[QUOTE=muldoonthief]
Can these lasers be multipurposed to defend against a kzinti invasion? If so, then I vote yes.
[/QUOTE]
Eh. They’re cats. You know what happens to cats around lasers.
Hadron, wasn’t he one of the Good Emperors? The one who built the wall in what is now Great Britain?
Oh, crap, that was Hadrian. :smack: Never mind, get back to your 50’s sci-fi doomsday scenarios.
[QUOTE=muldoonthief]
Can these lasers be multipurposed to defend against a kzinti invasion? If so, then I vote yes.
[/QUOTE]
Yes, Schroedinger wasn’t quite prepared for a Giant Feline Race of Great Valor.
The cat³ cubed.
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
The reality is that most PIs (Principal Investigators) working on large, equipment-intensive research programs, especially in the academic or non-profit research world, spend much of their time filling out and jumping hoops for government or research foundation grants, filling out accounting and budget audit reports, revising schedules, procuring equipment, administrating existing research programs, and counseling/mentoring/venting their aggressions at graduate students and postgraduate researchers.
[/QUOTE]
So how much paperwork is actually involved in getting multiple governments to cough up a total of $10billion for education/research? That’s got to be approaching some sort of natural limit for the universe. Or can a finite bureacracy process an infinite amount of forms?
[QUOTE=slaphead]
So how much paperwork is actually involved in getting multiple governments to cough up a total of $10billion for education/research? That’s got to be approaching some sort of natural limit for the universe. Or can a finite bureacracy process an infinite amount of forms?
[/QUOTE]
Actually, just about the same amount it costs to request $10, so you should always write your proposal to exaggerate the costs by a factor of 10[sup]π[/sup], so when they cut it by 1000% you still have a little margin. (The trick, see, is that you have to use an irrational number, because accountants can only deal in whole fractions…it’s sort of like how Richard Pryor stole a bunch of money by collecting the transaction roundoffs into a side account.) That’s what worked for NASA in the Grand Tour mission; they snuck it in as the Voyager program, which was wildly successful despite nominally being scaled down.
The only programs that get US$10B and aren’t dedicated to blowing shit up real good or showing up those dirty Commies is stuff like the Space Shuttle, which was of questionable scientific value and primarily supported under the theory that it would somehow reduce launch costs to six dollars and a pack of smokes per payload, and also be way cooler than the Titan 34B. (It also didn’t hurt that the STS procured parts and services from virtually every Congressional district with any manufacturing industry.) Occasionally someone tries to sneak in a Superconducting Supercollider, in the name of showing that the United States is still better than Europe at doing Really Cool Stuff, but then we get distracted by the Superbowl or the World Series and it gets held up while CERN just keeps building stuff.
Stranger
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Occasionally someone tries to sneak in a Superconducting Supercollider, in the name of showing that the United States is still better than Europe at doing Really Cool Stuff, but then we get distracted by the Superbowl or the World Series and it gets held up while CERN just keeps building stuff.
[/QUOTE]
I always thought the Superconducting Supercollider proposals end up sinking when people start asking why the government is paying to build an underground Nascar track that doesn’t even have bleacher seating…
[QUOTE=Stranger On A Train]
Occasionally someone tries to sneak in a Superconducting Supercollider, in the name of showing that the United States is still better than Europe at doing Really Cool Stuff, but then we get distracted by the Superbowl or the World Series and it gets held up while CERN just keeps building stuff.
[/QUOTE]
Nah, that was shot down due to backwards causation because it would have had destroyed our universe in the future, much like the LHC will have been.
[QUOTE=Cisco]
I wanna be hit by a runaway tractor-trailer truck driven by the Incredible Hulk.
[/QUOTE]
I want my bus to go below 50 miles-per-hour. Please??
I hope the LHC summons the Argo. I’ve been dying to fire that wave-motion gun.
[QUOTE=horsetech]
Hadron, wasn’t he one of the Good Emperors? The one who built the wall in what is now Great Britain?
Oh, crap, that was Hadrian. :smack: Never mind, get back to your 50’s sci-fi doomsday scenarios.
[/QUOTE]
As played by Sylvester Stallone: “Yo, Hadrian!”
[QUOTE=jayjay]
Eh. They’re cats. You know what happens to cats around lasers.
[/QUOTE]
Most unfortunately, they turn into tau-bees.
[QUOTE=Terrifel]
Are there any news articles about this project that DON’T focus on the blowing-up-the-world theory? It seems like the potential discoveries about the nature of the universe would be a pretty interesting story hook by themselves.
[/QUOTE]
I read a long article on how they had to reinvent the internet in the area. There are a few countries involved and they are transmitting incredible amounts of data across the lines.
It will be multiples faster than anything available now.
[QUOTE=gonzomax]
I read a long article on how they had to reinvent the internet in the area. There are a few countries involved and they are transmitting incredible amounts of data across the lines.
It will be multiples faster than anything available now.
[/QUOTE]
“–project supervisors unanimously stress the need to allocate sufficient funding in this area. Urgent and necessary upgrades are required to accomodate the anticipated high volume of data exchange necessary for researchers to share and analyze experimental results, and not porn. We again emphasize the absolute scientific necessity of these upgrades to the success of the project.”