Methinks someone doesn't know what "mandatory" means.>> ^Lendl:

"...attendance at the Romney event was mandatory, but no one was forced to attend."
wtf??

I always thought you used warm water because it freezes from the bottom up, NOT forcing the minerals/impurities into the center. or something like that

@spoco
the "official" government theory on what happened is also a conspiracy theory.
and there are always political underpinnings on where blame is placed, and how.

I mean, it's a wonderful theory that a guy in the remote stretches of Afghanistan trained and coordinated a bunch of Saudis conducting an URBAN airport operation. he must have had terrific cel service at the batcave.
it's a dumb theory, but still a theory.

and i'm quite sure invading Afghanistan had nothing to do with the largest amount of untapped rare earth minerals anywhere in the world. what a lucky coincidence!
and given that a modern empire needs to have 2 essential things to maintain it's empire - energy and technology, there is absolutely NO WAY we are in Afghanistan for anything but killing that dude, women's rights, feeding the orphans, and keeping us snuggly safe and secure.

Mineral oil...about 80 gallons of the stuff.

>> ^Xaielao:

I'm not sure if that was supposed to be an alien or an elf with a massive brain tumor.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Sixth_Finger

It's an ignorant Welsh miner whose natural evolution has been fast-tracked in some hokey machine in a mad-geneticist's lab.

The Outer Limits always had the funkiest-looking monsters and aliens.

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Dual Unit Mars Balloons - that's gold. >> ^Fletch:

@dag

Thanks for the link - I've reviewed a lot of this stuff too though I appreciate more information even if it is delivered with a heavy dose of condescension.

Disagreement is not condescension. I don't think you're insane. I just think you're wrong.
[Here's a link for you. Be sure and attach your idea for Dual Unit Mars Balloons to your resumé. I'm sure they will be very interested in your ideas.]
^THAT'S condescension (just an example, of course).

Egos and personalities involved in science? Why would I ever think that - everything we do or say or write comes from a completely rational base right?

We are talking about NASA, not science in general, although I'm sure there are egos aplenty at NASA as well. But I find it very unlikely, ridiculous even, that a mission that has been purposely over-complicated just to satisfy said ego(s), in the face of budget constraints and time considerations, would even make it off the drawing board, much less all the way to Mars. That's just not the way missions are conceived, planned, and realized there.
As I mentioned, the only major difference between this landing and the previous rover landings is the winch instead of the balloon due to the size of Curiosity. I don't see the over-engineering. It's Mars. It's far away and it has little atmosphere for braking. If NASA could just hire some miners, retrofit the Shuttle with indestructable skin and gravity, and then send them to Mars with minimal training, they wouldn't need the winch.

@dag

Thanks for the link - I've reviewed a lot of this stuff too though I appreciate more information even if it is delivered with a heavy dose of condescension.

Disagreement is not condescension. I don't think you're insane. I just think you're wrong.

[Here's a link for you. Be sure and attach your idea for Dual Unit Mars Balloons to your resumé. I'm sure they will be very interested in your ideas.]

^THAT'S condescension (just an example, of course).

Egos and personalities involved in science? Why would I ever think that - everything we do or say or write comes from a completely rational base right?

We are talking about NASA, not science in general, although I'm sure there are egos aplenty at NASA as well. But I find it very unlikely, ridiculous even, that a mission that has been purposely over-complicated just to satisfy said ego(s), in the face of budget constraints and time considerations, would even make it off the drawing board, much less all the way to Mars. That's just not the way missions are conceived, planned, and realized there.

As I mentioned, the only major difference between this landing and the previous rover landings is the winch instead of the balloon due to the size of Curiosity. I don't see the over-engineering. It's Mars. It's far away and it has little atmosphere for braking. If NASA could just hire some miners, retrofit the Shuttle with indestructable skin and gravity, and then send them to Mars with minimal training, they wouldn't need the winch.

Thankyou for your words, and congrats to all the other gem miners... we'll be rich before long people, Riiiiich!

Comment hidden because you are ignoring dag. (show it anyway)

Wow congrats to you all, they grow up into compressed minerals so fast. [sniff] Thanks @Norsuelefantti, @lurgee, @spoco2, @moodonia and @seltar for your contributions to the Sift.

Very interesting, and a very gray-area issue!

All kinds of jobs have guaranteed significant risks associated with them -- mining, oil rigs, Alaskan crab fisherman, etc. If there is some feasible and yes, cost efficient way to reduce those risks then it is pretty rational to expect or hope that it will be implemented. But, sometimes you really do need more data to figure out what if anything can be done to mitigate the risks. And sadly, that might require some level of exposing people to some problem that you know exists, but don't know what to do about yet.

If a coal miner suddenly decides that the risk of black-lung is too much for them to continue, I don't think we should expect the mining company to keep them on the payroll even if they refuse to go into the mine. I hope that these guys get the top brass to think long and hard about whether or not it is necessary to ground all the F-22s again, but I think they need to be ready to accept the very real possibility that the Air Force will tell them "don't let the door hit you in the ass on your way out".

If you really want to be an asteroid miner, just play EVE online.

Oh my god. They totally got me. I was about to go, "THEY WERE NOT MINERS IN ALIENS!" Bravo, TDS writers. Bravo.

Ouch that last probe was a game changer, the guys losing it in the background is so epic!

That protoss should micro his probes when attacking, sending each weak probe to a mineral patch, like blink micro for probes lol

Nevermind, I don't even play protoss, or SC2 for that matter

What about reactors that can't melt down? What about Ford Pintos that exploded when you hit them from the rear, that isn't a story of why all cars are dangerous, only Ford Pintos. What about a plane lands on a city and kills thousands, or the super dome and 10s of thousands? What if what if what if. 50 million people is a little showing of being irrationality scared. Even in the worst designed reactor incident in history, it wasn't as bad as that. If you looked closely, as well, the chart shows that nuclear has historically been safer that solar and wind (and hydro if you include the Banqiao Dam incident).

With that said, I do wish to see old light water reactor technology phased out and new, walk away safe reactors phased in. Engineered safety is less preferred than intrinsic safety that many of the new reactors have. Also, lets not forget, most of the navy is nuclear...meaning they feel safe enough to be in war time situations with current reactors, so engineered safety can indeed be very safe.

I have irrational fears as well, I hate to fly even though I know statistically it is safer than driving. I would suggest that your fear of nuclear is of the same nature. The only way you can kill millions of people with current or future nuclear technology is with bombs, not reactors. The only way reactors can "explode" is from a steam explosion or a hydrogen explosion...so about as bad as a fuel plant exploding, most likely several orders of magnitude less. IE, reactors explode chemically, not via fission, making no more or less dangerous that that other kinds of tech, with the exception of the fission byproducts. The good thing about most of the new nuclear tech is the fuel burn up rates are very very high, meaning there is less fuel involved in most cases.

At any rate, don't take my word for it, there is lots of data out there to look over. For my part, I think nuclear is the cleanest, safest bet for energy needs. I submit that nuclear is only scary because of it was first developed as a fearsome weapon. But the even more fearsome weapon are thermonuclear weapons, which are actually fusion/fission hybrid bombs. I would imagine for whatever reason you aren't super scared of fusion, and would wager that if thermonuclear bombs were called fusion bombs, the world at large would have a different mindset towards it...irrationally.

But I leave you with the facts, nuclear has been the leading sources of clean power which has also caused the least amount of deaths than other technologies. There are many factors in that, including massively engineered safety that continues to improve, as well as highly trained crews that watch over them. Coal miners die all the time, pipelines explode, oil platforms explode, people fall off roofs, or fall off wind farm towers, or get electrocuted...but none of these deaths cause the downfall of those technologies. Nuclear still has more drama in our minds, so plays out much differently when something goes wrong, which isn't very often ( 6 fatal occurrences since 1961) .

>> ^Yogi:

>> ^GeeSussFreeK:
http://nextbigfuture.com/2011/03/deaths-per-twh-by-energy-source.html


I'm sorry are you comparing death rates between Coal and Nuclear Reactors? What if there's a meltdown or a terrorist attack and suddenly there's 50,000,000 people dead? It only takes one reactor outside of LA to do catastrophic damage you cannot compare the two NOW when we don't have a Fuckton of Reactors near population centers.
Comparing the two at this point in time is just ridiculous, the numbers are so skewed it's not even funny.

>> ^Spacedog79:

It's funny that we actually have loads of easily accessible rare earth minerals in Monozite sands, but we don't use it because there is so much Thorium in it. A Thorium reactor also produces a significant amount of rare earths as a byproduct. Problem solved QED.


Except it's not about what makes sense for the nation or even the world. It's about what makes bankers more MONEY.

Nb. http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2012/mar/14/goldman-sachs-director-quits-morally-bankrupt