NASA Looking for Bandwidth Sponsorship

Neil Halelamien writes "A news release and MSNBC's Cosmic Log report that NASA has a web sponsorship opportunity for companies in return for providing bandwidth support for the two upcoming Space Shuttle missions of Discovery and Atlantis. The missions, scheduled for this summer, are expected to cause 20 to 30 million web site visits each and up to a half million streaming video feeds. The alternative is for NASA to cap the number of visitors. Sponsorship proposals are being accepted through April 13."

Comments

Why so many?

[Anonymous Coward]

The missions, scheduled for this summer, are expected to cause 20 to 30 million web site visits each and up to a half million streaming video feeds

Why? Are they supposed to blow up too?

Re:Why so many?

[rovingeyes]

Are they supposed to blow up too?

No, they are supposed to be bogged down

Re:Why so many?

[Rei]

Won't people stop with this? A 2% failure rate on a rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt is a very impressive rate for orbital rockets - not just for the US, but worldwide. We may not like this fact, but that's the reality of space travel: it's *dangerous*. You get into a craft for which most of its mass is some of the most eager-to-react chemicals we can produce, made of thin, flimsy materials (because it has to stay incredibly light), has millions of components (the complexity of a real, high performance rocket engine that can take you to orbit makes million dollar jet engines look like child's toys), these materials undergo high vibrational loads and G forces, the engine materials are often exposed to temperatures hotter than the boiling point of iron in extremely corrosive environments, the turbopumps have to spin at tens of thousands of rpms. You're often handing cryogenic materials that can make things that are normally sturdy snap like twigs; cryogenic hydrogen is especially bad, as it also embrittles metals. When you get to orbit, you're constantly bombarded with particles moving at tens of thousands of miles an hour, along with radiation and severe temperature extremes that are eager to freeze up your hydraulics, cause expansion problems, and basically mess up anything that they can. On reentry, you're exposed to ridiculous amounts of heat as you try and burn off all of that energy that you spent accelerating using your proportionally tiny orbital craft.

Honestly, it's amazing that these craft ever survive.

Re:Why so many?

[rovingeyes]

We may not like this fact, but that's the reality of space travel: it's *dangerous*

Agreed, but shouldn't NASA also acknowledge that fact and let the people know about it? Case in point, recent "crack" which was discussed on slashdot. Yesterday, I read an article, which states that NASA is downplaying it. May be it is nothing but shouldn't their attitude be more realistic?

Re:Why so many?

[WIAKywbfatw]

They hide the risks partially because if they were to openly admit that strapping people onto a rocket and firing them into space was dangerous then politicians and the public would start asking if there really was a point to manned orbital missions if they're so dangerous, which is a question that would leave NASA up shit creek and without a paddle.

Re:Why so many?

[dangitman]

then politicians and the public would start asking if there really was a point to manned orbital missions if they're so dangerous, which is a question that would leave NASA up shit creek and without a paddle.

Well yes, but isn't America a democracy?

Re:Why so many?

[Anonymous Coward]

"Agreed, but shouldn't NASA also acknowledge that fact and let the people know about it?"

How has NASA "not" acknowledged the dangers of space travel? I thought it was common knowledge. Should they be yelling it from the mountaintops?

"Case in point, recent "crack" which was discussed on slashdot. Yesterday, I read an article, which states that NASA is downplaying it."

No pun intended, but I'm sure they studied the shit out of that crack. There is still no guarantee it won't be a problems, but that brings us back to the point - "space travel is dangerous"

Re:Why so many?

[Clay Pigeon -TPF-VS-]

There are currently: 0 pure democracies in existence. America is a democratic republic (it uses representatives and indirect democracy).

Re:Why so many?

[ifwm]

I think most people know it's dangerous. In fact I've seen no evidence to suggest otherwise.

Two shuttle disasters, numerous rocket failures and a HUGE hit movie whose only focus was a botched space mission have helped drive the point home.

But I could be wrong. I doubt it though, and I plan to ask a few people in passing conversation about the subject. Maybe I give people more credit than they deserve.

Re:Why so many?

[Anonymous Coward]

There are currently: 0 pure democracies in existence.

If you are talking about nation-states, true. There are plenty of direct democracies on the village-to-small city scale. Probably because direct democracies loss their effectiveness as their scale increases.

Re:Why so many?

[shift.red.avni]

Do you honestly believe that NASA should spend it's time publicizing the fact that strapping astronauts onto literally a ton of rocket fuel and blasting them into outer space is involves significant risk to people who are unable to come to that conclusion themselves?

Re:Why so many?

[bigpat]

"Won't people stop with this? A 2% failure rate on a rocket with a statistically significant number of launches under its belt is a very impressive rate for orbital rockets - not just for the US, but worldwide."

And more so amongst reusable space shuttles it has the best failure rate in the history of mankind. In fact it could be said to set the standard for reusable space shuttle safety.

Well, wait lets see the only other manned program hasn't had a loss of life since 1971... so in a field of two, the space shuttle has the second best safety record. I can see what you are saying ... just limit the comparison to one that is favorable to your view point and you get the optimal result.

I'll grant you that going into orbit on rockets is an inherently dangerous thing to do, but I think it has been shown convincingly in engineering that a simpler spacecraft design which is optimized for human passengers will increase safety.

The current failure rate is something to live with and be aware of, but nothing to be proud of.

Re:Why so many?

[pr0c]

Agreed, but shouldn't NASA also acknowledge that fact and let the people know about it? Case in point, recent "crack" which was discussed on slashdot. Yesterday, I read an article, which states that NASA is downplaying it. May be it is nothing but shouldn't their attitude be more realistic?

Do you think you are a fucking rocket scientist!?! Most of them are... you are not smarter than the lowest 5% of people at NASA... why don't you people quit thinking you know everything and leave the worrying up to the people who REALLY know what they are talking about.

As for "and let the people know about it", what does it matter to you? You aren't on the ship and the people on the ship DO know the risks. Am I missing something here? Are you their fucking lawyer or union rep or what?

Re:Why so many?

[drgonzo59]

The problem I think is that the average Joe cannot understand that there is an actual percentage of risk involved, he probably doesn't know what percentage is anyway. So for Mr. Sixpack it is either "dangerous as hell - don't do it!" or "totally safe - will _never_ fail!" The real problem then is that there are a lot of those Joe Sixpacks around, including in Congress and the media.

So NASA has to translate 1% failure into "this is totally safe - will _never_ fail!" for them in order to get any funding.

The same thing goes for nuclear power plants. One small incident on the "Three Mile Island", watching Chernobyl (worst case scenario) on TV along with the bomb drill and fear of the Russkies in the childhood turned the public opinion into "dangerous as hell - let's not build any more nucular power plants! Killing people over oil is a lot more fun"

Re:Why so many?

[Keamos]

Except that the recent "crack" was in the foam insulation, not the shuttle itself.

"The start of the move was briefly delayed by the discovery of a crack in the external fuel tank's foam insulation. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration later said the crack was no reason for concern.

The flaw was discovered as the spacecraft was being readied for the first shuttle launch since Columbia fell to pieces, a disaster blamed on a chunk of foam that fell off the tank during liftoff and gashed one of the wings.

NASA spokeswoman Jessica Rye described the flaw as a hairline crack and said that, after sending images of it to the tank's manufacturer in Louisiana, the space agency concluded it did not need to make any repairs.

NASA later said the 1 1/2-inch crack was high up on the shuttle in a spot where, if foam flew off, it would not likely hit the vehicle.

"It's a very, very tiny crack. Very, very narrow . . . well within our experience base," said Mike Leinbach, shuttle launch director. "It was an acceptable condition for flight."

Re:Why so many?

[dangitman]

Do you honestly believe that NASA should spend it's time publicizing the fact that strapping astronauts onto literally a ton of rocket fuel and blasting them into outer space is involves significant risk to people who are unable to come to that conclusion themselves?

No. I just asked if America was a democracy. I didn't say what I believe anywhere in my post. Any such inferences are in the mind of the user. See a psychologist if symptoms persist.

Re:Why so many?

[oringo]

That 2% failure rate, my friend, is a perceived failure rate, and the actual risk might be much higher than that. Space shuttles are such complex systems that it is impossible to test every single aspect of it. Most of the time, we test it until we FEEL that it is safe to launch. The only reason why we haven't had more accidents can only be attributed to luck. Read Richard Feynman's report on the challenger shuttle accident: http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.ht ml

Re:Why so many?

[Rei]

The Soviets also haven't launched nearly as many astronaut missions; consequently, I was not talking about rates of casualties, but the rates of rocket failures - a much more fair comparison. And the shuttle is among the best in the world. Although, if you want a head to head of shuttle vs. soyuz, both have had two fatal accidents, but the shuttle has launched more (there were more casualties on the shuttle, but that's just because it's a bigger craft with a larger average crew).

Furthermore, casualties of cosmonauts under the USSR are still hard to get a complete list. There were a lot of coverups in the interest of presenting the best face to the world. We only know of a "minimum" list. Here's an interesting page on some of the reports from the 50s to the early 80s.

Re:Why so many?

[Rei]

One of the biggest problems with nuclear power, unlike space travel for which there are no alternatives, is that it is so expensive with current safety regulations in place. Yet, we don't want to go lax on safety, as the Belarusans and Ukranians learned the hard way.

Yucca Mountain might reduce costs somewhat, since the plant owners would only pay one-time transportation costs instead of long-term on-site storage.

Re:Why so many?

[networkBoy]

"Maybe I give people more credit than they deserve."

Yup.
Most people, if you were to ask them if it were dangerous would rightly say yes. However in their day to day thoughts think of it as glamerous, not dangerous.
-nB

Re:Why so many?

[networkBoy]

And you sir are a tard.

While many there are rocket scientists, the people doing the downplaying are PR people A.K.A. politicians by a different name.
-nB

Re:Why so many?

[timeOday]

Why? Are they supposed to blow up too?

...2% failure rate is a very impressive... it's *dangerous*... eager-to-react chemicals... thin, flimsy... millions of components... vibrational loads and G forces... tens of thousands of rpms... snap like twigs... constantly bombarded... radiation... it's amazing that these craft ever survive.

If you meant "yes," just say so!

Re:Why so many?

[pr0c]

While many there are rocket scientists, the people doing the downplaying are PR people A.K.A. politicians by a different name.

Duh? And they speak on behalf of whom?

Re:Why so many?

[Chairboy]

> and a HUGE hit movie whose only focus was a botched space mission have
> helped drive the point home.

Now, I enjoyed Space Camp as much as the next guy, but was it really a HUGE hit?

Re:Why so many?

[networkBoy]

The accountants.

-nB

Re:Why so many?

[orac2]

Do you think you are a fucking rocket scientist!?! Most of them are... you are not smarter than the lowest 5% of people at NASA... why don't you people quit thinking you know everything and leave the worrying up to the people who REALLY know what they are talking about.

NASA engineers are smart, but that doesn't mean they, or NASA as a whole, aren't capable of huge errors.

Go read the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report, especially the bit where it discusses how exactly the institutional arrogance you seem to be endorsing insulated NASA from listening to critics and contributed to the collapse of the safety culture within the manned space program. You'll find it on pages 102-106 of the free pdf of volume 1. Here's one quote, emphasis mine:

In the aftermath of the Challenger accident, these contradictory forces prompted a resistance to externally imposed changes and an attempt to maintain the internal belief that NASA was still a "perfect place," alone in its ability to execute a program of human space flight. Within NASA centers, as Human Space Flight Program managers strove to maintain their view of the organization, they lost their ability to accept criticism, leading them to reject the recommendations of many boards and blue-ribbon panels, the Rogers Commission among them.

External criticism and doubt, rather than spurring NASA to change for the better, instead reinforced the will to "impose the party line vision on the environment, not to reconsider it," according to one authority on organizational behavior. This in turn led to "flawed decision making, self deception, introversion and a diminished curiosity about the world outside the perfect place." The NASA human space flight culture the Board found during its investigation manifested many of these characteristics, in particular a self-confidence about NASA possessing unique knowledge about how to safely launch people into space. As will be discussed later in this chapter, as well as in Chapters 6, 7, and 8, the Board views this cultural resistance as a fundamental impediment to NASA's effective organizational performance.

Re:Why so many?

[orac2]

What statistics are you using? If you are talking about what vehicle has the best safety record that you can fly in today, as opposed to, perhaps, a Vostok vs. a Mercury Capsule, then it's Soyuz vs. Shuttle. And there the difference in mission counts is 86 to 113: within the bounds of "nearly as many," at least enough to allow meaningful comparision.

Although there's been some hairraising moments, that there hasn't been a Soyuz crew death since 1971, indicates a mature spacecraft design whose reliability has increased over time, something that can't be said about the shuttle. In other words, the practice of launching Soyuz's has demonstrably shown improvements in the chances of crew survival, while launching shuttles has not. Indeed, the physical aging involved with these resuable vehicles has given rise to significant concerns in itself. If everyone thought the shuttle was getting better with age, it would not need to be recertified in 2010, something no-one believes is going to happen.

It's also worth noting that the Soyuz booster itself has had nearly 1,700 launches under its belt, far outstripping any US launcher, with a reliability rate of around 96-98% since its introduction back in the 1950s. Of the 98 launches since 1996, the Soyuz booster has one failure: a 99% success rate, indicating that it too has become more reliable over time.

Re:Why so many?

[Rei]

Again, you seem to be looking at casualties. Both Redstone and Vostok had rocket failures, but the craft were unmanned at the time. In fact, the Redstone rocket had a *50%* failure rate - just not when people were in it (56 launches, 28 failures). Now not all of these would have been fatal if they were manned missions, but a number would have been.

There hasn't been a *public* Soyuz crew death since 1971, although the USSR was known to have covered up a number of cosmonaut deaths (including one who died in an accident similar to the Apollo fire) that later got disclosed. But just ignoring that, again we need to look at the safety of the entire system (comparing casualties when the number of humans launched is very different is inherently unfair). The Proton (which is the booster) is actually a rocket family, for which there are a number of models, and I'm not sure where you get your 96-98% number from (a quick look through the various proton models on astronautix.com testifies to just the opposite). International Launch Services, which sells proton launches, cites 92%, and "just over 200 launches".Also, where you got your "one failure" since 1996 is beyond me - there were two failures in 1999 alone, which led to the temporary suspension of all Proton launches. One of them crashed on top of a small Kazakh village :P

Re:Why so many?

[orac2]

There hasn't been a *public* Soyuz crew death since 1971

There haven't been any, and so the statistic stands. There are no gaps in the Soyuz launch records, no missing crews. Jim Oberg has pretty much debunked claims of covered up deaths in space. The deaths you explicitly refer to were indeed training accidents, and just as I don't count the crew of Apollo 1 (or people like Eliott See for that matter) in launch reliability statistics, you're correct not to count them either.

The Proton is a rocket family, but it doesn't contain the Soyuz, so I don't know where that non-sequiter comes from, especially given the proton is not human-rated. The Soyuz is also a family, but the differences between the family members comes from what upper stage you stick on top (Fregat, etc). The lower stage plus boosters is the same, right back to the original R-7 ICBM adapted to launch Sputnik. You can find more recent launch data from Starsem, the Soyuz launch company, and historical data can be also be found pretty easily, assuming you're searching for the right rocket family! If you're vague on Russian rocket families, this diagram will help. The Proton statistics -- a completely different, cargo rated booster-- have no bearing on the Soyuz statistics, the actual launch vehicle that is in the same arena as the shuttle (and these days the Long March 2F) in putting humans in orbit.

Re:Why so many?

[Rei]

Why on earth you provided a link that ends with "How many other names should also have been on there remains to be determined" (in reference to a plaque placed on the moon listing dead astronauts) is way beyond me. Your link argues strongly against you, and defends my position that Soviet secrecy makes accurate counts impossible. And I only mentioned the fire as an example case; I wasn't blaming a launcher there.

Sorry about the Proton - my mistake, in that I was thinking of the soviet manned lunar proposal craft (which was to use a Proton as a booster for a Soyuz). Ok, lets redo this: October 15th, 2002: a Soyuz blows up shortly after liftoff. Given that your argument was that they've learned from their mistakes and it's a reliable vehicle now (unlike the shuttle), how do you explain it? By the way, you clearly chose "since 1996" because there were two accidents then - June 20th and May 14th. Again, if the Russians were "learning", and we were not, how do you explain these?

Re:Why so many?

[orac2]

Why on earth you provided a link that ends with "How many other names should also have been on there remains to be determined" (in reference to a plaque placed on the moon listing dead astronauts) is way beyond me. Your link argues strongly against you

Becuase the only secret deaths Oberg finds are from various training and other accidents, not space accidents, and therefore there have been no Soyuz launch/orbital/landing deaths since 1971, and therefore that's a trustworthy statistic for comparing spacecraft reliability. Oberg explicitly rejects a long lists of cosmonauts rumored to have died in space. The plaque on the moon, deposited during Apollo 15, lists the names of astronauts and cosmonauts who died while on the books, even if they died nowhere near a spacecraft, e.g. Edward Givens, who died in an automobile accident. Oberg is not wondering "who else died in space," when he asks "How many other names should also have been on there?" He's lamenting the secrecy that covered up ground deaths in the Soviet Union.

As for the failures, as you are wont to point out, nothing is without risk. Soyuz's still blow up. I didn't state their reliability statistics as 100%. But they a) never blew up very often and b) blow up less often now, epescially when they're being used for manned missions: the last manned Soyuz booster explosion was a pad explosion in 1983. Fortunately, unlike the shuttle, in that case the cosmanauts had a emergceny evacauation system that worked within fractions of a second (a Faget-style escape rocket) and sent them to safety.

That the aging shuttles statistics don't follow the same trend as the Soyuz is evidenced by the recertification requirement (one no-one expects NASA to bother even trying to meet) in 2010 to allow the shuttle to continue flying. If everyone thought shuttle was getting better with age, the orginal certification program would still be valid.

Let me be clear: I do not believe the Shuttle is a deathtrap. Nor is the Soyuz a wundervehicle: it has it's own slate of problems. But I do believe the philosophy of seperating cargo and people onto seperate vehicles is a good one (which I why I was heartened to see that approach adopted for NASA's new CEV). I also believe that the economics of the shuttle prevents NASA from fully taking advantage of what it learns during missions and incorporating that into better engineering, unlike the Soyuz spacecraft and booster, if only because the Russians get to build a new one every mission.

Re:Why so many?

[bigpat]

"The Soviets also haven't launched nearly as many astronaut missions; consequently, I was not talking about rates of casualties, but the rates of rocket failures"

Rates of rocket failure are inconsequential to a point about safety. Politicians are willing to take more risks with money than with human passengers, after all doing something once is an accomplishment doing something more than once is a job.

I am not suggesting that the space shuttle is a terrible spacecraft, but rather that your assertion that it is the best and by implication the best possible is misleading. We have learned a lot from the space shuttle and NASA is not looking to replace the shuttle with a craft designed along the same lines. NASA is looking to Soyuz and Apollo as the model for a well conceived passenger space craft using proven technology, rather than an updated version of the space shuttle. The fact that the shuttle is a bigger craft with a larger crew far from mitigates any statistics, but rather it is itself one of the major design criticisms. The space shuttle wasn't a terrible spacecraft, and I believe we are better off for it having flown. But to imply that the shuttle is the safest is to treat a bit too litely two major in flight failures.

Your point about possible cover ups is well taken, but that likely applies to both sides.

Bottom line is that I would fly on the space shuttle if given the opportunity, but I'd feel reasonably safer on the soyuz.

Ask Yahoo!

[praseodym]

Maybe they can ask Yahoo?

Re:Ask Yahoo!

[Iphtashu Fitz]

More like they should ask Akamai since Yahoo relies on Akamai for its content delivery.

Re:Ask Yahoo!

[Anonymous Coward]

It was still going on Yahoo's bills...

Gotta check those links...

[TripMaster Monkey]

The link entitled "MSNBC's Cosmic Log" actually points to a story about the coverage of the upcoming solar eclipse from Panama...certainly newsworthy in its own right, but somewhat offtopic here..

In the interest of promoting more discussion, a lot of good info regarding the NASA bandwidth sponsorship can be found here.

How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandwidt

[Hulkster]

Be real interesting to see a chart showing bandwidth needs for various high profile sites such as Google, CNN, Slashdot, and (most recently) the Vatican.

Probably the best qualified to help 'em out would be the p0rn sites ... somehow, I doubt NASA will accept those offers in exchange for a banner ad on Nasa.Gov ... ;-)

P.S. I noticed Slashdot is offered a Free One Day Pass (sponsored by ThinkGeek) - new revenue generator for 'em? Ironically, if you click thru on the article after getting your free one day pass, it says "Posting will only be possible in The Mysterious Future!" - a minor, but funny, typo.

NASA needs this

[bcmm]

Didn't we once /. one of their servers?
Only on a subdomain, but it still shouldn't be possible.

Re:NASA needs this

[Erwos]

Do you understand that NASA subdomain servers are often just single boxes with Apache running on them? It's not like everyone's running a server farm, and if one day their pictures suddenly become popular, well... they don't have the funding to do much more than watch the boxes start smoking. It's also not as if they're each connected to the web on their own gigabit pipe.

If www.nasa.gov went down, I'd be concerned, but let's be reasonable...

-Erwos

Re:NASA needs this

[bcmm]

Do you understand that NASA subdomain servers are often just single boxes with Apache running on them?

Yes, and that is why they need better hosting.

I wasn't blaiming them.

Re:NASA needs this

[Anonymous Coward]

I think we hit worldwind.arc.nasa.gov pretty badly last September, but since then they've thrown another CPU, 7Gb more RAM, and a gigabit network connection at that particular server :)

To paraphrase...

[mogrify]

It will be a sad day when our corporations get all the money they want and NASA has to publish a sponshorship opportunity to run a website.

Re:To paraphrase...

[Anonymous Coward]

Damn those corporations! Comrade, I say we rise up!

It doesn't matter how hard those companies work to get to where they are, right? Put all your trust in the state, tovarisch, and full speed ahead! The iron boot of justice should step on the capitalist head of these greedy corporations and grind them into the dirt until they accept that the proletariat should be given everything they have.

Why, the dialectic demands it!

Re:To paraphrase...

[Morlark]

So... it's a sad day today?
In this day and age science is not getting anywhere near the level of funding that it needs to keep the current rate of technological advancement. More and more companies are shutting down their R&D departments, because they can't be bothered to wait for the science to come to fruition. Science is all about long term benifits, but many companies can't be bothered to wait, even though in the long term it brings huge advantages. And the same is true of government funding as well. In many countries, science is not getting the level of governmental support that it requires. There are less people studying science subjects at university; some universities are closing down their science departments. This is a very serious problem that is endemic to the whole of society.

Re:To paraphrase...

[ScentCone]

It will be a sad day when our corporations get all the money they want and NASA has to publish a sponshorship opportunity to run a website.

Corporations don't 'get' money (in the way that NASA does), they have to do something in exchange for it (like, sell something) or talk investors into delivering it. NASA, on the other hand, works on tax dollars, which means that everybody in the country (at least, the part of the country that pays taxes, anyway) funds their programs. I think they should have a much bigger budget, but a lot of people don't.

Personally, I think it makes a lot of sense to avoid a potentially more bruising budget fight in front of the administration and congress when some donors (who will very carefully think about who the audience is for these events, and will only provide resources if it makes sense for their business model) are willing to take up some of the slack. Episodic events (like shuttle launches) are ideal for this sort of sponsorship because the need for that overhead is fleeting, and can be tied to a date on a calendar. That works well for people in the PR/marketing side of things, and allows NASA to focus more on actually safely hurling people and equipment into space and have to worry less about which project to extend or kill.

Re:To paraphrase...

[Rei]

It's a sad day that NASA doesn't get the funding that it needs, yes. They get half of what they got, proportionally, back in the days of Apollo, and their budget is completely dwarfed by things like the military, medicare, medicaid, social security, national debt interest, etc. On the other hand, it is good to see that NASA is so concerned with maintaining the budget for its strained programs that they're seeking outside assistance instead of just killing programs off.

Re:To paraphrase...

[avalys]

Why? Corporations get money from a free and voluntary exchange of goods and services with the general public. NASA gets money taken from the general public by force.

And really, saying that corporations get all the money they want is completely absurd. They get all the money that the public wants to give them, which is quite a big difference.

Re:To paraphrase...

[mogrify]

Actually, poignant appeal aside, I meant this to be more of a [+1 Funny] than [+1 Insightful]... haven't you guys seen the bake sale/bomber bumper sticker?

Glad to stimulate discussion though...

Re:To paraphrase...

[curlyjunglejake]

Corporations do just "get money." They get it through tax breaks and subsidies.

Re:To paraphrase...

[Kiryat Malachi]

They get half of what they got, proportionally, back in the days of Apollo

Not even close to half, actually. NASA, at the peak of Apollo, got around 4.5% of the federal budget. Now, it gets around 0.75%.

Re:To paraphrase...

[ScentCone]

A tax break is not money. It is paying less taxes. A subsidy, I agree, is corporate welfare, and should be stopped. As should all forms of tax dollar handouts (whether to individuals, or groups of them called corporations).

One word:

[FiveNines]

bittorrent....

Re:One word:

[kjamez]

two words: coral cache.

Re:One word:

[arekq]

Archive.org

Contact info.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear NASA,

regarding your budgetary constraints for space travel and internet bandwidth, please contact Scaled Composites and Armadillo Aerospace for advice and how-to's.

YHBT

Re:Contact info.

[Rei]

Wake me up when they produce anything that addresses the real technical challenges of real spaceflight, instead of building unscalable joyrides.

Re:Contact info.

[Anonymous Coward]

Dear Scaled Composites,

Regarding your inability to orbit the earth, please contact NASA for advice and how-to's.

Sincerely,
MoFo

cc: Armadillo Aerospace

Are we helping their problems?

[Inkieminstrel]

Nasa is having bandwidth problems... let's post links to them on Slashdot!

Re:Are we helping their problems?

[Capt'n Hector]

Nasa has bandwidth problems because they have a flash spash page, and video on their homepage! I mean, seriously. Before they go crawling to the corporations begging for handouts, perhaps they should slim down their site a bit.

Re:Are we helping their problems?

[Professor_UNIX]

Nasa has bandwidth problems because they have a flash spash page, and video on their homepage! I mean, seriously. Before they go crawling to the corporations begging for handouts, perhaps they should slim down their site a bit.

The NASA Portal (www.nasa.gov) site is hosted on Speedera and is not on a NASA network at all. This is also consequently where all the centers' subdomain web servers go to these days too. For example www.ksc.nasa.gov redirects to www.nasa.gov/centers/kennedy.

As for the Flash animation crap, yes it is definitely annoying. They need some cookie or something that remember if you already viewed a flash intro and skip it if you go back in your browser. It's annoying to hear the same intro 5-10 times in a session. But hey, that's what they wanted.. more interactivity and something more interesting for the viewing public.

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[superpulpsicle]

I just don't see the same level or interest going to NASA's website as google or slashdot. It may attract visitors once, but what will keep them coming back and again?

BitTorrent

[svanstrom]

Why stream it all to a few, instead of using BitTorrent to send the complete files to everyone that wants them?

Re:BitTorrent

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

Is there a torrent-like streamer out there? Would be cool to see a live-feeding BitTorrent... This would be perfect for that, too.

Re:BitTorrent

[k0de]

Until there's a bittorrent browser plugin, that isn't going to happen. The general public doesn't understand the technology. If they did, spyware wouldn't be the problem that it is.

Re:BitTorrent

[Have Blue]

You can't do live video over BitTorrent, since it does not provide in-order delivery.

Re:BitTorrent

[Albio]

A BitTorrent streamer would be great, but depending on the bitrate, uploads may cause performance problems with the streaming download. Also, I am a firm believer that torrents work because people leave the torrent going after they've finished dowlnoading.

Re:BitTorrent

[mattbee]

But Dijjer does and works along very similar lines.

Re:BitTorrent

[MrAnnoyanceToYou]

It's the guvmint, how high quality can the feed be?

Re:BitTorrent

[WIAKywbfatw]

But it's a partial solution though: offer torrents of the video after the event and you significantly lower you bandwidth bill for the post-live portion of your event.

Re:BitTorrent

[linders]

Sure it does. Just have the client ask for the right packages.

Re:BitTorrent

[dangitman]

Why stream it all to a few, instead of using BitTorrent to send the complete files to everyone that wants them?

Because, if you use BitTorrent, the terrorists have already won!

Re:BitTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Because they want something that works!

Maybe they need to sponsor the creation of a replacement for BT.

Re:BitTorrent

[Lord_Dweomer]

"Ok, here we have them landing on the moon.....no wait, now they're loading up to go home....errr....now they're taking off......OMG! The shuttle blew up!!!.......oh wait, there they are again on the moon......no wait, now the parts are dropping into the ocean!!!"

Hmm....on second thought, in-order delivery might be more important than I first thought.

Re:BitTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

True, but the guy wrote send the complete files...

Re:BitTorrent

[RebelWithoutAClue]

Why is it that hard to hack bt to provide inorder delivery ?

Wonder what the delay is on that one though.

Re:BitTorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

It is both, high bandwidth people keep it going by uploading while downloading, low bandwidth by keeping on the torrent longer after they are done. I seldomly seed, I have 110 kilobyte/s upload which is above average so my ratio is normally about 1.6 to 2.0 anyway so I quit after downloading.

korea

[Lil-Bondy]

im guessing the server/s will end up being in korea, i mean, after all they do have the best internet in general, most (over) populated game servers are there, for example, ROSEonline - which requires an amazing amount of bandwidth, for example; when you are in a popular area, the amount of people will make even the best of computers slow down (and the game was built to run on p3's)... but yes, all in all, i rekon that korean servers will get it, i doubt NASA would want to cap it, they would lose too much

Nice shuttle roll-out pics

[MagPulse]

NASA has some nics pics of the roll-out from Wednesday. This one is my favorite, and thanks to the high resolution it makes great wallpaper.

Re:Nice shuttle roll-out pics

[Adult film producer]

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/images/large/05 pd0624.jpg This one here puzzles me... maybe it's just tricking my eyes but it looks like there's hardly any room in the cockpit for a crew of 4 or 5. Are there any shuttles on display (Smithsonian perhaps?) where visitors can sit in the real thing ?

Re:Nice shuttle roll-out pics

[Anonymous Coward]

This one here puzzles me... maybe it's just tricking my eyes but it looks like there's hardly any room in the cockpit for a crew of 4 or 5. Are there any shuttles on display (Smithsonian perhaps?) where visitors can sit in the real thing ?

There are fold-out seats in the mid-deck (a cabin under the cockpit). That's were the two to three other mission specialists sit during launches and landings.

Re:Nice shuttle roll-out pics

[pixelpusher220]

The Air and Space Museum has the shuttle, Enterprise, on display but alas you can't get anything other than a frontal view from about 10-20 yards away.

I was there on opening day and the whole museum is pretty impressive in terms of old aircraft. SR-71, Enola Gay, a Concorde, and oodles more aircraft. All fully assembled (save the shuttle since the wings came off to test after the Columbia disaster).

Re:Nice shuttle roll-out pics

[Glendale2x]

This one here puzzles me... maybe it's just tricking my eyes but it looks like there's hardly any room in the cockpit for a crew of 4 or 5. Are there any shuttles on display (Smithsonian perhaps?) where visitors can sit in the real thing ?

While it does look a little bit perspective skewed, only two people sit in the cockpit proper - the pilot and commander. The rest of the crew either sits in chairs behind the cockpit on the flight deck, or in chairs on the mid-deck below.

Here's how the seating on STS-107 was arranged:

http://www-pao.ksc.nasa.gov/kscpao/shuttle/countdo wn/sts107/crewseat.htm

I hope NASA steers away from popups.

[game kid]

I've never seen any (that I remember) on their sites (unless you traverse a link for more info on a mission; the popup will have said info as opposed to an annoying ad), but they might grow fearful of the coming apocalyp^WSlashdotting and general demand, and cave in to terrible deals.

They better not lest I add some cracks to teh shuttle tanks in protest. Ok, maybe not, but you know what I mean. Hate 'em.

Up next...

[Anonymous Coward]

...sponsorship of heat shield tiles. Buy ad space!

"Coke adds life...and preserves it!"

Foam insulation now made from harmless Nerf.

Zero-G exercise studies now sponsored by Burger King's Enormous Breakfast Sandwich.

Hello Google?.....

[i_want_you_to_throw_]

Google is good about helping out good causes. NASA does use a TON of open source though so maybe M$ should do it. After all M$ runs ads in Linux magazines.

Maybe they haven't heard of something called

[llZENll]

BitTorrent

Re:Maybe they haven't heard of something called

[dotslasher_sri]

half million streaming video feeds

Bittorrent cannot be used for video streams. It can only be used where you are downloading something which can be downloaded in parts.

Re:Maybe they haven't heard of something called

[Anonymous Coward]

Bittorrent cannot be used for video streams. It can only be used where you are downloading something which can be downloaded in parts.

Yes... That gave me an idea. Maybe it would be time for semi-live video feeds, something that can be couple minutes delayed (2-5?). Stream could be cut into 30 sec - 1 min pieces and downloaded using something similar to Bittorrent. Clients would serve small pieces to each other for some small time period... maybe calculate decent "delay" and unfortunate clients with bad connections would just skip ahead, if needed.

Half a million viewers? I think not...

[Eyeball97]

Half a million streaming video clients? More than a little ambitious, I'd say.

Even at a modest 64kbps stream this would consume 32Gbps of bandwidth - that's THREE OC192's or, although the figures vary quite widely (Here's one), approximately the entire capacity of the "Internet" as it currently stands.

There are technologies that can handle this using a mere 64kbps in total (e.g. multicast) but they're not widely adopted/available (side note - why??)

You'd think an agency that can put someone on the Moon and vehicles on Mars would have the tech savvy to know off the top of their heads that they're dreaming!

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[rtaylor]

Of course, you've made the assumption the streams all need to start from a single source location.

Someone like an Akamai may be in a position to accomplish the job.

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[Eyeball97]

Reluctantly replying to my own message, before anybody else points out the faux-pas I should apologise for the misleading statistics - the web page I linked was for a "large city" not the 'net in general. Now, I'm having trouble finding stats pages for the 'net in general - been a few years since I needed to look them up (or was interested)! Sorry!

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[Eyeball97]

Very true, I simply meant to highlight the overall bandwidth such a load would demand. Since you mention it, I'd be surprised to find that NASA isn't already akamai'd

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[brontus3927]

Assuming NASA's prediction of 20 millions visitors for the launch (which is ~6.8% of the US population or .33% of the world population) is correct, is it that unbelievable to think that 2.5% of the visitors will try to view the launch?

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[Ironsides]

There are technologies that can handle this using a mere 64kbps in total (e.g. multicast) but they're not widely adopted/available (side note - why??)

First, because only one service can really be using a single multicast address at a time. And there are a limited number of them. Second, you have to get everyone in the path to allow that multicast address. This involves the internet backbone providers (mainly those telecoms like SBC everyone keeps complaining about) and all the internet companies allowing that multicast address through their firewalls and routers. They generally do not allow them due to the bandiwidth problems (read up on how multicast works in detail for more on this), the spamming/virusing potential (send a virus to all computers at once instead of one at a time), and that most people do not use it.

Multicast is generally used only 'in house' when needed since it is sent to every computer on the entire network. (initially, at least, or always if misused)

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[timeOday]

I don't think we'll ever get milticast working across the Internet at large. What's more likely to work IMHO is caching proxies.

Get Comcast to do this in a few major cities and you've made a serious dent in the problem. Comcast would save big money by decreasing traffic on their backbones, and NASA would obviously save a lot too. Now the only question is how to make streaming media proxy-cache friendly.

Hmm, apparently it has been done. I wonder if the big ISPs do this?

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[paragon_au]

Errr. bullshit.

Lets do a little be of actual (rough) math.
64kbps = 6.4kps
Your avg ADSL connection is 1.5mbit or 164kps.
So that means you can fit 25 streams per connection.
So to cover 500,000 people watching you'd need 20,000 1.5mbit ADSL connections.
Yeah I'm sure the total bandwidth of the world amounts to 20,000 home ADSL Connections.

Oh, and by the way according to the graph you linked to the total bandwidth is around 1Pbps or 1,000,000GBps. But don't worry, you were close.

You'd think someone on the tech savvy Slashdot could read a graph.

Re:Half a million viewers? I think not...

[Eyeball97]

Errr...

20,000 1.5mbit ADSL's is 30Gbps dude - which is basically roughly what I said...

I also posted a follow up apologising for the 30Gbps being a "world" estimate when it's actually a "large city" estimate. If you're going to be pedantic, the line crosses 100Tbps in 2005 not 1Pbps which doesn't happen until about 2007.

Leaves me wondering, though, how accurate this graph is? 100Tbps for a "large city"? Or for "The world"? Either way - . My first connection was on a 300baud modem the size of a small filing cabinet I still have trouble getting my head round Gbps never mind Pbps... :-)

In any case, I hadn't intended to start any arguments about how much capacity the "Internet" has - the main point was the relatively high amount of bandwidth half a mil streams would consume... which doesn't seem so high any more if we're heading for a total capacity of Pbps!

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[StalinsNotDead]

Pornography?

I wonder

[elid]

Is there a way to use Coral for distributing the feeds?

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[game kid]

I believe Alexa shows traffic in their site info when you search for certain sites. Don't know about bandwidth used though.

p0rn ads on NASA? That'd be odd...

I, for one, welcome our geeky Free One Day Pass overlords. Weirdest Lego-block-composed ad ever (from what I saw).

Why not go with something torrent-like?

[stratjakt]

huh? Why not?

Sounds like the perfect application for it.

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[Anonymous Coward]

I just don't see the same level or interest going to NASA's website as google or slashdot. It may attract visitors once, but what will keep them coming back and again?

Here's a clue, NASA doesn't just have one public website, they have dozens, perhaps even over a hundred, with specific content. The topics range from astronomical photos to zeolite crystal research. It would take days of web-browsing to go through all of it. Of course most people would actually be interested in less than the full scope, but traffic to NASA servers has usually been high (especially for a federal governemnt agency) ever since they have been putting more effort into the webdesign (since late-1990's).

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[Rei]

I regularly visit NASA.com's Cassini page and Mars rovers page. I'm hardly the only one. They sometimes put interesting features on the front page as well related to various scientific discoveries (things like the discovery of gamma ray bursts from lightning, making earth the most powerful gamma ray source for orbital craft).

Sponsorship Scandal

[Anonymous Coward]

Perfect... a future SPONSORSHIP SCANDAL! Nothing could possib-lie go wrong.

It's all about priorities

[grozzie2]

The cost of one smart bomb will more than cover the bandwidth needs of nasa for the shuttle coverage. hmmm, says a lot about priorities.

Re:It's all about priorities

[ScentCone]

The cost of one smart bomb will more than cover the bandwidth needs of nasa for the shuttle coverage. hmmm, says a lot about priorities

Well, let's see now. "Smart Bomb" covers a lot of territory, but take for example the one that we used the most of during the Gulf war. That would be the 500lb GBU-12 Laser-Guided Bomb. It's actually gotten a lot less expensive to produce those, but at the time, they cost about $9,000.

$9,000 isn't even going to but a dent in NASA's desire to run thousands of concurrent streaming video feeds during a shuttle launch. When you decide to make political points (never mind a discussion of what it costs in lives and dollars to not use guided munitions), please at least get within a few orders of magnitude of the facts - you'll at least sound more credible as your actual meaning is dissected.

Re:It's all about priorities

[Anonymous Coward]

You missed $10K.

http://www.fas.org/man/dod-101/sys/smart/gbu-12.ht m

A GBU-12 is $19K .. which would be around two DS-3 circuits for a month.

-AC

Re:It's all about priorities

[ScentCone]

A GBU-12 is $19K .. which would be around two DS-3 circuits for a month.

OK, I'll see your $10k and raise you another $10k, just to cover inflation for this year. Doesn't matter unless we're off by a couple of decimal points. That still doesn't even come close to supporting the concurrent traffic that NASA would like to be able to support during a launch. Sure, over a given month that would be nice for typical traffic - that much bandwidth would help them out a lot with visiting school kids and whatnot. But in the, say, 10 minutes before, and 60 minutes after a launch (or a landing, etc.), two DS-3's would still just be drinking straws for the half million (!!!) live video feeds they want to serve up.

The post to which I replied - where the poster suggests that NASA's infrastructure needs in this regard could be covered with the cost of one smart bomb - is just slanted, trolling rhetoric, and I didn't want to let it go unanswered.

Multicast feeds of NASA TV

[Danathar]

Unknown to many, If you are an internet2 (most universities) connected college or university then you probabaly have access to the multicast feed of NASA TV being broadcast by the University of Oregon. WHY NASA does not provide this themselves since NASA is connected to Internet2 is beyond me. (I even wrote to the web site asking about it...nobody responded).

They could save a TON of bandwidth from multicast enabled users clicking on unicast streaming servers...if only they would POST that it's available!

Re:Multicast feeds of NASA TV

[goldragon]

Hey buddy, how about providing a link next time?

Found via Google Search.

Re:Multicast feeds of NASA TV

[Danathar]

did'nt know one existed. I accessed it via SAP announcement through the videolan interface.

Re:Multicast feeds of NASA TV

[Freeform]

How about provinding a link to this internet 2 thing ;)

Dear NASA,

[th0mas.sixbit.org]

I have a DSL connection. It should handle fine unless we're playing xbox online but I'll keep that to the off hours. Gimme a call.

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[Rei]

Corrected links:

Cassini
Mars rovers.

Sorry about that. :)

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[ergo98]

Alexa's traffic estimates are, to the best of my knowledge, based upon users who voluntarily installed the Alexa toolbar - it basically reports back each site visit. Now how many users install the Alexa toolbar, and how evenly distributed among the computing population are they?

My own observations are that there are very few, and they are very unevenly distributed. One of my sites generally is listed as having no traffic, but then in one week, a week with no more traffic than normal, I happened to have several Alexa users visit and suddenly my ranking was considerable...then it dropped out again.

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[Ironsides]

I don't know about them, but PBS has 2 DS-3s (over 300mbits) and they are operating at close to 100% capacity.

it does just work

[MattW]

There's nothing to understand. You download bittorrent (The client). You install it. From then on, you can click on a torrent link on a web page, and bittorrent runs and grabs the file.

Re:it does just work

[Anonymous Coward]

You're right it isn't that hard, but who is going to teach the public patience? They're used to video coming from slow servers, but video coming from BT is an order of magnitude or more slower. I couldn't imagine, for example, my wife or two daughters putting-up with waiting on BT.

Re:it does just work

[MattW]

Maybe you need to check your upstream or ISP or something. I downloaded ISOs this morning, and bitorrent was saturating my T1 for the d/l.

good use for some of Microsoft's money

[Anonymous Coward]

If MS would provide servers and stream the audio and video (and not just in MS formats), this would be a good thing... They have PLENTY of cash to fund it.

Funding?

[dangitman]

If they want more money, why don't they just put a PayPal link up?

What's so bad about ad sponsorship?

[tyates]

The comments here make it seem like we're selling out our government to the highest bidder. It's an ad, folks, and it's probably the same kind of ad you'll see in a subway station or at a bus stop - both government facilities. If it helps NASA deliver more services and saves the taxpayer some money, what's the problem? I think it's a good idea. Maybe if the DMV put some ads on their walls and website, they could hire another gnome behind the counter and I wouldn't have to wait so long to get anything done.

Re:What's so bad about ad sponsorship?

[reezle]

Exactly... I wrote an e-mail to them in the mars pathfinder days asking why they didn't put up some ad-space on their web pages to help pay for the next mission. (It was a very popular site for a few weeks/months.) I received a terse reply that that sort of thing was against their charter, and that they would never run ads. Seemed like a complete waste of the public's attention to me.

I'm pretty happy to see them do it. If the popularity of space programs can go to support future space programs, isn't that the sort of thing we want to happen?

ESM

[DesiVideoGamer]

Why can't they use ESM ? That should save them bandwidth.

First...

[BJZQ8]

First they find crack in the fuel tank, now they're capping visitors. What's next, a 3-album deal with a major record company, complete with ho's, Crystal and an Escalade?

Manifest Destiny in Space

[manganese4]

I like there vision statement The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Vision is: To improve life here, To extend life to there, To find life beyond. It is #2 that troubles me.

Suggestion...

[raam]

Sell the super-secret Air Force shuttle on ebay.

That'll buy some bandwidth.

Re:Suggestion...

[knightri]

a west wing comment i'd presume

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[TiggertheMad]

Probably the best qualified to help 'em out would be the p0rn sites ...

Mmmmm, Space ships AND Hot nekkid chicks....brilliant. Can I award Hulkster the congressional medal of Honor for the suggestion?

Seriously though, perhaps this would be a good time to point out that P2P apps like bit torrent are perfect for this sort of thing, and that perhaps the mpaa and the riaa should just shut the fuck up, because there are some very legitimate uses for P2P.

Sponsorship is a mistake

[Mr. Lwanga]

Using fundraising to make up budget shortfalls is a big mistake. All the beancounters and PHBs will see is that NASA made do with less, so they will get the same or less money in the next years budget.

Re:To paraphrase.

[ediron2]

NASA doesn't get the funding that it needs, yes. They get half of what they got, proportionally, back in the days of Apollo, and their budget is completely dwarfed by things like the military, medicare, medicaid, social security, national debt interest, etc.

The hard numbers are interesting:

Nasa : $16 Billion
Military : $420 Billion
Medicare : $300 Billion
Medicaid : $175 Billion
SocialSec: $518 Billion
Interest : $322 Billion
Etc. : ... well, there's $2500 Billion total spending

Even more interesting is the serious PITA it is to find this data. I've got projected 2005, budgeted 2005, some 2004, and some 2006 stuff overlapping up there. Politicians and agencies hide the info a zillion ways, talking in percentages and percent-changes whenever it'll improve their argument.

2% is shameful

[postbigbang]

Look how many lives were needlessly lost due to NASA's incredible failures. They've put more people and good hardware in the drink than any organization should be allowed to. Can you imagine the looks on kids faces when they watched Challenger go down?

I've heard the excuses-- and they're just that-- bad excuses for bad engineering. The mind reels at how much money has been spent for such awful returns. And now they need bandwidth. I'm hoping they get their priorities right, but sadly, their egos won't let it happen.

Re:2% is shameful

[networkBoy]

IIRC challenger was not supposed to launch according to its engineers. It was management that overrode the engineering staff about O-ring stability at too low temperatures. So lay off the engineering.

As to destroying stuff, I'd like to see you (even with a bigger budget than NASA) design from scratch a space program as advanced and have fewer failures. Bleeding edge science nearly requires some ammount of failures. The earlier the failure is found the cheaper (in all costs $$ / Time / Human) it is to fix. While it is sad that we've lost people (and equipment), it would be sadder if we lost Kevlar, PyroCeram, and other space program derivitives because we were afraid to do the research. If you were interested PyroCeram plates are awesome! Just don't put them in a microwave oven.

Oh, and on another note: I was one of those kids (6th grade) rooting for the first teacher in space. I (and my class, teachers, and parents) saw it blow up. . . live. My teacher started crying, as did most of us. It was a tough day, but as a result my class did a lot of research and learned a great deal. Something else that would have likely not happened if this desaster did not befall.
-nB

Re:2% is shameful

[postbigbang]

It shouldn't have taken a disaster to stress what NASA does. But NASA is a political football. The engineers end up taking the blame-- they could have scotched the mission, and they should have designed it better-- that and the $68billion dollars worth of NASA launches that either blew up before orbit, or were sent into the drink because of bad trajectories, or from other malfunctions.

Yes, the research has to be done. That's what I do for a living. On a moral basis, I don't experiment with other people's lives. If TVs had a 2% component failure-- every single TV would come from the factories dead. 2% is just plainly unacceptable. As are the jeapordy that lives were and are put into. Yes, we get to learn, but this is not the price that should be paid. Criminal charges aren't small enough, in my opinion. Manslaughter is a criminal offense, and when people are put in harms way, it should be prosecuted. Not enough research and experimentation was done-- just to continue to be in the race. It's inexcusable. And in a civilization where we value human life, criminal.

All of our guts were wrenched when not one, but two shuttles went down. Zero is the right number of defects. This is not what NASA does. I wish it were.

space porn

[timothy]

If NASA needs private sponsorships and advertising to get along, why not let true private enterprise (instead of quasi-private) take over the aspects of spaceflight which it's not prepared to support? I'd much rather see Pizza Hut paying -- voluntarily, and with clearcut goals of their own! -- for spaceflight than me, my landlord, and my neighbors, who are not given any specific choice about it.

(Please don't tell me that "we as a society decided to give money to NASA to do it" unless you believe that every government decision represents societal concensus. Consider this: if U.S. tax return forms had a checkbox for NASA, reading something like "Yes, I'd like to direct a dollar of this tax money or contribute an additional [dollar amount, please fill in] ______, enclosed, to NASA," then *that* would be voluntary -- and a good idea, to boot, sez me. It would sure knock down the whole argument I made in the first graf here ;))

Militarily, there's reason for NASA: among other things, they help launch satellites. Defense is a natural imperative, so I'll assert, not just concede, that part. To a lesser extent, though I think it's mostly a budget- and political carrot rather than near-term reality (Hey, what happened to the Bush plan to put folks again on the moon?), NASA research on practical matters of human life in space is somewhat justifiable.

What about abstract knowledge part of NASA? While I realize this makes me an anti-science troglodyte who hates any advance in human knowledge, I don't think that tax dollars should be paying for edge-of-galaxy explorer probes, or satellite telescopes looking outward at the various nebulae -- fascinating and good as those things are! (Golf carts on Mars is easier to swallow, wrt the Life in Space loophole, and so are satellite views of Earth, which show, among other things, how humans affect the planet.)

Note: I'm not saying no one should be interested in or study abstract, non-practical, just-for-insatiable-curiosity things about space -- far from it. I'm only raising the issue of how they're paid for and justified. The government doesn't spend our money very well, and frequently act with it in ways that decrease the national well-being; my biggest gripe about the way NASA money is spent is that it amounts to a tax subsidy, year after year, for a handful of entrenched companies that are technically private but mostly exist because of their (to mix a metaphor) pole position at the public teat.

Ahem.

timothy

Use Bittorrent

[Anonymous Coward]

Why don't they just use Bit Torrent or some similar system?

Re:To paraphrase.

[HMA2000]

Unless I am misunderstanding you it is not too difficult to dig up that data you just have to know what you are searching for.

Here's the spreadsheet I always use when citing government budget figures.

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/fy06/sheets/25_1 2.xls

And here's a bunch of other stuff...

http://www.gpoaccess.gov/usbudget/

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[Daniel Boisvert]

Last I checked, a DS3 was 45 mb/s. That'd give PBS 90 mb/s of bandwidth, if you're right about them having 2 of them.

Scroll down.

[FleaPlus]

Try scrolling down a little on the MSNBC page, to the "This space for rent" subtitle. I tried including an anchor in the link that goes down there, but it doesn't seem to be working right. I think the # character is getting converted to something else (can't verify that myself right now, on Treo, but will later).

Re:To paraphrase.

[Daniel Boisvert]

I find these summary tables are the best place to start. For further breakdowns, you can hit up the detailed budget info here.

social security?

[johnpaul191]

social security is not supposed to get "government funding". that money is taken right from taxes and used to pay the people currently getting the checks. if anything social security funds other stuff because the government keeps "borrowing" from it.

Re:social security?

[Retric]

Social Security is still goverment spending.

IF the government taxes my income and gives it to other people then it's spending money. Hell, it's the closest thing to a flat tax we have 16% of all money earned by people makeing less than ~80k and 16% of ~80k for everyone else...

And you thought we had a progressive tax system. Hell, the only reason why it's failing is the net income of people making less than 80k is going DOWN.

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[Ironsides]

Must be higher than DS-3 then. I know the 300mbit figure is correct, not positive about the DS-3 part.

It's worse than that.

[jd]

It used to be that they did Internet broadcasting using a vast network of CU-SeeMe reflectors across the globe, transmitting only a single low-res B/W video stream. (For colour, you plugged into the multibone, but that was only one stream from them, too.)

These days, they do video broadcasts using higher-resolution point-to-point protocols.

And they wonder why they don't have any bandwidth???

I do have one question for them, though. If they can't afford to do Internet-based television, what makes them think they can afford to run a space program? I'm just curious, that's all.

Re:It's worse than that.

[FleaPlus]

I do have one question for them, though. If they can't afford to do Internet-based television, what makes them think they can afford to run a space program? I'm just curious, that's all.

Perhaps because they think that instead of spending loads of money on improving their bandwidth infrastructure for an unusually large two-time spike, it'd be better to spend that money on science and exploration?

advertising?

[scharkalvin]

I'm waiting for NASA to rent space on the side of the shuttle for banner ads. Can you picture
Ronald McDonald holding up a big mac airbrushed on the shuttle's underside during takeoff?

I agree...

[jd]

Now, if we can talk them into offering sponsorship programs for Hubble, Voyager and maybe Pioneer 11, they might get some real work done.

MBone

[jd]

The simplest, easiest, quickest, cheapest answer is for NASA to persuade ISPs to enable multicasting. Then bandwidth ceases to be an issue and nobody has to run any additional servers on anything.

Re:To paraphrase.

[ediron2]

Table s-12 was what I sought. Thanks.

But having to scroll through pages and pages on a nonroot document... I think that's worthy of saying PITA and buried to describe the circumstance. I went to OMB and CBO looking for this info, for example.

And if I handed this report to my boss, he'd ask for a summary paragraph at the head that said "by category, we're spending $X on X, $Y on Y,". The summary paragraph for this? Well, from OMB/budget/fy2005, you get collections of topics. Picking a likely one (budget.html) I get a set of links. Topmost is a lengthy policy 'speech' by GWB (understandable that it is first), six more on specific agendas, twenty departmental budgets, and then your summary table set. It isn't as bad as the location of the plans for the Bypass that took out Arthur Dent's house, but it is well-obfuscated.

I understand that is the way things work, but as an engineer I also dislike the deception, here or anywhere else it happens. Compare the annual reports from companies in banner years vs. bad years... in the former, they are eager to show off the success and growth and profit. In the latter, they talk about conditions and percentages and influencing factors, and even occasionally split stuff wierdly (discretionary vs. fixed budgets, splitting a sector loss among geographical regions, or etc).

I have a stupid question.

[io333]

With all this insulation worry, why can't they put the stuff on the inside of the liquid fuel tank?

Re:I have a stupid question.

[Anonymous Coward]

> With all this insulation worry, why can't they put the stuff on the inside of the liquid fuel tank?

You mean so that if a chunk of insulation falls off it gets sucked through the main engines of the shuttle?

Yes, that's what the Saturn V rocket did (amongst many others), but suddenly you need another layer of complexity: fuel filters.

i'm a sponsor

[underworld]

in fact, everyone who pays taxes is a sponsor ;-)

Re:To paraphrase.

[ediron2]

No, I found it. A dozen google-searches and bobs-yer-uncle. But the key word is 'dig'. 2006 isn't a real budget, yet. And as I wrote to another commenter, seeing the recap I sought in table 12 of hundreds of pages collection of numbers is the 'hiding' I dislike.

Oh, and I hesitate to trust even Uncle Sam when it comes to opening word docs and spreadsheets. Infosec audits for him-- um-mm, not so safe.

The real reason for the use of bandwidth...

[WaR.KiN]

Space cadets probably have too much free time sitting in space and want to download p0rn.

Put this on bit torrent

[Maxo-Texas]

and you won't HAVE to sell government sites to the highest bidders.

Criminy it gets irritating the way government is getting into bed with business these days.

Dijjer - mod parent up

[cryptochrome]

Very cool. Much fewer hoops to jump through than BitTorrent. Peercasting possibilities. Sounds like dijjer could replace BT, if its efficiency and reliability works as advertised. My only concern is there appears to be no way to turn it on or off.

I must be hallucinating

[curlyjunglejake]

Did I just read that? Corporations certainly do "just get money." They get it through tax breaks, subsidies, disproportial amount of business, or externality management. Sometimes, as with the airline industry, they are considered too integral to our economy to allow to fail, and are subsidized. Other times, as with pet companies run by Senators, they are given wide tax breaks, under the pretext of stimulating the economy to ward of external competition (this is a form of protectionism). Often, as with the industrial military complex, our reliance on a particular private sector product so empowers that sector that they begin to distort our continuing preference for that product even though our continuing need has diminished. Finally, as with the oil industry, externalities such as wildlife preservation, roadways, and extranational reserves are managed by national resources, effectively saving the industry that cost by distributing it to all of us, the tax payers. The difference between NASA and corporate handouts is just in the fraction of subsidy. What makes these corporate handouts different is their motivation: NASA takes our money to forward an idealistic vision and forge a collective legacy. Corporations take our money to make us pay for the cost of reassembling an elite aristocracy. This is not a project that distinguishes our legacy from any of the other miserable historic states of mankind. It is not in my interest, it is not in America's interest, in is not in the interest of mankinds plight, nor mankind's betterment.

P2P

[Cyno]

Well, if these old timers would wake up there's technology out there that would be ready to handle this today.

Instead of supporting this peer to peer technology they have to go begging for help like some homeless hippie. That's sad.

I suggest they get with the times and start promoting technology that could save us all some money. Imagine if every web browser had some efficient P2P software integrated/standard. Without encryption or obfiscation it could be very efficient and legal content, like this, could be distributed with less overhead.

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[the frizz]

For some statistics here's some press releases and my previous posting.

Past viewer statistics

[the frizz]

I work for Speedera, the delivery network NASA uses for its main NASA TV live streaming link and the HTTP caching for its major web sites. So you are right that assuming bandwidth isn't going to be a problem. Its just that NASA has to pay for these services and unlike TV, the more people that watch, the more they have to pay.

For some statistics here's some press releases and my previous posting.

Space Inc.

[Doc Ruby]

NASA can "invest" billions in secret missions for the military and intelligence agencies, but can't invest 0.001% of that in bandwidth to promote their flashy public missions to the public? We're paying for it, they should use some of our money to show it to us. Corporate sponsorship is a certain way to pervert NASA missions' science according to some inevitable corporate agenda.

Aha!

[Anonymous Coward]

Few years ago NASA forced me to remove the NASA logo from my "news" site (used as a topic graphic). Now that I'm a big guy with several OC3 connection I'll NOT give you my bandwidth. Never again NASA, use the money you have to purchase badwidth by your own.

Re:How do NASA's needs compare to other high bandw

[Hulkster]

TigertheMad: Mmmmm, Space ships AND Hot nekkid chicks....brilliant. Can I award Hulkster the congressional medal of Honor for the suggestion?

Hulk says save the Medal of Honor for the real hero's.
Hulk happy/content with chocolate chip cookies ... ;-)

Re:To paraphrase.

[AMuse]

Not to mention that the $16 billion includes lots of "Earmarks". An Earmark is a clever way of putting lots of money into a budget to make an agency budget look larger, but demanding that the money be spent certain ways.

For a non-specific example, if the military awarded a $10 million grant to DARPA, but demanded that they spend $5 million on contracts only with Lockheed Martin, then the DARPA budget would look like it got a $10 million increase while, in practice, it got much less of an increase.

Take an entire agency budget of $15 billion, add a $1 billion raise and than tack on $5 billion in earmarks, and it actually amounts to a ~25% budget cut.

Torrent

[Lotharjade]

It may have already have been said, but how about NASA embracing the use of bittorrent? It would solve a bit of their problems.

comments on several points.

[app13b0y]

first, as to bittorent, STOP POSTING IT ALREADY! dead subject, it can't happen. Maybe after it is all said and done copies can be passed around, but most people want to watch it live!

I believe having the uni's use internet2 would cut down considerably on the internet's bandwidth, and I also think users like us can help handle their bandwidth problems and make this event enjoyable for all.

my suggestion is getting everybody together to create an advanced relay setup using icecast with theora support. This could easily help many people connect, as I'm guessing (according to calculations of people who use linux/unix/bsd based system) at least 50% will be able to view that stream. (Remember, most windows users won't be able to figure out how to connect or care to do so anyway). We just have to find a way for the rest to be able to view it.

I am part of a project called http://freematrix.us/. Currently, we only stream audio, but all of our servers have theora/streaming video support and can be the source for the stream while having one of our servers act as a relay for others to connect and share the links.
I'm talking with our director about doing this right now, and will probably email NASA about it soon. If you would like to help out, I'm on irc.freenode.net in #freematrix or under the nickname Apple.

now, to address the three OC192's (iirc) it would take to do this, this is simple but hard at the same time. Let's take a look at what, my guestimate, 70% of bandwidth usage is.
1. p2p
2. porn
the second one is a tad bit easier to bring down, because if people are watching the NASA sucker live, it's somewhat impracticle to be watching some streaming porn flick on the side, especially if somebody came walking in, that would get weird...

as for p2p, I'm sure that if people passed the word, and everybody was nice for a couple of hours, you could cut down on say 25% of all p2p bandwidth, which adds up.

Now, with my cluster idea, the saving in bandwidth right there, and using internet2, I think there is a shot that this can be pulled off. At this point, instead of debates on pop-ups and ads, rants about taxes, 20+ posts on bittorrent, etc. I would like to see you guys for once help come up with other ideas like mine to hopefully find a solution that would work. I'm not saying this is the best, I'm just saying its a start.

Re:To paraphrase.

[alizard]

Oh, and I hesitate to trust even Uncle Sam when it comes to opening word docs and spreadsheets. Infosec audits for him-- um-mm, not so safe.

Open Office in Linux is probably as much infocondom as you need to deal with that.

DOJ v MS Finding of Fact

[alizard]

see subject line.