it's quite clear to me that the thread asks this question; "If someone has preferences listed in their profile, do you pay attention to them, or do you hope they just won't matter?"

i answered the question as best i could as reagards to the attention i pay to the preferences of others. as far as seeing something i like; IF and that's a big IF, i can get past the preferences i suppose i might send a message anyway. but i won't simply ignore the preference. i simply do not care to read what women want in a man. in a profile i want to read that a woman is what i want in a woman and no, i'm not at all sure what that is either. the point is that a profile must cause me to want to take the next step and reading what she expects is not likely to do that.

i couldn't agree more. i see profiles as similar to classified adds. some people have something to sell, others have something they want to buy. when i'm looking to buy a used car i don't look in the 'used cars wanted' section, instead i go to the 'used cars for sale' section. if i'm to click on the 'send message' thingy i'll do so because i see something that i like. i'm not about to click it because i meet a requirement or preference.

but hell, rarely do ladies reply to my messages and i can't think when the last time someone just messaged me out of the blue anyway so what do i know, huh?

no, you could say the same of philosophy. i wouldn't. perhaps religions do address issues of ethics but that does not mean they address those issues in a way that everybody can agree is ethical. ethics are best addressed by thought within each individual. when we look to dogama, religious or otherwise, for ethical standards, we tend to fail at ethical reasoning on our own such as happened in the crusades, the inquisition and now this jihad humanity must indure.



i never said that philosophy has no answers. you tied philosophy and religion together, not me. why we're even discussing philosophy when the question is about different religions is beyond me. the question of god, a deity, a supreme being, etc. which all religions must address simply have no answers. the human mind simply is incapable of knowing the existence of god, the afterlife and other supernatural phenomena. of course you think i'm wrong. takes an agnostic to think i'm right.

i don't see much of a difference between any of the religions, assuming that is that we accept the definition of religion as based on a belief in a deity, god, supreme being, etc. they are all inventions of mankind to provide answers to questions for which there are no answers.

absurd analogies.

it'd be difficult to count the number of experiments that have been conducted at altitudes all the way up to the very top of the atmoshpere. but it's not my burden to prove your concept. you inherited the burden of proof when you began this thread. science and scientists, even amatures, live to pick apart new concepts. that's what science is all about. somebody like you comes up with an idea. somebody like me challenges you to prove that you're idea will work. perhaps you've thought of something that i haven't. great. then show me what i've missed but i can assure you that i and others here feel that you've missed quite a bit and it centers around the time that the craft must cease relying on the balloon to remain aloft until it exits the earth's atmospere completely. as a retired pilot who's flown as high as fifty one thousand feet i can assure you that the higher you go the more problems you encounter when it comes to generating lift. and without lift you've no means to accomplish this 'spiaral maneuver' you keep talking about. you say this all can be done. great, prove it to me and i've financial sources who we can take it to and we'll all be rich.

of course lift has no value in space but you mentioned the craft 'spiraling' upward in the thin atmosphere at a high altitude. how does the craft perform this spiral maneuver without lift? how does it fly through the upper reaches of the atmosphere? will your craft rely on thrust alone?

it's obvious even to nasa that the less a craft must travel through the atmosphere, especially the lower reaches, the less power it takes to reach outer space. we saw that when the x15 was dropped from a high flying b52 as early as the late fifties. and of course of late we have rutan/branson and their scheme to launch after piggy backing to altitude. but all of still requires a great deal of thrust in order to leave earth's atmosphere and those craft never reached near the speed required to orbit. perhaps if you gave us an idea of the craft you intend to haul up with the balloon would look like. then we could talk about it's feasability as a space craft. but just say it will spiral up until it reaches speed says nothing at all. how will it perform this spiral maneuver?

sure it does.

oh i can assure you that the people who come thousands of miles to work in our national parks don't live in the area. still, they come to work. i think a survey would be in order to determine what percentage of the unemployed are doing to better their education and qualifications. my guess is that it's a very small number. sure, you'll say that that takes money but it costs nothing to read up on many work skills on the internet. fact is, industries are changing and workers can adjust to the change or not work. i stand by my point that were more prsonal responsibility excercised in this country the unemployment rate would drop dramatically.

hardly a reflection of what cain said. the national parks employ about a third of their workers each season from foreign countries simply because they cannot get enough americans to work. when i spent a summer at mt. rainier my neighbor was there from spain so he could at least earn enough to pay his mortgage so his family would not lose their home. i see people on unemployment who simply will not work until their benefits run out. blackberries are rotting on the vines and farmers are going bankrupt in georgia because illegals have left the state because of increased immigration inforcement and no americans will lower themselves to pick the berries. cain never suggested that the poor are to blame for being poor. what he meant was that the first place to look when you're down and out is at yourself and what you are doing to correct the problem. if everybody accepted their share of personal responsibility unemployment figures would improve dramatically.

at least the walmart checkout line is shorter with all the protesters on wall street.

it'd take till the end of time to read it all.

the inquisitors sure thought they understood the bible.

sure. to think there is a god requires mental correlation. to believe there is a god requires no mental correlation. requires faith.

of course you don't use lift to propel a rocket. you don't use lift to propel anything. lift is used to counter the effect of gravity or accelerative force. it requires twice the lift to maintain a level sixty degree banked turn than the lift required at straight and level flight for instance. for a rocket, or any powered craft, to accelerate upward without lifting devices such as wings will require thrust in pounds exceeding the weight of the aircraft in pounds. that's what's been forgotten here. how to produce the lift to maintain the craft aloft while it accelerates in the amosphere. if we had some idea of what the craft would look like, we could more readily talk about drag, thrust, lift and the affects of gravity and acceleration.

as massagetrade said. acceleration IS measured in g forces. you feel 1 g on you right now meaning you are affected by an accelerative force of one g as gravity accelerates you toward earth. propulsion is measured in pounds of thrust. an increase in drag is always directily proportional to the increase in airspeed squared no matter how high up or thin the atmosphere is. to maintain any excelerative force, .3 g's or whatever, will result in an ever increasing airspeed along with four times increasing drag. there is no 'best ratio' for drag caused by friction that i know of. a ratio of what compared to what? drag everywhere increases with the square of the airspeed increase. i don't care how high in the atmospere you go, as long as you remain in the atmosphere induced drag, [that produced by angle of attack], form drag[produced by the aircraft structure] and parasite drag [produced by engine nacelles, attenaes, etc.] will continue to build as airspeed increases. it would require an engine producing an ever increasing thrust/weight ratio in order to maintain acceleration at .3 g's for for any extended period of time while operating in even the thinest atmosphere. during a shuttle launch the thrust/weight ratio is ever increasing as the engines burn off heavy fuel and the craft becomes lighter. that's why it can maintain the approximately 3 g's acceleration to escape earth's atmosphere.

and you still haven't explained how you'd slow your craft down from the approximately seventeen thousand mph required to sustain low earth orbit to re-enter the atmosphere without very heavy thermal protection which would add to the weight of the craft. i can assure you that if there were a means of lowering the effects of drag, heat, friction, etc., the airlines and nasa would have been all over it by now. but drag will not just go away and it's affect as airspeed increases will always remain the square of the speed increase.

believe nothing. said it's absurd.

ah, my appologies. i did miss the decimal point. okay, let's assume .3 gs acceleration. first of all, ground speed has nothing in the least to do with anything. when speaking speed as regards aerodynamics, airspeed is all that matters. with any increase in airspeed, there will be an increase in drag equal to the airspeed increase squared. that means if you double the airspeed you will QUADRUPLE the drag coeficient. when you do finally reach the point where drag and thrust balance, as you say '75 miles [qoughly]' all accerleration stops. when lift balances out weight and thrust balances out drag the aircraft is in a state we refer to as "straight and level unaccelerated flight." think of an airliner cruising at altitude.

the point being, how do you maintain even .3 g acceleration while the craft is in the atmosphere? as far as i know, ion propulsion is an idea for use in outer space where there is no atmosphere. we have electric motors that can produce much more than the .3 g's you're talking about to accelerate to the point that thrust and drag are in balance. that's the problem. you need a propulsion system that can produce enough thrust that drag NEVER balances out so that you can leave earth's atmosphere.

i think where you're having a problem is with your thinking of engines producing x number of g's or acceleration. propulsion systems do not measure power as such. weight, altitude, temperature, or being in outer space will all play a role in the ammount of acceleration any given craft will maintain. you say an ion engine will maintain .3 g's acceleration for eight to ten hours even in the upper atmosphere but you've not explained how it will do that. for an aircraft to maintain acceleration it must have an engine powerful enought to overcome the greatly increased drag that builds up as the airspeed increases. if that were a simple matter i can assure you that boeing would produce an airliner that can do just that. fact is, it ain't a simple matter.

you keep coming up with 'belief requrires this' or 'belief requires that' and seem to expect the rest of us to accept YOUR requirement as some kind of law of physics. that's the essence of the strawman argument. taking off on a premise that has not been accepted and running with it. establish that belief requires mental correlation in all of us or that belief requres a certain chain of events which happen in specific order and THEN we have something to discuss. and you're still combining "thought/belief" as if they're one and the same. another not accepted premise.

rarely have i read anything more absurd on the forums.