alternatively, you could just build it all in space to begin with. Then you could cut out all of the ineffeciency of lifting the craft, as well as any subsequent ones, AND any fuel, to orbit. One of these days, I hope somebody with loads of cash decides to do this - maybe that will light a fire under NASA's pants. An international space race wouldn't be a bad thing, either. My vote is for the space elevator that goes straight to the orbital assembly line!

I have to disagree with this. Having a monopoly dissolves all competition, meaning that there is no longer any push for a better product. This means that either there are no improvements made, or the improvements are very slow in the coming. If you ask me, m$ is the case in point for this.

Server's IP is also known as the external IP. That's the address that your computer's browser looks for - the "street address" for the server, so to speak. The local IP is the location of the server relative to it's router (if that makes any sense). It's the path another server (or service, hint hint) would take to get to the computer (server) that the page is stored on. There's a bunch of questions on that level already in this thread. Read the whole thing, you should uncover some info on it.

I know. But the power supply is very similar. What I meant by that was, I'll probably end up moving the power supply (photoflashes) to a coil gun. But that's not the point. I mean easy on a relative scale - eventually, perhaps when I get to college (or find freetime in general), I may experiment with larger, more complex (and expensive) railguns. The idea is that I want to build an actual railgun, and I don't want to have to sell my kidneys to build it. Nor do I want them fried when I wire it up. Don't get me wrong - I'm perfectly aware that even 1 photoflash can be incapacitating, much less 15 or 20 of them - the idea is, each individual component is much less lethal. I tend to be very careful when dissecting or toying with electronics, especially those with capacitors. In reality, I'm not going for easy, I'm going for cheap. That's very characteristic of me - it's a lot easier to build a gokart with an old lawnmower engine and some metal tubing than it is to build a hovercraft out of a vaccum, resin, and some scrap plywood, but I don't have a half-finished gokart sitting in my room, do I? Anyways, that's a different topic. The idea is, I don't want the easy way out, I want a practical one that still offers a challenge. I think that (for me, at least) just the satisfaction of having made a working (however badly) railgun would be worth the trouble.

'Twasn't Pangloss, it was me. No worries. Tools -> Options -> Tabbed Browsing -> (scroll down) User Interface -> Place tabbar on bottom of window (requires restart).

The point is that I want something relatively easy and quick for my first one. Just to play around with. In the end I'll probably convert it into a coil gun - but for now, I just want to play around.

Not just one, the ones that I've seen had about 15-20 wired parallel. [Edit: here's one: http://cas.umkc.edu/physics/sps/projects/railgun/railgun.html ] While I'm on the subject, can I charge multiple capacitors in parallel with one circuit? I ask because one of the charging circuits got fried. So I have one (partially) operational circuit, with most of the circuitry intact, and another that's fully operational.

I dunno about that first part - I have heard of (and googled) a lot of experiments with photoflash caps being used for railguns, in addition to coilguns.

IIRC, at least some of the OS has to be written in assembly. A quick google search yielded this site, which skims over stuff pretty well, IMHO.

As far as the caps go, so far I have collected the following (all electrolytic): 2 photo-flash, rated at 330v160µF and 330v200µF; 1 rated at 200v120µF; 3 rated at 18v330µF; 1 rated at 6.3v1000µF; 1 rated at 200v4.7µF; 1 rated at 50v47µF; 1 rated at 50v4.7µF; 1 rated at 6.3v100µF There's a bunch more smaller ones, as well as some that are of a different type (I suspect ceramic, see below) that I haven't harvested from the VCR yet. I'm really surprised at the difference a few millimeters makes in capacitance. The 50 volt caps, which vary in capacitance by a factor of ten, are - at most - a millimeter or two bigger in diameter. As far as transformers go, I still have the majority of the camera-flash circuitry left, and I was planning on pulling off the circuitry. Would an LED serve the same purpose as a bulb, or do I need an actual bulb? They aren't very old. The VCR itself can't be more than 7 years old; my gut says it's closer to 5. Also, what's the difference between the mini-soda can caps and the ones that look like coins wrapped in blue tape? Are the former electrolytic and the latter... Ceramic? Tantalum (electrolytic)? [Edit: my dad says that transformers only work on AC. How do they step up the voltage from a 1.5 volt battery to the 330v (it's probably more like 160 volts) needed to charge the capacitor quickly? I see what looks like a transformer on the circuit, but would they really go to the trouble of using an alternator on such a small circuit?]

Yeah, I see that, but it's not what I mean. I'm trying to explain it to a friend, and he doesn't think that the virtual image would be produced (I know it is, I've seen these things in action)... Can you explain to me how, exactly, the image is produced and why the image is actually there?

Weird - I'm looking at it and don't see any problems on FF 1.0.6. http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v669/calbiterol/ScreenShot_002.png My OS is (currently) windows xp home edition. What's your OS? This is the only thing that I can think of that would cause this problem. From your screenshot it looks like Red Hat linux. I'm not exactly familiar with Red hat, so if that's the issue, I dunno what to say. Cheers.

From my understanding, "also" auf deutsch doesn't mean also, it means something along the lines of "anyways," which, if I was taught correctly, would make it "Anyways, does anyone here speak German? I speak some, but I understand it well." (Again, not literally) Diesen Satz verstehe ich nicht, was bedeutet er? „Darauf lege ich keinen Wert.“ Ich denke, daß ich diesen Satz verstehe, aber was heißt es genau? „Unsere letzte Unterredung war nicht so, dass ich darauf brenne, sie fortzusetzen.“ Unsere letzte ___ (encounter? meeting? account?) war nicht so, dass ich ___ ____ (ich habe gedacht, daß brennen „to burn“ heißt. stimmt das?), sie fortzusetzen. Also, ich habe „our last account didn't give me the desire to continue“ verstehen, aber ich denke, daß das nicht voll recht ist. Bitte, corregieren Sie mir, wenn ich eine Verwechslung gemacht habe.

Wasn't planning on it. If/when I do decide to do that, I'll have a chat with my dad, or get him to help - one of his bachelors is in electrical engineering. I'm not entirely sure. Perhaps (seeing as I also have 2 photo-flash caps) build a simple (and very small) railgun. We shall see. I am pretty well-versed in safety, as far as electricity/electronics goes, and I know some basic theory, I just don't know as much as I'd like to. As far as reverse voltage, do you mean reverse polarity? If yeah, then that's a bit of a no-brainer... Anyways, is there anything I should know about simultaneously discharging/charging cap's with different voltage ratings in the same circuit?

That only tells you the focal point of one of the parabolas, I believe - unless we are assuming that they are both identical. More importantly, that still doesn't tell me how it works. I guess a more appropriate question would be, why is the virtual image produced?

After a certain point, this is definitely correct. I'm not sure if it is always correct, but when put into practice, this is most definitely true.

I've been wondering for quite some time how double-parabolic mirrors (such as the ones for sale here and here[yes, same product, different pages]) work. Specifically, I'd like to know the issues behind image coherency and the focal points of the mirrors. Thanks in advance.

Ion drives are extremely efficient - the problem is, they have very little power, but a LOT of exit velocity, so they don't produce any decent amount of acceleration.

As per (someone's) suggestion, I thought I'd start a thread for all those who speak another language, in order for people to get practice in it / just converse / etc. So, have at it! Also, spricht jemand hier deutsch? Ich spreche ein bißchen deutsch, und ich verstehe ganz gut.

I agree with nanotechnology completely. The language thing would be quite cool as well. Personally, the two things that I would most like to see are electronics (I see an awful lot of questions that should be in electricity/electronics go into engineering or computer science) and space technology/aerospace engineering/etc.

I have to admit, I didn't actually check to see what the link was doing, so I was just speculating there. About the xhtml /> : Thanks.