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Old Momo-tan. Her old chassis is adorable!

14 (23%)

New chassis! She could become a regular cast member!

26 (42.6%)

She needs some more upgrades.

1 (1.6%)

New chassis - if only to tick off Pintsize

14 (23%)

MOAR TOASTERRRRR!!!

2 (3.3%)

Toaster - only because we like waffles.

4 (6.6%)

Total Members Voted: 56

[gangler]

If your computer is sentient, and can be damaged by sketchy web sites, is it domestic violence to expose it to them?

It occurs to me to wonder exactly how far this goes in explaining Pintsize.

[Arancaytar]

Why was she using Momo for that, anyway?  She has the other computer, with a monitor, so she can see the pretty pictures...

As Momo pointed out when she was introduced, she has data-trawling capabilities that make her an autonomous personal search engine. (Pintsize seems to have the same, but he only ever uses it to search for porn).

So that raises the question of why they don't use Google.

Maybe Google left the search business? Or maybe it expanded the logging and surveillance of its free services to the point where nobody wants to use them. Or maybe the information on the net increased exponentially in the time leading up to the singularity, to the point where no central search engine can cope. Or Google was taken over by its AIs (who pooled their stock options) and now focuses on some other business entirely. (That last one would be my favorite theory.)

[pwhodges]

It's not that virus doesn't have a plural, it's that it's a fourth declension noun.

This is disputed

The Roman grammarian Priscian (fl. 500 A.D.) states that some claim the word is indeclinable (i.e., has only one form for all the cases in the singular); others, apparently more accurately, that it is declined in the singular according to the second declension neuter and cite two passages from the poet Lucretius in substantiation. All of the ancient grammarians are in agreement, however, that the word is used in the singular only, which indeed appears to be true, for no plural forms are attested in extant Latin works.

[stoutfiles]

well beyond my capacity to evaluate properly

I'd be stunned if there's anyone in the world who can evaluate them properly. The real killer in high-risk technical projects is finding out, the hard way, answers to the questions you didn't know you should ask. There is a lot of terra incognita in those designs.

Which, maybe, are in use in the QC world? Hannerdad's space station is big enough to spin for 1-g without making everyone sick, and big enough that they use golf carts to get around (based on Hannelore's Formspring). That's a lot of material to lift if all you have are chemical rockets. Maybe there's a space elevator? They do seem to have made more progress than we have on carbon nanotubes.

(Or maybe it's all a joke by a webcomic author, but that hypothesis is no fun).

If I had to guess, they use dimensional portals like the ones Raven is learning about and successfully duplicated. 

[Is it cold in here?]

Pintsize used Google to look up Gina Riversmith for Faye, and Dora found Vespavenger on Google.

[Boradis]

I'm no nuclear engineer.  I have no idea what kind of revolutionary propulsion system he had in mind, and neither do you.  Just because you can't adapt existing reactor systems to spaceflight doesn't mean there isn't some neutron-shedding reaction that will push a rocket through space!  

There's plenty of reactions that will do just that. The problem is they irradiate the hell out of the launch site. The most famous of which being ...

Nuclear propulsion for the really hardcore

I've been thinking about this since you posted it, and I'm not sure that I buy it. I know that climbing out of the gravity well is very difficult, but it hasn't become any more so since Apollo 17 brought crewed spaceflight beyond Earth's orbit to an end. In 1972. Nearly 40 years ago. Using technology developed back in the 1960's.

Unfortunately physics hasn't changed either since at least the epoch of inflation.

Advancing spacefight is not as straightforward or easy as Moore's Law. The issue with rockets isn't miniaturization or refinement of design -- it's power. All of the math involved in making a rocket fly has been known for centuries, so that's a very mature field. There's an unavoidable reason rockets are almost all fuel.

Further refinements can make them safer, but barring something radical like Orion or one of the other speculative nuclear rockets mentioned by Akima, they can't make them more powerful.

When I wrote these articles (the "Beanie Baby Satellite" story) I spoke with rocket scientists routinely. It's not like they're sitting on their butts about things like this. They'd like nothing better than to put up more spacecraft. There's also a lot of money just waiting for someone to find a better way into space, even without there being oil on the Moon or whatever.

But until something more powerful and at least as safe as liquid oxygen plus kerosene or liquid hydrogen is discovered -- at least the power of a nuclear bomb without radiation -- it will take a Saturn V -worth to go anywhere beyond sub-orbital thrill rides.

[Skewbrow]

Yup. Just to give you some numbers. To reach a space orbit you need Mach 25 or thereabouts (don't want to do the math any more accurately), to climb out of Earth's gravity well you need about Mach 35. (this would be the speed you need to have when leaving atmosphere in order for the Earth to not pull you back in, unless you can keep accelerating after that point).

The X-15 (a U.S. test plane from the 1960s) reached Mach 6 and it was rocket powered (and needed to piggy-back a jet to get started, it couldn't take off on its own power). `Spaceship' One went a inch higher, but only reached Mach 3. I don't know what's the world record of jet powered aircrafts. I guess military planes may have topped Mach 3. AFAIK Concorde was the fastest commercial aircraft with a notch over Mach 2.

And I don't think that it is due to lack of funding for propulsion research. After all, any propulsion system could also be used to deliver weapons, so the military would support the idea, if it were at all feasible.

Looks like we need that space elevator. Getting to geostationary orbit "free of charge" reduces the escape velocity quite a bit. More importantly, upon re-entry you can give the energy back to something else on its way up.

[Akima]

When I wrote these articles (the "Beanie Baby Satellite" story) I spoke with rocket scientists routinely. It's not like they're sitting on their butts about things like this. They'd like nothing better than to put up more spacecraft. There's also a lot of money just waiting for someone to find a better way into space, even without there being oil on the Moon or whatever.

But that's the thing. We don't even have the same capability we had in 1968. There are no Saturn V rockets any more, never mind anything better using modern materials. We've gone backwards in our ability to lift payload into orbit, not forwards, for all the non-butt-sitting your rocket scientists have been doing. That isn't because the technical challenges became any greater, but because of political/managerial decisions.

[Mr_Rose]

Technically there is still one nearly complete Saturn V stack left, but it was left out in all weathers for twenty years and I doubt it'd be ready to fly in less time than it would take to just build another one from the blueprints.

You're totally right about the main problem being not enough politicians with the balls to just come out and say "spaceflight is way more important than profiteering off wars you fucks! Let's get it done already!" though.

[Carl-E]

OK, heard a joke that actually fits here...

Three surgeons were arguing over who was easiest to work on.  the first said, "Electricians - everything inside is color coded!"

The second sez "No, it's Librarians - everything's in alphabetical order!" 

The third one tells them they're both wrong.  "It's politicians.  There's no guts, no heart, no spine and no balls, and their head's interchangeable with their ass."

[starkruzr]

Am I the only one who's a little surprised that anthro chassis as indistinguishably human as this new Momo one are actually allowed in the QCverse?

She could be a real girl (as distinct from a RealGirl™) with dyed hair and contacts.

This has Consequences®.

[Emperor Norton]

When I wrote these articles (the "Beanie Baby Satellite" story) I spoke with rocket scientists routinely. It's not like they're sitting on their butts about things like this. They'd like nothing better than to put up more spacecraft. There's also a lot of money just waiting for someone to find a better way into space, even without there being oil on the Moon or whatever.

But that's the thing. We don't even have the same capability we had in 1968. There are no Saturn V rockets any more, never mind anything better using modern materials. We've gone backwards in our ability to lift payload into orbit, not forwards, for all the non-butt-sitting your rocket scientists have been doing. That isn't because the technical challenges became any greater, but because of political/managerial decisions.

The thing is launching a single Saturn V which was, a DISPOSABLE rocket and launched 3 people in cramped conditions to the moon cost after inflation 1.11 Billion US Dollars. That just, isn't feasible unless there is a much better reason for GOING to the moon other than to just go. You can't use it to build anything resembling a permanent structure on the moon, you can't use it to mine the moon. There is just no good reason to go just to go without a much better way to get there.

[Is it cold in here?]

You don't irradiate the launch site if the nuclear rocket is an upper stage. I don't have the numbers handy, but I've seen them, and if you put a NERVA-type design on top of a Saturn first stage you get way more mass into orbit.

[gopher]

The earlier questions about the timeline reminds me about when JMS was asked about the speed of spaceships in Babylon %. He said that they movec at the "Speed of plot", that is whatever was needed for teh drama. I feel teh QC time moves in a similar way.

[jwhouk]

Am I the only one who's a little surprised that anthro chassis as indistinguishably human as this new Momo one are actually allowed in the QCverse?

She could be a real girl (as distinct from a RealGirl™) with dyed hair and contacts.

This has Consequences®.

Actually, no, considering Eve from AppleGeeks has shown up in the strip. She's essentially a home-built APC made from Mac parts, and she does look realistic.

[Skewbrow]

I didn't know about NERVA. Not a surprise actually given that in my youth I was definitely more interested in the math/physics of space travel as opposed to the engineering problems. That Wikipedia article tells the story, but I also get the vibe that whoever wrote it, is not a great fan of Nixon administration.

IIRC one of the goals of the Space Shuttle program was the reusability of the components - like that huge tank of propellant would be the only part that was irretrievably lost after a launch? Does anyone here know, whether the thruster rockets (or whatever) were actually successfully retrieved? That aspect of the shuttle program has not received much publicity since the early launches. Could you lift a rocket high enough with those for a safe ignition of a NERVA? Probably not?

As much as I would like to see human beings on Mars in my lifetime, I have little right to complain, for it ain't my tax dollar paying for it. An international effort might be able to pay for it, but I don't see much public support for such a program. The first space race was very much about national pride on both sides, I think.

[Boradis]

But that's the thing. We don't even have the same capability we had in 1968. There are no Saturn V rockets any more, never mind anything better using modern materials. We've gone backwards in our ability to lift payload into orbit, not forwards, for all the non-butt-sitting your rocket scientists have been doing. That isn't because the technical challenges became any greater, but because of political/managerial decisions.

The technical challenges have remained the same, and you're right about the funding cuts. But the real bottom line, IMO, is that the technical challenge -- in other words the propulsion problem -- are a pretty big deal.

Check out the first three vehicles in this image. How much of each actually contains crew/payload and how much is whopping big fuel tanks? The answers are "hardly any," and "pretty much the whole thing."

Even if our economy was booming to the degree it was in the 50s/60s the reason we haven't gone back to the moon is right there in the design of the Saturn V. By my eyeball estimate it looks like 275 feet of fuel to send and return 10 feet of crew/cargo (I'm kind of handwaving over the LEM and Control Module).

If a car had the same fuel/passenger ratio it would be the size of a Saturn V. Why do I say that? Because the Command Module is only about as big as a compact car.

Can you imagine driving that to Grandma's?

You don't irradiate the launch site if the nuclear rocket is an upper stage.

Maybe it won't irradiate the launch site but it's still a nice big fallout fire hose. Especially if they get used routinely, which I think we all want.

Am I the only one who's a little surprised that anthro chassis as indistinguishably human as this new Momo one are actually allowed in the QCverse?

Agreed. How long until we or Jeph forget Momo's a robot?

[gangler]

Am I the only one who's a little surprised that anthro chassis as indistinguishably human as this new Momo one are actually allowed in the QCverse?

She could be a real girl (as distinct from a RealGirl™) with dyed hair and contacts.

This has Consequences®.

Actually, no, considering Eve from AppleGeeks has shown up in the strip. She's essentially a home-built APC made from Mac parts, and she does look realistic.

What I don't get is why an AI would want to look like a human. Soft, weak, bags of meat. A monument to mortality. Like modeling yourself after an egg with a timed explosive inside.

I'd think they were mocking us, but Momo doesn't seem like the type.

It's gotta be part of the cultural upbringing or something. I wonder if AI's that are raised in places without the pervasive sense of human superiority have an interest in emulating our appearance?

Although it could just as easily be that their libido is such that humans are what they're interested in, thus making the basic aesthetic value of looking human hold a lot of appeal to them. Not to belabor a point, but if you're into human men, and you identify as female, then it's not such a stretch to want to pass for a human female.

All in all it's all quite interesting. There almost seems that there could be an entire field of psychology based around studying AI's.

[Mr_Rose]

Skewbrow; the Shuttle itself was never meant to operate like it ended up doing; the initial design concepts were all two-component, with both being manned and reusable: The Orbiter would ride the back of a sub-orbital aircraft then detach and use its own engines to boost itself to orbital altitude and speed.
Then someone decided hat the reusable booster was too expensive and designed a SSTO version.
Then someone else decided that the cargo space was too small on that design and gave it an external, disposable, fuel tank.
Then yet another someone figured out that the whole thing was too heavy to get off the ground like that and bolted on the reusable boosters.
And thus the new 'cheaper' design ended up with less reusable components and greater per-flight costs than the original specification and still cost more than the disposable systems that came before and after.

(the white firework boosters are reusable and were re-used)

[Method of Madness]

I'm not sure if we're still doing this, but this is the strip where I started high school!

Edit: Oops, should've put this in the other thread.

[questionablecontentfan]

What I don't get is why an AI would want to look like a human. Soft, weak, bags of meat.

But ohhh so beautiful...in some cases.

[Akima]

Even if our economy was booming to the degree it was in the 50s/60s the reason we haven't gone back to the moon is right there in the design of the Saturn V. By my eyeball estimate it looks like 275 feet of fuel to send and return 10 feet of crew/cargo (I'm kind of handwaving over the LEM and Control Module).

I'm a numbers kind of girl, and the Saturn V had the capacity to lift 119000kg to Low Earth Orbit, or 4.9 times the Space Shuttle's capacity. Or to put it another way, you'd need five Shuttle launches to equal one Saturn V launch. I've found it pretty much impossible to find non-rubbery figures for the cost per launch of either Saturn V or Shuttle, so it is very hard to work out how the cost-to-orbit-per-kilogramme compares. There is a school of thought that argues that heavy lift capacity is actually a bad thing that would discourage space exploration in the long term, but I'm not so sure.

Contrary to popular belief, NASA's budget isn't that large. It's been at or below one percent of total Federal expenditures (PDF file) since 1976. That doesn't help the public perception problem, but still.

The thing is launching a single Saturn V which was, a DISPOSABLE rocket and launched 3 people in cramped conditions to the moon cost after inflation 1.11 Billion US Dollars.

Then US operations in Iraq and Afganistan cost something like ten Saturn V launches per month. It's all a matter of priorities.

[Kugai]

Another factor in the turning away from the Lunar missions was what was going on in South-east Asia, and the events surrounding them.  One wonders what might have happened had Kennedy not gotten murdered in Dallas and the events post that had not gone as they had.

[Akima]

Another factor in the turning away from the Lunar missions was what was going on in South-east Asia, and the events surrounding them.  One wonders what might have happened had Kennedy not gotten murdered in Dallas and the events post that had not gone as they had.

Who know? But Kennedy was the president who said, after meeting Khrushchev in Vienna, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place", increased the number of US military personel in Vietnam from under 1000 to over 16000 before his death, and connived at the coup that toppled Ngo Dinh Diem, so probably not much would have been different. Kennedy was reluctant to commit US combat forces, resisting Robert McNamara's suggestion that six divisions be sent to Vietnam, but the coup pitched South Vietnam into chaos, reducing rather than enhancing its ability to resist, and had he lived St. Jack would have faced the same pressure that Johnson did to "raise or fold". I've never been able to buy into the "if Kennedy had lived, everything would have been different" school of US historical hagiography.

[Method of Madness]

I think things would be pretty different if Kennedy had lived, but not that Kennedy.  If RFK hadn't been assassinated, and went on to win the general election in 1968, I'm pretty sure that would've changed some things significantly.

[snubnose]

If that's what he said, he has a grossly oversimplified view of the difficulties of space travel. It's not that we lost interest it's that orbital velocity is incredibly hard and escape velocity is even harder. Until a breakthrough in propulsion or materials comes along we're going to be stuck on one planet.

I've been thinking about this since you posted it, and I'm not sure that I buy it. I know that climbing out of the gravity well is very difficult, but it hasn't become any more so since Apollo 17 brought crewed spaceflight beyond Earth's orbit to an end. In 1972. Nearly 40 years ago. Using technology developed back in the 1960's. I was thinking about this when the final Space Shuttle mission ended. The Space Shuttle first made an orbital flight more than thirty years ago. The Russian Proton rocket first flew in 1965. I don't doubt that Proton, like the Shuttle, has undergone development since its first flight (the latest model first flew a decade ago), but could we not do better today if we only wanted to? Compare the pace of progress in space-launch technology with that in areas we really do care about, like mobile phones and killing people.

I think there is something in Jeph's idea that we, or at least our rulers, just lost interest. The technical hurdle has not grown any higher, but we're achieving less in leaping it than we did in 1968.  The political motivation for Apollo was primarily international dick-waving, and using space-flight for that just went out of fashion, until arguably my homeland started treading the same path.

I dont really get your posting.

Yes the technology to reach the moon is known now. Its chemistry. All our rockets use chemistry.

Chemistry has a simple property: the most powerful reaction of all chemistry is the one of hydrogen and oxygen.

So yes, our most efficient rocket designs use exactly that, hydrogen and oxygen.

So yes, there is no way to store more energy into a rocket. The Saturn V used it. The Space Shuttle used it. Neither are pure hydrogen / oxygen concepts, but the overall performance is close to maximal to what we could possibly do.

We cant go further than that because there is simply no technological way known to us, not even at the far horizont, that would allow us to pack more energy into a certain weight. Nuclear reactors are crazy complicated and super heavy machines. Solar energy is much too little at a time that you could get something into orbit with it. The space elevator is a nice idea but I doubt that it will ever work even if we find a material that could theoretically do it. Just realize this material will be bombarded with our own garbage in orbit.

So there has been no huge progress in this area simply because we have no real option there.

Once someone finds a way to create the "impulse drive" described in Star Trek, i.e. a drive that accellerates small amounts of matter to extreme speeds compareable to those in the large hadron collider, and another technology that is as efficient as nuclear power, but with much less radiation issues and thus can be created very lightweight, we can have something like a star trek shuttle and fly into orbit and beyond easily.

But there is no such option available to us right now.

[Is it cold in here?]

Cesium and fluorine has way more energy content, but not on a per-mass basis, and hydrogen-fluorine produces highly toxic exhaust.

Chlorine trifluoride was investigated as an oxidizer, able to supply fluorine at high density without cryogenics. It has industrial uses, but it's hard to safely handle something that sets concrete on fire and explodes all but the cleanest and driest protective gear.

[Mark7]

Britain's rocket research program (yes, we had one ) used a kerosene/peroxide mix (yes, that's right, our rockets were powered by blonde).

From the Wikipedia article on the Bristol Siddeley Gamma

Use of kerosene / hydrogen peroxide engines has been a particularly British trait in rocket development, there being few comparable engines (such as the LR-40) from the USA.[4]

The combustion of kerosene with hydrogen peroxide is given by the formula

    CH2 + 3H2O2 → CO2 + 4H2O

where CH2 is the approximate formula of kerosene (see RP-1 for a discussion of kerosene rocket fuels). This compares with the combustion of kerosene and liquid oxygen (LOX)

    CH2 + 1.5O2 → CO2 + H2O

showing that the exhaust from kerosene / peroxide is predominantly water. This results in a very clean exhaust (second only to cryogenic LO2/LH2) and a distinctive clear flame.[5] The low molecular mass of water also helps to increase rocket thrust performance.[6]

The oxidizer used with Gamma was 85% High Test Peroxide (HTP), H2O2. Gamma used a silver-plated on nickel-gauze catalyst to first decompose the peroxide.[7] For higher concentrations of H2O2 another catalyst would have been required, such as platinum. No ignition source was required since the very hot decomposed H2O2 is hypergolic (will spontaneously combust) with kerosene. Due to the high ratio (8:1) of the mass of H2O2 used compared to the kerosene, and also its superior heat characteristics, the H2O2 may also be used to regeneratively cool the engine nozzle before combustion. Any pre-combustion chamber used to power the pump turbines needs only to decompose H2O2 to provide the energy. This gives the efficiency advantages of closed cycle operation, without its usual major engineering problems.

All of these characteristics lead to kerosene / hydrogen peroxide engines being simpler and more reliable to construct than other liquid propellant chemistries. Gamma had a remarkably reliable service record for a rocket engine. Of the 22 Black Knight and 4 Black Arrow launchers, involving 128 Gamma engines, there were no engine failures.[6]

Probably the most famous British rocket

[Mr_Rose]

Chemistry has a simple property: the most powerful reaction of all chemistry is the one of hydrogen and oxygen.

Whilst it's adorable that you stated that like its a fact, please stop.  

[Carl-E]

Probably the most famous British rocket

I wish it had been called Black Adder instead of Black Arrow. 

[cesariojpn]

If your computer is sentient, and can be damaged by sketchy web sites, is it domestic violence to expose it to them?

It occurs to me to wonder exactly how far this goes in explaining Pintsize.

I would like to go into it, but i'm remotely afraid it'll cross the line into the whole "No Shipping" rules in effect.

[Jedit]

Britain's rocket research program (yes, we had one ) used a kerosene/peroxide mix (yes, that's right, our rockets were powered by blonde).

Well, that explains why we British think having our own space program is a pretty dumb idea.

Sorrysorrysorrysorrysorry.

[Mark7]

Our political class is also powered by blonde 

[Carl-E]

If your computer is sentient, and can be damaged by sketchy web sites, is it domestic violence to expose it to them?

It occurs to me to wonder exactly how far this goes in explaining Pintsize.

I would like to go into it, but i'm remotely afraid it'll cross the line into the whole "No Shipping" rules in effect.

Really?  I don't see this as shipping, unless you're suggestuing that Marten abnd Pintsize...

Oh.  Nevermind. 

[Mark7]

Has anyone shipped Pintsize and Winslow?

Yes; I went there

[Carl-E]

I'm sure someone  has. 



Just not here...




Tht's neither an offer, nor a challenge. 

[Kugai]

I think things would be pretty different if Kennedy had lived, but not that Kennedy.  If RFK hadn't been assassinated, and went on to win the general election in 1968, I'm pretty sure that would've changed some things significantly.

An interesting point. 

[cesariojpn]

If your computer is sentient, and can be damaged by sketchy web sites, is it domestic violence to expose it to them?

It occurs to me to wonder exactly how far this goes in explaining Pintsize.

I would like to go into it, but i'm remotely afraid it'll cross the line into the whole "No Shipping" rules in effect.

Really?  I don't see this as shipping, unless you're suggestuing that Marten abnd Pintsize...

Oh.  Nevermind.  

That never crossed my mind, but........EEEEEEEEEEWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW!!!

[Is it cold in here?]

If AnthroPCs have a Second Law, then does ordering one to have sex with you when it doesn't want to constitute rape?

If they're legally children, well, ...

[Method of Madness]

I'm pretty sure Asimov's laws don't apply, because those laws imply that AI exists solely to serve humanity, while in the QCverse, they both seem to fill their own roles in society, with AIs not necessarily being under humans.

[starkruzr]

Am I the only one who's a little surprised that anthro chassis as indistinguishably human as this new Momo one are actually allowed in the QCverse?

She could be a real girl (as distinct from a RealGirl™) with dyed hair and contacts.

This has Consequences®.

Actually, no, considering Eve from AppleGeeks has shown up in the strip. She's essentially a home-built APC made from Mac parts, and she does look realistic.

I don't remember this at all, but I'll take your word for it.  That would at least produce more precedent.  But there are still a lot of weird issues that go along with this to think about.

[cesariojpn]

Marigold and Momo look like Mother/Daughter.

[jwhouk]

Actually, no, considering Eve from AppleGeeks has shown up in the strip. She's essentially a home-built APC made from Mac parts, and she does look realistic.

I don't remember this at all, but I'll take your word for it.  That would at least produce more precedent.  But there are still a lot of weird issues that go along with this to think about.

Oh, don't take my word for it... go check out Eve and AppleGeeks for yourself.

[Jedit]

  I don't see this as shipping, unless you're suggestuing that Marten abnd Pintsize...

Jeph beat you to that one.  Link is somewhere in the last two WCDT threads, but it was right after he broke up with Dora.