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Author Topic: Space Thread  (Read 346317 times)

Egan_BW

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1845 on: September 02, 2016, 06:09:21 am »

You can tell he's a synth because he hasn't given up yet.
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SirQuiamus

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1846 on: September 02, 2016, 09:44:42 am »

You can tell he's a synth because he hasn't given up yet.
You can tell just by looking at the above infographic: It says that Musk ran out of library books to read at the age of eight, and although it doesn't specify which library that was, it's reasonable to assume that it was the biggest one within a few miles of his childhood home in Pretoria. As of 2009, there were about 1.5 million volumes in the University of Pretoria Library collection, and that number was probably roughly the same in the late seventies – let's say 1.1 million volumes. The average length of a novel is somewhere around 80 000 words, although the scientific monographs and periodical volumes one can expect to find in an university library tend to be a bit wordier – so the average length of the books read by Musk was probably somewhere around 105 000 words. The graphic does not tell us when exactly he started to read at a steady rate of ten hours per day, but we can (uncharitably) assume that it was at the age of three, and it took him no less than five years to accomplish the task.

Given the above numbers, we can calculate Musk's average reading speed during his formative years:

(1100000*105000)/(365*5*10)/60
=105479,452055

105 479 words per minute is about 462 times higher than the reading speed of an average English-speaking human NPC, but it's probably within the normal range for a superintelligent player character like Musk.
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LordBaal

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1847 on: September 02, 2016, 09:49:23 am »

Probably it just means the books in his house. If you factor in the time in history and his father being engineer it stands to reason he could had over a hundred books lying around at home.
« Last Edit: September 02, 2016, 10:37:34 am by LordBaal »
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Reelya

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1848 on: September 02, 2016, 10:29:41 am »

You have to be a registered student to borrow from a university library. "When he was in grade school, he was reading ten hours a day, devouring everything in his library and the entire Encyclopedia Britannica". It was probably the library at his grade school or something. But I'm sure he'd be technically picky, e.g. if new "See Spot Run" books came out at the library, is he really going to stop reading encyclopedia-level stuff to read those to ensure "completeness" of having read all the books?
« Last Edit: September 02, 2016, 10:40:08 am by Reelya »
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Starver

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1849 on: September 02, 2016, 11:03:05 am »

When I was that age, a number of us had run through most of the age-specific reading books and had (in an early form of 'hipster' culture, arguably) started to go back and read younger-age books (Red Pirate, Green Pirate, etc) that we had skipped over.

By the end of my primary education, I was spending most of many of my breaks in the non-fiction shelves correctly sorting the largely unmaintained shelf contents back into dewey decimal order. I still, these days, regularly stop at the maps section in one or other bookshop and shuffle them back into map-number order.

This probably says somehing about me. It does not appear to an Elon Musk make, however...
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origamiscienceguy

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1850 on: September 02, 2016, 06:18:39 pm »

So. Anybody hearf of the spaceX disaster?
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Dutrius

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1851 on: September 02, 2016, 06:27:35 pm »

It was just yesterday that I heard that a SpaceX rocket would actually be reused and now news comes in that I see they have suffered a launchpad failure during fuelling (with, I presume, a 'virgin' booster), and have lost the payload.

I presume insurance will be claimed on, but even if this helps replace the satellite it'll not help future premiums or momentum of the planned future developments (c.f. Spaceship One and Virgin Galactic).

Apparently, the problem occurred in the upper stage's Oxygen tank, which I don't believe can be reused.

Yes, we've heard.



In other news, I got to hold a bit of Mars. More specifically, a bit of a meteorite that originated from Mars. Sadly, I had to give it back.

One of the former members of our local Astronomical Society gave a talk on meteorites, and had a bunch of meteorites we could look at and hold. The guy has one of the largest private collections of meteorites in the UK.
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martinuzz

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1852 on: September 04, 2016, 02:36:45 am »

Juno has sent a nice pic of Jupiter's pole. This side of Jupiter has never been observed before.
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/juno/main/index.html

This pic was taken from 70 thousand kilometers away. Last week, Juno passed around Jupiter at only 4200 km. Nasa expects to be able to provide detailed photographs in the coming weeks.
« Last Edit: September 04, 2016, 02:39:48 am by martinuzz »
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http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=73719.msg1830479#msg1830479

MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1853 on: September 04, 2016, 02:43:16 am »

Wow, that's not at all what I thought it'd look like. Progress!

The cloud patterns sort of look like a heavier gas in air, but the scale of it all is absurd.

Hopefully they'll get some good images of the Great Red Spot, just in case it really does finally end.
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WillowLuman

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1854 on: September 04, 2016, 03:15:20 am »

Shame about the loss of that payload on the SpaceX rocket, sounds like it could have done some good.

Also, as expected, the best we can do about the latest SETI signal is shrug.
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MetalSlimeHunt

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1855 on: September 04, 2016, 03:29:09 am »

You do gotta admit it's a little weird that all the mysteriously vanishing high-energy radio emissions we've found are all in similar ranges, though. Probably not aliens, but if it were aliens against all odds, it would probably look a lot like that.
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Quote from: Thomas Paine
To argue with a man who has renounced the use and authority of reason, and whose philosophy consists in holding humanity in contempt, is like administering medicine to the dead, or endeavoring to convert an atheist by scripture.
Quote
No Gods, No Masters.

Starver

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1856 on: September 04, 2016, 05:54:28 am »

I occasionally playfully tease cats with a laser-pointer.  They seem to like it, even if they do seem bemused.
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WillowLuman

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1857 on: September 04, 2016, 01:01:18 pm »

I occasionally playfully tease cats with a laser-pointer.  They seem to like it, even if they do seem bemused.
Wrong thread, or cunning metaphor?
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monkey

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1858 on: September 04, 2016, 01:29:25 pm »

We have a 2nd Dyson sphere, http://phys.org/news/2016-08-irregular-dimming-young-stellar-astronomers.html
(insert oblig. wake up sheeple!)
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Max™

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Re: Space Thread
« Reply #1859 on: September 04, 2016, 01:42:55 pm »

I occasionally playfully tease cats with a laser-pointer.  They seem to like it, even if they do seem bemused.
Wrong thread, or cunning metaphor?
As a cunning linguist myself, I find the comparison of playful pussy-cats being provoked to ponder the presence of powerful pseudo-deific providers of pleasureable scratching and pre-packaged playthings is probably preferable to pusillanimously proffering perverse or peevish puns.
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