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The Last Atlas 2 Rocket Launch
Fiz Ocelot writes "Reuters reports that the last Atlas 2 rocket was launched on Tuesday. The rocket was the last to launch the old-fashioned way. For this launch, the 120-member team was inside a blockhouse 1,400 feet from the launch pad. It was also the end of an era dating back to the 1950s, when most rockets, including early manned flights, were launched from concrete blockhouses adjacent to the pads."
and if the replacement will be using free software?
No, seriously folks. How do we expect to progress as humanity unless every aspect of our large scientific projects become open and shared? Space exploration is going to stagnate unless they start using open technologies.
The rocket was the last to launch the old-fashioned way. What, with boosters, and rockets and things? What's the new fashioned way? There is nothing ol fashioned about this rockets integral functions, just the location of the operators.
Honest question - why? The great thing about "open" is that everyone can use and modify it. How many folks have the scratch to run their own space exploration enterprise?
Now, a high level tech sharing accord between the major players, I could understand, but why on ( or off ) Earth does it "need" to be opened?
One god, one market, one truth, one consumer.
60 successful launches in a row, over 500 launches for the series, that's rocket science!
Unreal. We discovered Saddam's chemical weapons when he freakin' used them on the Kurds in the 1980s. Now folks like you are honestly trying to get us to believe that Saddam was a changed man. That under the blistering gaze of Bill Clinton, he saw the error of his ways and just got rid of all of them (without bothering to tell the UN inspectors how and where).
Yes, the question is where are the WMD, and it's a question that scares the hell out of me, because he had them and they're not there now, and that means they are somewhere else, and that somewhere else may be the lovely utopian paradise called Syria.
The question would scare the hell out of you, too, if you actually had a single brain cell not entirely devoted to the irrational hatred of George W. Bush.
You can tell a great deal about the character of a man by observing those who hate him.